What adventure module defines D&D to you?

[mattcolville]

There are things about D&D that I wonder why they ignore.

All the work put into Hommlet will still pay off now. The default D&D game, regardless of edition, should begin in Hommlet.

WotC really has very poor Brand awareness in spite of spending several years obsessed by it.

Anyhoo my answer is le Chateau d'Amber.

 

[Bullgrit]

There've been a few mentions of Castle Amber as the defining D&D adventure module. I'm curious about why. I always thought it was more an exception to the normal D&D adventure than something representative of the norm.

Bullgrit

 

[Bullgrit]

I always thought T1 wasted too much space on the village, and could have used more adventure. Now, granted, the title of the book is The Village of Hommlet, not The Moathouse, so it's not like the contents are a bait and switch. But for all my D&D gaming, I've never needed or used that much detail about the common inhabitants of a basic village.

Bullgrit

 

[ExploderWizard]

I always thought T1 wasted too much space on the village, and could have used more adventure. Now, granted, the title of the book is The Village of Hommlet, not The Moathouse, so it's not like the contents are a bait and switch. But for all my D&D gaming, I've never needed or used that much detail about the common inhabitants of a basic village.

Bullgrit

I don't think the space was wasted considering that T1 was written as a prelude to TOEE. The amount of detail for a village really depends on what the players want out of the game. If relationships with the villagers and repeated contact with the village will benefit the play group then the detail may come in handy. If the village just serves as a place to rest, dump loot, and aquire quests then all the detail may be meaningless.

I like the fact that it is there. Detail is easier to ignore than create consistently on the fly.

I am getting a lot of use out of all the detail included in Return to B2 that I'm using in my current campaign. All the keep inhabitants have names, and many of them have notes about thier personality and how they are connected with others. It was a great ready made community for me to begin adding my own creations to. The info already provided has served up some great adventure hooks and the relational notes serve as a general backdrop for the schemes and plans I tossed in.

Its fun for me as a DM to have a fully functioning community with all kinds of plans and operations going on that the players can get involved in if they desire. There is a bit of variety to the campaign when the PC's happen to stumble upon events taking place that are not really evil/ save the world type things. Getting involved with these schemes on one side or another has consequences that may have a major impact on more world shaking matters.

Detailed information about people and places is the seed that grows all that.

 

[grodog]

Part of what I really like about the village details in T1 is that you can clearly see a lot of back-and-forth interaction between the village and the Moathouse, as well as the village and the Temple (although in general the published ToEE version didn't really follow-up on those relationships much), and there are also hints about the wider scope of the overall Elemental Evil cult (the assassin coming to town after the PCs kill Lareth, the rumors/hints that the cult may have started in Dyvers or Wild Coast, etc.).

To me, these details are a good example of how to set up and stage your dungeons, so that PCs are drawn from their home base to the dungeon, and then from that dungeon into the wider world.

 

[Lanefan]

Re: Night's Dark Terror ***SPOILERS AHEAD***

In hindsight I think it is probably far too linear but when I ran it as a 12 year old my players took the bait every time.

What went wrong when you played it?

You mean, other than everything?

I was DMing it, and right from the start I just didn't get what the module was supposed to be about - to begin with I couldn't connect the dots between the various quasi-random occurrences in the countryside and the cult up in the mountains. Thus, of course the players couldn't connect 'em either...and that was fine, as the party was quite happy just wandering around bashing whatever got in their way; only they never bothered to capture and question *anyone* to see if there was anything more to it all. (by now, I'd made up on my own the bits I couldn't grok from the module, and had a slender thread of a story to tie it all together; enough, at least, to eventually point them up the valley and into the mountains)

The starting party was mostly 4th level, 5 characters to begin with.

And the characters kept dying. They took out a small batch of Goblins, but a single Goblin got away; it came back that night and nearly slew them all. Then, two characters (both in heavy armour) went in the water with the piranha: glub glub glub bleed bleed bleed dead. And so on; and as my rule at the time was new characters come in a level below the party average, the party level was going backward fast! I put a floor at 2nd-level...

The two survivors went back and recruited another party. They got into the valley above Thainshold and - mostly due to a complete refusal to do anything the least bit stealthy - again pretty much ran out of characters.

The two (different) survivors went back for yet another bunch of recruits (and by now, the whole party is 2nd-level except one) then away up the valley again, and this time got clobbered by the statues on the bridge. Everyone died except one character who fled down the valley and was never seen again, and two who retreated and carefully crept (!) out of the valley; at that point, both the players and myself gave up on the whole thing: they wanted a different adventure, and I was all too happy to oblige.

Lan-"never again"-efan

 

[mattcolville]

I always thought T1 wasted too much space on the village, and could have used more adventure. Now, granted, the title of the book is The Village of Hommlet, not The Moathouse, so it's not like the contents are a bait and switch. But for all my D&D gaming, I've never needed or used that much detail about the common inhabitants of a basic village.

Bullgrit

I think that classic low-level play requires an axis mundi, a town that the PCs us as a base and whose inhabitants serve not only as questgivers, but as a Greek Chorus, providing context for everything that happens in town.

In that context, I think there is no better example than T1. You can use it as the anchor for any number of different games.

 

[mattcolville]

There've been a few mentions of Castle Amber as the defining D&D adventure module. I'm curious about why. I always thought it was more an exception to the normal D&D adventure than something representative of the norm.

Bullgrit

I feel like any fantasy RPG can do a dungeon crawl. But D&D had some weird crap in it and that spirit, the kitchen sink attitude, shines through in Castle Amber. I am not a big fan of spaceships and rayguns in my D&D, but Castle Amber's high weirdness is something I particularly associate with that late 70's era off D&D.

 

[Bullgrit]

I think that classic low-level play requires an axis mundi, a town that the PCs us as a base and whose inhabitants serve not only as questgivers, but as a Greek Chorus, providing context for everything that happens in town.

I completely agree.

In that context, I think there is no better example than T1. You can use it as the anchor for any number of different games.

See below.

I don't think the space was wasted considering that T1 was written as a prelude to TOEE. The amount of detail for a village really depends on what the players want out of the game. If relationships with the villagers and repeated contact with the village will benefit the play group then the detail may come in handy.

I understand needing/wanting some information and detail about the village and villagers. But really:

6. HOUSE WITH LEATHER HIDE TACKED TO THE FRONT DOOR: This is the home and business of the village leatherworker (0 level militiaman, leather armor, shield, sling, hand axe; 4 hit points). With him live his wife, her brother (a simpleton who does not bear arms), and 3 children of whom the eldest is a 12 year old boy (0 level militiaman, leather jack, buckler, sling, dagger; 2 hit points). The leather-worker is a jack-of-all-trades, being shoe and bootmaker, cobbler, saddler, harnessmaker, and even fashioning leather garments and armor, the latter requiring some time and a number of fittings and boiling. He is not interested in any sort of adventuring. Sewn into an old horse collar are 27 g.p. and 40 e.p. as well as a silver necklace worth 400 g.p.

Bold emphasis in the original text.

17. MODEST COTTAGE: A potter is busily engaged in the manufacture of various sorts of dishes and vessels, although most of his work goes to passing merchants or the trader. He has a variety of earthenware bottles and flasks available for sale. The potter (0 level militiaman, padded armor, shield, glaive; 3 hit points), his wife, and four children (two boys are 0 level militiamen, padded armor, crossbow, spear; 4 and 2 hit points respectively) all work in the business. A crock in the well holds 27 g.p., 40 s.p., and 6 10 g.p. gems. They are of the faithful of St. Cuthbert.

Bold emphasis in the original text.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/reviews/243020-t1-village-hommlet.html
http://totalbullgrit.com/bullgeek/2007/07/30/the-village-of-hommlet/

Is the combat information necessary? Is the bold emphasis on the people's hidden valuables necessary? (The emphasis on their treasure always struck me as odd.) I think EGG did a better job with "town" NPCs in Keep on the Borderland.

Bullgrit

 

[rogueattorney]

Is the combat information necessary?

You're not thinking like the medieval wargamer that it was written by and for whom it was written. At some point (when the pcs have ticked off the bugbears in the Temple so much that they mount a punitive raid against Hommlet, for example), the pcs may want to know who's available to be levied.

While it's a low level module, implications for 1e's end game are laced throughout the module.