D&D General grodog's Top 10 Favorite Greyhawk Adventures

For your consideration: grodog's Top 10 Favorite Greyhawk Adventures

The list, sans commentary (which I have on the blog page):

1. D3 Vault of the Drow by Gary Gygax
2. WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure by Rob Kuntz
3. MoZ4 The Eight Kings by Rob Kuntz
4. T1 The Village of Hommlet by Gary Gygax
5. L1 The Secret of Bone Hill by Lenard Lakofka
6. G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King by Gary Gygax
7. A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity by David Cook
8. "Chambers of Antiquities" by Rob Kuntz and Paizo in Dungeon Magazine #124
9. "COR1-03 River of Blood" by Erik Mona, a Living Greyhawk scenario
10. Return of the Eight by Roger Moore

Enjoy!

Allan.

Mine are probably T1 and various Paizo ones from the APs in Dungeon.

The older adventures haven't aged well. Run some older ones recently. Ymmv of course.

Saltmarsh count as Greyhawk?

Zardnaar said:

Mine are probably T1 and various Paizo ones from the APs in Dungeon.

The older adventures haven't aged well. Run some older ones recently. Ymmv of course.

Saltmarsh count as Greyhawk?

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Supposed to be south of Keoland.

Zardnaar said:

Mine are probably T1 and various Paizo ones from the APs in Dungeon.

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Makes sense! I try to pull apart the big APs and series groupings to look at individual scenarios vs. just listing GDQ1-7 or the Age of Worms AP as a whole, for example.

Zardnaar said:

The older adventures haven't aged well. Run some older ones recently. Ymmv of course.

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Happy to hear some more thoughts on that front. Some scenarios have more nostalgia attached to them IME than good design, but many older ones still hold their own for me.

It was a fun exercise to reponder my rankings again, and to really put some thought into it vs. just going with my usual lists.

Zardnaar said:

Saltmarsh count as Greyhawk?

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Definitely!---U2 and U3 even built out the old Darlene map hexes in deeper drill-down detail:



From The Tower of Zenopus in Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Allan.

grodog said:

Makes sense! I try to pull apart the big APs and series groupings to look at individual scenarios vs. just listing GDQ1-7 or the Age of Worms AP as a whole, for example.



Happy to hear some more thoughts on that front. Some scenarios have more nostalgia attached to them IME than good design, but many older ones still hold their own for me.

It was a fun exercise to reponder my rankings again, and to really put some thought into it vs. just going with my usual lists.



Definitely!---U2 and U3 even built out the old Darlene map hexes in deeper drill-down detail:

From The Tower of Zenopus in Ghosts of Saltmarsh

Allan.

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Well my favorite of all time is There is N Honor. Savage Tide pt 1.

I don't have nostalgia for 80s stuff. I started in thec90s. I ca look at them and see how they would be fun in 1985 vs 1995 or whatever at least.

I'd probably put Village of Hommlett at number 1. To me, that's the platonic ideal of an AD&D adventure in Greyhawk. I'm surprised to see Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure rated so highly. To me it's got too many gotcha tricks and traps for my tastes.

Zardnaar said:

Well my favorite of all time is There is N Honor. Savage Tide pt 1.

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I enjoyed AoW and ST a lot, but never got the chance to play them. I'd love to DM AoW one day, and there are parts of ST that I've liked a lot too (although I've never particularly adopted the idea that Demogorgon's heads are two different minds/personalities, which necessitates quite a bit of rework in ST).

Zardnaar said:

I don't have nostalgia for 80s stuff. I started in thec90s. I ca look at them and see how they would be fun in 1985 vs 1995 or whatever at least.

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I tried to look hard at the adventures as individual modules (vs. as adventure-sourcebooks like S4, or as part of a series or AP like AoW), and also really tried to check on my nostalgia for a scenario. That's why B1 and S1 didn't even make the lists at all and why S4 and WG4 dropped down to Honorable Mentions, as much as I think they're excellent Greyhawk scenarios.

Ralif Redhammer said:

I'd probably put Village of Hommlett at number 1. To me, that's the platonic ideal of an AD&D adventure in Greyhawk.

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Hommlet is pretty great, I agree, and it does convey so much about how Greyhawk works---the wheels within wheels of machinations and onioned-layers of evil at work!

Ralif Redhammer said:

I'm surprised to see Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure rated so highly. To me it's got too many gotcha tricks and traps for my tastes.

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I like WG5 for its many set-piece encounters and it's lore additions that are germane to the adventure, in addition to its many cool new monsters and magic items, and its inspirational expandability (making me want to build onto it further).

Some of the traps and tricks are of the "read my mind" variety, but it's also for 9th-12th level PCs, so they've got plenty of ways to detect and avoid such things (in theory ).

Allan.

I would certainly include Tomb, FT of Tharizdun, and Tsojcanth, maybe Barrier Peaks. Probably at the expense of the non EGG ones.

As for your top one, it always seemed like it would be a challenge to run, but I assume you have done so?

Never quite got the great praise for Hommlet. There isn't really an adventure in the town, and the link to the Moathouse is only mentioned once. IMO.

Don't ever recall playing/running D3 so will check out it's number oneness.

Great list; thanks for sharing.
Personally, I rank Tharizdun, Tsojcanth, ToH and Dwellers in the Forbidden City close to the top. I'm also a big fan of Steading of the Hill Giant Chief.