Is it me.... or they really suck????

The odd thing is that they made 2 REALLY good DM guides where they explain how you should build interesting fights.... and they don't follow it!

i'm not talking about the roleplaying sections those are fine for a premade adventure.... but the fights...

common mistakes are:
small rooms with too many players/mobs
too many choking points
No great variety with the enemies chosen
Static enviroment
No interaction with the enviroment



previously i was running The 4e Scales of war.... now i'm going with my own campaign in neverwinter.... and all the fights are more interesting! (players say so not just me^^)



An idea popped in my mind....
Maybe i'm not the target for those adventures, maybe they are meant for newcomers that haven't chewed a lot of rpgs...



what do you think?

They have a few large adventures that are worth playing, but in general their smaller free adventures aren't very good. EN World has some large campaign-style adventures that are quite good, but require payment to access (War of the Burning Sky and Zeitgeist, with the upcoming Santiago).

Well... I switched to Pathfinder because have have found very little good adventure material for 4e.

On Insider, I seem to recall Dead By Dawn was a blast. Orcs of Stonefang Pass really sucks, but the Gate Room battle is good fun and epic.

I've run my own conversions of the Death In Freeport series. These are old school adventures and they play extremely well in 4e. Easily the most fun I've had in 4e. I had my players, begging, crying, laughing. And 4e style action was a total blast in a city. 3D battles with rogues climbing walls, and flying Monks. Total fun. (Better than 3x or pathfinder I'd guess.)
http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1002e.html

I feel that most premade 4e material sucks in comparison to that. Every Paizo Pathfinder adventure is head and shoulders above every single 4e adventure. Hands down.

I have heard very good things about War of the Burning Sky, and it is available for purchase as PDFs or as a hardcover, not just through the E.N. World subscriptions.

But mostly, yeah, WotC adventures are pretty bad, and have been since 3.5, at the least. In their heads adventures can be whipped out with no thought, and it shows in their scenarios. There is no excuse for it.

Dungeon used to have good adventures, but back then Paizo was doing Dungeon - the whole reason that Paizo started Pathfinder was because the license for Dungeon was taken away, since it seems that WotC thought that they could do a better job themselves. (A subtle hint - they were wrong....)

I like the Pathfinder system, and don't like 4e, but there are folks that have done/are doing unofficial 4e translations of the APs. Look on the Paizo forums.

The Auld Grump

The only wotc module that's decent is madness at guardmore abbey. The rest if them are at best forgettable.

That said the stuff that enworld puts out (WorBS and the new one) is some of the best out there. IMHO they are better even then the pathfinder adventure path but others may disagree.

I wasn't opposed to the Eberron module I just finished running. It was perfectly timed during some serious chaos at work that prevented me doing much in the way of DM work outside of game sessions. It was decent. Some of it was even more than decent. I would suggest it to others.

As for WotC, adventures for them have always been lackluster. This is one of the main things that D&D Next better fix or I don't see myself committing to it. I really like the idea of being able to fall back on pre-made stuff...even changing it to my liking.

I too am in search of some decent 8+ level 4e stuff that is good to hold me over until work gets better.

Yeah 4E has not been great for adventures. Easily one of the things I miss from 1E and 2E...they tend to be very grindy and as the OP pointed out, the choke points/mobs/lack of environment interaction seems to be in contradiction with how they recommend games be designed and run.

I see that the first module of WotBS is free i'll take a look!

btw a manual i have REALLY appreciated is the neverwinter campaign setting! really really a good work, lot of plots but nothing written in stone!

oh well i think i'll have to think by myself for the campaign wich isn't bad... simply... time consuming!^^

What i love most is the "superadventure" method:
You lay down a plot and a setting and then let the ppl move freely!