Questions about I12 - the Egg of the Phoenix

[Cyronax]

I came across this gem in a used book store recently, and I was wondering what sort of experiences other gamers have had with this adventure. Its hard to say how good an adventure is at first glance (and before the evitable 3rd edition conversion), but why is such a big adventure not better known? Was it just the time it came out, or was it just a stinker?

Also has anyone done any conversions of this adventure or its artifacts? At first glance, the Egg of the Phoenix seems like it could be on the high end of power when compared to most of the artifacts in the DMG.

Thanks,
C.I.D.

PS - I am aware that the setting is based on Aquaria (an unofficial but near-canonical island continent to the far east of the World of Greyhawk's Great Kingdom), but that's not the main thrust of this thread. If anyone has some good Aquaria info though, I'd love to read it.

 

[Garnfellow]

PS - I am aware that the setting is based on Aquaria (an unofficial but near-canonical island continent to the far east of the World of Greyhawk's Great Kingdom), but that's not the main thrust of this thread. If anyone has some good Aquaria info though, I'd love to read it.

Frank Mentzer used to run an online Aquaria campaign on AOL, and had posted a ton of campaign info, which made for a pretty interesting read. This was about 10 years ago, and I've got no idea whether or not that material is still on the AOL network.

The old TSR AOL forums were, in the day, one of the best online communities around. The Greyhawk forums, which featured the posts of one Iquander (Erik Mona) really opened my eyes to a setting I had written off as a silly mish-mash. I wonder if any of that goodness was preserved for posterity?

 

[Maniac]

I came across this gem in a used book store recently, and I was wondering what sort of experiences other gamers have had with this adventure. Its hard to say how good an adventure is at first glance (and before the evitable 3rd edition conversion), but why is such a big adventure not better known? Was it just the time it came out, or was it just a stinker?

I really liked the adventure myself. I think it came out right before 2nd edition so that might have caused it to be lesser known.

It was originally 4 separate tournament modules R1-4. Backstory was added to I12 to link it all together. Since the 4 advuentures really are not linked thematically it ends up being a kind of mish mash.

I did like the focus on illusions in the first section and I thought the time critical aspect of the second part worked well too.

M.

 

[Cyronax]

Frank Mentzer used to run an online Aquaria campaign on AOL, and had posted a ton of campaign info, which made for a pretty interesting read. This was about 10 years ago, and I've got no idea whether or not that material is still on the AOL network.

The old TSR AOL forums were, in the day, one of the best online communities around. The Greyhawk forums, which featured the posts of one Iquander (Erik Mona) really opened my eyes to a setting I had written off as a silly mish-mash. I wonder if any of that goodness was preserved for posterity?

I also hung around the old GH forums on AOL. I posted as GeoMoLe and actually wrote up an alternate Slave Lords organization that got kudos from people like Erik. It was enough to make my then-high school self switch permanently to Greyhawk as the only published world I'd DM from (well except for Planescape).

 

[grodog]

Frank Mentzer's materials are available on his online forum, which I can't find a link to at the moment (I'm on vacation and away from my bookmarks). I know that he has a lot of the old Aquaria AOL info available there. If you are curious about the link, shoot me an email reminder with a link to this thread, and I'll post the URL when I'm back online again from home.

A lot of the Greyhawk goodness from the AOL folders has been preserved for posterity at Canonfire! at the Best of AOL downloads page at http://www.canonfire.com/htmlnew/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=3

If you see anything of note missing and have copies of it, please contact one of the site admins and we'll happily arrange to host it

 

[kuje31]

Radoc (an NPC from that module) also appeared in the Forgotton Realms, since the co-author of that module also wrote The Savage Frontier for FR. And in The North box set it seems he managed to return home.... Or at least he left FR.

 

[David Howery]

there are four very loosely connected adventures in the book, IIRC. The first two are kinda blah, but the third one (IIRC) involves some miniworld dominated by undead, and it's pretty good. If you're going to run them, break up the adventures and come up with completely different backgrounds for them, rather than keeping the original shoddy connections....

 

[D'karr]

PS - I am aware that the setting is based on Aquaria (an unofficial but near-canonical island continent to the far east of the World of Greyhawk's Great Kingdom), but that's not the main thrust of this thread. If anyone has some good Aquaria info though, I'd love to read it.

The following link will get you to the AOL groups for Frank Mentzer...

Mentzeria


Hope that helps.

 

[diaglo]

I also hung around the old GH forums on AOL.

didn't we all.

 

[Garnfellow]

there are four very loosely connected adventures in the book, IIRC. The first two are kinda blah, but the third one (IIRC) involves some miniworld dominated by undead, and it's pretty good. If you're going to run them, break up the adventures and come up with completely different backgrounds for them, rather than keeping the original shoddy connections....

The shoddy connections aren't actually in the original RPGA modules. My understanding is that Mentzer had nothing to do with preparing the supermodule version of Egg of the Phoenix; Paul Jacquays did the editing, adding the connective pieces and some apocryphal twists to the plotline.