AEG's Adventure Keep series: experiences?

LordMelquiades · May 20, 2005

Hello all

I have both Adventure I and Adventure II, AEG's compilation of the best of their Adventure Keep series of mini-modules. As I read them, I have lots of "Hmmmm, okaaaay..." moments, where things look a little shonky.

From past experience my gut feel is often way off-beam. Has anyone run any of these, and if so, what was your experience of them? Has anyone attempted to string them together into a campaign?

Any and all stories welcomed.

DaveMage · May 20, 2005

LordMelquiades said:
Hello all

I have both Adventure I and Adventure II, AEG's compilation of the best of their Adventure Keep series of mini-modules. As I read them, I have lots of "Hmmmm, okaaaay..." moments, where things look a little shonky.

From past experience my gut feel is often way off-beam. Has anyone run any of these, and if so, what was your experience of them? Has anyone attempted to string them together into a campaign?

Any and all stories welcomed.

I ran "Servants of the Blood Moon" when it was just the mini-adventure (not from Ad I and/or Ad II) and, while fun, it was not smooth as to the encounters. In order to survive the final encounter, I had to modify it heavily. Still, I enjoyed it for what it was.

HellHound · May 20, 2005

I've run two of the adventures back when they were in the mini-adventure format... I have -NO CLUE- what the names are anymore though. Both ran well, and were 'light' dungeon crawls with a bit of backstory, making for good items to plug in between the major adventures in the campaign.

thundershot · May 20, 2005

I own them all (and I'd like to get the updated Adventure books at a decent price), and I've run many of them. They require some tweaking, but some of them have become integral elements in my campaign. Jerimond's orb, for all it's glitches, STILL effects my campaign even though the characters right now are 14th level. Servants of the Blood Moon, the Red Isle, Bring them back alive, the Barrow King, ... I can't remember all of the ones we've done so far, but it's quite a few. They make great templates to integrate, and can't always be run as is. But I had fun with 'em.

Chris

HellHound · May 20, 2005

Thanks for the remind - Barrow King is one of the ones that my players really enjoyed and that ran smoothly.

The ghouls wandering the surface had the party VERY nervous because they kept loosing track of them in the forest around the barrow, and finally decided to enter the barrow knowing that there were ghouls behind them. Kept them nervous even thought he ghouls in question never attacked them.

jrients · May 20, 2005

I play in an infrequently-meeting campaign that is nothing but Adventure Keep pamphlets strung together. It was a little uneven in spots but everyone had a good time. I'm looking at buying volume I of the re-do for my next campaign.

LordMelquiades · May 22, 2005

Alrighty, thanks very much. How about the campaign angle - any experiences/advice for stringing them together, or are they by design better suited to non-core-campaign sessions?

I figure, jrients, that if your game is infrequent, that you have less need/desire for a mor eintegrated campaign? How about thundershot - did these modules comprise the core of your campaign, or the periphery - the leaves or the dressing?

Cheers

thundershot · May 23, 2005

All of mine are strung together with other things. Most of the towns from those adventures make up the main kingdom of my campaign. When we started 3E, we didn't have much to work with, so those little adventures were great for getting things started and building the new campaign with old characters knocked down to 1st level again. They're constantly revisiting those towns. Right now, the 14th level group is stationed in Stormy Shore ("The Illusionist's Daughter"), and one character ended up MARRYING the illusion daughter. They've been together for a long time now and run the town with her father dead (long story involving pirates and devils). I fear the day they end up discovering the corpse in the attic of the tower and all hell breaks loose.

So these adventures formed the skeleton of my campaign, and I built it around them initially (the eastern part of my kingdom has all of the towns from the "Return to Temple of Elemental Evil", along with the Dark Elf City of Hosuth from one of the AEG modules). Treefall ("Jerimond's Orb") is run by the two lovers who were in the adventure after most of the town were killed as Mathorn. The surviving members of the town of Darbin ("Kurishan's Garden") were brought to Treefall by the PC's since Darbin became unlivable, and Treefall needed help. For a long time I used the King from "Princes, Goblins, and Thieves" as the king of my campaign's kingdom until he was killed by one of my NPC villains, who in turn was killed by Baba Yaga, who now rules as Queen Abagail.

God, I love continuity... but those little AEG adventures are great for building...

Sorry for rambling on..

Chris