Bloodstone Pass - your experiences?

[Quasqueton]

Twenty-second thread of a series on the old classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. It is interesting to see how everyone's experiences compared and differed.

The Bloodstone Pass series that culminates with The Throne of Bloodstone

(Note the level of this adventure. Who says power gaming and munchkinism started with D&D3?)

Did you Play or DM this series of adventures (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

Quasqueton

 

[kilamanjaro]

I was the DM for the first one of these and was never able to find the rest. I updated it to 2nd Ed. and used the 2nd Ed. Battlesystem rules. It was fun having the players make allies and try to unite everyone, but the final battle was a slaughter. The characters were so much more powerful than their armies that they pretty much fought the entire army of the Grandfather with out support from their troops at all. The players did end up establishing their home base in the region and becoming involved in local politics so I got a lot of use out of the module.

 

[diaglo]

the first one in the series H1 Bloodstone Pass was available as a free download on the www.tsr.com site for a long time. then was removed when WotC realized they could make money on ESDs.

we played it as a battlesystem series. didn't actually use the modules.

but then again we were wargamers long before we were roleplayers. so we thot we would try out the new battlesystem rules.

it was a nice diversion. but not really what we would use for real warfare rules.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Played these, loved 'em, but rewrote the heck out of them (as is basically de rigeur with high-level modules anyway). As kilamanjaro hinted (and I realized basically right away), PCs of this level don't play well with armies of 1st-level mooks. So, I made sure to tangle up the PCs in serious high-level combat while running the mass combat separately. (I used the 2e Battlesystem rules, BTW; they are VERY wonky, and I imagine that were I using something like Fields of Blood or Cry Havoc!, things would've gone much more smoothly.)

The modules, though, were lots of fun. I ran 'em as an excuse to reintroduce every long-time foe of the PCs; since said PCs had done a wonderful job of ticking off the drow in my GDQ series run, I ran H1-4 as a Lolth-sponsored incursion of giants, goblinoids, bandits, and undead led by a human cleric of Lolth (a living blasphemy from the PCs' perspective!) and backed by my new and improved Witch-King, an old foe of the PCs from (the 1e) Lords of Darkness named, conveniently enough, Alokkair the Wizard-King.

For H2, I had my PCs descend to a small drow community below the Mines (instead of the duergar village scripted therein); that was a lot of fun, as I'd thoroughly scared my players of the Underdark in GDQ1-7, and this was their first encounter with the svirfneblin beyond that with the charmed one in D3; as such, they were inclined to shoot first and ask questions later, and negotiating a mutual support agreement became very tricky. (They had a great diversionary tactic for their assault on the Temple, though; underground lake + tsunami = fun!)

H3 was good, and involved a war on three fronts, all connected by permanent teleport pads (Bloodstone, home to three PCs; Daggerford, home to one; and Wheloon, Cormyr, home to the remaining two) and brought together PCs from two different campaigns (the Bloodstone PCs, who had run through H1-2, and the Cormyr/Daggerford PCs, who were semi-retired). The only disappointment was the Assassin's Run, which turned out to be a cakewalk for my (six 16th-19th level) PCs.

For H4, my PCs went to the Demonweb Pits instead of Orcus's lair. It worked out nicely; the adventure took place The campaign ended in the deaths of two PCs and one henchperson (er, cohort) and resulted in the characters stealing the Egg of Lolth (my replacement macguffin) and taking it to Arvandor to be sanctified by the combined might of the Seldarine, causing it to sprout two trees (one for planting in Daggerford, one in Bloodstone) which kept out all drow, demons, and undead forevermore. Fun stuff.

 

[mattcolville]

I played through at least the last one in the series, if not also the one before it. Since then I bought it off ebay and read through it.

Our GM basically mined it for ideas and encounters, which is good, because it's awfully suspension-of-disbelief inspiring on it's own. Being little except a series of battles and puzzles with only the thinnest membrane of story coating it.

Still, we had a load of fun.

 

[rossik]

long time since the last post...i was readin about this adventure at wikipedia, till i got to this:


Opponents

To complete the adventure players will need to defeat many opponent. Those difficult or impossible to avoid include:

* Arctigus, a huge, ancient White Dragon.
* The Witch-King Zhengyi - a Lich with 30th level magic-user ability.
* 100 Type III Demons.
* Fyrillius, the Abyssian Dragon - a Red Dragon larger than any found on the Prime Material Plane.
* Baphomet, a Demon Lord.
* Orcus, Lord of the Undead.
* Tiamat, the Chromatic Dragon.

Other major opponents characters may face include:

* Large numbers of Demons of all types, including large cities of hundreds of thousands of demons.
* a Tarrasque
* 10,000 Zombies
* 100 Liches, 12 Demiliches & 12 Death Knights
* Various Lesser Gods and Demon Princes including:
o Pazuzu, Prince of Lower Arial Kingdoms (Demon Prince)
o Charon
o Demogorgon, Prince of Demons
o Yeenoghu, Demon Prince of Gnolls
o Lolth, Demon Queen of Spiders
o Juiblex, the Faceless Lord (Demon Prince)
o Urdlen, the Crawler Below (Lesser God)
o Zuggtmoy, Demoness Lady of Fungi
o Graz'zt (Demon Prince)
o Fraz-Urb'luu, the Demon Prince of Deception
o Kostchtchie (Demon Prince)
o Kali, Goddess of Destruction
o Vaprak, demigod of Trolls and Ogres
o Laogzed, demigod of Troglodytes




it seems a little...too much


any new reviews?

 

[TerraDave]

I was wondering why Quas. hadn't done this yet.

In any case this is well timed, with Orcus's back in the spotlight (or at least on a book cover) and all.

 

[rossik]

I was wondering why Quas. hadn't done this yet.

In any case this is well timed, with Orcus's back in the spotlight (or at least on a book cover) and all.

and the "miniature"!

also, i wonder if anyone played with the 100 level pcs

 

[rossik]

no more insights?

 

[Shemeska]

no more insights?

It is the L Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth" of D&D. It's so bad that it has to have been brilliant parody, because if it wasn't intended as parody, there's something wrong with the universe.

It manages to combine the worst stereotypes of its edition into a single module. Bad puns, goofy encounters, hack & slash mentality, and yes, it has beer drinking, pot bellied solar with a texas accent. The cover of the module is perhaps the greatest bait and switch in the history of gaming. I heard about the solar and I thought it was a joke, and I didn't believe it till I read a copy of the darn thing and had an "I've seen it and now I can't unsee it" moment.

"I guess you've figgered out by now that that bad hombre you've been fightin' is Orcus himself, the meanest dude this side o' the
Pecos, St. Sollars says, taking a deep swallow from his mug. He doesn't explain what, exactly, the Pecos is. "The big boss, ol' Bahamut, don't much like Orcus, and especially don't want him messin' round this plane, you unnerstand. 'The only way to corral that there demon an' git him off'n your backs once and for all is to corral that big skull stick o' his and bring it to me at my spread out Mercuria way, over in the Seven Heavens, and I'll tell yuh how to git rid o' it.

It's almost an equivalent of the 1e joke module "Castle Greyhawk", but for the planes.

That said, for anyone who has read the 3.x Fiendish Codex I, in spite of H4's own attempts on the topic, Mona and Jacobs actually managed to salvage some of the locations in that ancient turkey into things that are actually pretty darn cool in FC:I. That's an acomplishment, and a damn fine one.