What adventure module defines D&D to you?

[Maggan]

Isle of Dread and Lost City. It's a toss-up between those two. I think I'll go with ... Lost City. No ... Isle of Dread. No ... aaaaargh! And Ravenloft.

/M

 

[Celtavian]

Probably one of the megamodules. Temple of Elemental Evil or the G Series. The epic heroic quest your party sets out on and completes is what I love about D&D adventuring. Having that little first level party finish an epic quest becoming powerful, respected, and heroic adventurers makes you feel great as a DM at the end of the day.

 

[Derren]

None. Modules are much too limited and mostly too combat focused to define a PnP RPG.

 

[Ariosto]

Great to see some love for the ToEE, which in my experience was a disappointment. The "scope, and the interplay of its various parts" raised high hopes. As a campaign dungeon, though, it goes against Gygax's own advice in ways that I think suggest the general soundness of that advice. The groups in which I ventured to the Temple always ended up bored with it. That some people were able to realize more of the dungeon's potential and "finish an epic quest" is a delight! Kudos to the DMs and players.

 

[Wik]

It occurs to me, reading this, that most of the adventures I love would not be considered a "defining" D&D adventure. I mean, take a look at my three favourites:

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Aztecs, poison gas, and a talking crayfish that thinks he's a god)
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (robots, vegepygmies, and a crazy fitness instructor android)
Isle of Dread (dinosaurs, flying raccoon things, and zombie cults).

All are super cool - but none of them really seem "iconic" to me. I would not hand one of these adventures to a newbie and say "hey, this is what D&D is usually like". I would hand those adventures to newbies and say "hey, this is some of the weird stuff D&D is capable of doing".

Really, most of the modules I've played have been the opposite of "Defining D&D" - I buy weird modules because I want something different from the usual D&D adventure. But, to stay on topic, my most defining D&D module is...

REF 3 and REF 4: The Book of Lairs 1 & 2.

Reason? Each book contained dozens of mini-adventures centred around a single monster type. They were made to be expanded upon by the GM, but could be picked up and played as is. They ranged in levels, and were great for a pick-up-and-play session filler (sort of the 1e equivalent to the Dungeon Delve book, which could also be on this list). Way back in 6th grade, I ran an entire campaign based off those books, it seemed.

 

[Derulbaskul]

Like so many others, Keep on the Borderlands with its mix of town, wilderness, dungeon and politics defines D&D for me together with:

The Caverns of Thracia

which showed me how history and mystery, plus thinking about a dungeon in three dimensions, could make dungeon crawling more than just hack'n'slash.

 

[Storm Raven]

I loved X2, primarily because of the NPCs, but it was the first module of which I remember thinking, "Wow, this single room is 100 feet square. Damn, that's big. And WTF ... a boxing ring?!"

I agree that X2 was very D&D, but IMO it was a little too caricaturish of D&D.

A 10 x 10 room is really big?

 

[Holy Bovine]

I never used modules, having an active imagination, I always came up with my own adventures to run.

Uh, that is a pretty insulting thing to imply to the rest of us (not having active imaginations). I would suggest a bit of clarification here.

A 10 x 10 room is really big?

I think he means that the room in question was 100' on a side - 10,000 square feet.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Seconds for Escape from Zanzer Tem's Dungeon and B10: Night's Dark Terror, but if I had to pick one that topped the list for me, it would absolutely have to be X3:

Wow. I hated that module when I got it. So much so that I refused to buy another 'X' series module for years. Then I finally got X4 & X5 and realized i missed some real gems!

 

[Jhaelen]

None of the official modules (that I know) define (A)D&D to me. I guess, that's because when I was introduced to the hobby noone used them. Everyone wrote their own adventures.

When 2e came around I DMed a couple of the classics: S1, S2, and S4 (I refused to DM S3 due to the (to me) silly SF/Fantasy mix). S2 and S4 were quite fun to play but nothing particularly noteworthy; S1 defined everything I don't like about D&D.

The best official modules I've played were the UK modules:
UK4 - When a Star Falls
UK6 - All that Glitters...
UK7 - Dark Clouds Gather
All of them required some additional work, but the potential was there.

I generally dislike megadungeons (or even large dungeons), but I was really impressed by 'Castle Whiterock'. It's about the only 'classic'-style module I'd actually like to play/DM in 3e/4e.

Judging from reading through it, I'd say, 'Red Hand of Doom' contains all of the elements I enjoy in a (modern) D&D game. I think it should work even better with 4e. Imho, it's definitely the best module of the 3e era.

None of the 4e modules impressed me so far. H2 is probably the best of the bunch (if you put some additional work into it).