My vote is for B10: Night's Dark Terror.
It's a shockingly good adventure. I had purchased the collection B1-9:In Search of Adventure in 1987. Nine adventures for $15? Good deal for a 13 year-old! Also in 1987 I started buying the D&D Gazetteers and fell in love with the Known World. B10, published in 1986, however, was not something I purchased at the time. I didn't like the cover. I did eventually buy the $5 pdf (ebay copies are stupid expensive) two years ago.
It's not shown up on any "best of" lists that I'm aware of. At least, not on "best of" lists from magazines or websites. It has, on the other hand, gotten many positive comments from discussion forums like this one, which is why I was so eager to get it (as well as completing my Mystara line of products)
Many have, rightly, compared it to Lost Mines of Phandelver. It's an episodic adventure for low level characters. An AP for levels 1-5, if you will. The adventure, like LMoP also has some mini-adventures not related to the main plot, though they aren't as easily accessible. It took what was at the time a mostly blank slate of a country, Karameikos, and fleshed it out via module.
I've run it twice now and sucking the PCs into the slowly expanding plot (which I had tied into other external events to pique the PCs interest) is just so fun. Even my wife, who hates RPGs, said she "loved the story". The PCs always had a sense that their actions made a difference.
Sure, there is a bit of a railroad, but the players felt like they were heroes in a movie that were swept up in the adventure (like a good Star Wars movie, and my wife loves Star Wars).
I also had the PCs meet the plot hook NPC in their very first adventure as 0 XP level one PCs in the stereotypical "inn that adventurers hang out in to get adventuring ideas". They also met several other NPCs so it wasn't obvious that this guy was "Plot-Hook Man". They then rescued him in their second adventure, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (thankfully not underrated), and he innocently said he wanted to reward them and invited them back to his and his brother's farmstead (little did they know what was in store).
Oh... I almost forgot to add that the adventure is a fantastic bridge from the dungeon settings of Basic levels 1-3 and the wilderness settings of Expert levels 4+. For 5e, it fits wonderfully as a bridge between Local Heroes (levels 1-4) and beginning Heroes of the Realm (levels 5-10)
It's $5 for the pdf (no Print on Demand yet). Or you can get B1-12 for $29. Cheap!
Go now and buy it.
What's your most underrated D&D module?
It's a shockingly good adventure. I had purchased the collection B1-9:In Search of Adventure in 1987. Nine adventures for $15? Good deal for a 13 year-old! Also in 1987 I started buying the D&D Gazetteers and fell in love with the Known World. B10, published in 1986, however, was not something I purchased at the time. I didn't like the cover. I did eventually buy the $5 pdf (ebay copies are stupid expensive) two years ago.
It's not shown up on any "best of" lists that I'm aware of. At least, not on "best of" lists from magazines or websites. It has, on the other hand, gotten many positive comments from discussion forums like this one, which is why I was so eager to get it (as well as completing my Mystara line of products)
Many have, rightly, compared it to Lost Mines of Phandelver. It's an episodic adventure for low level characters. An AP for levels 1-5, if you will. The adventure, like LMoP also has some mini-adventures not related to the main plot, though they aren't as easily accessible. It took what was at the time a mostly blank slate of a country, Karameikos, and fleshed it out via module.
I've run it twice now and sucking the PCs into the slowly expanding plot (which I had tied into other external events to pique the PCs interest) is just so fun. Even my wife, who hates RPGs, said she "loved the story". The PCs always had a sense that their actions made a difference.
Sure, there is a bit of a railroad, but the players felt like they were heroes in a movie that were swept up in the adventure (like a good Star Wars movie, and my wife loves Star Wars).
I also had the PCs meet the plot hook NPC in their very first adventure as 0 XP level one PCs in the stereotypical "inn that adventurers hang out in to get adventuring ideas". They also met several other NPCs so it wasn't obvious that this guy was "Plot-Hook Man". They then rescued him in their second adventure, N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (thankfully not underrated), and he innocently said he wanted to reward them and invited them back to his and his brother's farmstead (little did they know what was in store).
Oh... I almost forgot to add that the adventure is a fantastic bridge from the dungeon settings of Basic levels 1-3 and the wilderness settings of Expert levels 4+. For 5e, it fits wonderfully as a bridge between Local Heroes (levels 1-4) and beginning Heroes of the Realm (levels 5-10)
It's $5 for the pdf (no Print on Demand yet). Or you can get B1-12 for $29. Cheap!
Go now and buy it.
What's your most underrated D&D module?
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