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In this unboxing video I am going to show you the contents of Madness At Gardmore Abbey, a Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition adventure for Heroic Tier.

I haven’t played the adventure, so will not comment on the quality of the encounters or the plot, but I will let you know what the contents are like in terms of quality and if they are appropriate oro not.

There is a lot in this box, including a surprise that will come very handy in the future!

Please head to www.gmsmagazine.com/unboxing-videos/madn... if you'd like to watch it.

Feedback would be very welcome!

All the best,

Paco. 

Thank you very much for your kind comments!

I was tempted to go into more detail, but I restrained myself for two reasons. One is that I wanted to keep the video short. The other, and probably the most important, is because I wanted to keep the video to "this is the first impression you get before you read the books" kind of thing.

One of my bugbears with some RPG material (and I am not talking about WotC.. usually they excel) is when I buy a box or a book, look inside and leaves me wondering if I have done the right thing spending the money. Sometimes I have been so put of that I have paked the book, never to look at it again.

I can see what you mean, though, so I will make an effort in at least describing in a bit more detail what I can see in the books for future videos.

Hopefully this sort of videos will take some of the fear of spending money on a new book or supplement away!

More videos to come soon!  

Jan 29, 2012 -- 6:01AM, mboss77 wrote:

Thanks for posting this, I had actually been wondering just what kind of stuff was in that box.  I would have liked for you to elaborate just a bit more on the differences between the content of the four books, but I got the gist.  Your video was.....lovely.

If you're just curious about each book here's a run-down:
Book 1 : Gardmore Abby - This describes the intricate back story of the Abby and it's denizens. It's a more detailed back story than I've seen in any other module and I thought it had some really great stuff. It also describes how the Deck works which is several pages in and of itself.

Book 2: Allies and Enemies - This mostly covers the NPCs and key monsters that the heroes can run into. There is a long section on possible proprietors for the heroes and their motivations and back stories. It also details some very interesting baddies that live in the remains of the Abby as well as a team of competing adventurers and ways in which the party can encounter them. Much of this is just options for the DM but can also be chosen at random by drawing from the Deck.

Books 3 and 4: Encounters - Each book contains ~11 encounters, many of which are either skill challenges or RP opportunities. A large amount of the combat encounters can be bypassed with some good RP too which is cool IMO.

Maps - There are two double sided maps that depict some key locations at the Abby, but they are far from enough to run the whole campaign. It is assumed by the campaign that you have the official set of essentials tiles for the dungeon. I have them and took a look through them and I'm pretty sure that between the maps and the tiles kit that you can build all of the settings but I'm not entirely certain because I haven't tried yet: the party that I'm going to run through this was waylaid by a white dragon that they weren't quite prepared for and they'll have to deal with that first.

That box is a great value. I use the tokens all the time.