Best starting modules

[Sunderstone]

My Pics for best beginner's modules/campaign starters (not in order)...

First Off you could add as much intrigue as you want with a little creativity, the following modules have some NPCs that can be fleshed out and enhanced for later use...

1) Crucible of Freya and the downloadable Wizard's Amulet Prelude- I kicked off a campaign with this one as well. Excellent. You can visit the Necro boards to see what some DMs have done with it. Vortigern, Tavik, and even Eralion can be modified for future plots. Im even toying with having Shandril (who has all but been driven out by my players) plotting revenge against my players for revealing the circumstances leading to Eralion and Gethrame's current situations (crucible downloadable supplement).

2) NeMoren's Vault- This is an easy one to build upon, especially when played with the Quest for Amelia expansion. Another great starter module, though Im doing this one in Ravenloft™ with a little work done on fitting it into a domain politically. I will likely develop Amelia into a Darklord behind the scenes.

3) Sunless Citadel- Not too much intrigue to be had as is. More of a good basic beginning module for those new to the rules unless you plan on re-using the main villain here too.

 

[caudor]

Nobody has mentioned "The Hamlet of Thumble" yet? *Sigh*

Oh man, I should have mentioned The Hamlet of Thumble earlier. I picked it up a while back and my group had a BLAST with that adventure. It is a really fun low level romp and is well done.

(P.S. I don't work for Ed or his company; his post simply reminded me about it)

 

[Brakkart]

I'll chip in with a couple of my fave entry level modules:

Night Of The Walking Dead for Ravenloft setting, but very much designed for PC's from any world to get sucked into for a "weekend of terror". Run this one a few times now, always goes down well.

Eye Of Traldar for basic D&D. Rider fless into the PC's roadside campsite and they get draged into his struggle against the attackers pusuing him, leading to an assault on a fortress. Just ignore the rubbish "sequel" The Dymrak Dread, which was suppossed to follow on and was really a poor dungeon crawl.

 

[Ed Cha]

Quite frankly, they kind of stink.

You get what you pay for. A free adventure will rarely, if ever, match the quality of published adventure. That's why they're free.

 

[Ed Cha]

Oh man, I should have mentioned The Hamlet of Thumble earlier. I picked it up a while back and my group had a BLAST with that adventure. It is a really fun low level romp and is well done.

(P.S. I don't work for Ed or his company; his post simply reminded me about it)

I'm glad your group enjoyed it! Did they enjoy the pit trap? It's very simple, but can be surprisingly fun.

I think everyone who is a DM should own a copy of "The Hamlet of Thumble", especially since it's on sale now.

 

[delericho]

I've had success in the past with the following:

Sunless Citadel

The Shattered Circle (for 2nd Edition - don't know how tough it would be to convert)

Death in Freeport

and

Life's Bazaar (the start of the Adventure Path from Dungeon)

Dungeon #115 also included an adventure that looked interesting, "Raiders of the Black Ice", both for the adventure itself, which is more-or-less a standard rescue mission in a somewhat exotic setting, but also for the hints of intrigue surrounding "His Luminous Preponderacy, Archbaron Bestmo of Blackmoor", who I thought could make an excellent campaign villain. But note that there are just hints of intrigue here, not a world-shaking conspiracy.

Truth be told, if it's intrigue you're wanting, I haven't seen a lot of suitable low-level adventures. Of the ones I've mentioned above, Death in Freeport is definately the winner on that front, although all of them are good modules.

 

[Tuzenbach]

B1 In Search of the Unknown
B2 Keep on the Borderlands
B4 Lost City
T1 Village of Hommlet

Seconded! I need to get me some new modules..........

 

[CrusaderX]

Keep on the Borderlands will always be the quintessential D&D starting module.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

My favorite adventure for "newbie" gamers is Gordoldand's Gauntlet by Richards (come on CD-ROM with Dragon mag a couple years ago), it's got some very unique encounters, and alot of cool and fun mental puzzles. It's a great transition into roleplaying.

I like this module too. I would have to say that Jonathan Richards is one of my favourite D&D writers of all time. I loved all of his Challenge of Champions adventures, especially because they are not level dependant. A level 1 character has basically the same chance as a level 20 character (give or take a couple of skill checks). He also wrote the Ecology articles in Dragon that had the Monster Hunters Club (Association?) in it. I don't know why we haven't seen more of them. I thought that they were fantastic but maybe his writing is just my sort of style.

Maybe Mr. Richards will see this post and give us answers as to why there have been no more Monster Hunters Ecology articles and when we will see the next Challenge of Champions modules. I see him post from time to time so I know that he is around the place.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Richards]

Originally posted by Olaf the Stout:

Maybe Mr. Richards will see this post and give us answers as to why there have been no more Monster Hunters Ecology articles and when we will see the next Challenge of Champions modules.

Maybe he will.

The decision to stop publishing Monster Hunters Association "Ecology" articles was not mine. In fact, when Jesse Decker took over the reins of Dragon from Dave Gross, I got six "Ecology" articles returned to me, rejected, because the decision had been made at that point to change the format of "Ecology" articles away from the "fiction and footnote" method that had been around since the column's inception. Three of those were Monster Hunters Association ecologies (gulguthydra, grick, and death kiss), two were Shandrilla/Javorik ecologies (chuul and destrachan), and one was a standalone (grey render). Each had been through several rounds of "polishing" and had been just about ready for acceptance when the new leadership decided they were no longer desired. Bummer, huh?

I've pinged each new editor of Dragon since, seeing if they were planning on returning to the "fiction and footnote" format, but it doesn't look like that's ever going to happen. And, since the MHA appeared in Dragon, a WotC publication (at the time), it's not like I can go publish MHA ecologies anywhere else. (Plus, much of what they deal with isn't part of the SRD; kind of hard to use Ozzie, for instance, when I can't mention osquips....)

End result: It looks like the Monster Hunters Association is on the back burner, probably indefinitely. A real pity, too, as I simply loved writing about them. (I had even started working on and was halfway finished with the now-abandoned "Ecology of the Aranea" - Azurielle the nymph gets kidnapped and held for ransom, and it's the Monster Hunters to the rescue - and had come up with another one based on the idea of Willowquisp as a guest speaker at a mage fair, asked to give a presentation about umplebies, when all they really wanted was a bunch of obscure facts about a monster nobody really cared about so that two rival bards could have a "rhyming duel" - Willowquisp would mention an umpleby fact, one bard would put it to music, Willowquisp would say something else, and the other bard would have to set that to music, rhyming with the first verse. I even had most of the "umpleby lyrics" down pat. But oh well.)

As for the "Challenge of Champions" series, I haven't yet started actually writing the 6th one yet, but I know the "trick" I want to do with it, and I'll probably start cranking out individual scenarios early next year. In the meantime, my "Return to Gorgoldand's Gauntlet" submission no longer fits the format of Dungeon (it's too big, for one thing, but are you starting to see a pattern with my luck?), so I'm following James Jacobs' excellent advice and reworking it as a shorter, standalone adventure that has nothing to do with the Gauntlet. With any luck I'll have that one back to Dungeon by year's end, and then we'll see where it goes from there.

In any case, thanks for the kind words, Olaf!

Johnathan