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When it comes to H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth, I think I can divide the Yessirs! from the No Ways! through a very simple show and tell demonstration:
H2, the second official Wizards module for their new 4.0 D&D line, actually has a room in which there are multiple pools, each of which is a different color, and, yes, each of which has a different magical effect when you drink from them. It has wandering monster tables. It has a selection of half-page art with encounter numbers that forces you to fold a book in half to show the players what they are seeing.
If any of those appeal to you (and you know who you are, you sly devils you), this gives you an idea of the sort of fun that can be found within the titular Thunderspire Labyrinth, which is a giant maze-like "proto-Underdark" city carved out from a big mountain centuries ago by minotaurs. Only the minotaurs are long gone (sorry, minotaur fans), and various other beings have moved in, and that's where the players come in.
While the retro-flashback nods to old dungeoneering conventions are definitely in full force in H2 -- it reads very much like a hyped-up, double-espresso order of D1-D2 with optional Red Bull chaser -- what's impressive is how Baker and Mearls, the writers, manage to make it all work in the more slightly realism-grounded gaming we expect now in the 21st Century. There's a reason for the pools to have different magical powers -- not a good reason, mind you, but more than just a random thing to mess with player heads. The wandering monster tables almost uniformly lead to mini-encounter suggestions for the DM to branch off into untold sidequests of their own design. And the art -- well, it's art. We don't do art here.
This module is essentially a series of small, micro-set piece encounters all based around a central location, the Seven-Pillared Hall. Said Hall is a hall in the old Thunderspire Labyrinth which was taken over just a while ago by a consortium of wizards known as the Mages of Saruum. In earlier D&Ds, these guys would be Neutral Evil with the emphasis on Neutral. They basically set up a trade zone, protected by their Paragon-level magic, to fund their own researches into the ancient minotaur ruins. So long as visitors clean up their own messes and don't mess with the Mages themselves, they're free to do more or less what they want.
There are a number of well-developed plot hooks to bring the players into H2, which is good, because the plot hooks taking players from H1 to H2 were not necessarily straightforward to find (they basically required the players to do a full clear of the Keep on the Shadowfell). Still, once the players get to the Seven-Pillared Hall, the vast mazey city of the long-dead minotaurs is theirs to explore as they want, and the module is quite generous as suggesting things to fill a curious DM's mind as to what could go into each little corner. If H1 was relatively free from railroading, H2 is nearly completely so. This freedom might excite some DMs while bothering others.
The plot does feature four major set piece mini-dungeons, as well as a few minor small ones, and there's a logical progression of clues that lead from one to the next, but there's no reason the players have to follow them in any particular order. The main set pieces are the base of the hobgoblin slavers first mentioned (but unmet) in H1, a well-fortified duergar fortress with dramatic bridges and unwalled ledges over convenient Underdark bottomless chasm #43231, a lost sanctuary of minotaur religious training now taken over by demonologist gnolls, and a hidden shrine to Vecna.
The set pieces take up most of the module, of course, and they're of a varying lot. None are bad, but the slaver lair runs very dry and dull, and the duergar fortress is visually dramatic but static once inside -- what could be a tough series of tactical encounters plays out very differently as a high number of duergar inside are written as brave buggers who will not try to get reinforcements until its too late. This probably makes the place playable by the module's recommended levels 4-6, but it's still short shrift to the dark dwarves in my mind. The shrine to Vecna is rather dull in tactical encounters, but excels at bizarre things to keep the players on their toes, including a new type of monster with the Controller type who prefers melee combat (!?) and the first opportunity in over a decade for a group of player characters to openly negotiate with Vecna. Yes, Vecna.
None of these are bad -- they range from the unexpectedly awesome (Venca?!) to the dull and servicable (slaver lair). But the module kicks into true high gear with what is supposedly just a midpoint location: the Well of Demons. This is the old minotaur monestary which has been taken over by gnoll cultists, and it's a blast of old school 1970s D&D high threat wacky hijinks gone totally off the rails. The highpoint of H2 will undoubtedly turn out to be the Well of Demons, and that's probably due to its final encounter, the Proving Grounds, which is probably the most involved encounter put out for 4.0 yet.
The Proving Grounds encounter is so utterly whacked yet awesome I'm going to try to describe it without giving away too many hints. In one encounter, the players basically have to trigger four traps simultaneously in four different parts of the dungeon to move on. Each trap then triggers another trap, plus another trap that makes the connecting tunnels between the four trigger points very dangerous. But that triggers a timer which shows how long the players have to survive this mess before they can even think of escaping. So they're split up facing a host of traps -- did I mention there's two rival adventuring parties trying to get the treasure from the Well of Demons at the same time as the party? And only one of them is made of living beings? And while they may or may not be friendly, helpful, or even interested in the party based on your group's roleplaying, the gnolls who have taken over the site definitely are not friendly, and the minotaur ghosts who still haunt it aren't fond of *anyone* being there? And that depending on the player actions earlier there may or may not be an enraged dire boar roaming the dungeon, looking for its dwarven master (who lives back in the Seven-Pillared Hall, and has a nice reward posted for it, and thus the players may have to keep half a ton of gnoll-tortured pork alive through the chaos)? That the guide recommended to the party to lead them there is, unknown even to himself, a vicious werewolf who tends to Hulk out under stressful moments and chew on anything nearby? And to top it off the hallways of the Proving Grounds are high enough for the master of the Grounds, a young green dragon, to fly overhead and try to mess up *everyone's* plans? And this all goes down at the same time with the party split up to trigger the four original traps? And if the party gets through this then it leads *immediately* to the boss fight with the main gnoll cultist?
That's one of the craziest encounters I've ever come across, and I'm just boggled at the possibilities for a creative DM and players to mess with it. If Irontooth cut the wheat from the chaff in H1, I predict that their hairbrained schemes at ad-libbing the chaos of the Proving Grounds will provide the same stories for H2. It's definitely the high point of the whole module, and kinda makes the final encounter with the Big Bad at the Vecna shrine look dull by comparison -- which it is. And probably is supposed to.
Matching their creativity in the Well of Demons for encounter fun, Baker and Mearls bring out the roleplaying goodness with tons of little NPC hooks throughout the dungeon. There's the hard-ass slavers who are so shocked at the depravity of the gnoll cultists they might even team up with the players to handle them. The kobold with the Peter Lorre schtick. Each and every random monster encounter tells the DM why the monsters are roaming, and ends with a hook to expand their wandering into a side adventure of the DM's choices. And then there's the NPCs in the Seven-Pillared Hall (such as that kobold). It's a sign of just how many NPC hooks there are that one subplot, mentioned in passing only twice, only involves a troglodyte plot to annihilate an entire city through an evil ritural, a bad case of amnesia, and a very worried wizard -- and that's just the bits to get the DM's juices started!
Even the set piece combats allow for some strong roleplaying opportunities for interested players. The negotiation with Vecna, for instance, might have significant repercussions for any PC with a strong religious or moral bent, and the very act of investigating the Well of Demons requires the players to basically duplicate the religious rituals of ancient minotaur monks to Baphomet, which will probably not sit well with any divine characters in the party at least -- especially if the DM uses the optional plot hook of getting Demogorgon involved to ask the PC to perform a favor for him...
Are there problems with the module? Of course. The trigger adventure for the whole module actually starts in a side passage off from the main route the party is told to follow -- with no guidance to head out there, they would never get there except through random exploration. That's just stupid. And while nothing in the module equals the excellence of the Well of Demons, many of the other set encounters are functional yet seem so uninspired by comparison.
The lack of a thematic whole across the module keeps it from being a true classic, but there's lots of good stuff here to use. The Seven-Pillared Hall itself is a fine, spooky, yet accessible Heroic-level home base with sinister overtones yet safe enough to start an adventuring career in the "upper Underdark" that is Thunderspire Labyrinth. For those who care about such things, the new monsters include the 4.0 return of duergar (they're dwarves with the devil subtype now) and, yes, Norkers. Norkers! Complete with big noses.
There's no weak spots in H2, but there's definitely bits that shine more brightly than others, and more than a few that don't shine at all. Still, compared to the relative uninspired trompings in H1, H2 definitely cranks up the quality, and the Proving Grounds is one of the more inpsired bit of D&D encounters that I've seen in a long time.
