[RPGNow] Question about AD&D 1st ed. adventures

[Michael Dean]

Wow! That was almost too easy. I had problems a couple of years ago trying to get downloads from rpgnow.com so I gave up trying (I am a techtard to the nth degree; I am pretty sure it wasn't Rpgnow's fault in any way). This weekend I gave it another try because I heard Adamant was going to do supplements for Atlas' New World Adventures, and the temptation is too great. $50 later I had downloaded the bulk of Adamant's Pulp Characters, as well as Martial Arts Mayhem II and Fists of Blood II and had to stop myself before I went too crazy.

Now that the fever is down a bit, I noticed that AD&D 1st edition adventures are available too. My question is whether anyone has ordered any of these and what did they think? I would love to get ahold of some of my old favorites but am interested in the quality and/or completeness of the downloads (in terms of maps and diagrams). A lot of the old adventures had many of their maps on the inside cover of the modules; are these reproduced well? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[diaglo]

the problems the old downloads had are still there. they just have an errata page to go to for some of the corrections for the 1edADnD stuff.

 

[tec-9-7]

I just don't think a download would really do if for me on old school modules - something about having that blue "copy-proof" map in hand that a download just doesn't capture...

 

[Voadam]

I have a couple and they are great, particularly for the price.

Quality varies on the scans, but generally things are complete including inside cover maps. Anything with a fold out map is problematic because they take more than one page to print and then piece them together.

 

[EricNoah]

Be sure to look for compilations (i.e. you can get the compiled GDQ series for the same price as each module individually).

They are a treat to re-read.

 

[Henry]

Be sure to look for compilations (i.e. you can get the compiled GDQ series for the same price as each module individually).

They are a treat to re-read.

WARNING, though! I've been told that The GDQ compilation is not content-wise the exact same thing as G1/G2/G3/D1/D2/Q1 separately. There were story elements and encounters placed & altered to make the modules fit together better (supposedly). Same thing with the "S" series and others. If you're on a budget though, the compilations are still worth it.

 

[johnsemlak]

WARNING, though! I've been told that The GDQ compilation is not content-wise the exact same thing as G1/G2/G3/D1/D2/Q1 separately. There were story elements and encounters placed & altered to make the modules fit together better (supposedly). Same thing with the "S" series and others. If you're on a budget though, the compilations are still worth it.

The compilatiosn were generally done really horribly and had a lot ediiting mistakes.

However, I do believe that GDQ did actually have everything that was in the original modules, though it did add a few things.

IMO B1-9 is not worth it--I bought the PDF and ended up acquiring all the modules I really wanted anyway. The compiliation doesn't include the Castellan Keep, the Lost City (it has the main adventure bit, but not the the rest), and it only included the maps from B1 for some reason.

 

[Michael Dean]

I just don't think a download would really do if for me on old school modules - something about having that blue "copy-proof" map in hand that a download just doesn't capture...

Yeah, I can relate to that. That's one of the reasons I wasn't sure that downloading would do it for me.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone.

 

[Staffan]

As for the quality of the scans, the scans of Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, and Dragonlance books are usually pretty good, with full OCRing. After those, they used a faster/cheaper system that mostly turned the pages into pictures of pages (but, I think, with the non-laid out OCR text behind the image so you could still search), which leads to (a) bigger file sizes and (b) lower quality. But FR, DS, AQ and DL should be good quality.
Edit: For examples of the scan quality of the old stuff, check the stuff at the top of http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads .