Zardnaar
Legend
What 2E adventure is it?
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- Thread starter Zardnaar
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What 2E adventure is it?
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
Gates of Firestorm Peak - there are literally 100 foes in one fight. But I don't want to derail your thread, I'll start one tomorrow
Zardnaar
Legend
Gates of Firestorm Peak - there are literally 100 foes in one fight. But I don't want to derail your thread, I'll start one tomorrow
Not familiar with it. I used 40 5E Kobolds on an 8th level party.
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=618818
Here is the link. Again, in the interest of not derailing your thread you can talk about your 40 kobolds there if you prefer, I would like to hear about it.
Looking forward to B3
I used B1 for the first time a few years ago to introduce my oldest to the game, and I was seriously underwhelmed. It creates a random collection of mundane, unrelated encounters, then provides the DM with a vast, blank map and tells the DM to assign the encounters randomly on the map. It is about as uninspiring as a module can be. The only tidbits available to spark creativity are the vague history of the dungeon complex and the layout of the map, which still has bedrooms, eating chambers, etc. As an aid to teach the mechanics of creating adventures, it has its uses. Also, if you just need a dungeon layout or some throwaway filler encounters, you can use what's there. But if you're looking for anything else I think you'll be disappointed. After a couple of sessions my my son I rebooted to B2 and we were both much happier.
Speaking of B2, I wrote up a thread around here on some of the tweaks I used to make it more playable. I'll see if I can dig it up.
Edit: Found it!
Speaking of B2, I wrote up a thread around here on some of the tweaks I used to make it more playable. I'll see if I can dig it up.
Edit: Found it!
Last edited:
Koren n'Rhys
Explorer
Admittedly, the design "style" of B1 and many of these thin, early modules will seem lacking to those used to modern adventure path writing. One does need to remember that it was the first module TSR produced (I believe) so its not as if they had a tried and true template to follow. I'd say, for its time, it does a reasonable job of teaching the fledgling DM how to build and stock an old school dungeon crawl, which really was all there was to D&D at its inception (ie Gygax's Greyhawk megadungeon). They recognized that, so the advice and early sandbox of B2 quickly replaced it in the Basic box set.
Zardnaar
Legend
B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
AFAIK B3 is not being remade by Goodman Games or anyone else. It is also a module familiar to me as once upon a time a young(er) Zardnaar in 1993 had access to B2, B3, B4 and X1 and the Rules Cyclopedia the next year which had my 1st D&D campaign exploring the Caves of Chaos. Back then I had the green cover, my PDF is the yellow cover with the naughty art that was cut. WoTC gave this away for free a few years ago. So What is Palace of the Silver Princess and why should you care? Its a 36 page module mostly a dungeon hack but it is notable for several things. One is that there is a large amount of world building/backstory to the module (the hacking doesn't begin until page 10). It is also the 1st of the B series that is explicitly set in the Known World (Mystara). Being early days the nation of Glantri is located in this module on the edge of the map AFAIK however this map was not actually included in that area of the world effectively being retconned out as The Known World was developed more. IN effect it is a mini campaign setting or regional guide with a bit of backstory. The backstory has a dragon, the Princess Argenta and a Dragonrider and the domain was ravaged by dragon fire with tales of a magnificent ruby. Compared to B1 and B2 its more or less Shakespeare. IN early D&D camapign settings teneded to develop organically (Greyhawk, FR in Dragon, the Known World). This would change later with Dragonlance in 1985.
So dungeon hack. The Dungeon is supposed to be the princesses castle, with a dungeon underneath. It looks more like a typical dungeon with a second level, future castle based adventures would actually detail the area as a castle/palace etc. So cartography is not great even making allowances for the time as there were better available pre 1981. Still its a minor negative and as I said it still early days. B3 shaeres some things with B1 in terms that the dungeon is still incomplete ie the DM has to stock some sections of it. Page 10 has the controversial art in in that resulted in a recall and real copies of this module are rare with the yellow cover. Generally it follows that around 1 in 3 rooms has some sort of encounter, 1 in 3 rooms are empty and one in 3 rooms have things in them (treasure, furniture etc). The interior art will not be winning any modern art awards but it has a certain charm, this is before TSR acquired the services of Elmore, Easley, Caldwell etc (or they had recently arrived IDK). This adventure might have some rough bits for level 1 PCs but for PCs opf level 2 or 3 it doesn't look to bad although there is a save or die (+2 bonus) in here. Its a bit harder than B1, easier than B2 IMHO.
There are 13 pre made PCs, some adventure packs of equipment, and some pre rolled encounters that are not to hard- cavebears, acolytes, skeletons, kobolds that sort of thing. There are a few 3HD type monsters around which are roughly CR 1/2 or CR 1 in 5E terms. BAd things can happen but its not a killer dungeon as such and its encounters are smaller than B2's efforts.
Overall I like this module a lot and find it a bit more interesting than B1 and B2. The entire B series is fairly solid to exceptional in quality though. The 1st 4 are probably the famous ones. Overall I would give the module a 3.5/5, 3.5/5 as a teaching aid, and 4/5 as a conversion to 5E. You could almost run it as written even subbing in the monsters 1 for 1 due to its reasonably low power curve and a lack of things like Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls.. There are a few monsters in the adventure however that do not appear in 5E and you maybe be hard pressed to find equivalents so equivalents and substitutions may have to be found. So far the 1st 3 modules in the B series have been decent but the B series actually gets better with the next 2 being very good with B4 being one of the greatest D&D modules of all time IMHO.
AFAIK B3 is not being remade by Goodman Games or anyone else. It is also a module familiar to me as once upon a time a young(er) Zardnaar in 1993 had access to B2, B3, B4 and X1 and the Rules Cyclopedia the next year which had my 1st D&D campaign exploring the Caves of Chaos. Back then I had the green cover, my PDF is the yellow cover with the naughty art that was cut. WoTC gave this away for free a few years ago. So What is Palace of the Silver Princess and why should you care? Its a 36 page module mostly a dungeon hack but it is notable for several things. One is that there is a large amount of world building/backstory to the module (the hacking doesn't begin until page 10). It is also the 1st of the B series that is explicitly set in the Known World (Mystara). Being early days the nation of Glantri is located in this module on the edge of the map AFAIK however this map was not actually included in that area of the world effectively being retconned out as The Known World was developed more. IN effect it is a mini campaign setting or regional guide with a bit of backstory. The backstory has a dragon, the Princess Argenta and a Dragonrider and the domain was ravaged by dragon fire with tales of a magnificent ruby. Compared to B1 and B2 its more or less Shakespeare. IN early D&D camapign settings teneded to develop organically (Greyhawk, FR in Dragon, the Known World). This would change later with Dragonlance in 1985.
So dungeon hack. The Dungeon is supposed to be the princesses castle, with a dungeon underneath. It looks more like a typical dungeon with a second level, future castle based adventures would actually detail the area as a castle/palace etc. So cartography is not great even making allowances for the time as there were better available pre 1981. Still its a minor negative and as I said it still early days. B3 shaeres some things with B1 in terms that the dungeon is still incomplete ie the DM has to stock some sections of it. Page 10 has the controversial art in in that resulted in a recall and real copies of this module are rare with the yellow cover. Generally it follows that around 1 in 3 rooms has some sort of encounter, 1 in 3 rooms are empty and one in 3 rooms have things in them (treasure, furniture etc). The interior art will not be winning any modern art awards but it has a certain charm, this is before TSR acquired the services of Elmore, Easley, Caldwell etc (or they had recently arrived IDK). This adventure might have some rough bits for level 1 PCs but for PCs opf level 2 or 3 it doesn't look to bad although there is a save or die (+2 bonus) in here. Its a bit harder than B1, easier than B2 IMHO.
There are 13 pre made PCs, some adventure packs of equipment, and some pre rolled encounters that are not to hard- cavebears, acolytes, skeletons, kobolds that sort of thing. There are a few 3HD type monsters around which are roughly CR 1/2 or CR 1 in 5E terms. BAd things can happen but its not a killer dungeon as such and its encounters are smaller than B2's efforts.
Overall I like this module a lot and find it a bit more interesting than B1 and B2. The entire B series is fairly solid to exceptional in quality though. The 1st 4 are probably the famous ones. Overall I would give the module a 3.5/5, 3.5/5 as a teaching aid, and 4/5 as a conversion to 5E. You could almost run it as written even subbing in the monsters 1 for 1 due to its reasonably low power curve and a lack of things like Orcs, Hobgoblins and Gnolls.. There are a few monsters in the adventure however that do not appear in 5E and you maybe be hard pressed to find equivalents so equivalents and substitutions may have to be found. So far the 1st 3 modules in the B series have been decent but the B series actually gets better with the next 2 being very good with B4 being one of the greatest D&D modules of all time IMHO.
BaytAlAzif
First Post
Looking forward to Night's Dark Terror! (B10 in the US.) This was a transitioning B to X level supermodule that set up a ton of the Known World. Need to pull out my copy and see what I've forgotten about it.
I suspect the world building of the two human societies will be even more impressive to me now.
I suspect the world building of the two human societies will be even more impressive to me now.
Zardnaar
Legend
Dax Doomslayer
Adventurer
I liked B3. I ran this a bunch of times and repopulated the rooms for each time. It was a fun little romp. B10 is a fantastic adventure. It's funny, a lot of people love B4 and I honestly never got into it. It was OK and I understand it ends up on a lot of people's top 5, but I never understood the mass appeal but that's just me. Everyone has their favorites and I liked those like Baltron's Beacon and To Find a King and Bane of Llywelyn which weren't overly popular...
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