Favorite 2e modules?

[RichGreen]

Hi,

From the things I actually ran, I really liked The Horde trilogy (which a couple of posters didn't), Return of the Eight (Greyhawk), The Eternal Boundary & Great Modron March for Planescape, Feast of Goblyns (Ravenloft) and Golden Voyages & A Dozen and One Adventures for Al-Qadim. I also really enjoyed the first (and to a lesser extent, the second) Ruins of Undermountain although as Psion says they're more than just a module. There were also some great adventures in Dungeon: Mightier Than the Sword was one of my favourites (I think this was 2e, but it was early if it was).

I read but never ran most of the other Planescape stuff with Dead Gods and Tales of the Infinite Staircase both seeming excellent. Same story with Gates of Firestorm Peak. I have Return to the Tomb of Horrors but wasn't sure how that would play out. I ran Night Below but we got very bogged down in Book 2 and gave up to play something more fun instead.

Cheers


Richard

 

[billd91]

<snip>
- Return to White Plume Mountain
- most if not all of the Al-Qadim adventures

- I'd add Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, but it was awful in 2e with the idiotic made-up rules for goblins. However, it converts and runs very well in 3e, ironically.

<snip>
(The worst 2e adventures is the entire Ravenloft line, less Feast of Goblyns and Ship of Horrors. The rest of the Ravenloft modules are the reason wny 2e gets such a bad rap. Deservedly so, I might add. Ravenloft modules = unplayable crap, AFAIC.)

I agree with much of what you're saying. The bulk of the modules we played in 2e were the Al-Qadim and Kara-Tur ones (which were more 1st edition since there was no 2nd ed version of OA). And we found all of them quite enjoyable.
I, too, agree that the Ravenloft modules were not very good. I'd limit my good list to just Feast of Goblyns though.

I also liked the Return to the Keep on the Borderlands. It served as a good example of a basic module setup from 1e, fleshed out with real personality and exceptional suitable for relatively new DMs.

I'd like to see your conversion notes for Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, actually. I've been mulling over a campaign with that as the centerpiece. I think, though, that the special goblin rules were fairly innovative, particularly since they so easily convert into 3E concepts like Aid Another and special feats. It's enough to make me wonder if the designers of 3E looked at Skip's work there and tried to find a better and more consistent way of providing the same sort of experience without the ad hoc rule additions.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

I think that by far, the one that I had the most fun with was The Shattered Circle. It's a great little dungeon crawl, with a few opportunities for some roleplaying, and a good mix of challenges. I updated it to 3e and ran it at a Chicago gameday a few years back, and it wsa quite a bit of fun still.


I had quite a bit of fun with The Ruins of Zhentil Keep as well. It was a fun chance for the PCs to do some romping around in a pretty evil city, and then run around in a dungeon and start having conversations with flaming skeletons of the Price of Lies. ("Wait. So you expect me to believe you, a flaming skeleton of the god of lies?" "....Yes.")

 

[Voadam]

Ravenloft was a mixed bag for me.


Ravenloft had a lot of really cool horror D&D adventures. Feast of Goblyns, Night of the Walking Dead, Touch of Death, a bunch of short ones from Book of Crypts, and that ghost dog one with three different ways to run it swapping who is the good and bad guys with the same basic story. Top knotch stuff IMO. House of Strahd looked cool too, though I didn't get to run it.

On the downside it had a bunch of modules where the PCs were just screwed, were killed off screen as part of the plot or had their bodies replaced turning wizards into flesh golems, turning the pcs into detached heads who had to do bad guys bidding to get their bodies back, etc. A lot of stupid plot elements came in a few of them, such as in the indian place where foreigners are all hunted down and harboring them is a capital crime the PCs guide being a foreign girl secretly adopted by a family and hidden and being able to blend in by the clever use of a ceramic mask. Or the lebontod monster family in Ship of Horrors who had neat powers that were never used and who had no game stats or maps despite being very key to the middle of the adventure, or the necromancer lord whose undead minions were not as powerful as the default ravenloft rules made them (2HD undead instead of 20). Then there was the over the top Death trilogy and the illithid one.

 

[viscounteric]

After reviewing the 2nd edition list, Shattered Circle is it. I've still got a pile of Basic D&D, 1e, and Judges Guild stuff that I've never touched.

 

[LegendaryGames]

Al-Qadim and Castle Forlorn

Castle Forlorn was a crazily complicated Ravenloft adventure that slipped through three separate time periods, but was really a very cool setting and adventure in one.

I loved Return to the Tomb of Horrors and got good use out of it in my old campaign, and I really liked the individual set-pieces in Rod of Seven Parts even though I wasn't all that keen on the overarching metaplot with Miska the Wolf-Spider and the rod.

My overall favorites, though, were the Al-Qadim mini-box adventures like Cities of Bone, A Dozen and One Adventures, and Ruined Kingdoms. I converted a lot of them with only slight modifications for a campaign set in the main part of Forgotten Realms and had a fabulous time with them. Short adventures but dripping with flavor and interesting challenges.

 

[Bedrockgames]

For Ravenloft, Feast of Goblyns is my absolute favorite. Just packed with cool material. Castles Forlorn is also great, and has so much setting you don't even needto run the module itself if you do not want to. Night of the Walking Dead was a great combination mystery/zombie adventure that brought one of the islands of dread to life. Book of Crypts has about nine small adventures in it, and there are a few gems in there.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

After reviewing the 2nd edition list, Shattered Circle is it. I've still got a pile of Basic D&D, 1e, and Judges Guild stuff that I've never touched.

The Shattered Circle is, IMO, a mini-masterpiece. It reminds you how good Bruce Cordell could be. Ditto for The Gates of Firestorm Peak. I rank both of them in my top 10 adventures of all time.

 

[TerraDave]

I did a pole on this some time ago.

Top ten:

Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Ruins of Undermountain
Night Below
Rod of Seven Parts
A Paladin in Hell
Dead Gods
Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff
The Gates of Firestorm Peak
Axe of the Dwarvish Lords
Dragon Mountain

 

[Remathilis]

I did a pole on this some time ago.

Top ten:

Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Ruins of Undermountain
Night Below
Rod of Seven Parts
A Paladin in Hell
Dead Gods
Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff
The Gates of Firestorm Peak
Axe of the Dwarvish Lords
Dragon Mountain

Having not played all of them, I can still agree with this list.

Shattered Circle too.