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What our customer's say!

"A little tough but straight forward adventure", To be very simple, this is a pretty good introduction to a 4th Edition adventure. The encounters are interesting (although maybe not quite unique enough) and the new format is a great improvement over the previous edition. Should be easy enough to fit into any campaign.

"Terrible", My group just got finished running through Keep on the Shadowfell. It's so badly written, our group is going to hold to vote to see if we want to revert to 3.5 D&D. Problems with the module include:

1) Horribly trite. It's like the authors read "How to make a 1st module for a new edition of D&D" and copied everything from it. First, you fight kobolds. Then more kobolds. Then some goblins. Then more goblins. Then some skeletons. Then hobgoblins!
2) No plot to speak of. What plot there was was trite and uninteresting.
3) The final boss was a generic mustache-twirling villain who was as uninteresting as hell, especially because the PCs don't even meet him or really know who he is until the final encounter. The rest of the monsters were also all generic as hell. (A goblin commander who was also a coward?! Brilliant writing!)
4) Combats were boring, with no real memorable set pieces or situations except possibly the Irontooth combat. This was not helped by the fact that monsters in 4ed have more interesting abilities than the PCs.
5) The color maps that came with the game were good (very pretty), except a lot of the maps had rooms and other features on it that had no monsters on it, and had no reason for the PCs to go into. It was like they couldn't figure out what to do with the extra space they had.
6) Worst trap encounter ever. The party gets trapped in a room with statues in it. However, the statues all have a limited range, and the room is larger than the range of the traps. So the party can safety stand there from 10 squares away and destroy all of the traps without taking a single point of damage.

Now that we're finished with the module, this overpriced thing is going straight up on Ebay. I'd rather ram pencils into my eye than run it again.

While I appreciate they might have been trying to make a generic, boring game to serve as an introduction to 4th Edition, they made it so bad we might not ever play 4th Edition again.

"It's a start", We started on this campaign a few weeks ago. It was promising, had a good amount of detail, NPCs had descriptions, motivations, interests, etc, maps were fairly detailed... In general, it gave me a good first impression.

Then I started reading the module itself... and quickly found that the ink on the covers comes off rather easily on your fingers. This wouldn't be too terrible if the text of the adventure were not written on the outside cover (rather than having a graphic on the outside cover instead to take the hit). As soon as I discovered this, I took preventative measures (don't touch the book, use a stick to turn the pages, let it lie on the table, etc), and the damage was not to the point to make it unreadable... but it was an unpleasant revelation.

The encounters seem a bit unbalanced to the player's favor, but a good GM could always make minor adjustments to balance things out.

The maps are a good touch, but they are not quite complete... you'll end up making your own to play on in the larger areas (either using the minis or by doing things the good old-fationed 3e way).

"A pretty good 4e adventure", We're partway through this adventure after six sessions and are really enjoying it. It's not perfect by any means, and the actual "Keep" portion of the adventure can degenerate into a dungeon crawl of repetitiveness if the DM isn't careful.

Personally, i've added my own flavor and flair to the adventure as written, fleshing out the dull NPCs and adding multiple new encounters, treasure, and monsters. The whole story is nothing new in the realm of epic of fantasy, but i find it to be a great vehicle to show off what 4e can do. a

And what it CAN'T do.

My biggest complaint is the lack of maps for the keep itself. It has taken me painstaking hours to scan and print these maps, but the end result is fantastic. And they're reusable to boot. I look forward to the next part, Thunderspire Labyrinth, and just hope there's an easier way to print the high quality maps shown in the books.

"Good intro but weak adventure", Keep on the Shadowfell was suppose to be a prelude to D&D 4th Edition even before the core books are released. Hence, in the adventure it contains a short rule guide, the adventure itself and maps for the game. It comes in a slipcase file.

I'll keep my review in point form to make it readable.

Good:
=====
(1) Combat in the sense of 4th edition (i'm not going into discussion of the merits and demerits of 4th Ed D&D) is pretty well conceived
(2) Maps is a bonus
(3) Not much flaws in the flow (as it's kept really simple)

Bad:
====
(1) Poor quality paper and binding. The last page of the adventure booklet is part of the adventure. Can't even provide a proper cover to protect it.
(2) Poor storyline (imagine the real story behind the Paladin Keegan is not much difference from the public story; was it any shocker?!?) You got to come up with something. On page 32, there was some advice but not enough for a newbie DM to try out this module
(3) Several mistakes (STR 18 gives +5 damage bonus but the damage on Irontooth battleaxe is only 1D8+4, wrong label on the map as noted in the adventure; adventure shows goblin sharpshooters as represented by G but map shows S). This should have been playtested and spotted. I found it even by just reading through it. Can imagine how bad the QA is on WoTC.
(4) Flat gameplay.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Review for Keep on the Shadowfell", Keep on the Shadowfell is was a very good product and is useful even without the other core books. Definitely worth the money.

"Great fun and well worth the price!", I've dabbled in DnD since it first came out and couldn't wait until my kids were old enough to play. I had introduced them to the 3rd edition, and it was fun, but the rules seemed so daunting to them, they never felt like they could do more than scratch the surface. So we all were looking forward to the 4th edition rule set.

I have to say that I was a little taken aback when I first started reading the 4th edition rules. They seemed a bit too simplistic and were more streamlined than I anticipated. But once we started playing....

It actually took a few sessions to for the spirit of game to really sink in. This version is all about letting the players try anything they want. They are heros! And the rules are there to support that mindset. They made my job as the DM so easy. I could focus on the encounters and the players were spinning the story as they went!

As for the Keep on the Shadowfell module, I think it provides a wonderful example of how to design compelling story lines. The encounters were well balanced with a good mix of interesting creatures and great settings. The tactical options were countless. Our group wanted to run through some of the scenarios multiple times because new strategies and tactics were constantly being discovered. I've never had so much fun DM'ing! The encounters are well laid out. They will serve as a great model for me as I dabble in creating some of my own encounters. There are many threads in the story that will make compelling jump off points for an ongoing campaign.

Another great thing about the module are the concise 4th edition rules summaries that are included. They have made it really easy to get new players up and running in just a few minutes. It really is all a group needs to get started with DnD.

The long and short of it is this: My kids and I are having a blast! We only play once a week, but they now talk about DnD all the time. They have gotten so many of their friends excited, we don't enough room to let them all come over and play at once. This has convinced me that the new rules are the best yet at striking the right balance between having an approachable game for newbies, a compelling game for gamers, and a wonderful vehicle for DM's to participate in the unfolding of epic adventures! Keep on the Shadowfell serves as a good example of how various 4th edition elements can be mixed up to produce compelling encounters that will keep players retelling their stories for years to come!

"FANTASTIC", For a long I hadnt seen a D&D product so beautiful.
Made me remember of the old campaign box, wich came along maps and other utilities. Not quite the same thing as the past but as much as nice.
Better than the 3rd edition commom paperback adventures.


"Worst. Module. Ever.", I've run this module for two different groups now. They have both hated it. In 25 years of running D&D this is the first module I've had a group simply quit in the middle of it. It is a series of miniatures battles almost incoherently stuck together. There is almost no roleplaying, exploring etc.

Here is a sample of how the module basically works. The characters start out immediately in combat on a map. After winning this battle, they arrive in town. Then they can talk to various NPCs who have little depth or information. If you ask the right questions, the NPCs gve you directions of where to go next, like "The keep is northeast of here." Then, if the characters want to go to the keep, they are instantly there (well, they get ambushed first, using the first map again).

What if the characters don't ask the right questions? It doesn't matter. My players wished to find the hidden lair of the kobold brigands. How hard is it to find this hidden lair? Well, the module says if the characters decide to search for the hidden lair, pull out the lair map and start the lair encounter. I felt like I was in a bad 1980's computer game "click here to go to hidden lair."

So essentially the module is all about combat. Is it fun combat? My players haven't enjoyed it. The worst part of the module is it makes it hard to tell if 4th edition is flawed or if just this module is bad.

With work, a good DM can turn this into a good adventure. But if you try running this without adding a lot to it and rewriting parts of it, it is not good. And if you want to put that much work into fixing the module, save $30 and just write your own adventure.

In the end, saying "With work this is good" is a bit silly. I suppose almost anything is good if you spend enough timing fixing it.

"The Bad, the Ugly and the Horrible", Plainly stated, this is one of the most horrible module offerings I've seen in a while.

The folio books are cheap and prone to smudging and the maps are unusable for DDM, so those buying the module for the secondary use as DDM maps should steer clear.

The plot of the module is horribly cliche, and the whole of the adventure is put together with no thought towards ecology or continuity. It's three to four quasi-linked battle scenarios held together by very contrived circumstances that leads to an epic "save the world" fight at the end. The town of Winterhaven can't possibly support the 900+ citizens (and it does become pertinent in the adventure) and the dungeon has so many logic holes you could rampage the tarrasque through (for owners, contemplate this - how does the BBEG get to the lowest level without running afoul?)

Also, the climatic battle at the end of the adventure runs towards impossible. Surviving the final battle relies too much on luck and not so much on skill and strategy.

The fast play rules are a joke; there's too many holes to even run the game adequately, and even simple things, like a list of equipment prices for things you could buy in Winterhaven (including Rituals or even minor magic items like potions) aren't present. (So you get all this gold from the adventure, but have nothing to spend it on...).

I've seen far better