D&D 4E What is today the best way to start D&D 4E (paid and free)?

I can’t speak to 4e Encounters, never having played any of them, but another option that I somewhat waffle about recommending in the ‘free’ category is Living Forgotten Realms

Living Forgotten Realms

Official campaign resources for Living Forgotten Realms, including rules, adventures, pre-generated characters, and more. This site is maintained by the LFR Global Admins under license from Wizards of the Coast.
www.livingforgottenrealms.com

I like(d) LFR a lot but the problem is the wheat to chaff ratio is pretty low. I’d avoid anything from years 1 or 2 (there are a few gems but not many) and look at years 3+.

Free is free….
 

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Voadam said:
Does anyone recommend the 4e encounters PDFs? I have never used them but they are cheap and provide a decent number of short sessions most with one focus combat starting at 1st level that look like they could be good intros to the system.

They look like they were mid-4e, post the initial HPE series of modules and before the later acclaimed things like Gardmore and Slaying Stone.

Also if you are thinking about getting 4e PDFs take advantage of the current GM's Day Sale to get them at 40% off.
Click to expand...
They were good for their intended purpose. You got together with random people to play one encounter every week. You had all the maps ready. Pregens printed on durable stockcard mini-sheets. And there was fun to be had. I ran it for several seasons and played in a few.

That said, it's hard to see value in them simply as pdfs and without organized play to make use of them, unless you have people willing to participate at your local gathering places and gameholes. The plots aren't great, and the format is terribly linear, more so than even the most railroady adventure you can think of.

But, yes. You could mine them for the encounters, which most are designed for starting characters. I believe there was only 1 or 2 that started higher than level 1.

Keep on the Borderlands (season 3) is my personal favorite. It has an old school feel to it (for obvious reasons). It was the first released after Essentials came out, thus using the new monster designs and game philosophies. It's also longer than most, and actually decent. The keep itself also gets fleshed out later in Dungeon 196 as a potential home base, and becomes the center of the Chaos Scar adventure series.

The quality generally improves in the later seasons, but they also experiment with different approaches and themes. There was a run of all-drow players stories, for example. One Season let players level up after every encounter. And the last few were hybrids with multiple edition stats, and test beds for D&D Next (i.e. 5e).
 

The Keep on the Shadowfell would be a good free product with which to start, because you get the pregen characters, a bunch of monster stat blocks, encounter maps, and DM advice.

You don’t have to run the adventure as is. When Chris Perkins ran “Acquisitions, Inc.” through KotS, he hand waved all the beginning part and started them at the dungeon entrance.

It allows people to see if they like the rules before paying any money for it.

I agree that the DMG1 is an exceedingly excellent book.

The first Monster Manual isn’t quite as bad as advertised, especially for heroic tier monsters. It includes “encounter groups” for each monster type, so that the DM can quickly work up a combat encounter. The Monster Vault, though very good, doesn’t provide the encounter groups.

Addendum: the adventure has goblins, kobolds, cultists, drakes, a dragon, zombies, skeletons, and more!

If you are playing in person, and need “miniatures”, a quick and cheap way to make some is to cut 4x6 cards into one inch squares. Label the PC markers with letters, and the monster markers with numbers.
 
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