As part of WotC' DM Rewards program people got mailed a 4E version of T1. Interestingly, it's not the first version thereof - Mearls did one for the RPGA last year, and it was a blast to play. Alas, this time things suck.

You see. The idea of playing T1 in 4E obviously capitalizes on playing it with minis on a map. So they provided DDM maps to scale - printed in colour with high production values. Laudable. Recommendable for their usability for players interested in using them for their 1E or 3E games. Or so I thought.

You see, WotC messed up the scale of the moat house on these maps by 1/3. The entrance room, right after crossing the drawbridge, should be 12 by 12 squares. It's now 8 by 8. Same for all the other rooms. All dimensions shrunk by a third. There's a hilarious 3 by 3 squares room in one corner. The tactical usability of such rooms for 4E play is practically nil - it's all window dressing. What used to be a dungeon (even before the module hit underground) in T1 is now a single encounter. If this abominable reduction of dungeon terrain to one room (because, as stated, most peripheral rooms are too small to come into the encounter) isn't grist to Settembrini's "4E = Encounterization" motto, I don't know what is.

And messing with the scales sort of beats the whole point of revisiting the moathouse for 4E. I mean, what's the point of having a DDM-map, of apparently high production quality, for an old, classic module when you shrink it so drastically as to make it into something else?

I'm lost. Mearls' "Return to the Moathouse" respected the room measurements of the original. Since Andy Collins didn't respect the room measurements this time, not only will whatever he did be something entirely non-related to the original (which I'm actually ok with). Also, the re-usability of the maps when running some genuine T1 Moathouse encounters, replete with nostalgia and all, has just been tossed out of the window. For no good reason.

Not that I mind WotC doing an adventure - moreover, a free one! - and giving it to people. But if they were going to shrink the moathouse into an altogether different dungeon, they might as well have done a fresh one. Not that you can't redesign a classic dungeon for 4E. Mearls' moathouse is ample proof of that.

But honestly, people. You wanna run the Moathouse in 4E, give Andy Collins a pass and head over to Daniel Rivera's beautiful maps - in perfect scale, both to miniature play and in loyalty to the original:

Surface

Underground .

its probably a classic case of the artist for the new maps not having read the brief for sizes and dimensions?

Quote from: Lawbag;304212its probably a classic case of the artist for the new maps not having read the brief for sizes and dimensions?

Quite likely. That's what Mearls said happened with a published 4E module for which he wrote encounters. The maps were done before he had a say, and some of the rooms were just not of the right size.

So either that, or the DDM map would have been too large (hence, too expensive) to produce.

Is it fair to say that a fairly large percentage of gamers have at least played through this adventure, but how many would actually notice?

I do have problems with descriptions for some published adventures in that the descriptions bare little relation to the actual maps.

Not to be too snarky, but this sounds like what happens to projects based on older products when you have a regular turnover of your creative staff. Things fall through the cracks as people work on products which are based on previous products they have never known.

Quote from: Windjammer;304211What used to be a dungeon (even before the module hit underground) in T1 is now a single encounter.

Morons (Wizards, not you).

This is almost as hilarious as the omission of Greyhawk from the "history of D&D" in the 4e books.

Still, hey, nothing a tiefling or three couldn't fix, eh?  Just throw in some controllers and strikers and a few rare minis and make sure everone's using at once powers and healing surges and - pardon me -



voila!  A 4e module!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;304225

voila!  A 4e module!

Go get 'em, tiger.

!i!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;304225This is almost as hilarious as the omission of Greyhawk from the "history of D&D" in the 4e books.

That comparison is totally apt, since it's demonstrably an editorial mistake, not a gesture of sleight or malice. I assume you refer to this line:

Quote from: 4E PHB, page 7The History of D&D

...Throughout the 1980s, the game experienced remarkable growth. Novels, a cartoon series, computer games, and the first campaign settings (Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance) were released, and in 1989 the lonw-awaited second edition of the game.

There were some hilarious flamewars on the internet regarding that tidbit. Greyhawk fans were (understandably) in uproar. And some people tried to defend 4E designers by reading a restriction into the sentence which simply wasn't there ("and the first campaign settings of the 1980s were released"). The reason it wasn't there, however, was that one of the editorial staff - you know, the sort of people whose work WotC doesn't deem worth a penny (see the indices in their books) - simply lifted that sentence, and the paragraph to which it belonged, from a different work but didn't care to see whether fitting it into the PHB - with its space constraints - would alter the meaning beyond recognition.

Ladies and gentleman, behold the original line.

Quote from: Dungeons & Dragons for Dummies (3.5), page 10The origin of D&D

It started with wargames, a popular pastime in which participants re-create famous battles on a tabletop using metal figures. In the mid-1960s, Gary Gygax formed a small group of wargamers who met regularly and set out to publish new wargames. This led to the development of the Chainmail miniatures rules, and by 1971, Gygax added supplemental rules that expanded the game to include fantastic creatures such as elves, dwarves, and monsters. In 1972, Dave Arneson came to Gygax with a new take on the traditional wargame. Gone were the massive armies. Each player had a single character, like the heroic characters in Chainmail. A story teller ran the game, unfolding a narrative in which the players were free to choose their own course of action for their characters. This was a cooperative experience, not a competitive wargame, in which the players joined forces to defeat villains and gain rewards. This combination of miniatures gaming and play er imagination created a totally new experience. Gygax and Arneson collab orated on a set of rules, but they weren’t able to find a publisher. So in 1974, Gygax formed a company that eventually was called TSR, Inc. and published Dungeons&Dragons himself. In 1977 , the rules were totally rewritten and the original Dungeons&Dragons Basic Set was released. Sales rose rapidly and the game became a phenomenon. A year later, a new version of the game, Advanced Dungeons&Dragons, was introduced, published in a series of high-quality hardcover books. The 1980s continued to see remarkable growth for the game, and new initiatives started during this decade. D&D novels were introduced, a cartoon series debuted on Saturday morning TV, and new fantasy worlds (called campaign settings) for D&D such as Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms appeared. In 1989, the second edition of AD&D hit the shelves, and the 1990s saw the birth of even more campaign settings, including Ravenloft, Dark Sun, and Planescape. In 1997, TSR changed hands. Wizards of the Coast, makers of the phenomenal trading card game Magic the Gathering, purchased the company and moved most of the creative staff to its offices in Washington state. In 2000, the newest edition of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game was released, and today the game is more popular than ever. Some 4 million people play D&D every month, using their imaginations and having fun with their friends.

By the way, that's far from the only thing in the 4E core books that got lifted from the two "Dummies" books for D&D 3.5. For instance, chapters 1 to 3 of the new DMG are a (somewhat uninspired) rehash of material in Wiley Publishing's "Dungeon Master for Dummies" which came out in 2005. You know, I'm accumulating all these data for an upcoming mockumentary on the origins of 4E (coming to a theater near you in 2015), inspired by this one (fast forward to 5:00). The uncanny (if hardly total) visual resemblance of the fictitious “Frank Ross” therein to Bill Slaviscek certainly helps.

Quote from: Windjammer;304230That comparison is totally apt, since it's demonstrably an editorial mistake, not a gesture of sleight or malice.

I agree: incompetence, not malice.

I have a really hard time getting worked up about a change in scale that if anything seems to make it more plausible - a 40'x40' entrance chamber is still very big, but a lot more believable than a 60' chamber.  If anything the problem is 4e's reliance on vast 'movie sets' to function.

Quote from: S'mon;304297I have a really hard time getting worked up about a change in scale that if anything seems to make it more plausible - a 40'x40' entrance chamber is still very big, but a lot more believable than a 60' chamber.  If anything the problem is 4e's reliance on vast 'movie sets' to function.

That's a good point.  FWIW, when I use a battlemat and minis, I prefer a ground scale of 1" = 3-1/3 ft, so a 10' wide passage is three squares wide and three can fight abreast (weapons allowing), and a 40 x 40 room is 12 squares by 12 squares.

Quote from: S'mon;304297I have a really hard time getting worked up about a change in scale that if anything seems to make it more plausible - a 40'x40' entrance chamber is still very big, but a lot more believable than a 60' chamber.

Why do you label it a "chamber"? It's not a furnished bed room with fluffy carpets on the floor. It's the entrance yard of a bloody moat house. You really think a moat house ought to be smaller?

Since I'm slightly unsure you know what we're talking about,
1. please accept my apologies for misleadingly talking about an "entrance room" in my OP,
2. have a look at the dioarama built for the Gygax vs. Kuntz T1-wargaming showdown. The figs in the foreground, just behind the moathouse's entrance door, are positioned in what you label the "entrance chamber".

Quote from: S'mon;304297If anything the problem is 4e's reliance on vast 'movie sets' to function.

Not really either. For 4E's reliance on dynamic movability to function, you just need a sufficient number of squares on a battle map. The individual measurements of each square, on the other hand, doesn't come into this. So you could scale down the measurements of individual squares (to 3x3 foot each, as opposed to 5x5) to deliver more "realistic" overall dimensions if that's what you're after. The catch with Andy Collins' battlemap for the Moathouse remains. There are too few squares on that DDM map for the figs to maneuver properly. Which beats the whole purpose of running T1 as a DDM-like experience in the first place.

PS. Your general point is well taken though. To quote from Monte Cook's review of the 3.0 Stronghold Builder's Guide,

Quote from: Monte CookThe book's maps of things like sample gatehouses and whatnot are useful for both players and DMs, but it would have been nice for the authors to have mentioned that they were suitable only for a fantasy reality. The almost 50-foot-wide bedrooms (with the 10-foot-long beds) certainly would not fit in any castle that I have been in. The 25-foot-wide auditorium makes the gigantic bedroom seem even sillier.

Quote from: Windjammer;3043192. have a look at the dioarama built for the Gygax vs. Kuntz T1-wargaming showdown. The figs in the foreground, just behind the moathouse's entrance door, are positioned in what you label the "entrance chamber".

Also note that this was for a game of Chainmail.  Each figure represents multiple men (20 men at the standard scale, but this particular game used a 1 figure = 10 men scale), with the possible exception of hero/leader figures (some Chainmail players consider those single men, while others consider it the hero and his "retinue").  

(Not a rebuttal of anything you said -- just adding some more info.)

A poster at Paizo raised some very good points about the product this thread is about.

Quote from: Torc the Orc @ PaizoMy friend just received this in the mail so I had a chance to look it over yesterday. I own every published version of Hommlet and have run each version of this adventure at least once. The 4E version of The Village of Hommlet is, in a word, awful.

T1 was my very first D&D module and I ran nearly every playing group I was involved with over the next 20 years through it. The immortal Moathouse claimed many an aspiring adventurer long before their youthful dreams were ever realized. (Watch out for that tick!)
When T1-4 came out I snapped up a copy and sent a small group to infiltrate the Temple. Many months, nay years, of game play later the adventure culminated with the successful exploration of the nodes, the retrieval of the power gems and the final destruction of the Goldenskull!
Imagine our surprise when Return to TOEE was published some years later. Iuz and Zuggtomoy were merely puppets! Mighty Tharizdun had been pulling the strings all along. I quickly jumped at the chance to revisit an old favorite reworked and reimagined for a new edition with new stories and surprises introduced throughout. Who knew that the Giant Crayfish guarded anything more sinister than the bones of its previous victims! As a DM I tried for a fresh approach to "Return" and thus framed it as quest to reclaim a lost Dwarven Homeland. Action was centered in Rastor and the original TOEE comes in only later in the campaign. Alas the adventure was not to be completed. After the discovery of the Dwarven shrine in the Temple of All-Consumption the campaign went on extended hiatus. Perhaps it will live again down the road.

Why then, given my enthusiasm for every previous incarnation, is the latest version of Hommlet so contemptible? Let me count the ways.

1) The cover. The original T1 cover depicted Lareth (the BBEG), the aforementioned crayfish, the Moathouse and guards wearing the flaming eye. The reprint of T1 depicted the ghouls (or are they the zombies?) from beneath the Moathouse. T1-4 had the facade of the TOEE itself on the front cover. (Was there ever a better front cover for a mod?) Even "Return" shows a guard or priest peering from a lit door into a shadowy hallway which could conceivably be an Elemental cultist guarding one of the Temple's many hallways. The cover of the 4E version of Hommlet, on the other hand, shows a shadowy skyline of a "village" that bears absolutely no resemblance to the original Hommlet. There are harpies, dragons, and what? gargoyles? quasits? imps? perching on roofs and hovering over what seems more like a small city, judging by the skyline. Huh? No way was this picture drawn with Hommlet in mind. This was a picture of an entirely different place pasted on the cover with little regard to what was printed on the pages behind it.

2) Interior art and maps. Almost all of the interior art is recycled from the original. (They even repeat the same picture on the bottom of both page 1 and page 2!) The maps are repeated endlessly as well. There are 7 different maps for the Moathouse basement alone. 1 on the back page that depicts the whole level and then 6 inside that show smaller sections of the basement with some additional tactical notations. Maybe my first edition is showing, but how many tactical maps must one have? The map on the back page was plenty big enough to add whatever tactical detail deemed necessary. The repetition was both unnecessary and unfortunate because it wasted interior space that would have been better spent on...

3) Flavor. As in there was nearly none. A great deal of the original flavor was watered down, generalized, or missing entirely. Elmo no longer has a "brudder Otis". Kobort and Turuko are also gone. Many of the other named NPC's from the original are given short shrift and have been drained of personality. Jaroo and Gundigoot are no longer well meaning snoops with a cache of weapons laid secretly by in the cellar as insurance against the reemergence of dark times. Furnok of Ferd is now a dwarf(!?) without his "loaded knucklebones" and he no longer offers up a scroll in the hopes of parlaying it into far more... Gone is the detailed look at the Church of St. Cuthbert (now replaced with the ubiquitous Pelor) with its delightful, almost Zen like, koans. (SQUARE CORNERS CAN BE POUNDED SMOOTH or LAWFUL CORRECTION LIES IN A STOUT BILLET - classic!) None of the missing material is replaced with anything of substance or anything new.

There is a new 2 sided color map, you say? It is a cheap version of a Paizo Flip Mat, I say.

It is an homage to D&D's roots, you say? It is a lazy, uninspired "effort" that does little to capture the feel of the original "Gygaxian" roots of the game, I say.

All in all, a shameful exploitation of one of the original icons of our game. I can't even begin to imagine what Gary Gygax would think.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;304311That's a good point.  FWIW, when I use a battlemat and minis, I prefer a ground scale of 1" = 3-1/3 ft, so a 10' wide passage is three squares wide and three can fight abreast (weapons allowing), and a 40 x 40 room is 12 squares by 12 squares.

Thanks, that seems a good approach - 1 square = 1 meter rather than 5' allows for much more plausibly sized areas.