Favorite Modules

So thanks to the magic that is Half-Price Books, eBay and my local game store, I have managed to score over the years nearly every classic AD&D Module and many of the 2nd ED ones and a fair number of 3rd and 4th ed ones too.

I am a-wash in adventures.

I want to run my kids through some of the greatest adventures of all time.  They have already been through X1 Ilse of Dread, B4 the Lost City and a few others.  They are going through B2 now with another DM using Pathfinder and will be going through B3 as soon as tomorrow under D&D 3.x.

I am itching to take them through S1 (I have versions now for every edition of D&D), S3 and S4/WG4.  I am dying to get them through Ravenloft and Castle Amber (X2) and Death's Ride (CM2).

They will also hit the GDQ mega-adventure someday, either with me or our other GM.

So what are your favorite adventures and why?
Help me narrow this down to the "must dos".

Thanks!

Would you like an "A" or 100 XP?, Part 2

So my son indeed got home tonight and we sat in the game room. He had his notebook, all my D&D books, including 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions of the Dragonomicon, and he wrote a history for me on why is character wanted a life of adventure.

Here are some excerpts:

Teragon is a Blue Dragonborn Sorcerer.   His dad was famous for killing Tiamat, the Queen of Dragons. Now Teragon wants to be an adventurer just like his dad and so does his brother, Sligon, the Black Dragonborn Paladin. 

When Teragon was 11 his dad died of a disease called "dragonitis". 

Teragon found a magic dagger and a scroll with a spell that made his dragon breath into blue fire. 

Ok, so it won't win any Ennies, but it is still awesome.  I like the part about how his character wants to be like his dad (win!) but not so much about the part where his dad dies of Dragonitis! There was a lot more, thngs about a dragon's cave and how he adventures with his brother.

So for his efforts, Teragon has blue fire dragon breath that does extra damage (thanks to a feat he had to choose at 1st level anyway) and he has a +1 dagger.  Oh and Liam for his efforts was given 500 XP.

Tomorrow night I hope to hear about Sligon and why he decided to be a Paladin.

Return to the Palace of Silver Princess

Like a lot of gamers my age I am familiar with the module B3: Palace of the Silver Princess, and like most of those gamers my experience is with the "Green" cover version.  Well I had heard about the infamous "Orange" cover version of course, but never hoped I would see it.  Well Wizards of the Coast had changed that when they released the banned Orange version a few years back along with the story of why it was banned/deemed inappropriate.   An interesting bit of game history, but really I think nearly everyone feels that the edited Green version is the better module.

Reading the Orange version with knowledge of the Green is an interesting experience and one that almost always leaves the Orange one coming up a bit short.  Not that the Green version, with edits by Basic Game guru Tom Moldvay, is a stellar module, it does have it's moments.

B3 holds a special place for me since it is the first module I ever bought specifically to run and not play in.  There was a lot for a neophyte DM like myself in 1981 to like.  The programmed adventure in the beginning was a nice touch to kid just learning how to also program the computers in Jr. High.  Arik of the Hundred Eyes was an awesome sounding bad guy and one I had hoped would make another appearance one day. And it was easy for me to place this all in Glantri from the Expert Set, it seemed to fit well with other things I had going on at the time.

Reading over the Wizard's site this past weekend got me thinking.  I have wanted to use B3 in my kids' game for a while now.  Thanks to the maps (linked below) from the Vaults of Pandius and the update to D&D 3.0 version of the monsters and encounters I could run this is as-is for them now.  Of course I'll want to bump the encounters up a bit to make them more challenging.   Course the maps are for the Green version and 3.0 update is for the Orange version. 

I think I'll take a suggestion from Wizards and run this as "Return to the Palace of the Silver Princess".  The events of the "green" cover happened many years ago, but something went wrong that lead to the events of "orange" cover.  The Eye of Arik wasn't destroyed properly and soon the entire area became cursed.  Ellis the Strong (The Silver Warrior) became the the cause in the minds of the locals.  While the evil energies pouring out of the fragmented eye caused mutations in all living things in the castle.  Plants became vampire roses and archer bushes, the staff became Ubues (gotta explain them somehow), Aliegha, Catharandamus and the dwarves Boron and Xyzom were adventurers that came here previously and are now coming under the affects of the Eye.  Catharandamus is going insane, thinking he can summon Arik, Aliegh is turning into a wolf (or bear or a bear-wolf crossbred-thingy) and the dwarves are slowly becoming orcs.  I do plan on using Candella and Duchess, as randomish NPCs, but they had just gotten there and have not started to mutate yet. I just liked that picture of the two of them being caught by surprise. 

I doubt I will drop any hints here to the upcoming 4e adventures or even the on going Dragonslayer's plot.  So Arik is not really another name for Tharizdun, and I doubt I'll make the Eye of Arik a part of the summoning ritual they need for Tiamat.  Just a little side adventure to amuse me and them while I build them up to the big finale.  Though the Knights of the White Drakes from the Green version allays interested me.  Maybe once the adventure is over I'll have the Knights send them their thanks and offer them a great gift, a Drake (a riding dragon) for them to use in their battle against Tiamat.  My son would LOVE that.  Of course that only works if the the guy on the dragon that everyone thinks is evil is actually good and the characters help clear his name.  I do like that idea.

Links

- Wizard's page for the Orange version, http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/dx20020121x7 

- Grognardia reflects on B3, http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/11/retrospective-palace-of-silver-princess.html

- As does Emerald Lich, http://www.emeraldlich.com/post.php?post_id=1162

- Acaeum overview, http://www.acaeum.com/ddindexes/modpages/b3.html

- Cool maps from the Mystara uber-site, Vaults of Pandius, http://pandius.com/maps.html

- d20/3.0 conversion at ENWorld, http://www.enworld.org/cc/downloads/files/palace_of_the_silver_princess.rtf

Would you like an "A" or 100 XP?

So rarely do my roles as father, educator and gamer collide as well as they have this night.

I have been working with my sons all summer long on doing extra reading, math and writing.  Yes this is what it is like when you are a teacher's kid.

I know motivation is low for school work, especially in the summer and especially when it comes to writing.  But tonight I offered my boys a deal.

For every paragraph they write about their characters they will get 100 XP.  If they do a whole page then they get 500 XP.  If they can write a good story and tell me something about their character then we consider it "true" , even if that means he gets a new magic item.

We will see how it will go.