Thunderspire Labyrinth is Bland

... is no longer being played by my group.

I'm quite disappointed with it overall. It started out okay. The Seven Pillared Hall was an interesting town/quest hub, the overall story was ok... but the encounters quickly became quite boring.

The encounters in the Chamber of Eyes, were fine. There were four or five of them depending on how you count. The last part has the potential to combine two or three encounters into on extended encounter, which is in itself a little bit interesting, at least in terms of difficulty.

The sameness began to appear in the Horned Hold, which has a total of eight encounters, of which at least five of them are *really* generic, and quite similar. When the encounters start becoming predictable, that's when you know something's really wrong. When the third group composed of "two soldiers/two artillery or skirmishers/one named or controller leader joined combat in a room" happened everybody was feeling the blandness. Sure, there was a fight across a bridge. There was fireplace or two to shove the enemies into (but wait Druegar have resist fire 10 so make that fireplaces to shove players into). But they were small details amongst the larger repetitive battles. Honestly, I expect more from a stand alone, published package like Thunderspire Labyrinth.

What really drove the point home for me was that I started up a second D&D 4 group last week and ran the beginning of the Scales of War adventure path from Dungeon #156 "Rescue at Rivenroar". That adventure started out with two really different combat encounters as the town of Brindol comes under the attack of some goblins and a cart-pulling Ogre. A couple of memorable battles came out of that, interspersed with some fun role-playing in the aftermath of the attack (skill challenges as written are still boring to me, so I don't use them at least not as written). Then the party set off overland to find Rivenroar and had some (also fun) wilderness encounters. It could have been a series of "you meet a balanced group of 5 goblins" and if that was the case it would have been boring... just like the Horned Hold was.

So two things resulted from this...

First, I'm staying away from "adventure modules" for a while. There's something about them that makes me feel constrained to their framework rather than inspired by their content. We finished up with the Horned Hold last weekend, and the breadcrumb trail that should have led off to the next chapter in the labyrinth mysteriously dried up. The heroes will leave Thunderspire Labyrinth next week and I'll start working the creative juices towards something original and fun in Alia.

Second, I'm enjoying my digital subscription to D&D Insider. Go, Scales of War! The Character Builder is looking pretty nice too. Levels beyond 3, and the rules filter, sometime soon please?

Published Adventure Modules

I have a love/hate relationship with published D&D modules.

As a player, I tend to hate published modules. Maybe it's just the game masters that I play with, but when somebody goes into a wooden reading of the "boxed text" for an encounter... Let's just say I don't like it. Published modules are a crutch. Everything is prepackaged and preplanned, and all it takes is for a GM to spoon feed their players the contents, following the printed plan. They can turn a genius of creativity and improvisation into a soulless automaton.

As a game master. I like published adventure modules. They often have interesting backgrounds and settings. Memorable NPC characters. They are sometimes very well polished with interesting tactical combat challenges, infuriating puzzles and traps and great opportunities for role-playing and development. I enjoy reading the modules and thinking about how how my players might react to the setup.

I just bought H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. And I think with a little work I can work it into my campaign. In fact it's a pretty good fit.

So I've been thinking about how I can use the supplement without falling into the "reading the boxed text" trap that I hate so much. I've come up with a few options.

1. I could just read and enjoy the published adventure at home and continue to run my homegrown adventures, for which I still have lots of ideas.
2. I could (figuratively) rip the module into little bits and plant the pieces into my campiagn where I think they'll fit.
3. I could do as much preparation as I'd normally do with my own adventures making the published adventure into my own adventure.
4. I could completely rewrite the adventure using it as inspiration rather than as a reference.
   

Honestly, Option 1, is what I usually do. For the most part, I'll buy an adventure, enjoy reading it, and never spring it on my players. At least half the published adventures I own have never been played.

Option 2 is unsatisfying for me. A story is more than the some of its parts. A group of encounters is really not that difficult to put together. The value of an adventure, published, homegrown or improvised, is not so much in the details, but rather in the how it fits into the overall adventure. The sum is more that it's parts, so to speak.

I think Option 3 is what most people *should* be doing with published adventures. I think that good DMs usually put a fair amount of time into planning for their home-grown sessions. When I'm planning one of my own adventures, I think about the plot direction, get a vague notion of what NPC's will be doing and otherwise make sure that I have enough of a framework that I can easily fill in the fleshy bits with improvisation. I do this with a broad strokes in planning out the developing plot as an ongoing effort, and in a more detailed fashion planning for each upcoming session. So if I was running a published adventure module I could easily spend a the same amount of time reading through the module getting an idea of the overall adventure, and then look in detail at the sections and encounters that the party will likely be running across in each session.

But it's Option 4, that has a special resonance with me. Let me tell a brief story.

When I was a young lad, before I owned any D&D products. I played my first published adventure. That adventure was Castle Amber it was DMed by an inexperienced DM that mostly just read the boxed text, and ran it straight, with no improvisation that I recall. I liked it then. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like it run that way now. I was young and easy to please in those days, but still I believe that Castle Amber was one of the better published adventures of its day.

Years later when I wasn't quite so young, I was DMing for a group of players and decided to recreate Castle Amber from memory for them. We were playing a completely different system at the time. Castle Amber was for the "Expert" boxed set for the non-advanced D&D and the group I was DMing for was playing the original "Oriental Adventures" rules in a far east campaign.

Castle Amber adapted from memory to Oriental Adventures was one of the funnest adventures I ever ran, both for me and for the players. I never saw the stats for any of the encounters of the original, I did fight the battles and hear the room descriptions though. That one time that I played through it, the group I was with certainly didn't manage to explore the whole castle, but I remembered the fun that I had and I possibly forgot about the frustrations. I tried to create something that incorporated the best of everything and modified it to fit the oriental flavour of the game we were playing and succeeded better that I or anyone had expected. It was a high point of my early D&D experience.

So Option 4 is to read through the adventure, and the leave it at home and try to recreate it from memory. I don't know if that's quite the same as playing through it once then trying to recreate it from memory years later, but maybe I'll give it a try.

The real objective is to take some ownership of the adventure. In order to do that you need to put some work into it. Whether that work is reading the adventure before hand, and doing the prep work you'd normally do, or to force one's hand by leaving the actual materials behind, there's a certain amount of you and your campaign that just has to be there to give it life and to bring fun into what could be a soulless and frustrating experience.

Wish me luck.

Why I must push myself to say "Yes!"

Saying "yes" to your players can be hard. What I mean by "saying yes" is to allow players to do what they want.

My players currently have a party with a Minotaur in it. A Minotaur! A creature of legend!

My gut reaction to having a Minotaur walking around in my adventure is that it doesn't really belong. I do plan some city-based adventures, and my idea of Prolia is modeled after a weird hybrid of Norse and Celtic coastal society. Traditional, longhouses, Jarls, fishing, and rural. Actually seeing a Minotaur walking through town would certainly be disruptive!

When the player of the Minotaur and I were originally talking bout the races in 4th edition, he was slightly distressed that the half-orc was gone. He's a player that enjoys playing the big, strong and as monstrous as you can get, within the rules. If he plays Shadowrun, he'll be a Troll. In Feng-Shui, probably a "Monster". In Champions, a mutant brick of some sort. It's just him. It's what he likes.

The question is, whether having a Minotaur around really has to be disruptive. Prolia is certainly not a real world. It's whatever I decide it is. My original vision of Prolia didn't have Minotaurs as an accepted part of town life. Minotaurs are monsters! But is my original vision really all that different, if I change things a bit and say that, Minotaurs don't really distress people that much? What if there were some encouraging stories of a Minotaur hero from ages ago. Maybe Prolians would be afraid, uneasy, and initially distrustful of a Minotaur walking around, but maybe most Prolians do have the ability to accept him once he proves himself as an ally.

The careful planner in me makes me want to say "no" to suggestions that I don't expect. To say "no" to things that are not what I envisioned. To say no, when I'm not sure about something. i don't want players to run amok in my beloved campaign. I want things to proceed as planned. To methodically and orderly proceed through my story and do never surprise me with a curve ball that shakes up my world.

I said, "yes". And with that one word, his eyes lit up like a kid with candy. It's simple; fun is good. The truth is, that this particular player is in love with the idea of playing a Minotaur. I know he's having a blast doing his brutish monster thing, and the end result is that Minotaur hasn't upset my plans.

Now if my player was just pushing for a Str/Con combo fighter and like the ability that minotaurs with large weapons, it may have worked out differently. I'd be willing to give somebody the mechanics of a Minotaur without actually being one if that's what they really wanted. So, you're a big human of dubious parentage, possibly a monster in your genetic background, and you have all the stats and abilities of a Minotaur. It's their character and as long as they are not raining on anyone's parade, and they aren't messing with my plans, they can do *whatever* makes them happy.

So even with a Minotaur PC, everything is just fine in Prolia. My plot is intact. A few new role-playing opportunities have arisen in dealing with the townsfolk, but it's nothing that the party and the towns can't handle.

My instincts to say "no" are dead wrong. I don't really want the things I think I do. I'm game mastering for my players because it's the players that give life to my campaign. The unexpected suggestions, the requests that I'm worried about, the danger to my plans are what brings a campaign to life. It's what makes the game interesting to me. If I wanted things to go *exactly* as I planned, I'd be playing alone. I could control *everything*... and there would be no point. No fun. Nothing interesting for me.

I must constantly push myself to allow players to play what they want. When I'm not sure, or when I'm caught by surprise by a suggestion, I shall say "Yes" unless there's a good reason not to. I shall roll with the punches. I shall use the players' ideas to make the game more enjoyable for everyone.

Including me.

Yuri's Doom and Index Cards

At the end of Chapter 1, the players indicated that Yuri's Doom was where they were going next. That was my indication of what needed further development. So I spend some time getting some things straight. I didn't need to write plot elements for this because I already had most of this planned in my head.

The short version was the following:

1. Yuri's doom is dangerous enough to prevent the empire from moving through it. I need to convey it's danger by some encounters with some "Swamp Nasties".
2. Jarlsberg is going to have a bunch of undead. More encounters.
3. Jarlsberg is where the druid Yuri cast his uber-powerful ritual that created the swamp there needs to be some evidence of it. Possibly I'll have the ritual in some time-stopped frozen tableau - something to look at with a bit of awe.
4. Jarlsberg needs to have some clues to the location of the Iron Crown to continue the main quest plot line.

Encounter Cards

I'm becoming a fan of the 4th edition Monster manual and the monster adjustment rules in the DM's Guide. After putting together some encounters, I'm seeing that the guidelines for putting together encounters seems to be balanced very well and it's pretty easy.

I've been starting to use a combination of index cards and what I call encounter cards to keep track of combat rounds, and I've got to the point to where I'm getting very comfortable.

I started out doing this by copying out the entire stat block of each PC and monster to an index card, putting those cards in a stack in initiative order and cycling through them. The problem with this is the PC or monster on the top of the stack is doing the attacking, but it's attacking a card deeper in the stack. This leads to constant shuffling through the stack to find out defense values and mark off hit points or status effects.

A better way of doing this is to have a separate place for the things that are needed off turn. These are commonly defenses, perception, hit points and a place to mark down damage and conditions. Additionally some mosters have resistances, immunitires, vulnerabilities, auras and other powers that take place on other's turns. My index cards have space for ten lines of information, and given that I rarely (never) have more than 5 types of monsters in an encounter, I developed a 2 line stat block. On it, I record: NAME, AC, Fort, Reflex, Will, Perception, HP, Bloodied Value, Role, and XP value on the left hand side of the two line block and have a free form area on the left to note other things like hp totals, powers of note, resistances etc.

It looks something like this, with an encounter card having five rows that look like the following:

NAME... | AC FR | Per HP | Notes......................
ROLE XP | RF WL | Int BL |

The Role and XP are additions that should help the re-use of some of the encounter cards, by mixing and matching. So for example, I decided that the undead encounteres in Jarlsberg would be mostly zombies, with an occaisional ghoul thrown in as well as Phantom Warriors for a special encounter. For this I wrote up a card with Zombie Rotter, Zombie, Corruption Corpse, Ghoul (level adjusted to 3) and Phantom Warrior.

I also copied out those five mosters to individual monster cards, with complete details. In particular, the information that needs to stand out on the monster card are abilities and stats that get used on the monsters turn, that is mostly the Speed and the Attack Powers. Monsters can be counted on moving and attacking each round, usually. The intent is to have the whole stat block on the monster card, but the movement and attacks are really the thoings that must be there. The monster manual is still available as a reference for full details if required and if space does not permit them to be recorded on the index card.

I have one encounter card made up as a quick reference for the party, with all their defensive stats. That way I don't have to query them all the time. I have an index card for each party member. The PC index cards are mostly blank. Hopefully the PC's will be able to keep track of their attacks and moves. It's there for mostly for initiative.

At the beginning of combat I'll lay out the party and monster encounter cards then grab the correct set of monster cards for the encounter. Next, I'll have each PC and monster roll for initiative, recording the initiative on the upper left corner. The index cards get sorted, and then the top PC or monster takes it's turn, getting placed at the back when finished.

When a PC or Monster gets attacked, their defenses and relevant abilites are referenced on the encounter card, and any damage or conditions that are inflicted are noted.

Encounters

For the Yuri's Doom part of the adventure I drew up about the following encounter cards.

1. The undead encounter card I mentioned before, with the Zombie Rotters, Zombies, Corruption Corpses, level adjusted Ghoul, and Phantom Warriors.
2. One swamp encounter card. I put Stirge, Fire Beetle, Deathjump Spider, Visejaw Crocodile, and Shadowhunter Bat.
3. One card with the solo "Hopper" encounter from Chris "Goober" Ramsley's Boss Compendium. [I sill can't find a link.]

I also noted a suggested sequence of encounters. I plan on putting together the wilderness encounters as the party travels. For Jarlsberg I plan to have several undead encounters, starting with rotters and regular zombies, with additional encounters introducing the corruption corpses and eventually the ghouls.

Level Adjusting

The DM's guide suggests that PC's should be able to handle creatures from Level-4 to Level+7. That may be the case, but I'm not sure it applies at the very low levels. And the very low levels suffer for a little bit of lack of monsters, since the only variety is to move up in the level range.

I have noticed that in particular when the monster's defenses get a little bit too good, everything sort of falls apart. Encounter powers that don't hit don't swing the battle as much as they should and high defenses combined with a larger pool of hit points can make these encounters a little bit too long.

I'm currently trying to limit the level difference of creatures that the party faces to +2 levels, at least on the upper side. Or at least having a long hard look at the monster's defenses.

Regardless, level adjusting monsters in 4e is very easy, and there's hardly a reason not to. The ghouls I added to Jarlsberg are level adjusted to 3. It doesn't make them trivial, it just balances things out a bit and allows me to bring in a larger variety of creatures that the party can face, without being overwhelmed or being caught in a fight that's lasting a little too long because of the enemy creature's toughness.

Jarlsberg Plot Elements

Jarlsberg will have the following non-combat features:

1. The tableau I mentioned previously of Yuri and his compatriots casting the ritual that created the swamp. I'm thinking a fountain in the middle of town, with a miagic circle containing five druid-looking individuals frozen in place at the conclusion of the ritual. The fountain's water is motionless, the druids's arms are outstretched and holding magical implements. The only movement from within the circle is a thick mist billowing forth from the fountain adn rolling outwards through the ruins into the mists of the swamp.
2. There is massive amnount of destruction around the city. All the non-stone buildings are essentially destroyed, with a few stone hearths visible among the lush swamp vegetation.
3. Only a few buildings still stand. A blacksmith, a stone tower half sunk into the swamp at the outskirts of the town, a temple of umos that looks as solid as the day it was buit and a not so solid but still mostly intact inn.
4. Around the town are hundreds if not thousands of (restless) zombies. They are mostly inanimate these days but will react to the presence of the PC's and to sounds of battle. The conflict with the undead will start slowly with a few zombie rotters slowly raising themselves out of the muck and pathetically attacking the PC's. This will attract Zombies in greater numbers over the next few minutes, until things start looking desperate.
   
5. Holing up in the Temple of Umos will afford the PC's a chance to rest and to meet with the three Phantom Warriors who still defend the temple. These will be helpful, provided things don't go badly. The Phantom's earthly remains are in the center of the Temple and have magical goodies for the Party, which the will gift if things go well, or may be taken if the Phantom Warriors are defeated. The Phantom Warriors can recount how most of the Prolian battle against the Empire went, and if asked about the Iron Crown of the Prolian Kings, they recall that a Skald named Eodwyn was collecting information about King Arnesson and was staying at the inn.
   
6. The rest in the temple will be followed by a confrontation my a rather large mass of Zombies that have surrounded the temple (mostly rotters). After this fight, the number of Zombies in the area will have been mostly exhausted.
   
7. The Inn has the final major undead encounter. Suggest 1 ghoul, 1 corruption corpse, 2 zombies and 3 zombie rotters.
8. In a room upstairs "The Last King of Prolia" written by Eodwyn the Skald may be found on a table beside an unoccupied bed.