POLL: Greatest "Golden Era" Module for D&D.

[lowkey13]

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[lowkey13]

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[Lanefan]

We agree on 2 of 4: Lost Temple of Tharizdun and Castle Amber.

My other two are Keep on the Borderlands (just because) and G-1 Hill Giant Steading because bashing giants is just so much fun.

If Rahasia (B7) was on there it'd get a vote but it came out just a bit too late.

 

[lowkey13]

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[atanakar]

C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness : Because we played this using the RPGA tournament format with a clock and the pre-gen characters. It was memorable.

L1 The Secret of Bone Hill: I bought it because of the very sexy magic-user on the cover. Turned out to be a descent adventure with a city. I used that city as a base for my first real home-brew campaign. Also the start of the L series. Assassins Knot is also a favorite.

S3 Expedition to Barrier Peak: Weird techno-pulp adventure at its best.

U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh: Because it didn't involve a mega-dungeon crawl and was an intrigue-investigation format. Very novel for the time.

U2 Danger at Dunwater : Because the problem can be resolved with negotiation instead of the usual hack & slash approach. Very glad U1 an U2 were reprinted in Ghost of Saltmarsh book.

 

[lowkey13]

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[touc]

D3: Vault of the Drow. Possibly Gygax's masterpiece, we get drow for the first time with some amazing descriptions of pure evil mixed with cold beauty (take a visit to the local torture parlors, etc.). Set the standard for a generation. Let this article sway you.

S1: Tomb of Horrors. Topping D&D's own list, I've run this in 2nd, 3rd, Pathfinder, and 5th edition. It's iconic and there's few gamers who don't know what it is. It broke all the norms, set the standard for a "thinking man's" dungeon, and took it up a notch for players who felt with all their gear and wiles they had conquered AD&D. Also made great use of visuals, a lost concept nowadays with word and page count.

T1: Village of Hommlet. Another Gygax gem, a model for introductory adventures leaving you wondering what secrets lie behind each door and cellar.

X1: Isle of Dread. First hexploration module. Set the standard for another generation. An ultimate sandbox of "here's your map, go forth" (and don't run into a T-Rex or King Kong).

C1: Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Superb dungeon writing with some of the most imaginative rooms, an inverse concept (drops you in the middle/bottom), and a mechanism to keep you moving (originally a tournament module). Plus, one of the first forays into something non-European, inspiring future products, along with excellent handouts.

 

[Count_Zero]

G1: Steading of the Hill Giant Chief - I did a blog post on this, and this is basically the tabletop RPG equivalent of a sandbox from the most recent Hitman game - you're dropped into this environment with an objective and all the tools in the adventure to accomplish that goal in a variety of scenarios - in a way that if you're playing with a group of players who are new to D&D, but (say) have played Hitman, they will be able to wrap their brain around how to approach this scenario with minimal effort.

X1: Isle of Dread - First Hexcrawl, and has been mentioned.

B2: Pool of Radiance - A generally well put together adventure and the first D&D adventure that I played.

L1: Secret of Bone Hill - Another early adventure that I played, and have strong nostalgia for.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A4: Dungeon of the Slave Lords. What happens when players start to rely on magic items and spells to get their way out of every challenge? This happens. Makes the players actually have to start thinking about different strategy.

B2: Not because it's iconic (although it perfectly represents what D&D is about: rumors and go kill monsters in a dungeon), but because it offered much more and often gets underrated. Everyone complains how it's just a dungeon crawl that makes no sense. I disagree. It's a sandbox. Lots of areas to explore. Interact with the keep NPCs (one adventure was almost entirely in the keep, as the players decided to try to take it over through subterfuge and politics). It showed how you can play the various tribes off each other in the caves. It taught DMs that the game was more than just a dungeon crawl, even if that was the meat of the text.

S2: White Plume Mountain: Full of traps and puzzles. Loved it.

T1 Village of Hommlet: probably the perfect starting point for a D&D town. Excellent base of operations. So much going on around it to tie into adventure hooks. Interesting NPCs for the DM to flesh out.

 

[lowkey13]

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