Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure - your experiences?

[-=Xar=-]

Never played the original, but I am currently running my group through the 3rd edition remake from Dungeon. It rocks. Really brings back that 1st edition deathtrap-dungeon-feeling. It is incredibly lethal, even for my munched-out 15th level party, but the rewards are awesome. There are what, 5-6 artifacts hidden in the module? Draws in the players, while they know that every mistake can be fatal.
And then there are all the customised monsters, just love them, especially the huge iron golem. Too bad it got ripped appart in 3 rounds, the party kept tripping(!) it. Huge combats when the party tries to kill off entire dungeon levels by staging all-out ambushes in the twisting corridors.
The backstory isn't that good, but I have added links to my own campaign. Role-playing? It is meant to be H&S, but there were occasions when the party tried to talk first, kill later.
To sum it up, it is a great high-level dungeon crawl that brings back some of the lost feel of 1st edition. Has been a huge inspiration for me in designing evocative, suprising and especially deadly dungeons...

 

[T. Foster]

This has always been one of my favorite modules, but my only experience playing it was sadly anticlimactic. It was actually the last ever D&D game with my old group, c. 1994. We'd been playing other rpgs for several years (after dropping D&D shortly after 2E was released) but for whatever reason (perhaps I talked them into it? I no longer remember...) we got feeling nostalgic and decided to play D&D again as a one-shot, strictly 1st edition pre-UA rules, those of us who had them using our old out-of-retirement high-level characters, a couple folks who were new to the group and had never played D&D before (!) rolled up new high-level characters on the spot.

Unfortunately, all this nostalgic good-will didn't translate into a very fun session. The players had all grown accustomed to a more roleplaying- and storytelling-oriented style of play (our most recent games before this had been with Amber and Pendragon), their attention waned with the "dungeon-crawling" problem-solving style of the module, and there was a lot of condescension and "why did we ever play this way?" talk. They spent a long time RPing with Arley the Weaver, wasted some time at the pool with the goblet, had a brief run-in with the Terrible Iron Golem, fled the scene, and showed no particular desire to return. They never even discovered the second or third levels and I never played D&D with those guys again (RuneQuest became our fantasy rpg of choice until the group finally broke-up when a quorum of us graduated from college in 1997).

But oh well, it was their loss. I still think this is one of the all-time great modules!

 

[JohnBiles]

I ran this with the pre-gens; the party walked the ragged edge of death a lot but we had a ton of fun; being able to be famous figures from game history was cool and the place was full of weird stuff. The golem was a real nightmare as Bigby and Mordy couldn't do much to it at all.

 

[grodog]

This was my favorite Rob Kuntz module BITD (and is at worst #2; I haven't decided for sure if Bottle City eclipsed it or not), and I like the expansions into Maure Castle itself in Dungeons 112, 124, and 139. If you're a fan, see also the MC expansion materials on the PPP site @ Maure Continues! and in Oerth Journal 23 @ Oerth Journal - Issue 23 (as well as the RJK interview in OJ 14 @ Oerth Journal - Issue 14).

The Maure Castle forum on Paizo and the two at PPP (Maure Castle and Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure) still have dedicated (though sporadic) discussions.