The Shadow Rift of the Umbraforge 1 of 3

Im going to separate out this module into three reviews. This first one Im going to talk about the setup of the module. Shadow Rift of the Umbraforge (dungeon issue #158 September 2008)starts out where the last module left off. The heroes have successfully defeated the orc threat and receive their rewards from the grateful dwarves. The main plot of this adventure hinges on a key that the players discovered in issue 157. The key, unknown to them, is a portal device to a gateway to the shadow fell in the city of overlook. The story behind this is that there is a shady arms dealer named Sarshan that got double crossed by one of his minions to the orcs and now the adventurers are hot on his trail. Im not going to get into specific encounters on this post because the majority of the beginning of the module was role-playing focused with a skill challenge. I really like the skill challenges in 4th and I hope to run them better in future. During the skill challenge by strong arming, bribing, and cavorting info about this arms dealer the players eventually end up at a run down mission of pelor that feeds the poor. The mission is honest but the activities that go on under it in caves that exist below aren't. That's the start of the module, next post Ill get into the meat of this one.

Survey

did a survey over at http://easydamus.com/character.html apparently Im a 4th level NE halfling wizard

I Am A: Neutral Evil Halfling Wizard (4th Level)


Ability Scores:

Strength-12

Dexterity-12

Constitution-11

Intelligence-16

Wisdom-15

Charisma-12


Alignment:
Neutral Evil A neutral evil villain does whatever he can get away with. He is out for himself, pure and simple. He sheds no tears for those he kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. He has no love of order and holds no illusion that following laws, traditions, or codes would make him any better or more noble. On the other hand, he doesn�t have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has. Some neutral evil villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own sake. Most often, such villains are devoted to evil deities or secret societies. Neutral evil is the best alignment you can be because you can advance yourself without regard for others. However, neutral evil can be a dangerous alignment because it represents pure evil without honor and without variation.


Race:
Halflings are clever, capable and resourceful survivors. They are notoriously curious and show a daring that many larger people can't match. They can be lured by wealth but tend to spend rather than hoard. They prefer practical clothing and would rather wear a comfortable shirt than jewelry. Halflings stand about 3 feet tall and commonly live to see 150.


Class:
Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.


Find out What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?, courtesy of Easydamus (e-mail)

Siege of Bordrin’s Watch 2 of 2

The second part of Bordrin's Watch picks up after the players rescue the dwarf paladin Kalad at the bottom of the temple in part 1. Kalad warns the players that if the vents, a system of caves under the mountain, aren't closed off that the orcs might sneak in behind the front and wreak havoc on the vale. The second part consists of six encounters and one skill challenge: entering the vents, gauntlet, boiler room, shrine to Moradin, dwarf quarters, and the nexus.

Entering the vents

This room is a basic 4 monsters versus the players, there is a couple ranged and some melee for combat options. The ranged also have the option to fall back into the next room as well. My players picked off the range early so this didn't happen in my game.

Gauntlet

I found this room to be interesting but in its printed state a little weak. The room is a long hallway with dart traps in the middle of the walls. In the printed version there are two trigger plates that activate the traps. In my version I filled the room with trigger plates and placed a meandering path through the room that was "safe" squares. This made for a fun and exciting encounter where the monsters were pelting at the players from the far end as they tried to get to them while darts were flying everywhere. I made the darts much easier to avoid then the original (DC 15 acrobatics or athletics) and a successful check moved you to the next square up to your movement rate. I made the monsters minions instead of normal and reduced thier damage as well since I wanted the trap to be the focus of the room. In its printed state this room is ok, but It was a lot of fun with these changes and was easily one of the players favorite encounters.

Boiler Room

This is a 2 level room with a platform with orcs on it and some beetles down below. There are vent pipes that run the length of the room. This is a dynamic looking room but more could have been done with the pipes such as having them vent steam that the players had to avoid or something. I ran it as printed and it was alright but not very memorable.

Shrine to Mordin

Small room with a troll. moving on.

Dwarf Quarters

My players skipped this room as its an optional room. Its set up to be a encounter where the monsters can run around and flank the players moving through three connected rooms. Might have been interesting though I don't know since we skipped it.

The Nexus

This is the climax room of the module. This map is huge, it took three full size poster boards worth of space. This encounter sounds cool on paper but my players found it very irritating. The way the encounter works is there is a pathway that winds around the room to a central control panel that the players need to activate to shut out the orcs. Each round more orcs pour out of six holes in the wall around the room randomly. My players found this encounter very irritating because the small pathway gets easily choked up with tons and tons of minions and its a slog to get through them all. The minions mostly missed my two defenders who took point going through but where I have a very melee heavy group they were only able to kill two minions a round with two more coming out every round. This encounter took a very very long time and was quite boring after a while. Part of the problem we had was my group make-up, they needed a wizard or sorcerer to clear the pathway with blast spells. By the end of this encounter my players actually missed out on important information that leads to the next module because they got up in disgust once the boss died. I was tired of it and so were they. This room is possibly the worst encounter we have run into yet.

Final Call

Ease of use: 7/10
Again easy to start up, the encounters are all fairly straight forward to run. this actually is part of the problem. I had to modify one room drastically to make it fun and the others were basically tank and spanks.

Difficulty: 4/10

All but the last room are fine on the difficulty curve the last is overwhelmingly boring to run and play if you dont have a character that can take out massive amounts of minions every round.

Originality of encounters: 3/10

Mostly run up and hit the monsters that don't do anything interesting type encounters.

Overall: 4/10
After the first part of Bordrin's Watch I was excited about this half and I feel it let us down. The last encounter was very badly designed and the others could have been better.

just got back

Just got back from this months game we played "shadow rift of the umbraforge" Ill review it later but all I've got to say right now is sword-mages are very annoying.

Getting Ready for Game Day

     In this post I'm going to take a break from reviewing past games to talk about what I do each month to get ready for the games. The first step is to read through the module once quickly, its ok to skim monsters and the details of the rooms at this point. You are really just looking for a general impression of the themes of the adventure. If you write your own stuff, which I have been known to do in the past, you can obviously skip this part. In that case your first step would be to write it. :)
     Second thing I do is get my maps and props ready. For modules I import the pictures into Photoshop and blow them up to scale and print them off and piece them together on poster-board. This makes your maps look really good and makes prep easy. If you don't have any module maps you can take a ruler and grid off 1 inch squares on poster board then draw your maps that way. Having your maps ready ahead of time really speeds things up. I used to draw them but it seemed like half our time was spent with me drawing and everyone else goofing around then I had to wrestle their attention back after I was done. Its always a good Idea to bring extra pre-gridded posterboard in-case you need to improvise a scene. I have a couple sets of the pre-made dungeon tiles these come in very handy for these situations. You can find those over at amazon pretty cheap.
     Third go through your minis and separate out the ones you will need into zip-lock bags for each room or if your module has specific themes like orcs or demons or whatever just grab all of that type of mini and put them in a baggie. Doing this will save you tons of time usually spent sifting through minis setting up rooms.    
      Lastly go through the module again in detail and check out each of the monsters abilities and think about how you plan to use the monsters. A well planned attack can turn a easy encounter into a challenging one and vice versa. I've had problems when I didn't think through my tactics enough and the monster that's supposed to be the focus of the encounter gets trapped by terrain or is bested by inventive players very easily. This cant be helped sometimes but a little forethought goes a long way in these situations. Here's a few pics of me prepping the maps for our game this weekend.