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Tell Me About The Famous Dungeons of D&D

They've been mentioned already, but I'll list my personal favourites:

EXPEDITION TO THE BARRIER PEAKS: Essentially, this is a crashed spaceship. The PCs force open the doors, and start exploring - but they only have a certain amount of time before the doors close, and then they have to find a way out. There are many different floors in this "dungeon" - a submerged floor, a swampy floor that was once an animal menagerie, and some more sci-fi like floors. Many of the monsters were written for this specific adventure, and were very sci-fi in nature - the vegepygmies, for example, as well as one of the weirdest monsters ever... the Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.

The PCs could pick up various ray guns, powered armour, and gadgets, but they had to make intelligence checks and follow an "item learning" flow chart to see if they could get the thing working (or if it'd blow up in their faces). There were coloured key cards to get from place to place in the dungeon, crazed androids, and so many other cool things that this has to be one of my favourite dungeons of all time (and I'm amazed it hasn't serously been remade).

THE HIDDEN SHRINE OF TAMOACHAN: This one is actually my favourite adventure of all time. There's a lot of Aztec imagery within the adventure, and the PCs actually fight various "Gods" (a giant slug, a giant bat) that I always thought were cool. I mean, fighting a giant slug is kind of lame... unless that slug is actually a cthulu-esque God, right?

Another neat thing was that the shrine was filling up with poisonous gas, and the PCs only had a certain amount of time to escape (in the original module, it was something like two hours of REAL TIME, because the module was written for tournament play, but you can easily modify it, and were sort of expected to, for at-home play). As a by-product, many of the encounters were themed around actually AVOIDING the encounter, as opposed to "beating" it. We had a lot of fun with this, because at the time, we were very much into playing rogues and other sneaky folk.

Plus, there's a neat scene involving a mirror of opposition. I won't give it away.

THE ISLE OF DREAD: My second favourite adventure, because it really is a sandbox. You can explore the island (and the simple towns found on the Tanaroan Peninsula), and many areas of the island had different themes. There were the nomadic Rakasta riding giant cats in the savannah, dinosaur-haunted jungles, and a volcanic centre that was also the home for the aquatic kopru.

Many things in this adventure leap out at me, but I won't give it all away. But, really, it was the perfect adventure in that it gave a lot of quick details, but expected the GM to take it from there. You could really follow your group's interest and expand upon the isle for many, many levels. When I ran it in 3e, I unfortunately felt I had to stick to the path (it was an Adventure path, after all)... if I ran it again, I'd pretty much stick to the "sandbox" play - it's a lot of fun.
 

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Tomb of Horrors for sure. It's a classic. (Although there aren't "very powerful monsters living virtually side by side" in the ToH - in fact, the Tomb is notable for its almost total lack of creatures.)

You have obviously never been a player in my Tomb of Horrors. ;)
 

You have obviously never been a player in my Tomb of Horrors. ;)

Heh.:lol: How is anyone supposed to know about YOUR Tomb? It may be awesome but if its not published or shared, how is it supposed to be FAMOUS outside of your playing group.




Hint: If you have really cool modifications to the module.........SHARE PLEASE!!! :)
 

You have obviously never been a player in my Tomb of Horrors. ;)

That's what you think. I have for some time been masquerading as one of your players for reasons that I shall not reveal here. Soon my plan will reach fruition and then - oh yes, then - you shall rue the day you were so hasty in your judgment!

:p
 

The most famous, iconic dungeon in all of D&D-dom has, alas, never been (and very likely never will be) published in anything resembling the form in which it was actually played for about a dozen years in Lake Geneva, WI -- Gary Gygax's (later Gary Gygax & Rob Kuntz's) Greyhawk Castle. We do know lots of details about it, though, from numerous magazine articles and internet posts by both its creators and some of the many (hundreds, possibly thousands) of players who adventured in it both in its original run (1972-85) and more recent "retro" runs that Gary ran at conventions and in his home campaign from c. 1999 to earlier this year (according to Gail Gygax, Gary's last D&D game was an expedition into Greyhawk Castle at Winter Dark Con II in January 2008).

The original version of the dungeon, designed by Gary late in 1972, was either 9 or 13 levels deep (accounts differ -- it may have started out at 9 and expanded to 13) and at the very bottom there was a "slide to China" which 3 different players discovered separately, all within a couple days of each other (to Gary's amazement).

In mid-1974, Gary brought Rob Kuntz in as his co-DM and they greatly expanded the dungeons, merging material from Gary's original dungeon, Rob's dungeon (El Raja Key), and newly-created material. Level 1 was quadrupled in size and there were 4 different sets of levels beneath, each guarded by a different "gatekeeper" -- a group of elves, a group of dwarves, an ogre, and an unguarded (but very hard to find) gateway. Thus there were 4 different levels 2 (level 2 North, level 2 East, level 2 South, level 2 West) through 8. There was also a secret stairway on level 1 that led all the way to level 9, and the "dozen or so" levels below, which also included numerous gateways to other planes and demi-planes (including the "Alice in Wonderland"-themed Dungeonland and "King Kong"-themed Isle of the Ape (both of which were later published as stand-alone AD&D modules) as well as Jack Vance's Tschai, a Greek Mythology-themed area, and many others). This 40+ level dungeon was deliberately designed to be able to handle massive amounts of play -- different groups adventuring in the dungeons on a more-or-less daily basis.

By digging around in the old rulebooks (particularly OD&D vol. III and Supplement I), various old fanzines, Gary's "Up on a Soapbox" column in Dragon from the early 00s (and a particularly juicy article in Dragon Annual #2 from 1997), and various online warstories and Q&A with Gary, Rob, and other early campaign participants (as well as more recent vintage session-logs of people who played in the retro-version), it's possible to piece together lots of miscellaneous info about what was in the dungeon and the types of adventures people had there. The best source of collected info on Greyhawk Castle is Grodog's Greyhawk Castle Archive.

Four extracts from Greyhawk Castle have been published as stand-alone adventures:
  • Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1983): both cover a demi-plane based on a D&D-ized version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
  • Isle of the Ape by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1985): based on King Kong and Skull Island, a total meatgrinder based on pure attrition (per Gary, nobody in the original campaign ever "beat" this level)
  • The Original Living Room by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2007): a single room with lots of special features -- basically, all of the furniture is alive and will attempt to kill, or at least humiliate, anyone who enters
  • The Original Bottle City by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2008): in the dungeons of Greyhawk Castle there was a bottle containing a miniature city within it (inspired, presumably, by the Bottle City of Kandor from the Superman comics) that characters could be transported into to have adventures and try to escape

After Gary and Rob parted ways with TSR (at the end of 1985), several "official" versions of Greyhawk Castle have been published:
  • Castle Greyhawk (TSR, 1988): an anthology "joke" module by a team of freelancers -- opinion is divided whether this was an honest attempt to capture the whimsical tone of the original or a deliberate insult at the ousted former boss, but either way the module doesn't work well -- the jokes are forced and mostly not funny, and it feels more like a series of separate adventures than a cohesive whole
  • Greyhawk Ruins (TSR, 1990): TSR's attempt at a "serious" treatment of the castle, but still created more or less out of whole cloth with no more than coincidental resemblance to the original -- this dungeon is very big but, IMO, awfully bland
  • Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (WotC, 2007): updates the 1990 TSR version of the Castle, but also tries to restore more elements from the original (without stepping on the toes of Castle Zagyg)

Lastly (at least for now), Gary Gygax announced in 2004 that he was teaming up with Troll Lord Games for Castle Zagyg, which was billed as a reimagined "best of" version of the original Castle -- the 40+ levels trimmed down to 20 or so and the whole thing reworked to a more professional/traditional standard (as opposed to the minimal notes Gary and Rob used while DMing BITD). Rob Kuntz was originally tapped to co-write this project with Gary. Unfortunately, as Gary's health went south progress was slow, and a disagreement with Rob led to his leaving the project in 2006 with none of the actual dungeons having been published (the town of Yggsburgh and the prelude-module Dark Chateau were both newly created). He was eventually replaced by a guy named Jeff Talanian and work re-commenced in earnest in 2007, but Gary passed away before anything more was released. Castle Zagyg: The Upper Works by Gary and Jeff was released at GenCon 2008, consisting of 80% new material (covering the above-ground fortress and a set of surrounding caves) and 1 dungeon level, based on the original Greyhawk Castle dungeon level 1.

More sets were supposed to follow, detailing the remaining 19+ levels, but things have pretty much fallen apart -- Jeff Talanian was removed from the project, then the project was pulled from Troll Lord Games by Gygax's estate. If this project does continue to move forward, it will be in a different (and, as of now, undetermined) new format and approach.
 

Four extracts from Greyhawk Castle have been published as stand-alone adventures:
  • Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1983): both cover a demi-plane based on a D&D-ized version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass
  • Isle of the Ape by Gary Gygax (published by TSR in 1985): based on King Kong and Skull Island, a total meatgrinder based on pure attrition (per Gary, nobody in the original campaign ever "beat" this level)
  • The Original Living Room by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2007): a single room with lots of special features -- basically, all of the furniture is alive and will attempt to kill, or at least humiliate, anyone who enters
  • The Original Bottle City by Rob Kuntz (published by Pied Piper Publishing in 2008): in the dungeons of Greyhawk Castle there was a bottle containing a miniature city within it (inspired, presumably, by the Bottle City of Kandor from the Superman comics) that characters could be transported into to have adventures and try to escape
Thanks for the cool rundown. I may not be remembering correctly but wasn't WG5: Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, supposed to be connected to the Castle Greyhawk dungeon?
 

[/LIST]Thanks for the cool rundown. I may not be remembering correctly but wasn't WG5: Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure, supposed to be connected to the Castle Greyhawk dungeon?
Close, but not quite. WG5 is levels from Rob Kuntz's "El Raja Key" dungeon, before he was brought in by Gary as co-DM for Greyhawk Castle. In the official World of Greyhawk setting, El Raja Key became Maure Castle (which had 4 more detailed levels, and many more hinted at, in Dungeon issues #112, 124, and 139, and on the Pied Piper Publishing website).

Other bits of trivia: the Greater Caverns map in module S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was originally a level of El Raja Key -- Gary liked the map so he borrowed it for this module, but he completely re-keyed it.

Elements of module S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks apparently come from "The Machine Level" of Greyhawk Castle.
 

I think I can count on this group to pull through on this…

Years ago there was a module (I believe 2E, possible 1E) that involved going into the body of a giant transmuted lich that was incubating these creatures known as lichlings. What was the name of it? My youthful memories tell me it was a “good” module, however I suspect it would be silly if I read it today.
 

I think I can count on this group to pull through on this…

Years ago there was a module (I believe 2E, possible 1E) that involved going into the body of a giant transmuted lich that was incubating these creatures known as lichlings. What was the name of it? My youthful memories tell me it was a “good” module, however I suspect it would be silly if I read it today.

That's FA2 Nightmare Keep, a 2e Forgotten Realms adventure. Brutal. Nasty traps. Nasty monsters. Good stuff on the whole.
 

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