Tale of the Comet - your experiences?

[Mark Hope]

Fourteenth thread of a series on the younger classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. It is interesting to see how everyone's experiences compared and differed.

Tale of the Comet

Synopsis: A sci-fi/fantasy crossover that sees the PCs dealing with invaders from a hi-tech reality. The adventure then moves to a far-distant world, where aliens fight desperately against death machines that threaten to overwhelm all organic life.

Riffing on concepts similar to those that made Expedition to the Barrier Peaks such a classic, this boxed set fully immerses the PCs in a technological environment. Did you play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

(With thanks and a tip of the hat to Quasqueton for his ground-breaking series of classic adventure discussions.)

 

[El Mahdi]

I tried running it once, but the group had to go their seperate ways for a substantial amount of time after the first couple of game sessions (due to deployments and PCS'ing - just a fact of life in the military but it can really cause problems with gaming group continuity). I thought it was a fun and unique adventure. I tried to incoporate a PC that had also crash-landed into this magical-medieval world from a StarDrive type culture. I was going to have a lot of fun with a player investigating "magic" with technological sensors and trying to come up with scientific explanations and conclusions. I even let the character have an energy weapon (with a limited number of shots - of course - and no ability to recharge). It made it a unique item with limited uses that was really no more powerful than a Wand of Magic Missiles. Wow, reminiscing about this makes me want to try it again.

 

[TerraDave]

Never heard of it.

But looking at that cover, I have to admit I am intrigued.

 

[Psion]

I have it. I thought it was cool, as an idea, and because it rejected the spelljammerish "crystal spheres" part of the cosmology that 2e seemed to canonize.

I didn't think the rules for tech equipment were that hot, and the campaign ideas for Cordell's "sheenchasers" in the dragon seemed cooler.

 

[Arnwyn]

Passed on it, for one reason that Psion thought it was cool.

Spelljammer = great. Barrier Peaks? Not.

(Yeah, I know, there'll be some ENWorlders who are diametrically opposite of me on this matter.)

 

[frankthedm]

But looking at that cover, I have to admit I am intrigued.

Looking at the cover, I get a feeling of "Casters rule, Thieves and Fighters need not apply". Inside the insults to combatants continue with cartoon of a dwarf getting his axe broken on a bot's head, the dwarf getting lasered by a bot, while later a wizard makes short work of the robot with a lightning bolt spell.

I wish I could remember the details, but IIRC only magic weapons and armor worked [maybe only partially] against the high tech attacks.

 

[frankthedm]

Confirmed. Only the "Plus" of magic armor affected AC against the robots, so +3 Platemail helped only 3 points. Of course Cloaks of protection and Bracers of Defence had full protective effect, so the wizard was sitting pretty.

Magic Weapons had only slightly more than comedic effect on the robots. Only damage done was the plus of the weapon.

 

[Emirikol]

What character levels is this adventure for?