WotC has a surprising number of free adventures for 4e available online. There's enough here to run a pretty long campaign and plenty of monsters, traps, and maps to scavenge for your own creations.

Keep on the Shadowfell (1st level)

Keep on the Shadowfell: Side Treks (1st level)

Rescue at Rivenroar (1st level)

Khyber's Harvest (2nd level)

Fool's Grove (2nd level)

Siege of Bordrin's Watch (3rd level)

Tariff of Relkingham (3rd level)

The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge (4th level)

Heathen (5th level)

More Thunderspire Labyrinth (6th level)

Sleeper in the Tomb of Dreams (8th level)

The Last Breaths of Ashenport (8th level)

Massacre at Fort Dolor (8th level)

The Haunting of Kincep Mansion (12th level)

Dark Heart of Mithrendain (12th level)

Depths of Avarice (13th level)

Sea Reavers of the Shrouded Crags (15th level)

I'm going to fight my natural impulses to modify 4e to be more old-schoolish for my upcoming game and keep house rules to a bare minimum. I'm going to not tinker with random stat generation now. Characters will be built using the standard stat array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10). Also, I'm not going to restrict classes- even though some of the Cleric and Paladin powers make me go WTF?. I will draw the line on races though. Dragonkin and Tieflings as player races just don't fit into my into my fantasy headspace. Eladrin are out because I don't need more than one brand of elf and I really don't like that fey step power. Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half-Elf, and Halfling are all Tolkien needed and that's good enough for me.

Otherwise, rules will be as written in the starter set (and as found in the phb and dmg when I actually get them). Maybe later I'll tinker with things and make some changes or additions, but for right now I want the game to stand or fall on its own.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The long running D&D 3.5 campaign I've been playing in has finally collapsed under the ever increasing work required to keep it going. John, our dm, just couldn't devote the time necessary to build opponents at this level that could challenge the party anymore. It's an often heard lament of 3rd edition dm's that it's just too much work to run the game past a certain point and this campaign was probably a few levels (13th) past that. So John didn't want to run the campaign any longer, so now what?

I've been wanting to dm again, so I volunteered to run a new 4e campaign for them. Why 4e when I've been a vocal detractor against it? Well, I certainly didn't want to continue the present campaign. I've dm'ed 3.5 at high levels before and it is not fun to do in my opinion. It's also a complete bitch to balance correctly. You either end up with the pc's blowing through encounters like they're nothing or TPK's - it's very hard to get that middle ground of a good fight that's challenging without being fatal. Starting a new 3.5 campaign is also out as it would just end up the same way in a few months.

So, why not run an older version of D&D? I certainly enjoy older, simpler versions- Basic D&D and AD&D 2e probably being my favorites. The OGL clones available like Labyrinth Lord and OSRIC mean that the rules are free and they are compatible with a lot of old adventures that I have. There are two reasons for not choosing this route at this time. One, my current gaming group are all college students in their early 20's. They have no history with the older games having started playing with WoW and D&D 3e. Earlier versions of D&D seem woefully incomplete to their eyes. They like intricate tactical fights and things like feats. D&D 4e would seem tailor made for them. The other reason for my choice of game is that I really just want to try something new. I'm getting tired of reading the same old rules and running the same old modules. I need something fresh.

So, why not try another game than D&D entirely? Trick question, 4e isn't D&D so it is a new game. Seriously though, while I have been a player in this game I have bought several other games that I thought of running next- Savage Worlds, Basic Roleplaying, Dragon Age, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, HackMaster Basic, WFRP 1e - to name a few. OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, and WFRP are out as they aren't something that I haven't run before. BRP and HMb are just too much work for me. BRP is easy to play but requires a lot of front-end work to get a campaign set up for. HMb is just too fiddly and will only get worse as HM Advanced comes out. The critical miss tables in the latest issue of KoDT confirms that. Savage Worlds with it's Fantasy Companion comes very close to being ideal but there are a few things that bug me about it (weird dice mechanics, cards for initiative, starting character power) and I have doubts about it being good for lengthy campaigns. Dragon Age also comes close and it would have been a good fit for my group as I think all of them have played the video game- except for me which is why I would have a real hard time running it. They know much more about the setting than I do. That's never a good thing.

So, why 4e now when I've railed against it before? When it first came out, it was so different that it was a shock. I wanted a better D&D not a different D&D (if that makes any sense). So it pissed me off. I still think they made a major mistake in adding so many unfamiliar elements to the core set of rules. The new races, classes, and cosmology don't have a place in my fantasy head space. I think they realize this now as the new beginner sets that they have coming out later this year have pared away much of what I don't want. It was the announcement of those products that got me to take another look at 4e. Also, by ignoring 4e for the past 2 years, I think I can finally look at it objectively as a new and different game and judge it on it's own as a good or bad game.

Now I have my work cut out for me as the clock is ticking to our first game next week and the only 4e product I own is the basic boxed set which is fairly incomplete as a working game. I did order the phb1/phb2 set (great deal, by the way) from Amazon a week ago which was before I knew I'd be running a game or else I'd have ordered a dmg while I was at it. Unfortunately, it looks like the books may not arrive in time to help. Oh well, the group can use the online character generator to make characters and I guess I can see just how much mileage I can get out of the boxed set in the meantime.

has to be this cover of the AD&D 1st edition Player's Handbook.

There has been an amazing number of homages done to this image over there years. Here's the ones I could find. Are there any I've missed?

I've had a chance to take a good look at the starter set and it's left me with mixed emotions. On the plus side, I really liked the counters which have some really nice art and are sturdy- just like the included dungeon tiles. I also found the DM's book to be pretty well done. It has a nice selection of low level monsters and just enough info to run a game - if you've played D&D before.

That brings me to the down side. The Starter Set is just woefully inadequate when it comes to actually being a starter set. I can't see how anyone who is new to rpg's would be able to take this boxed set and get near to playing what would be recognizable as D&D. It's not just that there's no character generation rules- other, better starter sets have done this before. This set is missing much more. What more do I expect? Examples, lots of examples and there are very few here. No combat examples. No example of play. The only real example is for a Skill Challenge which is probably the last thing a newbie needs to concern themselves about. Beginners need a lot more hand holding than this. And what makes this worse is the included "adventure" is only three encounters long. Three. So, you basically have about 2 hours of play time out of this before the fledgling DM has to start making up his own dungeons? The old 2e starter set had enough adventures to last at least a month of play time.

Another thing that I didn't like was the Quick Start book itself. It's basically the same that came with the Keep on the Shadowfell module. I didn't like it for two reasons. The rules are just a subset of what is in the DM's book so it's just a repeat of what you already have. That's six pages that could have been used for something else without having to raise the price any. Something else like a combat example or, I don't know, how a list of some stuff I could buy with all that loot I find in the dungeon!?! Yes, that's right. Treasure has no purpose in the starter set and is almost completely ignored. The other thing I disliked about the Quick Start book was that the pregen characters have to be cut out or photocopied to be able to actually play. This is just enough of an inconvenience to keep me from getting to play it. This is yet another mistake that the 2e version did not make.

I certainly hope that WotC puts more thought into their new boxed set coming out later this year. This set combined with a Player's Handbook would be enough to start playing. It's really more of a DM's Starter Kit than anything. By itself though, it's really incomplete as an introductory D&D game.

3/1 update: you can view some treasure rules that were left out here- Excerpts: Economy & Reward and you can get some more kobolds to use here- Kobolds!.

Character Generation- Pretend to be an Elf.

Character Advancement- replace [monster] below with the following depending on your level:

1-3: Orc
4-9: Troll
10+: Demon

Adventure- Roll a die.

0,1: You fall in a pit and die.
2: You get killed by a [monster].
3: Waste time quoting Monty Python. Roll again.
4: Injured. Roll again -1.
5: You survive but don't level up. Roll again +1.
6,7: You level up, congratulations! Level +1. Roll again.