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In Search of the Unknown - your experiences?
- Thread starter Quasqueton
- Start date
Savage Wombat
Hero
I played in it once - my brother had just gotten AD&D for Christmas. I distinctly recall that he thought the suggested monsters were "boring", and so our first level characters ran into a beholder AND a gas spore in the same room.
This is the same brother that later ran my first level characters through the Tomb of Horrors.
This is the same brother that later ran my first level characters through the Tomb of Horrors.
Vymair
First Post
I played it first and then later ran it as a DM. I remember those paired teleporting rooms and the false stairs as destroying the accuracy of player maps. I lost my first character to the pool room when I went into the acid pool after the treasure on the bottom.
I actually used part of the map for an early 3.0 adventure and used the rumor charts. A cave-in had destroyed most of the first level, but I remember the eyes of my long-time players lighting up when the recognized the magic stone found on the 2nd level and realized the dungeon they were in....
I actually used part of the map for an early 3.0 adventure and used the rumor charts. A cave-in had destroyed most of the first level, but I remember the eyes of my long-time players lighting up when the recognized the magic stone found on the 2nd level and realized the dungeon they were in....
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diaglo
Adventurer
one of my all time favorite published modules.
i'm getting ready to run it yet again. along with its sister module B2 Keep on the Borderlands.
OD&D(1974) style of course. it was never Basic for me.
btw, i have the older cover version of B1. never bought the brown cover one until many years later.
my B1 came with the Holmes edition. i chunk most of those rules tho. since we were playing real D&D.
i'm getting ready to run it yet again. along with its sister module B2 Keep on the Borderlands.
OD&D(1974) style of course. it was never Basic for me.
btw, i have the older cover version of B1. never bought the brown cover one until many years later.
my B1 came with the Holmes edition. i chunk most of those rules tho. since we were playing real D&D.
Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
This is the first module I ever owned and ran as a DM. I am in the middle of DMing this again, right now. My story hour in my sig, is not up to this point now, but it will be in the next month or two. I've updated traps and encounters to 3.5, and modified many of the rooms. A Kobold Tribe has taken over much of the first and second levels. The pool room is converted to a room that is alive, and used as a creche for new breeds of Kobolds. Much of the original Dungeon is intact, and some of the encounters were modified and placed as well.
My copy had 2 pages missing, and the cover with maps. I copied the pages from a friend's edition, and had the map from a B1-9 In Search of Adventure book I have.
I'm having fun re-living the old module, and the party is having fun kicking Kobold tail.
GW
My copy had 2 pages missing, and the cover with maps. I copied the pages from a friend's edition, and had the map from a B1-9 In Search of Adventure book I have.
I'm having fun re-living the old module, and the party is having fun kicking Kobold tail.
GW
kengar
First Post
diaglo said:
The version we played was the same (monochromatic that came with Holmes). I bought the brown cover a year or so ago in a used book store to flesh out my B/X collection because I never owned the module myself (it -along with the Holmes book- was/is my brother's).
B1 was the first module I ever played in. Initally, in our games we just walked down 10' wide halls opening doors and fighting monsters/grabbing loot until everyone was dead or it was time for follks to go home. Eventually my brother read through the mod and filled the rooms with critters and ran it for us. After "Unknown", our DM started really getting creative with more coherent homebrew dungeons. I've always felt sort of deprived in a weird way because my brother was (and is) such a creative DM, we rarely played modules after that so there are a lot I've never played in or run or know the slightest thing about.
I don't know that I would have switched to a "mostly module" group, in fact I know I wouldn't; but I still find myself reading threads and saying to myself "Module X10?? How many X's were there??"
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I ran this module twice, never actually played it.
The first time was back in the early 1980s. I dutifully stuffed the dungeon with monsters almost at random. There were tribes of orcs living next to ogres, fire beetles stalking the same halls as kobolds. I like to think of it as a time when the monsters of the world got along in peace and harmony, united by their desire to eat adventurers.
The players hacked their way through it, with the chamber of pools and the wizard's lab providing all sorts of fun. I think the party's NPCs served as taste test subjects for the pools and test tubes - at least one NPC was forced to eat ancient, dried dung.
(Hey, we were 10. It was funny at the time. This was also back when the party's idea of checking for traps was to throw the NPC thief into a room, close the door, and listen intently for explosions or screams.)
The big innovation this module gave us was in the stat boosting pools (or some other contraption) on the second level. I had recently bought Deities and Demigods, and in an effort to test out the rules for stats over 18 I allowed the players to boost their stats to ungodly levels. We ended up with a few 21s.
After that, I remember buying The Fogotten Temple of Tharizdun, which also had a stat boosting doohickey. The players were pretty eager to sack the temple, swear undying allegiance to Tharizdun, and get that +1 bonus to Strength, Con, or whatever, but we ended up ditching the campaign when we figured out that we were being total munchkins. Our next campaigns were much more normal.
The second time was shortly after 3e came out. I stocked it with monsters again, though this time I had a plot and reasonably coherent encounters. The basic premise was that the PCs find a treasure map that leads to Quasqueton. Unfortunately, so do about 5 other groups of monsters, explorers, and treasure hunters. After battling the orcs who had set up camp in the halls, the PCs had to deal with a massive influx of country bumpkins eager to make a quick buck by looting the place. There was a dwarf demolition team blowing holes in random walls (and unleashing all sorts of nasties - I decided the Zelligar had a thing for summoning demons and trapping them in pentagrams for later use; of course, the dwarves kept accidentally blowing the pentagrams apart) and the halfling con artists who set up all sorts of fake, cheap treasures and sold maps leading to them. It was a blast.
The first time was back in the early 1980s. I dutifully stuffed the dungeon with monsters almost at random. There were tribes of orcs living next to ogres, fire beetles stalking the same halls as kobolds. I like to think of it as a time when the monsters of the world got along in peace and harmony, united by their desire to eat adventurers.
The players hacked their way through it, with the chamber of pools and the wizard's lab providing all sorts of fun. I think the party's NPCs served as taste test subjects for the pools and test tubes - at least one NPC was forced to eat ancient, dried dung.
(Hey, we were 10. It was funny at the time. This was also back when the party's idea of checking for traps was to throw the NPC thief into a room, close the door, and listen intently for explosions or screams.)
The big innovation this module gave us was in the stat boosting pools (or some other contraption) on the second level. I had recently bought Deities and Demigods, and in an effort to test out the rules for stats over 18 I allowed the players to boost their stats to ungodly levels. We ended up with a few 21s.
After that, I remember buying The Fogotten Temple of Tharizdun, which also had a stat boosting doohickey. The players were pretty eager to sack the temple, swear undying allegiance to Tharizdun, and get that +1 bonus to Strength, Con, or whatever, but we ended up ditching the campaign when we figured out that we were being total munchkins. Our next campaigns were much more normal.
The second time was shortly after 3e came out. I stocked it with monsters again, though this time I had a plot and reasonably coherent encounters. The basic premise was that the PCs find a treasure map that leads to Quasqueton. Unfortunately, so do about 5 other groups of monsters, explorers, and treasure hunters. After battling the orcs who had set up camp in the halls, the PCs had to deal with a massive influx of country bumpkins eager to make a quick buck by looting the place. There was a dwarf demolition team blowing holes in random walls (and unleashing all sorts of nasties - I decided the Zelligar had a thing for summoning demons and trapping them in pentagrams for later use; of course, the dwarves kept accidentally blowing the pentagrams apart) and the halfling con artists who set up all sorts of fake, cheap treasures and sold maps leading to them. It was a blast.
jasper
Rotten DM
I can believe I dm this. Just came from acarium and they have the old yellow green cover. All I remember is the random treasure and monster table.
Where I placed a t rex in a room (where how did he get in. It didn't matter. Ecology was something long hair hippies worried about).
Also remember sticking some treasure in a ring of cheese.
And my brother getting his version of Cpt Americas shield.
I don't have the yellow green module anymore and probably do not have any current version. This was one old school module I did have fun with. And one reason i wish they would not reissue modules with new covers.
Where I placed a t rex in a room (where how did he get in. It didn't matter. Ecology was something long hair hippies worried about).
Also remember sticking some treasure in a ring of cheese.
And my brother getting his version of Cpt Americas shield.
I don't have the yellow green module anymore and probably do not have any current version. This was one old school module I did have fun with. And one reason i wish they would not reissue modules with new covers.
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