Keep on the Shadowfell was the inaugural product for 4th Edition. I was fairly disappointed with the quality and the content of the module, but I wanted to playtest the new edition. So I decided to do a fairly expansive remix to give the adventure a stronger backbone and a richer mythology; adding depth and breadth where necessary.
COMPLETE COLLECTION
Patrons of the Alexandrian can download a PDF collection of the entire Remix. It includes:
The Complete Collection, containing every article form the series (including addendums, as detailed below).
Justin’s Running Files, which function as a kind of cheat sheet for the adventure. These are the actual notes I prepared and used for running the adventure, more or less stripping out all of hte design notes and other commentary from the Complete Collection.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS
First Impressions
Impressions with Spoilers
Last of the First Impressions
ANALYZING DESIGN
Traps and the Chamber of Statues
Remixing the Chamber of Statues
Rotten Cherubs
REMIXING KEEP ON THE SHADOWFELL
Part 1: Kobolds
Part 2: The Kobold Lair
Part 3: Arriving in Winterhaven
Part 4: On the Streets of Winterhaven
Part 5: On the Streets of Winterhaven 2
Part 6: Winterhaven NPCs
Part 7: Winterhaven NPCs 2
Part 8: Winterhaven Developments
Part 9: Cultists in Winterhaven
Part 10: The Ruined Keep
Part 11: Kalarel’s Ritual and the Dragon Burial Site
Part 12: The Three Clue Rule
Part 13: Three Clue Rule – First Revelations
Part 14: Three Clue Rule – Second Revelations
BELATED ADDENDUMS
How (Not) To Fix the Keep on the Shadowfell
A Much Belated Addendum
Kobold Lair Battlemaps
Xandering the Dungeon
ARCHIVED HALOSCAN COMMENTS
Jay
Many thanks for all of the hard work, skill and imagination shown here. I hope it will improve my soon starting campaign no end
Friday, December 18, 2009, 8:14:35 AM
David
Thank you for the cheat sheet! I’ll be using this whole thing when I finally get to play 4e.
Cheers!
David
Thursday, March 19, 2009, 2:04:05 PM
Justin Alexander
Thanks, Nizzren. I appreciate the encouragement. 🙂
Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 2:31:51 AM
Nizzren
Best guide ever.
You have to send all your stuff to WOTC 🙂
Thank you 😉
Sunday, January 25, 2009, 4:12:23 PM
Justin Alexander
Thanks for the kind words, Andreas. But, as Mortegro points out, the underlying material is all copyrighted by Wizards. The best I’ll be able to do, at the end of this series, is post my complete cheat sheet for running the adventure.
If you do like the type of work I do on adventure design, I do have several Adventure Supplements available in either PDF or print formats. I’m hoping to release more in the near future. (Now that 4th Edition is out, DMP is making some hard decisions about our future direction.)
I also have several OOP adventures there were published by Fantasy Flight Games. You can see a list of those in my Bibliography.
Thus ends the self-pimpage. Wink
Friday, June 06, 2008, 11:59:32 AM
Mortegro
Seeing as most of what he’s rewritten is still property of WotC, I think Wizards should just hire him to write for them. It makes perfect sense to me, but I bet they’d be too afraid of his formidable skills of analysis and fair criticism.
Friday, June 06, 2008, 8:39:45 AM
Andreas Rönnqvist
This entire adventure seems to come together very nicely with your writing. Ever consider putting it all together into a final product and releasing it later? I’m pretty sure there are publishers out there (us included) that would love something as interesting as this released. 😀
Friday, June 06, 2008, 5:00:47 AM
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I know you have your issues with 4e, but I do want to say thank you for taking the time to do this remix. KotS is built around some of Wizard’s worst and laziest adventure design habits, and as someone who enjoys 4e, it means a lot that you tried to make it into a more positive introduction to the system.
Had to come read this after listening to Mastering Dungeons (4/14/22 episode) that raved about how good this adventure was. I honestly thought they were having a laugh for a while, and I wanted to remind myself that, no, other people also thought this adventure was garbage.
I mean, God, that freaking cherub statue puzzle. I literally sat down for an hour and drew that out trying to figure it out and couldn’t.