How useful will this module be for a completely different setting?

Quote from: Will;783910How useful will this module be for a completely different setting?

If you wanted to run this whole thing in Greyhawk or Golarion, you'd have to do some work to incorporate the factions, cults and geography, but it could be done.

If you're just looking for stuff to chop and steal, it's less useful.  

In the book, you get about a dozen NPC opponents, some of whom could be imported (stat-wise) to other settings. You'd have to re-tool their motivations and backgrounds. Not sure at this point how easy it will be to make up your own class-based NPCs based on the info in the MM or DMG.

You get about 9 small maps of dungeons and/or buildings, which could be imported. Most of them are fairly simple and generic. There is a pretty cool cloud castle.

There are some "caravan encounters" that could be reworked.

But for the price? Nah, I think I'd pass on this unless you plan on running it.

Yeah, I have a setting that doesn't even have elves or dwarves. Ok, thanks.

Quote from: Saplatt;783892Whoa.  Trying to avoid spoilers here, but for those of you who have the book, check out the event that starts midway through the first column of page 36.

At first, I didn't pay much attention to this encounter. Then I looked up the CRs for the adversaries in the HotDQ appendix.

Holy crap.  Each one is a CR 8. The party at this point is not presumed to be any higher than 5th level.

According to the basic DMG guidelines, a "deadly" encounter for a party of 4 level five characters is supposed to be set around 4,400 experience points.

The encounter above would have a value of 15,600.

Edit: I'm talking about the free online appendix, because that's where the entries appear in this case.

According to the WotC boards, an early playtest version had four transformed Slaads before that was kiboshed.

At least they won't wake up as Easter egg baskets.

Quote from: Will;783910How useful will this module be for a completely different setting?

Im planning to re-tool it for our own start up setting. Either a pre BECMI Karameikos. Or something totally new that will develop from play.

Interesting "fixes" for HotDQ here, including some suggested by Zak S.

I'm going to use some of these and introduce others of my own, and we begin in one week.

Daniel Doyle (Save vs Magic blog) also has quite a few great fixes.

I have some also: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4wpCwKDa4dCU09YOWFxWEdpTGM/edit?usp=sharing

I suspect that the major producers of modules are kind of a lost cause at this point; their product is glossy and finished and has a uniform sophisticated artistic style — and is almost completely taken over by setting-specific, railroad adventure designs. But, I'm sure with a little patience folks like Goodman Games will get some fun, free-form modules out there. It doesn't take much — a dozen solid dungeons can go a long way.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785177I suspect that the major producers of modules are kind of a lost cause at this point; their product is glossy and finished and has a uniform sophisticated artistic style — and is almost completely taken over by setting-specific, railroad adventure designs. But, I'm sure with a little patience folks like Goodman Games will get some fun, free-form modules out there. It doesn't take much — a dozen solid dungeons can go a long way.

I don't know why they have to be mutually exclusive - why we can't have professional layout and graphic design at the service of setting-based, flexible adventures?

I don't buy Goodman Games books anymore (or Frog God books) because they look like they were edited and laid out by someone's brother-in-law in exchange for a couple cases of beer. And my experience in publishing in general is the professionalism of the layout is a strong indicator of the professionalism of the content. If reading the book and using it in play isn't a smooth and pleasant experience, you aren't getting my money.

If the major publishers release mainly railroaded epic stories, then I'm wiling to accept that's because railroaded epic stories are what the market wants. So those kind of books are responsive to the fanbase, and good business. What I question is whether they're the best way to showcase 5E.

WotC has published some very good sandboxy, setting-based dungeon adventures. The weird thing is, they published them for 4E, a game that's poorly suited to sandboxy dungeon adventures, and is better suited to railroaded epic storylines. WotC seems to have a persistent problem of misaligning its adventure content with its game systems.

If someone at WoC or one of their more professional partners had the balls to publish the modern equivalent of a ~30 page pastel module or a boxed set megadungeon I would shit my pants with glee. I just doubt they will do it. They are clearly focused on setting specific tie ins and other shite like that, and have been assimilated by the railroad adventure-design borg. I suspect your only real option is going to be a cool dungeon laid out on a dusty desktop computer in exchange for a case of beer.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785190If someone at WoC or one of their more professional partners had the balls to publish the modern equivalent of a ~30 page pastel module or a boxed set megadungeon I would shit my pants with glee. I just doubt they will do it.

They have. And quite recently. The first 4E adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, is a straight-up dungeon crawl. No railroad, no Forgotten Realms tie-in. The second adventure published for 4E, Thunderpsire Labyrinth, is an underdark sandbox with an underground 'wilderness' map in the vein of D1-2, and several mini-dungeons in it. Madness at Gardmore Abbey is a huge sandbox site with all kinds of factions and mini-dungeons. It offers several possible big-picture quest chains with variable patrons, or the party can take smaller quests, or just play it as a sandbox. Again, no saving the world storyline, and no Forgotten Realms tie-in. If they were published for AD&D, they would be probably be considered classics today.

The problem is the old-school community is oblivious to these dungeons because they didn't play 4E, and the 4E community disliked many of them because they were too old-school and 'grindy', and thus unsuitable to epic 4E (which should have only a few climactic combat encounters). It's a surpassing irony that my 5E campaign is going to eschew flagship 5E adventures in favour of converted 4E adventures because the 4E adventures offer a more old-school feel.

Quote from: Haffrung;785193They have. And quite recently. The first 4E adventure, Keep on the Shadowfell, is a straight-up dungeon crawl. No railroad, no Forgotten Realms tie-in. The second adventure published for 4E, Thunderpsire Labyrinth, is an underdark sandbox with an underground 'wilderness' map in the vein of D1-2, and several mini-dungeons in it. Madness at Gardmore Abbey is a huge sandbox site with all kinds of factions and mini-dungeons. It offers several possible big-picture quest chains with variable patrons, or the party can take smaller quests, or just play it as a sandbox. Again, no saving the world storyline, and no Forgotten Realms tie-in. If they were published for AD&D, they would be probably be considered classics today.

The problem is the old-school community is oblivious to these dungeons because they didn't play 4E, and the 4E community disliked many of them because they were too old-school and 'grindy', and thus unsuitable to epic 4E (which should have only a few climactic combat encounters). It's a surpassing irony that my 5E campaign is going to eschew flagship 5E adventures in favour of converted 4E adventures because the 4E adventures offer a more old-school feel.

The idea of having to run a group through a 4e sweep of the Horned Hold in Thunderspire Labyrinth makes me faint dead away with a bad case of the vapors. I had to pull out the magic hand wave.

Well, maybe it isn't too late. I am certainly one of those people who missed these because I gave up on 4E a couple of months after it was published. I actually gave it the old college try, and had no problem with the basic conceptual structure of the rules, but just couldn't deal with the 2 hour set-piece combats. So I shit canned it before the adventures were published.

Quote from: Larsdangly;785219Well, maybe it isn't too late. I am certainly one of those people who missed these because I gave up on 4E a couple of months after it was published. I actually gave it the old college try, and had no problem with the basic conceptual structure of the rules, but just couldn't deal with the 2 hour set-piece combats. So I shit canned it before the adventures were published.

KOTS came out with the core books.


However, if was the long set piece combats that turned you off looking at this module wouldn't have helped.