The Collector's Trove wrote:Howdy Mike,




Never let them know the secrets! EVER! (I am always tempted myself but I have made it my mantra to never divulge even after the module is over. I always regret it if I do.)


Futures Bright,

Paul

I was far more likely to do something like this than today.  But I still routinely provide players with short written histories of the areas they are adventuring in. I think it's more fun to do that and treat it as knowledge they have picked up, rather than roleplaying a lot of conversations in taverns and temples.  Plus they have something to refer back to if an incident sparks a memory of something they might have read earlier.  I find that generally I remember a lot more than my players ever do....most of the time they don't even remember how a beloved character died when I can tell them the entire last battle said character participated in.
  I think BITD I did it more as a vehicle to spark interest.  We always had a small group, maybe 5 players at the most at any one time, and I was always fearful we would lose one or more if I didn't keep their interest up.  So from time to time I would drop hints or clues out of game to the guys if I thought their interest might be waning or drifting.  This would involve stuff like in the example I gave, where I would let them in on a creature or character they ran into, to peak their interest. Or I might mention that the next adventure would be in the desert, or on a glacier, to get them thinking ahead about what kind of items/equipment/spells they would need.  It seemed to work really well with the guys I gamed with.

Mike B.

One of the interesting aspects of adventuring BITD was if you used a lot of pregen modules, like I did.  I did about 80% pregen and about 20% original, although I reworked a lot of the standards more to my style.  As you can guess with that much pregen I pretty much ran every published TSR dungeon module from the beginning up to T1-4...after that there were much more originals and less pregen, and I was starting to develop what I would consider my own style and adventuring campaign world.
   Part of the problem was time...going to college and working full time, then drinking and partying with what was left, there was little spare dungeon developing time.  Much easier just to buy the latest TSR creation and then change it up a bit and run the party through.  Dragon magazine at the time was also a big help, they had several classic adventures in the Contest series that ran throughout the years.  
    Anyway, the result of this was that my group ran through pretty much every published AD&D and D&D module, and most other groups we knew did the same.  Very seldomly a Judge's Guild product or maybe a generic type adventure (like The Companions) would make it through, but mostly everyone went through A1-4, G1-3, D1-3, T1, U1-3, C1-3, I1-6, L1-2, N1-2, S1-4, WG4-5, X1-5, B1-5, UK2-3, and the Dragon magazine adventures Citadel by the Sea, Can Seaport Be Saved, Ruins of Andril, Forest of Doom, Barnacus City of Peril; and perhaps Tegel Manor, Caverns of Thracia and Dark Tower (although due to low distribution of JG around the Texas area, I never saw any of these but Tegel Manor until later in the 80s).  Now, it's interesting to note two things:  One, the above adventures became a SHARED EXPERIENCE  and REFERENCE POINT when discussing D&D, characters, and adventures with anyone you met at a con, college gaming area, or just bumped into at the module rack at the local game store; and two, although I just named all the adventures above from memory I looked up the dates and without exception the last publication dates are in 1983-84, which could be construed to mean the years 1978-1983/84 should be considered the "Golden" years of AD&D adventuring.
BITD, gaming Conversations would go like this:
"Hey, your group gone through S3 yet?"
"Yeh, they ended up with a blaster rifle and a laser pistol but used up all the charges in Tomb ofthe Lizard King"
"Well, my group kept Blackrazor from S2 and proceeded to wipe out all the giants in G1 before I finally slapped some negative undead on them from Bone Hill, that finished off using the sword."
"yeh my group tried to keep Blackrazor too but I had it destroyed in the temple below in WG4 where Tharizdun slept"
"Cool, great idea, I should have done that!"
   BITD everyone would know EXACTLY what you meant when discussing any monster, treasure of specific hard-ass room from one of the modules mentioned above.  Everyone had someone from their group with their soul sucked out in S1.  EVeryone had a party member with the Giant Slaying Sword from G1. Everyone had fought Lareth the Beautiful in Hommlet. Everyone had tried to steal Blackrazor; Everyone had found the village of Orlane in N1 way too weird and had fought through to the Naga, etc etc.  Rather than make the game seem boring or the same it added to our enjoyment, especiallyif your group was able to accomplish something no other group did...when I was DMing that was getting from G1 all the way through Q1, which was considered quite the feather in the cap; or for players it might have been something like killing off Strahd, or mapping out the entire Isle of Dread, or takingover the Keep on the Borderlands by the end of the adventure and turning it into your own fortress.  Regardles, this COMMON POINT OF REFERENCE for the "Golden age" generation of D&Ders was a very good gauge of almost everying about you as a gamer and/or a DM.  If your group didn't finish most of these because they were getting their ass kicked and you ran away, or everyone died at the end of S1 or D3, you lost a lot of cred from your peers. If as a DM you couldn't get anyone to finish S4 or WG5 because the groups lost interest you likewise lost some gaming chops.  It said a lot about your group, or your abilities as a DM, how you handled these adventures.  Being a common reference point, you could measure performance based on what was accomplished.  Take S1 for instance: Did your entire group get wiped out in the first hallway (I knew those that did).  What a bunch of moronic losers.  Did you get fooled by the fake lich and think the dungeon was finished then? Even dumber than the guys killed in the first hallway. Did you all fall asleep and get crushed by the juggernaut later in the dungeon? Better, but still didn't close the deal.  Did you make it to the Demilich lair and got your souls sucked out?  Hey, at least you reached the finish line.  Did you actually destroy the lich?  Wow, so you cheated eh?  You expect me to believe your party just "happened" to be packing Holy Word, Forget and Shatter spells?  
    Every module mentioned had its scale, kind of like a built in 1-10 ranking based on how you did, how far you went, who you killed, and what you managed to get for treasure.  For a DM, it was how many players you killed and how you did it (style points helped).   I ALWAYS got kudos for wiping out the entire party at the end of A3 (so they could all be raised in time for the beginning of A4) since most DM's I knew either got the slave lords killed or had to rely on very artificial means to get the party captured at the end ("Everyone falls over to, uh, a previously undetectable sleep gas you get no save for")
 The point is, anyone mentioning the Giants in a group of gamers, say, in 1981 would get nods as EVERYONE knew EXACTLY what you were talking about, and EVERYONE had a different story about the same events (running into the drow seems to be a common touchstone here).  Now, the point of this ramble is that after the Golden Age, what sorts of commonality of discussion was there in this regard?  The only touchstones I can think of are, perhaps, the Dragonlance series (for those few who actually completed it) or Undermountain.  For 3rd edition? Therein lies the rub.
    Due to the plethora of material released at the adventure of D20/3rd edition, is there even a concept similar to the above?  Maybe the first "offical" WOTC set of modules? (Sunless Citadel, Forge of Fury, Nightfang spire, etc) Largest Dungeon in the World? (has anyone actually finished this?) Ptolus?  Goodman Games Dungeon Crawls? I would submit there is NO similar type of gaming experience for anyone gaming 3rd edition, due both to the amount of gaming material available and the ability to have such diverse groups that you could easily run one of the recent adventures with two totally different parties and experience no overlap.
  I guess this is one of the experiences  that the BITD guys find lacking in today's gaming and one of the reasons the "new" guys are viewed suspiciously.  How to rank these guys?  We don't know if going through Rappan Athuk is good, bad, indifferent, whatever.  Finishing the Freeport trilogy means nothing.  Both generations have no common frame of reference to bridge this gap either.
 Well, enough of the old fogey rant.  What do you think?

Mike B.

There is less continuity and common experience in 3.5, that is for sure.

Did anyone else here really hate some of the classic TSR modules?

I found most of them too unworkable or too weak or just plain too silly for my campaigns.

The T series, for instance...1 was useable with modifications, but 2-4 sucked IMHO.

Also, last night one of my players tried to lecture me on how much total weath his character "should have," based on a chart in the 3.5 DM guide.

Those who criticize the 3.5 game as too player-oriented have a point.

Mark  

MShipley88 wrote:There is less continuity and common experience in 3.5, that is for sure.

Did anyone else here really hate some of the classic TSR modules?

I found most of them too unworkable or too weak or just plain too silly for my campaigns.

The T series, for instance...1 was useable with modifications, but 2-4 sucked IMHO.

Also, last night one of my players tried to lecture me on how much total weath his character "should have," based on a chart in the 3.5 DM guide.

Those who criticize the 3.5 game as too player-oriented have a point.

Mark  

If we are talking BITD, and referring to my "Golden Age" of 1978-1984, then the only pregen adventures I never ran for my characters were EX1-2 and UK1, all of which I disliked and would have not gone over well with my group.  The only adventures I recall my core group disliking or being indifferent about were C2 Ghost Tower (too many tricks/traps I think) and I3-I5 (I ran these pretty much as written, I think if I was to run them now they would be quite a bit better received because I would change them up quite a bit).  Looking back on the A-series, that would go over horrible now if I had to run it because I would find it hard to railroad the characters without scores of complaints (I had no problem hammering a plot handcuff on those guys back in the day).  
  Eveyrthing else I ran was pretty well received, luckily there seemed to be a minimum standard of quality in most of TSRs modules during that period.

Mike B.

I'm a huge fan of the RM combat & skill systems. I've run all my campaigns since 1993 using it. It completely changes the feel of any encounter.

Recently I took our old group through G1-G2 using AD&D combat (by request). Boy would it have been more of a challenge with RM. A system where giants are real Giants and cave trolls are real cave trolls (and little green men from Mars are real little green men from Mars).

To all of you --MShipley88, bad mike, etc.--you all may have hit on something, and it's a point I had not  thought of.  The fact that most of us (?) here started in some way with the first-edition modules gives (most of) us a common starting point--the Greyhawk world (and later Mystara) and all of the modules that came out.  How many of us really can relate Eberron or even Dragonlance (beyond the DL1-DL16 series) to all of us?

  Most everyone here has either played, DM'ed, and/or at least read those modules.  Yes, some were weak, some stunk, and some were good to great.  But if someone said (as done in this thread) that they had played T1 The Village of Hommlet with modifications, it would be safe to say that most of us know the module, have a basis of understanding of what is being said, and would be curious to see what changes were made.  Same with the group in Portland that still uses 1e rules 25+years later; I personally would love to find out what characters are at what levels, which ones got the farthest, which character(s) have lasted the longest (in real time)--and if any of the original characters are still around, and what 1e modules (if any,changes or not) they have gone through.  Keep telling these stories about other games and even BITD. . . this has been very interesting to read over, these last posts.

Imagine what could be, if one could bring back and update, say, DA1/DA2/DA3 by 30 years . . . or the U1-2-3 series . . .
or, what would S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks be like 30 years on?  Or, all new adventures in the Greyhawk setting, similar to 1e settings?

Ironically, I was wrong about which series of TSR modules I hate.  

I liked T1 Village of Hommlet...lots of fun turning on the town and looting the villagers, after slaying all of the original badguys and taking their place.  Those villagers are rich!  Otis' brother, Elmo, was always the first to die.

I never saw T2-4...or at least I can't name them off the top of my head.

I was actually talking about the Slavelords modules, A1-4.  I hated them.  A1 was just barely useable, with modifications.  The others were too clearly tournament modules with little to do and lots to be annoyed about.

I was never impressed with tournament modules...G1-D3 being massive exceptions...because they are so much larger in scope and full of interesting badguys to kill, rather than a host of artificial situations.

In my opinion, tournament modules were always too short on combat and too long on being "clever."  My players were like, "Where the hell is the adventure you mentioned?"  

With their linnear storylines and sometimes sad assumptions about player incompetence, the tournament modules often disappointed.  For instance, who the hell does not know that the first course of action one must take in any adventure is to bind, gag, search, interrogate and slay any party member controlled exclusively by the DM?  For that matter, who does not know that crazy hermits are likely to prove...crazy?

I guess that White Plume Mountain was fun...except that it also introduced a soul-sucking sword into the campaign, and had to be beefed up with more challenging monsters.   White Plume Mountain also wins the prize for "Least Challenging to a Nerd Riddle."

I agree that the Eberron and other current campaign situations lack any special interest for me.  But then....I also never adventured in the Forgotten Realms and have absolutely no attachment to them.

I actually liked the idea of the Dragonlance modules...and one can never have too many paintings of shapely breasts, thighs, bellies, butts and big hair...I think that women adventuring in their underwear is a good thing.   I just couldn't subordinate my entire campaign to someone else's game world for such an extended time.  

I have only ever really been happy in a millieu of my own creation and I have always prefered modules that could be picked up and dropped into any night's gaming.

I tend to treat published modules like a junkyard, anyway.  I pull off pieces from the rusting hulks whenever I find them useful or interesting.

Mark  

In my opinion, tournament modules were always too short on combat and too long on being "clever."  My players were like, "Where the hell is the adventure you mentioned?"  

Tournament modules were just that; tournament adventures that had a fixed time limit.

Most of our judging criteria was based on the clever survival of the module. That is what we were looking for--clever players, not players that got lucky with their die rolls.

Given the several thousand die rolls collectively made in each round of a tournament, should we have rewarded those lucky few who defied the laws of chance and bucked the odds, or those who showed an understanding of the game and imagination and clever thinking?

Not a very difficult choice as we saw it, BITD.

red_bus wrote:
Oh I don't know.  Why not reward the lucky. I mean this really isn't chess, it's just a fun game     I recognise that there is some art to playing in-character or to playing tactically in a dungeon, but did anyone really take tournament competitions seriously?

i never always felt that it was about being "clever" either. i always like to see luck...a player pull something out of the bag totally off the cuff to save the day - that was always something the group talked about more than anything. but i do understand the tournament competition concept - which was fine by me, but i think RPGing is more than just being clever. is that what a game should just be about? nah

Al