The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - your experiences?

[jerichothebard]

I've run it a few times - once, long ago, without modification, resulting in a gleeful TPK (including some ugliness with the bodak). The most recent time, I heavily gutted it, making it fit in with my Celtic-based campaign.

Fun module of the unapologetic dungeon crawl variety

Strange - it doesn't sound familiar. Was that before I joined the party? Or did you gut it that far?


=+)

 

[MrFilthyIke]

I don't own S4, but have it in the Realms of Horror compilation.

What ARE the differences?

(Sorry, I started in '89, and have never played, only collected, 1e)

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I've always pronounced it T'ZO-CANTH.

Sorry to say, I never played it nor ran it. It was during that long period of my life where I had no one to play with... which is not to say that I didn't spend a good many teen years up in my room, reading and re-reading it... (A theme common to most of these Classics threads, sadly...)


Wulf

 

[MrFilthyIke]

(A theme common to most of these Classics threads, sadly...)

It's ok Wulf, as long as you learned to come out and meet the rest of humanity and be a social creature, we won't hold nerdy habitat (like reading modules for fun) against you.

And as a note, I own more modules than I have played.

 

[Chunklets]

Ooooh, one of my very favourite modules of all time. I semi-converted it to 3e and ran it about a year ago (with modifications so that it fit my campaign). It may just be the archetypal 1e dungeon crawl.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

It's ok Wulf, as long as you learned to come out and meet the rest of humanity and be a social creature, we won't hold nerdy habitat (like reading modules for fun) against you.

I played my first game of D&D (Keep on the Borderlands) before I was twelve-- just me and my best friend as DM. Then he moved away...

After that it was at least 5 years before I actually played a game (as DM) and probably 15 years before I actually played a game (as a PC).

I ran myself through a lot of these modules, though truth be told I spent most of my time, countless hours, just rolling up random dungeons from the back of the DMG-- fighting monsters, rolling up loot.

Sad, I know...

Wulf

 

[Samus_the_Lucky]

I ran myself through a lot of these modules, though truth be told I spent most of my time, countless hours, just rolling up random dungeons from the back of the DMG-- fighting monsters, rolling up loot.

Sad, I know...

Wulf

Well good to know i wasn't the only one that did that...

(doesn't mean it isn't sad though [grin])

 

[Maerdwyn]

Strange - it doesn't sound familiar. Was that before I joined the party? Or did you gut it that far?
=+)

Different campaign - Back when I lived in NYC, I ran a Viking-esque campaign, but after the party participated in a raid on the "Scots" of the campaign, they decided to go native. We only played a couple times after that because we moved out west, but that was the inspiration for the campaign you were in

 

[Style]

I love this one to bits - run it more times than anything else except for maybe Castle Amber and Desert of Desolation. Somtimes I use it with the wilderness area intact, sometimes it's just the caves. Always nails at least one hapless PC every time around. Wonderful stuff.

Nobody ever met the gnomes (so I never got around to the Tharizdun module, boo hoo) but the blue dragon was a recurring problem. One early group made frequent use of a wand of wonder with 100 different effects and somewhere along the line the blue dragon became a pink dragon that shot pink lightning bolts. No more dangerous than the blue version but far more embarassing when it fries your 12th level paladin while he stands there laughing at the DM.

The stone faces are a hoot - anybody else reckon that they ripped these off for the movie Labyrinth? The big pool always sends players into a paranoid frenzy as they try to figure out how to get across. Favourite beasties have to be the behir and the dracolisk (I think it was a dracolisk anyway) as well as the chasme. I recall one party hiding in abject terror from the chasme, convinced it was one of the worst demons in the book. The gas spore is great as well - made poor Lars very, very sick.

One group bitched at me in a truly indignant fashion when the teleporting started as they tried to enter the central chamber. Cries of "change the damn adventure" and "stop being so pedantic - we don't care what it says, we're sick of teleporting!" and "can somebody please remove this infection - I only have a couple of rounds left to live!" followed. For some reason they were a lot less grateful than I had been expecting when they finally made it through and met old twinkleslippers.

Great combat, that one - love the environment and the use she makes of her powers and items. And the energons (or whatever they're called nowadays) make for a great sting in the tail. And every group, bar none, double-checks the treasure with me at least twice. ("And it's all really there? And it's not an illusion? And it's not cursed? And we can really keep it this time and you aren't going to disenchant it all again?" I only included the Lanthorn once, mind you. Won't be making that mistake again in a hurry. Instead McGuffin Artifact #whatever usually gets lumped there in order to give the PCs a reason for going to the horrible place in the first instance.

(Loving these threads, btw...)

 

[grodog]

One of my favorite adventures, in part because of the extensive wilderness adventuring (especially in combination with WG4 as noted already): there really were very few true wilderness adventures published for 1e, and this one helped to set the stage for many of my own creation later.

Like Sep, the demonic lore made a big impression on me as well, although there are some subtle differences between the rules for protection circles and their accompanying spells as published in S4, Unearthed Arcana (1e version of course), and their first appearance in Dragons 56, 67, and 68. Well-worth checking out!

I ran the adventure multiple times, especially after WG4 was published. None of the groups I DM'd were ever able to claim Iggwilv's prize, nor to free her dreaded daughter from stasis---the dungeon was just too brutal. Twice I had groups go over the falls on level 1, never to be seen again.... The four prison demiplanes were also a lot of fun, in particular the pentacles one. The new monsters were a wonderful challenge, and I made immediate use of derro and several of the others not present in the module itself.

Lastly, S4 is probably the first Greyhawk module to really inspire me to start digging around for more history on the setting itself: its ties to Castle Greyhawk (via Fraz), Iggwilv's legend, the cambion (hinting at Iuz's ancestry), etc.

I'd love to expand on S4 further (as my page about the module details: http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_s4.html), in a manner that RJK did with Maure Castle in Dungeon 112! (Gygax of course would be the better one to do this, but if he's too busy, I'd happily oblige! )