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I wouldn't really mind if they actually did summarise the plot in that first section, but they don't, generally. I think it is the drow one where the PCs end up in a pocket of the Shadowfell, RP with some guy, visit some temple city to Orcus and so on - and none of it is mentioned, not even alluded to, in the first "plot" book. I think they do something similar in the Trollhaunt Warrens too. That said, I do agree that the problem is not necessarily the delve per se - it's the linking material that goes with it. But I still dislike the delve as it makes a scenario a poor read, which is mostly what I (like Sebastian) tend to do with most scenarios.
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I wouldn't really mind if they actually did summarise the plot in that first section, but they don't, generally. I think it is the drow one where the PCs end up in a pocket of the Shadowfell, RP with some guy, visit some temple city to Orcus and so on - and none of it is mentioned, not even alluded to, in the first "plot" book. I think they do something similar in the Trollhaunt Warrens too. That said, I do agree that the problem is not necessarily the delve per se - it's the linking material that goes with it. But I still dislike the delve as it makes a scenario a poor read, which is mostly what (I like Sebastian) tend to do with most scenarios.
You like Sebastian?
Aubrey brings up a good point. I think part of the problem is that the plot part of the booklet is often not written very well. D&D adventure writing has been evolving toward a more technical bent for a long time. Initially there were no plot summaries at the beginning of the adventure so we could simply see the delve format as a further move in this direction. The problem I've seen with this is that the plot booklet has yet to do a really good job of remaining completely independent of the encounter booklet. To really understand whats going on it often seems like you know have to be familiar with both and they don't easily flow together in the DMs mind.
If they could get it so that the plot booklet was all the DM needed to understand the adventure and the encounter booklet was something the DM reviewed only when the players were going to actually play through these encounters in the next session then it might work but, as it stands, it seems like I have to somehow grasp both and link them together to actually understand things enough to feel I have mastery over the material I'm running. Its also hellish to modify this format for ones homebrew.
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I wouldn't really mind if they actually did summarise the plot in that first section, but they don't, generally. I think it is the drow one where the PCs end up in a pocket of the Shadowfell, RP with some guy, visit some temple city to Orcus and so on - and none of it is mentioned, not even alluded to, in the first "plot" book. I think they do something similar in the Trollhaunt Warrens too. That said, I do agree that the problem is not necessarily the delve per se - it's the linking material that goes with it. But I still dislike the delve as it makes a scenario a poor read, which is mostly what (I like Sebastian) tend to do with most scenarios.You like Sebastian?
I am honoured to call Sebastian a friend. On the other hand, I don't know what he calls me.
Seconded - I like it a lot as it makes encounters easier to run.
I really like the delve format. I always hated having to flip back and forth between room descriptions and the one page that has the big map on it.
I think the current problem is the strict, two-page limit for each room. I'll bet there's a ton of good information and plot that gets left on the cutting room floor because a mini-map, descriptions, stat blocks, tactics, room features, and story are all crammed into those two pages.
Aubrey brings up a good point. I think part of the problem is that the plot part of the booklet is often not written very well. D&D adventure writing has been evolving toward a more technical bent for a long time. Initially there were no plot summaries at the beginning of the adventure so we could simply see the delve format as a further move in this direction. The problem I've seen with this is that the plot booklet has yet to do a really good job of remaining completely independent of the encounter booklet. To really understand whats going on it often seems like you know have to be familiar with both and they don't easily flow together in the DMs mind.
If they could get it so that the plot booklet was all the DM needed to understand the adventure and the encounter booklet was something the DM reviewed only when the players were going to actually play through these encounters in the next session then it might work but, as it stands, it seems like I have to somehow grasp both and link them together to actually understand things enough to feel I have mastery over the material I'm running. Its also hellish to modify this format for ones homebrew.
Agreed. If they could combine the info from both books into one continuous narrative, I think it would flow a lot better.
(snip) OpenDesign's Wrath of the River King is in delve format, and is extremely rich in design and detail and rp opportunities.
The difference though is that Wolf Baur is a good adventure designer. IMO, WotC has only two good adventure designers on staff: Rich Baker (who, coincidentally, is the only WotC employee who is a also a good author) and Chris Perkins (who hasn't had an adventure with his name on it as author since 3/5E's Sons of Gruumsh). Bruce Cordell used to be good but the Far Realm seems to be a reality for him: his latest stuff simply isn't good enough (and, sad to say, he may be the worst FR author of all time).
2E's Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff was an excellent skeleton for a sandbox campaign at the same time as paying homage, as it were, to the originals.
If I was running WotC I would have made Revenge of the Giants something like that and then next year released an Epic homage to D1-D3 (just in time for Lolth's official publication for the MMIII). The fact is these two products would have sold well and possibly kept the "grognards" happy as well. And as plot is, IMO, a weakness for the current crop of WotC designers, it wouldn't have mattered because the plot has already been worked out for them.
(snip) OpenDesign's Wrath of the River King is in delve format, and is extremely rich in design and detail and rp opportunities.The difference though is that Wolf Baur is a good adventure designer. IMO, WotC has only two good adventure designers on staff: Rich Baker (who, coincidentally, is the only WotC employee who is a also a good author) and Chris Perkins (who hasn't had an adventure with his name on it as author since 3/5E's Sons of Gruumsh). Bruce Cordell used to be good but the Far Realm seems to be a reality for him: his latest stuff simply isn't good enough (and, sad to say, he may be the worst FR author of all time).
(snip)
Right. The point I was making (in the snipped material) is that weak adventure design is not inherent in the delve format.
I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. WotC isn't referencing a classic adventure out of a desire to market the new product to an old crowd - they are doing so because they fondly remember the old classic, and want to produce something that is in the same vein in homage. I'm sure they would be happy if it then appealed to older players, but they aren't going to cut out other audience members in order to do so. They aren't going to set the adventure in Greyhawk, when they can instead continue their adventure trend of placing it partially in the default 'Points of Light' setting, and partially leaving it open to be transported into any DM's campaign as they see fit.Sure, I think having some 'easter eggs' and similar would be a nice touch - that can easily be done without costing the adventure anything. Not having read the new adventure, nor the original, I can't really comment on any similarities or references. But I think it is a shame to dismiss this as a 'cheap gimmick', rather than recognize it for what it is: an acknowledgement of the past by gamers who enjoyed the original work, and wanted to create something new in the same spirit.
Actually they are referencing the classic adventure "G1-2-3 Against the Giants" out of a desire to market the new product to an older crowd. If you don't deem it as such, I doubt I can convince you, given your usual opinions on all-things-WoTC. While you may deem me presumtuous for making the suggestion regarding the name's use for marketing purposes, unless you're some sort of mind reader, I don't think you can definitively vouge for the author's intent when he/she/they came up with the title either.
And by marketing this product to older players via the name and the genre of the adventure, WoTC are certainly NOT alienating the younger audience, because the product is equally usable and appealing to the younger audience as well as the old, and I suspect are equally likely to purchase it. The younger players simply aren't as likely to pick up on the name reference, and thus, the product's name clearly isn't designed to market to them from that stand point. But it is in my opinion marketed to the older players via the name. If you don't believe that, then I don't know what else to tell you.As for not setting the adventure in Greyhawk, again, that's WoTC's decision; but in the past, WoTC did not hesitate to set the past classic adventures in Greyhawk (where they were originally set), and by so doing, recognized and paid homage to the origins of the adventure and the game. It worked before. Why change it now? It has the feeling of intellectual dishonesty. Those of us who played the game back in the day know where the adventure came from. I would expect WoTC to reference that.
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Intellectual dishonesty? Hardly. They can call the adventure what they like and set it where they like. And it has giants in. That is about all there genuinely is that connects the two, since the plots are basically different. Of course they are trading in a small way on the old modules - the back cover says "Against the Giants" - but this is more like easter eggs than homage.
Just because you are disappointed that it isn't set in the Duchy of Geoff I don't think there is really much call to impugne the honesty of WotC (there are plenty of other reasons to do that, but this isn't one of them). None of the 4e generic modules are set in a specific place - it would be odd if this one was. Greyhawk hasn't been detailed as a 4e campaign world - why would they suddenly do so in a module without referencing it before or, indeed, providing any other support for it? None of the generic 3e modules (Sunken Citadel onwards) referenced a specific setting either. I can only asssume you haven't looked at any of the WotC modules that have been cranked out in recent years otherwise you would realise this is very much par for the course.
He's replying to Allen.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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While you may deem me presumtuous for making the suggestion regarding the name's use for marketing purposes, unless you're some sort of mind reader, I don't think you can definitively vouge for the author's intent when he/she/they came up with the title either.
<snip>
Those of us who played the game back in the day know where the adventure came from. I would expect WoTC to reference that.
Interesting...you doubt his mind-reading ability while providing evidence of your own. Since you are an expert on the hearts and minds of "those of us who played the game back in the day" maybe you could direct your mystical arts in WotC's direction and figure out their intent as well.
I'm inclined to believe the rational explanations provided by the other posters, but, then again, I do lack telepathic abilities, so I can't say for certain that WotC knowingly lied in an attempt to trick older gamers into buying a product which the title implies to them is thing X and is actually thing Y. Of course, I also can't say with any amount of certainty that it's the Greyhawk elements and not the classic "go kill lots of giants" vibe that appeals to players (old or new), but I will defer to your superior extra-sensory knowledge of the matter. For all I know, the Giants series is a classic and is known casually if not intimately by a large number of gamers, many of whom might not have played the original, but would be interested in an update on the concept for the new rules set they presumably play, with or without the adventure being set in Greyhawk.
Naw. That doesn't make any sense now that I think about it. Familiarity with the orginal Giant series is binary. Either you love it because you've played it (and therefore you love Greyhawk as well, because the Giants series could not possibly take place in any other campaign setting) or you've never played it and don't know what it (or a giant) is.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I am honoured to call Sebastian a friend. On the other hand, I don't know what he calls me.I wouldn't really mind if they actually did summarise the plot in that first section, but they don't, generally. I think it is the drow one where the PCs end up in a pocket of the Shadowfell, RP with some guy, visit some temple city to Orcus and so on - and none of it is mentioned, not even alluded to, in the first "plot" book. I think they do something similar in the Trollhaunt Warrens too. That said, I do agree that the problem is not necessarily the delve per se - it's the linking material that goes with it. But I still dislike the delve as it makes a scenario a poor read, which is mostly what (I like Sebastian) tend to do with most scenarios.You like Sebastian?
Who are you again?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Aubrey, I wasn't expressing 'intellectual dishonestly' simply disapointment. So I assume this was not directed at me.As Fabes says.
Ok, as the 'non-4e player' who posts questions I wanted to make sure I wasn't seen as trolling. I apologize for assuming the worst.
Aubrey brings up a good point. I think part of the problem is that the plot part of the booklet is often not written very well. D&D adventure writing has been evolving toward a more technical bent for a long time. Initially there were no plot summaries at the beginning of the adventure so we could simply see the delve format as a further move in this direction. The problem I've seen with this is that the plot booklet has yet to do a really good job of remaining completely independent of the encounter booklet. To really understand whats going on it often seems like you know have to be familiar with both and they don't easily flow together in the DMs mind.
If they could get it so that the plot booklet was all the DM needed to understand the adventure and the encounter booklet was something the DM reviewed only when the players were going to actually play through these encounters in the next session then it might work but, as it stands, it seems like I have to somehow grasp both and link them together to actually understand things enough to feel I have mastery over the material I'm running. Its also hellish to modify this format for ones homebrew.
I agree wholeheartedly. The Delve format does make running encounters easier, and WotC have improved it by actively printing the adventure and encounters as 2 seperate booklets (early 3e delves were one book and a pain in teh bootie). That being said it complicates the ease unnecessarilly by having descriptions and information in the fluff book (the room looks like this and has this stuff boxed text) and then has a second set of fluffy descriptive boxed text in the encounter, which makes it awkward to read aloud and mentally put together to form a scene. I would almost prefer the delve to have NO fluff whatsoever in the actual combat section, but instead handle all of that including secret rooms and such and treasure all in the fluff book. Either seperate the two completely to make it smoother or run it in one spot. At least that's how I feel, and as someone raised on adventure integrated combat stats I can read those fine as well. :P
I was flipping through this at the FLGS last night, and I think what's annoying to me about the Delve format is that, yes, during combat, you can turn to the encounter and never have to flip around to run it.
However, when you read through the adventure to get the overview, you have to flip around to get the actual details of the encounter.
You can't really read the adventure as a full story, to get an idea of what is suppose to be going on, you have to read an incomplete outline and then read through the details.
I know this may not be how everyone uses pre written adventures, but I have a hard time not reading the whole thing first, and getting ideas of where I might tweak things, and getting a feel for the whole story, then looking at the mechanical aspects of the story in more depth before I run it for the night.
It would probably be a massive utilization of space, but honestly, I think it would almost be more useful if the adventure were written "traditionally," and the Delve encounter format tacked on at the end, but its most likely not really feasible.
That having been said, one of my first thoughts about the DDI was that the Delve format encounters would have been a great thing to have on the DDI, while keeping the adventures in more traditional format.
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I've been thumbing through this one. I'm starting to prep it for some online play.
I think I've looked through it 4 times or so and I still don't have a full grasp of the flow for the whole thing (at least specifically how each section leads to the others). But I've given up on figuring out proper adventure writing structure and I'll just play it light and open. I'm not a diehard 4e fan anyway, so if the adventure falls flat during play, so be it. There are probably about 48+ hours or 8+ sessions of playtime crammed into this thing, so that's plenty of opportunities to revisit the material after each session to help get things down.
That said, I certainly would have liked the material to have been presented at least as some sort of narrative to make it more enjoyable to read. But I don't look for that anymore from WotC's 4e releases. Wrath of the River King, on the other hand, I would really like to look through if I ever get the chance.
Anyway, I reviewed it on Amazon: Revenge of the Giants review on Amazon if you don't own it and would like a small discussion on what's inside.
I've removed a post. Please play nicely.
I was thinking on a couple of points this thread raised. One was in regards to Revenge of the Giants and its relation to the Against the Giants series.
Maybe six months ago I was listening to the monthly Podcast over at WotC and they were in fact building hype around bringing back one of the classic D&D adventures. They did not specify which one but my suspicion is that this is in fact the product of that. This was initially going to be a kind of 'Return to Against the Giants' but, eventually, it was decided to rename the project likely because it became clear that what was being built just was not really Against the Giants. The current design paradigm means that all encounters - or nearly all, are going to include things in the encounter that make the combat dynamic, boulders shooting across the room like giant marbles or what have you. Furthermore most encounters are going to need a lot of space to facilitate maneuver and encounter design requires ideas like circular shapes for the encounters so that each side has flanking opportunities. Furthermore encounter design needs to take into account the fact that players need to take short rests prior to pushing on and if the entire complex is designed to mobilize for the attack the adventure will fall apart.
In effect at some point WotC choose to call the product something else because it became clear that an Against the Giants module that featured different monsters on a different map fighting in different rooms really just was not Against the Giants and they'd probably pick up more flack for pretending that it was then they would for going with an adventure that made some slight reference to the original inspiration.
I was also thinking a bit more about the Delve Format as I'm slowly coming around to some kind of an idea on how it might be viable. Essentially I'm reading through Paizo's The Jackal's Price without the intention of running it anytime soon and I find myself almost skimming it. What I really want to focus on is the interesting plot points and neat ideas but there is a lot of material in there that, while extremely necessary to actually run this thing, are not very interesting to read about if your just treating it as a kind of story, a mine for good ideas and an example of good adventure design.
I actually think I might enjoy the product more if it were somehow possible to separate the mundane material like stat blocks and basic room description from the more interesting material covering key plot points, NPC motivations and how things might play out. So I really like reading about how the Sauhugin hate the Eye of the Deep, I like reading about why the Eye of the Deep is working for Father Jackel and I like reading about the creature from the Far Realm and his willingness to betray Father Jackel but I'm having some trouble finding the fun and exciting bits to read about when they are mixed in with all the necessary material meant to run the adventure. I've yet to see an example of this type of material effectively split into two parts but I've come around to the idea that splitting them might actually be a good format.
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I've had this for a week. To briefly say what I like best and worst so far about this.
Best. The structure of the module. It's actually a CAMPAIGN! Not because it spans multiple levels, or contains more encounter material than WotC' other offerings, but because it puts the PCs in a place and then gives them 8 options to pursue. The options, and the goal they serve - fortify the place against a siege - totally reminded me of the middle part of Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. In that middle part, you had to prepare a (friendly) drow city against invasion from rival drow (allied with devils). You did "prepare" this by weakening the allies and resources of your enemies, and by strenghtening your own resources and forging new alliances. That was by far my most favourite experience in the Neverwinter Nights series. It made your choices matter in a manner that few computer games have imitated - i.e. which alliances you forge, and which ones you turn down (there are choices to be made) will have an impact on the final siege.
Revenge of the Giants takes that sort of experience and brings it to live at your game table. It's a multi-path adventure, even with NWN type plot lines (forge alliances, find items to help you against the siege, errode enemy alliances etc.), and the diversity of the options to pursue, plus the openeness in which to approach them (how to resolve them, in which order to resolve them, etc etc) is something I haven't seen done for D&D in a while. It certainly feels fresh compared to WotC' other offerings such as the ultra railroady H1-E2 modules. (Exempting H2 and P2, which weren't that railroady).
Worst. So you get multiple sub-parts of the campaign the PCs have to resolve. Each of these feature a set of prepared encounters and locations, and a list of further encounters (i.e. just the monsters listed, not their stat blocks). So the building blocks are all there. But they're linked in an abysmal way. Once the PCs enter the starting encounter of one of the subplots, the module railroads them from one encounter to the next. It's nearly as bad as Paizo's Second Darkness, with the NPCs picking up the PCs at the beginning and end of EVERY encounter. This has to go. Thankfully, this only takes up little space in the module as a whole.
As others said, making this work at your table will take lots of effort. There's next to no information of what the places visited look like - we get no images nor descriptive text of key locales - and you basically have to work from scratch to make these places come alive at all. If you like generic places with lots of room for customization, you might consider this a plus. On the whole, I think the campaign structure is absolutely brilliant to imitate, and is a good offering for relatively new DMs on how to build a campaign that stretches several individual adventures.
I wouldn't recommend this to non-4E DMs at all, however. 80% of the book comes with 4E stat blocks. You (a 3.5 DM) want to be inspired by this type of campaign? I'd say, play Hordes of the Underdark instead, if you haven't already done so.