You can't go back. Or can you?

[Quasqueton]

Have you (re)played any of the old-school adventure modules now that you have "matured" as a gamer? Can you enjoy Keep on the Borderlands or Steading of the Hill Giant King now, as much as you did 20 years ago?

Do the old modules have to be played under the old edition rules? Or can they be enjoyable with an update/conversion?

Can you go back? And is it an enjoyable experience?

Quasqueton

 

[The_Gneech]

Well, I never did "Against the Giants" in the past, but I'm going through a 3.5 conversion of it as a player ... so far so good! We're going to start scoping out a giant keep in the mountains north of Tika Town next session...

-The Gneech

 

[Crothian]

Yes. I've ran White Plume mountain 3 times in the past 5 years. I've ran the three giant modules, keep on the borderlands, Tome of Horrors, and a few others since third edition came out. We've always enjoyed them and had lots ofg fun with them.

 

[Psion]

I ran Isle of Dread again.

It wasn't as good as I remembered.


I recall fondly D1-3, and I think it would be interesting to run that again. But sometimes I wonder if half the fun was the iconoclastic rulings I made back then. (We had a PC with Blackrazor from WPM and an intelligent dancing sword. After his HP dropped below his "ego fence", I ruled that the sword danced and blackrazor dominated them and they fought, until one of the swords was "sundered.")

 

[drnuncheon]

I doubt I could handle Keep on the Borderlands. All those various humanoid races squished together in such a small space? The easiest way to root them out should be to wait for them to kill each other.

The Saltmarsh modules, OTOH, seem to hold up fairly well.

J

 

[the Jester]

Since 3e started, I've played Sinister Secret of Saltmarch and Isle of Dread. U1 was great; Isle of Dread- well, the dm just converted straight across, so our 4th-level pcs were fighting tyrannosaurs and stuff. That didn't last long.

 

[Storminator]

Just started G3 as a stand alone. My players no nothing about it, and they've made some interesting character choices...


PS

 

[the Jester]

I also just finished running Return to the Tomb of Horrors, which includes the original Tomb of Horrors as a fiendish- and small- piece of the whole. My god, but that was cool.

 

[Piratecat]

I've run both G1 and G2 (the giants modules) in my current campaign, and they were a blast. In G2, the group did a 4am infiltration commando strike to kill just the one giant they wanted dead... using wall spells to seal all the other giants (and the dragons) in their respective sleeping caverns. It was beautiful.

 

[eris404]

Have you (re)played any of the old-school adventure modules now that you have "matured" as a gamer? Can you enjoy Keep on the Borderlands or Steading of the Hill Giant King now, as much as you did 20 years ago?

We did play White Plume Mountain a few years back, just before 3E came out (EEK! that seems like a really long time ago now). Unfortunately, the DM was a boob, so I can't say the experience was a good one. Even if the DM hadn't been an idiot, I realized that there were elements that module (and in some others) that just seemed really hokey and not in our group's current gaming style. It's not that we are so serious, just that a lot of these old adventures had silly naming conventions, too many puns and fairly illogical dungeon set ups. Also, although I had forgotten parts of it, other people in my group could (and would) recite parts of the adventure nearly word for word.

However, I am now obsessed with the idea of running an slightly updated (both in rules and content) Keep on the Borderlands or the "Against the Giants" modules. I ran them when I was 12 or so and haven't looked at them too deeply since. I'd love to spring them on an unsuspecting party, not tell them I'm running an old module and see how long it takes them to realize what it is.