Finally used Vault of the Drow!

[MerricB]

The very first AD&D adventure (and adventure of any kind) I bought was Vault of the Drow. This was back in the early 80s. I'm assuming it was around 1983-4, but honestly the exact dating of events that far back are now just a bit hard. In my last couple of D&D 4E sessions, I was finally able to use the adventure. I'm very happy.

Of course, the way I ran it was a little counter to how the adventure was originally written. Or, perhaps, it wasn't. It's not every adventure you have the heroes teaming up with the clerics of Lolth to deal with the cult of the Elder Elemental God! It would have been nice to have a map of the Eilservs compound, but as I'm using Theatre of the Mond it wasn't that hard to wing it. We ended up with a combat that ran far, far longer than I expected. Four PCs vs 3 NPCs... and the blasted thing ran for two hours! That's what happens when all the strikers in the group don't turn up.

This is, in fact, not strictly true. The main reason the party had no strikers was because both of them managed to draw poorly from a Deck of Many Things. The reason the party is in the Vault is to rescue one of them, who is held by House Eilservs. And they had both the priestesses of Lolth and Eclavdra trying to persuade them to help them. (To make things even better, Lolth actually has the other striker captive). Now they've rescued one of the strikers, the other fights should go quicker.

This campaign, which is ending very much with a lot of Tharizdun in his role of the Elder Elemental God, is predicated on the major problems of the early D&D adventures; which sort of can be expressed as follows "Why the hell is Lareth serving Lolth?" I actually went into the campaign with Tharizdun and the EEG being quite separate, but it's been more fun to use them as the same. Well, ish.

It's moving towards the end now. I began this campaign shortly after 4E first came out, back in June 2008. The PCs are now about 28th level, and we'll be finishing the campaign pretty much in time for 5E. I discovered this old blog entry from the start of the campaign. We began with Castle Zagyg, we're ending with a hacked version of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Ah, how inexperienced I was with 4E back then! Was it really six years ago?

Cheers!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Cool!

I personally feel that Vault of the Drow is an underused adventure -- probably because its potential is only just touched on in the module itself. There's so much going on that you could set an entire political intrigue campaign in the Vault, make it the launching pad for an Underdark campaign, use it as the intended climax of an Against-the-Drow adventure, etc.

 

[MerricB]

Absolutely. The basic problem with the Vault is there's little more to it than an idea. (And detailing the Fane and not House Eilservs seems a mistake). But the idea is *fantastic*!

Cheers!

 

[pemerton]

I have used the Vault as a destination for PCs to travel to in a past campaign. One of the PCs in my current campaign is from there, but doesn't want to go back! To date, he's had his wish.

I did use D2 in my current campaign, though.

 

[Raith5]

I have used D3 twice. As a kid I played a rather Monty haul AD&D campaign where we led a slave rebellion against the drow. We made a base concealed by hallucinatory terrain and picked off a few of the noble houses thus growing our army of slaves armed with drowic weaponry.

I also used D1-3 in my 3rd ed campaign as a prelude to playing G3 The Hall of the Fire Giants (essentially playing those adventures backwards).

One of the things I like about these early adventures was that they were just an idea as Merric says - there is no serious direction, just a structure and the DM/players had to make in work.