Favorite Adventure

[Narmer]

What is your favorite published B/X or BECMI module or adventure?  And what do you like about it?

[jeffb]

Not sure much needs to be said. For me it's a tie

B4 - total pulp S&S adventure with massive campaign potential inside 20 some odd pages. Amazing amount of detail and very few words.

and

X2 - Funhouse, that isn't a deathtrap like S1 or disjointed like S2. Also much adventure potential outside the Mansion. It's so much fun to run, and everyone loves it when I run it.


Honorable mention X1, B2.



Moldvay and Zeb are my fave adventure writers along with Gary.

Tom did fantastic creative stuff no matter where he was- TSR, Pacesetter, Avalon Hill. I miss him as much as I do Gary. It makes me really sad that he passed on before the OSR revved up- he never got to see/hear all the love for his creations. And I would love to see what he would have come up with had he got back into RPG writing.

[bryce0lynch]

Level 1 of The Darkness Beneath in Fight On! magazine.

If it whimsical and folklorish, the way OD&D should be. Terse, evocative writing with lots of interactivity and surprises.

[sirclarence]

B2 - Was there ever a better written starting adventure? I'm running yet another group of D&D newbies through it these days, and it's a blast for everyone.

X4/5 - I regard this as one adventure. Master of the Desert Nomads is the better part of it, but together these are just epic.

[Parzival]

The Chapel of Silence from Dragon #50.
Great concept, fun to play— especially if/when the PCs are struck dumb, meaning the players aren’t aloud to speak. :-D
Needs a little modification (the BBEG is too strong for the expected level, IMHO), but it’s a strong adventure with imaginative traps and a great backstory plot.

[Punkrabbitt]

I really liked B2 and X1. Both were sandboxes in their own rights. My two very favoritest were AD&D, though; G1and D2. G1 had both indoor and outdoor areas, big scary giants and little dumb orcs, it was just fun. More fun than the other G offerings. D2 was a sensiblevdungeon crawl, an active site where things made sense why most of it was happening where it was. Plus, lobster-headed nekkid chick. I was 10 years old.

[Deleted]

My personal favorite modules are the "S" series for AD&D, which is fine because I don't count the differences between any pre-WOTC editions of the game. As far as I am personally concerned you can run any adventure with any 0-2 edition just fine and dandy.

[geoffrey]

Oct 14, 2020 13:39:48 GMT -6 Narmer said:

What is your favorite published B/X or BECMI module or adventure?  And what do you like about it?

Gary's B2. It is chock-a-block full of cool stuff, with almost no filler. Lots of treasures and monsters in a howling wilderness.

If we can expand past B/X and BECMI, then my favorite is Rob Kuntz's The Original Bottle City. It is an honest-to-goodness sub-level of Gary's old Castle Greyhawk dungeons from 1974, and you can tell. It is full of breathless wonder and enchantment. Pure fun, no risible attempts at "realism".

[Falconer]

B2 is perfection, but I don’t like the B/X conversion, I prefer the original.

For actual B/X modules, my favorite that I have run is B4. I love the idea of a traditional dungeon with lots of levels which you can start with low level PCs. These are the only vintage examples which qualify that I can think of of:

OD&D: The Caverns of Thracia
B/X: The Lost City
AD&D: The Temple of Elemental Evil

[Deleted]

Oct 21, 2020 13:49:18 GMT -6 Parzival said:

The Chapel of Silence from Dragon #50.
Great concept, fun to play— especially if/when the PCs are struck dumb, meaning the players aren’t aloud to speak. :-D
Needs a little modification (the BBEG is too strong for the expected level, IMHO), but it’s a strong adventure with imaginative traps and a great backstory plot.

I really don't want to sound disrespectful, and I'm asking this in all seriousness: Is "Mollie Plants" really a person, or an anonymous author, uhm, quoting their source of inspiration?

[tombowings]

I don't know for sure, but I'd place Mollie Plants in the same category as Anne Chovie and Chris P. Bacon.

As for favorite classic adventures, B4: the Lost City and B2 Castle Amber take the top prizes, though not necessarily in that order.

For AD&D modules, I love the UK series. UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave and UK4: When a Star Falls are both excellent.

[sirclarence]

Oct 28, 2020 0:48:43 GMT -6 tombowings said:

I don't know for sure, but I'd place Mollie Plants in the same category as Anne Chovie and Chris P. Bacon.

Not to mention Harry Nuckols.

[Zenopus]

As far as I know, Mollie Plants is a real name; although conceivably it could be a pseudonym. I once came across someone who said they gamed with a neighbor's "Aunt Mollie" in the '80s, who was the same as the author of the Chapel of Silence. See here.

She also co-authored a Judges Guild Journal contest-winning adventure "The Treasure of Barlawn" with Ned and Bert Plants, presumably relatives.

sites.google.com/site/zenopusarchives/home/modules-and-scenarios/the-chapel-of-silence
sites.google.com/site/zenopusarchives/home/modules-and-scenarios/the-treasure-of-barlawn

Also, as unlikely as it seems, all accounts indicate that Harry Nuckols was the real author's name of B9.

[Zenopus]

Oct 21, 2020 13:49:18 GMT -6 Parzival said:

The Chapel of Silence from Dragon #50.
Great concept, fun to play— especially if/when the PCs are struck dumb, meaning the players aren’t aloud to speak. :-D
Needs a little modification (the BBEG is too strong for the expected level, IMHO), but it’s a strong adventure with imaginative traps and a great backstory plot.

I've never run Chapel of Silence, but I have been thinking about it and the Creature of Rhyll for sessions at Gary Con sometime, since these adventures were the Holmes-era dungeons published in Dragon magazine.

I like the unconventional layout of Chapel. How do you think it would do in a 4-hour slot?

[Narmer]

Oct 14, 2020 14:39:06 GMT -6 bryce0lynch said:

Level 1 of The Darkness Beneath in Fight On! magazine.

If it whimsical and folklorish, the way OD&D should be. Terse, evocative writing with lots of interactivity and surprises.

I went to read your review.  However, I'm at work and my computer won't let me access your site.  For some reason it thinks "tenfootpole" is a porn site. 

[doublejig2]

It probably is! 

[Narmer]

Oct 27, 2020 10:21:07 GMT -6 Falconer said:

B2 is perfection, but I don’t like the B/X conversion, I prefer the original.

What kind of changes did they make to B2?

And does anyone know which version they sell on DriveThru/DMGuild?  I had the Holmes version back in the day but it was one of the many gaming items destroyed years ago.

[Zenopus]

Narmer:

There was a list of the changes between the Holmes/Moldvay versions of B2 on a page by Acaeum member brute, but it appears to be down now.

Here it is on the Internet Archive:

web.archive.org/web/20130607032549/http://home.earthlink.net/~merzak/B2.html

The DMs Guild version has a face logo, so it is the Moldvay version. The Goodman Games "Into the Borderlands" book has scans of a Holmes version (2nd printing) and a Moldvay version (4th printing).

[Narmer]

Oct 31, 2020 13:09:33 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Narmer :

There was a list of the changes between the Holmes/Moldvay versions of B2 on a page by Acaeum member brute, but it appears to be down now.

Here it is on the Internet Archive:

web.archive.org/web/20130607032549/http://home.earthlink.net/~merzak/B2.html

The DMs Guild version has a face logo, so it is the Moldvay version. The Goodman Games "Into the Borderlands" book has scans of a Holmes version (2nd printing) and a Moldvay version (4th printing).

Thanks for the information.

[Deleted]

FWIW, my favorite adventure of all time is probably Aaron Allston's "Treasure Hunt". It's not really deep, but I've run it in FR, Greyhawk, Airde, Blackmoor, and in my homebrew settings. No reason in particular, except that I liked the pacing, and found it easy to adapt/scale. I also frequently change the second part of the adventure, which demands an escape of the island where the story takes place; my preferred outcome is the players taking over the island, and using it as a base of operations.

Second would probably be 2e's "House of Strahd", the 2e I6/Ravenloft remake; I didn't particularly dislike the later renditions of the Ravenloft core adventure - but that one, still my personal favorite, between the different takes on the same story.

[Parzival]

Oct 28, 2020 0:15:12 GMT -6 @rafael said:

Oct 21, 2020 13:49:18 GMT -6 Parzival said:

The Chapel of Silence from Dragon #50.
Great concept, fun to play— especially if/when the PCs are struck dumb, meaning the players aren’t aloud to speak. :-D
Needs a little modification (the BBEG is too strong for the expected level, IMHO), but it’s a strong adventure with imaginative traps and a great backstory plot.

I really don't want to sound disrespectful, and I'm asking this in all seriousness: Is "Mollie Plants" really a person, or an anonymous author, uhm, quoting their source of inspiration?

Real person, from what I understand; I did a little research a couple of years ago when I was converting it for 5e and the information included some bio (not much). I don’t recall the details, but yes, that appears to be her real name.

[Parzival]

Oct 28, 2020 16:45:20 GMT -6 Zenopus said:

Oct 21, 2020 13:49:18 GMT -6 Parzival said:

The Chapel of Silence from Dragon #50.
Great concept, fun to play— especially if/when the PCs are struck dumb, meaning the players aren’t aloud to speak. :-D
Needs a little modification (the BBEG is too strong for the expected level, IMHO), but it’s a strong adventure with imaginative traps and a great backstory plot.

I've never run Chapel of Silence, but I have been thinking about it and the Creature of Rhyll for sessions at Gary Con sometime, since these adventures were the Holmes-era dungeons published in Dragon magazine.

I like the unconventional layout of Chapel. How do you think it would do in a 4-hour slot?

That’s a tight slot. You’d have to have dedicated players. The plot could be addressed in that time frame, IF the PCs use a particular path to descend quickly (and can handle the BBEG— not likely without items found in the module—), but the full scope of the module is probably an 8-hour deal at a minimum. IIRC, my most recent effort to run it stretched over three 3-hour sessions.