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Session XXXVIII - Part 4 Summary:

CJ: A note about the characters... Dave mentioned the characters (NPCs) were a strength. I'm not stating this to claim credit, but I refuse to allow the adventure itself to get the credit. As written, all of the inhabitants of Winterhaven are just written as cardboard cutouts with no personality. Any amusement you may have gotten out of them cannot be attributed to the authors of this adventure.

Doug: It's quite possible the writers hoped a good DM would fill those shoes when it comes to running NPCs.

Nick: But what CJ was saying is that people buy this product so that they don't have to invest that kind of time in it. Any DM can overrule the description given to them and change things, but there should be some kind of setup already in place. I don't think every DM wants to have to make up a personality for every single NPC the players interact with.

CJ: That sums up most of what I had to say quite nicely. Yes, the DM can come up with a personality. However, there are creative professionals paid to write this stuff, and that's what you pay for when you buy the product. I can compose my own song, but if I hire a professional to do it, it'll turn out much better. And that ties into the lore point -- yes, the adventure went to great lengths to detail the lore about the slime room and Sir Keegan, and yet it is very easy to completely miss that detail. The only reason you guys found out about it is because I cheated and just gave the information to Sorrow: your character starts with all this information that would have been skipped because this adventure is poorly written.

CJ: Sir Keegan was written to be an interesting character -- a tragic hero. But you don't get his backstory if you fail the skill challenge. Which brings me to the skill challenge... First off, "social" skill challenges are more difficult to run, to understand, and to enjoy than "physical" skill challenges. Having this as the introduction to skill challenges -- what was supposed to be a major selling point of 4e -- was a big mistake.

CJ: The difficulty of this adventure was a major flaw. Challenging combat is cool, but this adventure is written in such a way that, if you do not play with a party of 5 optimized characters, with each of the four combat roles well-represented, and if the players do not make the optimal combat choices throughout battle, the difficulty is unmanageable. As the introduction to 4e, why so difficult?

CJ: And then we come to the plot... Kalarel is such a poorly-written villain. He's not written to be incompetent -- he's just incompetent based on how he's written. What are his plans? Why does he want to open this rift? Why does he care about Winterhaven interfering? Why did he send an obvious spy? Let's just say I look forward to the next adventure.

Doug: I'd just like to finalize by saying that as my first D&D experience, as a whole, it was still quite fun, in spite of the frustration. I enjoyed it. I had a good time. D&D is fun.

CJ: That's a good point. As much as I could say that Keep on the Shadowfell was a terrible, terrible adventure, I do think we had a lot of fun playing through it -- at least I did. Some times weren't so fun, like when we had those near-TPK moments, or frustrations because of the insane difficulty, but overall it was fun. But I don't attribute that to the authors of the adventure, but rather to our group, the players, all of us together.

CJ: I will say one good thing about Keep on the Shadowfell; it delivered a good ending. It set up all the dominoes in such a way that the final battle was climactic. A satisfying death to the stupid villain, who was essentially killed due to his own stupid plan.

(Open question) From a production standpoint, from a YouTube standpoint, what can we do to improve the sessions? Presently, each session is divided into roughly 20 minute increments -- I can make the session one long video, but would that be better or worse?

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