New Campaign Setting

After playing Black Isle Studio's Planescape Torment (a fantastic game) and in the face of the massive failure that was H1 The Keep on Shadowfell, I have decided to forge my own campaign instead of relying on the ones supplied by WOTC. Planescape Torment is centered around the idea of, "planes," of existence which can be traveled between via portals. While Planescape was a 2e campaign setting the Manual of the Planes continues it's spirit in 4e. A such I intend to bring my characters through the wonders of the planes. This will occur after they are sucked through the portal in Kalarel's ritual (the last encounter of H1) and transported unknowingly to the Shadowfell. The rest of the campaign will center around them trying to find their way back to the Prime Material Plane from whence they came. I have not fully fleshed out the plot yet but the basic premise is that the destruction of Kalarel's ritual (just as Orcus was about to enter...or maybe he made it through and the PCs will have to deal with that when they get back to the Prime Material Plane (PMP)) thrust the PCs through the Far Realm. They where then pulled back (by Valthrun the Prescient) but he could not get them back to the PMP, as the strange magic of the Far Realm has a hold on them. Thus he deposited them in the Shadowfell with himself and promptly died.

I think that the relative mysteriousness of the Far Realm will provide an appropriate duex es machina to fill in any implausible holes that arise from a hasty campaign setting change.

I will keep up to date on the campaign starting with their deposit in the Shadowfell and their quest to find the Raven Queen.

H1 The Keep on Shadowfell

My group is about to finish H1 The Keep on Shadowfell. This was a particularly tough run for me because the initial, "adventure," blows. The plot sucks, the encounters suck, the maps correspond to NO map sets that WOTC sells...all around it was just a crappy adventure. I relied heavily on Justin Alexander's remix of it over at his website The Alexandrian and added some spice of my own. Ind the end however it proved to be too long and boring a campaign with no real motivation to succeed for my players. When we finally got to the dungeon I decided to cut out the entire second level (and thus you will find some of the material for that area absent, the maps however are still present.) skipping straight to the final encounter. It is also worth noting that the levels of the monsters in the keep were terribly low, thus my encounter sheets assume that your characters are level 2-3 before entering the keep (high two, low three).

The materials (sans all 2nd level encounter sheets) can be found here.

Note: I did not start making the maps online until  the beginning of the keep when I learned that I had a printer. If you really need the initial maps then email me and I'll see what I can do, but to be frank they're pretty simple maps and you should be able to make one without too much trouble.

Note 2: I have access to a plotter which is essentially a very large printer (mine does x by 36 inches) and thus all the maps are this size. You can generally print from a plotter at your local staples, etc. for something like 50 cents a foot, which would make printing all the maps for this encounter (in B&W) something like $20-$30. If you don't want to do this you can always cut them into 8.5" x 11" slices and paste them together.

However to be frank unless you're just starting out I don't really think you should run this encounter as is. Feel free to pillage my maps and notes but honestly the encounter was a bad first D&D experience.