H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth (Dungeons & Dragons) [Paperback]

The Wizards adventure team had me worried with Keep on the Shadowfell. The poor quality material, recycled maps, multiple discrepencies between module rules and the core books, and overall poor production value had me concerned about the future of the adventure path. Thunderspire Labyrinth goes a long way to ease those fears.

First thing I noticed was the booklet material. MUCH nicer than the KotS booklets. The pages feel firm, and both the cover and interior pages are much more resistant to smudging and ink transfer. This was a huge problem for me with KotS, and I'm glad to see it corrected.

The map was both exciting and dissapointing. On one hand, it is a very nice map with multiple important areas from the adventure on it. On the other, it is only one double-sided map. KotS boasted 3 double sided full color poster maps, impressive even if they were mostly reprints of D&D miniature's maps with new markings.

The booklets are nicely organized. Book One contains the adventure hooks, first encounter, new monsters, important NPCs, a bird's-eye map of the area the adventure takes place, and a map with call-outs of the adventure's 'town'. It's nice to see these laid out all in their own section, as it makes the module much more useful for folks who just want the locations for inspiration. Book One also contains a random encounter table for overland travel, something sorely missed from the first adventure. Most eye-catching is the final 5 pages, which contain artwork of the area arrayed in an easy to cut out or photocopy section. This adds a great layer to the read-aloud text in the booklet, as you can hand your players a picture showing some of the most important locations in detail. There is also a section giving some direction in expanding the area around the Labyrinth, giving short descriptions of areas not directly covered by this adventure.

Booklet two is somewhat less impressive. Right off the bat, I noticed that it suffers from the same problem as the KotS adventure booklet: there is no back cover. The rear of the booklet is dedicated to details of the final encounter. The adventure's conclusion and aftermath is handled on the same page, in a single 7-line paragraph. While this is sufficient for the module, some might wish for more.

The bulk of Booklet Two is given over to details on the encounters in the adventure. Each area is presented much as it was in KotS: an overview, with full map and description of general features, followed by individual encounters. The overall maps have clearly marked features detailing encounters, and you could easily copy them and chop it up to hand to the players as they explore. The maps in general feel as if they were designed with a maximum of utility in mind: 10 foot wide halls are the norm, and everything looks as if it would be easy to recreate with a drawn playmat or with Dungeon Tiles.

The encounter entries are fairly standard. If you enjoyed the layout in KotS, you'll like these. They have been polished, brought to a higher standard of conformity. Seperated into sections for Setup, Roleplaying, monster stat blocks, Tactics, Features of the Area (including treasure), and Conclusion for lingering details that need handling, the encounters seem made to run smoothly out of the box. I anticipate very little advance prep-work needed for these encounters.

Overall, the adventure seems well written. I'll know more after we've been through it, but I'm looking forward to running it at this time. There is still room for improvement. In my opinion, the lack of a back cover, inclusion of only a single map, and heavy focus on combat encounters drop this product to 4 stars.

Thunderspire Labyrinth is an epic adventure taking place in the deep mazes and caves below Thunderspire mountain. In other words this is an underdark type adventure and has many creatures such as duergar that you would find in the underdark. It is heavy on combat for the most part, but I feel this will be a major criticism of all 4e dnd modules. It seems like the way they are releasing their products is put just enough roleplaying material in there and give the players a series of encounters (some aren't combat) the dm uses to level them up or advance the story. If you look at most modules released by wizards of the coast they are also combat heavy with minor roleplaying stuff in there. This one does a better job of giving out the roleplaying info for the 7 pillared hall than H1 did for Winterhaven and there is more of it. In fact nearly the whole first booklet describes the hall and its citizens and gives a basic overview of the adventure. I can see tons of roleplaying possibilities with each of the citizens but they don't map all of these out. In other words a beginning dm may run the 7 pillared hall as a bland excursion in a bland city and bypass most of the roleplaying fluff. This is sad since the roleplaying info here is pretty good and each of the npcs motivations would make for good roleplaying encounters. This is a problem with wizards modules in general dating all the way back to 3rd edition. I don't see why this surprises everyone. However, that being said there are some really cool skill challenges as well. There is even a simple find the items to open the door puzzle as well.

The paper quality is much better than H1. Just compare the two. No ink smudging but as another reviewer said there is still no back to the 2nd adventure booklet. I have no clue what Wotc's reasoning is behind this. It doesn't make sense why they didn't add a back to the actual adventure, but I guess they have some kind of reasoning. There is only one map and I don't see the reason for the folder setup if you are only going to have only one map. Red Hand of Doom worked great as a book that the map could be removed from. There are some handouts but these have to be torn out of the adventure booklet or photocopied to be used. The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde had similar handouts but they weren't in the adventure books and were separate which makes much more sense.

SPOILERS Below

The overall adventure is actually quite good in my opinion. It far surpasses the bland storyline in H1. It deals with goblins,duergar, gnolls and even vecna (really cool skill challenge with this one). It gives numerous roleplaying opportunities if the dm uses them. The npcs are really fleshed out. I have always been a fan of mazes and underdark type campaigns and this one is actually pretty decent. Despite it's flaws I would recommend it to anyone who has played through H1 or just skipped H1 for that matter but wants to give a premade campaign in 4th a shot.

END SPOILERS

The main issue I had with it was the fact it could have been a whole lot better had they just packaged it with the handouts separate and added more maps as well as mapped out a few more roleplaying encounters. The campaign is pretty long but one would expect it to be when taking pcs from levels 3-6 which roughly equates to about 30 encounters plus roleplaying fluff. It should keep a gaming group busy for a while. I was pretty satisfied with the overall package and actually feel that it was well worth the price. However, this good campaign could have been great if only Wotc had put a little more effort in it.

It came in a very timely manner, well packaged and the booklets are of much better quality than the last published adventure, H1: Keep on the Shadowfell, of which the booklet for that adventure had some printing issues in that the ink rubbed off on whoever was reading it mid-session.

This adventure is really an overall improvement over Keep on the Shadowfell in every aspect. You're able to improvise all parts of the story rather than being stuck with the encounters that are written. And there are more NPC character personalities described than H1: KotS, so out-of-combat situations are more interesting. It's a great buy if you're looking for an adventure with intrigue and depth, without having to spend the time writing it out yourself.