TSR What's Your Favorite Basic Modules?

[CleverNickName]

So I was inspired by @Snarf Zagyg 's "Why Ya Gotta Be So Basic? Understanding the Resurgence of Moldvay's Basic" thread (and from doing a little bit of housekeeping on my gaming bookshelf), and I fell down a rabbit hole while reorganizing my collection. I started out just doing some dusting, then some light reorganizing, and then before I knew it I was jotting down notes for adapting a Basic adventure module ("B4, The Lost City") to my current 5E gaming group this weekend.

Hey, these things happen.

TL;DR, I was feeling nostalgic, and I was also in desperate need of a distraction from (gestures broadly out the window), so I cracked the covers on some books I hadn't touched in years.

Now I'm wondering: how many of us remember these old gems of D&D history (fondly or otherwise)? Did you ever play any of them? Do you have any favorites? Are there any that you just couldn't get into? And I put a poll together for everyone to vote for their favorites...whatever "favorite" means to you.

 

[CleverNickName]

I love these old modules, and I could write pages and pages on each one. These and the X-series of modules are what taught me how to be a Dungeon Master, for better or worse. But if I had to list the Basic Modules in my order of personal preference, from most to least favorite, it would be:

B7 > B2 > B4 > B11 and B12 > B5 > The rest > B6.

And that's not intended to be a dig on B6, it's a fun adventure module and I enjoyed running it...but one of them had to be in last place, and I felt that one was the weakest.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

I wish you had included the expert (X) series!

That said, my personal favorite will always be B4.

B2 is second because it's ... so D&D, if you know what I mean.

B1 is a classic of old D&D. In terms of giving the DM some tools, and expecting the DM to create the dungeon for the most part.

Other than those, none of them really make me excited. I want to vote for B3, but it never truly spoke to me.

 

[el-remmen]

I have run B2 and B3 countless times in countless iterations.

B7 I ran once in 3E adaptation that was so changed it might not have been recognizable except broadly and for the use of some names (my "Out of the Frying Pan" story hour actually covers it) - but it was great fun.

Anyway, those are the ones I voted for.

P.S. If anyone is actually interested in reading how Rahasia played out in my story hour, I recommend using the cleaned up PDFs over the original posts.

 

[CleverNickName]

I wish you had included the expert (X) series!

In time, my good Snarf.
All in good time...

 

[Stormonu]

I'll tell you which one I don't like - B8 - Journey to the Rock.

I've also run B1-B4, the only one that I didn't much care for out of those was B1, but that was mostly because a lot of it has to be filled in beforehand, and I usually run published modules because I didn't want to do a lot of prep in the first place.

 

[TwiceBorn2]

Hands down B10... nothing else even comes close.

 

[Emerikol]

I'm a B2 fan because it was my first and it's a sandbox.

 

[Lazybones]

I ran the first five back in the day, and put together a 5e conversion of The Lost City well before the line up for Infinite Staircase was announced. I also have fond memories of Horror on the Hill, even though I know it's not widely considered one of the greats. I would have to mention Keep on the Borderlands for nostalgia reasons, since it was the first D&D adventure I ever played. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with for that adventure in the next starter kit.

 

[Theory of Games]

B1 of course. It's a Masterclass in dungeon design that makes the (fledgling) DM piece together the adventure. Space by space. Some in the ttrpg community complained about not having enough info to design their own adventures, but between B1 and B2, DMs had everything they needed. The value of random tables continues to this day.