4th edition in print. wonderful. someday i hope to have all 4th edition materials nice and safe in my library.

Excellent bit of kit for those nights when you weren't able to write anything yourself or if only a couple of players turned up.

When you want to run D&D 4e but you don’t have a lot of time to prepare, Dungeon Delve offers a nice selection of short, combat-oriented mini-adventures. The adventures span the entire range of character levels. Encounter areas can be built using the older sets of Dungeon Tiles, which is great if you happen to have those sets and a bit of a pain if you don’t (though you can always use Gaming Paper, Chessex mats, or other strategies). You can get some replay value from the encounters by taking the video-game approach of imposing time limits (measured in rounds), adding enemies, making enemies harder, changing the terrain effects, and so on. This might even be a good way to let players try out different character concepts. The monster stat blocks reflect the initial wave of 4th edition math, so DMs will probably want to either use monster stats from more recent sources like the Monster Vault (or Compendium), or you might be able to get away with just doubling static damage bonuses to monsters’ attacks. From the perspective of mid-2013, when this book was (re)released as a PDF, it appears a bit dated (you can tell that it’s from the early days of 4e) but still offers a lot to a hurried (or creative) DM.

Dungeon Delve is a collection of thirty one-shot adventures, from 1st through 30th level. Each delve features three linked encounters, and is designed for five player characters. The delves are aimed towards beginning DMs, and the book includes tips for customizing and running the game. Dungeon Delve was originally released in 2009 as a now out-of-print hardback. Dungeon Delve has been extensively reviewed on the internet, so my review will be of the PDF itself.

Like many other book-to-PDF products, the PDF contains the same color art and page layout of the original hardcover. But, unlike the hardcover, the DM only needs to print out the pages of the delve he's running for the game session. No need to lug around yet another hardback! Dungeon Delve did not come with a map, so there's no map to awkwardly print out on multiple sheets on the inkjet. Huzzah for the PDF!

If you're a "battlemap and tokens" gaming group, you're set. However, if you must use monster miniatures and published tiles, good luck. The tiles used in the delves are from the various long out-of-print tile sets, not the boxed Master Sets. Given how much I've sunk into miniatures and tiles, I'm not too happy that I will still have to convert the encounters.