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First things first: that cover art, by the dependably awesome William O’Connor? Doesn’t happen in the adventure. Oh, sure, that’s probably the big bad guy of the titular Keep, but he doesn’t have one-tenth the flunkies shown on that picture, and that location is nowhere you can place in the adventure based on its appearance. On the other hand, it does have “Bruce R. Cordell” and “Mike Mearls” as co-authors, which is a pretty darn good byline in the premade adventure market (or “modules” as they used to be called).
I’m not exactly sure what wise whim of marketing thought that bringing out a sample adventure before the rules were available was the best way to kickstart the new edition. It makes for a weird dissonance while reading Keep. You’re not exactly sure you know how the rules work for any given encounter, even with two mini-rules summaries to get you started, and you have no idea what all this gold the adventures are plundering is supposed to be spent on. But more on that later. What do you get for your $30U.S.?
You get a semi-flimsy folder holdout that has great visual layout. Inside there’s two booklets, printed on slick, easily smearable paper, and three double-sided maps, used for some of the major fights in the adventure. Of the booklets, one is a 16-page Quick-Start Rules booklet, which also includes the five starter player characters (fighter, rogue, wizard, cleric, and paladin, if you must know), and the other is the 80-page adventure itself.
The adventure itself is nothing special, although the skill of the two writers keeps the sameness of the early D&D adventuring tropes from becoming dreary. There is indeed a Keep, and it does indeed link to the Shadowfell (apparently a new kinda-hellish Plane of Shadow for 4E), and the players will indeed wander into it and put most of its inhabitants to the sword in the name of taking all their loot and being heroes. There’s lots of the expected humanoids (kobolds! goblins! hobgoblins! gnomes!), some undead, lots of oozes, and a few four-legged beasties. There’s a Bad Guy in the lowest level of the Keep who wants to open an ancient gate to let old school Boss Bad Guy Orcus out and grooving in the world. There’s the Town where you can resupply – er, rest up at (tough to resupply with no gear tables from the new PHB, now, isn’t it?). And, really, that’s about it.
But let’s compare this to another classic edition headlining release – the by-now semi-mythical Keep on the Borderlands. No way Wizards released their first adventure for their new edition and named it Keep on the Shadowfell without wanting to evoke comparisons to that old chestnut. Shadowfell is better at having something of a plot than Borderlands, and, hey, the people in the town of Winterhaven actually have names (on the other hand, the guys in Borderlands had game stats, so maybe that evens out). Still, I think the intention is there. You have a very casually paced adventure setting for low-level adventurers to lope around in, learn their abilities, and maybe pick off an evil cult while they’re at it.
The adventure is refreshingly free of railroading. There are two areas besides the Keep for adventurers to investigate (a dragon’s burial mound now under archaeological excavation, and a goblin fortress hidden behind a waterfall), and the writers offer three or four possible motivations for characters to be in the area to begin with, only one of which involves the Keep, and encourage players and GMs to think up their own. The town of Winterhaven is a source of potential NPC contacts, of course, but jobs to clear out dens of evil aren’t just hanging out on the Help Wanted board. Players will have to talk to locals (most of which have sharp, quickly-drawn and charming personalities) to learn what to do and where they might be interested in going.
The same loving character detail even shows up for the bad guys (although, strangely, not for the Big Bad down in the dungeon). The goblin lord is lazy and happy to get rich off the efforts of his minions, which makes his minions less than interested in sacrificing their own lives in slowing down adventurers. Meanwhile, the hobgoblin boss under the employ of the Big Bad is not only not entirely sold on the whole idea of 1. Releasing Elder Evil = 2. ??? = 3. PROFIT!, he’s also a bit miffed that said Big Bad isn’t willing to lend him sufficient undead troops to fulfill his own harebrained schemes of conquest. As such, he’s struck a deal with some slaver cousins of his so he can at least make some money out of his current position, and his men are more interested in helping the slavers than the Big Bad. None of this is known or easily available to the players, and while it’s not dwelt on in the text, these are some hooks in the adventure itself that may allow groups who enjoy negotiation as well as sword-play to resolve some encounters in very unique manners.
Sadly, by comparison the Big Bad Priest in the bottom of the dungeon is a walking cliché. He wants to release his boss, and that’s about it for his personality, goals, and plans. Even worse, in the NPC notes for the Big Bad, the authors stress that the GM should work to make him shine, but straight-out admit: “He has had no chance to interact with the PCs before this fight, so be sure to play him up.” Well, duh. It’s tough to be an interesting, engaging final boss encounter when you have no personal interaction with the PCs before hand. This is sloppy writing and bad design, and it’s not alone in the adventure.
For every interesting thing in the adventure (the freedom for the new players to find their own path at their own pace, say), there’s stuff just inexplicable and weird. For instance, there’s a great old-school trap room in the Keep, with three interacting statue traps that are nasty enough on their own, but make a nice whirlpool of death when they all run into each other. On the very same level, however, there’s an inexplicable trap which consists of a portcullis gate that shuts…in front of the adventurers. Thereby sealing the monsters behind the gate in a deadend they can’t get out. The point, apparently, is that the monsters use spy holes to watch the PCs and make plans on how to kill them while the PCs are figuring out ways to get past the gate in front of them…but isn’t a heavy metal gate that seals YOU in a deadend passageway a rather stupid security measure? Plus, the gate closes on an otherwise unremarkable hallway, and there’s no glimpse of treasure or monsters beyond the gate to particularly lure the PCs to waste time trying to lift the big hunk of iron back into the ceiling. Apparently the players are supposed to be just sufficiently intrigued by this bizarre “trap” that they’ll tirelessly try to lift a heavy metal gate, just to be ambushed by the monsters who have spent all this time watching them do it. Quite frankly, this is one of the stupidest things I’ve seen in a module in years.
There’s other troubles that come from being released before the rules are available. First off, of course, the GM has no rulebooks to actually adjudicate any choices the players might make that aren’t covered in the encounter text. There’s also no mention as to what the gear the pregenerated charactrers start with DOES. How much AC is the scale mail worth? When the party finds the magical armor on the hobgoblin torturer, isn’t it kinda stupid to say it’s just +1? +1 to what? We don’t know yet what scale mail or a chain shirt does in 4E. They find a number of magical weapons, and their base damage isn’t given as well. For that matter, all of the loot is kinda meaningless, because we don’t know what the players should be dissatisfied with their own loot list. The rogue’s combat bonuses don’t seem to add up across all his powers, and the various rules given in the player booklet and GM booklet aren’t the same – in particular, definitions of burst, blast, and close abilities aren’t given in the player booklet at all. Numerous monsters near the endgame have the Recharge ability on a few of their powers, but this is not defined anywhere in either of the books.
Tactics and positioning take a place of pride in the 4E rules set, and while the adventure can’t go too overboard with an introductory adventure for Level 1 characters, there are a few set pieces that give chances for clever placement and tough positioning. There are multiple fights in excavations, for instance, which gives players (and goblins!) chances to knock wooden planks over deep pits off with a savage kick (hopefully with a foe on the plank, of course), ladders to fight up and down, and earthen pillars to duck behind while trading shots. The final battle with the Orcus priest takes part in a very nice and atmospheric set piece. It’s a two-level (really, three-level) temple complex, with the summoning ritual reaching the required climax on the bottom level while the players enter the top level. To descend down, they have to defeat the top level guards, ghoulies, and other assorted monsters while eventually clambering down blood-drenched chain anchors over fifty feet long into a pool of blood situated in the middle of the ritual chamber where Orcus is trying to get free (and undead guards are ready to pounce)! Now that’s a nice end fight scene.
Overall, it’s a mixed bag. The adventure is nicely opened ended, but there’s no standout NPC personality as compared to earlier “first adventures” from the D&D line (such as the beloved Meepo from The Sunken Citadel, the first release for 3.0). The set fights are good in a low-level sort of way, but the haphazardness of the rules descriptions plays havoc with their playability (and renders some things, such as the Recharge power, utterly unexplained and unusable). The treasure is useless without a price list to spend it on, the magical gear is baffling to figure out (is +1 hide armor better for the fighter than his scale mail? We don’t know!), and the Big Bad is a Big Blah indeed. On the other hand, players are free to make friends and enemies as they want, may pursue their own plot threads at their own pace, and have some nicely detailed NPCs, both friends and foes, to interact with.
The module feels rushed, especially with the inconsistent rules information split between the two booklets. How an adventure for a game nobody has rules for yet is supposed to drum up sales for the rules is admittedly beyond my poor, cringing brain, and the lack of that rules set is definitely the main strike against the adventure (bizarre portcullis traps aside). Gamers interested in getting an early rush on 4E can pick it up, and the adventure is certainly usable as is, but it’s by no means an excellent introduction to the system, and is, in fact, rather disappointing considering the strong credentials of Cordell and Mearls.
Overall, I can’t see Keep on the Shadowfell convincing anyone on the fence over 4E to change over. Its playability will increase in less than a month, as the rules are actually released, but as it is now it’s a very average adventure with little to recommend it (but, and this must be stressed, little to complain about either).
