I get tired of the “If you don’t like it, go do your own” line. I want to play D&D 4e, I want to give WotC my money for a product that is quality and easy for me to use. I don’t have the time to sit down and flesh out an entire world to anywhere near the detail that we’re being fed, bite by bite, from WotC. Their adventures and detail level are sufficient, though I hope for improvement. What is not sufficient is having no control over my campaign world as the DM… at least not without the fear that something I do now will destroy and/or require massive effort to fix later on down the line.

These APs are supposed to make the DM’s storytelling easier… not tell a story to the DM himself!

@reveal:

I don’t feel like he listened at all. He didn’t give me any tools to tell the story in a more captivating way, beyond the fact that Elsir Vale is important throughout the heroic tier. He didn’t even tell me whether anything from Rivenroar gets used again later (except the area), so I don’t know who I need to make sure to include in my FR conversion/KotS hybridization.

To anyone and everyone: If you don’t like what you’re getting from Wizards, then come up with your own adventure paths. DMs do it all the time, and then you’ll know exactly what’s going on from the get-go without waiting for the next part to come out

Tomcat1066s last blog post..The One Less Traveled By

Many thanks to Randy for listening and giving us what we asked for

I’m also curious as to who these DM that want to be surprised each month are because I can’t recall seeing anyone saying they don’t want an overview in any of the threads on the matter.

I gave a somewhat more scathing response on the gleemax boards, but really, the problem is just that I don’t know any better than before which NPCs need to stay alive and what hooks I can start laying immediately so that later the PCs won’t feel like the hooks are all the same thing over and over again. *Event occurs.* *PCs know they need to investigate.*
I’d like to be able to lay the foundations such that the PCs are genuinely invested in the storyline such that they’re genuinely interested and my hooks don’t have to be obvious This Way! signs. I’d like the PCs to meet and like Thanir Ironhaft (to randomly pick a name), maybe even owe him something, before he gets captured and they ‘need’ to go rescue him.

And, importantly!!! I am about to run H1 as a segue into the siege of Bordrins watch. I feel that it fits better into the AP than Rivenroar does, I can just leave the crumbs with different EGs. I think that Sinruth is just 3.5 fan service, nostalgia, and I’m betting there is nothing particular about Brindol which cannot be replaced by the KotS town.

But I don’t know that. If I knew a bit more, I could decide to place KotS around Brindol. Or is Rivenroar important? In that case, I need to pick the published adventures or the AP.

Its so frustrating.

Questing GMs last blog post..Homebrew vs. Published

Good job Randy and company!

Tomcat1066s last blog post..Required for Fun: Do We Need All That We Think We Do?

Randy