Keep On The Shadowfell

Well, my copy of Keep on the Shadowfell (the first adventure for DnD 4e) arrived yesterday and I have been skimming through it to see what's what. Then I figured it might be nice to do a little review for you guys. Not sure hoe many of you have picked it up, so here goes.

Presentation

The adventure consists of 2 booklets and 3 double sided maps all contained within a rather nice folder. It all looks very pretty indeed but I stumbled over a small problem when I started to read the booklets. It is warm in Texas, and though I do not sweat a massive, the fact that the booklets have no covers really bothered me. I care for my books well and I am afraid that this is going to end up sticky and useless especially across the back page. Al lit would take is one Mountain Dew spillage and your lovely adventure would be so much paper pulp. For just under $30, I have to say I expected a cover!

The interior of the booklets are colour and shiny. The art is pretty decent and it is clear that they are going for a different feel. There is a short introduction to the adventure in the Adventure Book and then we are straight into the encounters. Essentially the adventure has been watered down to a series of set piece encounters with a little bit of linking narrative. If any of you have seen the recent adventures for 3.5 (Expedition to Castle Ravenloft and Demonweb Pits etc) then you will be reasonably familiar with this "new" style of adventure layout. I have to say I am not a fan. I do not like the adventure telling me where my monsters start on the map. It worries me that this is perhaps a step too close to computer gaming where the monster notices nothing until activated by a PC.

The System

The new system is what everyone seems to be wanting to know about and it seems like a huge departure from Dungeons and Dragons of old. Alignment essentially means nothing any more (not a bad thing in my opinion), gone is spell memorisation and spells per day, and skills have been simplified. At first glance it appears that combat may run quicker, assuming the group is aware of all the new rules regarding slides and shifts and things. I have to say I think the combat has been strongly influenced by both MMORGs and the desire to sell minis for the Miniatures Game. Although each character class now has many more options in combat than just stand and swing I think essentially you may fall into a trap where the party just deals with combats in the exactly the same way every time. Bob uses ability A, then Frank uses ability B etc.

I have to admit that the Rules Booklet is very flimsy and thin and is essentially nothing more than the absolute basic rules to allow for the game to be run. I am really waiting to see the grappling rules on the main book. Only then will I have a true idea as to whether or not this is an improvement.

Looking at the pregenned characters at the back of the book they seem to show a strong resembelece to characters from games such as World of Warcraft. They have their resistances (AC and Saving Throws), the Ability Scores are relegated to the back of the sheet, they have a limited and simplified skills list and they have a big bunch of "powers".

These powers can be used "at will", per "encounter" or "daily", essentially giving then a recharge time like a computer game. Looking at the basic characters there seems to be a lot more hit points floating around even at Level 1 than their ever was before and the fact that you do not die until you reach half your hits under zero means that there will be a lot less mortality in this edition. Add on top of this the fact that each character has a number of Healing Surges per day with essentially restore a quarter of their hits and you have some very sturdy character indeed.

Overall

I am currently on two minds about the whole 4e business. I am going to hold off on an overall opinion until I have seen the core rulebooks (which I have preordered) and have run a game (which I am arranging for the day of release and hopefully it will hit the site the same day as well). I want to see how all the changes have affected how the game runs and feels. 3.5 was a huge change from ADnD and I am wondering if this is going to be the same.

From what I have seen so far I think it may well be fun to play, but it may also be very close to just attending a LAN party and playing WoW with your mates. Time will tell!