D&D General So which 2e adventures are beloved?

[humble minion]

Night below was the one that sprang to my mind too.

The Ravenloft adventures that didn’t involve PCs being casually killed in scripted encounters at the start and then converted into some sort of monster were often very good. I’m blanking a bit on the names, but the murder mystery with the moor hound was a nice one, the Lord Soth module with the memory mirrors, and the first adventure in the Grand Conjunction series, set in Souragne. Castles Forlorn was an amazing haunted house story, if complicated to run.

Al-Qadim did well with its adventures too. Ruined Kingdoms, Assassin Mountain, amd Caravans were all very good (there was an NPC who was a magic rug, who’d tell you secrets if you fed him poetry), but they were Al-Qadim so didn’t make much of a splash outside fans of that setting.

Edit: but there’s a difference between ‘good’ and ‘beloved’ and I’m probably conflating the two here.

 

[aco175]

I recall getting a lot of mileage out of the Dungeon adventures; Challenge of the Champions. I think there were 4-5 of them in total.

I also made a couple campaigns from Under Illefarn.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Night Below is amazing. So is Firestorm Peak.

Fallen God or something like that for Planescape is considered a top 10 adventure in a lot of circles.

I know it will sound biased but I’ve (as an DM) enjoyed those more than any 5E adventure so far. Except maybe a 3rd party adventure I ran made for 5E: Odyssey of the Dragonlords. A great Greek themed adventure.

 

[Velderan]

Dragon Mountain and a paladin in hell

Dragon Mountain was soooo good!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Dragon Mountain was soooo good!

that boxset was my first time joing a new group and up until then I had not played a prewritten adventure

 

[amethal]

Yeah, there was a lot of dross in the 2nd Ed adventure offering. There's also not the same "shared experience" as with 1st Ed adventures (or even 3e, 4e, and now 5e) - because so many of the adventures were tied to settings, and since the settings each had their niche groups of fans, it was hard for many to stand out.

"Night Below" and "Return to the Tomb of Horrors" seem to be regarded as the best of the bunch. My personal favourite was "The Shattered Circle" by Cordell - it came close to the end of the edition so was never going to be a massive success, but I enjoyed it.

I ran The Shattered Circle in Pathfinder as a prequel adventure to the Second Darkness adventure path, and I enjoyed it a lot.

The players enjoyed it as well, although their favourite moment was actually a happy accident - they were being pursued by a gibbering mouther or something, and it fell down a pit trap that they knew about but it didn't. (It wasn't that they tried to lure it into the pit, either. The dumb thing fell in all by itself.)

I've also run Night Below and enjoyed that too, but I re-wrote quite a lot of it (since I already had lots of ideas for an underdark campaign).

Return to the Tomb of Horrors might be a bit too grim for my group, but I'd like to give it a try sometime.

I've also run the Sea Devils trilogy as part of an underwater campaign (which makes it a bit easier, since the characters can breathe underwater) and enjoyed that as well. I did rewrite some of the worst elements of railroading to make them a bit less blatant.

I'd also love to run Gates of Firestorm Peak, but it seems like it would be great as an Eberron adventure so I'm saving it until I can get an Eberron campaign going. (Which might never happen.)

I do own Dragon Mountain, but we play Pathfinder so it loses some of its edge when you can just give the kobolds as many class levels as you like. Also, the "twist" at the end of the first part of the adventure really annoys me for some reason.

Spoiler: Mild Spoiler

When it turns out the bad guys have been targeting the PCs due to a misunderstanding.

Looking at that list, there's a lot of Bruce Cordell adventures on it. Maybe the argument should be that, apart from the Bruce Cordell ones, there aren't many good 2nd edition adventures?

 

[delericho]

Looking at that list, there's a lot of Bruce Cordell adventures on it. Maybe the argument should be that, apart from the Bruce Cordell ones, there aren't many good 2nd edition adventures?

I'm not familiar enough with enough of the 2nd Ed adventures to really comment on that. But Bruce Cordell definitely had a hot streak when it came to adventure design that seemed to run through the last several years of 2nd Ed and much of 3e.

 

[Enrico Poli1]

These are fantastic:

Return to the Tomb of Horrors (Greyhawk)
Die, Vecna, Die (Greyhawk, Ravenloft and Planescape: final adventure of 2nd Edition!)
City of Skulls (Greyhawk)
Dragon's Crown (Dark Sun)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I was reading one of the Dragonlance threads and saw this exchange


And it got me to thinking; I can think of a lot of 2e settings that are beloved, and a lot of B/X and 1e adventures. Even 3.0, 3.5, and 4e adventures. But the more I think about it the more @Reynard appears to me to be right, and I struggle to think of beloved or influential 2e adventures. So what should I look at?

If you care to stretch the point, the Baldur's Gate CRPG was 2nd edition.

 

[Voadam]

2e Ravenloft had both amazing adventure modules and some incredibly terrible PC agency-robbing ones.

Ones I ran that I really enjoyed and would recommend.

Howls in the Night, great ghost story mystery investigation with ambiguity on who the bad guy is.

Night of the Walking Dead fantasy Louisiana bayou madness and zombie apocalypse themes that kicks off the grand conjunction modules. Fantastic low-level module.

Touch of Death a fun lower level visit isolated fantasy Egypt area and deal with mummy curses and dark Egyptian god things.

Feast of Goblyns a bunch of different themed villains with politics and relationship connections, a good mix of classic D&D and ravenloft gothic horror domains stuff for mid-levels.

Ship of Horror, a higher level cursed New England vibe with covered up horrors that the PCs become entangled in and uncover as they go.

Web of Illusion dark fantasy India adventure dealing with powerful thematic factions for decently high level PCs.

I have heard a lot of praise for a bunch of Planescape modules like The Great Modron March and Dead Gods but I don't have experience with them.