Best 3.0/3.5 adventures from Small Publishers?

[Hstio]

I've been thinking that I've missed a potential gem in rough adventure from a small publisher that never made to the FLGS or disappeared so quickly I never saw or heard of it. There were a lot of small companies that came and went in a blink of an eye. For me two examples are:

Gryphon's Legacy from Gaslight Press: The only adventure in the series and one of my all time favorites. It had you escorting colonists and retaking/restoring an old fort. A different sort of adventure that really tied the party to the results.

Dark Awakenings Auron Press: A lot of money went into these adventures with the 3D disks, great art, music etc. While the gloss and bells and whistles helped, there is a solid adventure here with fleshed out NPCs and some real roleplaying.

Any others I missed? I'm focusing on Small companies not Goodman, Green Ronin, AEG, WOTC, Etc.

Hstio

 

[Turjan]

I'm not sure what you mean with "small companies". Even someone as prolific as Necromancer Games consisted of two people doing this as a hobby next to their real jobs. Isn't Atlas Games something like John and Michelle Nephew? Not sure how many people were behind MonkeyGod Enterprises, either.

If you substituted "small" with "obscure", there would be Guildhouse Games with a stretch of quite nice adventures (The Succubus Bride, A Green Place to Die, Red or White, A Thief's Tale, A Mage's Tale, Dark and Stormy Night, The Plague of Nyrathorth). They are not exactly great, sometimes a bit sketchy, but contain some nice ideas, nevertheless.

 

[Klaus]

NeMoren's Vault, by Fiery Dragon Productions, has been touted as one of the best 1st-level adventures to start a campaign.

Of Sound Mind, also by Fiery Dragon (and written by EN World's own Piratecat), is also hailed as one of the finest adventures of the 3.x era.

 

[Turjan]

NeMoren's Vault, by Fiery Dragon Productions, has been touted as one of the best 1st-level adventures to start a campaign.

Of Sound Mind, also by Fiery Dragon (and written by EN World's own Piratecat), is also hailed as one of the finest adventures of the 3.x era.

Those two are definitely much better than those I mentioned .

@OP: Can you define a bit more what exactly you are after?

 

[Crothian]

I love threads like this. I own plenty and have run a good number of modules that I think fall into this type of thing.

Bret Boyd's 11th Hour. It is for low level, very clever, and hard to talk about without spoiling what it is. It is very well done for doing something that is very difficult to do in a mdoule. Heck, I've seen TV shows and movies mess up what he does well in the module.

Wispering Woodwinds from CMG. A ni9ce, well done low level module. It has great world building ideas in it.

Castle Shadowcrag by Open Design. Another one that is hard to talk about without spoiling. It was creative and well written. I have not run it, but it is near the top of modules I want to find a way to run.

Betrayal at Shadewood Keep is an adventure by Vanishing Goblin Inc. I haven't run this one either, but it seemed good.

Ring of Thieves is a PDF adventure by Games Mechanic and written by Rodney Thompson. I used this in Sharn instead of Liberty and it should work well in almost any city. It is one of the better city adventures.

 

[Hstio]

I was looking for the more obscure companies that wouldn't show up or showed up briefly in the FLGS. I'm looking for ones that I missed and might want to track down. I hadn't heard of any of the adventures in Crothian's post, because I normally look for dead tree versions. As you can see from my first post, I'm a Wolfgang Bauer fan, but have never jumped on the patronage bandwagon to get access to some of his latest work. Any other adventures?

Hstio

 

[Crothian]

Here is a couple more

Atlas might be too big, but they had some good but rough modukles in the early days of d20. My favorite of theirs is Three Days to Kill ; one of the only modules that really makes a group of PCs feel like a special Ops team.

Robert Kendzie did a great module that I imagine few people have heard of even though I gave it a nice review. Tomb of Haggempoth is both creative and has a nice old school feel to it. It is a little more involved as the quest the PCs go on is not easy and takes them to many places to gather the clues. The end has a very good revelation that I think few module writers would even try to pull off.

I know Green Ronin is known and popular, but their Bleeding Edge series was short lived and hardly ever talked about. They are datrk and story oriented. They have the quality I expect from Green Ronin and the evilness that sometimes that company does a little too well.

 

[Knightfall]

Gryphon's Legacy from Gaslight Press: The only adventure in the series and one of my all time favorites. It had you escorting colonists and retaking/restoring an old fort. A different sort of adventure that really tied the party to the results.

I've been looking for that one.

 

[Knightfall]

Dark Awakenings from Auran Press: A lot of money went into these adventures with the 3D disks, great art, music etc. While the gloss and bells and whistles helped, there is a solid adventure here with fleshed out NPCs and some real roleplaying.

I was not aware that there were three CD adventures from Auran Press.

Amazon.com: Auran d20: Books

• Dark Awakenings: Guardian
• Dark Awakenings: Shadowland
• Sanctuary

 

[Aberzanzorax]

Not sure if small enough, but the 0one great city series is fantastic.

Also, Sinister Adventures indulgences are well worth the cost.