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Keep on the Shadowfell (Dungeons & Dragons, Adventure H1) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bruce Cordell, Mike Mearls
Brand: Wizards of the Coast
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.39
You Save: $14.56 (49%)
New (29) Used (11) from $15.39
Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 3869
Media: Paperback
Edition: 4th
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 96
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 11.2 x 9.3 x 0.5
ISBN: 0786948507
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN: 9780786948505
ASIN: 0786948507
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New; Excellent condition! Clean crisp tight copy, no marks,could have some minor shelf wear. Email Notification, Satisfaction Guaranteed,Direct from our warehouse.
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Product Description
An introductory 4th Edition D&D adventure for characters of levels 1-3. The town of Winterhaven stands watch over a ruined keep that was once a bastion of good in the realm. This keep overlooks the Shadow Rift, a dark scar in the world that was once a gateway to the Shadowfell but has been dormant for many years. Now, an evil cleric of Orcus, Demon Lord of the Undead, seeks to re-open the gate, and the only thing standing in his way is a small yet determined band of heroes. Keep on the Shadowfell is an exciting Dungeons & Dragons adventure designed for characters of levels 1-3. It includes three double-sided poster maps suitable for use with D&D Miniatures.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 A little tough but straight forward adventure September 5, 2008
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 September 4, 2008
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 September 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 August 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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:
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(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:
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(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.
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