Take someone totally new to the theater and place them in the middle-school production of Hamlet. After seeing the forgotten lines, missed cues, overacting, or whatever, they might be tempted to say, "This William Shakespeare guy sucked." The same person, seeing a stellar production of a play that is mediocre, might think some hack is the best playwrite ever. In both cases, neither conclusion is necessarily correct because both were made about the quality of the text without ever seeing the text. They were evaluations of performances, not text.
And so it is with RPG adventures. I am the first person to ask for and appreciate coherent and well-reasoned constructive criticism on adventures. I only ask that, before coming out with "this or that adventure sucks," take a moment to look at the adventure in question. Consider if it wasn't the "performance" (i.e. the DM, the other players, the atmosphere, etc.) that was really the problem.
Those who have been around organized play campaigns for a few years can tell stories about playing adventures that we thought were great. Then, upon reading the adventure, realized that the fun we had was very much because of an excellent DM or excellent group of players. Likewise, countless time we have played adventures that we thought had to have been written by someone of limited mental capacity. Then, as we read the adventure is preparation to DM for it, we realize the adventure is actually great, but that something about the "performance" of the adventure made us think that it wasn't good.
I present this not in defense of any individual adventure, nor in the hopes of quelling legitimate concerns about adventures. I just hope to channel energies spent on such pursuits into a direction that might lead to progress.
Thanks,
Shawn
LFR Global Admin
Thanks,
Shawn
There are a few things that don't track at all.
-Cons:The spell plage guy was only interested in talking to us about the latest fashion, but i understand he has been asleap/dead in his coffer for 150 years. But still rolling a diplomacy to talk about fashion, in dnd , isnt cannon to me.
This is a really... odd take on the suggested characterization. An almost deliberately unhelpful one in fact.
-Cons:If you wait to long, you have to fight the Dragon, the Rider, and the Spellplage beast, all with regen, and spikes, and 10 square threatening reach is OVER kill, theres absolutly no way to survive that, the mod needs to be toned down or fixed to just say u die some how.
You are right, there is no way to survive that. Good thing there is absolutely no provision in the mod fr fighting all of the above at once. Also, nothing has threatening reach 10. Nothing has reach 10 period. The spellchange monster has some abilities to allow very long range opportunity attacks, but it should NOT be run like universal threatening reach and the mechanics should be clearly different.
-Cons:the recharge ability on the rider, to teleport across the map is redicilious. Having to spend 1-2 extra turns chasing him down every other round, makes the round last FOREVER, especially with the regen.
This makes no sense to me. The enemy is almost a pure melee fighter. There is no reason to make him teleport away except to prolong the combat.
-Cons:Again, no milestone countage...(fix this)
You mention this a couple times and it makes no sense to me. You should gain at least one milestone before the big final fight, no matter how you run this. There are really only two big combats so one action point each makes sense to me.
-Cons:Hit points, on low 650+ hitpoints, with regen seams crazy to me imo (800+ on high)
The HP you are listing here on low are higher than the listed high level HP. If your DM was secretly running you through a pumped up verson of the high level it would explain most of your issues. It would also make your DM a bit of an ass.
-Cons:You can talk to him to try to calm him down, by talking about the latest fashion, in clothes, and he might move a island closer for you.
Again, strangest take on this character your DM could have made.
The dragon did a aura with flame brethe attack that made u take 20 every round basically. It was brutal to the max.
Yeah, it would be. The aura is only aura 5 and does 5 (10 on high) damage. The breath weapon has a high recharge.
I hope thats more constructive than my last rant post.
I'm kind of sad I missed the rant.
In short, get a new DM. Your current one is broken.
It's really really hard to provide a worthwhile review of an adventure you've never read.
As to all the negative comments about our DM
He is a no bull **** type of guy, one of my favorite that i play with locally. If the mod is hard, he will push you. He treats stuff real like they should.
Please keep the personal attacks to yourself, if he didnt play it how you would have and feel you need to attack him, dont. It doesnt make you a better person.
I think that the comments about the DM in this case can be summed up as follows: almost without exception, every single "Con" on your list of pros and cons is a case where your DM went off-script and did not run the module as written.
The above statement contains no positive or negative judgement, only an objective observation of your own list of which things you yourself did or did not enjoy about the experience.