Yeah, when I went digging through my old stuff to make a new icon for gaming posts, B2 came to mind immediately. I think I will need to add a mad hermit to the current game...
I really, really dig fourth edition, but yeah... Shadowfell is just about the worst introductory module they could've put out. They're giving away better ideas every week on their website than the ones that went into that module.
Still, the seeds for awesomeness are there, it just went a little too old-school with the implementation. It would have been a fantastic module back in 1981. ;)
To be honest, I'm kinda liking how Shadowfell is only 10% awesome. It's a fun thing to riff on and I'm having more fun putting my own mark on it than I would if it were tighter and better designed.
As an module for new players, I suspect it's pretty much a failure. Irontooth is too much too soon, the chief antagonist is boring, the Winterhaven NPCs talk like Ultima IV characters, there's no skill challenge, there's no pointing out obvious stunting opportunities, and worst of all, no support for debugging a player defeat or TPK. The game just ends. Fun!
I wonder if the dryness and sketchiness is by design? We all were supposed to start with B2, which was very detailed in some ways and completely not detailed in other ways. Maybe the idea is to teach DMs how to riff on top of the module material...
The irontooth encounter is something like level+5. A very odd choice. I got really close to TPK with that. Nothing else has come close.
I've decided to just hack out 90% of the rest of the module and just get to the good stuff. Last night had two fights that dragged on too long, and they didn't have any real importance to them. After the fact I'm kicking myself for not cutting them as well.
Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous. Google "irontooth tpk".I tried to make it a bit easier for them; I moved the "outside the lair" encounter to a watch encampment far from the waterfall so that they'd be cued to have an extended rest before taking on IT. Unfortunately, that encounter wasn't a clean sweep -- someone got away and warned the lair, which went to Defcon 1
( ... )
Running from the pit
anonymous
September 18 2008, 23:30:30 UTC
Frankly I advocated for run away over mess with the ritual because a) higher odds of success and b) it just seemed like more fun going forward to have to figure out how to equip back up and then have to deal with a rampaging dracolich - wilhelm
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For more excellent eighties D&D goodness, see The Erol Otus Shrine.
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Still, the seeds for awesomeness are there, it just went a little too old-school with the implementation. It would have been a fantastic module back in 1981. ;)
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As an module for new players, I suspect it's pretty much a failure. Irontooth is too much too soon, the chief antagonist is boring, the Winterhaven NPCs talk like Ultima IV characters, there's no skill challenge, there's no pointing out obvious stunting opportunities, and worst of all, no support for debugging a player defeat or TPK. The game just ends. Fun!
I wonder if the dryness and sketchiness is by design? We all were supposed to start with B2, which was very detailed in some ways and completely not detailed in other ways. Maybe the idea is to teach DMs how to riff on top of the module material...
Reply
I've decided to just hack out 90% of the rest of the module and just get to the good stuff. Last night had two fights that dragged on too long, and they didn't have any real importance to them. After the fact I'm kicking myself for not cutting them as well.
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