The Hidden Kingdom “Adventure Setting” For D&D 4e

Over at Nevermet Press, there was a little tidbit a while ago about the production of an “Adventure Setting” product for Brother Ptolemy And The Hidden Kingdom, with myself acting as Lead Developer.

I just sent the (ostensibly) full text of the module over to the big bosses, and we expect a mid-May release.

In essence, we wanted to do something different and more captivating for this product than we did for The Desire. We wanted to produce brand new content, exclusive to this product, that’d really make you want it. We wanted to do something different than just 4e monsters and items. An adventure module seemed like the perfect fit, so I was asked to write one for it.

I didn’t really have much experience with designing modules. But I did not let that daunt me. I have read a bunch of 4e adventures. I was familiar with the format for encounters in 4e, and I have to say after writing this, I feel a lot more endeared to the format than when I was just reading it. It really helps to dissect an encounter into its parts and helps you fill in the blanks.

I went back to some of my favorites from D&D 3.5, like Red Hand of Doom, which remains my favorite adventure module I’ve ever read, played and ran (briefly and unsuccessfully, sadly). I read and re-read my favorite 4e module so far, Village of Hommlet, for inspiration. Its “minor quests” approach to getting acquainted with the town intrigued me.

Part of the difficulty for me in starting to write was that I wasn’t the one who designed the Brother Ptolemy character, that was Paul King. So there was some trepidation on my part with dealing with someone else’s baby, that I don’t offend the person in question. I cleared a lot of my ideas with Paul King and hope that he enjoys my take on the groundwork he has laid down, and I hope the gamers out there do as well and that they feel it is a natural addition to the Hidden Kingdom meta-narrative.

An “adventure setting” is an expansion of the concept of the “The Desire” product. We take the articles on the NMP site, we expand upon them, we add 4e stats, but now, we then also add a 10-12 encounter (1 level) adventure into the mix. So we create this material and readily give you a large, structured example of how to put it to use right away.

One of the things I knew I wanted to do in this adventure was to have a lot of opportunities to roleplay and interact with NPCs both ordinary and not, in friendly and antagonistic ways, without leading into a tactical combat encounter. When a brawl did break out, I wanted fights against seemingly “ordinary” opponents to be interesting because of a combination of tactics, circumstances and exploitable terrain. That monk may just be wielding a sword, but he can smash you out of a window if you aren’t paying attention.

But most of all, I wanted to have an open ending of the adventure that is affected by the PCs decisions, good and bad, not just in combat, but in how they’ve conducted themselves and how people perceive them.

It’s been a fun and interesting experiment that I believe sets itself apart well from the offerings by Wizard’s of the Coast and other companies. Over the weeks leading up to its release, I plan to write a little more about these things, as well as about anything the readers might be interested in.