Classic Adventures Modules -- wishes and failures

[Dannyalcatraz]

My main wish would be to run/go through S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. The one time we tried to go through it, our party made one error and wound up blowing themselves up- only one fatality, but the entire party looked like the plaything of some malevolent cat god.

That in and of itself isn't the issue. That kind of thing happens in all kinds of adventures.

The issue was that we did that pretty early on in the adventure. It was pretty embarrassing, really.

 

[Piratecat]

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was the first adventure I ever tried to run. As soon as my players realized it had robots in it, they flat-out refused to enter any further. Then, after an awkward silence, they suggested we go to the beach instead.

Not my finest moment as DM.

Interestingly, I played in this about six months ago, and it wasn't as much fun as I had hoped. No NPCs to interact with definitely dampened things a bit. But we never got down to find the froghemoth, so I still have that to look forward to!

In comparison, I've run a 2e and 3e version of G1 - Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and had a blast every single time. What a fun adventure that is.

 

[Wik]

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks was the first adventure I ever tried to run. As soon as my players realized it had robots in it, they flat-out refused to enter any further. Then, after an awkward silence, they suggested we go to the beach instead.

Not my finest moment as DM.

Interestingly, I played in this about six months ago, and it wasn't as much fun as I had hoped. No NPCs to interact with definitely dampened things a bit. But we never got down to find the froghemoth, so I still have that to look forward to!

In comparison, I've run a 2e and 3e version of G1 - Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and had a blast every single time. What a fun adventure that is.

The froghemoth scene in the module is one of the coolest 1e scenes EVER - the only possible exception I can think of offhand are the mud pit koprus in the isle of dread. But the froghemoth scene is just super creepy if you present it right.

 

[Stormonu]

Wishes: The DragonLance series. I've tried starting DL1 a couple of times, but never seem to get far.

Failures: I10 - The House on Griffon Hill, bummed me out. I ran I6 (Ravenloft) & I10 at the same time with the characters moving from Ravenloft to Mordenshire, but I was really unimpressed with the module itself. I made it work, but that was only because I threw I10 to the four winds and really added/changed a lot to make it impressive.

I also have to agree on the Demonweb Pits. That adventure was a lot more bare-boned that I thought it would be and I wasn't really impressed with it.

 

[Betote]

Wishes: I've wanted for some time now to run the GDQ series, although there's always a new shiny to distract me from that.

Failures: As for now, I've been unaware of the reported high level problems of 3.x, because all my campaigns seem to fall apart because of a TPK or real-world issues around levels 10-11. Ah, how I long to play an arch-villain...

 

[GlassJaw]

[*]The Forest Oracle -- an infamously bad one, for good reason.

HAHA!! That brings back memories. The Forest Oracle was one of the first modules my friends and I ever played. That was 20 years ago. We had no clue what we were doing that we probably didn't realize how bad it was!

 

[GlassJaw]

This is a great thread.

Wishes:
ToEE would have immediately been one of my first wishes. I have it and read it and it just oozes old-school. The comments make sense though.

I would love to run the Desert of Desolation series. I hunted it down on ebay a while back and I'm glad I did.

To go really old-school, I would love to run B10 Night's Dark Terror for D&D. I bought this when I was just getting into D&D having little idea what it was. I don't think I really appreciated it at the time but it's always been one of my favorites. The maps and cartography were amazing. I even still have the unpunched counters!

Disappointments:

Like other have mentioned, the group I was in at the time did get bored with Return ttToEE. Just too long.

And I don't think it's considered a classic but I've been rather disappointed with Red Hand of Doom. Not sure if we got too much off-track or what but it just doesn't seem to flow that well. There have been many times where our group just wasn't sure what to do next.

 

[Crothian]

And I don't think it's considered a classic but I've been rather disappointed with Red Hand of Doom. Not sure if we got too much off-track or what but it just doesn't seem to flow that well. There have been many times where our group just wasn't sure what to do next.

I liked Red Hand of Doom, but I do see your point. I basically laid out the options the modules gave to the PCs so that they knew what choices they had. Only time will tell if it becomes a classic but it did have issues.

 

[meomwt]

So, when I started DM'ing (about 1994 or thereabouts), I wrote almost all my own adventures - or else stole ideas from Dungeon or modules, rarely using them wholesale. Thus, alas, I have never run or played GDQ, Ravenloft, T1-4, etc. I want to - especially the GDQ series - but there is so much other cool stuff I want to run (Tomb of Abysthor, AoW, SCAPCastle Whiterock and some adventures of my own) that it might take a while to get to them.

 

[KidSnide]

I really enjoyed the Ravenloft adventure Feast of Goblyns. I've run it three times with fantastic results. It's easily the best 2e module I ever used. I also have very fond memories of the Lost Tomb of Martek. I'm not sure I would enjoy running it now, but it was fantastic fun at the time.

I've also been disappointed with the Temple of Elemental Evil modules (in their various guises). Homlet and the moat house can be fun but there's not enough going on in the temple itself to justify the massive number of encounters.

-KS