I rarely buy modules. Usually, I'll buy a third party module if I decide that I liked the publisher's style in some other book, and the hook sounds interesting / unique / old school enough. I bought a Necromancer module after liking Relics and Rituals, because they were offering that old-school feel, and to be honest I didn't know which "school" I was with my own adventures, so I wanted to check it out and see. I had disposable income, then.
But for the most part, I've feel like I've already bought the cow with the core rulebooks and supplements, and I can milk it myself. If someone is asking me to buy the dairy product when I've got the cow, it would have to be very good... like Ben & Jerry's Magic Brownies good.
Most Wizards adventures don't do that for me. They've got to have general, mass market appeal and I'm looking for something with a really good, distinctive flavor if I'm going to spend additional money on it. I can usually get the gist by reading what it's about if there's something vaguely different about it. They can't make these things too unique because they've got to get the general audience to buy it.
If they took a chance on putting out a Magic Brownies or even a Chunky Monkey, I might consider it. But most of their stuff, while not necessarily vanilla, is at least just Butter Pecan. Sure, they might throw in a swirl or something - some hook or encounter that is unique and interesting - but they've still got to follow a certain formula so that it's still Butter Pecan. I can make my own. Third party publishers are more likely to take a chance on doing something really different throughout an entire module, so that's where I'd tend to look first.
My problem with Thunderspire is that the hook that makes it a little bit different (there's a city built onto the top level of your standard dungeon) also makes it a little hard to swallow to me. Why would these wizards allow adventurers to go down into the dungeon, even at their own risk, if they've built up their entire economy on trade with the denizens of the dungeon? You'd think they'd keep people out so that their customers and suppliers don't wind up eventually getting killed by sufficiently skilled or armed glory seekers. Unless it's a scam. So perhaps that's the 'twist', that the wizards (who are already in league with the dungeon dwellers as trading partners, so it shouldn't be a stretch by anyone's imagination) go down and wipe out the adventurers at the end, sell their gear off (the trade with the dungeon dwellers is actually made off the bodies of the dead adventurers) and then they repopulate the dungeon. So, in a metagame sense, it's either an ill-conceived setup or a trap. In-game, the characters should be thinking, "Heeeey, why are they letting us walk down here into the homes of their trading partners with all these weapons, when there's a chance we might win? Something's not right here." And in that case, why not skip it and just go to the next village, where there's a dungeon where there isn't a trading post on top, with wizards that are dependent on the survival of the dungeon's inhabitants. It seems a little too much like, "Hey, there's a trap! I think I'll walk into it!"
, I sure for good reasons - though I'd be very interested in hearing them.
