But can’t you do that with the store bought stuff too? I mean, why not throw a RP timeout in the middle of whatever module you purchased? Will it break the module? I know, it’s about time. But after the few encounters you play in any given session, when starting any given module, you should have a sense of what it’s all about and tweak it to fit your group, can’t you?

Anyway, since everyone is putting it out there, I love 4E. It’s one of the best systems that I have ever played. I encourage any haters to play a session or two with my crew. You would see why any negatives are actually positives. It is all what you make of it.

I was worried I might have to find a way to convince them to stay in town and tackle the bad guy, but now I think I’ll put it on them to convince the townsfolk why they should stay and keep the town alive.

Ideally, PC’s would just storm the haunted mine and cleanse it, but it’s hard to tell what this party will do next.

–I’ve found the compendium extremely useful. If I need to pull up a monster super fast, I can grab it and (if needed) print it out much faster than I can look it up in the MM.

–Character Builder is very cool.

–I use quite a bit of the content of Dragon each month. I say each month I use at least a quarter of the content in some fashion. PC class/race info gets handed out to my players, who really like it. The fact that it gets put in the compendium for easy access is even better.

–I use less of the content from Dungeon, but I like having a lot of material available to scavenge for ideas in building my own adventures. I spend quite a bit of time each month going through Dungeon.

–I like getting the previews (I also like sharing them with readers!)

–As someone who gets a kick out of designing my own elements for the game, all of the above makes it easier for me to design and add elements that fit into the power curve of 4e overall. When I add in elements, I take great pleasure and pride from producing something that feels like it could have been designed by the publishers themselves. When I make powers or other features, I do a lot of research to make sure the powers actually fulfill a need without being under or over powered. Looking at all this stuff helps me out a lot.

That said, I don’t expect everyone to be convinced. DDI is not an automatic “hell yes!” purchase, especially not for players. As a GM though, I get a lot of “raw” material that I find invaluable. At 8 bucks a month, it’s cheaper than a video game and I feel I get more out of it. Again though, YMMV.

I’m curious though, what makes you think you’re ‘getting what you pay for’ out of the account as a GM?

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1144003

I am also sending it to the DDI Devs, and you might see it in an upcoming Digital Insider column.

Scepter Tower is brutal. Fight fight fight fight fight. Rest, repeat. There’s interesting background and a couple of spots here and there, but there needs to be a better overall story that’s touched at several spots along the way to provide a sense of continuity, provide more opportunities for roleplay, and just improve the adventure all around.

I’m planning on running “Scepter Tower of Spellgard” for my friends and I’m having a hard time finding spots for role playing in there.

I expected the published adventure to be mostly combat, but I kind of expected it to leave some “holes” to fill up with other kind of activities.

I’m having fun preparing the whole thing, but it really beats the idea of “ready-to-play” adventure to the ground.

@JackofHearts 4e combat can be a bit fiddly. Do you use any props to help track status? One of my favorite tricks these days is to get a bunch of blank index cards. As conditions get applied to PCs, I just toss them the index card to put right on their character sheet. When the condition goes, I take it back. As for tracking monster stats, I usually try and keep some tokens and what not available to mark conditions. It can be a lot of extra props, but they can help everything go smoothly. I feel that the flow of 4e combat takes some getting used to, but I like it. I run my own material definitely for adventures. It’s the way I’ve always done it, and the way I like to do it. But to me, adventures are what give a peek into the soul of the game. I feel like WotC’s giving the wrong sort of peek into their game.

@Dave Yes. Yes. Yes. That would be the best of all possible worlds for me. One thing I feel is lacking in WotC’s 4e adventures are good characters. We get some interesting opponents, but no one character or group of characters for players and GMs to really interact with and that are memorable.

@Oz I agree with you completely and do very similar things in my campaign. I haven’t had to rule in secondary skills, but I do reward story achievements highly and am shifting the game to less and less combat for the sake of it and more combat with meaning.