Numion
First Post
Hi
In order not to derail the golden age of D&D thread, I decided to borrow mearls comment and start a new thread. I think that Castle Maure is way overrated, probably due to nostalgia. Let's start with mearls comment on the subject:
Why I think that Maure is not all that is actually laid out in mearls opinion, but I reach quite different conclusion. The problem of the adventure is just what mearls says - it's got cool backgrounds, but it's still a X monster in room Y dungeonfest. Those background things and cool NPCs made me want to run the adventure too, and guess what, I did!
It has big maps, and some nice encounters with background, but the problem is that due to the big maps the interesting encounters are few and far between when the PCs are grinding against yet another group of run-of-the-mill gnolls. And when an encounter with a cool background does come up, it's usually in a way that the background never comes into play. It's like 80% of the cool designing effort is wasted on 10% of the encounters, and 80% of the background effort is wasted on encounters that are meant to be combat encounters where the background .. stays on the background.
The cool backgrounds do make for a nice read for the DM, and makes you want to run it, but in play they are absent, and this makes Maure boooring. We quit after 75% completion. I can't be sure, but I think that the rave reviews and high regard on this board are due to nostalgia.
In order not to derail the golden age of D&D thread, I decided to borrow mearls comment and start a new thread. I think that Castle Maure is way overrated, probably due to nostalgia. Let's start with mearls comment on the subject:
mearls said:I was thinking about nostalgia the other day while reading Gygax and Kuntz's excellent Castle Maure adventure in Dungeon. That adventure does a lot of things "wrong" by modern design standards - many of the encounters are simply X number of monster Y in a room, without detailed tactics or personalities, yet the vivid, imaginative background and concepts made me want to run the adventure.
Why I think that Maure is not all that is actually laid out in mearls opinion, but I reach quite different conclusion. The problem of the adventure is just what mearls says - it's got cool backgrounds, but it's still a X monster in room Y dungeonfest. Those background things and cool NPCs made me want to run the adventure too, and guess what, I did!
It has big maps, and some nice encounters with background, but the problem is that due to the big maps the interesting encounters are few and far between when the PCs are grinding against yet another group of run-of-the-mill gnolls. And when an encounter with a cool background does come up, it's usually in a way that the background never comes into play. It's like 80% of the cool designing effort is wasted on 10% of the encounters, and 80% of the background effort is wasted on encounters that are meant to be combat encounters where the background .. stays on the background.
The cool backgrounds do make for a nice read for the DM, and makes you want to run it, but in play they are absent, and this makes Maure boooring. We quit after 75% completion. I can't be sure, but I think that the rave reviews and high regard on this board are due to nostalgia.