Man in the Funny Hat
Hero
I remember being quite excited at the prospect of running it when I read it. When it actually came down to doing that I was not yet as secure in my DM-fu as I should have been to run it. The more I looked at it the more I said to myself that the players would FREAK if I just started vaporizing their magic items with all kinds of "arbitrary" effects. And this, even though we were quite the group of powergamers at the time and quite familiar with watching stuff burn up in fireballs, melt in lightning bolts, and just FOOF in the occasional lich/beholder disintigrate. But this just started to feel eggregious as I got closer to it.
Finally, as I recall, I toned down those item-destroying effects quite a bit and the module came out playing much like any other module would. It was quite unmemorable to the point that it took me reading most of the above thread before I remembered that I actually DID run it once. I was thinking that I never had!
There were challenges here and there but nothing at all as epic as it should have been. I EMASCULATED it, removing the elements that were genuinely attractive about it in the first place - its unapologetic brutality. Of course at the end of it I had to thin that treasure pile by several orders of magnitude since the PC's would not be using it to replace many items nor would it sit well with anyone to see the drastic INCREASE in GPV of magic beyond replacement of an order of magnitude. It would be... Monty Haul at that point. Treasure awarded that was out of scale with the dangers faced or the pacing of the campaign.
I have always kept it though. Like the GDQ series, Tomb of Horrors, and others it is one of those modules that I will ALWAYS keep on my shelves "just in case." I actually DO want to run it again but it WILL have to be rewritten. Even being less sensitive about the attritional elements I would want to be sure that even though the PC's would have NO IDEA what they were about to get into when they started it, that they would be given continual, fair and sufficient warning of the consequences of proceeding without having to just come out and say, "If you do that I'll end up killing your characters. I swear it."
I think it's correct to say that it does need/deserve to be treated as a mini-setting rather than a single, self-contained adventure. I think that would serve its scope and intent better. It should become a somewhat static location - a fixed DC monster that players will then know the general location of and THEN choose when and how to approach it. You can't just lay this adventure at the players feet as if there's nothing different about it than any other off-the-shelf adventure. "Yep, we'll just zip this one off tonight and then next week I've got another new one I just bought that will fit in sequence perfectly [since it's designed for new 1st level characters...]"
Finally, as I recall, I toned down those item-destroying effects quite a bit and the module came out playing much like any other module would. It was quite unmemorable to the point that it took me reading most of the above thread before I remembered that I actually DID run it once. I was thinking that I never had!
There were challenges here and there but nothing at all as epic as it should have been. I EMASCULATED it, removing the elements that were genuinely attractive about it in the first place - its unapologetic brutality. Of course at the end of it I had to thin that treasure pile by several orders of magnitude since the PC's would not be using it to replace many items nor would it sit well with anyone to see the drastic INCREASE in GPV of magic beyond replacement of an order of magnitude. It would be... Monty Haul at that point. Treasure awarded that was out of scale with the dangers faced or the pacing of the campaign.
I have always kept it though. Like the GDQ series, Tomb of Horrors, and others it is one of those modules that I will ALWAYS keep on my shelves "just in case." I actually DO want to run it again but it WILL have to be rewritten. Even being less sensitive about the attritional elements I would want to be sure that even though the PC's would have NO IDEA what they were about to get into when they started it, that they would be given continual, fair and sufficient warning of the consequences of proceeding without having to just come out and say, "If you do that I'll end up killing your characters. I swear it."
I think it's correct to say that it does need/deserve to be treated as a mini-setting rather than a single, self-contained adventure. I think that would serve its scope and intent better. It should become a somewhat static location - a fixed DC monster that players will then know the general location of and THEN choose when and how to approach it. You can't just lay this adventure at the players feet as if there's nothing different about it than any other off-the-shelf adventure. "Yep, we'll just zip this one off tonight and then next week I've got another new one I just bought that will fit in sequence perfectly [since it's designed for new 1st level characters...]"
