TSR/WotC Adventures - Are they REALLY any good? (Warning: Possible Spoilers)

[haakon1]

My players didn't play Ravenloft as a gothic horror story. Instead, they played as experienced hack'n slash, dungeoncrawlers. After one encounter with Strahd and realizing he was a vampire, they laid an elaborate trap for him, lured him to fight, killed him in one combat round, and then trapped his gaseous form, which they brought outside and waited for daytime.

After that, they systematically looted the castle.

It was very strange, indeed.

That's not strange, that's Old School.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

My favorite published modules were the A1-4 Slaver Lord adventures and The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan.

Probably 95% of the adventures I ran were ones I wrote myself, but when I did consider a module, there were some key points I considered:

• Can I make it fit in the game-world?
• Can I make it fit in the ongoing story?
• Does it make the players (not the characters) think? We loved challenging tactical puzzles in particular.

 

[pemerton]

My players didn't play Ravenloft as a gothic horror story. Instead, they played as experienced hack'n slash, dungeoncrawlers. After one encounter with Strahd and realizing he was a vampire, they laid an elaborate trap for him, lured him to fight, killed him in one combat round, and then trapped his gaseous form, which they brought outside and waited for daytime.

After that, they systematically looted the castle.

It was very strange, indeed.

In another recent post, I characterised Ravenloft as a "crossover" module - the trappings of a "story" module, but the play of a somewhat meatgrinder dungeon.