What are the greatest published adventures you've run?

[MerricB]

I've recently posted a couple of reviews on two D&D adventures that I consider to be amongst the handful of truly great adventures I've run: Demon Queen's Enclave and Gary Gygax's Necropolis. Someone asked me what adventures I consider great, and it made me realise how few adventures there are that I consider that good and that I've run.

I mean, I think both Hall of the Fire Giant King and Vault of the Drow are potentially great adventures, but I haven't run either of them. I don't really know if they are or not. Some adventures read well but play badly, others don't impress me that much in the reading, but turn out to be exceptional when played.

My very favourite adventures of all time are Pharaoh and Oasis of the White Palm. The first engaged me from when I first read it, and played really well when I ran it a few years ago. The latter didn't read that well, but was brilliant in play - perhaps even better than Pharaoh. My third-favourite is the aforementioned Necropolis. That all three are Egyptian-themed is probably coincidental.

The other adventures I've run and that I really, really, really like are Keep on the Borderlands, The Prince of Redhand, Dragons of Despair and Demon Queen's Enclave.

A few other potential greats I haven't run include Ravenloft and The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. I'm currently trying to decide if Death's Reach is a great adventure - we're most of the way through it and I'm leaning in that direction. The 4E Tomb of Horrors (co-written by Mouseferatu) might also qualify once I finish running it.

Not on the list is Red Hand of Doom which I have run but I don't really like that much. It's a good adventure, but it doesn't enthuse me enough to call it "great".

So... what are your lists of truly great adventures you've run? (Or played in, if you're a player...) And which potentially great adventures do you want to run?

Cheers!

 

[crazy_monkey1956]

I've had fun with The Sunless Citadel every time I've run it and I've run it many times for different groups.

Heart of Nightfang Spire was another fun adventure from that era (with a nifty potential story connection to Sunless if you run them both with the same group).

 

[Herremann the Wise]

For me, my favourite is still Whispering Cairn by Erik Mona. It was a real joy to run, and so much fun for the players. This is a real highlight for our group in terms of published play.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[billd91]

I6 - Ravenloft ranks as one of the best. I've run it 3 separate times in 3 separate editions of D&D. Played awesome every time.

A series. A very simply premise, relatively simple modules focused around humanoid opponents. It's straightforwardness really lends itself to being a pleasure to run. The players find the enemies, slavers after all, satisfying to trash, smash, and bash at every turn.

Return to the Keep on the Borderlands - one of the best adaptations of a classic modules I've got and been able to run, particularly for a mix of players who knew the original intimately and newer players who had never played it.

From the Deeps of Space - Not necessarily the best written module, but coupled with Villains and Vigilantes idea of playing yourself with super powers it played like gangbusters. I set the module's alien invasion in our hometown area - putting together a map from the county plat book. It was fun to pull in other local people as NPCs and locations we knew so well.

 

[Lancelot]

Going by version...

BECMI D&D

• B4 Lost City: The stuff of which campaigns are made. I like the fact that it starts out very basic (lost in the desert, some random encounters in a half-buried ziggurat) and sort of spirals from there. You meet one or more rival factions and choose whether to ally or fight with some/all of them. They can give you quests which motivate you to explore further. You encounter another (enemy) faction. You get a quest to slay a big bad. Each dungeon level is bigger and more complex than the last, leading to an entire underground civilization. And it all culminates with a massively powerful enemy that has been foreshadowed for a long time, but probably took you 8-9 levels of adventuring (many, many sessions) to reach. Not bad in 30 pages.
• X1 Isle of Dread: Everyone should know this, but it just plays so remarkably well. It's the classic sandbox. Really thematic island, point-of-light design ("safe" villages cowering in the south-east; everything else can be deadly). What's your purpose for being there? That's up to you. There are some locations and enemies which could serve as a climax, but it's not like most other modules where there is a clearly defined purpose. I've had parties just go hog-crazy on the island: build their own villages, hunt dinosaurs, try to build alliances between phanatons and rakastas... it's all so unexpected.

1e AD&D

• G1-3 Against the Giants: I love a lot of the old AD&D modules, but my best DM'ing experiences have usually been in the G series. I think it's because of the "comfortable / suprise!" dichotomy of the modules. Let me explain... Giants are a very predictable opponent. They don't have weird psionic powers or complex plans or wings or anything else that can mess with PC abilities. They're simply big, and tough, and they hit like an 18-wheeler truck. The players know this, and get the chance to unleash all of their best plans and abilities against them. It's "comfortable" fighting them. The players enjoy themselves. And then suddenly... wham! Something weird pops up in the module. It's a half-buried forgotten Cthulhu-esque temple. It's a concealed dragon. It's a ring of wishes. It's a manticore trap. It's a wall of tentacles. It's a ginormous and heavily trapped treasure hoard. The players get comfortable with the 80% which is predictable and themed, but there are enough surprises in the 20% to keep them from getting bored (...and also motivates them to search every nook and cranny).
• N2 The Forest Oracle: Yeah, bite me. I know the module's reputation. But Merric asked for great DM'ing experiences, so I'm going to drop this one on you. I ran this for an all-girl group. Teen girls. And they loved it. Heart-broken nymphs, dryads, a wicked ogre holding a pegasus captive, gypsies, goblins, a crazy dwarf and buck-toothed giant rats. I'm sure there are some gamer grrls reading this and gagging, but the non-gamer girls who played this had a blast. And they thought the pegasus was adorable. DM'ed well, this can be a great introductory adventure for a group that is more interested in saving the trees (and winged horses) than killing-and-looting.
• I6 Ravenloft. No explanation necessary. Better people than me have written massive text as to why this is a great player and DM experience. I've run it more than six times, in three separate editions.
• WG4 Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. I've had many good experiences DM'ing this, but oddly my best was using the 4e rules. There are three particularly interesting/novel things about the module. The first "encounter" is unlike nearly any other in the history of D&D. You walk into a room, and fight the monsters - and then reinforcements arrive. And keep arriving. And keep arriving. By the time the fight is done, the players have either been forced to retreat, or they've killed an army. In room 1. It's an amazing scene of ever-increasing tension, and tailor-made for 4e's minion rules (with occasional standard creatures to stiffen the spine of the assault against Controllers). Especially if you only allow PCs to spend a single surge and regain 1 encounter power each between "waves", rather than taking a short rest. The second cool thing is the general oddness of the creatures in the Undertemple. Fiend Folio, ahoy! There are some great, strange beasts here which can utterly confound player expectations. And the third cool thing is the... climax. It plays against all expectations. It is also a great chance to rock out some skill challenges to... avoid touching things, or taking certain actions... that might get your PC disintegrated, or worse.

2e AD&D

• Fires of Dis (Planescape): I love most of the Planescape modules, but oddly enough they usually read better than they play. Maybe it's because the DM reader gets all the back-story and intricacies, and the players only get part of it. Fires of Dis, however, is "complexity" light. It still has a lot of great Planescape flavor, but it's more of a classic adventure. Your party goes to Hell, you meet Dispater, you foil the plans of mighty pit fiends. At 7th-8th level. A module that shows how to have epic themes, without requiring epic levels.
• Return to the Tomb of Horrors: This one gets the nod over Night Below (which I also liked) for boxed sets. And it leaves Dragon Mountain (poor) and Rod of Seven Parts (mediocre) in the dust. This box set terrified my players more than any Ravenloft module. It was a combination of grisly scenes and themes (seriously - there is some really dark stuff in here), claustrophobic atmosphere, lethal encounters, and terrifying monsters. Unlike the original S1 Tomb of Horrors, it's not just a meat-grinder "pick unlucky and die" crawl. I'm in the camp that S1 is frequently more about luck, and having access to powerful magic in your party, rather than player intelligence. So Return to the Tomb of Horrors was refreshing to me. There are fewer save-or-die situations, more situations that reward good play or intelligence, and some brilliant set-pieces. The highest compliment I can offer is that my players had a 90%+ attrition rate on characters in the campaign, and still loved it.

3e D&D

• Red Hand of Doom: I hear you, Merric - didn't work for you. Fair call. Our group, however, had a blast. They also had a 300% attrition rate. That's right - they TPK'ed three times throughout the module. And still kept playing! That's how much they enjoyed it. We normally just start a new campaign after a TPK, but they wanted to keep going - twice! It was something about the plight of saving small villages from this unstoppable horde... coupled with the fact that I foreshadowed the enemy leaders from an early stage ("We got the white and black guys! Let's go for the green guy!")... coupled with some fantastic set-piece bad guys. Demonic behirs, druidic liches... these were things they'd never seen before.
• Age of Worms: There were clearly some weak points in the series, but this is the best adventure path we've ever played. Also, the only adventure path we've played start-to-finish (1st to 23rd level). Highlights for the party were the gladiatorial module, Prince of Redhand (the few-fights / all-interaction module), the giants vs dragons module, and the climax.

4e D&D

• I've had some tremendous DM'ing experiences with 4e... but I haven't DM'ed a single published 4e module. I write my own, or have been re-jigging classic 1e/2e modules for 4e rules. That's something I simply couldn't do (easily) in 3e, which is one of the reasons I appreciate 4e so much as a DM. It has allowed me to revisit some of the classics that I haven't DM'ed in 20 years with people who may never have played the originals.

 

[Zil]

The stand-out published adventures that I've run to the enjoyment of my players would have been the AD&D "Against the Giants" series and adventures from Planescape : The Eternal Boundary, and Harbinger House in 2E times. Although there have been more great adventures that I've run (1E. 2E, 3.x, Pathfinder), those three would have been the high points for me I think.

I altered G1-3 a small bit to make up for the Unearthed Arcana power-up so the Giants adventures may have been a bit tougher than the original, but the players still had a blast. That trilogy of modules was the first higher level D&D game I had ever run and it ended up marking the point at which I transitioned from being primarily a player to primarily a DM/GM.

Planescape is probably my favorite setting, so it's no surprise that two of my my favorite adventures are from that setting. Some honorable Planescape mentions are "Something Wild", the first two sections from "Door to the Unknown" and several adventures from the first Planescape adventure anthology. There are many more Planescape adventures that read great, but I never ran them so I can't say for sure how the would have stacked up.

Other honorable mentions include many Paizo adventures including a few Dungeon adventures plus several from the Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure paths.

I also quite enjoyed running the Red Hand of Doom that others have mentioned, but we never finished that one as several players ended up moving so I'm not sure how it would have played through to the end.

 

[Smoss]

While I don't run prepackaged modules myself, I have been a player in some.

I still have a fondness for my first ever adventure which was a module from the old magazines...

It was called "Jacob's Well". A beautiful little murder mystery solo adventure.

Heck, the intro module I made for my RPG is based on that module in spirit.
Smoss

 

[bulya]

Fury of the Deep for Dragon Warriors.

Also Box of Old Bones for the same game.

 

[Mark CMG]

Red Hand of Doom was much fun and the Kobold King trilogy from Paizo, too.

 

[Gilladian]

Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

Best module ever. Everyone realizes the thief is a bad guy, but they almost always still take him along...

Haunted houses, pirates, and backstabbing! Who could want more!?

I've run that adventure probably six different times and had a blast every time.