Quote from: Voros;1008225The D series again is barely connected, I love Shrine of Kuo Toa and Vault of the Drow but they are actually easier to run as seperate set pieces and D1 is only great in spots (the spider statue and vampire/succubus encounter).

Those two encounters are actually in D3 The Vault of the Drow.

Quote from: markmohrfield;1008421Those two encounters are actually in D3 The Vault of the Drow.

Ah, you're right. That doesn't leave much that was memorable from D1 then.

Quote from: Voros;1008225(snip) So I have to go with David 'Zeb' Cook's Master of the Desert Nomads and Temple of Death. Cook's work is the most consistenly impressive of the early American modules for me.

That was my gut response when I saw the thread. I thought I was going to be the only one!

Master of the Desert Nomads was really fantastic.

The only thing I could add to what has been suggested so far is the Lendore Isle series. L1-2 were different from the normal fare.

It has always been interesting to me how much better (on average) the British material was than the US material. Whether it's the U and UK series, the Complete Dungeon Master series that was mentioned, or scads more 3rd party material in my collection, the British material is much more often interesting and worth keeping to think about, while the US material is often repetitive/boring. I'm not sure, but good job Brits!

Quote from: TheHistorian;1009803The only thing I could add to what has been suggested so far is the Lendore Isle series. L1-2 were different from the normal fare.

It has always been interesting to me how much better (on average) the British material was than the US material. Whether it's the U and UK series, the Complete Dungeon Master series that was mentioned, or scads more 3rd party material in my collection, the British material is much more often interesting and worth keeping to think about, while the US material is often repetitive/boring. I'm not sure, but good job Brits!

BTW I once got hold of "Australian Realms" RPG mag, that was very good too.

TSR UK and old White Dwarf were very high quality. I don't think the other/later/1990s mags like Arcane, GMI, and Last Province were particularly brilliant though, our golden age of RPG writing was more an early-mid 1980s thing.

White Dwarf was superb before it became a GW mouthpiece. I've collected a lot of the old issues and most are golden.

Quote from: jeff37923;1009842White Dwarf was superb before it became a GW mouthpiece. I've collected a lot of the old issues and most are golden.

Yes, great reading. I got started when reprints of the first 3 issues showed up in my FLGS, and then bought every issue or subscribed through issues into the 60s or so. Along the way I managed to lose a few issues which is a bummer. These days I'm more picky about material I take from magazines, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy and appreciate the stuff I don't take.

Quote from: jeff37923;1009842White Dwarf was superb before it became a GW mouthpiece. I've collected a lot of the old issues and most are golden.

Imagine was also a very good mag but didn't have the great adventures of WD.

Quote from: S'mon;1009839BTW I once got hold of "Australian Realms" RPG mag, that was very good too.

TSR UK and old White Dwarf were very high quality. I don't think the other/later/1990s mags like Arcane, GMI, and Last Province were particularly brilliant though, our golden age of RPG writing was more an early-mid 1980s thing.

I had my first gaming article published in Australian Realms when I was young! I remember the A-Team comics fondly. Wish I could buy them in a PDF or something actually. So many funny bits.

Quote from: Voros;1009926Imagine was also a very good mag but didn't have the great adventures of WD.

Pelinore? The City League? Granted, those articles were hardly full-fledged modules but as a collection of city locations they are still unsurpassed, to this day.

Quote from: S'mon;1009839BTW I once got hold of "Australian Realms" RPG mag, that was very good too.

TSR UK and old White Dwarf were very high quality. I don't think the other/later/1990s mags like Arcane, GMI, and Last Province were particularly brilliant though, our golden age of RPG writing was more an early-mid 1980s thing.

One of the illustrators of Australian Realms went on to become an award winning graphic novelist, Shaun Tan.

GMI and Last Province were only shadows to White Dwarf but Arcane has a special place in my heart. It didn't have as much gameable material, and the one systemless "adventure" (more like, "location") per issue was pretty much hit-or-miss. But for me it was the right mag for the right time - at that time I was more intrested in game journalism, reviews, essays, and stuff, and there was never a better RPG magazine for that.

I already had all those White Dwarf adventures to fall back on, and there were indeed classics among them.
Regarding that claim about "GW mouthpiece" - WD was always a GW mouthpiece. Before GW became mainly a publisher they were an importer and distributor (with a range of reprint licenses, like AD&D, MERP, later RQ) and their house mag always concentrated on games that were in their warehouse.
It wasn't that transparent as the magazine catered for a wide range of games and tastes, and they didn't call for mail orders that openly but the mag served as a "shop window" for all those shops that ordered from GW, plus those GW stores that still were RPG stores back then.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;1009984GMI and Last Province were only shadows to White Dwarf but Arcane has a special place in my heart. It didn't have as much gameable material, and the one systemless "adventure" (more like, "location") per issue was pretty much hit-or-miss. But for me it was the right mag for the right time - at that time I was more intrested in game journalism, reviews, essays, and stuff, and there was never a better RPG magazine for that.

Yes, I did like Arcane's chatty style. But I no longer have my Arcanes GMIs or Last Provinces whereas I still have and collect White Dwarf up to #89, and I missed Imagine but collect it now and have most of the issues.

One thing, I wonder if TSR's spurious copyright & TM claims in the 1990s where they tried to stop people producing D&D-compatible material might have put a dampener on RPG mags even before the rise of the Internet.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1008721Master of the Desert Nomads was really fantastic.

Was coming here to say this. It and X5 Temple of Death were major portions of my first "real" campaign.

No votes for the A1-4 series?  I'm curious about those as they're the only early modules I've never seen or played, though I've heard countless times of other groups playing the entire series and enjoying them.  Mostly curious about this.....

Really, those already mentioned in this thread are the only D&D modules I'm familiar with so I'd probably give the nod to the I1-3 series like others as the most connected.   However, I'd give the nod to the whole G/D series if we're talking about something to inspire a campaign.  Each individually is a set location, but they certainly require a good insertion of creativity from the ref to stitch them all together into a coherent whole.  I thought the U1-3 series were similar - great inspiration, but not really ready to run out of the box.  It's only downside was that it tried to stitch it all together and just failed to be as inspired in the 2nd and 3rd installment.

I have a soft spot for all of the S modules even though there is no consistency or common thread between them.