broghammerj said:
This is horrible news. I played in a lot of the B series modules when I was around 10-12 with my older cousin. I picked up B1-9 for a little nostalgia. Now I'm 30 and my memories are a bit clouded. I guess there was enough recognition for me to think I got the whole thing!
You get most of it. Off the top of my head:
B1: Map only, and a mention of Zelligar and Rogahn. Basically the whole fill it in adventure and background are absent.
B2: You get the entirety of the Caves of Chaos. The Keep is absent.
B3: The entirety of the Palace of the Silver Princess (green cover; not the original orange cover, which is available as a free download from WotC). There is some change to the background of the story to fit it into Mystara/Karameikos, but it is not a major change.
B4: The entirety of the first pyramid. Absent are the second tier of the pyramid, and the maps of the lower levels (and subsequent description of Zargon, etc.)
B5: The entirety of the Keep on the hill and the caves of the Hobgoblin King (and the lower levels with the dragon). Missing are the encounters as one climbs the hill to the monastery.
B6: The entire adventure is here, absent the fold-out counters and things that came with it.
B7: The entirety of Rahasia is here (as far as I know anyway; B7 is one of the few individual Basic modules I don't own).
B8: The southern route to the Rock is here, as is the entirety of the Rock itself. The northern and middle trails are missing, IIRC (I think a Chameleon man encounter is still there, but I'm not positive). The suggestions for expanding the adventure are also missing.
B9: Castle Caldwell and the return (basement portion) are both here in their entirety. Elwyn's Sanctuary is here in its entirety (though some alterations to the background have been made to fit it into the campaign), as is the entirety of the Escape adventure (can't think of the name; again, some background has been changed to fit it better into Mystara/Karameikos). The Abduction of Princess Sylvia is missing. I think those were all the adventures in that one.
All in all, it's a pretty awesome compilation, and together with the Rules Cyclopedia would give you a pretty comprehensive campaign through the lower levels. The only problem is that, IME, the adventurers are either going to be higher than 3rd level by the time they complete just a few of the adventures (Rahasia alone is almost a campaign), or else there will be a very high mortality rate- depending on how forgiving you are to PCs. (As an aside, if I were to convert this to 3E, I'd probably try to make it more like an AP stretching up to the 5th or 6th level at least).
I'd have loved to have seen an X1-X13 compilation, but given the way that Mystara developed after those modules came out, it makes it difficult to use at least a couple of them without some drastic changes (and frankly, sadly, a couple of those adventures were just not very good in any case).
