Keep on the Shadowfell, which we just wrapped up, is an introductory adventure for 4E Dungeons and Dragons.  Being that this was our first big adventure we ran through, I decided I would give some thoughts, reveal some insights, and tell a few funny stories that happened along the way.  The article is divided into two sections.  The first is the story of Keep on the Shadowfell and the party's adventure though it.  The second part is some background thoughts and what I learned playing as a DM.

The published adventure is designed for five characters to advance from levels 1 to 3, but I modified it a bit such that it was fine for four characters.  Considering we hardly ever actually had four players, and instead had two people play four characters, this seemed best.  Plus, modifying it is pretty simple.  Just take out a monster here or there equal to the experience gained by a fifth player.  And if players were easily walking through encounters, I would just leave all the original monsters in.

Our party consisted of Dracus, a half-elf cleric; Rana, an elven ranger; Mangai Dewd, an eladrin wizard; and Eric the Red, a human fighter.  Depending on who was playing, we sometimes switched in a Paladin (and one time a Warlord), but the named four were the main characters.

The Story:

Keep on the Shadowfell begins in the small town of Winterhaven.  The players were brought to Winterhaven to investigate a rumor about a death cult in the area.  Upon arriving, the players heard little of such things, but managed to find a few ways to make themselves useful otherwise.

Lord Padraig of Winterhaven (after being tricked into paying for the heroes' night at the inn) hired the players to deal with the recent increase in Kobold attacks by directing them towards their encampment.  Once there, the players found a lair protected by many Kobolds as well as an enchanted magic circle that grants special powers.  Mangai Dewd was instantly let down to discover the special power is a mere +1 to attack rolls.  After dealing with the Kobolds, the players quickly slew the beefy goblin leader known as Irontooth, who shouted praises to Lord Orcus (demon prince and lord of the undead) upon his death.  There was also a note from a person named Kalarel, indicating a spy in Winterhaven and other nefarious deeds.  The plot thickens.

The adventurers headed back to town and chatted some more with the locals.  Eilian the Old is a jovial fellow who loves talking with the players at Wrafton's Inn and let's them know who's who in town.  Valthrun the Prescient, local sage and scholar, spends much of his time in his tower, but stops by the Inn every so often.  In the corner was a quiet elven woman, Ninaren, who seems to be the only one to believe in the death cult presence and whom Mangai unsuccessfully tried to put the moves on.  Mangai Dewd often used his magic to make a lump of dirt look like a loaf of bread, which he gave to many of the locals, including Ninaren.

Through their adventures, the players discovered that Kalarel was trying to reopen a rift to the Shadowfell in an abandoned keep to the north.  After performing feats of strength, magic, and acrobatic stunts to lighten the spirits in Winterhaven, the players set off for the keep.

The characters explored the gigantic underground dungeon beneath the keep.  There they found many goblins, undead, traps, and treasures to keep them busy while trying to locate Kalarel.  In one such area, while the fighter was surrounded by zombies, Mangai used a burst of fire in an attempt to destroy the undead.  Instead of freeing him, the fighter was surrounded by flaming zombies.

Deeper they went into the keep.  The players easily did away with Balgron the Fat, the cowardly goblin leader.  They dealt with and made an unlikely ally of Sir Keegan, former commander of the keep before he went crazy and killed his family.

When they came upon a door in a dark corridor that was marked "closed," the players assumed it was some sort of shop.  Upon breaking down the door, they discovered the floor was incredibly clean and even a bit shiny.  Their hopes continued to rise that they may have found some loot.  Little did they know that they walked into the lair of one of the most feared monsters in the game... the Gelatinous Cube!  A few characters were quickly engulfed by the cube and would have met an untimely death if it were not for the unlikely arrival of Ninaren.  With the help of her bow and deadly accuracy, the characters defeated the cube and continued on.

With Ninaren tagging along, the party made it through a few more chambers and one very close call with death before arriving at the end game: a room filled with vampire spawns, human berserkers, and an underpriest of Orcus.  Blood from the altar ran down the center of the room, empting into a large pit.  The monsters attacked, but Ninaren suspiciously does nothing to help.  The players vanquished the foes, but Kalarel was nowhere to be found.  Thus, they proceeded the only way available to them, down the blood soaked pit.

Eric, Dracus, Rana, Mangai, and Ninaren descended into a pool of blood in front of a gigantic rift.  It had not yet been reopened, but some powerful presence was pushing against the void.  The room itself was filled with skeleton minions and a Deathlock Wight.  Finally, standing at a bone altar, chanting spells in an unknown tongue, was Kalarel.  He turned his gaze towards the heroes and thanked Ninaren for finally delivering them.  Oh no she di-in't!

The players defended themselves.  They focused their attacks on the skeleton minions first, but soon realized they could not be defeated without first destroying the Deathlock Wight.  Kalarel began his assault and Ninaren joins him by shooting a few arrows at the heroes.  But it soon became clear that Ninaren was anything but willing and the players decided to help her when she began to get sucked into the rift.  Rana threw a rope to Ninaren and tied the other end around her waist, but it is not enough.  It took the combined efforts of Eric, Mangai, and Rana to pull her free of the voids influence.

Dracus and Mangai attempted to close the rift with their own counter spell.  It was quite complicated and took many attempts.  A few failed checks resulted in damage being dealt to the players.  It all came down to one final check to decide whether they could reverse the spell on their own.  And they failed.  This meant that the only way left to seal the rift was to defeat Kalarel once and for all.

With Ninaren again on their side, the heroes were finally able to defeat Kalarel.  A final shot from Rana's bow sent Kalarel spiraling into the void, killing him instantly, and thus destroying the spell and sealing the rift.

Ninaren explained how she was held under Kalarel's power due to threats he made against her children.  She professes her love to Mangai, her unlikely knight in shining armor, who is hesitant to return her feelings (due to her family baggage).

The characters finally returned to Winterhaven with much experience under their belt and treasures in their pocket.  There they celebrate with Valthrun, Elian, and the rest of Winterhaven, except for Lord Padraig, who never really believed the threat in the first place, but agrees to once again pay for their night at Wrafton Inn.

Thus, the characters saved the day and awaited their next adventure.

What I learned:

Most of us used this adventure as a learning experience, I as a DM and the players as, well, players.

I think the biggest thing I learned as a DM was that you are always improvising.  I always got a kick out of crazy ideas the players came up with during the game that I never would have thought of.  You have to be on your toes the whole time, ready to make up things on the fly.

And then you have to improvise because you screwed up, which happened a number of times.  While we were playing, I realized I accidently drew the map wrong, eliminating the main passageway that the players would eventually have to follow.  But a quick door and a made up hallway later and the players are back on track.

But then there are times when I would make something up and then completely forget about it, only to have my players reference it later.  This led to me saying, "I.. uh... oh that... right... umm...."  You must have a plan in mind if you are going to make something up, because you have no idea what the players will think of as significant.

Finally, you sometimes have to improvise to make the adventure more interesting.  It could be little things, like ending an encounter quicker if things are getting boring, or big things, like what I did with Ninaren.  As the published adventure was written, Ninaren was a simple, and quite obvious, spy.  There was even an encounter drawn up for the players if they eventually decided to face off with her.  About 3/4ths of the way into the adventure, I realized they would never do it (simply because it required them leaving the keep and returning to town midadventure) and be left without any resolution on Ninaren.  Thus, I decided to have her be a conflicted character and appear to rescue the players when they most needed her.  Then it played out as above.  I probably could have done a few different with her to make it more interesting, but it just seemed like a better option than having her be a one-dimensional NPC.

Another thing I learned is not to push things if they aren't happening naturally.  I was really excited about one aspect of the adventure, namely a goblin prisoner named Splug.  If freed, Splug would follow the characters around and help them around the keep for a bit, but perhaps be a bit mischievous as well.  I thought it would be a really fun mechanic to play around with.  But when the time came, the players just wouldn't go into the room where he was held.  I tried to lure them in by having a goblin run that way, but they didn't take the bait.  I could have changed the map and forced them in, but I decided against it because the players expressed that they were growing tired of dealing with goblins and wanted to move on to other things.  I really wanted to use Splug, but I let it go because the players should be having just as much fun.

As a DM, describing what is happening is also really important.  That may seem obvious, but a few times I haphazardly described the events and realized I had to go back and say them again later because the players didn't understand.  Sometimes I would get caught up trying to keep things going and I would skim over a few details.  Bad idea.  When a ranger is trapped in a swirling whirlpool all by herself, it would be useful to understand that the water is flowing out of magical vases and not just some hole in the wall.

Reward creativity.  This is a big thing as well.  The game gets boring when it becomes battle after battle and dice roll after dice roll.  If someone thinks of an interesting possibility, reward them.  Whether it be a bonus to attack rolls, or maybe something tangible like gold, the reward will encourage creativity.  A silly example is when the fighter was going into melee and the player said, "He's going to do a sweet spin move here," as he spun his miniatures around and we laughed, so I said, "Ok, give him a +2 to the attack roll for that sweet spin."

Which sort of brings me to the most important, and corniest, thing I learned, which is to make sure everyone is having fun.  I guess that should be obvious, but sometimes it can be challenging when things slow down or the characters are getting beat down.  I learned a few tricks to keep the game moving by essentially limiting my own dice rolls as much as possible.  For example, I began by rolling initiative for the monsters, but then decided to just use their average initiative instead to save time.  Or, if players are doing something repetitive that will eventually succeed (shooting arrow after arrow to kill rats in a pit), just say they are successful and move on.  No need to roll attack and damage rolls for five minutes if you know nothing is going to interfere.

Another way to make sure everyone is having fun is by not taking things too seriously.  We are usually a pretty silly play group, so our game reflects that.  If Mangai wants to tickle Valthrun's beard or give fake loaves of bread to citizens, then have fun with it.  Sometimes it doesn't matter if it makes perfect sense as long as it is fun.  No one is going to care if the characters aren't as "good" as their alignment says they are as long as everyone is having a good time.

Up next:  Our playgroup will be moving on to the next published adventure, Thunderspire Labyrinth.  It will probably take a few months to work our way through it, but be sure that I'll try to get something up related to that afterwards.  I may even get some other DnD related thoughts in before that as well.  Until then.

Jaybird currently resides in Seattle where he reads comics, works in a library, and writes for this site.  He has also been known to blow your mind, rock your world, and eat pizza.