Beyond the Crystal Cave - your experiences?

[Quasqueton]

6 hours, eh? Could this be used as an "intro to D&D" kinda thing, or is it a bit too complex/complicated?

I think he meant they finished it in 6 hours game time. The garden (where the adventure takes place) is time-altered: 1 day in the garden is 2 years outside in the normal world. Finishing it in 6 hours game time means 6 months have passed in the campaign world.

Quasqueton

 

[Piratecat]

I was incredibly impressed with this module (the save-or-stay excepted); it was extremely well written. Unfortunately, the time difference is a campaign-killer. You had better be ready to alter your whole campaign world if the PCs decide to stay over the night.

 

[el-remmen]

I was incredibly impressed with this module (the save-or-stay excepted); it was extremely well written. Unfortunately, the time difference is a campaign-killer. You had better be ready to alter your whole campaign world if the PCs decide to stay over the night.

Exactly.

Unless you build your whole campaign around this conceit it will put a major wrench in everything. . .

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was incredibly impressed with this module (the save-or-stay excepted); it was extremely well written. Unfortunately, the time difference is a campaign-killer. You had better be ready to alter your whole campaign world if the PCs decide to stay over the night.

Yep.

On the other hand, this module is low enough level that things probably can't get screwed up too badly, since they're just starting.

In fact, if I were to run this again nowadays, I'd use the time-shift to CREATE problems that would drive the rest of the campaign. If the players were assumed dead because no one's seen them in 18 months, what's happened with their families, their old mentors, their family farm, etc. LOTS of potential for mischief.

EDIT: OK, by the standards of when this module came out, I considered it fairly low level. I still stand by what I say above, but I'd have to work to set things up around the module so that players wouldn't be upset by its effects, but would rather (hopefully) be excited by the changes in the plot.

Didn't "Alias" do this between seasons once?

 

[GlassJaw]

I've never run any of them but the UK series modules have some of the best maps and cartography I've seen. Was Night's Dark Terror a UK module too? I forget. That had sweet maps too, as well as poster battlemats. I have an unpunched copy too.

 

[MarkAHart]

I owned this module at one time, but it vanished at some point along the way...I never had a chance to DM it.

I did, however, have a chance to play in it for one evening. I was visiting a friend in a small rural community in Iowa, and he invited me one evening to play D&D with him and his friends. Excited, I agreed (I didn't know the DM planned to run this adventure, but I warned him ahead of time that I owned it and had read it). I rolled up a paladin in anticipation.

Trouble started soon after we arrived. Of the six people present, two were well on their way to being drunk, while another person was high on something unidentified. Our characters included a paladin (me), an assassin, a half-orc fighter, an insane wizard, and a bard (from the AD&D days of bard, which meant a high level character). Naturally, most of the party had psionics (except my character) and the odd artifact tucked away for safekeeping.

Once the adventure got under way, several players (the drunken ones) complained long and loud about any adventure with faeries, or the Romeo & Julietesque lover story. The assassin started things off by pulling out his favorite magic item -- the Apparatus of Kwalish. Our party wandered around the enchanted land, attacking everything that moved. Since our party averaged 14th level, nothing much proved a challenge (not sure what the DM was thinking...). The hack-and-slashers mowed down everything they could, trampling any attempt by the DM at a story or mood.

By the end of the evening, I promised never to play with them again, and had a marvelous headache from the drunken singing and shouting, intermixed with a DM who had no idea what he was doing...the adventure ended with Orcus making an impromptu appearance and attacking the party just to demonstrate the DM's abilities to kill PCs. Being somewhat annoyed, I pointed out to the DM that Orcus wasn't part of the original party...

Hmmm...I wonder if I subconsciously threw this adventure away shortly thereafter, never able to look at it without convulsive shudders?

 

[el-remmen]

Didn't "Alias" do this between seasons once?

There is a big difference between two years and two hundred. . .

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There is a big difference between two years and two hundred. . .

You would have to spend 100 days in the adventure to have it be a 200 year difference.

Page 5 of UK1: "For each day spent in the garden two years pass in the outside world; for each hour spent in the garden one month passes. The DM must therefore take care with his recording of time."

At worst, a party jumps four years into the future upon completing this adventure. While a DM obviously has to be prepared for this, this can be a lot of fun for a campaign. That snot-faced kid brother of the bandit chief you whacked last week? He's now 17, huge, and a 10th level assassin ...

 

[Anabstercorian]

Will these threads be archived or linked to anywhere? They seem like a good resource for a campaign I'm running.

 

[el-remmen]

You would have to spend 100 days in the adventure to have it be a 200 year difference.

Page 5 of UK1: "For each day spent in the garden two years pass in the outside world; for each hour spent in the garden one month passes. The DM must therefore take care with his recording of time."

At worst, a party jumps four years into the future upon completing this adventure. While a DM obviously has to be prepared for this, this can be a lot of fun for a campaign. That snot-faced kid brother of the bandit chief you whacked last week? He's now 17, huge, and a 10th level assassin ...

Perhaps it is just my experience that PCs tend to take a lot longer to do stuff than you originally thought. I honestly don't remember all that they have to accomplish in the adventure and it has been a few years since I read it, but I remember thinking that it was likely that dozens of years might pass before they got out of there.

Also, perhaps you can tell me since you have the module with you and I don't - do the PCs know about this time differential? Because if they don't - they could spend a lot more time in there and not know what is happening. . .