Desert of Desolation - your experiences?

[Kid Charlemagne]

Let's see - this is about the first of these threads I've been able to participate in! I remember finding the party illusionist in a box in a warehouse; I remember the party's elven magic-user/thief sleeping 50 feet off to the side of the party every night - invisible. He was the origin of our gaming group's catch-all phrase for annoying NPCS: Flying, invisible magic-user with a -5 armor class. Eventually, he put on a hat of contrariness, and we found him to be much easier to control after that. When we got to the mini-plane with the thieving tribe who worshipped their "stealies" it was like he had died, gone to heaven and found out he was god.

Until they robbed him and left him for dead.

This was also the module of the 24-hour game session, with a wish being the prize for making it through till morning. I got a vorpal blade for my fighter - who had an 8 Dexterity, and kept falling into things. I could never get close enough to the invisible-flying-magic-user-with-the -5 AC to lop off his head.

Ah, good times.

 

[Benben]

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

Started playing it when I was in 5th grade I think but the campaign never finnished. Now some 16 years later I got a group together and ran them through a conversion of it.

Overall I loved the concepts and settings in the game. The ending though was a tremendous anticlimax.

If I could do it over again I would have given the Efree a number of servants that need to be dispatched while Martek is reforming.

 

[glass]

Is it so wrong for me to insist on BOTH?

Both doom and a lap dancer, or both a lap dance and a hooker?


glass.

 

[Waylander the Slayer]

Whatever the Critcisms, i ran the Desert of Desolation module (which is a compilation of the 3 with tie ins) and it is the one module that my players still talk about and i ran this about 9 years ago. Whatever the flaws, the module is very evocative, and was a load of fun for my players.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

Does someone know where a decent, or downloadable, copy of Desert of Desolation may be obtained?

 

[Steel_Wind]

As it so happens, I3- Pharoah was translated faithfully into one of the best NWN multiplayer modules by Curt Miller.

I was chatting with Curt a few weeks ago and he is nearing release on the sequel Oasis of the White Palm, with a ton of custom tiles and other content to capture the feeling of the desert and tomb settings. Like its predecessor in the Desert of Desolation Series, it's a faithful translation of the original.

For those who would like to give the NWN version a whirl, it's available here:

http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=modules.Detail&id=4021

 

[gizmo33]

I've only read about half of the first module so far, but oh my god, it is horrible. So much about this module is horrible. Just some examples I can remember without it in my hands right now:

I don't think any of your complaints so far rank as "major" issues, though I suspect that difference is the core reason why some folks (like me) consider the modules great while others (you) do not.

Monsters in the random monster charts don't have hit points listed. Just HD.

Back in the old days DMs knew how to multiply by 5. Now the MM does that for you.

There is a group of about a dozen bandits with 2 HD. Half have only 2-4 hit points.

25 or so years of DMing and no player has ever asked me why someone has 10 hit points instead of 4. Who cares about stuff like this? The bandits with 2 HD are tough. Maybe next time someone in your campaign meets a 5th level fighter NPC they should demand to see an XP sheet enumerating each of the XP gains.

There is a maze with only one way in -- jumping into a burning brazier in the temple. The worshippers at the temple haven't figured out the brazier is a teleporter. But there are a couple dozen folks (non-worshippers) in the maze who had to come through the brazier.

My memory is a little hazy, but there were sections of the dungeon that bordered on other dimensions. I don't recall it explicitly stating that there was only one way in - though perhaps the module only described one way. One of the issues is that in practice (IME anyway), PCs assume that there is a logic behind it, and they're a little too busy trying to stay alive to want to undertake a study of the ecology of the place. Even if the module says one way in, it's not that big of a deal to add others - do you really think the module would have been great if half of it were taken up with useless backstories of NPCs that got killed in the first round by a fireball?

There are areas in the maze where treasure is just sitting in the middle of the floor, apparently just abandoned and not found by anyone else.

When I run modules in my campaign, I take notes on PCs actions so that those that revisit the dungeon find it altered by the events. It is NOT uncommon for PCs to discard items, even a magic item that no one had time to examine.

In one area, a +1 warhammer just is lying in the middle of the floor. No monster, no trap, nothing but the warhammer on the floor.

Ok, so one thing that makes less sense than a discared warhammer in the middle of the floor is a TRAPPED discarded warhammer in the middle of the floor.

In many areas, there is ancient writing with hints and clues for the PCs. But for most all of them, there is a 30% to decipher the writing. Just a flat 30% chance, regardless of being a wizard with 18 Int or a dumb fighter. And it doesn't even say this is 30% for the whole party as a group, or for each individual trying to read it.

Welcome to 1st edition DnD. There were no skills. It would take a whole seperate thread to describe the various ways of DMing non-combat situations - but suffice to say IMO that there were few guidelines. Any system that you propose (intelligence-based for instance) would be just as flawed in certain cases (what if my dumb fighter were from the desert?) "30%" chance takes up a whole lot less space than a 3E-ish "sidebar" explaining the rules. The modules in the old days were lean and mean.

This first module at least, is absurd. All those of you who say this is a great module, are you smoking crack? Or just looking back through rose-colored glasses. I mean, this thing is outrageously bad. And I'm only half-way through the first module.

The oldest of 1e modules were just pure out-and-out slug-fests (or trap-fests, like Tomb of Horrors). The I-series was one of the first to add a story and interesting non-combat elements to the mix. You still have to do some work to get it to mesh with your campaign world - but I find the tantalizing bits that the I-series does provide to be much more interesting than the pages and pages of fluff that I'd have to discard anyway. Maybe it's a little light on details for today's thespians, but back in the day all the extra flavor text that you seem to be asking for would have been wasted space.

 

[Quasqueton]

I was letting this whole thing go, but gizmo33 defends the module by insulting me. Interesting method. Basically: This module doesn't suck because *your* stupid. Very enlightening.

Back in the old days DMs knew how to multiply by 5.

But apparently the designers couldn't.

So what everyone here is saying in defense of the module, is a good DM made up stuff to cover the irrationality of the encounters and/or good Players ignored the irrationality of the stuff they encountered and found.

There's a freakin' gnome digging tunnels with a *spoon* [literally!] deep in the heart of a 1,000-year-old tomb (with not so much as a single sentence on how or why). And this is not only completely acceptable, but considered "good design"?

Quasqueton

 

[Arnwyn]

There's a freakin' gnome digging tunnels with a *spoon* [literally!] deep in the heart of a 1,000-year-old tomb (with not so much as a single sentence on how or why). And this is not only completely acceptable, but considered "good design"?

Nope - one of the dumbest things in that module.

However, I have yet to see to this very day a 120-page adventure that didn't have at least a couple of completely retarded (or at best, badly designed) elements.

 

[gizmo33]

I was letting this whole thing go, but gizmo33 defends the module by insulting me. Interesting method. Basically: This module doesn't suck because *your* stupid. Very enlightening.

I didn't insult you, but you do feel insulted so I'll recognize that and apologize for that feeling. I took for granted that you could multiply by 5, and so I was being flip, and I should have said it more directly: it's not a big deal to have HD and not have hp in a game system where monsters don't have CON. I don't think you're stupid and it didn't occur to me that you'd take this that way.