D&D 5E Goodman Games Taking Pre-Orders For ToEE

[Magister Ludorum]

Yeah, I think its fondly remembered reputation is largely due old farts' fading memories.

I played it when it first came out. I thought it was terrible. Orc and Pie, without the pie.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

it is my favorite of all time barely inching out Palace of the Silver Princess. I am not that old, barely 46. And I must say there are few bad adventures and mostly just poor DMing.

Different strokes for different folks. The GM was generally good. As good an any 15 year old, at least.

My list for worst modules:

1. Terrible Trouble at Tragidore
2. Tomb of Horror
3. Tome of Elemental Evil (3e)
4. Tome of Elemental Evil (1e)

 

[jerryrice4949]

Different strokes for different folks. The GM was generally good. As good an any 15 year old, at least.

My list for worst modules:

1. Terrible Trouble at Tragidore
2. Tomb of Horror
3. Tome of Elemental Evil (3e)
4. Tome of Elemental Evil (1e)

Tomb of Horror is amazing, under the right circumstances. If played as part of an ongoing campaign it is not very fun.

But it Can be amazing. Get your group together. Roll up characters for a one shot and clear 12 hours, playing through the evening and into the morning and you will love it. It is really a tournament module and should be played as such.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

Tomb of Horror is amazing, under the right circumstances. If played as part of an ongoing campaign it is not very fun.

But it Can be amazing. Get your group together. Roll up characters for a one shot and clear 12 hours, playing through the evening and into the morning and you will love it. It is really a tournament module and should be played as such.

1. Don't like one-shots
2. Don't like death traps
3. Played it (with fake enthusiasm) 3-5 times over the last 42 years. Didn't enjoy a single time.

It's not lack of experience that makes me hate it. It's the experience of having played it that did that.

 

[jerryrice4949]

1. Don't like one-shots
2. Don't like death traps
3. Played it (with fake enthusiasm) 3-5 times over the last 42 years. Didn't enjoy a single time.

It's not lack of experience that makes me hate it. It's the experience of having played it that did that.

Fair enough. Like I noted earlier I enjoy most adventures. I play and DM and almost always have a great time as do my players when I DM.

Out of curiosity what adventures do you rate highly Past or present? Do you like any of the older modules?

 

[Magister Ludorum]

Fair enough. Like I noted earlier I enjoy most adventures. I play and DM and almost always enjoy the experience.

Out of curiosity what adventures do you rate highly Past or present? Do you like any of the older modules?

I like many of them, although I often rewrite them when I run them. In no particular order, I like:

• Temple of the Frog (I first ran it out of the Blackmoor booklet for OD&D)
• The slaver series (except that I reverse A4 and A3 because I don't hand wave the party losing a fight. I just increase the difficulties of the encounters in the dungeons)
• Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (but I'm not that fond of the sequels)
• Castle Amber (I rewrite it to give it a coherent story instead of an Orc and Pie feel. I also draw from more Clark Ashton Smith stories to round it out)
• Lost City
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• Cult of the Reptile God
• Ravenloft
• Ravenloft II (with extensive rewriting)
• Vault of the Drow (but not D1 or D2)

That's just off the top of my mind. I don't like

• dungeon crawl unless there's a good story behind it.
• puzzles that have to be solved by the player, not the character (I like them fine when I'm not playing D&D. I just don't like them in adventures.)
• endless descriptions of empty rooms
• silliness in the adventure

 

[jerryrice4949]

I like many of them, although I often rewrite them when I run them. In no particular order, I like:

• Temple of the Frog (I first ran it out of the Blackmoor booklet for OD&D)
• The slaver series (except that I reverse A4 and A3 because I don't hand wave the party losing a fight. I just increase the difficulties of the encounters in the dungeons)
• Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (but I'm not that fond of the sequels)
• Castle Amber (I rewrite it to give it a coherent story instead of an Orc and Pie feel. I also draw from more Clark Ashton Smith stories to round it out)
• Lost City
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
• Cult of the Reptile God
• Ravenloft
• Ravenloft II (with extensive rewriting)
• Vault of the Drow (but not D1 or D2)

That's just off the top of my mind. I don't like

• dungeon crawl unless there's a good story behind it.
• puzzles that have to be solved by the player, not the character (I like them fine when I'm not playing D&D. I just don't like them in adventures.)
• endless descriptions of empty rooms
• silliness in the adventure

Dungeon crawls take a bit of work to not get monotonous. I never run any module as written. Sometimes I make small tweaks, sometimes large tweaks, but I always modify.

i don’t mind detailed descriptions of empty rooms. I like the place to feel real and not just a room waiting for a party to kill pillage.

Overall that is a good list though I feel Saltmarsh has always been a little overrated. I really like Castle Amber but I would note that it has a lot of silliness which you expressed not caring for.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

Dungeon crawls take a bit of work to not get monotonous. I never run any module as written. Sometimes I make small tweaks, sometimes large tweaks, but I always modify.

i don’t mind detailed descriptions of empty rooms. I like the place to feel real and not just a room waiting for a party to kill pillage.

Overall that is a good list though I feel Saltmarsh has always been a little overrated. I really like Castle Amber but I would note that it has a lot of silliness which you expressed not caring for.

I have to remove the silliness when I run Castle Amber. I wouldn't bother if CAS wasn't one of my favorite authors. I probably wouldn't like it if I played it with someone who ran it as written.

I just have never like dungeon crawls. It isn't really boredom, although I find combat to be much less interesting than investigating and interacting with NPCs.

I don't mind empty rooms so much as I do listening to descriptions of them. When I run a story in a site that has them, I tend to use broad narration to cover those parts. When I design "dungeons" they have lots of empty space. I don't give detailed descriptions of each room. I'm more likely to lump a large area together and describe it as series of rooms or caverns.

Despite the fact that I've been playing since 1978, and despite the fact that the game is called Dungeons and Dragons. I seldom use either when world building or adventure writing.

 

[MNblockhead]

It's 69.99 for pre order at GameNerdz's website.

That's a surprisingly good discount. First time I used the site. Thanks for the tip!

 

[jerryrice4949]

I was hoping they'd give some indication on how the two volumes are split up. Putting the history in one volume and the 5E conversion in the other would be huge.

It'd hard to picture T1 taking up an equal sized volume as T1-4, but it'd be nice to get clarity on this.

I'm betting we hear about OAR 7 this weekend at GaryCon. As always, my money is on Palace of the Silver Princess, which is probably the remaining TSR module with the most interesting history and varied versions.

Did they announce OAR 7 or any other 5E products? Tried to find info and couldn’t and the twitch stream at Garycon was not recorded?