The Gates of Firestorm Peak - your experiences?

[Mark Hope]

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

The Gates of Firestorm Peak

Synopsis: The first adventure designed to incorporate the Player's Option series of books. Under the light of a fabled comet, the PCs face dark dwarves in their underground city, explore the abandoned caverns of the Elder Elves, and deal with weird alien entities from the Far Realm.

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.)

 

[DM_Jeff]

Played the entire thing from beginning to end. It took around 6-8 sessions, easily. It was a rather good intro to the Players Option rules, and before we realized how horrible they were in extended play we ran this with little to no problems at all and had a lot of fun. It's also the module that had such a "wow!" factor by the end that it turned me onto the name of Bruce Cordell that continues to this day.

There are lots of good war stories still related to this day regarding a mega fight on the bridge over the lava and the underdark marketplace. Good stuff.

-DM Jeff

 

[Shade]

I never played it, but I tip my hat to it as one of the watershed moments in D&D history. The Far Realm has been one my favorite additions to the game, and Bruce Cordell has a fantastic imagination.

 

[jollyninja]

rode a goat of terror through the underground bazzar, it was great. Loved this adventure, was the first published adventure I ever played through.

 

[Oryan77]

I don't know anything about this other than I've heard it was good. Can someone explain more about the Underdark marketplace?

What's the actual premise of the adventure?

 

[Retreater]

I played it converted to 3.0 about 5 years ago. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, and I'm not sure how closely to the original we played it, but here's a little of my experience.

I played an elven evoker who enjoyed laying waste to numerous creatures with his Fireball spells. I toasted many duergar and fungus men.

I remember a few encounters with some small, hairy humanoids that grappled us in swarms - that was nasty. Lots of enlarged duergar with polearms behind defensive positions - the reach sucked. I remember getting knocked into unconsciousness by an enlarged polearm, stabilized by a cleric, then sitting up and casting another fireball, before dropping into unconsciousness again - at least it killed the duergar.

The Undercity Market. Wow. That totally erupted into mass chaos and killing, thanks to our dwarven fighter whose player had gotten a little tipsy that afternoon.

I remember it being a lot of fun ... but I don't remember many more details. Part of why drinking and D&D do go together sometimes .... but sometimes not so well.

Retreater

 

[Defender_X]

When I played this one, I remember alot of neat things about it, but playing was like cutting teeth with the group I was in at the time. We more or less had a TPK because of inter-party conflicts that the DM let fester and other issues at the time. A truely functioning party was very important and that was the one thing we lacked.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How easily could this be converted to 3E?

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Never heard of this one before.

 

[Schmoe]

How easily could this be converted to 3E?

Agreed. I've heard nothing but good things about this adventure, and I'd really like to see a conversion, if it exists.