This is not to judge based on a single adventure. Rather, on a series of modules that were tied-together, be it for BECMI or AD&D. Which series of adventures was the best, as a series?
I think the G series isn't really well connected, feels arbitrary. The 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). I have a fondness for the Slave series but haven't revisited since I was a teen.
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.
I have a darkhorse candidate: UK2-UK3. Good low-level two parter quest with a tremendous final battle. The A series is really overrated (too linear, repetitive and arbitrary --- you NEED to be captured to run A4).
Quote from: saskganesh;1008232I have a darkhorse candidate: UK2-UK3. Good low-level two parter quest with a tremendous final battle. The A series is really overrated (too linear, repetitive and arbitrary --- you NEED to be captured to run A4).
UK2-UK3 do look very good, but only having read them I couldn't say for sure.
Re U1-U3, U1 Saltmarsh is a great start to a campaign but U2-U3 felt like a huge letdown by comparison.
As a series of actually connected but separately published modules, I might pick I1-3 (published as a compilation in 'desert of desolation').
Re: UK3. What moved this from good-ish to awesome was after the party captured the castle, but were then attacked by the Fire Giant and his Hobgoblin army with pseky mephit air support. It was an unexpected twist (defend the dungeon!) and the players felt way way over their heads. And they loved it.
Ok, I'll cheat. You didn't say TSR D&D series... so I'll say The Complete Dungeon Master Series (http://tomeoftreasures.com/tot_nontsr/integrated_games/integrated_games.htm) from Beast Entz/Integrated Games.
(And it's double-cheating, as this AD&D/RQ double-statted series of modules feels as if it was written with RuneQuest in mind...)
The original boxed sets - with all their bells and whistles, handouts and maps and GM screens - were so much better than the bland Doomstones rewrite for Warhammer.
Quote from: Larsdangly;1008244As a series of actually connected but separately published modules, I might pick I1-3 (published as a compilation in 'desert of desolation').
That would also be my pick, admittedly from limited experience with series. I can't think of any that I actually played or ran as a series, though did many of the series modules in isolation.
Quote from: saskganesh;1008232I have a darkhorse candidate: UK2-UK3. Good low-level two parter quest with a tremendous final battle. The A series is really overrated (too linear, repetitive and arbitrary --- you NEED to be captured to run A4).
The UK series is excellent, I thought it almost too obvious a pick because of the entire UK series stellar reputation.
The Thunder Rift series of adventures and boxed adventure games. I didn't come across these when I began playing, but later as I was personally rediscovering how much fun Basic D&D was. I had a lot of fun with those modules and think that they are seriously underrated.
The Thunder Rift modules I read were good, haven't read them all. Would like to give them a run sometime.
Second on UK2 and 3, great stuff there.
Quote from: Willmark;1008330Second on UK2 and 3, great stuff there.
Yes, that would also be my "non-cheating" answer.
I ran them once as-written (one of the very few times that I didn't feel the need to change anything) in my Greyhawk campaign.
The mountain keep from UK3 I reused in other, non-D&D, campaigns. It's a nice, memorable location.
D1-3. I loved the otherworldness of it all: from the underground highway of the main passage, to the terrifying depths of the side tunnels, and the strange faeryland of the Vault of the Drow. Plus you've got a city of Kuo-toa and a depraved Drow city where demons rub shoulders with other underworld tourists.
I could run a whole campaign off those.
D1-3 is a great series if you treat it as an exotic campaign environment rather than simply a story line. I think a lot of D&D players are excited by the challenge of figuring out how to survive deep underground for months on end!
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.
My soft spot is for the original Ravenloft and Ravenloft II modules.
I thought they were both extremely innovative to have a non-linear adventure with a dynamic foe, which was structured without being scripted, and kept up a great gothic feel. (There were randomized plot points from fortune telling, as well as partially randomized background events as the enemy continues to develop.)
The start of both modules is forced and arguably railroady (like starting out captured by the slave lords in module A4). However, they are very non-linear after that point. i.e. You are stuck getting into the adventure, but have a wide range of choices after that.
Quote from: jeff37923;1008310The Thunder Rift series of adventures and boxed adventure games. I didn't come across these when I began playing, but later as I was personally rediscovering how much fun Basic D&D was. I had a lot of fun with those modules and think that they are seriously underrated.
Thunder rift is a great little series.
Personal favourites are...
The Illitiad series for 2e. Starting with Darkness Gathering. Its a great epic that can take the PCs from the starts of their careers to nearly the end and sprawls across worlds even in its scope.
Master of the Desert nomads and its followup Temple of Death for BX/BECMI D&D. While not great. Its a fairly solid adventure with dealing with political intrigues and more.
DA1-3 The Blackmoor series by Arneson. A great merging of fantasy and SF elements. DA1: Adventures in Blackmoor is my favourite of the three.
Quote from: Omega;1010180Personal favourites are...
The Illitiad series for 2e. Starting with Darkness Gathering. Its a great epic that can take the PCs from the starts of their careers to nearly the end and sprawls across worlds even in its scope.
Just discovered and read these modules, they are terrifically imaginative and ambitious.
I've read/played maybe just a few of the old modules... I ran some kids through a severely hacked version of Hommlet/ToEE using BRP a few years back...
But just now I accidentally discovered that the dungeon our DCC GM has had us exploring is non other than White Plume Mountain!
I've got mixed feeling about it, because while I'd like to play through more of the old modules... this one has, so far (we're maybe 60% done), been pretty nonsensical. Even before I knew that I'd commented on how it felt different than the DCC modules and whatnot that he'd been throwing at us up till now.
Was it originally a 'tournament' dungeon like Tomb of Horrors? (I've played a bit of that one) It feels that way, just a funhouse full of deadly setups.
White Plume isn't really representstive of early modules. I recall that the author claimed he wrote it just as a sample of what he could do and was surprised when TSR offered to publish it as is! Not sure if that is apocryphal or not but it seems believable to me.
I came upon them VERY late. But I actually found the first few Dragonlance modules to be anything but the soul crushing railroad or "story" that so many claim. Its fairly free roaming and you can even crash and burn the campaign through player action/inaction.
Quote from: Omega;1010384I came upon them VERY late. But I actually found the first few Dragonlance modules to be anything but the soul crushing railroad or "story" that so many claim. Its fairly free roaming and you can even crash and burn the campaign through player action/inaction.
As long as you ignore the DM notes not to kill certain PCs or NPCs.
I really liked the first DL modules. I think the setting and war are pretty compelling, and would run them again with non-canon characters.
Quote from: Voros;1010323Just discovered and read these modules, they are terrifically imaginative and ambitious.
Those are crazy! I'd never heard of them before this thread and just read some reviews of them last night. Those sounds kookier than Expedition to Barrier Peaks in a good way!
Quote from: darthfozzywig;1010449As long as you ignore the DM notes not to kill certain PCs or NPCs.
I really liked the first DL modules. I think the setting and war are pretty compelling, and would run them again with non-canon characters.
My favourite of the DL modules is Dragons of Dreams.
Quote from: darthfozzywig;1010450Those are crazy! I'd never heard of them before this thread and just read some reviews of them last night. Those sounds kookier than Expedition to Barrier Peaks in a good way!
I recreated the first module, Darkness Gathering as a FRUA module waaaaaaaaay back. I was working on the second when the UA group kinda deteriorated into eletism and I left. I think the module is still up on Magic Mirror?
I'm gonna cheat too!
Although not the "best", one of my favorite "series of adventures" was THE BLACK RING by Dan Hauffe published by Judges Guild in Issue I of the Pegasus magazine.
Over the decades, I've run this series at least a dozen times as parts and three times in its entirety, twice elaborated into their own campaigns.
Great stuff - nothing revolutionary, but you can't get any more "old school" than 1981 Judges Guild.
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/56279/Pegasus-Magazine-I-AprMay-1981?manufacturers_id=31
Quote from: jhkim;1010142My soft spot is for the original Ravenloft and Ravenloft II modules.
I thought they were both extremely innovative to have a non-linear adventure with a dynamic foe, which was structured without being scripted, and kept up a great gothic feel. (There were randomized plot points from fortune telling, as well as partially randomized background events as the enemy continues to develop.)
The start of both modules is forced and arguably railroady (like starting out captured by the slave lords in module A4). However, they are very non-linear after that point. i.e. You are stuck getting into the adventure, but have a wide range of choices after that.
I think that Ravenloft is a classic module, but I never really thought of it as a series, as such. I mean, Ravenloft II was a sequel, but it just wasn't something I thought of in the same way as the giants series or something like that.
Quote from: RPGPundit;1011342I think that Ravenloft is a classic module, but I never really thought of it as a series, as such. I mean, Ravenloft II was a sequel, but it just wasn't something I thought of in the same way as the giants series or something like that.
I was thinking that, too. It's more difficult to pull off a series that holds together. I love Pharaoh, for example, but I don't recall the two follow-ups to be that great.
Quote from: darthfozzywig;1011390I was thinking that, too. It's more difficult to pull off a series that holds together. I love Pharaoh, for example, but I don't recall the two follow-ups to be that great.
The second and third are not bad but I believe the second wasn't actually written as a sequel to Pharaoh, it was retconed as such and hence why it is co-written.