Best 'beer and pretzels' adventure

[Nathan P. Mahney]

My buck's night is approaching, and I have decided to run a marathon D&D session for the day after. This will be as old-school a game as possible, with as many of my old gaming buddies as I can scrape together for a fun one-off session. I'd like your opinions on what the best 'beer and pretzels' module is. I'm looking for something reasonably low-level here, with a good mix of combat, tricks, traps and roleplaying encounters. And preferably a dungeon (really really bad ecology is a bonus).

 

[delericho]

If you're looking for old-school, you could do a lot worse than "B2: Keep on the Borderlands" or the "Against the Giants" series in some form. Or even "Tomb of Horrors".

I've also heard good things about "Rappan Athuk" from Necromancer, which might be exactly what you're looking for, and is already in 3.x form.

 

[jasin]

Maure Castle comes to mind, but it's 12th-level.

 

[Ry]

The World's Shortest Adventure, Revised and Expanded for a new generation of nostalgia!
"The Orc, the Beer, and the Pretzels"

Adventure Background: An orc has pretzels.

Adventure Synopsis: The PCs kill the orc and take his pretzels, unless they do some lateral thinking.

Adventure Hook: The PCs have beer. The PCs are hungry for pretzels.

Room 1: The Orc's Pretzel Room.
You see an orc with a bowl of pretzels.

The room is 10 feet by 10 feet.

Creature: A thirsty orc.

Treasure: A bowl of pretzels.

Concluding the Adventure: Pretzels are good. Give the PCs double experience if they conclude the adventure without killing the orc.

Further Adventures: Somewhere, there is another bar. Perhaps it has wings. The orc may know where this bar is.

 

[Nathan P. Mahney]

Well, it doesn't matter to me what edition it's in - in the interests of old-school fun I'm running this as 1e.

Keep on the Borderlands is a definite possibility, but it seems a bit repetitive in terms of the types of opponents faced. I'll keep it in mind, though.

Against the Giants would be awesome, but again a bit repetitive, and I'd like something a bit lower level - some of the guys playing haven't gamed in close to a decade! Tomb of Horrors is good fun, but it's a bit light on hack.

I'll definitely give Rappan Athuk a look. I scored a copy some time back, but haven't had time to really give it a good read yet.

As for "The Orc, the Beer, and the Pretzels" this would be perfect if you could stretch it out to a ten-hour game. Perhaps the orc has 1,000,000,000,000 hit points?

 

[Ry]

I'm picturing a game where the PCs are bar-hopping in a rough and tumble city with dungeons connecting the bars. Creatures are coming up from the underground into the bar-dungeons...

 

[Pbartender]

My buck's night is approaching, and I have decided to run a marathon D&D session for the day after. This will be as old-school a game as possible, with as many of my old gaming buddies as I can scrape together for a fun one-off session. I'd like your opinions on what the best 'beer and pretzels' module is. I'm looking for something reasonably low-level here, with a good mix of combat, tricks, traps and roleplaying encounters. And preferably a dungeon (really really bad ecology is a bonus).

It's mid-level, rather than low-level, but White Plume Mountain (revised) has absolutely everything else you are looking for... Old-School style - check. Combat - check. Tricks - check. Traps - check. Roleplaying encounters - check. Dungeon - check. Really, really bad ecology - double check.

It's a D&D fun house underneath a volcano. It's perfect.

And you can download it for free.

 

[Nathan P. Mahney]

Ah, White Plume Mountain! Good call! I've got the original, so no downloads required!

 

[Pbartender]

Ah, White Plume Mountain! Good call! I've got the original, so no downloads required!

If you are planning on running it using D&D 3.0 or 3.5, I'd recommend the download. They did a pretty decent job with it, with only a few changes from the original (getting rid of the turnstile being the most notable, and the one change I changed back). I ran it at a Chicago Gameday a while back using Iron Heroes instead of D&D, and it was a lot of fun.

The other advantage is that White Plume Mountain is just about the perfect length for a single marathon session... If the players stay moderately on task, they can run through the entire module in as little as 6-8 hours or so.

But if you're planning on running it with 1st edition, then yeah... Use the original.

 

[blargney the second]

Adventure Hook: The PCs have beer. The PCs are hungry for pretzels.

Nice!
-blarg