Showing posts with label 1st ed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1st ed. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

RPGaDAY2016: Day 23

Share one of your best 'Worst Luck' stories.

I mentioned this one a couple years ago for "Most Memorable Character Death" but it also falls under best "Worst Luck" since the poor guy was at the receiving end of some truly diabolic dice rolls.

I have played exactly 1 ninja my entire  gaming life.  His name was Oko-nishi (horrible I know).  My lame attempts at a Japanese sounding name.  In my defense at what I knew was a bad name, I made him a half-orc; because I could then blame his orc parent.  It must have been around 1984-5 as I made him using the Oriental Adventure rules.  My then DM and I had worked up a D&D combat simulator on the Color Computer 2 and we plugged him in with 9 other characters.  He was attacked by a Black Dragon (or Red, cant recall) and killed. The dragon kept attacking him and only him.  We had not worked out all the errors. In the end, he had been reduced to something like -70 hp.  My DM offered to let him be ok, or keep him dead. We enjoyed watching it so much and getting the mental image of this dragon jumping up and down on my dead ninja that I felt it was a waste to say it never happened.

I never played a ninja or a half-orc again.

http://www.brigadecon.org/rpgaday2016/


Thursday, August 18, 2016

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons. My collection is now complete!

Look what I got in the mail today!



+Mark Taormino's Maximum Mayhem Dungeons #2 and #3.



I now have the complete set.

In order of playability, lowest to the highest.

Just missing an adventure for 4th to 6th and then 12th to 14th.

Not sure what I will do with these.  Hanging Coffins was so much fun I just had to have these.  The 3D glasses and pictures are a nice and unexpected treat.

I also can't help but think that Mark and +Venger Satanis need to get together to make a really gonzo adventure.  Liberation of the Demonslayer would fit into all of this really nice and Star Spawn practically begs to be mixed with Alpha Blue.  Get on that one guys!

Monday, August 15, 2016

Monstrous Mondays: Stranger Things

If you play D&D or ever played it and read this blog chances are really good that you have already heard of (or have watched) Netflix's Stranger Things.

It is the biggest hit of the summer and made huge stars not just of the great young cast, but also D&D. In fact it is being credited with helping D&D sales.

Beyond all that it is just great story telling and a fantastic tale.

Plus it has a cool monster.

The Monster, called "Demogorgon" after our favorite two-headed demon prince, is a true monster.  It is hard to see, hunts and kills people and can smell blood anywhere.  I am not going to spoil it if you have not seen it, but sufice to say it is a great monster.

Great enough in fact for AD&D.  Here it is, with some artistic liberties taken.

The Monster
AKA: The Demogorgon
Frequency: Very Rare
No. Appearing: 1 (believed unique)
Size: Large 7" (L)
Armor Class: 5 [14]1
Movement
 Basic: 180' (60')
 Advanced: 18"/27"
 3e: 45ft
Hit Dice: 8d8+4 (40 hp)
% in Lair: 50% (hunting at night, hiding in the Border Ethereal)
Treasure Type: None
Attacks: 3 (claw/claw/bite)
Damage: 1d6+4/1d6+4/1d6
Special Attacks: Scream (as fear spell)
Special Defenses: Ethereal Projection; Immune to all gaze attacks, blindness; regeneration
Save As: Witch 102
Magic Resistance: none
Morale: 103
Alignment: Chaotic evil (animal)
Level/XP: 8/4,250 + 12/hp

STR: 19 INT: 10 WIS: 8 DEX: 16 CON: 20  CHA: 6

1 Descending and [Ascending] Armor classes are given.
2 This is used for Basic games, and S&W. Also for monsters that I think need to save a little differently than others.
3 Morale is "Basic" Morale and based on a 1-12 scale. Multiply by 1.6667 for 1-20 scale.

The Monster, known by locals as "the Demogorgon" is not a demon, or even related to demons.  It is a native of the Border Ethereal known as "the Upside-Down" and really not much more than an animal.  It is a rather terrifying animal with hunting abilities similar to that of a shark.  It has no eyes, it's entire head opens up to a large mouth, it can smell and even taste blood on the air like a snake or shark would.

The Monster is a nocturnal hunter, not because of fear of light, but it is when it has advantage over it's prey.  It seeks out it's prey, large warm blooded creatures, and drags it back to it's lair in the Border Ethereal.  There it can feed at it's leisure.

The Monster can heal itself at the rate of 2 hp per round.


Don't forget to include the hashtag #MonsterMonday on Twitter or #MonsterMonday on Google+ when you post your own monsters!

Friday, July 8, 2016

Friday Night Videos: Happy Birthday Jon!

Wednesday, July 6 is the birthday of one of my oldest friends Jon "Flat Black" Cook.
Growing up Jon's birthday always meant that going over to his place and playing D&D until sunrise.  Great times really.

Since I have not posted one of these in a while I wanted to do this one for him.  Plus Jon always had a great collection of music.  He got me into Rush and Iron Maiden. He was the one that threw a copy of Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast" at me and told me to listen to it and don't come back till I knew all about Eddie.
Metal, D&D and summer's hanging out with Jon were what made the early 80s for me.
Also this is more like Friday Afternoon Videos since I want to tag him on Facebook with this.

I'll admit it. During the height of the "Satanic Panic" Jon and I would do whatever we could to make matters worse. Playing D&D and listening to Iron Maiden was the norm. Thankfully for us we had parents that were neither impressed with two teens nor stupid.




I am not really sure who introduced me to Pink Floyd first. Jon or my late brother Mike.  I am inclined to give Mike the credit because Mike was really cool like that and that is how I want to remember it.  But Jon certainly introduced "Not Now John" from Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" to me.  I am in the minority here, but I rather enjoy the bleakness of this album. People say The Wall is depressing. That's a cake-walk compared to Roger Water's soul-bearing requiem for the post-war dream.
Fuck all that.  This is just a great song.




One of these days...I need to do a FNV dedicated to Pink Floyd.
One of these days I am going to dance with the grim reaper...or cut you into little pieces...never was sure hat he was saying here.




It is no doubt that Jon introduced me to Rush.  To this day I equate Rush and D&D so tightly largely due to these summers.  This was the first song I can remember him playing while we gamed.




Another group Jon played a lot of and I associate with gaming to this day is Blue Öyster Cult.  Veteran of the Psychic Wars from "Fire of Unknown Origin" might be the most D&D song ever written.



It wasn't all metal. David Bowie's "Let's Dance" was a BIG hit around this time.




Even years later as I was getting ready to go away to college Jon still had something new for me.  With his typical "you need to listen to this now" attitude he popped in a tape (yeah tape) of this new band he discovered; Guns and Roses.

No association with gaming here.  Just Jon once again being Jon and finding out about music when no one else in our little midwest town had never even heard of these guys.



So Happy Birthday JR!

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Review: AC4 The Book of Marvelous Magic

"The D&D and AD&D games are actually different games." p.74, The Book of Marvelous Magic.
This was not the first time I had read this, and by 1985 I had moved away from the D&D game to AD&D, it was still interesting to read this.  Back then we freely mixed the two systems without so much as a care.
So it was with some confusion then that when I picked up AC4 The Book of Marvelous Magic that is proudly stated it was for the D&D AND AD&D games.  This was only emphasized more with the very first magic item listed, the Alternate World Gate.  AD&D was treated on the same level as Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and Boot Hill.

Confusion of compatibility issues aside, The Book of Marvelous Magic became one of my favorite and most frustrating D&D accessories.   Favorite because at this time I was serious into working on my witch class for AD&D/D&D and I was looking for guidelines on how magic items should be created.  I didn't find that here, but I did find a lot of inspiration.  Also, there were a lot of magic items in this book that later would become rather important in my own games for the next 2-3 years.
Frustrating because I never could get my gaming groups to embrace this book like I did.  I think it something to do with the punny names of the some of the items.  I now know that this was just something that was going on at the TSR offices back then (see I6 Ravenloft), but it made it difficult to take the book seriously at times.

The authors are listed as Frank Mentzer with Gary Gygax, but I think we all knew at the time that Mentzer did the lions-share of work on this.  The book covers the same span of characters (and same span of publication) of the Mentzer penned Basic, Expert and Companion Rules.  Living in my small town in Illinois I think this might have been the first reference I saw to the Companion ruleset.  Reading this book I am thinking that the Companion rules had just been written and the Master Rules had not. There are no references to the Master Rules and in places, the rules seem to put 36 at the top of the character achievement and in others, it was 26.

So what does this book have?  Well, there are over 500 new (at the time) magic items spanning 76 pages of text. The cover art is from none other than Clyde "I'll have the thigh" Caldwell and really grabbed my attention.  Not like that (though I was 15 at the time) but because she looked like a bad ass witch.


She even has a broom in the corner over there.  How could I NOT buy this book??

The magic items are divided by type, so for example under Armband there are five listed magical Armbands.  When a magic item needs to be listed, such a Bag of Holding, it is listed with a "see D&D Basic Set".  

The book did raise the question in our groups of who was creating all these magic items? That was never fully answered here or really anywhere for a couple more decades.  We opted that most of these were in fact fairly unique items.  So there were not a lot of "Buttons of Blasting" out there, but maybe one or two at best.

There are a few magic items here that I still have not seen in other (future) versions of D&D, so it is worth it just for those. It is also a great insight to the mid 80s D&D, a time when TSR was on top of the world, right before the big shakeup.  Also at the time I enjoyed tthis book, but largely ignored Mentzer's magnum-opus BEMCI D&D.  Reviewing both now as an adult I see I did all these books a large disservice.

What is in these books that gamers of today can use?  Well in truth, LOTS.
Really.  The book might as well say "Compatible with 5th Edition D&D" on the cover.  Hell. Change the trade dress and you could almost republish it as is with little editing.   Yeah remove references to Basic, Expert and Companion. Change some of the spell casting descriptions, but otherwise this is still a gem today as it was 30 years ago.

Time to re-introduce the Collar of Stiffness to my games!

Thursday, June 30, 2016

The search for Q2

In August I will start the boys on the GDQ series.  Reading through all the material I can't help but wish there was something...more to the ending.

Back in April I mentioned that Q1 seemed lonely because it was all by itself and it does have quite a different feel to it than the G and D adventures.  I mused at the time a "Q2" would be a good addition.   I think I even talked a bit about a drow civil war.

I have been thinking a lot about what a Module Q2 might look like or be.  Since I am also strapped for time I thought a pre-made, published adventure might be my best bet.  I want it also to be something that challenges the characters and players.  Q1 was designed for characters levels 10-14. So I want something near to that.

Plus to make the "Q" in "Q2" mean something I wanted to stick to "Queen" adventures.  BUT not  ones that I might want to put into my "War of the Witch Queens" adventures.

So who are the contestants in my Q2 pageant?

First up is +Mark Taormino's Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen.  This adventure has a lot going for it. There is the Queen connection, it's high level and there is a vampire realm briefly described in Q1 that would work for this. Also, I wanted more vampires in the end of the adventure too.
On the con side the module is a slaughter house.  Making it work with Q1 would take some work.  There is also so much going in this adventure that it really could be used on it's own.  I also like the idea of making this part of the old Palace of the Vampire Queen adventtures too.

+Monte Cook's Queen of Lies is another really good choice.  It's a good adventure (having been reprinted three different times), it fits the theme REALLY well, it is about the right level, has that Drow civil war thing going on and calling it "Q2 Queen of Lies" really, really appeals to me.  (Side note I had a rather infamous NPC back in the late 80s whose nickname was "Queen of Lies").   The basic plot though really takes the characters away from the big arc I have going on, but not so much I can't work with it.  It is for D&D 3.0, but I can make that work no problem.

+Wolfgang Baur and  Gwendolyn F. M. Kestrel's Expedition to the Demonweb Pits for 3.5 is an honest to goodness sequel (of sorts) to Q1.  It also has a lot going for it. The issue I have is that Lolth is assumed to be alive when the module starts and there is no way I can guarantee that.  Yes it is unlikely she will get killed in Q1, but it is possible.  Again this one is big. I mean huge really. There is so much going on here that it is also it's own campaign.   Lots of good ideas to mine here though.

P2 Demon Queen's Enclave is for 4e, but it has the whole Drow and demon thing going for it too.  Also it was written in part by +Mike Mearls and +Robert Schwalb so I know it has potential.  It also ties in the whole thing nicely with Orcus.



First (Fantasy) World Problems I know.



---
I am up for an Ennie this year for Best Blog!
Please click on the link and vote "1" under "The Other Side".


Thursday, June 2, 2016

Edition Changes as a Role-Playing Device

It is no secret that I am a fan of most editions of D&D (and many games in general).  Since I began back in 1979 I have played every edition of *D&D there is and have found something to enjoy in all of them.

Since I have been playing for so long, I have also had campaigns that have lasted years.  Sometimes these campaigns span multiple editions.  For example, my kids started with characters in 3rd edition, then those characters have kids that were started in 1st Edition and then we all moved to 5th edition.  With the occasional side step into Basic or OSR games for fun.   I have used different editions of the game for flashbacks, dream-sequences and general out-of-body experiences.



But looking at the larger picture of a longer narrative have you considered the actual rule changes to part and parcel of what is going on in the world?  Obviously, if you only play one edition this will not mean much to you or if your games have no continuity between editions.   But I have characters that started in Holmes Basic and they have descendants in my current 5e game.   Usually, it is one generation per edition, but how can I explain it when a cleric only has a mace a weapon and no spells till 2nd level when his grandson, who is also a cleric of the same god can wield a sword in some cases and his son can cast minor spells at will?

Some things I did work into a large narrative.
When I went from Basic to First Ed I explained the Class/Race Split by saying that elves in my original lands preferred to become fighter/magic-users due to tradition, but elves elsewhere in the world would choose other classes.

Going from First to Second had the biggest hurdle regarding demons.  First ed had them, second ed originally did not.  So since I had just done a huge war to finish off my "high school" games before college I just said that the war had blocked all demons from coming back into the world.

Second to third was a longer time span of inactivity for me, but the big issue was the birth of Sorcerers; people with spontaneous magic in their blood. Is this a remnant of the re-opening of the demon gates?  Maybe.   Hmm....I think I see and adventure idea!

Fourth has a slew of problems.  Mostly though the change in the nature of magic.  I have regarded this as an odd conjunction of the planes; something that altered the Cosmology.  Again, sounds like a cool thing to play out one day.

Fifth then is the return to the way things were before...with some things changed permanently.

I know there are some "in-story" and "in-universe" explanations for these changes in a lot of the Forgotten Realms material.  I will have to check these out someday and see if they track with my own ideas.

What have you done?

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

New Releases Tuesday: Tomb of Horrors

The Tomb of Horrors is one of the most talked about modules on this blog.  Now you can legall own a PDF copy.

Tomb of Horrors @ RPGNow.



Honestly never thought I'd see this, but there it is.
I imagine the rest of the S-Series will be out in the next few weeks.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Next Stop, The Temple of Elemental Evil

For the next phase of the Come Endless Darkness campaign, I am going to do a flashback episode.  I am taking the characters all back to first level, or more to the point 0 level, and they are going to meet for the "first" time in Hommlet.



Here they are going to meet other adventurers such as Morgan Ironwolf, Rufus, Burne, and Aleena.  I might even throw in Emirikol the Chaotic just for fun.

Why go back and do this?  Well, I wanted to run Temple of Elemental Evil now for a while.  But T1 Village of Hommlet is for brand new characters.  I also have been dying to do some Basic D&D again.  I have picked up all this really cool Basic-era related stuff lately and I think it would be a blast.

So this flashback episode will serve to introduce the party, give them a reason to be together, and uncover the reason why they had forgotten it to start with.

I am going to throw this out there, but despite my own personal objections to the women-in-refrigerators like plot device,  I am still going to kill Aleena.  Partly because I want to later use The Shrine of St. Aleena, but also because of my stated goal of giving my kids a full D&D experience.

Though I also admit I have always wanted to run a game called "They Keep Killing Aleena" as a time-travel adventure.


Tuesday, May 24, 2016

On this day the Slave Lords have been defeated!

Over the weekend the boys escaped the Dungeons of the Slave Lords and started a revolt in the city of Sudderham to defeat the Slave Lords.  They managed to kill them all including the leader Stalman Klim.


I decided that Klim was not a cleric of the Earth Dragon cult, instead, I made a more tangible connection to the Elder Elemental Eye.  Yeah I could go all convoluted with the connections and cover cults and fronts, but really the boys have enough details to juggle.

On the Water Dragon on their way back to the Duchy of Urnst I hit them with the big plot point.  The Sun just went out.

In typical fashion, my youngest announces that someone is killing Sun Gods.

While they were unconscious in the Dungeons I told them they had a flash back to an adventure very early in their careers, and one they don't remember.

So for the next adventure, I am going make 0-level B/X Basic versions of their current 7th level D&D 5 characters and take them through T1 The Village of Hommlet.

I was going to do this using 4e, but a few things have happened recently that have made me really want to do this as Basic D&D.  Plus this is a flashback to when the characters were "younger" so a simpler system is really what I want to give it that right feel.

Any XP they get in Hommlet I am going to give to their 7th level characters.  Afterall, if they just now remembered the adventure that could not have had any advantages from the XP till now.

Also, the nice thing here is I am going to take advantage of D&D Basic's features as features (and not as I thought of them then as bugs).  So the sorcerer and the warlock are going to be Magic-Users. The elven ranger will be an Elf.  The Paladin will be a Fighter and so on.  The only sticking point is the Dragonborn.  I think he will be a Dragonborn.  Just like a Dwarven fighter would be a Dwarf. So yes I am going to use Race-as-Class for this.

I also got all my B/X GM's Screen stuff in the mail yesterday from +Richard LeBlanc so Basic is on my mind.  More on that though in another post.

The Sun is gone. The Order of the Platinum Dragon has a lost memory to recover.  And now they hear of giants coming down from the hills to brazenly attack villages...

Thursday, May 19, 2016

A Treasure Trove! With Pics!

So no "real" post today.  I spent my writing time going through my latest treasure trove.

I joined a bunch of area online "Garge Sale" groups on Facebook and one panned out yesterday.  So cash in hand I drove to nearby Schaumburg, IL and picked up a couple of milk crates full of old-school goodness.   It was not till this morning that I discovered what I really had.


Lots of minis including a wizard's lab.


A D&D Electronic board game in working condition and from what I can tell all the parts.


Modules, Top Secret and even a few Marvel Super Heroes books and some Star Frontiers.


Two Greyhawk folios with maps.  They are in rough condition though, between the two I might be able to salvage one.


More character sheets!  Always need these.


No idea what these are.  But I can't wait to find out!


A lot of the books have water damage like this.  This was not a collector's collection, but a users and a player's one.  There are also a few duplicates.  This was because the husband and wife that sold them merged their collections.





The B/X boxes are empty but the books have been cut up and put into that brown binder.  See I KNEW someone had to have done this.  The BECMI Master's box has both the Master's set and the Immortals set inside. The hardbacks are in decent enough condition. The Monstrous Compendium is in fantastic shape.





I have NO idea what this is.  It is made by TSR and it is from 1974.  The product list on back doesn't even list D&D.



Their old Gen Con folder with the games they were going to choose for 1983.

Some JG stuff.


Cut out minis.  From 1984 I think.


And this was a surprise, a 6th printing of Swords & Spells in near perfect condition.


An absolute ton of modules and books.  Some duplicates within the group and some with my own collection, but still enough "new" stuff to make it worthwhile to me.

It's going to take me some time to sort through all of this stuff that is for sure. But I will have a blast doing it.

Tuesday, May 3, 2016

New Releases Tuesday. Witch Edition.

It's Tuesday and that means new releases.

Today I am very excited to report that The Witch is now available on iTunes and Amazon Instant Video.


I am going to be staying up tonight to see this one.

Also out is the third book in Barb Hendee's Mist-torn Witches series, To Kill a Kettle Witch.


While not exactly a new release for today, it was released on Friday.  Rob Zombie's The Electric Warlock Acid Witch Satanic Orgy Celebration Dispenser.



On the D&D/OSR side of things The Rogues Gallery is now out.
I remember getting this and being quite excited.  I remember years laters rediscovering it and recognizing some of the names.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! T is for Temple of Elemental Evil

T is for Temple of Elemental Evil.

Confession time.  I have never run or played through The Temple of Elemental Evil.
I think I was in the Village of Hommlet (T1) once, but that was back in the early, early days of the game.

Since then there have been three more updates and expansions to the T series.
I have read all of these. Recently I also read the novelization of the Temple of Elemental Evil and played part of the old Atari PC Game.  T1-4 also made the top 30 D&D adventures of all time.

So I have to admit I really want to run it now.  Though I want to tie it into my current D&D5 game.

Trouble is that the characters are now already 8th level and near the very end of the Slave Lords.  I didn't want to start with T1 because for me it was more important to start with B1 and B2.

So I have the T1-4 supermodule on PDF, but there is a lot going on that I am not a fan of.  Not that it isn't good, it is, but not what I need or want.  Plus I am no fan linking Zuggtmoy to the temple.  Her powers are not elemental in nature.  Plus I always liked the idea that some remnant of Tharizdun especially in the guise of the Elder Elemental Eye.  Maybe this is an elemental themed patron for a warlock.  The idea is of course to play into the larger "Come Endless Darkness" plot line.  So yes this evil is related to the larger evil. Which might be Tharizdun. At least that is what I have always considered over the years.  Turns out that +Joseph Bloch agrees with me.  I already did S4 and WG4, so I guess I am going in reverse.

As usual I have an embarrassment of riches. Too much material actually.

I found some 5e Conversion notes that look really nice. And I have a lot of choices when it comes to plots, ideas and adventures.  Of course I will use T1 The Village of Hommlet and likely a good portion of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil.  Given my particular desire to make an easy job far more difficult I am also going to look at versions for other editions.
I read through most of those last night.  T1 is easy, T2 will be a bit more work.  I think I am going to steal a lot of ideas from Return and Princes of the Apocalypse.

While doing some research, I discovered this blog post that talked about T2 The Temple of Elemental Evil as promised  back before T1-4 came out.  It is a very interesting read to be honest. That is where the image to the right came from.

Here are some other posts I consider "must read" on my goal to build this gigantic conspiracy of evil.
To me "Expert" level (as listed on the T2 cover) is 4 to 14.   When I first had this idea I was going to go with a parallel group, now I think I just want to up the threats and have it after the Queen of the Demon-web pits.   Make it 14th to 20th level.

So it is settled.  Zuggtmoy is out. Tharizdûn is in.  What is his plan?
Simple. He wants out.  He has convinced all these different evil factions to blot out the sun and deliver the essences of gods to him they think they are going to obtain godhood, but in truth they will be freeing him.  Maybe each has a Shard of the Elder Elemental Eye.  Lolth has Air, Orcus has Earth, Dagon/Hydra has Water and someone else has fire.  I kinda want it to be Asmodeus, but that is a whole other issue really.

But I am leaving out the mindflayers.  Why Air for Lolth when she is underground?  Air represents what she has lost. Plus I like tying her to the Queen of Air and Darkness.

I know there are places I can put the Elemental Shard of Air in Q1.  I am sure I can find places in the D series for the Elemental Shard of Water.  That leaves Earth and Fire.

That's what I love about all these old adventures.  So much you can do with them.

Friday, April 22, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! S is for Special Series.

S is for Special Series.

Ah! The "S" modules.  No series of modules have been as divisive, controversial or as fun (to me) as these.  Originally just four adventures, it has one "honorary" member in my mind and two more unnumbered members.  I have played in these and run them; some (like S4) many times over. These are some of my favorite adventures of all time.

Where to begin?

Well here are the modules/adventures I want to discuss.
These adventures have all been featured here many, many times.
Also, the first four have been collected into a single volume not once, but twice.  Many of the adventures have also been updated for other versions of D&D.


S1: Tomb of Horrors
Depending on who you ask, this is either one of the best adventures for D&D or the worst.  I enjoy this module, but it is not one I plan on running again. I ran it for my kids and they survived, but I think there are better adventures out there.  It is one of those adventures that everyone talks about; often about how horribly they or someone else died in it.   In the picture above, the book on the right with devil with his mouth open?  Yeah. More than one idiotcharacter put their hand in there only to loose said hand.  The big bad is that jeweled skull on the cover of the middle book.
Tomb of Horrors is often described as a meat grinder.  This is true, but it is also a fun challenge and if I can be so bold, a rite of passage of the D&D gamer.  You can't really call yourself a D&D gamer until you go through this.
Love it or hate it, it's place in history is solid and unmoving.

S2: White Plume Mountain
In many ways White Plume Mountain is one of my favorite adventures.  It's a crazy dungeon filled with traps, monsters a few legendary weapons of vast power, all dropped into a semi-active volcano.   I ran it for my kids a while back.  Back then I ran it under 3rd Edition, using a 1st Edition rule base, Basic Edition characters, and some 4th edition add-ons.  It was such a classic though that it all worked.  My kids loved it.

S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
This was one of the first adventures I ever bought for myself.  The characters (in a quasi-medieval Europe) find an ancient crashed star-ship and all the crazy alien life forms still trapped inside.  Based a bit on the game Metamorphosis Alpha.   I ran this for my kids a while back.  My youngest LOVED it, but my oldest didn't. Which is a bit odd I thought, because he began playing with the Star Wars d20 RPG.
Still though, I personally think this is a great module.

S4: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth 
The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and it's near sequel WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun are two of my favorite modules ever.  I bought S4 my freshman year in high school and read it cover to cover.  One of my favorite bits was the "sneak peak" at some of the monsters that would later appear in the Monster Manual II hardcover.  It was also a rather deadly adventure. The nearby Forgotten Temple of Tharizidun then opens up a new threat of the ancient imprisoned god Tharizdun.  This ties it in to the T1-4 Supermodule The Temple of Elemental Evil.  But I think what I liked about it was the information on Greyhawk.  We are introduced to the witch Iggwilv here. She would later become an important figure in the history of Greyhawk and D&D.
The boys loved this adventure.  Combining it with WG4 and some additional material from the web it took us about 6 months to complete.  Still, it was a great time.

Two other modules were later added to the "Special" Series but never had, to my knowledge, an "S" designation.

S5: The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga
Baba Yaga is one of those characters that we keep coming back to in D&D.  There are at least 3 or 4 versions of The Dancing Hut adventure out there now and even for the Pathfinder game (a game very much like D&D) has her as the main bad guy for a whole series of adventures.
I am going to feature her and this adventure in my own "War of the Witch Queens" campaign that I run next.

S6: Labyrinth of Madness
Of all the "S" modules, this is the only one I know nothing about.
From what I can tell it is sort of a tribute to the kinds of dungeons we saw in the S-series.  It looks like a lot of fun though.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! R is for RPGA Adventures.

R is for RPGA Adventures.

Growing up in the 80s I read about the RPGA, Role-Players Game Association, with great interest.  As a kid it was important to me then to be "Best at D&D" (whatever that meant) and the RPGA seemed like external validation of that.  I had heard there were some people in my small-ish town (22k at the time iifc) that were members, but I don't think I even knew for sure.  For me though being in the RPGA was like a badge of honor, like running a Call of Cthulhu game was.  Something only Real RoleplayersTM did.

Well today I am not going to get into the details of the RPGA, past or present, instead, I want to talk about the adventures.  Now normally with this challenge I want to present some material that my normal readers will like and that new readers will also find approachable.   The adventures from the RPGA are, as you might expect from reading the above, not very common or easily accessed.

Back in the early days of eBay I hit the internet hard looking for copies of these adventures.   One of the first ones I grabbed were the first four I knew of.

R1 To the Aid of Falx 
R2 The Investigation of Hydell  
R3 The Egg of the Phoenix  
R4 Doc's Island

These were written in 1982-83 by Frank Mentzer.  I focused on these since they were the ones I knew about and I had a chance to go through them in the late 80s myself, but never finished them.
Unknown to me at the time they were all collected into a larger adventure and sold as I12 Egg of the Phoenix which I talked about on I Day.

Re-reading these now I am very curious about Frank Mentzer's own campaign setting of Aquaria.   I found these links that gave me a bit of a better idea what it is all about:


I am going to need to find out more about it to be honest.

The next set of RPGA adventures that got me interested were the RPGA series.

RPGA1 Rahasia
RPGA2 Black Opal Eye
These were written by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then later combined into the module B7 Rahasia.  Reading these earlier treatments is actually very interesting. I pulled them out when I was thinking about this challenge and after I got the new Tracy and Laura Hickman inspired Ravenloft.   I talked quite a bit about Rahasia and The Black Opal Eye.
http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2016/03/rahasia-ravenloft-and-witches.html

RPGA3 The Forgotten King 
RPGA4 The Elixir of Life
Both of these were written by Bob Blake in 1983.  I have them, but I have not really gotten into them.

There are others, mostly featured in Polyhedron Magazine.

As publications, they are an interesting piece of D&D history especially from the so-called "Silver age" of D&D; that early/mid-80s time when D&D was at its cultural peak, but the best adventures were for the most part already published and behind it.

As adventures, many are forgettable save for the ones I mention here.  This, in particular, came as something of a blow to me.  I had expected the RPGA modules to be the cream of the crop, but that was not the case.  Rahasia and the Egg of the Phoenix caught my attentions, but that is about it.
Many of the best would be later reprinted under other module codes (like Rahasia and Egg of Phoenix).

Still. There is something uniquely nostalgic about picking up these duotone books and flipping through thinking of an age when Walkmen, pastels, Trapper Keepers, and Rubic's Cubes ruled the land.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! Q is for Queen of the Demonweb Pits

Q is for Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

What else could it be?  Well...funny you should say that. There is also a few Vampire Queen adventures out there and there is the adventure path I am playing around with, War of the Witch Queens.  But I guess really there is only one queen and only one Q module.

Queen of the Demonweb Pits is the ultimate finale that began with the characters looking into some giant raids. Behind it all was the Drow and Lolth!...er wait. Wasn't supposed to be the Elder Elemental Eye? Tharizdun? I mean that is what is going on in T1 Village of Hommlet.

Well as it turns out Q1 was supposed to be different. It wasn't the vision that Gary wanted. Now the official story is that Gary was too busy to work on Q1 because he was working on T2 The Temple of Elemental Evil.  We can see bits of his thinking in T1, S4 and WG5.  So David Sutherland came in to finish it off.  At least that is story we have been told.  According to Shannon Appelcline this was the start of Gary's eventual ouster at TSR.

Regardless of how, what and why, Q1 is fondly remembered to this day 36 years later.  As part of the GDQ series it is considered to be one of the greatest adventures of all time.

I remember playing this back in the day and that confusing as hell map.  I remember talking to friends in the days WAY before the Internet and how we would speculate on Q2 and Q3.

Like T1 and the mythical stand-alone T2, a DIY Q2 would be great.

SO TO MY REGULAR READERS:  What would be in YOUR Q2?

Would you have the characters look into the Elder Elemental Eye connection?  Maybe there would be a civil war among the drow; those that support the EEE and those that support Lolth.

I suppose I could take a few pages from Expedition to the Demonweb Pits for 3.5 edition of D&D to.  I do know I need to work out this Lolth-Tharizdûn issue before my players get there!

3 Different Editions, 1 Basic idea


Monday, April 18, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! O is for Outer Planes

O is for Outer Planes.

There are other "O" series out there, but the only one I owned was OP1, Tales of the Outer Planes.  It was designed to support the Manual of the Planes, one of my favorite D&D books.  The Outer Planes are home to gods, demons, devils and weirder things like modrons, gith and slaad.  All the myths of the world can be found in the planes...somewhere.  The outer planes are very much part of many of the adventures I have, or will, talk about here. H4, Q1, these all take place in the outer planes.

OP1 Tales of the Outer Planes has 11 adventures on various outer planes and 17 lairs.  The adventures are all small and the lairs are just that, a lair.  I got this book because I was so enamored with the Manual of Planes.  Sadly, or fortunately depending on your point of view,  2nd edition came along and got rid of the demons and devils (at least for a while) and made most of this book obsolete.
I also remember hearing back in the day that a lot of people also just didn't like it.  I felt it did not live up to the hype to be sure, but I never thought it was bad.  I rather enjoyed the "Castle at the End of Time" and "An Element of Chaos".

When I run H4 Throne of Bloodstone, this would be a good book to have next to me.  Just in case!



Thursday, April 14, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! L is for Lendore Isles

L is for Lendore Isles (and Len Lakofka).

I was a fan of Len Lakofka way back in the day when I first discovered his work in Dragon Magazine.

I think it was his articles on the Gods and Goddesses of the Suel Empire that read first. Especially the one on Wee Jas.  Or it could have been his article on the Death Master NPC.

But in any case it was his L series, the Lendore Isles, that most people know his work.

Module L1, The Secret of Bone Hill, is a classic for a number of reasons. First it was Lakofka's first foray into module writing. There is was plenty of background detailed in this module as well, a lot for what amounts to an introductory module.

The typical hack-n-slash or kick in the door plot is given over to what really amounts to a mystery.   The adventure section itself is actually only a small part of the adventure.

I also think it was that Bill Willingham cover.  I made character based on that magic user.

I got the chance to run my kids through this at Gen Con 2014 and we had a great time with it.
I had planned to run L2 Assassin's Knot, which is a great follow-up to L1, but time did not allow it.  By the time I had calculated all the XP the characters were ready for something else anyway.  Which is too bad, there is a great murder mystery in L2 that my youngest would have loved.

L3 Deep Dwarven Delve was completed at the same time as the first two adventures, somewhere around 1979, however it would not see publication til 1999 for the D&D Silver Anniversay Edition set.  I have never actually owned or even read this one. A fact that was lost on me till I started working on this post!  In fact the game it was written and published for, 1st Edition AD&D, was no longer in print and 3rd edition was on the very near horizon. Even the company, TSR, was no more having been bought by Wizards of the Coast.
(eta I checked and I did buy it on PDF at some point)

You would think that 20 years is enough to keep a guy out of the gaming biz. Well Len then released the next installments of the Lendore Isles adventures on the old-school gaming forum Dragons's Foot.

The next adventures were L4 Devilspawn and L5 The Kroten Adventures.
Plus material to support these adventures.

I have ready through these other adventures and I can't help but feel that they might work great for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. They have the same feel to me and think they would compliment each other very nicely.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

A to Z of Adventure! J is for Jeff Dee Adventures

J is for Jeff Dee Adventures.

These adventures are not classics. In fact they are only a few years old. But they do have a solid pedigree.  They were both designed and illustrated by legendary TSR artist, and co-creator of the Villians and Vigilantes game, +Jeff Dee.

JD1 Cess-Pit of the Bog-Mother
This is a fun little adventure for characters level 1-3 for your favorite Old-School game.
At just under 10 pages it is perfect for a quick afternoon game. It would work great while traveling to another adventure or in-between towns. The map is repeated in b&w (blue and white) and full-color versions.

JD2 Darkland Moors
Another mini-adventure, this time for a little bit higher lever adventurers. The basic idea here is to investigate the moor and defeat a cyclops causing trouble.  There are three black and white maps.  Given this is about a cyclops I could work it into the Giants series pretty easily.

Both adventures are under $2.50 and you get an adventure you can run in an afternoon.  Perfect for slotting in between other adventures or even to break up the campaign a little.