Rod of Seven Parts - your experiences?

[Erik Mona]

I thought this one had great potential but was ultimately an unexciting let-down that wasn't even worth running for my players. The "spyder fiends" were particularly lame, one-dimensional, and unfortunately named. Some of the material on the Vaati was interesting, but all in all I felt the product skimmed over the truly interesting bits and the adventure parts were very mundane. I have great reverence for the source material and strong respect for the creatives involved, but this one was a stillbirth, imho.

--Erik

 

[Terath Ninir]

I started running that adventure before I read the whole thing. I read the first two sections, each one before the sessions where I ran it. I liked them well enough.

Then I read through the rest. I read the backstory. I read through it again to make sure I read what I thought I had. I boxed everything up, went to the local used book store, and got the stupid thing out of my life.

I've read stupider backstories, but that one particularly grated on my nerves. Lame.

 

[Kafkonia]

I've read stupider backstories, but that one particularly grated on my nerves. Lame.

For those not in the know, what was the backstory?

 

[Atavar]

I ran the whole thing for my players several years back. We had a great time overall.

I converted it, though, for a Planescape campaign. Instead of the pieces being scattered across a world, they were scattered across the planes. The giant wedding, for example, took place somewhere on Ysgard.

There were two very memorable parts for me. The first was the climax of the final battle with Miska. Of five characters, three were dead, one was dying, and the last was about to go down. He stabbed Miska with the Rod...and the Rod made its saving throw! It didn't shatter! It actually killed Miska! That was probably the best final battle I've ever experienced.

The second was the very end of the module, where the party is celebrated and rewarded by the Wind Dukes. The Rod Bearer turned over the Rod to the Dukes and immediately went insane and tried to kill everyone. The party quickly subdued him. The Wind Dukes treated him and informed the party that the Rod had been keeping him lawful and sane, countering the effects of a deity-level "seed of chaos and evil" in his soul (which he happened to have acquired from Orcus/Tenebrous during the course of "Dead Gods"). The Wind Dukes successfully sealed off that seed for now, restoring his original LN alignment, but they warned that the seal would slowly wear away over time unless the party could find a way to safely remove the seed, which was beyond the Wind Dukes' power.

I know, that wasn't in the module, but I thought it was pretty cool anyway.

Later,

Atavar

 

[BOZ]

yeah, "spyder-fiend" was lame, and the creatures never really inspired me. however, the backstory of ancient days provided a common link between FC1 and a couple of articles in Dragon mag...

 

[Prince Atom]

I just saw this for sale at the local used-book store. I flipped through it for five or so minutes, but I didn't see anything that grabbed me. I guess I must have missed the whole "giant wedding" part [Yoink!].

I considered getting it, but the last game I ran was an adaptation of "Against the Giants," the 25th anniversary edition, and that fell through before we'd even got started (stupid me, spending time leveling up with non-giant-oriented adventures before getting to the meat of it), and that's still got me down. Besides, I also have RttToEE that I haven't run.

TWK

 

[Mark Hope]

I ran this as part of my homebrew and changed huge swathes of the published adventure - actually, reading the responses above reminded me that I changed much, much more than I had originally intended (not least that the eponymous rod became a shattered torc). I ditched Miska and the spydarr-feendz in their entirety, and made the Queen of Chaos a sort of subplot (a forgotten goddess trying to claw her way back into the Planes).

Overall, it was fun - but (as with Dragon Mountain) only once I had gutted it and reanimated its corpse in service to the needs of my own campaign. I made the aboleth a refugee from Great Shaboath (destroyed at the end of Night Below), and I kept the ruined temple. I kept the giant wedding, but my PCs lured the giants out into the open and then slaughtered them in a highly embarrassing fashion, before laughing derisively and sauntering off in search of "something more challenging" .

I loved the AD&D lore that oozed from the adventure, and enjoyed mapping this to my homebrew, but felt that many of the adventure's components didn't fit my needs (or were just lame - Miska, I'm looking at you). Some interesting ideas here, mind you. One criticism that I'd mention is a weakness that (in my humble opinion) the set shares with both Night Below and Dragon Mountain - namely that there are too many introductory adventures that lead into the main plot. It's not as bad as Night Below (where almost a third of the set isn't really below anything), but I'd have preferred these mega-boxed sets to have cut to the chase a little sooner. More meat, less croutons! Maybe that's a flaw of the 2e design mentality, that there needs to be a believable narrative set-up before you enter "the dungeon". It can work and has its place, but I think that it was overdone. Neither 1e or 3e seem to suffer from this problem (which may, at the end of the day, just be my personal taste, and not really a problem at all).

 

[Pants]

yeah, "spyder-fiend" was lame, and the creatures never really inspired me.

I really liked the spyder-fiends.

I thought that they filled an interesting thematic niche (similar to the dragonspawn but, 1000x better and more flavorful) in the D&D cosmology, despite their somewhat dubious name.

 

[Erik Mona]

yeah, "spyder-fiend" was lame, and the creatures never really inspired me. however, the backstory of ancient days provided a common link between FC1 and a couple of articles in Dragon mag...

Well, yes. I am particularly fond of taking obscure and/or disappointing elements at the periphery of D&D continuity and making them cooler. Guilty.

--Erik

 

[BOZ]

I really liked the spyder-fiends.

I thought that they filled an interesting thematic niche (similar to the dragonspawn but, 1000x better and more flavorful) in the D&D cosmology, despite their somewhat dubious name.

i don't have anything against them. i just don't care about them, personally. if people want to use them, or if wotc/paizo decides to update them at some point, i won't complain. i just don't really care.