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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:58 am 
 

Howdy All,


Anyone else here use the final Slavelord encounter with the poison gas in A3 or did you run the battle and let the bodies fall where they may?

I couldn't put my group through the poison gas trap, I thought it would really burn their collective butts to be railroaded like that.

Still the battle was pretty stacked against them but it was memorable one. The Slavers had all but won when the party's invisible thief, hiding under Mordrammo's throne, backstabbed him and killed him a huge cheer went up from the collected group. The battle looked grim after that but everyone hung on that last character's tactics and dice rolls. What great suspense and excitement for even those with unconscious or dying characters!

In the end all were captured alive and sent to be sacrificed to the Earth Dragon in A4. I told them at the beginning I would run it with the same time constraints as the tournament with a failure to complete the scenario being their death. I have never seen them make quicker and bolder decisions than that night. They escaped with an elapsed time of 3:58 but their dwarf fell behind and I had him roll a saving throw as the whol place collapsed and lava started to flow. He made it, tumbling down the slope of Mt. Flamenblutt only to have the party members scream to run again as lava was pouring down the slopes of the now active volcano.

Ah, good times!


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:20 am 
 

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   8)


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 2:04 am 
 

sleepyCO wrote: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


The standard operating procedure in my own campaigns has been to start over with new characters whenever the game began to break down due to PC power levels.

In 1st Edition AD&D, this was around 9th-11th levels.  After Unearthed Arcana, the breakdown began shortly after 7th level, when double weapon specialization made the fighter characters too strong for almost any monster in the book.

The same was true of 2nd Edition, which was essentially a neutered version of 1st.

In 3.5, the breakdown level is higher because the monsters can also be over the top mean.  I consider 9th-12th to be medium levels, with the game beginning to break down after the cleric reaches 12th level and cuts loose from reality.  The game can be played to higer level, but changes to a high level space opera at that point.

After starting new characters, the old characters became either NPC's, under my control, or were held in reserve for special high level adventures.  Sometimes, after a group of characters reached sufficient level, the campaign was declared to be "open" and any past character could be brought to the table.

The old PC's from the high school games became the legendary heroes and mages of my adult campaigns.  One, as mentioned above, even became a god that was worshipped by player characters...at their peril.


One other topic of interest to old timers:  

In downtown Portland, Oregon there is a legendary used/new bookstore called Powell's City of Books.  (www.powelbooks.com  I think).  I first visited the store back in the 70's and I have returned to its fabled shelves every time I get down to Portland.

Powell's is an entire city block in area and several stories tall....with a mezzanine and many labyrinthine interconnections.  The store is a giant maze of books...which I have replicated at least twice in D&D libraries.  It could easily be as complicated for a newcomer as the library in Umberto Ecco's The Name of the Rose, and you literally need a map to find your way around.  

Seriously...they give you a map as you enter the store, and even then it is easy to get lost on your first trip.  (I have one of those maps on my wall, two feet away, as I type.)  For romantic types, like me, it is possible to get lost in all of the knowledge stored there...dazed by the sheer power and wonder of such a collection...the maze is just a bonus.  I could sit for hours on a bench in Powell's, just staring at the titles in the Lovecraft section of the "Gold Room."  The impact of Powell's is much stronger than a conventional bookstore.

There was a rolling book rack in Powell's, used to transport books back to their proper shelves.  Back in the 70's, some store worker photocopied and glued several cartoons from the original AD&D books onto the side of that cart.  The cartoons were by (I think) Tom Wham.  They were the giant lynx joke, the +2 backscratcher cartoon and the "Papers and Paychecks" cartoon.

Those cartoons stayed glued to the side of that book rack for almost 30 years, next to a stairway in a corner of the "Rose Room."  Each time I visited Powell's I would seek out that rolling rack and confirm that they were still there...an inside joke across time for all AD&D veterans, and a major piece of nostalgia for me.

This spring, when my best friend and I made our annual pilgrimage to Powell's, I found that the side of the bookrack is now covered by a slick, plastic sign, telling customers how to find their way around the store.  It was the end of an era.

But...still...I bet there is a 90% chance that whoever screwed the sign to the book rack did not bother to scrape off the cartoons...which had become bonded to the laquered wood.  Some day...ineffably far away...when someone gets around to changing the sign or puts the book rack to a different use...those cartoons will see the light of day again.  Some distant person will find those pieces of the original AD&D books and puzzle over them, and the Golden Age will live again...in a way.

Mark   8)


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 2:46 am 
 

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.


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:05 am 
 

Kaskoid wrote:
...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?


Oh I don't know.  Why not reward the lucky. I mean this really isn't chess, it's just a fun game  :wink:   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?


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 5:27 am 
 

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  :wink:   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


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 11:07 am 
 

I don't have a problem with the concept of a tournament module.  I understand the reason behind all the cleverness.

I just don't think they made really good campaign adventures.

In the only tournament I ever competed in, our party broke the adventure wide open.  Many other groups died to the last man, but we were hardly challenged...a real laugher.  

I will never forget the look on the DM's face when we simply ignored his main monster because it moved too slow to even bother us.  A black knight in plate armor confronted us...and we killed his horse and just walked on by.  I pointed out to the DM that not only was he slower than us, he was a lot slower.  :lol:

We finished second to a group that broke the adventure even worse than we did.  They were more aware of the tournament scoring rules, so they sought out monsters to fight to increase their score, while we finished the adventure having taken essentially no damage.

Oh..and they also got points for bulling straight through a set of traps that we simply walked around...and laughed about.

I have no idea how some groups managed to get killed.   8O

Silly stuff.

Mark   8)


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:02 pm 
 

Howdy,


MShipley88 wrote:In the only tournament I ever competed in, our party broke the adventure wide open.  Many other groups died to the last man, but we were hardly challenged...a real laugher.


What the heck adventure was that?


Futures Bright,

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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 12:53 pm 
 

The Collector's Trove wrote:What the heck adventure was that?


Yeah, was that a TSR tournament module?  

As for A1-4, I think they're great, my personal favorites which were a blast to run.  With a bit of tweaking they're ready to drop into most campaigns.  A1 probably shows its tournament roots the most but there's a ton of cool, fun stuff in that module from the doppleganger to the dimunitive troll busting out of the temple poor box to the aspis in the sewer and the orc graffitti that says "elves are fairies."  The only letdown is the boss battle with a non-descript slavelord flunky.  That part needed further fleshing out, which a good DM can of course provide.  
And then the series gets better as they move on with A2 featuring some memorable villains such as Icar and Markessa with all those deformed humanoids from her magical experiments, and even her love interests.  It's a fun scout and destroy mission module.  
And then A3 with a nice, short dungeon to get to the city adventure in the hidden city of Suderham to the showdown with five of the slavelords.  The party I ran through it were taken down, but then again I used the Unearthed Arcana rules to make Feeta the pirate fighter double specialized with his +2 scimatar and 18/76 strength.  He was just a killing machine as well Nerelas with the sips from his potion of invisibility to backstab the unsuspecting, and I had Ajakstu levitating high in the chamber peltering them with magic missiles from his Staff of Power.  I don't think many 4-7th level parties would be able to survive that onslaught, but it was one of the best battles I've ever been involved in.  
And then comes the coup de grace, A4, which is the best adventure ever to really test a D&D player's skills.  With none of their original supplies or magic items, they must use their cleverness and raw skills to get out of the volcano before it explodes.  Memorable enemies include the first introduction of the myconids and magmen, the "kingdom" of the kobolds and a feeble will-o-the-wisp.  And getting out of the volcano is just the first act, then the party has to make their way across the burning island to the docks to defeat the remaining slavelords with very little help (exception Murtano) and the island burning to smithereens all around them.  Just awesome all round.   :D

  

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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:16 pm 
 

The Collector's Trove wrote:Howdy,




What the heck adventure was that?


Futures Bright,

Paul


I suspect it was not a published tournament adventure.  It was a local event with a dozen teams.

Mark


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 1:23 pm 
 

MShipley88 wrote:
The standard operating procedure in my own campaigns has been to start over with new characters whenever the game began to break down due to PC power levels.

In 1st Edition AD&D, this was around 9th-11th levels.  

...snip....

Mark   8)


Interesting thread, if only that clearly my group's gaming experience was so very different to most it seems. We never used any TSR modules - I looked over some and hated the whole style of them. 90% of what we used was original with exceptions for CSIO and a few of the better dungeons out of White Dwarf and Underworld Oracle (the Thieves Hall of Testing was relocated within the walls of the City State.

I DMed a very very tight and closed game world in which I think I highest level characters ever achieved were a 6th Druid, a 5th/4th Magic User-Fighter-Elf and a 5th level gnome thief. The vast majority of characters were killed off before reaching 4th level - not that it was a deadly campaign. It might take my players a couple of years to get to 4th level  8O

It did mean though that the mosters were easy to keep dangerous and interesting and the concept of power players simply did not exist.   

I worked without any printed rules for about three months, then a single blue soft back for levels 1-3 for another year or so before getting hold of the original set and gradually the first four sups. We moved onto 1st Ed AD&D for our last couple of years gaming until we all went off to Uni and I never played D&D again  :cry:

Plenty of good memories though and I know it would be a mistake to try to return - at least for anything other than an odd game for nostalgic reasons with similarly dated old farts. I don't dis whatever has happened since - it is just I have never seen it and only know of it's existance from this site.

I just know I would hate it though - just like that modern music whadoya call it - rap?  :wink:  Now where did I put my hearing aid.....

Nick

  

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Post Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 3:21 pm 
 

What the heck adventure was that?


Any module/adventure has the potential to be "busted wide-open"; it's the nature of the beast.

Anyone who has ever DM'd knows the feeling of having your group waltz through a section of your campaign into which you have poured a lot of your time and creativity.

When you are DMing for a group of intelligent and creative individuals, you never know when the synergy of their insights and intellect will defeat you utterly. The old "...best laid plans oft gang agley..." was never truer than in this circumstance.

When we were asked, BITD, why it was necessary to continually issue errata sheets and rules clarifications, our reply was often "There is no such thing as fool-proof rules because fools are too ingenious."

The moral of this story is that no matter how crafty you are, now matter how obscure the clues, as a DM you always have the chance of a "flash of intuition" that can and will render all your scheming moot.

The only alternative is to construct an adventure that is impossible to win because it is hoplessly stacked against the players. An infinite number of balrogs and hill giants can kill any party; what group will come back for more of that?


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:06 am 
 

That is so true, Tim.  The players can be fiendishly inventive.

The DM might be smart, but the average group of players is a whole group of smart people.  It is very difficult to out-think them.

When interpreting and role-playing monsters, I generally applied the following standard, based upon intelligence:

Animal:  Generally outsmarted by any reasonable plan.

Low:  As smart as the average person.

Average:  As smart as the average gamer.

High:  As smart as...well...me.

Very High:  Can think of things I should have thought of.

Genius:  Probably already thought of any plan the party might have.

   In the case of the tournament module above, the people who ran it were used to a lower level of play.  They were more open-hearted and less crafty/stubborn/dastardly/competitive than my own gaming circle.

   Just one "for instance":  The module subtracted points of damage done to party members by pit traps on a one-for-one basis from the team's total tournament points.  In their campaign, the players apparently considered pit traps to be unavoidable and did not take real care.  By contrast, our party took no damage from traps.

  Ironically, we missed out on winning by missing a 200 point bonus that we would have gotten had we "figured out the maze" and gone right through a series of hellishly bad traps on secret doors.  We figured out that we could just go around every secret door location and take no damage at all.  But, we did not "figure out the maze."  (Several other parties got wiped out in the maze while they "figured it out.")

  It was all good fun, however, and we still have a laugh about it from time to time.

Mark   8)


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:27 am 
 

sleepyCO wrote: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?


This is entirely anecdotal, but I would have to say if you started gaming in the Golden Age (1978-1983), you had probably a 100% chance to do the majority of the following: B1 and B2; C1 & C2; G1-3 and D1-2; L1; N1; S1-4; T1; U1; and X1.  This core group was probably the collective unconciousness of an entire generation of gamers and a powerful shared point of reference. Mention something about one of the above, and you would have heads nodding and tales flying.  
  Personally I am always updating and re-running the classics, sometimes with the same players years later!  My most run modules would have to be B1 and G1-3, with T1, L1 and D1-2 close behind.  I also have a fondness for Dragon magazine modules and have run Citadel by the Sea, Can Seapoint be Saved and Forest of Doom several times.
    I find B1 is the absolute perfect dungeon for beginning players who barely understand the concept of D&D, it has a little bit of everything, and doesn't throw a lot at the players and make too many demands.  It can be as simple or complicate as you want to make it. I often have a "boss" in the lower level by the exit, he can be an evil priest, evil mage or some kind of monster that will give 1st-2nd level characters a challenge (an Ogre or Ghast works well).  I've possibly run this as many as 20 times, most of the time as one shots. The last time I ran it in a campaign was a few years ago, the friend that introduced me to D&D and who is now a doctor had me run he and his kids, and my stepdaughter through it, it was their first ever D&D adventure (a bit of symmetry, it was MY first adventure and my doctor friend ran me through it in 1978!).  The kids had a blast, the final combat on the bottom level against an evil priest and his skeleton servants had the kids really sweating, at one point everyone in their party was held, unconcious or at negative hit points except my friend's mage (down to 1 hp!) and my daughter's war dog, which she had bought on a whim before entering the dungeon.  The war dog ended up being the big hero, the mage shot the cleric with a paralyzation ray from a wand, the cleric failed his save, and as the mage and his raven familiar held off the skeletons the war dog proceeded to kill the mage by tearing off his arm (I added that bit as the dog did massive damage with a few max damage bites).  Needless to say, all my daughter talked about for days afterwards with how her dog ripped off the arm of the evil priest in the dungeon and saved everyone!  What a great intro to roleplaying for the kids...
   I've run G1-3 many times, even converted it to second edition, and placed it in the Forgotten Realms for a few times.  My brothers have gone through it multiple times, and I make sure to change up crucial details each time to defeat any sort of half-ass attempt to outthink the module....it just ain't gonna happen.  The last time I ran it I added shamans to the Hill, Frost and Fire giant strongholds; made the inevitable Giant Slaying Sword a cursed berserker (whoops, heh heh heh); gave King Snurre a Ring of Warmth (defeat those pesky cold spells that might be thrown at him); made Ombi an actual good dwarven prince, albeit a 1st level one (they didnt' butcher him out of hand like I had planned, that would have been good for a few laughs); and turned the Red Dragon on the bottom level into an Efreeti who conjured the image of a red dragon to fool the party while he did his best to take them by surprise.  Every different version has added or subtracted at my whim to try and keep the players on their toes.  This had to be the absolute most beloved series by my groups and players over the years, with the funnest battles except for maybe the Trog, Troll, Bugbear and Drow clusterfuck in D1 (which has also figured multiple times in my campaigns.)
    Basically, if I can shoehorn any of these in one of my campaigns, to this day I will do so happily.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:40 am 
 

The Collector's Trove wrote:Howdy All,


Anyone else here use the final Slavelord encounter with the poison gas in A3 or did you run the battle and let the bodies fall where they may?

I couldn't put my group through the poison gas trap, I thought it would really burn their collective butts to be railroaded like that.

Still the battle was pretty stacked against them but it was memorable one. The Slavers had all but won when the party's invisible thief, hiding under Mordrammo's throne, backstabbed him and killed him a huge cheer went up from the collected group. The battle looked grim after that but everyone hung on that last character's tactics and dice rolls. What great suspense and excitement for even those with unconscious or dying characters!

In the end all were captured alive and sent to be sacrificed to the Earth Dragon in A4. I told them at the beginning I would run it with the same time constraints as the tournament with a failure to complete the scenario being their death. I have never seen them make quicker and bolder decisions than that night. They escaped with an elapsed time of 3:58 but their dwarf fell behind and I had him roll a saving throw as the whol place collapsed and lava started to flow. He made it, tumbling down the slope of Mt. Flamenblutt only to have the party members scream to run again as lava was pouring down the slopes of the now active volcano.

Ah, good times!


Futures Bright,

Paul


Fought the battle out. I agree using the gas would have caused a group revolt.    As written the slavelords (run by the DM) should be able to counter and defeat the party, it lead to one of the all time great game moments as one by one the beloved characters who had been run since 1st level went down to defeat (andsome death) during the battle.  The players actually got upset enough they were yelling at each other.  The grim, morose faces as the last character fell were priceless.  I couldnt' leave them like that so I immediately told them what was in store for the beginning of the next adventure (basically giving them the A4 intro), telling them they were going to be raised and healed up but without anything and having to rely on their wits, so come to the next session prepared to think outside the box.  Just hearing they weren't permanently dead did wonders for their psyche...they wanted to start the next night!  Like you said A4 works best as a pressure cooker so I made sure we could get the entire crawl into one night without interuptions.  The characters did a great job, they immediately stripped down to their birthday suits, said they were picking up spare rocks, and used their underwear for slings!!!  I used the weaponless combat rules for most the battles, it was nip and tuck until they got out.  They even had a pretty ingenious plan for taking the boat of the slavelords and using it to get off the island (don't remember it right now), didn't lose a character to death, and managed like Paul's group to make it across the island just before the volcano blew.  Even brought the surviving slavelords back for a sequel a few adventures later (boy were the players motivated as heck to kick some ass on that one....!)
 I have to agree with Mark, I don't think the A-series would stand up well now although I know the group had a good time with it, much too linear for today's players.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:41 am 
 

I converted Steading of the Hill Giant Chief for a Viking-themed 3.5 campaign.   It was still a blast after all these years...even worth the hassle of converting the map to five foot squares for the 3.5 movement rules.

The best classics are still classic in any format.   :D

Mark   8)


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:47 am 
 

MShipley88 wrote:  

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   8)


I was always surprised at all the DMs Iknew who ran the modules "as written"...I mean, the are obviously tournament modules and for the most part meant as one=shots, not suitable for campaign play.  After some tinkeringmost could prove acceptable. The only ones I could never run were EX series and UK1, no amount of tinkering could make these worthwhile.  Mygroup hated C2 because it was the definition of a tournament adventure, even my changes couldn't make it work.

Mike B.


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Post Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 3:00 am 
 

My memories.

BITD a lot of groups never used the rules correctly.  I would like to point out that this was not a creative difference or shunning of the btb mentallity.  There was no internet yet (who is Al Gore?) and a collective exchange of ideas and gaming styles, house rules, etc. was not prevailent where I was at.  I have had the misfortune of never seeing a truly well played game btb.  That is not to say that I have never seen my fair share of good games otherwise.

I relate to those who mentioned just having the big 3 books for AD&D.  Nobody ever had them all.  It was always a collective effort for the group and usually the DM had the guide and there was just 1 or 2 PHB that was passed around during play if needed.  A smattering of modules as well.  We never played the published modules much but enjoyed looking at them and wondering if we would ever attain the levels to play them.  The 7th level was usually the highest any respectable DM would let any get to before the total TPK reared it's ugly head.  It seemed in those days if you had a PC that was higher in level than a DM you played with a lot,  that something terrible was about to happen to your character :wink: .  Homebrew modules were like a foray into Q's lab from James Bond.  A door is never just a door and treasure always had a price to pay in blood.

The greatest gift I could give to a modern player is the sense of wonder that sword & sorcery had back then that is in no rare quantity today.  We had just a few movies such as Excalibur but it was not like it was a vhs tape that you could pop in and watch on a wim.  You had to watch the TV Guide and try and catch a sci-fi flick back then.  Sword & sorcery was just more fantastic then because it had not permeated society nearly as much as now.  Sure we had books, Frazetta, Conan comics, & Harryhausen but looking back that was about it!

Thanks sleepyCO for the remembrance/thread and btw, I wore my Moldvay out at the bottom of Pikes Peak!  I miss the beauty of that mountain!

  
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