Opinions on Which Mega-Module to Run

[Herpes Cineplex]

Banewarrens is nifty, easily customizable (our GM rewrote some factions and some backstory and stuck it into the Scarred Lands, and if he hadn't told us he did it I don't think any of us would have noticed), and has a lot of interesting things in it. We had a blast with this one, and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.

RttToEE is a much more standard dungeon crawl, and claims more than its share of PC deaths. But I hear good things about it, in an old-school "total party kill" kind of way, so if that sounds more appealing you may want to consider it. Also, lots of people have apparently played it (just check the Story Hour forum) and enjoyed it, so that has to be worth something.

Rappan Athuk, from the little we played of it (most of the first level and a bit of the second), is a total meat grinder. I'm not even sure that there's any kind of story behind the dungeon crawl itself, because in many ways it doesn't really matter if it does or not. Like Undermountain, it's a megadungeon full of things that may or may not be capable of carving your entire party into tiny wet chunks, and most of them are at least willing to give it a good, solid try. If you're looking for a high-lethality, high-challenge dungeon crawl, this could be right up your alley.

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if you need more plot or less carnage, you may want to give it a miss
ryan

 

[trollwad]

First, it is crater ridge mines not copper ridge.

Second, it depends on the type of party/dm you have. IMHO, if you love the spirit of 3.5e (i.e. no real played history, a ton of options, heavy game) then maybe you'll like Banewarrens. Personally, I thought it was kinda an interesting idea but the execution was atrocious, the villains were silly, etc. Rapan Athak is ok but it doesnt have much depth. RToEE is pretty good if you understand the history of Greyhawk however, you might have to edit out about one-third of the encounters -- in a few places it seems like Monte was simply trying to showcase every monster in the MM. However, overall despite the fact that it is too combat crunch heavy, it is a pretty good module.

Personally, my favorite megamodule series is the three part Saltmarsh series, enworld has 3.0 conversions and it should take you from 1st to 5th level. If you really want a supermodule series to get you to level 10, try using the town of restenford in place of the town of saltmarsh and then use those three modules as well (bone hill, assasin's knot, deep dwarven delve). If you want something to do at the higher levels add the Sahuagin-based Sea of Blood module. Following that, you could add either the original slavers series or else just the 2e Slavers follow-up (which I thought was very good). Either way, wIth a tad of work by you, voila, your pcs can go from 1-10 lvl!

What I like more about this series is that it has a wonderful mix of melee, investigation, underwater exploration, negotiation, problem solving, etc.