Best D&D Adventures

[jdrakeh]

This is true, but I recall that they also butchered some of the modules mercilessly to make it all fit in.

I think that "butchered" is a pretty strong word, as many of the modules that were reworked for In Search of Adventure started life as little more than completely random or largely unrelated encounters set in vaguely defined locations. Still, I know some people that really think there is something special about completely random and unrelated encounters set in vaguely defined locations. I'm not one of them, though

 

[catsclaw227]

Wow.... there have been so many over the years...

• 1ed A1-4 - Slaver series. Complete Awesome.
• Lost City of Barakus, Necromancer Games. Did this twice with two different groups in th 3.5 days.
• The Drow War series, Mongoos Publishing. This was a great adventure series and one of the early APs in 3.5. It had all the embarassing requisite editing gaffs MP was known for, but the story was ultra-cool. It had everything.
• Freeport Series. Green Ronin. This was the very first 3.0 adventure series I DM'd. It was the reason my friends all came back to playing D&D again.

 

[meomwt]

In no particular order:

NeMoren's Vault - cute little module which had a great MacGuffin for getting a first level group to work together, had a nice dungeon crawl with a story and could create a base of operations to work out of. Run twice, and different each time.

Tomb of Abysthor - read, but never run, sadly (one day). Great crawling, but with added intrigue between the nasties in there.

The Whispering Cairn - another read only, again, dying to run. Mr Mona takes a deadly dungeon and adds a bait-and-switch twist to it. Filge is one mean nasty.

The Grey Citadel - a great mixture of investigation, role-playing and dungeon crawling.

Return of the Eight - one of the few 2e modules I ever bought and ran. Started out as a gentle night out in Greyhawk and had my players cowering by the end.

Honourable Mentions: The Crypt of St Bethesda (played and DM'ed, it was a doozy), The Lost City of Barakus (a great city setting and a wonderful dungeon crawl), The Star Cairns (another one which had my 2e group running for cover).

 

[WereSteve]

In no particular order ...

The Lost Tomb of Kruk-Ma-Kali (Kalamar)
Rappan Athuk:Reloaded (Necromancer)
The Halls of Tizun Thane (White Dwarf)
The City of Irilian (White Dwarf)
City State of the Invincible Overlord (Judges Guild)
Dark Tower (Judges Guild)

 

[Draksila]

Ravenloft/House of Strahd - Watching my father DM this module led me into gaming. I've run it often since then, including the House of Strahd incarnation (which updated some of the statistical anomalies, I freely admit). Two groups have lived through it, one survivor of two other groups, and a good dozen found it to be lethal... but enjoyable. They often wanted to go back for more, but I avoided running it multiple times for any particular group just to keep some of the mystery.

Night of the Walking Dead - A classic opening module with a difficult but cinematic ending, stories are still told in my longest-running group about this little gem. Of course, they were fans of the entire Hyskosa cycle... but this is the module that got their interest peaked.

Curse of the Azure Bonds - More or less just a conversion of the SSI Gold Box video game, my groups still got a lot of mileage out of this adventure. Run well, it's a mini-epic all on its own. The lead-in adventure, Paths of Adventure (the module based on Pool of Radiance) was clunky and needed a good deal of work, but this one functioned really well.

Night Below - If I could still find a decent copy of this boxed set, I might be tempted to dig it back up. Maybe eBay... anyway, we never got further than book two before the group composition was shattered by real life changes, but there are some very memorable scenes from my uses of that campaign set. Hardcore negotiations with green dragons, rambling barfights, vendettas with NPCs, elaborate funerals for fallen heroes, and betrayals from within the group that led to disaster... this one ended up having a little of everything.

Return to the Tomb of Horrors - I never got a chance to run this one, but it read beautifully. Take the old grindhouse of an adventure, put a full and complex story around it, add in a city of obsessive necromancers... it just sounded like it would have been incredibly interesting. Too bad I lost my group before it came to be.

(Added a sixth) Dragon Mountain - Okay, so I liked the old boxed set adventures. This one was a bit difficult to run due to its dungeon crawl nature, but it was the first official module that exhibited the cleverness and ingenuity of kobolds as a species. After years of being noted as sly and inventive trapmakers and survivalists in monster manuals, they were finally used as more than cannon-fodder. Add to it another case of vendettas sworn against NPCs, and it went over rather well in play.

 

[MerricB]

1. Pharoah
2. Oasis of the White Palm

Yes, I know that these are part of the same series. However, they're different enough from each other, and I really don't like the final installment (Lost of Tomb of Martek) as much. Tracy Hickman had a fine appreciation of the importance of plot in D&D, and Oasis is perhaps his finest hour with it.

3. Keep on the Borderlands
4. Necropolis

I feel that these two adventures show Gary Gygax at his best. Keep isn't a "deep" module by any means, but it is probably my favourite introductory module (although Keep on the Shadowfell has much to recommend it). Necropolis is mature Gygax, and has many elements seen in his early work (such as Hommlet, Tomb of Horrors and other dungeons) but done very well indeed.

5. Dragons of Despair

Oh, this was a hard one to pick, but, ultimately, DL1 just has so many cool elements. The series went dreadfully wrong in DL2 (most railroaded beginning to an adventure ever, with about 10 encounters in a row before the PCs get a choice!), but I really like the first adventure in the Dragonlance series. Oh, and DL10.

Cheers!

 

[Beckett]

In no particular order:

1. Against the Cult of the Reptile God; first adventure I purchased.
2. Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh; I've run this in 1E, 2E, and 3E and am thinking about converting it to 4E
3. Dragon Crown- Epic Darksun adventure to find out what is going wrong with psionics.
4. Lost Cavern of Tsojcanth; some great memories from this one.
5. Against the Giants; my on the fly 3E conversion sputtered out for various reasons, but I did manage a full run of a 1E/2E blend that still has some stories told (like the "lone" elven commando who had the whole tribe of frost giants running scared)

 

[Lanefan]

First off, nice to see all the 1e love here!

Now for me, counting only those I've either run, or played through, or both (and in no particular order):

* Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
* Castle Amber
* Pharoah
* Against the Giants G-1-2-3
* Sword of Hope (judges' guild), for the sheer insanity factor!

Honourable mention: Keep On the Borderlands, Forge of Fury, Secret of Bone Hill, For Duty and Deity, Quest for the Heartstone, Tomb of the Lizard King

I've a sneaking suspicion that Keep On the Shadowfell might wind up on this list; I haven't run/played it yet, but it has loads of potential.

So many people putting Night's Dark Terror on their lists tells me I perhaps ought to pull it out again someday and give it another look over; until then, I just can't understand the love for it. I spent half a year once DMing that module and developed a healthy loathing for it that has never gone away...

Lanefan

 

[Dm_from_Brazil]

Well, in Dungeon #116 (November, 2004) appeared the famous "30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time" - voted by the fans, IF I´m correct:

The Top 5
1) Queen of the Spiders, 1986 (G1-3, D1-3, Q1)
2) Ravenloft, 1983 (I6)
3) Tomb of Horrors, 1978 (S1)
4) The Temple of Elemental Evil, 1985 (T1-4)
5) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, 1980 (S3)

Obviously, it only goes up to 2004 -so, no "Red Hand of Doom" here - by the by, the only 3rd edition adventures in the list were:
8) Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, 2001
12) The Forge of Fury, 2000
24) City of the Spider Queen

...And the only "non-TSR/WotC" was
21) Dark Tower, 1980 (from Judge´s Guild)

The 30th was:
30) The Ghost Tower of Inverness, 1980 (C2)

And some tidbits:
7) The Keep on the Borderlands, 1979 (B2)
9) White Plume Mountain, 1979 (S2)
15) Castle Amber, 1981 (X2)
17) Ruins of Undermountain, 1991 - the FR mega-adventure
20) Scourge of the Slave Lords, 1986 (A 1-4)
22) The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, 1982 (S4)
25) Dragons of Despair, 1984 (DL1) - the first of the Dragonlance adventures


It´s interesting to notice that, in 1st edition, D&D was defined by its´s ADVENTURES, in 2nd and 3rd editions, by it´s SETTINGS, and, up to this point, 4th edition has been defined by it´s RULES.

DM from Brazil / Daniel Lira de Oliveira

 

[PeelSeel2]

Keep on the Borderlands
Temple of Elemental Evil
Horror on the Hill

Those are the only ones that stick out in my head.