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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starmaster" data-source="post: 9817164" data-attributes="member: 7042521">I ran my players through both Assassin's Knot and Saltmarsh and consider them two of the best modules ever.  Because the player's choice of actions is so open (especially in Assassin's Knot), I can see how the adventures could fail to be much fun for some groups, however.  Spoilers for L2, U1, U2, U3, Ghosts of Saltmarsh below:  [SPOILER]Assassin's Knot can be very deadly depending upon the DM's strategy and the luck and choices of the players.  There was one nasty scene in the castle where I had one of the honchos standing on the top of a building and tossing missiles from a Necklace of Missiles down on the fairly low-level party while they were in the castle courtyard as per a strategy suggested in the module.  She probably burnt up some of her underlings as well since fireballs are rather indiscriminate, but she was evil, so what did it matter?  May have resulted in a TPK; I don't remember for sure.  If the players had just implemented a different strategy for assaulting the castle, she would not have found herself in a position to do this.  Luck was an important element in modules of the day.  Once in a while, the characters' decisions would just get them the short end of the stick through no major fault of their own.  I guess I'm probably in the minority here, but I kind of miss that element of the game.  It kept the players on their toes and they had enough sense to just run away sometimes.  Nowadays, it's more like:  "Hey, that looks like a lich.  Well, he must be the correct challenge rating for us to handle or else he wouldn't be in the module.  Let's get him!"I liked "U1: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" since it involved storming a ship at sea.  This was a new and interesting idea.  The player's ended up accidentally toppling the mast and burning half the ship in while battling the crew on the deck.  They used the ship as a home base afterward, but only after paying for extensive repairs due to the fire damage.  As for the rest of the Saltmarsh series, I thought the 2nd module (U2: Danger at Dunwater) was a little bit boring.  It' main problem was that if the players didn't figure out that they had to open negotiations with the perceived enemy, then everything falls apart.   Still, it was an interesting concept.  I always appreciated that the modules written by the TSR-UK staff usually introduced new ideas.  The third module (U3: The Final Enemy) was interesting because a large part of it involved underwater dungeon exploration.  The problem for me was that it was too challenging for a party if they started out at 1st level during U1.  The module recommends levels 3-5, but I think this was a bit too underpowered.  The party needed to do some additional adventuring outside the series to gain enough levels to handle U3.  I assume that's why the series reprint in "Ghosts of Saltmarsh" does insert some extra adventures along the way.  [/SPOILER]</blockquote>

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