My opinions have changed in the six years since my first run at an all-time greatest list.
Some classics never change.
1)
G1 Steading of the Hill Giant ChieftainThe module that started it all. G1 is a hell of a lot of fun to play. I remember being terrified of getting cornered by the hill giants. Also, we turned invisble and ate lunch under the chieftain's feasting table. As a
DM, I go back to
G1 every time I have players who are not familiar with it. G1 turns deadly deadly if you convert the giants to AD&D Second Edition. Used with the 3.5 rules,
G1 is hard to survive. Although it is full of classic memories, I was surprised to find that this old favorite was only 16 pages (eight leaves) long.
2)
G3 Hall of the Fire Giant KingStarts with the ultimate boss fight. Lots of things to kill. Ends with the first appearance of the drow and a totally unexpected battle at the shrine of Elder Elemental Evil - Gygax's take on Lovecraft. I have modified
Hall of the Fire Giant King for D&D 3.5, which makes it a much more challenging adventure. The level of detail in this module is outstanding for a relatively thin publication. It is astonishing how much adventure TSR could cram into 16 or 32 pages of module.
3)
G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant JarlDon't fall into the rift. That is the most dangerous place. The remorhaz makes a dramatic entrance into AD&D. Falls only slightly behind
G1 and
G3 in its overall quality. Although
G1-3 and D1-3 were written as tournament modules, the G series modules manage to avoid the stank of clumsy, tournament writing and railroad situations. (
D1 has this stank all over it and does not make my list because it is an interesting set of encounters, but nothing really more than a monster hotel.)
4)
Dark TowerThe quintessential old-school adventure, even though it was written for AD&D rather than OD&D.
Dark Tower has lots of things to do and plenty of fun encounters. Of the non-TSR modules,
Dark Tower is the classic; holding its value to this day.
Dark Tower has appeared in multiple versions of the game, with an initial appearance as a primitive 3.0 module that came close to ruining this masterpiece. Fortunately, Goodman Games was able to forge a come-back for
Dark Tower late in the
D20 era. I met Louis Zocci at GenCon in 2001 because he was selling re-prints of
Dark Tower. The idea of a reprint didn't appeal to me then, even though I was not yet a collector. Now, a Zocci reprint probably has collectible value.
5)
Pathfinder Adventure Path #2: The Skinsaw MurdersPossibly the best use of horror in Dungeons and Dragons. Also, this module represents the pinnacle of the
D20 rules set. It shows how powerful D&D 3.5 really could be when the designers were masters of the rules set and all its potential. There are elements of real horror in this module, which is about madness, disease and murder. Some of the scenes would fit well in a B movie Lovecraft adaptation...and I mean that in a good way. Other scenes are just downright creepy, including a memorable one in an insane assylum.
The Skinsaw Murders incorporates material from Green Ronin's
Advanced Bestiary in order to make familiar monsters frightening. If you never played 3.0/3.5/3.75 D&D, you still ought to read this master work module.
6)
VerboshToo much fun and too funny to leave off an all-time list. I know that I will be the only one to vote for
Verbosh, but that doesn't mean it isn't an excellent publication.
Verbosh has almost everything in it, from city adventure to aquatic adventure. Written in the simple and direct style of Judges Guild, Verbosh is a nice example of what was best in the early days of D&D.
7)
D3 Vault of the Drow If you don't have a favorite memory or two from Erelhei Cinlu, you never really played AD&D. D3 was Gary Gygax at the height of his powers. You seldom find a used
D3 in good condition because they got played to death. The drow became a fantasy trope that remains a powerful theme in fantasy literature. In my campaign, the physical/magical/psionic battle with Lolth lasted one round. It left one character insane, one unconscious, one stunned and one screaming with berserk rage...and Lolth banished back to the Demonweb Pits. There was a long wait for the sequel to
D3. Q1
Queen of the Demonweb Pits will probably make lots of these best of lists as well, but I do not have rich memories of that module. As a
DM, I was astonished that the players did not want their characters to linger in Erelhei Cinlu. The chance to be outlaws of good in an evil society? Priceless. Unfortunately, the drow city was not adequately mapped for the module as Gygax was focused on the
Egg of Lolth as the tournament adventure climax. So many possibilities! There is a very good, rather small picture of the walls of Erelhei Cinlu which I would have put on the module's cover.
8
T1 Village of Hommlet Gygax showing how it should be done. T1 is not the primer on medieval life that many gamers think it to be, but the images from
T1 are so universal among gamers of a certain era that this module has to be near the top of any list. Show gamers from the AD&D era a picture of the moathouse gate and the stories flow. More than a couple of game groups turned on the the villagers and began to rob Hommlet. There's lots more treasure hidden in the village than there is in the moathouse. The inclusion of a jeweler in the village seems to invite a burgulary attempt. I wonder what Gygax thought the player characters would do.
9)
Rappan Athuk ReloadedThe most famous and extensive dungeon set from the best publisher of the
D20 era. You grognards need not knock
Rappan Athuk Reloaded for being a D&D 3.5 module. It began life as an AD&D dungeon. Soon to reappear as a Pathfinder module, Rappan Athuk offers a deep dungeon delve and a chance to rock with Orcus. The name comes from a dwarven language dictionary that Bill Webb read as a kid. It means "Dungeon of Graves" (which you probably knew, but anyway...). The
Rappan Athuk Reloaded boxed set is one of the most valued collectibles from the
D20 era. It is a good example of how a readily available pdf does not lessen the value of a top level collectible. Mine is still in its very fragile shrinkwrap.
10 S2
White Plume Mountain The best of the tournament modules. S2 avoided many of the problems of tournament modules by being fun to play and having many interesting situations. I went through S2 as a player. Good stuff. Our gaming group was heavily combat oriented, so we didn't find any of the battles too challenging. I have heard that the final encounters were really dangerous for some parties.
White Plume Mountain manages to have enough cool combat situations to sate the bloodlust of power gamers while still entertaining the puzzle players.
11) S4
Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth Central to the mysteries of the Greyhawk setting. S4 was a tournament module, but managed to come back from that by having lots of cool stuff to kill. It is a pity there was no published sequel to S4 because Gygax hinted at further connections in the Greyhawk sandbox. As a
DM, I had a near total party kill in the black sphere at the center of this module.
Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was practically a new monster manual all by itself. A number of creatures made their debut in the caverns. My favorite was the behir.
12)
B2 Keep on the Borderlands If you are introducing D&D to a sourpuss,
B2 is the way to do it. This is D&D in its most basic and classic form. Who here got killed by the crazy hermit? (My party killed him and his panther, no sweat.) It is interesting that this module is named for the keep, since the heart of the module is the Caves of Chaos. Weird, aye?
13)
Thieves Guild #3 The Duke's Dress Ball Not written for D&D, so listing it here is a technical
foul. But the Thieves Guild modules were really meant for AD&D...with just some rules tinkering. It takes some preparation and some sharp
DM skills, but this module is my favorite of the social situation city adventure genre. There is a sense of malicious/mischevious joy in the entire Thieves Guild line from Gamelords. One gets the idea that Kerry Lloyd was a very fun
DM and his games were light-hearted. Everyone loves a charming rogue.
14)
D2 Shrine of the Kuo-Toa Everyone from the AD&D era has at least one funny or cool memory from
D2. The player characters could just walk right on through this module, but they never do. Once they set off the kuo toan guards,
D2 becomes what I call a "chase and stomp," with monsters crawling all over the characters. I wonder if there are any gaming groups in the old days who noted the shrine on the map and found a way to bypass the whole thing. Although
D2 was a tournement module, there is enough detail here for the place to become a regular stop in an underworld campaign.
15) I6
Ravenloft I6 showed how D&D could be really artistic and complicated and how a vampire could possibly be played with skill. Watch out for the 3-D map of Straud's castle...dang hard to use!
Ravenloft was probably the most complex and complete AD&D module. Unfortunatlely, in order to make the module work,
Ravenloft was set in its own plane of existence...which spawned the
Ravenloft line of modules...an unfortunate publishing venture that still lingers on the shelves of Half Price Books.
16)
B1 In Search of the Unknown Where D&D really began. Gygax taught a clinic on how to build a fun and interesting module but left the details up to each
DM. Very cool. As a player, I kept expecting the original owners of the dungeon to turn back up. Bill Barsh made this happen...30+ years later...with a Pacesetter module that solves the mystery of the missing heroes. This module is where my high school brain first encountered berserkers. As I recall, they were listed on the wandering monsters table. It took me a while to figure out what they there...since they sounded to me like some sort of Dairy Queen specialty. What human berserkers were doing wandering around the subterranean halls of Quasqueton was never adequately explained. Why didn't they fight monsters? There certainly were enough of them wandering around.
17)
Irilian - White Dwarf #42
Another technical
foul on my part, since this comes from a British
RPG magazine, but
Irilian is just a huge adventure with an entire city as a stage. You could play an entire campaign in
Irilian...which is exactly how the adventure is written. I have no idea how Game Workshop managed to cram
Ilirian into a single magazine, but it is the best of the British contribution to AD&D. Should have been a stand alone module. I first encountered Irilian as the centerpiece of a "best of scenarios" publication for White Dwarf.
Irilian easily dwarfed the rest of the publication in both scope and quality. The storyline has some grim and tragic elements that seem to have been more popular with British gamers in the early days.
18)
Kingdom of the Ghouls - Dungeon #70
The best from Wofgang Bauer. This is how an underworld adventure should be done. A great twist on a classic D&D monster.
Kingdom of the Ghouls has seen press in Dungeon Magazine and has appeared as an Open Design Project and as a 4th Edition module that doesn't credit Baurer on the cover.
19) S3
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Too many shared memories here to leave S3 out. I believe this must have been one of the most widely-played modules of the AD&D era. S3 was complicated by an overly large and hard to draw map, but it is a classic of game design and player memories. Like a few other modules, S3 had a confusing title...since the only things missing from the module were the Barrier Peaks. The only drawback to this module is that I've never heard of an adventure group actually finishing it. Hunting down robots and taking their technological weapons becomes the goal of the module.
20)
S1 Tomb of HorrorsNo all-time list would be complete without
S1, which beat out several worthy competitors for the last spot. I don't know if anyone should bring a beloved character into
S1, since it is a collection of death traps that go against the traditional spirit of the game. I wonder how many gamers actually played through this module as opposed to just reading it. I have heard of at least one gaming group that played
Tomb of Horrors with their standard characters, and supposedly they survived. I don't see how. Gygax shows how the trap/puzzle dungeon should be done, with an ultra-deadly tomb crawl that predates publications like
Grimtooth's Traps by several years. All it needs to be in the top 10 is less deadly traps and a bit more combat.
Far far from making my list:
A1-4 Against the Text Boxes and Railroad Plot of the Slavelords
C2 Ghost Tower of Nothing to Kill in Inverness
DL1-
DL? Dragon (AD&D Losing its Way) Lance
Pretty much anything with Forgotten Realms in the cover blurb.
