Quote from: Libertad;616213It gets worse.  One of the adventures (for low-level PCs) had a big-ass river of clear, clean water in a dungeon, and it's treated as just another piece of the environment.  With its own ecosystem.  No explanation as to how no powerful groups claimed the dungeon, how the PCs can exploit this new-found bounty, or where it's coming from.

Wow, its almost as if they didn't give a shit about setting at all, except as a backdrop for new powers and combat scenarios...

RPGPundit

4E - fixes Athas by eliminating water scarcity?

The dark sun campaign book is good, and the setting is just as water scarce as the origional.

If one low level module has an underground river...meh...not seeing that as a big deal. The writer may have simply goofed.

Quote from: Bill;616767The dark sun campaign book is good, and the setting is just as water scarce as the origional.

If one low level module has an underground river...meh...not seeing that as a big deal. The writer may have simply goofed.

And the Dungeon tiles with boats and water.

Quote from: Piestrio;616771And the Dungeon tiles with boats and water.

So whomever is in charge of tile release was either clueless or did not care.

That does not make the dark sun campaign book bad.

I used that book for a 4e and a pathfinder dark sun game and I think it is an excellent resource.

If you can find it complete I like Madness at Gardmore Abby. You get a decent module and a Deck of Many Things to boot.

Dark Sun is also cool, I like the creature catalog as well.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say if you are at all interested in items the Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium was  pretty decent. It offered -a lot- more interesting options then what you see in the other supplements. It also has several artifacts, since artifact concordance was something a actually liked about 4e item rules.

Avoid the feywild book.

The best 4e stuff is the new Gamma World. Pure fucking rockage.

I am not a FR fan, but I enjoyed the Neverwinter book and I would run a 4e campaign with that book. My current 4e campaign is my PHB3 homebrew out in the Astral Sea and my OD&D campaign is a city-campaign which is the only reason I am not running a Neverwinter campaign right now.

Quote from: Spinachcat;616807The best 4e stuff is the new Gamma World. Pure fucking rockage.

I am not a FR fan, but I enjoyed the Neverwinter book and I would run a 4e campaign with that book. My current 4e campaign is my PHB3 homebrew out in the Astral Sea and my OD&D campaign is a city-campaign which is the only reason I am not running a Neverwinter campaign right now.

I have the 4E gamma world but have not had a chance to play it yet. Would you say it is a 'better' version of 4E within its limitations based on the setting it is made for?

The blue areas on the DS tiles represent silk. They were originally meant to be grey, not blue, but then changed to be made useful for DMs running desert scenarios in other settings. So it's not outright stupidity, just a willingness to sacrifice idiosyncracies in flavour for 'generic utility value' (I'd use that as a tagline for much of 4e). That, btw, was also the story behind the DS module. Bruce Cordell had it apparently in the drawer, a generic Realms adventure, and then an editor picked it up and did little more than exchange a couple of names and scenery descriptions. So it'd be useful for GMs not running Dark Sun.

Now for recommendations... hmmm...

On the whole, 4e books are extremely system heavy - written for use with 4e - so in general I would not recommend them for people playing other systems. There's usually something else out there, on a similar topic, with better and more content for the same price.

Take for instance Open Grave - not bad, but if you can find and afford Libris Mortis, the 3e predecessor (from WotC), you get much more flavour material. 3e books somehow seemed less stat heavy, while having less empty space and smaller font size. Not to mention that 3e books were written for a more mature audience. 4E books use bad diction, bad grammar, and are on whole poorly edited. I do love them, but that's because of their game utility. They certainly don't excite the bibliophile in me.

Heroes of the Shadowfell* is the worst book in 4e history. There's a shadowfell background book, called Gloomwrought, but like Neverwinter it's a city supplement, with little useful info on the plane itself. Also, be wary of Essentials books like these two. WotC was already working on Next, so they gave everything to freelancers operating under minimal quality control (see again the Heroes of S book).

That's why I'd instead heavily recommend the Plane books. NOT the original Manual (one of the worst in the 4e line) but 'The Plane Above' and 'The Plane Below'. More than any other book, they give you the background vision to 4e fluff. They both contain mini adventures you can adapt, but I wouldn't recommend the books on that basis.

*Zak, the guy meant this book, not the H1 module (at least that's how I read the query, given how he juxtaposes it with the Feywild book)

Quote from: Bill;616907I have the 4E gamma world but have not had a chance to play it yet. Would you say it is a 'better' version of 4E within its limitations based on the setting it is made for?

Every time I pick up the box I put it back down again.  I just like 1e Gamma World.  Fond memories.

As for the original question, I found the Thunderspire Labryinth module to be very well done.

Quote from: Bill;616907I have the 4E gamma world but have not had a chance to play it yet. Would you say it is a 'better' version of 4E within its limitations based on the setting it is made for?

Essentially, GW is different than normal 4E in that

(A) Character gen is random and very fast. If you know what you're doing you can be done with it in about 15-20 minutes. You have very few abilities and essentially no choice about your abilities (Each character is generated by generating two random "races" that dictate all of your abilities.) There basically isn't equipment.

(B) Combat can be pretty lethal compared to 4E (there's very limited healing and both monsters and players hit really hard). Consequentially, combat is also much faster.

It's basically a highly simplified version of low-level 4E with the sci-fi setting added in. I liked it better than 4E itself.

Quote from: Windjammer;616941The blue areas on the DS tiles represent silk.  

Do you perhaps mean silt?

There's still a kind of delicious irony, whether it was an accident or not.  Its just so emblematic of the whole "we don't give a real shit about setting, its just a backdrop/facade for our rules-play" mentality.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Windjammer;616941The blue areas on the DS tiles represent silk. They were originally meant to be grey, not blue, but then changed to be made useful for DMs running desert scenarios in other settings.

I bought the Dark Sun tiles for use in desert environments in my own non-Dark Sun settings, and there still were too many dang water tiles.

It did work in Wizard's favor in that I had to buy more sets of the Dark Sun tiles to represent desert in my game, but I would consider that crippleware or a bug, and not a feature.

Quote from: RPGPundit;617466Do you perhaps mean silt?

There's still a kind of delicious irony, whether it was an accident or not.  Its just so emblematic of the whole "we don't give a real shit about setting, its just a backdrop/facade for our rules-play" mentality.

RPGPundit

It certainly is possible the company does not care about settings.

The individual that wrote the dark sun book I think did care.

Quote from: Piestrio;615201I liked some of the fluff from 4e, (aside from stupid names for EVERYTHING), and now that stores are just giving away 4e books I thought it might be time to grab any that are worthwhile.

I have no interest in the rules or mechanics, fluff and inspiration only.

What's your take?

But you hate 4vengers so why dabble in their tomes?