What makes "King of the Trollhaunt Warrens" stand out?

[JeffB]

Does anyone have any good suggestions? Would Trollhaunt be a good one? Is there some 3rd party stuff that would be good for a 1st time DM?

I would say our group is not a heavy RP group, but I would like a good balance of intersting combat encounters and plot.

I'd recco Goodman Games'- DCC#55- ISLE OF THE SEA DRAKE

You can find more about it (including some links to reviews) HERE

 

[Rechan]

Here's why I like it (slightly spoilerish):
- A pretty decent crawl. It's not overly long and the locale is an interesting subterrainian area with good tactical maps. If you're into combats with good terrain features, then this adventure is for you.
- opportunity for the main villain to attack early on to surprise the party when they don't expect it.
- a nice shift away from the crawl to a cool drawn-out town defense.
- the third act involves traveling to a different plane.
- It's not quite as open as H2 or P2, but there are opportunities to strike bargains with varying denizens of the crawl.

I agree with all these points.

There's also an undercurrent of Celtic folklore to it. Very slight, but just the king of the trolls and the Feywild, and the Warren, it feels more... folklorey.

I disliked that the part in the module in the Feywild is fairly walled in; doesn't allow branching out, much. However, the module mentions that the PCs could approach the Trollhaunt from the Feywild side, and that excited me a lot.

Also, what really won me over with the module were the random/side encounters and side-treks in Dungeon.

 

[Cadfan]

Alright, putting some of this in spoilers.

[SBLOCK]
1. Good roleplaying opportunities to help connect the PCs to the Eladrin city. You've got an old mentor character, a militia in dire need of training, and a couple other points of connection. Our group trained the militia, which gave them a much greater investment in the invasion of the city.

2. The crawl in the trollhaunt has some good points to help connect the PCs to the plot as well. Our group negotiated with the dragon, and essentially worked for/with him in kicking out the trolls. This added both roleplaying and structure to the invasion of the trollhaunt.

3. The three-encounter battle on the Old Troll Wall poster map is quite cool, and while it works even better with some militia members around to provide flavor, the module does suggest that you add them if adding them is appropriate for your group.
[/SBLOCK]

That's as far as I've gotten so far. I've been pretty happy with it.

 

[Shroomy]

While I liked King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, I thought that Demon Queen's Enclave was a superior adventure and was more deserving of a nomination.

 

[mach1.9pants]

To those who have played/read it: please tell me it doesn't have the letter to next bad guy plot item, please? I am getting sick of those in WotC modules!

 

[wayne62682]

To those who have played/read it: please tell me it doesn't have the letter to next bad guy plot item, please? I am getting sick of those in WotC modules!

If it did, then my DM ignored it. Actually except for a vague hint to Pyramid of Shadows he put into KotS (and I'm not sure it was really in the adventure to begin with) none of the published adventures have had a real "Ha ha you beat me, but my master will destroy you!" type plot. Well, Thunderspire was somewhat related to KotS due to the whole slavers thing.

 

[mach1.9pants]

If it did, then my DM ignored it. Actually except for a vague hint to Pyramid of Shadows he put into KotS (and I'm not sure it was really in the adventure to begin with) none of the published adventures have had a real "Ha ha you beat me, but my master will destroy you!" type plot. Well, Thunderspire was somewhat related to KotS due to the whole slavers thing.

Oh yes they did, KotSF and TSL all had bad guys with incriminating (and rather helpful to the PCs) letters in their pockets (EDIT: or chests). I had to do a lot of fixing to make them go away.

 

[wayne62682]

Maybe my DM did the same thing, then, because all I remember was:

* A letter from the Bloodreavers to Kalarel talking about slaves
* Some writings from Kalarel talking about a "place of power" that turned out to be the Pyramid of Shadows (I think he added this one in himself)
* Some indication of an alliance between the Paldemar, The Bloodreavers, The Grimmerzhuls and the gnolls (I forget their clan) in TSL

 

[Jack99]

While I liked King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, I thought that Demon Queen's Enclave was a superior adventure and was more deserving of a nomination.

Yeah, this was what I was referring to as well. I checked and DQE has a december release. It's a disgrace that it wasn't nominated.