The Secret of Bone Hill - your experiences?

[el-remmen]

For anyone converting this module: do you keep the current stated levels and change the creatures or do you use the same creatures and raise the levels?

The latter is what I do for all conversions.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The latter is what I do for all conversions.

Whereas I went the other route. The most significant change was replacing the wraith with a ghost made it a little more survivable... Mind you, since the last time I ran it was for the Iron Kingdoms conversion was going to be needed anyway.

The Auld Grump

 

[morrolan]

Bone Hill was the first module I bought, in fact I bought it before I had the rulebooks. I ran a number of groups through it, though as I recall none ever "finished" it. I loved the freedom it gave the party as to what they wanted to explore.

I bought the Assasin's Knot and liked it, but I don't think it ever saw actually play in any of my groups.

 

[jrients]

My one go running L1 was one of the classic adventures of my youth. The party recruited pretty much all the NPC help they could and mounted a full scale frontal assault on the keep. Meanwhile, two of the PCs snuck in and entered building, catching the wizard unawares. The battle outside went well, but one of the PCs facing the wizard fired a wand of lightning bolts in a very small room. After the bolt stopped bouncing around (ah, the good ol' days!) everyone in the room was incinerated. Because of the cost for all the raise dead spells cast, I'm pretty sure the party lost money on the venture.

 

[Mycanid]

The L series (L1-3) are a great piece of work. L1 and L3 are real classic dungeon crawl material. L1 and L2 have nicely detailed towns - something that (other than T1) wasn't too common back then. I also like the fact that they take place in the Lendore Isles (and was majorly miffed that in 2e the writers decided to make the Isles no longer accessible to all - surrounding it with elven magics and what not), and this makes it one of the few of the official modules set in the far east of Oerth.

L1 was a BLAST! I thought it was a really well balanced module, but, as others have said, there was some stuff that could really rip you up hard if you were not careful (like the wraith and especially Telvar). Our group especially enjoyed exploring throughout the wilderness before heading to Bone Hill to get experience and such. I personally liked the non-standard goodies that Lakofka created for the module (I had an elven magic user/thief who got a hold of that nice blue dragon headed magic staff, for example.)

L2 was a real challenging module for our group. Actually I remember it being one of the hardest early modules we all went through - not for foes but for plot. We were just majorly dense and COULD NOT figure it out. The mayor of Garotten wound up taking over Restenford because of our ineptness. But we had a fun time trying to figure it out.

L3, of course, was a later on thing. I have neither played nor DM'd it, so I cannot say I have any personal experience of it in "real time". But I enjoyed reading it. And boy - Frepic and Pulveriser look REAL tough!

 

[painandgreed]

Right after I bought the 3.5 rules books, I had a couple of all night pizza and soda style hack and slash games to get to know the rules. We ran KotB first and then Bone Hill. We had abotu 8 or 9 players and I just ran the modules as written and when they encoutnered a monster I just pulled the 3.5 MM and ran it straight as is. Had issues with the Bugbears and MU but otherwise came out ok and made it through with only one loss: That was in the room with the mirror of opposition. While the players were off doing one thing (in combat IIRC) another character crawled through and had to fight himself and lost. It had been many turns before the rest of the party could pay attention to what happened to him. When he never came back out ( I had played what happened to him outside the room and earshot of everybody else), they just sort of decided it was too dangerous to go after him. I do think they missed some stuff though.

 

[Mycanid]

ahhh ... the all night pizza, soda and hack n' slash sessions ... few events are more enjoyable, eh? And L1 can certainly deliver the bill in such a recipe!

[Begin soundtrack] Summerti-i-i-immme. And the slashin'z eazaaa-AAYYY!

 

[grodog]

I've used L1 quite a bit: it was rarer in terms of environment, since it had a lot of wilderness adventuring (which was quite rare in published modules, especially for low-level PCs).

I also LOVED Lakofka's use of the potion miscibility rules in the DMG; his module was the only published one to include such experimentations/discoveries as part of the treasure. I was pleased to see WotC republish these back in April @ http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20060401b

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Item of possible interest: L4 should be coming out soonish (continuation of the series, same author).

 

[A'koss]

I must have run Bone Hill 40 times during those 1st ed days. It is definitely one of classics and a player favorite too as there was absolutely mad loot to be had if you were savvy / lucky enough to win your way through.

I agree though it is also extremely tough is spots for characters of that level and TPKs did happen. But in those days, greed often overuled good sense with almost absurd ease.