Keep on the Shadowfell Chop Shop [spoilers]


4th Edition

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Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

This will probably be a long post, so I'm going to use spoiler tags to block out the text a little. Basically though, this is my recipe for reworking KotS into something that is...well...is good.

First, what prompted me to do this:

Spoiler:

The adventure sucks. I have no nice way to say this - the adventure is paper thin, printed on poor quality paper, with little to no roleplaying, a dull as dishwater hometown, bad cartography (not the fold out maps, but the map of Winterhaven and the map of the area are ugly and boring), a one-dimensional villian, and no plot to speak of.

Mind you, this angry review might be because I had higher expectations for the first 4e intro product. If this were just J random module dumped in the middle of an issue of Dungeon (god rest its soul), I probably would've graded it a boring old C and moved on. But it's not. It's the flagship adventure for a new line. It should blow the pants off of everyone who reads it and make them want to adapt the new ruleset as soon as humanly possible.

Anyway, I hate the adventure as written and would probably just dump it in the trash as soon as play it, but given that it is practically the sole source of official 4e content at this point, I find myself substantially reworking it to make something I can run without holding my nose.

First, Winterhaven:

Spoiler:

As discussed above, the town is dull and ugly. I'd chop it out altogether and start from scratch, using either Fellcrest, which I see has just been posted on WotC's site, or Falcon's Hollow. The latter is a bit overly corrupt, so I cut back on a lot of those elements, but I like the map, and Nick's got some brief write-ups on locations that I can cut and paste onto the campaign website. I used MS Paint (the poor, technologically incompetent man's photoshop) to remove the Dwarven Monestary and Elara's Halfway House. Now I've got a pair of neat looking maps, some cool names, and a town with a reason for existing (it is a lumbering town). Much better than Winterhaven. To save myself some more effort, I drop the NPC names into the town and give them a little more flavor as well.

The adventure background:

Spoiler:

It's got a mediocre story that has more potential than the adventure can work with. Where'd Kalarel come from? How'd Keegan get a fancy tomb all to himself when he basically committed suicide? Did Nerath buy engineers in bulk and go on a public works pork project to carve all those sub-levels? Could the hobgoblin messengers linking to the next adventure be any more transparent? The place shut off their water supply because some kids drowned there?!?!? Ugh.

I like this better:

Nerath built the Keep on top of a more ancient set of ruins (basically, the second level of the map). This was approximately 100 years ago. They drove out the cultists at that time, locked up the portal, etc. Unfortunately, evil slipped in and tainted Keegan. He became a cultist and attempted to use the McGuffin to re-open the portal. He was discovered and fled along with some of his corrupted soliders, the McGuffin securely in his possession.

Squire McSquiresalot, Keegan's former squire, pursues Keegan. Keegan holes up in an old inn/cult of Orcus. There is a major battle, the inn catches on fire, and Keegan is trapped in the secret cultist chambers below (areas 5, 7, 16, and 8, with A4 as the entrance). Squire is mortally wounded, he manages to drag himself to a nearby cave complex with several of his men (areas 9-11) and dies. The surviving soldiers bury him with his magic sword Aecris and leave town to get reinforcements from the Nerath Empire. Said reinforcements never arrive, the various locales fall into disuse.

Falcon's Hollow is founded and grows up shortly thereafter. A year or so before the game begins, Douvan shows up with his assistant Kalerel. Douvan does not know that Kalerel is secretly a cultist of Orcus. The two of them find the Keep, Douvan intending to make sure it is secure, Kalerel intending to reopen it. They have a falling out, and Douvan leaves Kalerel to die at the hands of a goblin tribe. Douvan decides to leave the Keep because he has learned that the finding and preserving the McGuffin is the best way to keep the portal locked shut. Douvan follows clues to the burned down inn/cultist site where Keegan made his last stand.

Kalerel is a conniving bastard, and gets the goblins on his side along with the hobgoblins. He wants to find the key, but doesn't know where the burial site is located. He installs a spy in Falcoln's Hollow to watch for Keegan. He also learns of a local kobold tribe that pays tribute to a dragon living some leagues away. He goes to the kobold tribe, claiming to be a representative of the dragon, and informs the kobolds that the dragon demands they find the McGuffin. The kobolds are stupid and fall for the ploy, setting up ambushes. They manage to ambush a boat carrying artifacts from the Burial site, including a halfing that knows the location of the burial site, but no McGuffin. The kobolds hand over most of the prisoners (concealing a halfling to be eaten later) and, unbenknowest to Kalerel, redouble their efforts to find the McGuffin. This causes them to become more bold in their attacks.

As part of their "friendship" Kalerel also takes the kobolds' guard drakes from them, intending to use them in his plot.

With the information from the halfling, Kalerel makes his way to the burial site, ambushing Douvan. He journeys into the tombs beneath (which currently have no active undead) and retrieves the McGuffin. Douvan is kept alive at the site and some of Kalerel's companions also stay to make sure there are no other artifacts.

The Adventure:

Spoiler:

The PCs arrive in town and hear of Douvan's excavation projects in the area, but apparently no one can find him. They may even run into Kalerel and his bunch on their way back to the Keep (foreshadowing!). In any event, they buy into the idea of defeating the kobolds at their ambush site (though the redundant ambush is cut) and waterfall lair (did I mention the Falcoln's Hollow map has a waterfall on it already?). They discover the halfling, and he gives them the location of the burial site.

As they make their way to the burial site, Kalerel activates the portal and a pulse of necrotic energy washes over the land. Undead spring to life in the chambers beneath the burial site. The PCs rescue Douvan, he explains that Kalerel must not be allowed to open the portal, but he also points out that the necrotic pulse reaniminated Keegan and that something has to be done about him as well. In addition, he points out the cave complex where Squire died with the magic undead fighting sword. The PCs can deal with Keegan, the Squire's treasure, or just go right to the Keep.

The Squire's treasure is rooms 9-11 of the Keep, but instead of rats and oozes (the dullest combination of monsters) we get more Kruthiks, who have a climb skill and can hide among the stalagtites just like the rats, but are not boring and overdone (unlike the rats). This change also brings our incredibly high ooze count down from 3 to 2 (which is still too many in my book, but at least the oozes operate better than in prior editions).

The interlude happens here with the walking dead. The goal is to get more sacrificial victims to open the portal.

Rooms 1-4 are the true basement of the Keep, with 6 thrown in on the side (but no zombies, instead the trap summons some other appropriate monster to fight the PCs if they get the riddle wrong - I'm thinking archons if I can find appropriate stats on the wizards site). The entrance to the lower levels was buried as part of the construction of the Keep, and room 3 is where the entrance was buried (thus the dug out floor).

The second level is mostly the same, though the message linking to the next adventure is moved from room 11 to room 14 (located on the warchief). Room 16 is gone (it was moved to the burial site). Otherwise, everything from here out plays out normally. This area is much more ancient than the basement of the Keep and clearly predates that construction.

There it is, a revamped version of Keep on the Shadowfell that uses nearly all its elements, but makes for a more interesting story (in my book). Your mileage will most certainly vary, and it may be that this adventure really sings if you play it as written and accept it in all its Keep on the Borderlands simplicity. That's not my bag, and thus the rewrite above.

Comments and suggestions are always welcome. In particular, I'd love a justification for all these zombies to be around without (recently dead) corpses (it's a pet peeve of mine).

The Exchange

Yep. I concur. Fortunately my group sees this as a way to learn the game. Now that running the game has been made a whole lot simpler I can finally do a home brew without the fuss muss or bother.

WotC should have done better but they did not. Oh, well.


Both the authours have talent but tend to be hit and miss, Cordell especially ( I love some of his adventures and am totally underwhelmed by other work of his). That said doing this when their main job is to make the game was clearly a bad idea. They should have farmed this out.


I love what you're doing to flesh out the adventure. I'm currently in the process of doing the same sort of thing with the D&D Day adventure. I'm not sure if I'm such a fan of completely axing Winterhaven (okay mostly because it references areas from the Fantastic Locations modules--which I love seeing adopted into the setting).

So here's the thing. Were you of a mind to flesh out Winterhaven, what would you do with it?


About the quality :

I think the quality paper isn't bad at all but WotC should make a rigid cover next time.

For a supplement it's a shame, there's no summary and no glossary... :-(

The encounter are quite similar. The plot isn't very immersive.

So it's an average fisrt product and WotC need to improve it very soon for the next H2.


Sebastian,

Thanks for the ideas - I'll definitely be stealing some of them. I also found the plot pretty simplistic. Given that, I was just planning on using KotS as an opportunity to try out the rules, mostly to practice the new combat system, but also to see how their encounter-building guidelines hold up when adjsting for a different number of characters.

Your contributions have inspired me to set the bar a little higher.


I'm of two minds about this adventure module.

Several of Sebastion's points are true. There isn't much of a backstory to speak of, and the players have little to no motivation to go into the keep and kill the bad guy beyond "You are an adventurer. This is how we play D&D."

The construction is... intresting. I like the folder style of the booklet, and the maps are very good, but the booklets themselves are indeed flimsy. I wouldn't have problem with the interior paper if the individual booklets had a thick study cover. They don't, and i think that's a major flaw in the design.

However! With the exception of the two large area maps, I found the content itself to be amazingly good especially for a newbie DM. (I am not a newbie, but I can tell how helpful the step by step nature of this adventure would be.)

Yes, there is not a good storyline connecting each encounter, but they give a lot of suggestions on how to improve the storyline and the interactions with the various NPC's in town. They should have simply put those things into the standard adventure, but oh well.

The way they laid out encounters is just excellent.

Every encounter takes up a two page spread, and contains everything you need in one place to playthat encounter. All the monster stats, a map of the area with all the monsters keyed on the map, and a ton of information about the area like how the monsters will react and what kind of traps are in that encounter.

I really love this format of encounter design, and I really hope they continue that.


I actually got to play through the first part of this adventure last Saturday, but I don't want to go into too many details since I'm at work and I don't want to throw something out there that isn't quite what I mean to say.

However, the plot of the adventure, from what I got to see, really didn't do much for me. Thankfully I had a good DM and some really fun players at the table as well.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber

I've played this just to get an idea of how 4th Edition works since I'm one of the honest souls who's waiting for the books and I have to agree with Sebastian. They really should have tried to blow us away for the introduction to the new edition and they didn't. It could count as an homage to Keep on the Borderlands, but I doubt that :). I do like the ideas you put up Sebastian and wish I'd read them before I did my run through.


While I suspect my players will likely be more concerned about learning the new rules rather than following deep plot developments, I agree that the adventure’s a bit generic. For the most part, though, I’m trusting that the new rules will give a new feel to encounters we’ve all had before. Sure we’ve all fought kobolds before, but I don’t think we’ve ever faced off against 15 at once.

Having said that, though, I’m finding that picking a campaign setting which interests you is key to making this adventure come alive. I’m not very excited about Winterhaven or cults of Orcus, but have found that this adventure (and 4th ed in general) morphs very well into my favorite D&D setting : the Scarred Lands. Once I made that change and became a little more invested in the setting, I found all sorts of new ways to bring the setting alive for my players and (hopefully) build a fun environment for these otherwise “standard” encounters to take place around.

Not that I won’t be stealing some ideas from Sebastian, but my only changes to the actual encounters will be purely cosmetic. For example, I’d like to swap out the goblins with the kobolds (and vice versa) to help them fit into the roles that I have for those races in my campaign setting. Without the core rulebooks, though, I’ll likely just use the stats as given but call them goblins and kobolds instead of kobolds and goblins.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

I'm glad to be making a positive contribution for a change. I'm torn about the format. On the one hand, it is very well tailored for use in play. On the other hand, it's generally boring to read away from the table, and seems to be too small in some cases and too big in others. It also turns all the art into maps, which I find less than satisfying. There isn't even a picture of the BBEG.

For the most part I didn't change the tactical elements, I mostly just rearranged them. When I did make a change to the tactical elements, it was generally because of my personal preferences on monster uses (I don't like to use animals or oozes, for example, and I cut them out as a result).

As for not gutting Winterhaven, I'd probably just keep the name and throw out everything else. If you want to keep more than the name, I'd probably take a step back and come up with a reason for the town to exist in its current location. It's an unusual place for a town to exist given that it's not on a river or other body of water. It is on a road, but as the adventure states, that road is poorly kept and rarely used, so that shouldn't be enough to keep the place going.

By the way, I ran the first few encounters over the weekend and forgot about the dangers of player ingenuity. They encountered Kalarel and the Orcus Underpriest in town while looking for work with Douvan. Kalarel told them to piss off and fight the kobolds because Douvan didn't need help with anything. They encountered Narian, but got a high enough Insight check to realize she had an ulterior motive, and ultimately decided to just track Kalarel and the Orcus Underpriest to the ruins of the Keep, thus bypassing the kobold tribe, the squire cave, and the catacombs. It'll be fun to see how things turn out.


The impression I get is that it's a fallback location for all the farmlands round about. That once upon a time it was a patrol post or whatever for the old Nerathi Empire, but as the Empire fell into disarray, a lot of old perfectly good fortifications lay fallow and got possessed by regular folks. They farm, for the most part, but when something dangerous happens, they pile into town behind the big wall.

That said, I don't yet own H1, so I don't know how well my model fits the facts. From the map I can see that there's two parts to the city. The southern part has what looks like they might be stables, some homes, a town square area, what might be a tavern, and a barracks. Then through the second gate into the northern part of town you have three big buildings. The central one looks like where the lord (or whatever) probably lives.

But yeah, that's pretty much all I know.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

That's not a bad explanation Grim. Winterhaven generally needs some TLC, it's just not that interesting or exciting out of the box, and you may be better able to make it work than I was.


What I really need is for someone at WoTC to do what Paizo did with the Compleat Encounters. Just let me buy what I want. All I want is the area map and the pamphlet with the material on the village and the people who live there. I don't need or want the adventure, nor the two poster maps that come from Fantastic Locations anyway. I certainly don't need the quickstart rules, since I plan to buy the full books in about five days. Which y'know if the dumb module was $20 cheaper I just might buy it anyway, just to keep the two things I want and toss the rest in the wastebasket on my way out of the store. Stupid.

Oh, hey did I tell you I ran into a guy at the Paizocon who I was sure was you? Yeah. Me and the folks I came with were totally sure, whispering back and forth in the hotel lobby like you were a celebrity or something. Turns out it was somebody else entirely, but for a while there...

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

Grimcleaver wrote:


Oh, hey did I tell you I ran into a guy at the Paizocon who I was sure was you? Yeah. Me and the folks I came with were totally sure, whispering back and forth in the hotel lobby like you were a celebrity or something. Turns out it was somebody else entirely, but for a while there...

Are you sure it wasn't not one of my Sebastian-bots? Like Dr. Doom, I have an entire legion of them at my beck and call to fool super heroes who think they are about to capture me.

*basks in his status as a JJJ level celebrity*


Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

Unless Sebastian, in real life, looked like a little runty bald guy, I'd likely not recognize him.

As to Winterhaven, I really like Grim's explanation for it. There's nothing in the module that supports that, but there's even less that disagrees with it (Yeah, Winterhaven doesn't get a lot of air-time, as it were).

For myself, I've replaced Winterhaven with Mullis Town (again, Scarred Lands) and placed my PCs as travelling there from Mithril. Just that the town now feels like it exists in a world really helps me bring it to life more than running Dropinanymap Village.


Fletch wrote:
Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

Don't make fun of my skin condition!


Fletch wrote:
Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

I think it informs my mental image of the person. Certainly there's a bump one way or the other if you run into someone who uses the same avatar as someone I really like or don't like. If I saw somebody with the Fatespinner avatar I'd be predisposed to like him I figure. Just as easily there's a few avatars out there that would start someone off a step down with me--just because of negative associations.

As for me though, this picture is actually what I look like. Well at least my soul does. Heh.

Actually there are pictures of me floating around from the Paizocon thing. Good to know my secret identity is safe until I grow out my Hulk Hogan beard and bald guy mullet.


So what IS there about Winterhaven? I mean is it even worth my time trying to track down details about it? I hope at least there's a key to what all the buildings are, what the name of the local tavern is, and who's in charge of things. That's really all I absolutely NEED I suppose. I mean how lame IS the writeup anyway?

From all the talk I imagine it reads like this--

Winterhaven: Harmless.

Silver Crusade

Fletch wrote:

Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

Well now I do.

Though to be honest, I've long been unable to think of Nicholas Logue as looking anything unlike his avatar.


Teiran wrote:
However! With the exception of the two large area maps, I found the content itself to be amazingly good especially for a newbie DM. (I am not a newbie, but I can tell how helpful the step by step nature of this adventure would be.)

The problem is that this should not have been aimed at a Newbie DM. WotC already has plans for a product that will cater to new players and DMs coming down the pipeline. Plus their apparently their marketing is supposed to be aimed at the veterans first. If you are a veteran than this is not really all that impressive. If they felt they just had to do this in house one wonders why they did not put Perkins on it. He's probably got the best record in terms of adventure design out of any employee of WotC.


Grimcleaver wrote:

From all the talk I imagine it reads like this--

Winterhaven: Harmless.

You're thinking 3.5. With the 4th edition, Winterhaven has been upgraded to "Mostly Harmless".

Flipping open my ink-smeared book, Winterhaven receives just over four pages of text plus a half-a-page map. Come to think of it, there's also a half-page map of the surrounding area showing where the adventure locations lie in relation to each other.

Winterhaven itself is made of less than 20 buildings but with a surprisingly thick wall surrounding the lot of it. You get a paragraph or more for each of those buildings (and the thick thick outer wall) including the Inn, Smithy, Temple, Market and other standard village locations.

While a number of NPCs are listed by name in their respective location (such as Thair Coalstriker, the village smith), the module focuses on 4-5 NPCs it's assumed the PCs will engage with at the local pub, none of which, I confess, reach too far from a stereotype (the learned sage, the grizzled farmer, the elven scout, etc.) The module does give a number of quotable responses from these NPCs to likely questions from the PCs as the adventure procedes, some of which are good character moments or clever adventure hooks.

It's not a lack of content that makes Winterhave feel so empty, it's really a lack of context. It just seems out in the middle of nowhere (which may be kind of the point, I suppose). However, it is part of the sample setting presented in the DMG, so maybe it'll shine a little more once it has a place in the world.


For me Winterhaven is a small town that happened to be on crossroads which helped to thrive initially. The walls are wooden (interior and exterior) and the purpose of the town is to make money out of trade. Of course trade has almost stopped for a long time but winterhaven is a haven for the occasional trader who happens to come through. The people there are a hardworking folk who just does not want to abandon the land that their parents lived and this is the reason that they endure the abuse of the kobolds.


Mikaze wrote:
Fletch wrote:

Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

Well now I do.

Though to be honest, I've long been unable to think of Nicholas Logue as looking anything unlike his avatar.

It's the big evil moustache. His writing makes you think that he should look like th BBEG from one of his modules.


Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:
Both the authours have talent but tend to be hit and miss, Cordell especially ( I love some of his adventures and am totally underwhelmed by other work of his). That said doing this when their main job is to make the game was clearly a bad idea. They should have farmed this out.

I agree. His writing ranges from very good, to "Oh dear god kill me to make it stop." ' Dark Vision' was a decent book that I really enjoyed. 'Lady of Poison' & 'Stardeep' were like pulling teeth.


Sebastian wrote:

This will probably be a long post, so I'm going to use spoiler tags to block out the text a little. Basically though, this is my recipe for reworking KotS into something that is...well...is good.

As discussed above, the town is dull and ugly. I'd chop it out altogether and start from scratch, using either Fellcrest, which I see has just been posted on WotC's site, or Falcon's Hollow. The latter is a bit overly corrupt, so I cut back on a lot of those elements, but I like the map, and Nick's got some brief write-ups on locations that I can cut and paste onto the campaign website. I used MS Paint (the poor, technologically incompetent man's photoshop) to remove the Dwarven Monestary and Elara's Halfway House. Now I've got a pair of neat looking maps, some cool names, and a town with a reason for existing (it is a lumbering town). Much better than...

This was the same problem I had running 'Anauroch- Empire of Shade'. The adventure just really had no meat at all. By the time I got done ripping it apart, it looked nothing like what was in the book. As I've said before, I hate Delve Format.

What I'm curious about is did the adventure feel padded? That's one of the problems that I have with Delve. It's the need to reprint every stat block every time you encounter it. How bad was this module? Wotc had also said that it would be able to be played using either 3.5 or 4E rules.... How did that look on paper? Was there much converion if so?

Scarab Sages

Grimcleaver wrote:

So what IS there about Winterhaven? I mean is it even worth my time trying to track down details about it? I hope at least there's a key to what all the buildings are, what the name of the local tavern is, and who's in charge of things. That's really all I absolutely NEED I suppose. I mean how lame IS the writeup anyway?

From all the talk I imagine it reads like this--

Winterhaven: Harmless.

There is an area map in the DMG that shows Winterhaven in relation to Fallcrest. And there's a blurb about it as well (see H1 for more info basically).

The Exchange

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Grimcleaver wrote:
The impression I get is that it's a fallback location for all the farmlands round about.

Which farmlands? According to the included maps, the whole surrounding area is forested. Kobold-infested forests. Kobolds capable of making classed adventurers look like chumps if they're not careful. Sounds like the worst possible place for farming I can think of.

So, we've got 977 people crammed into like 20 buildings, surrounded by horrible monsters, on trade roads that have fallen into disuse (so, presumably, there's not much trade going on). So, what on earth do these people eat? I wondered that aloud, and one of my players suggested that after dinner, there will be 976 people crammed into the buildings.

I do like the question/answer format for helping out new DMs. Stereotypical or not, it's helpful for mood setting. Unfortunately, not a single NPC is statted out, so it's impossible for characters to use ANY of their social skills.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

Blackdragon wrote:

This was the same problem I had running 'Anauroch- Empire of Shade'. The adventure just really had no meat at all. By the time I got done ripping it apart, it looked nothing like what was in the book. As I've said before, I hate Delve Format.

What I'm curious about is did the adventure feel padded? That's one of the problems that I have with Delve. It's the need to reprint every stat block every time you encounter it. How bad was this module? Wotc had also said that it would be able to be played using either 3.5 or 4E rules.... How did that look on paper? Was there much converion if so?

Part of the padding problem is definitely the Delve format itself. Some encounters just don't need two pages and some need more and, as you mention, the duplicate stat blocks are also a culprit. However, I must admit that the delve format did play very well and served as an excellent format for reference at the table. The other padding that is not related to the Delve format is the duplicate encounter with the kobolds (it's basically the same encounter twice, on the same map, but with one new enemy) and the Burial Site Encounter. There is an NPC investigating a draconic burial site, but not a lot is done with that flavor other than just to link another encounter to an existing pregenerated map. The town itself lacked any exciting or interesting detail, and the information provided wasn't really worth reading. The Falcoln's Hollow info in the back of Crown of the Kobold King is a much better example of efficiently conveying the flavor of an interesting town.

I haven't read anything suggesting that this adventure is easy to convert, and, well, I'd have to say that anyone who made that claim was just blowing smoke (and that's the nicest way I can phrase that). This module is as convertable to 3e as an Exalted module. You would basically be lifting the plot (ick), maybe some of the tactical elements (which you would then have to stat up using 3.5), and the personalities of the NPCs (cliched as they are). I could not recommend this module to anyone unless they were really excited about 4e and wanted to get the rules early. It's a terrible product.

The Exchange

Sebastian wrote:
This will probably be a long post, so I'm going to use spoiler tags to block out the text a little. Basically though, this is my recipe for reworking KotS into something that is...well...is good.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the "bare-bones, little flavor" approach is deliberate. I've not spent a lot of time purchasing a lot of WotC-produced materials because I get what I need out of the basic rule books and go from there, so I am not familiar with the writers' styles. I believe, however, that this is WotC's new approach to adventure design, and I think, maybe, you have done EXACTLY what they want you to do with it (i.e., take what they have given you, make it relevent to you, and make it your own). Take a look at the rules and the "there's no default D&D world" approach.

You have to admit this sort of generic adventure approach would definitely lend itself to rapid adventure writing, taking a lot of work off the designer and placing it squarely on the shoulders of the DM to make it relevent and engaging.

Mind you, this is just an assumption. I wasn't all that happy with it myself, and was especially put-off over the reprinted maps. WotC has a long history of regurgitating their art and such, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised ...


Sounds to me like you're griping for the sake of griping.

Who cares where Kalarel came from? Is it somehow going to rock the adventure to include the villain's background? Maybe, just maybe, the story is supposed to focus on the PCs? Perhaps it's up to the DM to decide if he wants this villain to even have a backstory. If you opt to have him come back as an undead villain from the Shadowfell in a later adventure, you could expose more backstory then.

Keegan doesn't necessarily have a "fancy tomb". For all the players know, it's a dank cave in the earth that stinks like stagnant water. Perhaps, it's a burial chamber which was meant for someone else, someone who was driven off during the fall of Nerath. It's up to you to decide where the adventure goes.

Also, has anyone ever wondered why there are always sublevels to all these castles? Castle Greyhawk, Maure Castle, Hellgate Keep... the list goes on and on. Most real-world castles don't have sublevels like that. It's a D&D trope. Don't question it, just enjoy it.


evilvolus wrote:


Which farmlands? According to the included maps, the whole surrounding area is forested. Kobold-infested forests. Kobolds capable of making classed adventurers look like chumps if they're not careful. Sounds like the worst possible place for farming I can think of. So, we've got 977 people crammed into like 20 buildings, surrounded by horrible monsters, on trade roads that have fallen into disuse (so, presumably, there's not much trade going on). So, what on earth do these people eat? I wondered that aloud, and one of my players suggested that after dinner, there will be 976 people crammed into the buildings.

Well I'm mostly going off the blurb written on the Wizards site:

Winterhaven Village, Population 977
The rutted King's Road leads to the foot of a broad hill that holds the walled village of Winterhaven. The village is nestled in the southern foothills of the Cairngorm Peaks. The walls are weathered stone topped by defensive palisades. Small thatched homes stand around Winterhaven, each fronting a small piece of farmland or pasture. Beyond the farms to the west and south lie dark woods, and to the north, tall mountain peaks.

As for the kobolds, I have to imagine that like most savage regions, it's really hard to be a farmer. You're really exposed out in the middle of nowhere. Not much different today in certain parts of the world. You never know when a bengal tiger will crash out of the woods and eat you. Farmers are at the mercy of everything. So when the hulk of an old watchpost established in the early days of Nerath, became uninhabited, it filled like a vaccuum with scared farmers and simple tradefolk. The decendants of the original Nerathan hub city of Fallcrest, the Markelhays, still rule so I gotta' imagine there's a sense of still wanting to uphold as much of the old civilized boarders as possible--so they trade and supply the small outpost whenever they can. Unfortunately after trying to protect Winterhaven from an attack by the orcs of the Bloodspear Clan, they provoked a reprisal that almost destroyed them. Consequently their runs to supply and trade with Winterhaven are less frequent of late. The roads have fallen into disuse. So yeah, it's rough for the farmers out there--but what choice have they got?

(Y'know researching Fallcrest for this, it's amazing how perfectly the city fits into the backstory of the D&D Day module. I was hoping to use Winterhaven, but between the Gray Downs as a wonderful spot for the adventuring site and great contacts for the pregen adventurers. I think this is going to work out better!)

The Exchange

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber
Grimcleaver wrote:
Well I'm mostly going off the blurb written on the Wizards site:

Yeah, I'm complaining largely based on the Approaching the Keep map which is also reprinted on the site you linked. Realistically, a village of a thousand people is going to be using at least a few square miles of farmland around the fortification. Instead, we're presented with the village being built in a clearing that is (generously) a quarter-mile across. The town itself is less than 200 feet across (20 of which is wasted on wall) so there's no way the full population lives inside the wall. Instead, they're all "farming" in the roughly 500 feet available on each side of the defensible perimeter.

A much better example of appropriate farmland like Winterhaven is *supposed* to be is the Sandpoint Hinterlands map from PF2. Unfortunately, the Sandpoint farmers made the rather poor tactical decision to cut themselves off from the town's fortification by farming on the other side of goblin-infested forests and the Devil's Platter.

All of which, of course, is pretty petty complaining. It just feels symptomatic of minimal thought being put into the setting beyond "here's a cool encounter," "here's the same cool encounter again," "here's one with a waterfall" etc.


rockfall22 wrote:

Sounds to me like you're griping for the sake of griping.

Who cares where Kalarel came from? Is it somehow going to rock the adventure to include the villain's background? Maybe, just maybe, the story is supposed to focus on the PCs? Perhaps it's up to the DM to decide if he wants this villain to even have a backstory. If you opt to have him come back as an undead villain from the Shadowfell in a later adventure, you could expose more backstory then.

Keegan doesn't necessarily have a "fancy tomb". For all the players know, it's a dank cave in the earth that stinks like stagnant water. Perhaps, it's a burial chamber which was meant for someone else, someone who was driven off during the fall of Nerath. It's up to you to decide where the adventure goes.

Also, has anyone ever wondered why there are always sublevels to all these castles? Castle Greyhawk, Maure Castle, Hellgate Keep... the list goes on and on. Most real-world castles don't have sublevels like that. It's a D&D trope. Don't question it, just enjoy it.

I think his point is a question of quality. Sebastian is right (Words I never though I would hear myself say.) in saying that if this is going to be the first 4E module, then WotC should be looking to blow the consumers socks off with a stunning piece of work, not business as usual from 3.5.


For what it's worth, Grim, I admire your ability to pack meat on the bones of this setting. While some would just accept it as is or even walk away from it for being too skimpy, you were able to take what was written and see it as clues to a bigger picture. That's pretty cool.

If I weren't already lifting Winterhaven into another setting entirely, I'd likely be using your premise in its entirety. In fact, depending on how much interest my players have in my setting versus the default setting, I may keep this as a fallback anyways.

Thanks.


Sebastian wrote:

This will probably be a long post, so I'm going to use spoiler tags to block out the text a little. Basically though, this is my recipe for reworking KotS into something that is...well...is good.

First, what prompted me to do this:
** spoiler omitted **

First, Winterhaven:
[spoiler]
As discussed above, the town is dull and ugly. I'd chop it out altogether and start from scratch, using either Fellcrest, which I see has just been posted on WotC's site, or Falcon's Hollow. The latter is a bit overly corrupt, so I cut back on a lot of those elements, but I like the map, and Nick's got some brief write-ups on locations that I can cut and paste onto the campaign website. I used MS Paint (the poor, technologically incompetent man's photoshop) to remove the Dwarven Monestary and Elara's Halfway House. Now I've got a pair of neat looking maps, some cool names, and a town with a reason for existing (it is a lumbering town). Much better than...

You can save all of your spoiler tags, Sebastian, because I am not paying $29.99 for a module...


Fletch wrote:
For what it's worth, Grim, I admire your ability to pack meat on the bones of this setting. While some would just accept it as is or even walk away from it for being too skimpy, you were able to take what was written and see it as clues to a bigger picture. That's pretty cool.

Hey thanks! I appreciate it. I'm just so jazzed to finally be getting bonafide info on the new 4e setting that I'm just pouring over it and trying to piece things together to get a real feel for the world. Glad if it helps anyone out there besides me. And hey, thanks a lot for the background information you gave me. It helps a ton, me not having the adventure yet.


Sebastian wrote:
I'm glad to be making a positive contribution for a change. I'm torn about the format. On the one hand, it is very well tailored for use in play. On the other hand, it's generally boring to read away from the table, and seems to be too small in some cases and too big in others. It also turns all the art into maps, which I find less than satisfying. There isn't even a picture of the BBEG.

You make a good point about the format restricting the artwork.

The BBEG does have a picture in the module, he's on the second or third page, in the write up for the adventure. This is not, I think, a good place for him to be. He should be on the same page as his encounter, but not on the page with the map, so that the DM can easily show hold up one page of the book to show the players exactly what they are fighting by flashing them the picture.

Sebastian wrote:


By the way, I ran the first few encounters over the weekend and forgot about the dangers of player ingenuity. [The party going a totally different way]

Thats players for you. Let us know how it works out for you guys, I'm intrested to know.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook Subscriber
Fletch wrote:

Does anybody else here subconsciously think everyone else looks like their avatar art?

Unless Sebastian, in real life, looked like a little runty bald guy, I'd likely not recognize him.

So, what, you mean James Jacobs isn't a demonic t-rex?


Actually he looks a lot like Peter Jackson. That was my first impression of the guy. He's great!

Sovereign Court

Grimcleaver wrote:

Actually he looks a lot like Peter Jackson. That was my first impression of the guy. He's great!

And GrimCleaver is much taller then a 2 inch icon in person. Much taller. Much.

And he's great too, as are the rest of the Cleaver family. (you know, that's oddly funny when you say it like that)

Sovereign Court

Grimcleaver wrote:


Well I'm mostly going off the blurb written on the Wizards site:

Winterhaven Village, Population 977
The rutted King's Road leads to the foot of a broad hill that holds the walled village of Winterhaven. The village is nestled in the southern foothills of the Cairngorm Peaks. The walls are weathered stone topped by defensive palisades. Small thatched homes stand around Winterhaven, each fronting a small piece of farmland or pasture. Beyond the farms to the west and south lie dark woods, and to the north, tall mountain peaks.

Ok thought I'd jot down some notes on Winterhaven.

The preview of Winterhaven and the DMG town of Fallcrest both have the same issue. The maps and description don't support the number of people stated. 977 is just ludicrous. I'd say probably 60 people in town with maybe 100-125 outside in surrounding farms/manors. 977 might have been the case at it's peak when the outpost was fully active and staffed by the empire's soldiers, but not anymore. You're probably reading an old traveler's guide. :-) "Come visit beautiful Winterhaven!"

Of course after the Empire started to decline more and more of the soldiers stationed there were pulled back to more important duties until they completely abandoned it, leaving the outpost and surrounding farmers to defend themselves. It's slowly shrank as people moved away or were found dead of brigands (or worse). Even so it's been relatively peaceful for a good while (only a small militia onhand) until just recently when things have picked up.

It's at a fork in the road about a day's journey west from Fallcrest so would make sense for an outpost to grow there. There's a river that goes through Fallcrest so river traffic would drop off goods and then guarded caravans go overland to and through Winterhaven to points west.

With the downfall of the empire the road north looks like it's fallen into disrepair. The Keep is along that road. The south fork still seems to be active so there would be some amount of traffic.

If you're going to set this in PF campaign then northern Andoran would work fine. Heavily wooded. Falcon's Hallow could be easily substituted.

I was chatting with Sebastian about the plotline a bit on chat.dmtools.org last night and he mentioned about the cultists being a distraction. I'm thinking of having the diggers come into town and having the PC's potentially follow them. That will move the plot along a bit without getting them directly to the Keep.

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

rockfall22 wrote:
Sounds to me like you're griping for the sake of griping.

Sounds to me like you're defending a 4e product for the sake of defending 4e.

rockfall22 wrote:

Who cares where Kalarel came from? Is it somehow going to rock the adventure to include the villain's background? Maybe, just maybe, the story is supposed to focus on the PCs? Perhaps it's up to the DM to decide if he wants this villain to even have a backstory. If you opt to have him come back as an undead villain from the Shadowfell in a later adventure, you could expose more backstory then.

Keegan doesn't necessarily have a "fancy tomb". For all the players know, it's a dank cave in the earth that stinks like stagnant water. Perhaps, it's a burial chamber which was meant for someone else, someone who was driven off during the fall of Nerath. It's up to you to decide where the adventure goes.

Also, has anyone ever wondered why there are always sublevels to all these castles? Castle Greyhawk, Maure Castle, Hellgate Keep... the list goes on and on. Most real-world castles don't have sublevels like that. It's a D&D trope. Don't question it, just enjoy it.

When I purchase a module, I do so to save my time. If I have to go in and build a backstory, deviate significantly from the text (e.g., the fancy tomb, or for that matter, any tomb at all given the fact that no one was there to entomb him after his death), or otherwise do a bunch of work to turn a bunch of random maps and encounters into an interesting and exciting adventure, then I have not saved time despite the outlay in cash. Paizo products have never failed me in this regard, and I hold WotC to the same standard. I'm more than capable of generating a random map, populating it with random monsters, and calling it an adventure. To say that I should expect nothing further from a purchased product entirely misses the reason for puchasing said product.

Plus, as Blackdragon pointed out, the bar for the initial 4e product is significantly higher than J. Random Module. This module should have energized those pre-disposed to playing 4e and given the doubters second-thoughts, not required significant tinkering and extra DM work. I would direct you to Paizo's launch of Pathfinder, which started out with a stellar first product and has continued to be excellent since then. If Paizo had printed H1 as its first product, I doubt I would be a subscriber.


rockfall22 wrote:

Sounds to me like you're griping for the sake of griping.

Who cares where Kalarel came from? Is it somehow going to rock the adventure to include the villain's background?

I'd hope so, yes.

rockfall22 wrote:


Maybe, just maybe, the story is supposed to focus on the PCs?

Absolutely - Having more information facilitates that by engaging the DM and giving him ideas on how to hook the players into the setting and context.

rockfall22 wrote:


Perhaps it's up to the DM to decide if he wants this villain to even have a backstory. If you opt to have him come back as an undead villain from the Shadowfell in a later adventure, you could expose more backstory then.

More information rarely gets in the way of good story. At worst the DM can change it and we end up at the same place as if their was no info at all. But its even better if it sparks the DMs imagination and becomes part of the game.

rockfall22 wrote:


Also, has anyone ever wondered why there are always sublevels to all these castles? Castle Greyhawk, Maure Castle, Hellgate Keep... the list goes on and on. Most real-world castles don't have sublevels like that. It's a D&D trope. Don't question it, just enjoy it.

Most of these adventures more or less explain why all these extra levels were created. There is internal consistency even if its not the kind of thing one would find in a real world castle. Maure Castle in particular is absolutely loaded with flavour and stuffed to the gills with secrets. This does not even come close to providing the kind of flavour and mystery one finds in Maure Castle and thats really unfortunate - Its not an absolutely awful adventure - its just not very good. I don't expect it to appear on a list of 'worst modules ever' in 10 years but It'll never be mentioned as a great adventure either.


Sebastian wrote:
When I purchase a module, I do so to save my time. If I have to go in and build a backstory, deviate significantly from the text (e.g., the fancy tomb, or for that matter, any tomb at all given the fact that no one was there to entomb him after his death), or otherwise do a bunch of work to turn a bunch of random maps and encounters into an interesting and exciting adventure, then I have not saved time despite the outlay in cash.

Sorry to hear that. That's actually the fun part for me. I'm terrible at actually building encounters and campaigns and stuff, but I love being able to twist the premade ones and hang story elements on them. When I buy a published adventure (which I seem to do more than actually playing published adventures), it's usually just for the stats and outline. A lot of the fluff (unless it's pretty clever fluff) gets replaced with stuff that applies more directly to my group.

Liberty's Edge

Sebastian,

This was an awesome write-up and as others here have demonstrated, there are a slew of ways to add some substance to the adventure.

Friend, this is why I support Paizo. When I read Paizo's adventures, they aren't just hack and slash. There's weight to them - substance. You have backstories, histories of the lands, depth in PCs, and so forth . . . things that WotC appears to find little need to include . . . and instead give us 60% of the pages as refurbished enlargements of the maps, stats, and a lot of space to tell us how to run a combat encounter.

I doubt this will go without rebuttal, but my sense is that WotC has become the "Beginner's Series for D&D" and Paizo has become "For Intermediate and Advanced Players."

Dark Archive Bella Sara Charter Superscriber

Saurstalk wrote:

Sebastian,

This was an awesome write-up and as others here have demonstrated, there are a slew of ways to add some substance to the adventure.

Friend, this is why I support Paizo. When I read Paizo's adventures, they aren't just hack and slash. There's weight to them - substance. You have backstories, histories of the lands, depth in PCs, and so forth . . . things that WotC appears to find little need to include . . . and instead give us 60% of the pages as refurbished enlargements of the maps, stats, and a lot of space to tell us how to run a combat encounter.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked it. I haven't looked at the delve thread, and there's probably a discussion of the pros and cons of the format there (buried under some amount of 4e argument, I'm sure), but I would add some qualifiers about the format. The delve format does lack art, it duplicates a decent amount of information, it's not as interesting to read, and it uses a one-size-fits-all approach that is not perfect for the substance. However, I do find it to be about the best format for use at the table - the information is easy to find, the two page spread and map mean I don't do a lot of page flipping, and the encounter information is well organized. I think the fault of KotS isn't entirely attributable to the delve format, but I do think the format requires a better use of the non-encounter space to communicate the story behind the adventure and that's where KotS really dropped the ball.

I guess that's part of why I feel no need to quit getting Pathfinder even though I am almost certainly going to play 4e in the future. Pathfinder is interesting to read in a way that a delve format adventure never will be. It has better art. But, it also requires more prep to run. As long as I'm mining them for ideas and not planning to run them, that flaw is easy to overlook.

I think that's one of the biggest changes in 4e, the products are weighted more for easy use and reference at the table. Part of the cost of that format is shorter sentences, less elaborate paragraphs, and something that isn't as pleasing to read. Generally, I am okay with that trade-off, but your mileage may vary considerably if your read to play ratio leans more towards the reading than the playing.

Saurstalk wrote:
I doubt this will go without rebuttal, but my sense is that WotC has become the "Beginner's Series for D&D" and Paizo has become "For Intermediate and Advanced Players."

And my contract requires me to pop in with a rebuttal. My experience with 4e, limited as it may be, is not that it is any less complex of a game, but rather that it has a bunch of simple pieces that interact together to create a complex experience. The powers, the hit-and-heal effects, the constant movement around the battlemat sounds corny when you read it. But when I play the game, I find that we are having a lot of fun doing all that stuff and that combat is more interactive than in 3e. 3e has a lot of interesting and complex self-contained mechanics, 4e has a lot of simple mechanics that work together to form a complex tactical experience. The core rules are the simplest and most vanilla expression of those simple mechanics, and as new books are published, there will be more exotic expressions of those simple mechanics and more complexity in their interactions.

A lot of people have stated that 4e is like Magic the Gathering, and I think that is a great comparison, but in a positive way. I love Magic because the rules are relatively simple, but the cards provide additional rules and interactions beyond those simple rules. The complexity and fun of magic comes form the interaction of the relatively simple cards and simple rules. It's a great game, but it lacks storytelling and is too competitive. I think 4e combines the best aspects of Magic and rpgs - it's like D&D crossed with legos.

Anyway, there's probably a thread dedicated to comparing the two editions somewhere in the universe, but that's my attempt at a non-hostile explanation of what I like about 4e. I love 3e, I loved my 3e games, but 4e is delivering to me more of what I enjoyed about 3e. I don't believe it is any sort of beginner's D&D by virtue of the simplicity of its mechanics, just as chess is not a beginner's board game because of the simplicity of its mechanics.


I'm getting the same vibe from 4E that I got when I cut my teeth on red box Basic and black box Basic. In a good way. A very good way. I love the format and that it delivers the info in an accessible way.

For personal preference I always find the players come up with far more interesting and elaborate plots for the NPCs than scenario writers so I'm happy that the NPCs remain rather background-less.

Sovereign Court

Sebastian wrote:

A lot of people have stated that 4e is like Magic the Gathering, and I think that is a great comparison, but in a positive way. I love Magic because the rules are relatively simple, but the cards provide additional rules and interactions beyond those simple rules. The complexity and fun of magic comes form the interaction of the relatively simple cards and simple rules. It's a great game, but it lacks storytelling and is too competitive. I think 4e combines the best aspects of Magic and rpgs - it's like D&D crossed with legos.

QFT

The previews I've seen so far encourage me that they've incorporated good things from Magic, Minitatures, and MMO's (the three big M's). It's a new, different way to play DnD. As someone very into games, it's always interesting to discover new game systems.

I like Magic, but like you say it's too competitive and there is no story telling. I like Miniatures, but it's only a tactical exercise. I like MMO's, but you can't "think outside the box". By combining good aspects from all of these but with story and roleplaying included, it could be a really great game with some broader appeal.

The other thing I appreciate is the way that tactics have more "how can I help my other players or affect the opposing units". There's less "what can I do on my own" and more "what can I do with the party.". That incorporates everyone at the table and keeps them engaged.

Ironically my thinking is that by streamlining the combat and powers it will allow more role-playing each session, not less. I truly hope that the "1 hour to complete one round of combat" is gone for good with 4E.

Pete


After reading through the Forgotten Realms Keep on the Shadowfell adaption in the new online Dungeon, I have to say that I kind of liked some of the connections they made between encounters, even if WOTC has beat Shar to deal as the BBEGoddess of the setting.

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