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Iconic and Best Adventures in each Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 8939982" data-attributes="member: 11760"><p>Here are my lists, in no particular order within each subsection.</p><p></p><p><strong>TSR era</strong> (we played BD&D and AD&D adventures interchangeably, while using AD&D as our ruleset, which I suspect was incredibly common at the time):</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A2, Secrets of the Slavers Stockade: The best of the A series, player characters face a citadel full of smart, engaged, cooperative enemies. The group cannot hack their way through the stockade if they want to be successful, and so must use smart, real world tactics to get in, achieve their objective, and get out alive. Also the first appearance of several iconic monsters, most notably the cloaker.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">B1, In Search of the Unknown: The "fill in your own monsters" system seems silly today -- and was pretty ill-informed even at the time -- but Mike Carr's energy instead went into creating some of the most iconic room designs of all time. Even if you've never played B1, you've played remixed elements of it, as its DNA is in everything that came afterwards, even if writers were just reacting against it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">B2, Keep on the Borderlands: It still has some weird decisions (none of the NPCs in the titular keep are named because of reasons, although NPCs out in the world are) and the Caves of Chaos are a little silly in design, but in a lot of ways, they prefigure what computer RPGs would look like for years and, played smart, they taught a lot of great lessons to early D&D players. (The first encounter outside the kobold cave has more than a dozen kobold archers in a tree -- yeah, you can get easily TPKed by the first encounter at the theoretically easiest cave. You gotta play smart!) The borderlands around the keep and the cave get short shrift a lot of times, but they're a surprisingly good wilderness area, even today.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">B4, The Lost City: It owes more than a little to REH's Red Nails, but it's a great early megadungeon featuring rival groups that players will have to work with at least some of, since otherwise, they'll get slaughtered pretty quickly. Much of the city is underwritten, unfortunately, but the bones are very, very good. Anyone wanting to run a megadungeon campaign could do a lot worse than to drop their player characters in the desert outside this pyramid.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">B6, The Veiled Society: The first great urban adventure. Simple by today's standards, but easily portable into campaigns even today.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">D2, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa: Another module where the players can't simply rush in and kill everyone, lest they be absolutely torn to shreds by the incredibly tough and smart kuo-toa. This is also the first time, as I recall, that one can meet a god in a D&D module. Hope you and your sanity survive the experience!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">D3, Vault of the Drow: A much better Underdark crawl than D1, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, this is followed by the at-the-time mind-blowing reveal of the vault, the capital of the drow of Oerth, a crawl through an incredibly deadly urban capital where, in theory, the player characters might be able to walk openly and survive, plus a chance to raid Lolth's great temple (although the Elder Elemental God, not Lolth, was the real enemy in this series, meaning the player characters have no real reason to take on Lolth's temple other than sheer murderhoboness). Vastly better than Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, and still the standard that other big Underdark adventures are chasing today. (There's a similar set-piece in Kobold Press' Empire of the Ghouls, which is even scarier than Vault of the Drow, if you can believe it. The only way Midgard can survive is if the ghouls never truly work together.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">EX1 and EX2, Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror: Probably the best funhouse dungeons of the TSR era, giving structure and whimsy to a format that often just didn't hang together well otherwise. (And the Tim Truman art is <em>fantastic</em>.) Way more classic AD&D content debuted in these two modules than you'd expect.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I1, Dwellers of the Forbidden City: Like a lot of AD&D adventures, this was underwritten, and again feels very much like a Conan pastiche, but jam-packed with classic monsters and a great setting in which groups could set their own adventures.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I6, Ravenloft: A classic for a reason, although tonally, it still sometimes slid into early D&D silliness. (Strahd's crypts are not improved by pun names. Let the players provide the jokes, folks.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">L1, The Secret of Bone Hill: Another great level 1 starting adventure and location. Unfortunately, this was too similar to T1, below, so it didn't really have a niche to fill, and is often forgotten. It's also a great example of simple reskinning or adding abilities to common monsters to make something new, which was a valuable lesson for me as a DM.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">N1, Against the Cult of the Reptile God: Man, they got a lot of mileage out of Conan. The second best first level adventure of all time, setting a murder mystery in what just looks like an ordinary starting area like we got in T1 and L1.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">T1, The Village of Hommlet. Gygax's best adventure, presenting a great starting town in exhaustive detail and a fantastic low level dungeon.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">U1, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh: Scooby Doo does D&D, with Britishness so thick that you expect this module to serve you tea. Far better than the rest of the series, but also far better than nearly everything else TSR published.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">UK1, Beyond the Crystal Cave: A Shakespearean "return the lovers lost in Faerie" adventure where combat is unavoidable (it is AD&D, after all), but where it's otherwise not the preferred solution. Atmospheric and shockingly modern, despite being published 40 years ago this year.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">X2, Castle Amber: A funhouse module with a (somewhat) logical reason behind it: It's a castle full of high-level magic-users who have been driven mad. Again, you will have to be smart to survive and not be too quick to go for your swords (that doddering old man is literally one of the most powerful magic-users on the planet), but there are tons of great set pieces -- including a number from literary classics -- cool new monsters, an alternate world and a castle siege by a golem as tall as Castle Amber itself.</li> </ul><p>I missed the Return To era, but otherwise, if I left your favorite off, it's for a reason. I will be happy to fight you behind the dumpsters after school. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p><strong>WotC era </strong>(note that I skipped 4E after reading the Players Handbook and one terrible adventure and left for Castles & Crusades; I also have been running a long 3E->C&C->5E campaign set in and around Ptolus and have had little interest in picking up 99% of WotC adventures as a result)</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Sunless Citadel: From a map-making perspective, it's basically just a tube, which is unforgivably dumb outside of an MMO (and it annoys me there, too), but the theme park ride does take new players through the concept of rival groups of inhabitants inside a dungeon and introduces an NPC for the ages in Meepo.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lost Mine of Phandelver: Without a doubt the greatest D&D-branded starter adventure of all time. Players start with a simple (but still potentially deadly) dungeon, arrive in a starting town with adventures in town and through a bounty board system, and eventually face a dragon. I am nervous and excited to see how this is expanded to a hardcover book length adventure this year.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">(I own and intend to run Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Journeys through the Radiant Citadel this year, but haven't done so yet, and don't want to comment on them until I do. I will say what I see of them doesn't dissuade me. I also own Strixhaven, which I bought as a setting and am irritated that it turns out to be a short adventure path with gazetteer elements embedded in it. I doubt I will run it as intended ever, but will just continue to use it as a wizard school setting as needed.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DCC 11, The Dragonfiend Pact: This was a $1 promo adventure by Goodman Games and is one of the best adventures I've ever run. It's an old idea -- the player characters get shrunken down and have to contend with regular size nuisances that are now enormous -- but executed incredibly well. Easy to adapt to any edition of the game and I cannot recommend it highly enough.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DCC 24, Legend of the Ripper: It starts off as a Jack the Ripper adventure (with a D&D twist) and turns into an interesting dungeon crawl. Easily adaptable to any grimy fantasy city setting with a grimier waterfront. I ran this here on ENWorld years ago, setting it in Ptolus.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">DCC 31, The Transmuter's Last Touch: The other $1 promo adventure by Goodman Games. Not quite as good as The Dragonfiend Pact, as it's essentially a puzzle dungeon full of magically altered kobolds (I turned them into ratmen for the Ptolus version of it I ran on ENWorld back in the day), but this is another adventure with exceptionally good bones that I encourage DMs to pick up and adapt.</li> </ul></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 8939982, member: 11760"] Here are my lists, in no particular order within each subsection. [B]TSR era[/B] (we played BD&D and AD&D adventures interchangeably, while using AD&D as our ruleset, which I suspect was incredibly common at the time): [LIST] [*]A2, Secrets of the Slavers Stockade: The best of the A series, player characters face a citadel full of smart, engaged, cooperative enemies. The group cannot hack their way through the stockade if they want to be successful, and so must use smart, real world tactics to get in, achieve their objective, and get out alive. Also the first appearance of several iconic monsters, most notably the cloaker. [*]B1, In Search of the Unknown: The "fill in your own monsters" system seems silly today -- and was pretty ill-informed even at the time -- but Mike Carr's energy instead went into creating some of the most iconic room designs of all time. Even if you've never played B1, you've played remixed elements of it, as its DNA is in everything that came afterwards, even if writers were just reacting against it. [*]B2, Keep on the Borderlands: It still has some weird decisions (none of the NPCs in the titular keep are named because of reasons, although NPCs out in the world are) and the Caves of Chaos are a little silly in design, but in a lot of ways, they prefigure what computer RPGs would look like for years and, played smart, they taught a lot of great lessons to early D&D players. (The first encounter outside the kobold cave has more than a dozen kobold archers in a tree -- yeah, you can get easily TPKed by the first encounter at the theoretically easiest cave. You gotta play smart!) The borderlands around the keep and the cave get short shrift a lot of times, but they're a surprisingly good wilderness area, even today. [*]B4, The Lost City: It owes more than a little to REH's Red Nails, but it's a great early megadungeon featuring rival groups that players will have to work with at least some of, since otherwise, they'll get slaughtered pretty quickly. Much of the city is underwritten, unfortunately, but the bones are very, very good. Anyone wanting to run a megadungeon campaign could do a lot worse than to drop their player characters in the desert outside this pyramid. [*]B6, The Veiled Society: The first great urban adventure. Simple by today's standards, but easily portable into campaigns even today. [*]D2, Shrine of the Kuo-Toa: Another module where the players can't simply rush in and kill everyone, lest they be absolutely torn to shreds by the incredibly tough and smart kuo-toa. This is also the first time, as I recall, that one can meet a god in a D&D module. Hope you and your sanity survive the experience! [*]D3, Vault of the Drow: A much better Underdark crawl than D1, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, this is followed by the at-the-time mind-blowing reveal of the vault, the capital of the drow of Oerth, a crawl through an incredibly deadly urban capital where, in theory, the player characters might be able to walk openly and survive, plus a chance to raid Lolth's great temple (although the Elder Elemental God, not Lolth, was the real enemy in this series, meaning the player characters have no real reason to take on Lolth's temple other than sheer murderhoboness). Vastly better than Q1, Queen of the Demonweb Pits, and still the standard that other big Underdark adventures are chasing today. (There's a similar set-piece in Kobold Press' Empire of the Ghouls, which is even scarier than Vault of the Drow, if you can believe it. The only way Midgard can survive is if the ghouls never truly work together.) [*]EX1 and EX2, Dungeonland and The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror: Probably the best funhouse dungeons of the TSR era, giving structure and whimsy to a format that often just didn't hang together well otherwise. (And the Tim Truman art is [I]fantastic[/I].) Way more classic AD&D content debuted in these two modules than you'd expect. [*]I1, Dwellers of the Forbidden City: Like a lot of AD&D adventures, this was underwritten, and again feels very much like a Conan pastiche, but jam-packed with classic monsters and a great setting in which groups could set their own adventures. [*]I6, Ravenloft: A classic for a reason, although tonally, it still sometimes slid into early D&D silliness. (Strahd's crypts are not improved by pun names. Let the players provide the jokes, folks.) [*]L1, The Secret of Bone Hill: Another great level 1 starting adventure and location. Unfortunately, this was too similar to T1, below, so it didn't really have a niche to fill, and is often forgotten. It's also a great example of simple reskinning or adding abilities to common monsters to make something new, which was a valuable lesson for me as a DM. [*]N1, Against the Cult of the Reptile God: Man, they got a lot of mileage out of Conan. The second best first level adventure of all time, setting a murder mystery in what just looks like an ordinary starting area like we got in T1 and L1. [*]T1, The Village of Hommlet. Gygax's best adventure, presenting a great starting town in exhaustive detail and a fantastic low level dungeon. [*]U1, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh: Scooby Doo does D&D, with Britishness so thick that you expect this module to serve you tea. Far better than the rest of the series, but also far better than nearly everything else TSR published. [*]UK1, Beyond the Crystal Cave: A Shakespearean "return the lovers lost in Faerie" adventure where combat is unavoidable (it is AD&D, after all), but where it's otherwise not the preferred solution. Atmospheric and shockingly modern, despite being published 40 years ago this year. [*]X2, Castle Amber: A funhouse module with a (somewhat) logical reason behind it: It's a castle full of high-level magic-users who have been driven mad. Again, you will have to be smart to survive and not be too quick to go for your swords (that doddering old man is literally one of the most powerful magic-users on the planet), but there are tons of great set pieces -- including a number from literary classics -- cool new monsters, an alternate world and a castle siege by a golem as tall as Castle Amber itself. [/LIST] I missed the Return To era, but otherwise, if I left your favorite off, it's for a reason. I will be happy to fight you behind the dumpsters after school. ;) [B]WotC era [/B](note that I skipped 4E after reading the Players Handbook and one terrible adventure and left for Castles & Crusades; I also have been running a long 3E->C&C->5E campaign set in and around Ptolus and have had little interest in picking up 99% of WotC adventures as a result) [LIST] [*]The Sunless Citadel: From a map-making perspective, it's basically just a tube, which is unforgivably dumb outside of an MMO (and it annoys me there, too), but the theme park ride does take new players through the concept of rival groups of inhabitants inside a dungeon and introduces an NPC for the ages in Meepo. [*]Lost Mine of Phandelver: Without a doubt the greatest D&D-branded starter adventure of all time. Players start with a simple (but still potentially deadly) dungeon, arrive in a starting town with adventures in town and through a bounty board system, and eventually face a dragon. I am nervous and excited to see how this is expanded to a hardcover book length adventure this year. [*](I own and intend to run Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Journeys through the Radiant Citadel this year, but haven't done so yet, and don't want to comment on them until I do. I will say what I see of them doesn't dissuade me. I also own Strixhaven, which I bought as a setting and am irritated that it turns out to be a short adventure path with gazetteer elements embedded in it. I doubt I will run it as intended ever, but will just continue to use it as a wizard school setting as needed.) [*]DCC 11, The Dragonfiend Pact: This was a $1 promo adventure by Goodman Games and is one of the best adventures I've ever run. It's an old idea -- the player characters get shrunken down and have to contend with regular size nuisances that are now enormous -- but executed incredibly well. Easy to adapt to any edition of the game and I cannot recommend it highly enough. [*]DCC 24, Legend of the Ripper: It starts off as a Jack the Ripper adventure (with a D&D twist) and turns into an interesting dungeon crawl. Easily adaptable to any grimy fantasy city setting with a grimier waterfront. I ran this here on ENWorld years ago, setting it in Ptolus. [*]DCC 31, The Transmuter's Last Touch: The other $1 promo adventure by Goodman Games. Not quite as good as The Dragonfiend Pact, as it's essentially a puzzle dungeon full of magically altered kobolds (I turned them into ratmen for the Ptolus version of it I ran on ENWorld back in the day), but this is another adventure with exceptionally good bones that I encourage DMs to pick up and adapt. [/LIST] [/QUOTE]
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