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.

• S1 Tomb of Horrors  (Ranked #3 greatest adventure of all time)
• S2 White Plume Mountain (Ranked #9 greatest adventure of all time)
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
  (Ranked #5 greatest adventure of all time)
• S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Ranked #22 greatest adventure of all time)
• These first four are published now as part of S1-4: Dungeons of Dread.
• (S5) The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga
• (S6) Labyrinth of Madness
• and special addition WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun.

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.

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 Roleplayers^TM 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:

• http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/2010/08/frank-mentzers-aquaria.html
• http://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4140

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.

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

Strange Brew: Warlocks

I am interrupting this A to Z Challenge to talk about my newest book. The first part of "Strange Brew" is now out.  This book features Warlocks for the Pathfinder game.

Strange Brew: Warlock

Power.

Sorcerers are born into it. Wizards spend their lives in rigorous study for it. Witches gain it through devotion to their patron. But some who seek power are unlucky enough to have been born mortal, with no access to or desire for arcane education; ordinary people who know little of witchcraft’s ancient traditions. Unlike witches, who are called by their patrons, warlocks seek out powerful beings to grant them the power they crave or desperately need.

That power can now be in your hands.

Included in these 30 pages is the new Warlock class for the Pathfinder RPG.

• Also inside are new rules on Grimoires, the ancient and living texts of warlocks.
• Details on new warlock pacts, including unique powers and spells.
• Examples of several new warlock Patrons.
• New feats
• New hexes
• New spells
• And a new warlock NPC

All for your Pathfinder Role-Playing Game!

A to Z of Adventure! P is for Paragon

P is for Paragon.

I already talked about the Epic Level adventures for D&D4.  The Paragon adventures were the middle of the road ones, for characters level 11-20.  (The Heroic Tier was for adventurers of level 1 to 10).
The Paragon level represented heroes as the movers and shakers of the world. The heroes that the common folk knew by name or at least by reputation.  The threats are greater for these guys, but the rewards are also higher.
These adventures continued the fight to learn of Orcus' plans against the Raven Queen.

• P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens
• P2 Demon Queen's Enclave
• P3 Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress

It also is the level that the stress of D&D4 became really apparent.  In other versions of D&D these are levels where the threats begin to change and then become cosmic. We see that here too, but really the combat system of D&D4 was just more of the same slog.

I liked these adventures in concept. I still do in fact.  Maybe someone out there has converted them all to 1st or 5th Edition.  I could see a nice conversion using the current 5th edition adventure series format.  1st to 20th level.  It also would not be too difficult; you could easily cut out a third of the material above to create something that would work better for 5th edition.  The monsters would have to be cut down in number as well.  I would also cut some encounters out all together.  Work in the errata and tighten up the Orcus plot a bit more. It could work.

I guess I just really want to get some use out of my 4e materials.

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!

Zatannurday: Doctor Strange

The new Doctor Strange trailer came out this week.

Doctor Strange is easily my favorite Marvel character.
I liked the idea of this brilliant man of science and medicine thrown into a world he couldn't understand at first.

Plus all that 60's and 70's occult vibes to the early comics and art by Steven Dirko? Yeah that is right up my alley.

Now we have our first trailer out and I am excited as hell.

Looks like we are sticking pretty close to the classic Dr. Strange origin story here too.
Benedict Cumberbatch is opting for an American accent here, which tracks with Strange's character as being a New Yorker.   Tilda Swinton makes an interesting choice as The Ancient One, but a good choice in my mind. Plus we get Mads Mikkelsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor (as Mordo no less!), and Rachel McAddams...that is some top-shelf acting talent.

This is going to rock.

I hope though they keep the horror and occult themes I loved about this comic.
Say what you like about the failed Peter Hooten movie, it was some scary shit for 1978 TV.