So, what was the best adventure ever that wasn't for any edition of D&D or any OSR game?
Quote from: RPGPundit;995903So, what was the best adventure ever that wasn't for any edition of D&D or any OSR game?
- The
Enemy Within Campaign - and probably this peaks at
Death on the Reik for me. It's basically Apocalypse Now on a barge, heading through some of the dark Chaos reaches of the Empire...and against the collective wisdom of loadsa critics, I actually quite liked Ken Rolston's
Something Rotten in Kislev too.
- Similarly, I like a lot of Ken Rolston's work in Paranoia too - but the best single scenario, for me, is probably
Clones in Space by Erick Wujcik.
- I have never failed to entertain with Call of Cthulhu's
The Haunting, Dead Man Stomp and all the other scenarios from the core on any given Halloween. It also boasts it's three classic epic campaigns -
Masks of Nyarlathotep,
Beyond the Mountains of Madness and
Horror on the Orient Express. My personal favourite in Mountains.
- Unknown Armies has some excellent One Shots in the supplement of the same name, especially
Jail Break, and it's intro adventure
Bill in Three Places is simply brilliant.
- Kult's
Black Madonna campaign, set in Eastern Europe at the time of the Berlin Wall coming down, is very evocative to read - as is everything else for Kult actually, although I haven't played it.
- I am currently enjoying running Traveller's
Pirates of Drinax campaign, and to honest I have never read a bad Gareth Hanrahan scenario ever. Probably the best RPG writer in the hobby today.
I would definitely have to second the Enemy Within.
I had a blast playing and running it. My favorite was actually 'Shadows over Bogunhaffen' the first part. Pure urban adventure fun.
SPOILER ALERT - Stop reading now!: And my favourite part of it was that my character actually failed in chucking a grenade at the evil cultists (mid-ritual). And they managed to open a gate to chaos in the middle of the town. It was hilarious... Well, myself and the GM thought it was. Probably not the nicest experience for the townsfolk.
For Runequest: The Borderlands campaign pack was awesome, so much material in such a compact form. 7 adventures which varied from a free-form diplomacy mission, rescuing the "princess" from tower once owned by a vampire, an old-fashioned dungeon crawl (complete with dragon) to a spell as merchant caravan guards. And I'm always a sucker for found item tables! :-) Best of the lot was probably Jezra's rescue. My shield glued to the floor when I fell over while fighting skeletons. It didn't end well ...
The enemy within was indeed classic.
I loved some of the old traveller (double) adventures - chamax plague/horde was a nice variation on the "alien/s" trope, Twilight's Peak felt like an epic that was squeezed into a tiny book. And I have a soft spot for a WD traveller scenario Green Horizon - Spaceship lands in Norway during WW2 to grab some heavy water from the local plant, just as a Lancaster strike is incoming. Sorry - that's about 4 "best" adventures :-)
For Cthulhu - Masks of Nyarlathotep was awesome (and deadly).
Sky Raiders trilogy for Traveller (from FASA).
Basically a giant asteroid ship ruled by inbred pirates is wreaking havoc (occasionally) on the galaxy and the PCs have to track it down then stop it.
There's several system-agnostic, one-page dungeons that are awesome to read, though I'm having problems recalling a specific one right now.
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"A Federation starship is tasked to relocate inhabitants of the doomed planet Aleriad. The problem is, they don't want to leave." Featuring Ambassador Robert Fox from "A Taste of Armageddon," one of my favorite episodes.
Quote from: TrippyHippy;995929- The Enemy Within Campaign - and probably this peaks at Death on the Reik for me. It's basically Apocalypse Now on a barge, heading through some of the dark Chaos reaches of the Empire...and against the collective wisdom of loadsa critics, I actually quite liked Ken Rolston's Something Rotten in Kislev too.
As a standalone,
Something Rotten in Kislev is really good. It just wasn't written to be part of TEW, and it shows. The mission-based structure feels off compared to all the earlier parts of the campaign, and my players resented it.
Some of the missions are rough even by WFRP standards. It reminded me a little of the WFRP version of Paranoia. If you were playing an isolated Kislev campaign built on the concept of the the Tsar sending you on doomed missions every week, that is fine. However, if you have just invested a year in playing the TEW campaign, the players aren't going to chuckle at being hit with almost guaranteed TPKs in the penultimate volume.
I think the it would be a lot more fondly remembered if it had been its own campaign book and not shoehorned into another campaign.
Quote- Similarly, I like a lot of Ken Rolston's work in Paranoia too - but the best single scenario, for me, is probably Clones in Space by Erick Wujcik.
A lot Paranoia adventures are better to read than play, but that is a good on
- I have never failed to entertain with Call of Cthulhu's
The Haunting, Dead Man Stomp and all the other scenarios from the core on any given Halloween. It also boasts it's three classic epic campaigns -
Masks of Nyarlathotep,
Beyond the Mountains of Madness and
Horror on the Orient Express. My personal favourite in Mountains. [/quote]
All good choices, but Masks is my favorite.
Quote- Unknown Armies has some excellent One Shots in the supplement of the same name, especially Jail Break, and it's intro adventure Bill in Three Places is simply brilliant.
I love Jail Break.
I've collected a lot of Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures and have run them for my players in-between other situations and adventures I generated myself.
So far my players have explored Death Frost Doom (2nd edition), The God That Crawls, Scenic Dunnsmouth, and Stranger Storm from the original LotFP Referee book. They had a blast with with all of them.
Are they the "best"? I have no idea. There are so many adventures out there and there are so many of those I've never tried. But I do know my players loved them.
Non-D&D, non-OSR?
Apple Lane would be my favorite adventure. Other good ones are Snake Pipe Hollow and Duck Tower.
Almost all the adventures I have ever used have been for D&D other than the RQ adventures. An occasional interesting adventure from some other game system.
Wait...
Is the question "Best non-D&D, non-OSR adventure?"
Or "Best non-D&D, OSR adventure"?
Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;996054Wait...
Is the question "Best non-D&D, non-OSR adventure?"
Or "Best non-D&D, OSR adventure"?
QuoteSo, what was the best adventure ever that wasn't for any edition of D&D or any OSR game?
Parses to me as non-D&D AND non-OSR...
But the thread title is maybe more confusing...
Pirates of Drinax.
Really any of the early Runequest boxed sets (plus Griffin Mountain, which was published as a book but is similar to the boxed sets). These are all fantastic and can be used together to create a single regional campaign stretching from the River of Cradles valley through the mountains to the north:
Borderlands
Pavis
Big Rubble
Griffin Mountain
Troll Pack
I own a lot of games and hundreds of modules and I don't think I've seen anything that can touch these as a collective set.
One of my all-time favorites is 'Convergence' by John Tymes published in the original Delta Green sourcebook.
I've run it four times and each time I always get a thrill. There is so much going on... This is how the X Files should have been.
Big fan of CoC's Dead Man Stomp.
Most of my favorites have already been mentioned multiple times, but I'll give a shout out to CoC's In Media Res. That little one-shot really messed with my players' expectations, even more than Jail Break.
Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;996048I've collected a lot of Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventures and have run them for my players in-between other situations and adventures I generated myself.
So far my players have explored Death Frost Doom (2nd edition), The God That Crawls, Scenic Dunnsmouth, and Stranger Storm from the original LotFP Referee book. They had a blast with with all of them.
Are they the "best"? I have no idea. There are so many adventures out there and there are so many of those I've never tried. But I do know my players loved them.
Yeah, I meant non-D&D, non-OSR. That is to say the best adventure that wasn't for any kind of D&D-derived system.
My favorites:
- Arnor: Land of the Witch King (MERP; ICE)
- Broken Covenant of Calebais (Ars Magica; Lion Rampant)
- The Court of Ardor (MERP; ICE)
- "Deep Shit" (Blue Planet convention tourney; Biohazard Games)
- The Enemy Within campaign (Warhammer FRP; Games Workshop)
- "Grace Under Pressure" (Call of Cthulhu; Pagan Publishing)
- Griffin Mountain (Runequest; Chaosium)
- "In Medias Res" (Call of Cthulhu; Pagan Publishing)
- Masks of Nyarlathotep (Call of Cthulhu; Chaosium)
- Shadows of Yog-Sothoth (Call of Cthulhu; Chaosium)
- Walker in the Wastes (Call of Cthulhu; Pagan Publishing)
- Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues (Paranoia; West End Games)
Will have to check out some of these CoC adventures, thanks!
Good list there mate.
I can't seem to find 'in media res' on Drivethru anyone know where I can pick it up? Ta!
Apparently it is in this collection. (http://www.tccorp.com/site09/tccorp_prod.html?appSession=6S767V487TM63UEU12561PQ2ROBV9842XVGHDCG2R4323K2Q0P58G87AT5YAE8OI53D821RBK2N37H26F0L06ZNW779L8MG6NSBUJU5JG347YN96E49WC22QXM22H8Y5)
Quote from: Voros;997291Apparently it is in this collection. (http://www.tccorp.com/site09/tccorp_prod.html?appSession=6S767V487TM63UEU12561PQ2ROBV9842XVGHDCG2R4323K2Q0P58G87AT5YAE8OI53D821RBK2N37H26F0L06ZNW779L8MG6NSBUJU5JG347YN96E49WC22QXM22H8Y5)
Thanks for that mate... :)
Quote from: The Exploited.;997282Good list there mate.
Thanks, if you were referring to my list.
Quote from: The Exploited.;997282I can't seem to find 'in media res' on Drivethru anyone know where I can pick it up? Ta!
It was originally published in "The Unspeakable Oath #10" and later republished in The Resurrected Volume III (which I assume is what Voros linked to [but the link didn't work for me]). Both are now OOP, but buying TUO#10 is likely to be cheaper than buying Resurrected Vol 3.
Allan.
Fly To Heaven for Unknown Armies. From the collection One Shots. Breathtaking for a bunch of reasons, some unintentional.
Night of Blood for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I ran that so many times in college. A great "Zero-level" adventure. Would adapt well to Dungeon Crawl Classics.
The two Blood Brothers collections for Call of Cthulhu. Non-mythos, one-night horror adventures meant to simulate drive-in and grindhouse B-movies. Very nice for "Party" games or for people who had never role-played before. I ran a lot of these in high school and in college. A fascinating experiment in genre emulation that was about five years too early... nobody "Got" it and it went over like a lead balloon. The adventure Dead on Arrival may very well have the first "Zombie survival horror" RPG product.
Shaolin Heartbreak for Feng Shui, from the collection Marked for Death. Feng Shui was fucking all over the place in both setting and rules, but this adventure really focused laser-like on capturing the feel of a late-80's Hong Kong action melodrama.
I'm a fan of Blood Brothers too.
Quote from: grodog;997482Thanks, if you were referring to my list.
It was originally published in "The Unspeakable Oath #10" and later republished in The Resurrected Volume III (which I assume is what Voros linked to [but the link didn't work for me]). Both are now OOP, but buying TUO#10 is likely to be cheaper than buying Resurrected Vol 3.
Allan.
I was! It's a great list. :)
Shame about the adventure being OOP tho'.
The Emperor's Cup - a scenario for WFRP 1e. But could easily be transferred to 2e.
It actually was a fan scenario so I don't think it was ever published (I can't remember the author's name atm). Basically, the players had to infiltrate the 'Brothers Militant' a snotball hooligan club. I reckon it was based on that old football hooligan movie I.D.
Absolutely classic Warhammer!
Quote from: The Exploited.;997687I was! It's a great list. :)
Shame about the adventure being OOP tho'.
More recent issues of UO are up on Drivethru so hopefully it will at least become available in pdf.
Quote from: Voros;997719More recent issues of UO are up on Drivethru so hopefully it will at least become available in pdf.
Dang! I'll have a look for that, thanks, Voros!
Quote from: The Exploited.;997732Dang! I'll have a look for that, thanks, Voros!
Scott Glancy has been PDFing the earlier TUO issues as compensation to the backers of the quite-late Horrors of War KS (CoC in WW1), including most-recently issues 1-4 of TUO. So I assume that all of the early issues will eventually be PDF'd.
Allan.
I thought the original Gygax Legion of Gold for Gamma World was top notch. 100 Bushels of Rye for Harn is pretty good, if a little dry for some. Some of the MERP stuff like Dark Mage of Rhudaur is very good.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;997680Fly To Heaven for Unknown Armies. From the collection One Shots. Breathtaking for a bunch of reasons, some unintentional.
Night of Blood for Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. I ran that so many times in college. A great "Zero-level" adventure. Would adapt well to Dungeon Crawl Classics.
The two Blood Brothers collections for Call of Cthulhu. Non-mythos, one-night horror adventures meant to simulate drive-in and grindhouse B-movies. Very nice for "Party" games or for people who had never role-played before. I ran a lot of these in high school and in college. A fascinating experiment in genre emulation that was about five years too early... nobody "Got" it and it went over like a lead balloon. The adventure Dead on Arrival may very well have the first "Zombie survival horror" RPG product.
Shaolin Heartbreak for Feng Shui, from the collection Marked for Death. Feng Shui was fucking all over the place in both setting and rules, but this adventure really focused laser-like on capturing the feel of a late-80's Hong Kong action melodrama.
Ooh, Thanks for the tip on Night of Blood (a WFRP adventure I'd not seen) - I might run that tonight! Or maybe with my Friday Group as we're in between games.
I have found these three to be very useful and reusable:
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Coincidentally, I received a group of 16 musketeers minis today (with a few pirates thrown in too), and got thinking about Lace & Steel and Flashing Blades (again...). What do you like about those scenarios?
Allan.
Quote from: Madprofessor;998094Ooh, Thanks for the tip on Night of Blood (a WFRP adventure I'd not seen) - I might run that tonight! Or maybe with my Friday Group as we're in between games.
Awesome! Please let us know how it went!
Another vote for the classic Runequest trifecta of Griffin Mountain, Borderlands and Prax-Big Rubble.
Mainly because they present the kind of "adventures" I find best: mini sandbox scenarios so incredibly detailed that could be played infinitely, much beyond the suggested plotlines.
Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;997680The two Blood Brothers collections for Call of Cthulhu. Non-mythos, one-night horror adventures meant to simulate drive-in and grindhouse B-movies. Very nice for "Party" games or for people who had never role-played before. I ran a lot of these in high school and in college. A fascinating experiment in genre emulation that was about five years too early... nobody "Got" it and it went over like a lead balloon. The adventure Dead on Arrival may very well have the first "Zombie survival horror" RPG product.
I had enormous fun running the Blood Brothers adventures. It probably helped that I had groups then that were mostly non-gamers. They didn't go into the adventures trying to be rational PCs. They just took the pre-gen they were given and played them like a character in a movie.
Quote from: Itachi;998706Another vote for the classic Runequest trifecta of Griffin Mountain, Borderlands and Prax-Big Rubble.
Mainly because they present the kind of "adventures" I find best: mini sandbox scenarios so incredibly detailed that could be played infinitely, much beyond the suggested plotlines.
Interesting, while I have used Borderlands, it feels a bit like a plotted adventure to me. By the time I got Big Rubble, I was not playing RQ very much, though I HAD just started a campaign. I've had Griffin Mountain since it first came out, and did have one campaign where they were on their way to it from Sartar, but the group fell apart before we got there. I also remember running it some in college, but that also was a short lived campaign. On the other hand, Borderlands COULD be run with less plot line than is presented (and I do note it isn't a strong plot line, just enough though to sort of turn me off).
Frank
Quote from: grodog;998383Coincidentally, I received a group of 16 musketeers minis today (with a few pirates thrown in too), and got thinking about Lace & Steel and Flashing Blades (again...). What do you like about those scenarios?
Allan.
Just saw this now, will try to answer you later when I have time.
Quote from: ffilz;998785Interesting, while I have used Borderlands, it feels a bit like a plotted adventure to me. By the time I got Big Rubble, I was not playing RQ very much, though I HAD just started a campaign. I've had Griffin Mountain since it first came out, and did have one campaign where they were on their way to it from Sartar, but the group fell apart before we got there. I also remember running it some in college, but that also was a short lived campaign. On the other hand, Borderlands COULD be run with less plot line than is presented (and I do note it isn't a strong plot line, just enough though to sort of turn me off).
Frank
I think Borderlands works best in conjunction with Pavis and Big Rubble. Borderlands is a straight series of missions the PCs are sent on by the Duke, but if you have Pavis and Big Rubble, you can break those up with time the PCs have off to go into the city and do their own thing, or simply repurpose the places and characters from Borderlands into a Pavis campaign.
Quote from: Baulderstone;998794I think Borderlands works best in conjunction with Pavis and Big Rubble. Borderlands is a straight series of missions the PCs are sent on by the Duke, but if you have Pavis and Big Rubble, you can break those up with time the PCs have off to go into the city and do their own thing, or simply repurpose the places and characters from Borderlands into a Pavis campaign.
Yea, that's part of my thought, take the small adventures from Borderlands and just make that region a sandbox. Maybe have the Duke's holdings a bit more settled, and have the PCs go there as a base of adventure.
I really appreciate adventures that have somewhat forced plots, that still have enough good material that you can break the plot apart and use the bits and pieces. I've found a bunch of the Traveller adventures can be used in this way (and many of them just have railroads getting you TO the adventure - so just put the adventure out there and don't force the players into it).
Frank
I think it would probably be one of the CoC mega-adventures.