The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - your experiences?

[Shadeydm]

Thread necromancy FTW! This is absolutly one of my favorites. I ran it several times as a DM back in the day and one time the whole group actually survived to the end and claimed the Wonderous Lanthorn as part of thier treasure. One of the groups who went through this got creamed by the hasted Clay Golem losing two members of the party in the fight.

 

[Vascant]

This brings back some memories (or nightmare if you were a player). I have ran it for three parties and so far no one has made it out alive, it is just wicked.

On a side note relating to the topic, WotC stated they were going to release a 3.5e updated conversion for this back in mid March but so far have failed to do so (The article stated a few days.. I think it is late). Maybe someone from there who reads this can shed some light on it.

 

[JohnBiles]

I've run this a few times; we only finished it once, for various reasons. The background stuff is awesome; the module itself is pretty much classic 'makes little sense but fun in the right mood' material. The one party that did finish it felt pretty well rewarded, though.

They also learned trying to seduce a vampire doesn't go so well.

 

[I'm A Banana]

When I think of "old modules that need an update" it's pretty much a tie between this and the Desert of Desolation series.

Desert of Desolation usually wins because it has more of a plot, but there are a lot of memorable weirdnesses in these lost caverns.

 

[JohnBiles]

When I think of "old modules that need an update" it's pretty much a tie between this and the Desert of Desolation series.

Desert of Desolation usually wins because it has more of a plot, but there are a lot of memorable weirdnesses in these lost caverns.

There is a 3.5 update for this on the WOTC website.

 

[Celebrim]

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?

Played it. Didn't DM it. Didn't finish it.

Hate it. I felt that it was extremely poor dungeon design. Lots and lots of dangerous creatures living in close proximity and seemingly randomly placed and having no life outside of waiting for the characters to show up and encounter them. Vastly different module that S1: ToH (which I loved). Seemed to almost entirely depend on hack and slash. It's a power gamer's/tactician's module.

Lots of good sometimes imagination inspiring Gygaxian wierdness, but otherwise, 'Yuck'.

 

[Serendipity]

Brutal little adventure. We lost half the party by the time we took the Vampire down and everyone had lost levels. We had to back out and hang with the gnomes a few times just to recover lost hp etc.
The first time I played through this, for some reason, the DM made the tribesmen EWOKS. That left quite an impression.......(in his defense it *was* 1983....)

 

[grodog]

One of the other things I love about S4 is that it practically demands that the DM design additional levels for it, since the module explicitly mentions some (underground lake level) and alludes to/implies that others exist that don't appear between it's covers (Iggwilv's lairs/treasuries/conjuration chambers/labs/etc.; Tsojcanth and his demenses, if separate from Iggwilv's; the sealed cavern that the pechs are digging up into; etc.).

One of my still-in-progress writing projects is to finish designing some of these levels and to add them to my S4 page @ http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_s4.html: I've completed about 6 or 7 additional level maps, and have notes for much of them, but they're not keyed yet. Perhaps over the holidays....