Expedition to the Barrier Peaks - your experiences?

[Etan Moonstar]

Lots of fun. Ran it as a 3E module with a good group of players. They almost had the security robots convinced that they were supposed to have the high-level access card they'd found, then someone got paranoid and attacked the robots. Oops. The mage (wielding her flaming crowbar--don't ask, please, she was one of the worst players I've ever had, one of the risks of running an open game at a university gaming club) died, but the rest escaped. The vegepygmies also gave them a great deal of grief, what with the grenades and laser gun (less lethal than the original save or die, but still nasty). The paranoid tactician of the group (who was also the guy who ordered the rocket launcher, for those of you who read the Ravenloft thread) ordered the rest of the group to run into a small room and use the doorway as a chokepoint against the vegepygmies. I grinned, and he realized the implications of that strategy about 10 seconds too late, just before a sleep grenade bounced through the doorway and filled the room with sleeping gas as the vegepygmies surrounded the door to use it as a chokepoint against the party. The druid complicated the situation by casting chill metal on the metal floor outside the door, hoping to drive the vegepygmies back. They learned then that vegepygmies were immune to cold, and they were stuck either staying in the sleep gas or coming out, standing on the cold floor to fight the vegepygmies, and taking damage from the chill metal spell each round. They managed to kill enough vegepygmies that the rest ran off to regroup, then the party fled for the main doors they came in, set up a secure camp, and waited there, wounded and scared, until the doors opened and they left, never having gone down below the first level.

I hope to run the whole thing someday with another group.

 

[Dr Simon]

It's good fun (and I always have a tendency to mix in a little SF stuff with my fantasy - blame it on Sheri S. Tepper).

The "flow" is a bit unbalanced though - once you descend below the garden decks it loses momentum, with the more exciting parts being the initial experience of the high tech in the upper decks (with the vegepygmies) and the garden deck. By the time you reach the level with the mind flayer it's got a bit old-hat, and there's no BBEG, really.

 

[jasper]

Played in twice die twice (this was in my early game group munckins etc)
Dm 3 times. The first time munckins megagame and got mad at me when the id started hunting them.
2nd time had mind flayer use the grenades on the party. Slurp!
3rd time most of players wanted to bail so I allow it.

 

[rogueattorney]

Oddly, I've never played or DM'ed it.

Why is that odd? Because it was the great Otus cover art that I couldn't stop looking at on the comic book rack of the local grocery store that got me to ask my dad, "What's Dungeons & Dragons?" (I was 8 or 9, and he was a long time wargamer.) He brought the Basic and Expert boxes home from work with him later that week.

R.A.

 

[hong]

Even hong occasionally adds something useful to threads he posts in.

Do not.

 

[vulcan_idic]

Lots of fun. Ran it as a 3E module with a good group of players.

Any idea where I could find such a 3E version? I have a campaign world I'm designing where one of the key plot lines involves the crash of an advanced spacecraft and an evil king (whose island realm has been cut off from magic and the rest of the world due to an ancient attempt to conquer the world) who captures the tech and the crew and can recharge the items and uses this new "magic" to try to recapture his country's former glory... This sounds like it would be very helpful in designing such a circumstance...

 

[Etan Moonstar]

Well, my 3E version consisted of the original module, the MM, Tome of Horrors (used the website at the time, now I've got the book--essential if you like classic mods), the section in the DMG with futuristic weapon stats, and a bit of on-the-fly DM finesse to handle those few bits not covered by the rest. As Barrier Peaks has a lot fewer classed NPCs than other mods (classed NPCs are usually the only things I bother prepping in advance when converting a module), it's much easier to convert on the fly.

 

[Altalazar]

I got this module when I was in Junior High (or maybe earlier) and enjoyed reading it and then ran it 1E (of course) when I was in undergrad, around '90, I think, and I think everyone really enjoyed it. It may have been partial inspiration for me to do a homebrew adventure where the group went to early 21st Century Chicago, which was also a memorable adventure.

What most sticks out in my mind is the bullette dumped outside for pressing a button, the complicated diagram for figuring out how items worked, and the 'tween level with an intellect devourer, which to this day I always associate with this module.

 

[MummyKitty]

I don't recall all the details of playing this (it was in high school) but I do remember it was fun. I know our characters were walking around with some of the weapons we recovered in this module through several other more traditional modules (the laser gun wrist band things made great accessories for the female characters-- hey, we were in high school!). I always liked the old Gamma World with its artifact flow chart, so the one in this module was cool for me, and as was mentioned, the illustrations of the weapons and artifacts were tres cool. I think some of the other players thought it was weird but I totally thought mixing sci-fi and D&D was a radical idea.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Wow - back from the dead!

I played this while very young - I played a 30th level magic user who rolled 6d30 for fireball damage - and I cast a lot of these. I rember puzzling a lot with the doors and cards, and some robot with a powerful force field. I remember clearly how it ended we found an elevator and pushed the up button while on the top level. We were all shot out into space - and we died of lack of air.

I tried to run it once, a few years later, but it the game fell apart before we finished PC generation.

A third time, we played at a late night pick up game, at a wisconsin Con - The DM speifically said we could use whatever we could remember. We played for laughs and didn't get very far.