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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhyrryl" data-source="post: 322717" data-attributes="member: 6406">** There be minor spoilers here.**Too late for the tally, but I still wanted to add my comments concerning the first four Adventure Series modules.  These comments are slanted toward a marketing perspective of, "We're trying to introduce new players to the game with these."The Sunless Citadel: Definitely a classic.  It gave the PCs an objective, and entertained them along the way to that objective with other stories.  The group I ran through it didn't cooperate with the kobolds and ended up with a party member captured while the rest of the group escaped.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  [Meepo died very quicly after the fighting broke out.]  Selling an unconscious, but still alive Calcryx to an evil half-dragon sorc who needs living dragons for a ritual, became the seed from which the overall campaign story grew.The Forge of Fury: Too much of a raw dungeon crawl to be a classic.  I considered it to be a worked over random dungeon.  The module had no story for the PCs beyond "get loot" and gave no nod towards real newbies.  I managed to make the roper "lesson" work out, but only because I was being nice and only attacking with a single strand at a time.  I was also running a party of 6 through it, so they had the manpower to rescue people as they got caught.  A party of 4 new players would have been decimated if none of them picked up on the fact that the creature was intelligent and open to negotiation.  My party happened to be evilly inclined and was more than happy to capture a couple trogs to feed the roper.  While my group had some good fights in the dungeon, and even a couple memorable deaths, I didn't need to spend the $10 to stage random fights, that's what the MM is for.The Speaker in Dreams: I'm suprised that more people didn't like this module.  I think it should be considered an up and coming classic.  By this point in a campaign's progression, the characters should have a sense for there being a world outside of dungeons, and this module does an excellent job of teaching them that such a world can also be a source of adventure.  The module fell a little flat near the finale, but a decent DM who is willing to put even a little bit of effort can correct that.What really makes this module so good is that it makes the players feel like their characters are heroes.  They become celebrities, as the majority of their encounters are very public and witnessed by dozens, if not hundreds of people.  The fight with the gargoyles on top of the bell tower was particularly satisfying for my players.  I highly recommend the refreshing change of style (but not pace) that this module provides.  There are too few like it.The Standing Stone: As someone else said, I found this module unusable, and not just because it wouldn't fit into my campaign, but because it wouldn't be entertaining to the players on any level.  This is another, "I don't need to spend $10 to..." module.  In this case it's, "I don't need to spend $10 to advance characters through three levels of mission failure."  Especially if they aren't even going to realize that they failed, which the module attempts to set them up for.Regarding 2nd ed. modules that are classics, Castles Forlorn is excellent.  My recommendation is to not run it as a Ravenloft domain, and recognize that you need to really know the information presented in the boxed set.  If you're the kind of GM who doesn't need an outline of events, and can "run with it", this module is for you.The biggest problem that this module had was its layout of information.  All the info you need is there...if you can find it.  I can't think of a more free-form module than Castles Forlorn, and it's not helped by the fact that to present the players with information about a room and then run an encounter there, you might have to look in 3 or 4 places.  Preparation with a spreadsheet can overcome most of that.</blockquote>

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