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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.
The board ate my original post. Suffice to say it was a thing of sublime beauty that would have healed the edition divide and would have resulted in massive online nerdgasm. I guess this'll have to do instead.
I would like to commend you for this effort as well. It seems to me that the earliest releases for most games require so much story TLC that it should qualify as major plot surgery. THis is the sort of thing i love about these boards, and while I won't be playing 4ed, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to post this. Hell, a few more posts like this one and things may start getting back to normal around here.
As for delve, I really despise the format, regardless of it utility at the table. It sucks all the joy from the reading of an adventure for me. Everything seems too disjointed, and the flipping pisses me off . I would love Wotc to put the delve stuff onto a CD or on DDI and take those pages back for adventure info & story. Then I could buy 4ed modules to mine for ideas to use in my Pathfinder game.
the 'Ling
I'm fairly sure I'll steal some of the stuff from the FR version to add into mine e.g. Ninaren's cabin (although maybe not the "starts in a bar" fight)
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This Fellow seems to have written up some more "fixes" for KotS that seem like "goodness". Thought I'd pass it along. Found over on Gleemax where he's posting them in the "adventures" section.
He's pretty up himself for someone who wrote several adventures for 3.0 that were panned for their rules errors and illogicity (from what I remember).
The palpable arrogance dissuades me from using his 'fixes'.
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.
Umm...nevermind. Despite my enthusiasm over the scarred lands, my players really hooked on the names Bahamut and Orcus and old familiars won out over new concepts. So, rather than try to teach them a new setting AND a new game system, we just went with the stock setting provided and pressed on.
My players are generally good-hearted people and, when I said "you're on a road to Winterhaven, having come from whatever town lies at the other end of this road" they just accepted it.
I considered offering them a chance to play it in Eberron (since they do have some experience with that), but the conversion notes over at the online Dungeon are pretty meh.
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I ran the first session last night. Here's some stuff that worked well:
My custom intro:
When the kobolds attacked, I had them screeching to one another in draconic, which had the players all saying "uh oh..." At the bottom of the first round, they heard a much deeper & eviller voice from inside the caravan, repeating the words it'd heard from the kobolds (none of the PCs spoke draconic, so I just jibbered & jabbered). The other Brotherhood guards cut and ran, conveniently keeping them out of the fight. At the end of the second round, a evistro burst out of the wagon, screaming delightedly in draconic and terrifying the PCs (especially those who had meta-knowledge that this was a level 6 carnage demon). The horses hitched to the wagon went mad, and we had a very satisfying running battle like something out of Jet Li's Once Upon a Time in the West. The evistro had enough hp to act like a solo (since the kobolds were all wiped out by this point); being a brute, its defenses were easily within reach of first-level characters; and its damage was pretty tame, which was fine because the players were plenty scared of it nevertheless.
Afterwards they searched the wagon and saw that it had been built and warded to contain the demon; an arcana check told them it had managed to undo the bindings by using an unholy word, explaining why they were so eager to keep it from learning any words. They won a skill challenge to track down the mercenaries who fled (in part because I forgot to add 5 to the DC, which the EN World math threads imply is a good idea even if I did it by mistake) and learned that an Earl Gaunt had hired them to deliver the wagon; they didn't know what was inside, although they suspected it was bad news; and they were supposed to contact an elf woman wearing a green cloak at Wrafton's Inn to arrange for delivery & payment. We ended the session as the PCs visited the Inn and saw two elves meeting the description - Kalarath's agent and the wildflower-gatherer - setting up a roleplaying/skill challenge for next time.
Another minor thing I did was to make the 34 silver pieces on the kobolds unusually well preserved specimens of late Nerath Empire coinage, which usually circulates only in shaven and worn-thin form. This got them thinking about who paid the kobolds from an ancient hoard, and pleased the player who likes to make History checks.
My modifications to the town:
The solution I decided to go for is that Nerath built the fort of Winterhaven as a provincial administration and tax-gathering center, with the latter function indicating that it might also need to withstand a peasant insurrection. Parle Cranewing deduced that there was something interesting going on with the Keep on the Shadowfell by noticing old account books that recorded expenses for building two keeps within the same tax district, which was highly unusual & suggestive of something interesting. (I made him an old-war weapons fanatic, inspired by Bat in Sheffield's _Dark as Day_, and who hinted to the PCs that Nerath might have been sending military wizards to the KotS).
Back then Winterhaven was surrounded by plenty of cleared farmland, which I took as why there are graves by the side of the road on the ambush map, and reinforced by having the PCs find old chimneys and foundations in the woods nearby. Decades before the fall of the Empire, Duke Ag Zyg earned the title 'the Mad' by constructing a dungeon full of puzzles and deathtraps beneath Winterhaven. (His face was on the coins mentioned above). When barbarism set in, the outlying farms became too dangerous, so with the help of some dwarven refugees (the current smith's uncles) they converted Ag Zyg's dungeon into a mushroom farm. So when the PCs entered the front gate of Winterhaven, they were greeted with the overwhelming stench of manure. When the market square isn't in use, it's filled with herds of cattle; those citizens who aren't tending the herds are shoveling up the manure and loading it into sledges that are being hauled down a ramp, or brought up empty to be refilled.
The PCs haven't entirely figured out the cattle/mushroom economy yet, but they did pick up on the tension within Wrafton's Inn between the tanned, grimy guys who never share tables with the pale, moldy guys (i.e., herders and farmers, or 'shroomies' and 'muckers' when they want to start a fight).
One of the players said afterwards that he thought KotS was excellently designed as an introductory adventure because the situation in the town was unsubtle and simple yet evocative & distinctive :) I'm pleased because I got in a nod to dearly departed EGG, and because I love to embrace the most gonzo elements of D&D and then try to figure out how mundane medieval life would adapt to it.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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That's a wonderful set of changes, I love it! I'm a big coin goober, so I really dug using that to convey information to the players. And your explanation for Winterhaven as a second keep in the area is terrific as well.
They won a skill challenge to track down the mercenaries who fled (in part because I forgot to add 5 to the DC, which the EN World math threads imply is a good idea even if I did it by mistake)
Can you explain this? Are the DCs in the DMG for skill challenges too low to really be a challenge? I haven't run a skill challenge yet and would be curious how they play out.
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As I have read and GM'ed H1 I kept getting the sense that I had done something like this before. By that I mean taking a skeletal mod and adding detail to make it all work for me and the players.
Then it hit me.
I jumped up and ran off to the basement game room and dug out my old copy of Tegel Manor. There it was - a mod full of encounters with a little meat but not enough to make it playable from the word go. I even found my old notes written in my then nine year old scrawl. It was something about the ghost of Runic Rumps daughter that the PCs had to track down and free from her chains. She would keep running around until the PCs could catch her in a special net (I think I got that from a Casper cartoon) and unlock her chains. Apparently the chains worn by the ghost of Jacob Marley scared the crap out of me when I was nine. I do not recall ever running the Manor like that. I think my friends just trashed every room they went into.
But anyway - I think mods like H1 and Tegel Manor have their place. I see them as a framework that I can hang my own ideas from. I also enjoy Paizo's adventure paths but my players often wander so far afield from the original intent of most mods that I tend to stop following the main plot and use the mods for maps, encounters, and NPCs and the plot becomes an ad lib riff on the original. That is sometimes easier to do with a mod like H1.
That being said when a well written mod works (like Red Hand of Doom) it can lead to some great game play and role play.
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The glory of old-school modules like Tegel Manor was that they were full of bizarre details that were evocative and random, inspiring you to try to make sense of them in creative ways. Shadowfell is too filled-in to be old school in that sense, and nothing that it's filled with is a tenth as cool as a geneology of nobles all named Rump.
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Are the DCs in the DMG for skill challenges too low to really be a challenge?
No, it's the opposite. As I understand it, there are two problems:
- the overall chances of success are too low, which some people are saying could be solved by using the "raw" DCs (as per ability checks) and not adding 5 because they're skill checks- increasing the complexity of the challenge (the number of successes needed) awards more XP, but has a higher chance of success, so you're rewarded more for a less-difficult challenge
These are based on a mathematical/statistical analysis here.
The former problem is said to be solved by utility powers etc. that interact with skill challenges in ways that aren't accounted for by that analysus - see here. Last I saw, though, this didn't fix the greater complexity = better odds and more XP too problem - although these threads are long and I haven't read through them all.
My pet peeve re: XP is a variant of this - that a level 3 skill challenge uses the same DCs as a level 1 challenge, but gives more experience, due to the way the bands of DCs go by 3's.
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The glory of old-school modules like Tegel Manor was that they were full of bizarre details that were evocative and random, inspiring you to try to make sense of them in creative ways. Shadowfell is too filled-in to be old school in that sense, and nothing that it's filled with is a tenth as cool as a geneology of nobles all named Rump.
Oh yeah. I agree 100%. Half the fun of RPG products from the 70s was trying to figure out what the heck was actually being presented.
The palpable arrogance dissuades me from using his 'fixes'.
What, more so the our very own Curmudgeon Lawyer? This I have got to see.
Sebastian is a chilled out dood by comparison. I refer you to the extremely "thinking too much about fantasy" analysis of the cherub statues.
That's a wonderful set of changes, I love it! I'm a big coin goober, so I really dug using that to convey information to the players. And your explanation for Winterhaven as a second keep in the area is terrific as well.They won a skill challenge to track down the mercenaries who fled (in part because I forgot to add 5 to the DC, which the EN World math threads imply is a good idea even if I did it by mistake)Can you explain this? Are the DCs in the DMG for skill challenges too low to really be a challenge? I haven't run a skill challenge yet and would be curious how they play out.
The problem is that they're too high. If you ignore the note about adding +5 to the checks, then the challenges become achievable.
Sebastian is a chilled out dood by comparison. I refer you to the extremely "thinking too much about fantasy" analysis of the cherub statues.
Okay, now I gotta see this. Unfortunately I get an error from that link. Can someone help me find it?
I would also like to correct my earlier comment when I said that the KotS adaptation over at Dungeon OL was lame. What I'd meant was the Eberron conversion was lame 'cause I just recently read the Forgotten Realms conversion and it's buckets ahead of anything else. There's some content that everyone should be adding to there game even if it's not going to be set in FR.