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Last Saturday (February 1, 2025), to give myself some practice running 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons using the Masterplan software, I ran a couple of my synDClash delves. TL;DR: They were written for my convention, synDCon, as competitive, 4th edition delves. Five players playing one pre-generated character each goes through three combats, and whichever group of five players goes the farthest is the winner. My friend, Dusty, won, but I never got the prize to him (i.e., the set of five beholder mins). If I ever see him again, it’s his. But I digress . . . .

Each of the delves was based on classic 1st edition adventure module (what I always called a “mod,” which has strangely generated some grief on the internet). Why did I based them on 1e mods? Because I’m old. The mods were based on B2: The Keep on the Borderlands (easy), C2: The Ghost Tower of Inverness (moderate), G1-2-3: Against the Giants (moderate), D1-2-3: The Drow Series (difficult), S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (difficult), and Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits (impossibly difficult). I converted those delves into Masterplan project files, which can be found on my D&D 4e Resources page along with the pre-generated characters.

How It Went

In short, it went tremendously well. Everyone had a blast, and the software was smooth almost all the time. There were only two downsides. First, 4e is inherently slow, and despite delves being relatively fast, this particular group really likes to have side conversations. This meant that we got through only two: Return to the Borderlands (based on B2) and The Great Metal Dungeon (based on S3). Second, there was a clear error in my math for skill checks during the second encounter of The Great Metal Dungeon, which resulted in an unfair TPK. (Revisions have already been made but not yet uploaded.) The delve is labeled as “difficult,” but I assure you that those numbers were still unfair.

But what this means is that there are still four more (plus perhaps a retry of The Great Metal Dungeon) available for my group to play during weekends on which we can’t get a quorum for our regular gaming.

New Delves?

Over on BlueSky, someone posted an image of his four copies of the original versions of C2: The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan. That triggered a thought inside my soft human brain. If we get through these delves, I’m going to write at least two more based on Tomoachan and S2: White Plume Mountain. I don’t think there are any other mods that, though iconic, have much special meaning to me. Even Keep on the Borderlands didn’t, but I needed an easy one, I knew it was special to a lot of people, and I knew what the three best encounters to use would be. Perhaps I’ll convert S1: Tomb of Horrors as well considering that Wizards of the Coast already converted it to 4e, though that one would be hard to run as a delve. If so, for obvious reasons, I’d have to make it as impossibly difficult as The Demonweb Pits was. If I convert them, I’ll post the to my D&D 4e Resources page as Masterplan files.

I miss the days of 4e.

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