[Dungeon] Which TSR Modules are "Classics"?

[Wraith Form]

I don't think anyone has mentioned my favorite: The Secret of Bone Hill.

*SNIP*

God, that Wraith though

Uh, that's NOT ME TB's talking about. I wasn't there and I didn't do it.

Just clarifying. *ahem*

 

[Leopold]

Crap i hope i am not too late!!!


GDQ-This is the reason i started playing D&D hands down. Tis the reason I became a DM. Tis the reason that I love the tough fights, the ways to go in and out, the mulitple paths of success that PC's can use to accomplish the same goal. It's open ended and painfully simple. It's a DM's dream come true, as the whole thing is up to you.


H Series-It's bloodstone, it's high level, it's epic war, it's..well got ORCUS!?!?!?! I am a high level junky and this is the hardest series to collect and find, it took me many many years to get a copy of each one and boy was it worth it. Hell i had to get 2/4 shipped from the UK! This module allows the PC's who crave battle and challenge to do it on a massive scale. Before FR was FR you had the Valley of Bloodstone to play with.

UFO crash module-it's a black module with red letters, i forget the name. It basically has a whole ecology of creatures that sprouted up when a UFO crashed into the mountain. You've got laser weapons, star trek key code doors, strange wierd monsters (vegepygmy anyone?) that you've never seen before. It's a welcome change from the norm and allows DM's who've always wanted to add in that flair from Sci/Fi to their Fantasy game.


Castle greyhawk-mega dungeon that reminds me of rappan atthuk by necromancer games. I love dungeon crawls and going through this one from top to bottom can take many years of game play and many many months of normal time to complete. worthy of those who like to crawl, battle, and trick and steal from the greatest wizard evar: ZAGYG!!! I converted half of this to D20 and my players had a blast with it.



On a side note: every year (well the last 2) I run the D20 version of Against the Giants. We ran G2 and allot of people had a blast doing it. I hope that in my running these games every year I can get people to sit down and look over those old modules and get ideas just like I did with them.

One request I must make to Erik Mona: If you plan on updating these modules to D20, please take a look at the conversion library. Many hours of blood sweat and tears have gone into making those modules viable for another generation of players and DM's. It's a valuable resource that allot of people have used and something that ought not to be ignored. Furthermore, please, PLEASE! stay true to the modules!!! Don't change it greatly just to compensate for high EL's or off balance CR's! Play balancing is good and all but if you revamp G series, then don't remove any of the giants. I know it's meant for 9th level or so players and the main hall is at lest a 14 or so, KEEP IT LIKE IT IS!

I've seen updates butchered because people wanted to tweak it and twist it to make it more usable and keep it on par. I say nix that and make these things stay as true to the originals as they can. Bend the rules, but please don't break them.


Good luck, and if your going to be doing what I think your doing, I hope my check for Dungeon goes through!

 

[Wraith Form]

Wheereareeeeoooooo!

Thanks, Wraith Form, that was me If you really want to laugh, do yourself a favor and track down the Theremin documentary film. Priceless weirdness in every minute.

To everyone else, I'm loving this thread!

Jay

Well, Mr. MirthCard (if that's your REAL name)...thanks to you I had to add a theramin to my sig line.

I blame it all on you.

 

[Leopold]

I like the " night below " box set although I am sure others here might disagree, but It has alot of potential...and its big.

Night below suffers from what i call a inverse Bell curve appeal. Initally it's hot, flaming hot! The Pc's have so much to do and then they start doing it and then they go underground. Fight after weary fight they trudge along going down, down into the underground until they hit the City of the Glass Pool. Then they get bored after clearing away one portion and just move along to something else.

It's that middle ground in book 2 that kills many a party and causes them to be bored silly. In order to combat this you must give back something to the PC's or give them reason or purpose to go back and do the job and see more.

I used the following after they attacked the city twice and got bored:

They rescued jennelleth by teleporting after scrying her location. I had a the wedding of jenneleth and her beau andy start and in the middle I had the kuo-toa and derro attack the city as well as lizardmen from the swamp and ilzendren (green dragon) attack the keep and destroy haranshire, milbourne, count's keep and kidnap: the party's cleric, tauster, jenneleth, the druid, and the ranger all by the kuo-toa to use as sacrifice. They managed to follow the kidnappers to a portal near the center of town while control weather was slowly wasting milbourne and they faced a Large Kuo-toa Fi/10 Ebon Servitor(book of templates: silverthorne games) that just wiped the party sorcerer out and was blasting the other PC's before he got taken away by the mind flayer holding the gate open.

Furthermore, I used the story of the Devil that destroyed the count's old keep as the party had claimed that and had the derro, kuo-toa, and mind flayers took tauster to the underground tomb and sacrifice him in a ritual to open a portal to free the demon. I took the donkey devil from the Tome of Horrors and made sure that when the party saw Tauster it would rip open his chest Aliens style and then attack the PC's. It did, it beat up a couple of them and they killed it.

All this happens in a 12hr period on purpose.

So now they are mad, in hot pursuit of the Kuo-toa and then finding out what happens below. Now the upswing of the bell curve where they get back into the exploration occurs and they begin to finish the job they started.

To quote Don Corleone "Everytime I try to get out I get pulled back in!" This is the only way I have found and from my reading experience with other DM's who've run Night Below to solve this problem.

 

[Leopold]

simple. revisit them ala the return to crap of 2ed done for ToH, AtG, WPM, KotB, Slavers

but use 1edADnD rules and style.

that would make them crappy and useless. This all sounds like they are doing a D20 version of each of those. See my post for my thoughts on that.

 

[Teflon Billy]

that would make them crappy and useless...

I agree, what's the point of a 1E redux? Having them redone for Hackmaster might be fun, but I doubt Paizo has much interest there.

But 1E? By today's standards it's only marginally playable, and it's abominably laid out and organized.

 

[DMScott]

But 1E? By today's standards it's only marginally playable, and it's abominably laid out and organized.

Eh, it's completely playable, and the layout isn't a big deal for anyone who still uses it - they likely have 10 or more years of experience. The big knock against reissuing old modules for 1E is the people most likely to buy them already have them. That restricts the market to a prohibitive degree - it's not like anybody who sees the adventure and says "cool, I'd like to give that a try" is going to be able to pick up the rulebooks at the local game store, after all.

 

[AFGNCAAP]

Night below suffers from what i call a inverse Bell curve appeal. Initally it's hot, flaming hot! The Pc's have so much to do and then they start doing it and then they go underground. Fight after weary fight they trudge along going down, down into the underground until they hit the City of the Glass Pool. Then they get bored after clearing away one portion and just move along to something else.

It's that middle ground in book 2 that kills many a party and causes them to be bored silly. In order to combat this you must give back something to the PC's or give them reason or purpose to go back and do the job and see more.

I can easily testify to that. I've experienced Night Below, and I was glad that it was over when we finally finished this "super-module." Playing this module, using 2nd Ed. AD&D with Skills & Powers options, REALLY brought home a few points to me:

* D&D adventures are pretty much designed with the "typical" party in mind: a cleric, a fighter, a wizard, and a rogue/thief. Also, there should be the basic races in the party, as well: human, dwarf, elf, and gnome/halfling (for someone small to squeeze into stuff the big PCs can't). Some aren't, but they usually state at the get-go that they aren't: otherwise, it's a typical adventure for the typical adventuring group.

Thus, with this in mind, it is EXTREMELY easy to understand why my group had a hell of a time at it. My PC was a human paladin; another player had a half-elf mage/cleric: the rest of the group was some sort of mage and/or thief. We had a hell of a time getting through that module, since there was a large amount of down-time to replenish spells. And, of course, it was an absolute nightmare dealing with opponents who had Spell Resistance.

* Teamwork is essential. Lack of teamwork gets characters killed and hinders future chances/opportunities.

Unfortunately, many of the players created "Wolverines"--loners who were very confident in their abilities, yet who would rather do things their way/by themselves instead of working together. This pretty much got us nearly killed. It took a while to develop some degree of teamwork, though there were still bouts of extreme, what-the-hell, "individualism" (i.e., doing something stupid for the hell of it, even though the player knows better).

* Regular attendance is mandatory.

One thing that didn't help the flow of the game at all was irregular attendance by the players--there were many times were some PCs had to be "NPCed" by other players in order to play (some players were gone for long periods of time, new players jumped in, and some players left). Didn't help at all for recalling clues/critical events/etc.

Though I still like my paladin that I used for that game, I didn't care for the adventure overall. Maybe my experience would have been different if the party was different overall (more standard rather than oddball). But, IMHO, after that experience, I'd be extremely happy to see Night Below slip into obscurity.

 

[diaglo]

that would make them crappy and useless. This all sounds like they are doing a D20 version of each of those. See my post for my thoughts on that.

''
i did see your post. and after reading realize you don't know your head from a hole in the ...

come on you don't even know the S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks or WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins or...

and you even liked Greyhawk Ruins...what a POS that was. i wonder who had a hand in writing it.

besides the fact it was 2ed.

 

[diaglo]

...but I doubt Paizo has much interest there...

besides the fact that Paizo probably doesn't have the talent to do it.