D&D's Going To The Barrier Peaks

"In prior community polls, we’ve asked for your thoughts on elemental trinkets, things carried in a giant’s bag, and unusual lich phylacteries."

In other words, "we've asked you for your thoughts on previously upcoming adventures (PotA, SKT, and ToA)."

The question is, will the forthcoming book be a compilation of classic modules a la Tales from the Yawning Portal or a fleshed-out, updated version of a classic module a la Curse of Strahd?

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

You mean a tournament module like the 'Tomb of Horrors'? Small wonder then it's so bad. The idea of playing D&D as a kind of tournament was, is, and will be terrible. But that's just my opinion. If you enjoy that kind of thing, more power to you.

The majority of the classic modules---Giants, Slave Lords, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and a bunch of others---were originally tournament scenarios. If you look in the originals the scoring is usually listed but the adventures themselves were substantially fleshed out with the assumption they were not being run for competitive play.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I haven't played it, but my impression is that EttBP is an excercise in NOT metagaming: the players will understand a lot of aspects of play, but it wouldn't be appropriate to use all of that knowledge.

Meta-gaming was very much expected back in the day. Lots of puzzles in the classic modules assumed you were using player knowledge. This is even in the DMG1E, where there's an artifact, Heward's Mystical Organ, that presumes you know Great American Songbook tunes like "Fly Me to the Moon" or "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." The way Barrier Peaks is written if you meta-game you'll often end up screwed for it!

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Never liked that one. A failed attempt to show that D&D rules also worked for a sci-fi setting. Except they didn't.

According to the Wikipedia entry, it was originally run to advertise Metamorphosis Alpha. It was one of the earliest sci fi RPGs (maybe the earliest?) so it gets props for being early, at any rate. TSR dropped that in favor of Gamma World pretty fast, although that never really took off either, though it has been released over and over. I'm not sure sci fi has really ever done super well.

I never ran Barrier Peaks, but had fun playing it in the late '90s and as the campaign continued for a while longer, our PCs really valued those Barrier Peaks weapons until they finally ran out of juice because they worked in anti-magic!

 

[Jhaelen]

If you look in the originals the scoring is usually listed but the adventures themselves were substantially fleshed out with the assumption they were not being run for competitive play.

Ah, I see. I only know the version that was included in the Realms of Horror compilation.

Of the included adventures I only really liked 'White Plume Mountain'. 'The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' was passable, at best. The thing is: these modules aren't any better than the adventures I've created myself in my early teens: A non-sensical arrangement of rooms that each represented a mostly self-contained puzzle or environment that only started to become real as soon as the party entered it, plus a random encounter table.
Now, don't get me wrong: back then we actually enjoyed delving into that kind of dungeon, but (at least in retrospect) it's terrible design.

Note, that I don't know the original 'Against the Giants' modules. I've only seen the 4e conversions. As far as I can tell, these may have been slightly better.

When I started roleplaying (in 1984), adventure modules written for other RPGs, e.g. MERP were already way ahead of these classic designs. They contained separate descriptions of the locations, the inhabitants, the surroundings, and guidelines about things like watch schedules, alarm procedures and ideas for potential encounters or events. I.e. they described a realistic, living environment that the players could engage in any way they wanted.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Of the included adventures I only really liked 'White Plume Mountain'.

That one is more fun to read than play, IMO, though I was in a long running Greyhawk campaign where Keraptis was the main foil, starting as a villain and, over time, becoming a frenemy.

'The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth' was passable, at best. The thing is: these modules aren't any better than the adventures I've created myself in my early teens: A non-sensical arrangement of rooms that each represented a mostly self-contained puzzle or environment that only started to become real as soon as the party entered it, plus a random encounter table.
Now, don't get me wrong: back then we actually enjoyed delving into that kind of dungeon, but (at least in retrospect) it's terrible design.

I both ran and played Tsojcanth, the latter in the aformentioned Keraptis campaign. Part of that campaign, which was quite serious in tone much of the time, was that Greyhawk had been studded with dungeons by mad wizards. However, the DM worked to make things make more sense.

Note, that I don't know the original 'Against the Giants' modules. I've only seen the 4e conversions. As far as I can tell, these may have been slightly better.

Adventures of that time definitely had that feel. Giants was better, but still they endeavored to fill up every corner of the graph paper.

When I started roleplaying (in 1984), adventure modules written for other RPGs, e.g. MERP were already way ahead of these classic designs. They contained separate descriptions of the locations, the inhabitants, the surroundings, and guidelines about things like watch schedules, alarm procedures and ideas for potential encounters or events. I.e. they described a realistic, living environment that the players could engage in any way they wanted.

I think with those classic modules you need to and were expected to put that in yourself. I am not old enough to know the modules the first time but ran them in the mid '80s when I was starting out. This was pre the supermodule releases. I had the opportunity to play several in the mid '90s to mid '00s. With more mature DMing and editing they were really quite good.