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How many encounters in total do you have here? I see you have fourth and fifth level encounters by the end of the adventure.
You made me delurk. ;)
Okay...At the time of writing, I have finished 41 encounters (enough to take the party from 1st to 5th level). I have enough 11 encounters still do (I think), and an epilogue section. The more feedback I get from everyone the better, as I can do a full edit of the adventure and make it even better.
I've now stuck up the most recent version of the adventure for your consuming pleasure (Link). I'm afraid that it's had to take a backseat to my current script work, but once the script is finished (should be 20 days or so), I'll get back to Grimmendeep.
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The general outline, depth and attention to details is very good.
Might use it for my homebrew with some changes to match the level of my players.
By the by, Expedition to the Forest of Grimmendeep actually uses a homebrewed setting as well...has no impact on mechanics, but affects the beginning read-aloud text. If anyone is interested in the setting, I have a little documentation on it.
The art at the beginning, at A1, and A4. More of this in the adventure would be nice.
The plot outline is decent, it does have a solid core idea that builds up to a confrontation with a big baddie.
At a quick glance here are the issues I see:
1. The maps are difficult to read in quite a few cases--especially for the encounters. They often look mechanical and uninteresting (please note this is a critique of the maps, not a knock on the effort). The maps are also too small.
I'd suggest getting away from the computer and freehand drawing the maps. Scan them in once you are sure you've represented things in a clear way, then overlay a grid on them.
Alternatively you could go for a game mapping program. I've used those as well to a limited degree but have found that drawing things on pencil and paper is a quicker way to get to a goal.
I would recommend getting and using Gimp or Photoshop for maps. Both can work equally well, it just depends on your preference.
Here's an example (all pencil, no color):
Unmodified drawing: Dungeon drawing
Grid added: Dungeon drawing with grid
2. The adventure is encounter heavy. It needs to be broken up by more elements of the world and there needs to be more interaction with non-player characters. I would suggest adding more skill challenges.
3. The adventure is long and needs to have a table of contents that point to the major sections of the adventure.
4. There is too heavy an emphasis on A, B, C, D.... (lists). This becomes hard to read and is tiring to the reader.
5. What level range is this adventure intended for? 1st through what, that needs to be stated clearly at the beginning. The reason I ask is that you may have too many encounters (or possibly too few, but I doubt it). Consider having fewer, but more important encounters.
It feels like the adventure jumps from a high level outline straight into encounters. As a DM I will want to have more fluff about the town itself (an overview), the forest (overview), and the local monster tribes (what makes them different from run of the mill monsters). I don't feel that as a DM I have enough information to play this out.
Each section of the adventure needs to have:
- What have the players accomplished - a couple sentences.
- What will the players face this chapter - a couple paragraphs of summary.
- What characters, places, or items will be important and how - more summary.
- A larger encounter at the end of a section (i.e. facing a mini-boss for lack of a better term).
- A proper conclusion at the end of the chapter detailing what the players have done, what its effect is on the world and what is possibly next for the party.
I would carefully consider what is resolved by each encounter. When clearing the town--right now it feels like just slogging through encounters--and that might be because I don't have a high level overview of what is going on in the town in the first place. I'm not sure it feels like something is being accomplished with each fight, and they all appear to be in the same XP ranges. Remember encounters can be very trivial (level -1) to very difficult (level +4).
Players will often tire quickly of encounter after encounter unless you are shaking them up. Make sure each of your encounters is carefully chosen. I'd suggestion taking some of the ones you have and combining them or even just eliminating some. Three encounters to clear the town should be sufficient to "tell the story" of clearing the town. More than that is probably just heading into tedium.
Now, while the comments might be seen as pretty negative please don't take them as negative so much as a critique and suggestions. I think you have a lot of good material here to work with and I don't think the effort so far is wasted--but I do think it needs to be refined.
Hope some of this is helpful.
1. The maps are difficult to read: Very true. But, not something I can rectify, as I have no scanner, no other mapping program apart from the one I have (though if you have a link to another I'd be very much obliged), and my drawing sucks. And I don't mean that in a 'oh I'm not so good' way, I mean that I have trouble drawing stick men, honestly speaking. I simply don't have the ability to draw things, anything at all (besides bad stick men). Not that it would make a difference anyway, as I have no scanner.
If anyone would like to voultenteer to map for me, I'd be very grateful. unless that happens, i can't make the maps better.
2. The adventure is encounter heavy: Very true. I have a few skill challenges in the second part of the adventure, but none in the first and none (so far) in the third. I will take this point under consideration when I do the second draft.
The main reason that this is so encounter heavy is because it was written to do at a kid's party, a paying event. I only had a week to get it done, so I had to just shunt as much material as possible together. That said, that was only the first two parts of the adventure, it doesn't excuse the third part.
In my defence, the super adventures WotC have put out in the past (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is the one I Dmed a lot of) are no different. In fact, Expedition to the Forest of Grimmendeep is based quite heavily on Expedition to Castle Ravenloft: the village under attack, the loosely connected sites around it, and the final confrontation area. I even used the Vistani and the card-reading scene. However, Ravenloft still had more interaction than Grimmendeep does; maybe I should have studied it closer. I didn't really want it off though; I got rid of the book quite early on in the writing of Grimmendeep to keep the ideas original.
3. Needs a table of contents: Yes indeed, something I will put in when I have finished the adventure and the page numbers aren't going to keep fluctuating.
4. Too much emphasis on lists: Here I must diagree with you. While it's not the most interesting format, it's very practical, right down to a page number and reference letter. I could switch it for bullet points, but that's essentially the same thing. Formatting in this style is one of the reasons 4th edition is easier to understand than 3rd, because information isn't hidden in big paragraphs.
5. What level range is the adventure for?: This is again something that will be put in once the adventure is finished. When I started writing it I wasn't sure how much there'd be of it. Now, I'm pretty sure the PCs will finish at 6th, but if I take you're advice in point 2 there will likely be less encounters and so the PCs may end u[ 5th or 4th instead. So I'll put that level range guide in last.
6. Each section needs to have (and other general notes): Good points again, and I'll stick that in when I'm doing the second draft. As I was making Grimmendeep up as I went, structuring it properly and filling in all the gaps just wasn't possible (not enough time either, with that kid's party coming up).
I am fully aware of what defeating each encounter means; if that's not clear then I need to rectify that.
The number of encounters in the village is, again, derived from Ravenloft: there were eight encounters in that to clear the village of undead, so there are eight encounters in Grimmendeep to clear the village of goblins. The number of encountes is also set to (a) match the size of the village; the entire village has been invaded and taken over, and that means I need a sizable number of goblins (and thus encounters too) to make it realistic. I'm not sure that a 3 encounter force of the Yellow Hand clan could invade Heathfast, the village militia aren't that imcompotent. However, if the village was smaller, more like a hamlet, then the invading force could also be smaller.
But, (b) I wanted the PCs to level up at the end of clearing the village. It makes that first section feel very complete, for PC and DM alike, and allows me to stick in new monsters when the PCs lave Heathfast and hit Grimmendeep proper.
Again, thank you for your comments. You're very right that this needs refining, and I'm glad someone has finally taken a serious interest in it. Cheers!
1. The maps are difficult to read: Very true. But, not something I can rectify, as I have no scanner, no other mapping program apart from the one I have (though if you have a link to another I'd be very much obliged), and my drawing sucks. And I don't mean that in a 'oh I'm not so good' way, I mean that I have trouble drawing stick men, honestly speaking. I simply don't have the ability to draw things, anything at all (besides bad stick men). Not that it would make a difference anyway, as I have no scanner.
If anyone would like to voultenteer to map for me, I'd be very grateful. unless that happens, i can't make the maps better.
What you generally want in a drawing program is the ability to layer...that's really of key importance to be able to draw successful maps. Photoshop and Gimp are probably the two most used, with Gimp being free. The ramp up time on these can be a little daunting--but once learned, they are tools that will pay themselves back over the long term if you plan to DM for a while.
Another tool I've used with some success is Dundjinni. Its a much simpler tool to ramp up on, but it does cost a bit. I've tried Campaign Cartographer a couple of times and just can not train myself to use the CAD-like interface. It drives me insane, but there are a lot of people that swear by it.
I don't know that I could draw you maps for the entire adventure but I'd be happy to draw up a couple for you, you can PM me about that if you are interested.
2. The adventure is encounter heavy: Very true. I have a few skill challenges in the second part of the adventure,...
...the super adventures WotC have put out in the past (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is the one I Dmed a lot of) are no different.
I actually did some looking myself and realized the same. So the comment may have been too harsh. I guess whether the adventure is more "crunchy" or more "story" driven is more a style thing. The Pathfinder stuff seems to be more story driven--though there are lots of encounters, and most WotC adventures have a more classic dungeon-crawl feel to them.
I think in the end, what you are doing is valid, but I felt like there wasn't enough text around the encounters to help me string it together in my head.
3. Needs a table of contents: Yes indeed, something I will put in when I have finished the adventure and the page numbers aren't going to keep fluctuating.
Even without page numbers, I would get something added in the next draft of this you do. Its good to be able to pre-read and know that there will be 3 sections or 4 sections in an adventure--even if you can't get the final page numbers in there.
4. Too much emphasis on lists: Here I must diagree with you. While it's not the most interesting format, it's very practical, right down to a page number and reference letter. I could switch it for bullet points, but that's essentially the same thing. Formatting in this style is one of the reasons 4th edition is easier to understand than 3rd, because information isn't hidden in big paragraphs.
Ok, perhaps we are talking about different things or I wasn't clear about what was an issue (here's an example):
[INDENT]TACTICS
A.The beetles charge the PCs, accompanied by the blackblade who uses them to flank his enemy.
B.The warriors remain at range.[/INDENT]
If you compare / contrast that with an adventure by WotC (say H1, or H2), you'll see that they don't generally do this. They typically will give a paragraph description of the tactics to be used.
Also, as another example, if you look at the first few pages of H1: The Keep on Shadowfell, almost the entire first five pages is prose. Compare that to:
[INDENT]SYNOPSIS
A.In this adventure, the PCs travel to Heathfast, a small village in the mighty Grimmendeep forest.
B.When they arrive, the village has been overrun by goblins, and the PCs must clear them out and save the villagers.
C.With the village clear, the PCs are asked by the villagers to deal with the other threats to Heathfast: the remainder of the goblin clan, a clan of orcs, and a clan of hobgoblins.
D.As they deal with these threats, it becomes clear that the goblins, although the actual invaders, weren’t the ones behind the attack on Heathfast.
E.The trail leads to the hobgoblins and then on to a gnoll assassin clan.
F.Magically bound to the service of a witch called Ninazak, the gnolls engineered the invasion of Heathfast with the intention that the PCs would arrive and destroy the hobgoblins.
G.With the hobgoblin fort clear, the gnolls would be free to infiltrate it and track down an ancient treasure known as the blood crown, hidden in the catacombs below.
H.With the blood crown, Ninazak’s power would grew to a dangerous level, letting her take control of the Vale’s dead and bring the whole place under her control.
I.Once they learn this, the PCs set out to stop her. Aided by the prophetic vision of the gypsy sorceress Sela Leila, they destroy the three conduits that give Ninazak her power and recover the blackheart dagger, a weapon powerful against hags.
J.With the conduits destroyed, Ninazak’s base, a matrix of plants and magic called the Spun Garden, is revealed to all, set right in the middle of Heathfast.
K.In a race against time, the PCs enter the spun garden and kill Ninazak before she can destroy Heathfast and animate its dead as skeletal slaves.[/INDENT]
The above is what I was referring to.
The number of encounters in the village is, again, derived from Ravenloft: ...
...that means I need a sizable number of goblins (and thus encounters too) to make it realistic. I'm not sure that a 3 encounter force of the Yellow Hand clan could invade Heathfast...
Agreed if you want the number of encounters to represent the size of the invasion. Typically I try to give a sense of something, but not necessarily the gory detail, so I try to use less encounters: give a sense of a big invasion, while not having to actually kill every single goblin that took part in it. Really though, that's a style thing, I don't think there is necessarily a wrong answer to doing it either way.
Good luck on the next draft, definitely looking forward to seeing what comes out.
Overall, I think it's a nice adventure, and has some really cool ideas in it. I think it'd be great to play through, and the fact you start out at level 1 is really useful, because if I was to say, run a new campaign and wanted to use a pre-made sizable adventure, the only obvious candidate right now is KotS or the Scepter Tower (if it's FR) and I think most people have already played those by now.
I have a few points of critique though:
1) Introduction
It has a synopsis, and it's helpful, but what it could really use is half a page or so of general adventure background right at the beginning. Nothing huge, basically just a "this is what's going on, this is who is responsible and why, and this is the point at which the party gets dragged into things" kind of summary. It helps set the scene and the mood.
2) Size
It's big, and about half-way through I sorta starting getting lost. As someone else said, it could use a contents page and I see you already plan to add one.
It's also cool that you've split the thing up into acts, but I think each act also needs a brief summary of what's gonna happen, and something about the consequences of what happened in the previous act. Again, nothing huge, but it really is useful to a DM and lets you know where you are.
You should also add something at the beginning of each act that lets the DM know what level the party is assumed to be.
3) Maps
I don't have any problems reading them myself, and they are functional enough, but I think they could look better. (especially as you've included actual artwork in your module, which is great btw, I always love that! But then I am a very visual person.)
You said you don't really have much practice at it, so head on over to forums at http://www.cartographersguild.com/ and they will help you out with just about everything on that front if you're looking to improve.
4) Formatting
While it's well laid out overall (and it is just a draft so this comment is a bit premature I suspect), I think you could probably reduce the page count by like a third (which would make it easier to browse through too) if you were to use a slightly smaller font, two columns, and boxed-monster stats, etc, similar to what you see in the layout for any official module from any RP game generally.
That's all really. I think it's very good overall so g'luck with it.