Trimming down Keep on the Shadowfell?

[Scribe Ineti]

I'll be running KOTS this weekend as a sort of playtest and intro to 4th ed, but I'll only have about 5 hours in which to run it. A good look at the module suggests to me that there's more than 5 hours of material in there.

Any suggestions on what to trim and still come to a decent story conclusion? I'd like to have a hard hitting session from beginning to end, and I'm a bit concerned that the graveyard jaunt and the two levels of the Keep might be a bit much to compress into the time frame. And I don't want to just stop in the middle if time runs out.

FWIW, I'll be using the Dragon article to adjust the module to fit into the Eberron setting.

 

[Eric888]

The best solution is to end the adventure with the death of Irontooth, and leave the entire keep out of it. That should take about five hours. There is no way to have any more of the adventure and still it keep it under five hours.

Make Irontooth more the main villain. He's the charismatic goblin who was driven out of the goblin lands and united the kobold tribes to raise an army. Make sure that everyone in the village knows his name and have a few crying widows around for extra motivation.

 

[WarpZone]

You could try one of those PDF campaigns being shared on the internet. The ones designed in preperation for 4E back before any of the materials (Inclusing KotS) were released. They're much shorter and easier to run.

I ran the first encounter of Second Son yesterday, and it took about 45 minutes. Given the number of fights, I think you could easily squeeze it into 5 hours if you don't milk the prologue too much.

 

[Scribe Ineti]

Oh, good ideas. Make Irontooth the main bad guy. Then I could save the rest of the adventure for my campaign and fold it in there. Thanks!

 

[Xorn]

Awesome advice on The Second Son, in my opinion, though it's very linear--but when you run a demo game you kind of need linear.

The GameDay adventure (Into the Shadowhaunt) could be fun as well, if you can get your hands on it. I found the Kobold Hall adventure in the DMG to be pretty entertaining, also!

You could run KotS in the style that the PA/PVP Podcast was done--lead them through the quickest path through the keep by chasing after Irontooth. You can carrot on a stick them to where you want them to go that way, but they'll have all these other options they don't choose, so it feels like it's an open playground.

Note - If you do that--start them at the Keep, because there's a lot to the place, still. But my recommendation is The Second Son, still.

 

[fba827]

I can't provide much _exact_ advise because I was a player rather than DM so I don't know the original source material. I can say, however, that our DM said he shortened it down, taking out a level and associated encounters.

We basically fought through one level (I have a feeling he may have shifted a couple rooms around and added a coridor or two to keep certain items on that one used level) and then after that one level we went down some iron grated to get to the climatic fight.

So you may just want to do some thing like that, look at the map, trim out some rooms, and add some corridors and shift rooms around that you want to keep in the keep.

 

[JoeBlank]

Where would one find this "Second Son"?

 

[darkbard]

I suggest running "Kobold Hall" from the DMG instead. It took me two sessions of about 4 hours to run, though I had one player running all 5 characters, so your playing time should be much shorter.

It's a fun little adventure: not a lot of plot, but many neat features that show off the dynamics of the new edition.

 

[Gort]

SPOILERS IN THIS POST ALERT ALERT

To be honest, you can cut any of the Keep encounters - they're pretty much "combat filler", though you would miss out on the story of how the Keep got that way and the tragic tale of Sir Keegan.

It'd be simple enough -

Spoiler

a priest of Orcus stirs up some local evil humanoids to wreak havoc on the local good guys as a distraction for his plan to summon an evil being from the Shadowfell.

You could cut that whole storyline down to two encounters. Or even an investigation culminating in a single encounter.