What are the new 'Classics'?

[Mark CMG]

Red Hand of Doom was certainly a favorite of mine during the last edition era. Freeport (etal) and Witchfire are winners, too. The Whispering Woodwind is my own adventure that has been well received and remembered.

 

[GregoryOatmeal]

5. Keep on the Shadowfell (not widely regarded as awesome, but a TON of exposure, and cleaned up a bit, and available for free now).

I feel like this idea may have worked better in 1E than 4E. Slogs like this make me suspect the people that wrote the early 4E modules didn't really "get" 4E.

The Slaying Stone played much better than it ran. I'd definitely run that again in PF. It appears to be a bunch of aimless encounters but it's actually a pretty fleshed-out world with a lot of investigation and some fun pitting the kobolds against the goblins.

 

[SoldierBlue]

"There aren't any. To be a classic, a module needs an enduring level of popularity, but the market for modules is now so diverse that almost no modules can achieve the required level of exposure, never mind retain it."

Hmmmm...this may be true. A splintered player base may mean that, by definition, there are no classics in the offing, because we aren't all engaged in the same shared experience we would be if we more or less played the same system.

And perhaps I titled the thread wrong; by its nature a 'classic' needs to have been around a while, so perhaps the title "Mods that are GOING to be classics" would have been more appropriate...

BUT, there appears to be some consensus. To paraphrase (and to add my own two cents), in no particular order, nominations for classics of the new millenium so far might be (in no particular order):

- Return to Temple of Elemental Evil (I second this one - everyone knows about the plug in the fountain and the grell, etc, etc,etc...)

- Sunless Citadel, if only it was one of the first 3e mods, and everyone seemed to play it (cut down the tree!)

- Shackled City - first Dungeon AP, although the links between the mods were tenuous, at best.

- Red Hand of Doom - epic. Like the 'War and Peace' of our hobby (or at least the 'Star Wars'...).

- Whispering Cairn - first mod in the second Dungeon AP, Age of Worms. Good on its own; great in how it presages the campaign to come...

- Burnt Offerings - made goblins scary again (or at least made them memorable/notorious again...).

- Stolen Land - first mod in the Kingmaker AP. Early days for this one; it came out in Spring 2010, but I think it will resonate through the ages...



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[SoldierBlue]

And of course, I forgot the Freeport mods, especially the first three. First 3e mod I ever played, and I don't think I'm the only one in that boat...

- Keep on the Shadowfell. It's the only 4th Edition mod I ever played. It's the only 4th edition mod many of us have ever played. For better or for worse (read: Keep on the Borderlands), I think it squeaks in as a classic. Too bad you 4th edition guys can't give me more. Hall of the Mountain King?

 

[SoldierBlue]

[QUOTE=Bluenose;5705171]Not sure how far back you're interested in going, but the Witchfire Trilogy would hit my list of classic modules very easily. D&D3.5

Great Pendragon Campaign (Pendragon 5e) - perhaps not an adventure as such, but thoroughly awesome.

Dara Happa Stirs (Mongoose RQ) ran really well for me and my group, though it does involve a lot of prep for the GM.

Playing Halls of the Mountain King (4e) was great fun, and from what I understand Courts of the Shadow Fey is even better.

I'd also recommend Crowded Hours, a collection of adventures for Traveller. They're all good, in different ways, though my favourite involves a crashing spaceship.

While I'm not a fan of horror games, apparently the adventures for Trail of Cthulhu are very good. Which fits with the Cthulhu trend of excellent adventures, I suppose.

Blood in Ferelden (Dragon Age) reads well, and the first adventure ran well, though I'm less sure about the others.[/QUOTE]

Wow. It is amazing the range of games you've played. This is awesome. I've wanted to play Traveller for 20 years, and haven't got around to it, and I'd love to play Hall of the Mountain King if I could get someone to DM 4e for me. And Dragon Age looks great too, but I haven't played it.

I admire people who play across such a range of systems. Very cool.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I think that The Haunting of Harrowstone may eventually be a classic, though the rest of that Path... nope, I don't think so.

Burnt Offerings? Oh, yeah.

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? Not... quite, but close. I liked it better than I did the original Temple, but not as much as The Village of Hommlet

But some of my favorites for 3.X were by Monkeygod, a tiny company without the the distribution to make the list.

The Auld Grump

 

[delericho]

Agreed, though I can think of some 3.x modules that come close. For example, I'd include Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil in any such list. For a while there seemed to be quite a few groups playing it and posting on the boards.

Yeah, but the problem is that RttToEE sucked.

No question Paizo has published some great modules and AP's, but I suspect none of them have the market penetration to have a lot of players fondly reminiscing about them 10 years, much less 20 years from now.

Kingmaker might just achieve that status over the next few years. Like "Red Hand of Doom" it seems to have hit on something that people wanted, but didn't know they wanted until they were given it. We'll see.

- Shackled City - first Dungeon AP, although the links between the mods were tenuous, at best.

This is an interesting one. Shackled City is a great campaign, but it's definitely not the best of the Adventure Paths by quite some way. So, does it get points for being the test-bed for the AP concept, or should it be forced to stand purely on its own merit? Also, how do we handle the fact that there are two distinct versions of the path - the version in Dragon and the later version in the hardcover?

Anyway, Shackled City probably is a worthy contender.

- Whispering Cairn - first mod in the second Dungeon AP, Age of Worms. Good on its own; great in how it presages the campaign to come...

Great adventure. One of the best ever in Paizo's run with Dungeon ("Mad God's Key" and "The Styes" would be two others). If 'classic' status were awarded by quality, that would definitely get my vote.

- Burnt Offerings - made goblins scary again (or at least made them memorable/notorious again...).

Yep. Paizo took a big risk with Pathfinder, and they had to get that first adventure right. With this adventure, they did just that.

- Stolen Land - first mod in the Kingmaker AP. Early days for this one; it came out in Spring 2010, but I think it will resonate through the ages...

Of all the Adventure Paths to date, I think Kingmaker has the best chance of achieving classic status.

 

[SoldierBlue]

S'pose I should include Ptolus and World's Largest Dungeon. Not my cup of tea, and I never played them; I never bought into the implicit "bigger is better" credo around either of these things. However, they seemed to resonate through the community...

Also, Forge of Fury. Have it; never played it. But it seems to be fondly remembered, in this thread and elsewhere. Coincidentally, I'm running a PF version of it this weekend...

Mad God's Key/The Styes? - yup. These are mods that we'll tell the young'uns about when they gather around the rocking chair.

 

[Aberzanzorax]

S'pose I should include Ptolus and World's Largest Dungeon. Not my cup of tea, and I never played them; I never bought into the implicit "bigger is better" credo around either of these things. However, they seemed to resonate through the community...

Well, I would include Ptolus, but I wouldn't include World's Largest Dungeon. Ptolus has become a very expensive collector's item with a pretty devoted following. WLD, not so much (it usually goes for cheaper than list price).

I'd say that both Goodman Games' Castle Whiterock and Rappan Athuk 1-3 (or reloaded) are superior large dungeons to WLD, though Whiterock is much less well known, and I suspect fewer have played RA than WLD.


If I had to pick one of those as a classic, I'd go with Rappan Athuk.

 

[SoldierBlue]

But some of my favorites for 3.X were by Monkeygod, a tiny company without the the distribution to make the list.

The Auld Grump

This is excellent - I love hearing about hidden gems that weren't necessarily a part of the larger 'conversation'.

Auld Grump - any particular mods you can recommend from Monkeygod?