D&D General Dungeon Magazine's Top 30 Adventures: Do they hold up?

[Lanefan]

U1 is good (but U2 is ... troublesome), it's a pretty good introductory adventure. Just ... take Ned out of the adventure and it's much better.

Huh? Ned's the best part, and very much suits the spying/scheming/can't-trust-anyone tone of the whole adventure.

I really liked I3 Pharaoh, it's a very interesting take on a dungeon crawl, but I3-I5 Desert of Desolation tries too hard as a railroad and doesn't deliver.

I3 is excellent. I've never run (or played, for that matter) either of !4 or I5 so can't comment there.

 

[el-remmen]

I think I am the only person who has come to love U2 - Danger at Dunwater. I have run it twice in the last couple years with different groups and both times it was a nice change and a lot of fun.

That said, the first two times I ran it (30 years ago or more) it went horribly and I thought I hated it - luckily I decided to give it another chance as a more mature DM with players who are not interested in only killing things and taking their stuff. The lizardfolk that feature in it are now an important ally to the PCs.

 

[Riley]

Yeah, U2 went really badly when we played it as 13-year-olds. We never made it to U3.

U1 was great when I played it, then ran it.

I did not try to run U2 or U3. I’m still not sure how I’d ever use them successfully.

 

[Shiroiken]

such as Matt Colville calling the Temple of Elemental Evil "un-runnable,"

Colville's wrong. It's not good for his style, but that doesn't make it unrunnable. I've run it numerous times, and it was the introduction of my first 5E campaign. Some of these may go against modern sensibilities, but that doesn't change that they are good for what they are. Most objections seem to be aimed at 1E adventures, since most have either forgotten or ignore the fact that 1E was meant to be a strategic game, even having tournaments to test players skills. Adventures like Tomb of Horrors, Temple of Elemental Evil, Keep on the Borderlands, etc, are very light on story, since that's not what most players cared about at the time. They were meant to be dungeon crawls that challenged the players, with the DM adding whatever story they felt was necessary.

GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders
I6 Ravenloft
S1 Tomb of Horrors
T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil
S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks SONY DSC
I3-5 Desert of Desolation
B2 The Keep on the Borderlands
S2 White Plume Mountain
I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City
X2 Castle Amber (Chateau d’Amberville)
X1 The Isle of Dread
The Ruins of UndermountainSONY DSC
C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God
A1-4 Scourge of the Slavelords
S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
WG4 The Forgotten Temple of TharizdunSONY DSC
WGR6 The City of Skulls
U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh
B4 The Lost City
C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness

I have either ran or played all of these. Some were better than others, as I rate Ghost Tower higher and Slave Lords lower, but feel that all deserve to be on the list.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
Return to the Tomb of HorrorsSONY DSC
Gates of Firestorm Peak
The Forge of Fury
Dead Gods
Dark Tower
City of the Spider Queen
DL1 Dragons of Despair
L2 The Assassin’s Knot

I've not run or played these, and honestly some I've not even heard of. I've had intentions of running Return to the Tomb of Horror, The Forge of Fury, and The Assassins Knot, but never had a good opportunity. Either the setting was wrong, the campaign setup was bad for it, or the group just wouldn't like it (particularly Return to the Tomb of Horrors).

 

[Zardnaar]

The content of that list was pretty predictable - it was always going to be made up of those adventures that most, if not all, of the judging panel had fond memories of. Given the experience of that panel, that meant old TSR adventures were going to dominate.

Even a few years ago, a similar panel would have come up with much the same list - almost nothing from the 2nd Ed era, 3e, 4e, a third-party publisher, or Dungeon magazine had the widespread exposure to make it. The only likely exceptions being "The Sunless Citadel" and/or "Forge of Fury", "Red Hand of Doom", and the three Dungeon Adventure Paths.

5e has skewed things significantly, since for the first time in decades it has adventures that are selling spectacularly well. However, most of those adventures are either poor, or are remakes of, or at least homages to, the classics. "Lost Mine of Phandelver" should probably be on the list, but other than that...

("Curse of Strahd" is the other candidate from 5e, but it's unlikely to dislodge "I6 Ravenloft", and the list is highly unlikely to feature both.)

Problem is there's not much good from 2E adventures except Night Below, remakes of 1E adventures and Dungeon magazines.

3E is in a similar boat.

4E has one potential candidate.

5E has 2-3 contenders most of the adventures are average. Third party and DMguild have some but not known about.

Even with the APs in Dungeon only a few parts were good the APs break later on.

There's a few Pathfinder ones I would consider as well.

 

[el-remmen]

I did not try to run U2 or U3. I’m still not sure how I’d ever use them successfully.

I run U2 as a diplomatic mission with my own spin on the idea of a skill challenge once (and if) the PCs become the guests of the lizardfolk. I basically run with the premise that the lizardfolk queen in order to help her decide if the humans of Saltmarsh the PCs represent should be brought into the alliance allows them free reign of the lair to meet her people and have them meet the PCs and get a sense of what they are like and if they can be good guests. The idea being, adventurers might behave for royalty, but the common people will report back what they are really like. At the same time, the orthodox lizardfolk priest is against interaction with any outsiders, which causes ongoing tension and possibilities for violence.

Spoiler: Possible Spoilers

In the final act, I have the Queen ask the PCs to hunt down 1000 Teeth the Legendary Croc. Many in the community see it as a potential avatar of Semuanya, and refuse to deal with it - having led to several deaths of her people.
The priest, of course, sees these deaths as a sign that Semuanya is unhappy with them for building an alliance with outsiders, so he and his loyalists ambush the PCs in the croc's territory causing an awesome fight where the croc indiscriminately attacks both sides. The idea being, that if he can defeat the PCs, he will have the "proof" the queen was wrong, depose her and institute an isolationist theocracy (and inadvertently helping the sahuagin)

I have not run U3 since the mid-90s - but I am super psyched to run it again - I just had to run several other adventures between U2 and U3 to build the plot and give the PCs some experience.

 

[JEB]

The most well-regarded 4E adventures to my knowledge are Reavers of Harkenwold (an Asmodeus-worshiping mercenary company called the Iron Circle attacks a barony), Madness at Gardmore Abbey (a paladin's stronghold was thrown into chaos by the Deck of Many Things, which has left lingering effects; the cards of the deck must be collected to reassemble it), and Some Assembly Required (kobolds construct a mechanical body for a dragon's brain to inhabit).

Yeah, Reavers of Harkenwold is pretty good, and also a good example of the potential of 4E play. Definitely a contender.

I haven't read Madness, but I've heard good things (and your synopsis intrigues me).

Curse of Strahd seems to be the darling of 5E so far.

True, but as mentioned upthread, that's basically I6 Ravenloft, again.

 

[Retreater]

True, but as mentioned upthread, that's basically I6 Ravenloft, again.

Really, only the Castle, right? There's over 200 pages of content that wasn't in I6 - which is a sizable chunk of content. You have the competing factions in Vallaki, the Winery, the Amber Temple, and a lot of other stuff. That's like saying the entirety of Tales of the Yawning Portal is a clone of Tomb of Horrors because of the one chapter.
In my opinion that's like asking "why play Breath of the Wild when you've played The Legend of Zelda on the NES?"

 

[JEB]

Really, only the Castle, right? There's over 200 pages of content that wasn't in I6 - which is a sizable chunk of content. You have the competing factions in Vallaki, the Winery, the Amber Temple, and a lot of other stuff. That's like saying the entirety of Tales of the Yawning Portal is a clone of Tomb of Horrors because of the one chapter.
In my opinion that's like asking "why play Breath of the Wild when you've played The Legend of Zelda on the NES?"

I meant that for the purposes of a Top 30 list, including both would feel like double-dipping. (Which they came close to doing already in the original list with the two Return adventures.) Though I suppose you could have both tied for the same rank?

 

[Parmandur]

Well, since Curse of Strahd contains I6 in it's entirety (Chapter 3 or 4, I think), I say Curse of Strahd bumps off I6. Apparently Hickman started using Curse of Strahd instead of I6 for his own Halloween games.