Expedition to the Barrier Peaks - your experiences?

[Spatula]

All I really remember from this adventure is that the intellect devourer killed my high-level illusionist/thief that I had played for pretty much my entire D&D career, to that point (1e). The party turned my body to stone to preserve it until the whole thing was over so I don't think I got to play the rest of the module. Afterwards the druid reincarnated me as a bear.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've read it and think its a great module, but I've only been through it once.
We barely got out alive.

We had an ultra-high level party going through it- what would be termed "Epic" in 3.X- and nearly had a TPK. The problem wasn't the NPCs & critters, it was the party.

Generally, we tried to play smart. Resources were distributed throughout the party and nobody just went "TAB-TAB-TAB" unless it was clearly needed.

It was our first encounter with the Police Robots- at least 4 as I recall- and they looked tough, so we figured we needed a big spell to take them all down at once. Rather than having the Wizard do something, one of the other PCs- OK, White Lotus, my Ftr/Ill/Ass- used a Ring of Spell Storing to cast a high-level Delayed Blast Fireball set for max delay...

You know, so we'd have enough time to get away.

Of course, the robots were so insanely fast that they had closed to melee with us by the end of the next round, and were whaling away on us when the DBF went off.

It sure did kill all of the 'bots. It also sent several PCs into the negative and got everyone down to less than 30 HP. Since none of the ambulatory PCs was a divine caster, it was time to get out of there, heal up and regroup.

As you can imagine, each subsequent encounter on our way out was a LOT tougher than it would normally be, and by the time we exited, one half of the party was dragging unconscious bodies of the other half.

We never went back.

To this day, some 20 years later, the guy who ran the mage blames me for that mess. What he conveniently forgets is that it was he who suggested the use of DBF in the first place, and had his PC cast it, it would have had an additional 9d6 punch to it.

 

[Wik]

That story is priceless. I forgot about the police robots. Why is it that everytime someone talks about fireball in 1e, disaster follows?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Thanks!

Actually, we were pretty good about Fireball- it was Lightning Bolt that kept getting us in trouble, what with its ability to bounce and all...

You should see what happens when that spell gets cast in a wild-magic zone with all kinds of metallic targets around...in and around a lake.

(No, mountains did NOT come out of the sky
and stand there...)

 

[Mircoles]

We spent what felt like forever trying to get into the power armor and never did figure it out. The wizard killed himself trying to figure out a laser gun. We all got mauled by some security robots with great armor classes. The frogemoth we killed, but we ran in terror from the mind flayer. (We all thought mind flayers were too awesome to fight for some reason. The first time I fought a mind flayer was in a first edition conversion of Undermountain. After my lone monk took it down I couldn't believe that we'd lived in fear of them for so many years.)
Anyway, great adventure.

Well, they are kind of scary looking.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Finally(I have never played it) but I want to hear others experiences.

Wow, it is weird seeing a post by myself from six years ago.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Fun adventure, especially for a diversion. It's best if the players have never heard of it or seen it, though.

When I DM'd it in a campaign, most folks knew about it (1E days), so they'd figure the tech stuff out pretty quickly. I think this was before the term "metagaming" was invented, and there wasn't much separation of "player knowledge" from "character knowledge".

I do recall the odd laser pistol and a few grenades sticking with the party for a long time to come, to be used sparingly. I occasionally use bits from EttBP as easter eggs in later campaigns. All those odd monsters escaping into Geoff had to end up somewhere, right?

I've always thought a good sequel might be to introduce another section of the ship -- perhaps one where the crew had survived in some horrible, mutated form.

 

[Ariosto]

Not my experience, but Something Awful's:
Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Module S3 "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks"

Steve: Well the cover rules hard. Who doesn't want to pop on a bat-wing helmet and blast an evil starfish with a death ray? Everybody wants that. Little babies and congressmen would be down for that sort of action.

I'm sure I visited the ship a time or two, but the occasions just blur together with other far-out gaming.

I also played a lot of Metamorphosis Alpha, for which (IIRC) the original convention scenario was sort of a 'teaser', and its successor Gamma World.

Also Mutant Future is rad!

 

[Holy Bovine]

Not my experience, but Something Awful's:
Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Module S3 "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks"

That was really funny! I love SA's take on this old D&D stuff.