For CORE 1-1
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Not exactly a favorite of my players, the biggest issue they felt was how it felt to them that it was a no-win scenario with the Shadovar agent and there should be some way to get past him if he's triggered. Basically failure in that encounter makes it impossible to get anything except the Shade's Coin reward. I'd love a reskin for dealing with him in such a way (even if its considerably difficult) to get around him.
The combats were interesting enough, my players got really hung up on the statues for some reason in the tunnel to the vault encounter as they were pretty sure more crossbows were gonna fire from the rest once they dealt with those.
This was one of the earlier modules I ran so I was still unfamilar/uncomfortable with the flow and DME.
Not exactly a favorite of my players, the biggest issue they felt was how it felt to them that it was a no-win scenario with the Shadovar agent and there should be some way to get past him if he's triggered. Basically failure in that encounter makes it impossible to get anything except the Shade's Coin reward. I'd love a reskin for dealing with him in such a way (even if its considerably difficult) to get around him.
The combats were interesting enough, my players got really hung up on the statues for some reason in the tunnel to the vault encounter as they were pretty sure more crossbows were gonna fire from the rest once they dealt with those.
This was one of the earlier modules I ran so I was still unfamilar/uncomfortable with the flow and DME.
I decided to give a review of the first four modules that I have run so far, not that I'm in the position of being much of a critic but it seems other people have been posting similar so I thought I'd throw in my couple of cents
I just wanted to say that I personally appreciate hearing your reviews. I'm looking at running some adventures, so the more threads discussing them, the better!
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The adventure does tell the PCs can try and hide the documents, but that it is going to be very difficult and up to the DM whether or not it is going to succeed. Fact is that you only trigger that encounter when you are foolish enough to do what the NPCs advice you not to do or when you fail a skill challenge. There should be some negative consequence to failure...
Now, the adventure is far from perfect. It suffers from some pacing issues, but with this critic I just don't agree.
- author of said adventure
Now, the adventure is far from perfect. It suffers from some pacing issues, but with this critic I just don't agree.
- author of said adventure
I'd be rich if I had a dollar for every time a player's (and even DMs) feedback on an adventure was so fundamentally flawed that I was compelled to ask if they had mistaken it for a different one.
Now, my adventures are not perfect by any means, but it isn't just with my own that I have noticed this issue.
Maybe it's that people think they can run an adventure perfectly without reading it, using DME as a crutch to explain away mistakes or oversights. Maybe authors are the convenient whipping boys in that scenario...I don't know.
Sorry for going off topic there...I've just seen so many "reviews" on this and other forums that don't add up with what is on paper.
the problem I am finding with feedback I received for my adventure is, well, apparently most DMs don't seem to make an effort to actually read the adventures they are running...
I do. I read it multiple times, time permitting. And yet there are things I miss. There are things I see, I can't quite remember, and then I can't find again when I look a second time.
Running an adventure someone else has written isn't easy. Because you're nowhere near as intimately familiar with it as you would be if you'd written it yourself.
Having said that, posting my thoughts on here, and then having the writer respond is a big help. For example in this recent thread I said the DME changes I had made and the author came in and said he'd actually written most of them into the mod. Now I definitely made some of those up on the spot. But it could be I'd read it, and then forgotten it. So when it came to run the mod and do DME changes, I DME'd stuff I'd previously read and forgotten. Or it could be the changes I made were implied enough that they were the obvious thing to do. Or it could be the author did write it and then had to cut it for space-reasons and good minds just think alike.
Regardless its definitely helpful to hear the original author's responses to my thoughts on the mod.
Erm... on CORE1-1:ShowThe adventure does tell the PCs can try and hide the documents, but that it is going to be very difficult and up to the DM whether or not it is going to succeed. Fact is that you only trigger that encounter when you are foolish enough to do what the NPCs advice you not to do or when you fail a skill challenge. There should be some negative consequence to failure...
Now, the adventure is far from perfect. It suffers from some pacing issues, but with this critic I just don't agree.
- author of said adventure
I'm not using the authors as a whipping boy as I'm not placing blame on anybody nor am I reducing my comments to something like "this adventure sucked", etc. I don't think I have run a module yet that the entire party absolutely hated every minute of it, they are written better then a number of free and commmerical adventures I have seen personally and with far more interest in the theme and detail of Forgotten Realms.
For CORE 1-1 I do state it was one of my earlier modules as a disclaimer, and I have yet to get to re-run it since.
It is easy to misread. I had comments from LG adventures I wrote (not LFR, so far), that really made me wonder what the DM did to the adventure...
Gomez
As for CORE1-1, remember that the DCs of the skill challenges of the XXXX1-1 and CORE1-1, CORE1-2 and CORE1-3 have not been errated (although they are not pre-errata high eigher). And I also feel that there should be negative concequences to failures and stupidity, and as far as concequences go, this one is actually not even that bad. There are already more adventures out where you can use that particular story award to your advantage then its alternative.
Surgebuster is correct that as an author and reviewer I get comments from players and DMs alike about adventures that seem to result from DME or the DM missing something critical. It does not mean I mind those kind of comments.
Yeah, I thought about putting smilie at the end of my post to soften it up but, well, I just didn't.
If I had my way, there would be much, much more discussion and feedback on adventures, for the very reasons Madfox points out. Also, the larger the pool of people providing feedback to authors the better the campaign.
Sure beats whinging for no good reason!
Unless you have read the adventure, you are not reviewing an adventure, you are reviewing a play experience. A review of a play experience can certainly be helpful to the author, although without the author watching the table to see what exactly happened, it is a highly variable form of feedback.
For CORM 1-1Show
First feeling was someone read too much Harry Potter before writing this module, that it was detailed but a bit too cliche with some rather silly names for people and things. They asked me if we could visit Diagon Alley more then once.
Combats were considered too easy even though I reskinned them a little bit. They liked the matrix nature of the biggest encounter with locations as it gave them more of a feeling of freedom in which order to visit locations. They figured on the cult about the time they visited the theater and saw it being painted black (yes I had to sit through a few lines of the song).
They liked the moral quandry with Dark Skull and had a fun time tryng to figure out if he was good or bad. They suspected he wasn't behind it when they couldn't find any reports of him directly attacking anyone even though he was pretty well-armed.
They enjoyed dealing with the Nightshade and want to kick Shar's ass now, asked a girl to play Shar, she said no cuz "bleh its 4th ed". They liked rescuing the baby and all that, but said the cult and sacrifice was too cliche.
They loved playing with the writ and doing that line, they did it for -everything- and even tried to argue it for intimidating monsters, used as a light source, etc.
In the end, the party badly wanted the Soul mask as a reward.
I decided to give a review of the first four modules that I have run so far, not that I'm in the position of being much of a critic but it seems other people have been posting similar so I thought I'd throw in my couple of cents:
For CORE 1-1
For CORM 1-1
I can't comment on the CORE 1-2, 1,3 personally, but my experiences with CORM 1-1 and CORE 1-1 are as follows.
CORM 1-1
I really enjoyed this adventure as I played it - even if the fights were overall on the easy side. I don't think the DM took many liberties with the adventure. If I run it myself, I'm not sure I would change very much either - but maybe I would budget more time for people to explore Arabel.
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The stacking -1 to hit penalty from the minions in the first fight was a good way to make them a bigger threat to the encounter as a whole.
I didn't think the last fight (against the cultists) was going to be easy - I actually felt that it was really only easy because my Dwarf Paladin was able to entangle the cult leader right away. If not for my ability to take a second wind as a minor action, my use of a reach weapon and my ability to not get pushed as far, the battle could have been much, much harder for my party.
We approached the Black Knight without wanting a fight - I'd be interested to know how many parties go into that encounter looking for a fight?
The Skill Challenge got cut very short because we were already nearing 4.5 hours played before the last encounter, which is a shame because I was enjoying it.
The stacking -1 to hit penalty from the minions in the first fight was a good way to make them a bigger threat to the encounter as a whole.
I didn't think the last fight (against the cultists) was going to be easy - I actually felt that it was really only easy because my Dwarf Paladin was able to entangle the cult leader right away. If not for my ability to take a second wind as a minor action, my use of a reach weapon and my ability to not get pushed as far, the battle could have been much, much harder for my party.
We approached the Black Knight without wanting a fight - I'd be interested to know how many parties go into that encounter looking for a fight?
The Skill Challenge got cut very short because we were already nearing 4.5 hours played before the last encounter, which is a shame because I was enjoying it.