all-published module campaign
- Thread starter GlassJaw
- Start date
fredramsey
First Post
Lost City of Barakus, from Necromancer Games. Great jumping off point.
Jeff Wilder
First Post
I've done it, sort of ...
Maiden Voyage, Death in Freeport, Terror in Freeport, Madness in Freeport, Banewarrens (aborted in failure), and currently Black Sails Over Freeport. Assuming the PCs manage to get out of their current very dire circumstances alive -- not a safe assumption -- the PCs should be 14th to 15th level, and I'll be modifying Hell in Freeport to allow the PCs one more chance to safe the world from the banes they unleashed upon it by their failure in Ptolus.
One thing to keep in mind is that you always need to be open to the idea of doing side-treks, whether because they're called for by the overall plot or an individual PC's subplot, or because you need to give the PCs more XP and gold before they're ready for the next major adventure. I've used two or three short adventures for this purpose, drawing them from AEG's mini-adventures, or stuff on WotC's website.
One other thing ... I've found that most major adventures seem to be designed to handle hyper-optimized PCs. My group, despite being a level over what was recommended for The Banewarrens, had real trouble with the deadliness of that adventure, because they're just not optimized characters. Multi-classed arcanists and rogues, for instance. I'm finding the same problem with Black Sails, though to a lesser extent.
Maiden Voyage, Death in Freeport, Terror in Freeport, Madness in Freeport, Banewarrens (aborted in failure), and currently Black Sails Over Freeport. Assuming the PCs manage to get out of their current very dire circumstances alive -- not a safe assumption -- the PCs should be 14th to 15th level, and I'll be modifying Hell in Freeport to allow the PCs one more chance to safe the world from the banes they unleashed upon it by their failure in Ptolus.
One thing to keep in mind is that you always need to be open to the idea of doing side-treks, whether because they're called for by the overall plot or an individual PC's subplot, or because you need to give the PCs more XP and gold before they're ready for the next major adventure. I've used two or three short adventures for this purpose, drawing them from AEG's mini-adventures, or stuff on WotC's website.
One other thing ... I've found that most major adventures seem to be designed to handle hyper-optimized PCs. My group, despite being a level over what was recommended for The Banewarrens, had real trouble with the deadliness of that adventure, because they're just not optimized characters. Multi-classed arcanists and rogues, for instance. I'm finding the same problem with Black Sails, though to a lesser extent.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Used to do it all the time when I was very time pressed.
Night Below and Temple of Elemental Evil had two seperate groups who got together to go through The City Beyond the Gate (Dragon #100), and some encounters from A Hero's Tale, a Monte Cook anthology of adventurers. Worked really well.
I've also run Undermountain and its sequels including the two boxed sets and the three adventures. Worked very well.
Night Below and Temple of Elemental Evil had two seperate groups who got together to go through The City Beyond the Gate (Dragon #100), and some encounters from A Hero's Tale, a Monte Cook anthology of adventurers. Worked really well.
I've also run Undermountain and its sequels including the two boxed sets and the three adventures. Worked very well.
GlassJaw
Hero
I've looked at it and it seemed pretty cool but I'm curious as to what happened in your campaign with it.
I've played in the RttToEE and I hated it so I don't plan to unleash that on my players anytime soon.
I have the Freeport series too which I like a lot but I think I want something with a bit more "classic" feel for this group. I definitely want a good dungeon crawl early on.
My first choices right now are the Adventure Path series or the Lost City of Barakus that fredramsey mentioned. That looks pretty neat too. I suppose could go from that into the Banewarrens maybe.
If not one of those, I'll probably just throw together a collection of single modules instead of a big campaign.
fredramsey
First Post
For a bit higher level (at least 5th) dungeon crawl, it's hard to do better than Rappan Athuk from Necromancer games. Definitely has that 1st Edition feel they talk about ![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
We've been doing it for several years now, with one of the groups I DM for.
The group was going to fold if I didn't step in to DM, but as I was already writing for another campaign, I didn't have the bandwidth to write for a second campaign. So, we agreed that I'd run pre-published adventures.
The original plan was to use the Adventure Path modules, although the campaign was set in the Forgotten Realms. But, it turned out we couldn't use Forge of Fury or Speaker in Dreams, because some of the players had already played them. So, we started with Sunless Citadel, then used some modules from Dungeon (including a very cool one, the name of which escapes me, dealing with magical portals in Cormyr). We played two of WotC's published Forgotten Realms modules (Pool of Radiance, Into the Dragon's Lair), we've played a couple of old 1E modules that'd been converted to 3E (White Plume Mountain, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), we played an adventure from Necromancer Games' "Vampires and Liches."
It's been fun so far, though that's mostly due to the three great players I have in this group -- I think they'd have fun in just about anything.
The PCs are currently around 15th level; they're in the midst of the Hill Giant module. After that, we'll probably go back to the Adventure Path, with "Lord of the Iron Fortress." Once the party makes 20th level (probably in a year or so real-time; we only play about once a month), odds are we'll retire those PCs, and start over, maybe using the "Cauldron" Adventure Path mods from Dungeon.
The group was going to fold if I didn't step in to DM, but as I was already writing for another campaign, I didn't have the bandwidth to write for a second campaign. So, we agreed that I'd run pre-published adventures.
The original plan was to use the Adventure Path modules, although the campaign was set in the Forgotten Realms. But, it turned out we couldn't use Forge of Fury or Speaker in Dreams, because some of the players had already played them. So, we started with Sunless Citadel, then used some modules from Dungeon (including a very cool one, the name of which escapes me, dealing with magical portals in Cormyr). We played two of WotC's published Forgotten Realms modules (Pool of Radiance, Into the Dragon's Lair), we've played a couple of old 1E modules that'd been converted to 3E (White Plume Mountain, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief), we played an adventure from Necromancer Games' "Vampires and Liches."
It's been fun so far, though that's mostly due to the three great players I have in this group -- I think they'd have fun in just about anything.
The PCs are currently around 15th level; they're in the midst of the Hill Giant module. After that, we'll probably go back to the Adventure Path, with "Lord of the Iron Fortress." Once the party makes 20th level (probably in a year or so real-time; we only play about once a month), odds are we'll retire those PCs, and start over, maybe using the "Cauldron" Adventure Path mods from Dungeon.
Silver Moon
Adventurer
Around a decade back I ran a two-year campaign using modules from the first three year run of Dungeon Magazine. It worked rather well. My suggestion would be to have a few more modules lined up than you actually plan to use so that when circumstances change and one may no longer fit you can pivot into another one.
scadgrad
First Post
Yep, I've been doing it this way for a long, long time. It's just a huge timesaver for me as a DM now w/ wife, kids, career, etc. (not to mention my Warhammer addiction). I've probably ran in the neighborhood of a dozen or so campaigns by using primarily modules and interlinking them. You just have to plan ahead and be prepared to change a few things if necessary to accomodate your story arc.
I'm currently running Barrakus and we started it off w/ Queen w/ the Burning Eyes from Dungeon mag. I'm running a homebrew campaign so there are some minor conversions necessary, but 99% can be done on the fly.
I'm currently running Barrakus and we started it off w/ Queen w/ the Burning Eyes from Dungeon mag. I'm running a homebrew campaign so there are some minor conversions necessary, but 99% can be done on the fly.
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