Quasqueton said:
See, gizmo33, you are just stretching my comments to ridiculous extremes in an effort to discredit them. That's called a strawman argument.
I don't know what you're saying here. The quote that you used is not from something that I wrote. I'm not trying to "discredit" what you're saying, it's just my opinion that you're not considering this issue from all sides and I'm trying to clarify some of the other sides.
Quasqueton said:
And you are adding in little backhand comments about D&D3 (like insulting the current edition of the game is somehow going to buttress up the defense of a module from an earlier edition). Why do you keep bringing the current game and its players into this discussion on an old adventure of an old edition?
First of all, I play 3E and I like it a lot and I'm not "insulting the current edition of the game" by making a joke about mohawks. Secondly - there is a cultural difference between the 1E and 3E games and I detect what I strongly think is a bias in favor of some of the unwritten (or sometimes written) logic of the 3E game that is not appropriate for 1E.
Look - you asked what it was about these modules that made them good to those of us that thought so - so I thought that it was important for you to see these things from the perspective of those that played them. Your recent post that got this all started said something like "I3-5 sucks, so tell me why you guys still like it even though it sucks". It really begged the question (if you want to get into issues like strawman arguments - look at the wording of your original question). So I'll say this: given that people that don't like I3-5 have no taste in modules, why is it that people don't like I3-5? - see that's a dead-end.
Quasqueton said:
You are absolutely right. That's why I have not complained about anything even remotely this mundane. Now if that tavern had a red dragon in a booth, a ghoul tending bar, a random bag of gold sitting unattended on a table, no way in or out, and absolutely no mention at all of how this loony situation came to be, then I'd complain. And I'd still be flabbergasted about it when someone shouted out, "Hey, it's a fantasy adventure!"
But it is this mundane because you're making an assumption that the presence of a red dragon and ghoul require and explanation while the presence of 20 tavern patrons do not. Granted, a tavern is a strange place for a red dragon, but a dungeon is not. Granted too - it probably would help to have a general idea of what monsters are doing where. But a dungeon can be seen as a dynamic place, an enchanted place (and I don't mean the kind of enchanment that's simply defined in the PHB - some people have a hard time imagining magic operating in a campaign world that can't be codified in a nice spell-block write-up in the core rules), and monsters are weird.
The point is not that you were complaining about something mundane. You were complaining about elements that are easily explained - especially if you're not trying to fit everything into a real-world model:
1. gnome with spoon: thief that tried to steal from Pharaoh's treasure horde and was geased
2. sphinx: a sphinx's psychology makes it a simple thing for it to sit in a room for decades while it amuses itself in creating imaginary worlds in it's mind. It's inclination is to ask riddles which is a natural part of it's psychology (as is saying "hello" for humans). It was sent here long ago by Martek who realized that it's chaotic services would be necessary, but it forgot most of it's mission, of which it preserves only a distorted view.
3. bag of gold: dropped by some adventurers so that they could carry the bodies of their comrades after they were ambushed by doppelgangers. Or maybe the sack is all that remains of a pile of mundane items that have otherwise rotted away.
Sure, you can drill away at these explanations until the module writers are forced to write a page for every mundane element of the dungeon. How did the gold get there? Whose face are on all 254 coins? Why is it all the same face? Are any of the coins bent or shaved?
At some point when you're playing the game you do have to suspend your disbelief - I really don't see how this is basically different from later modules. I question the motives of any player who is obsessively drilling away at an NPCs explanation when it clearly has no bearing on their mission (breaking the curse) - it would seem to me to be more about hassling the DM than playing the game.
