bclarkie wrote:Yeah but Mike, why does every one else have to follow your standards and criteria for what makes a great module? I am not trying to be a dick, but it seems to me that you are kind of acting like your own personal opinions for what makes a module great are the ones that everyone should have to apply to what makes a module great. Most old school gamers prefer their modules to be pretty bare bones, so I am not sure where you can categorically say that they are wrong. I can also tell you for sure that a large portion of people(particularly old school gamers) who play that do not want to have their hands held through each and every portion of a module, as a matter of fact its quite the opposite. This is one of the main reasons that so many 1st edition gamers hated 99% of the stuff that was put out in 2nd edition, because of that. I mean you are certainly entitled to your own opinion as to what makes a module "great" and "more playable", but then again so does everyone else and I am not sure how any ones opinion is more right than the others.
Badmike wrote:I think every single letter series module would have it's supporters. The problem would be in defining exactly what "classic" is. I suppose if you limit the dates of 1977-1982 or so that would give you a good sampling, but what is the criteria? But what I think is interesting is your definition of setting aside semtimentality!!!!
Badmike wrote:You can have opinions about whether or not the modules are GREAT PLAYING EXPERIENCES...I'm on your side. I have specific memories of every single letter series module, all of which I personaly ran, some multiple times. I find that most die hard old school gamers just simply have no experience with anything published beyond, say, 1986, 1989, or 1999. I welcome their input, but as experts on anything outside of their very insular field, their opinion is very limited. Take for example three literary scholars. One teaches early 20th century lit, and has never read a book past 1930. The other teaches mid century, he's read everything the first scholar has read, plus he's actually read up to 1960. The third guy, he's got the first two guy's reading list plus he's ventured up until the year 2000. All three think their field begins and ends with their time period, and theyrefuse to read past their cut off dates, because their period is "The best". Sounds ludicrous, yet I've actually seen English departments at colleges who employ people like this. It reminds me of a lot of D&D players...without entering Edition wars, what makes a module great is the structure, writing style, uniqueness of setting, interesting tricks, traps, monsters and NPCs, usefulness of setting, etc etc. I really don't consider "when it was published" as a criteria....a good module is a good module, period. And a pig is a pig.... I will personally guarantee that very, very few people described as "old school" gamers have read 5% of the stuff published past 1989 because of these sort of bias (they may have hated 99% of the stuff as you say, but I guarantee they didn't READ 99% of the stuff). They can have opinions on what they LIKE, but without a depth of experience, they can't compare or contast accurately, say, the A-series vs the Rappan Athuk series. I have read everything commercially published for 1st edition, gamed almost all of it, and done the same for almost everything 2nd edition. 3rd edition, well, I've read a LOT of it (mostly Necromancer games, DCC, Sword & Sorcery published stuff), and I would stand a lot of it up against anything published in TSRs glory years. The best of it sometimes doesn't fall under the criteria you set (railroady or too much information). Interestingly, I used to get into arguments on usenet with people who hated Ruins of Undermountain as being "too unfinished", "it cost $20 yet it has all these blank spaces", "It advertises 7 levels but only gives you three", etc, yet they loved JG stuff like Frontier Forts of Kelnore or Wilderlands, where you have to pretty much write your own adventures. Edition bias, pure and simple. If Ruins of Undermountain had been released in 1980 and set in the City of Greyhawk, and written by Gary Gygax (without changing a word or encounter), it would be considered the single greatest RPG product ever published. The G-series is probably the most absolutely railroaded series ever written for AD&D (well, perhaps the A series counts also) yet is beloved of the ones who bemoan "railroaded" adventures. Doesn't make it bad, far from it. BTW, I would be interested in which classic "bare bones" and "non railroaded" adventures are favorites. One of the only ones (and one of my absolute favorites) is I1, which simply plops down a hidden jungle city, gives multiple ways in, several set encounters, and lets the DM design tons of extras if he so wants. Most other classics rely on set encounters, linear style, and unrealistic motivations (showing their tournament origins...I mean, in a tournament, you always just appear in front of the cave entrance/door/drawbridge!)Mike B.
Badmike wrote:Look, I love Raymond Chandler. I love pulp fiction in general. But if you ask who's a better writer, Steinbeck or Chandler, or Faulkner or Chandler, or Hemmingway or Chandler, there IS a right and wrong answer, no matter what my opinion...!
bclarkie wrote:Can you tell me in terms of something that doesn't contain your own opinion that makes it better? Unless you are going to start quoting sales numbers, in which case one may have sold better than the other, then you can't. Even if you were going to quote sales figures, I'd put S1 up against any dungeon magazine adventure no matter how great that you think it is......Its all a matter of what someone is looking for that makes one thing better than the other, so its all subjective and none of its objective.
Badmike wrote:Why grade essays in school?
Badmike wrote:There does exist standards for everything, which is why, say, S1 is considered a classic and WG7 Castle Greyhawk...well, not so much. Otherwise some dumbass who proclaims WG7 as the "greatest module EVER written" is on just as firm a ground as someone with T1-4 in his hands.I would break down Mud Sorceror's tomb for you, tell you why it's a BETTER WRITTEN adventure, but honestly, you've never read it and don't know what I'm talking about, do you? If you would take the time to read the adventure, I would take the time to point out why I like it and think it stacks up vs anything ever published with a letter at the top.... I would also point to a poll, I guess this could be totally subjective, that listed Mud Sorceror's tomb as the best adventure ever published in Dungeon magazine (when they did their top ten lists in Dungeon #116).But the bottom line is that items 30 years ago were products of the times. It didn't matter why you were at the Demi Lichs tomb, why you wanted to loot it, where you had come from, why he built a trap filled tomb in themiddle of nowhere, none of that. It wasn't necessary back then because we demanded a lot less of our modules (just like we demanded a lot less of our music, comics, tv shows, etc). We demand more now...does it make it better? In most cases, I'd say yes (Seinfeld is funnier than Welcome Back Kotter; the Shield is better than Dragnet). In some cases, maybe not (sorry, but most new tv comedies are horrific; I can still watch a Dobie Gillis episode and laugh more; the original Star Wars trilogy beats the pants off the new one). Today, I demand a lot more of my adventures than I did 30 years ago. I have a 3rd edition adventure, The Gryphon's Legacy, written by TSR oldie Wolfgang Baur, that has a better setting, background, plot, and overall unity, not to mention writing skill, than 90% of anything published in the last ten years. Not that anyone's ever heard of it. But it's still that good.Some modules work...some don't. Some I've run multiple times (G series, I1, N1). Some I've run once or not at all (C2, EX1-2, UK1). It's not just subjective...if so, then why do certain modules appear on top ten lists more than others? Could they be better written, better plots, better NPCs, interesting scenairos, etc?Standards do exist. They can be applied. Otherwise, what's the point of anything. We'll just crown WG10 Child's Play as the best module of all time (because that's my opinon) and move on....
Badmike wrote:The G-series is probably the most absolutely railroaded series ever written for AD&D (well, perhaps the A series counts also) yet is beloved of the ones who bemoan "railroaded" adventures. Doesn't make it bad, far from it.
Posted: Tue Jul 03, 2007 12:05 pm I will not speak for others, only myself, but based on a lot of what I have read from other prople I am certainly not alone in my opinions. If you don;t beleive me, I could happily post a link from over on DF with a whole host of gamers that play a lot, have read the materials post 1989 and still 100% disagree with you. Some of it may be edition bias, but no more of it than it is very apparent in your own bias towards 2nd edition.
Badmike wrote: Look, I love Raymond Chandler. I love pulp fiction in general. But if you ask who's a better writer, Steinbeck or Chandler, or Faulkner or Chandler, or Hemmingway or Chandler, there IS a right and wrong answer, no matter what my opinion...! No there isn't. It is all a matter of personal preference, period. Just like I mentioned above in regards to the Dungeon adventure versus S1, until you can start providing some objective figures and facts to the discussion and not your own opinions, its all subjective.
So, I thought it'd be interesting to see if we could identify those aspects of the original modules (yes, 1977-82 is a good time span) that had good playability, plot, balance, interesting magic & monsters, innovative tricks/traps (brain over brawn type of stuff). That's what I was thinking, anyway.
jamesmishler wrote:This too is a phenomenon in literature, with the true short story a la Howard gone and the massive, ten-volume series like Wheel of Time coming to the fore.
jamesmishler wrote:The characters, and thus the players, did not drive the action, they were driven by it!
jamesmishler wrote:I'm going to have to say this is probably chalked up to your personal experience playing these modules. If properly run, neither series is necessarily a railroad. PCs can either pick up on the clues left and pursue them or not. It all depends on how a DM runs his game. The DM might say "OK, last session you finished off the hill giants, now you follow up the clues you found there and stand before the glacial rift of the frost giants..."I love the G-series. I've probably run them more times than anything else, except B1. But, damn, THERE IS A TELEPORT DEVICE AT THE END OF G1 AND G2 THAT TAKES YOU TO THE NEXT ADVENTURE!!!!!! What party turns that down and says, "uh, no thanks, I think I'd rather WALK severa hundred miles to the next step of the giant kill"??? Depending on how the players want to play, that's either a good thing or a bad thing, i.e., railroading. Myself, I give players full, unabridged latitude to pursue any and all clues, adventure seeds, sub-plots, or possibilities. There are always consequences, of course, in a campaign. If they were, for example, to take out the hill giants, but not go after the frost giants, the frost giants will be raiding in greater numbers as time moves along... and gain new allies, eventually. But that's the way I run things.As do I, that's my approach. But I am looking at the modules AS WRITTEN. I can always juice up a module to make it more appealing...how much work I have to do, that's a factor.The difference between the original G1, G2, and G3 and the longer mega-series developed in the compilation books is that in the older version, the DM was free to take or leave the railroad possibilities. In the later versions, the railroad was implicit in the module.This is where a lot of the perception of difference comes from, between the older modules and more modern stuff. It started, really, with the Desert of Desolation series earlier, in which the adventure was never really finished until you completed all three modules. You could have, really, run the original G series in any order you liked, or as unrelated events, but I3 to I5 ran in one explicit direction with one background story. G1-3 had an element of this, too. It grew exponentially with the Dragonlance series, and was set in stone by the advent of 2E.I agree with you about the I3-5 series being the beginning of the true "campaign" oriented series. As these "story-driven" or "railroad" series became more common, so too did "fluff." Holy cow, did fluff become more popular. I attribute this to TSR using more freelancers, who got paid by the word, rather than paid on salary. This too is a phenomenon in literature, with the true short story a la Howard gone and the massive, ten-volume series like Wheel of Time coming to the fore. And it didn't help that a lot of module writers at the time also had aspirations to write fiction... and tried their hands at it in the modules they wrote. The Fluff Factor has ruined a lot of good gaming...and fantasy writing. Hell even Stephen King needs a better editior (or an editor, period) most of the time. Interestingly, it's why I champion Dungeon magazine. Most of the best adventures are lean and mean, stripped down to what makes sense and works in the context of the adventure. The true best 2nd edition adventures were pretty much all in the pages of Dungeon magazine, not as published modules.So, with late 1E early 2E, we have two things happening, more fluff and structured, "story-driven" adventures. This is what I hate about a lot of the later adventures... In earlier adventures, the characters are the story. In later adventures, the story happens to the characters! I can't remember the module, but there was one I read in the latter days of TSR that was essentially little more than a "pick-a-path" adventure, where the DM would read what happens and give the players two or three choices. Then the DM would read more of what happens to their characters, and so on. The characters, and thus the players, did not drive the action, they were driven by it!While I agree with this, it's not true of ALL adventures published after 1989...Ruins of Undermountain being a prime example (here's a giant underground dungeon of three levels, here are some set encounters, here are lots of empty spaces to develop your own encounters/scenarios, go for it!)Another factor in this was the "dumbing down" of the position of DM. In order to enable more players to become DMs, they produced modules that required minimal preparation time and investment of ability on the part of the DM to run a game... I guess this was to get more people playing overall, maybe. Not my cup of tea, but I guess if it worked for the players, more power to them. I know, after playing in several games from the era, the so-called "adventures" just bored me to tears.Once again, a lot of 2nd edition stuff reads like tournaments...dumbed down tournaments, at that. For fun you can read through them and pick where the different "signposts" in the adventures are for giving points in the original tournament.I never really understood the "dumbing down" aspect, but it was definitely there. What's surprising to me is that there seems to be Ed Greenwood's stuff, and Carl Sargent's stuff, and then, everyone else, like no one else even thought they could contribute to such a complicated cosmology as those two and thus just gave up.As for people complaining about Undermountain, that's just the cheap-ass nature of gamers coming to the fore. You'll not please most gamers with the amount of stuff they get in a $20 boxed set until it includes 500 pages of books, 22 maps, 46 cards, and a $50 bill...
jamesmishler wrote:I'm going to have to say this is probably chalked up to your personal experience playing these modules. If properly run, neither series is necessarily a railroad. PCs can either pick up on the clues left and pursue them or not. It all depends on how a DM runs his game. The DM might say "OK, last session you finished off the hill giants, now you follow up the clues you found there and stand before the glacial rift of the frost giants..."
Depending on how the players want to play, that's either a good thing or a bad thing, i.e., railroading. Myself, I give players full, unabridged latitude to pursue any and all clues, adventure seeds, sub-plots, or possibilities. There are always consequences, of course, in a campaign. If they were, for example, to take out the hill giants, but not go after the frost giants, the frost giants will be raiding in greater numbers as time moves along... and gain new allies, eventually. But that's the way I run things.
The difference between the original G1, G2, and G3 and the longer mega-series developed in the compilation books is that in the older version, the DM was free to take or leave the railroad possibilities. In the later versions, the railroad was implicit in the module.This is where a lot of the perception of difference comes from, between the older modules and more modern stuff. It started, really, with the Desert of Desolation series earlier, in which the adventure was never really finished until you completed all three modules. You could have, really, run the original G series in any order you liked, or as unrelated events, but I3 to I5 ran in one explicit direction with one background story. G1-3 had an element of this, too. It grew exponentially with the Dragonlance series, and was set in stone by the advent of 2E.
As these "story-driven" or "railroad" series became more common, so too did "fluff." Holy cow, did fluff become more popular. I attribute this to TSR using more freelancers, who got paid by the word, rather than paid on salary. This too is a phenomenon in literature, with the true short story a la Howard gone and the massive, ten-volume series like Wheel of Time coming to the fore. And it didn't help that a lot of module writers at the time also had aspirations to write fiction... and tried their hands at it in the modules they wrote.
So, with late 1E early 2E, we have two things happening, more fluff and structured, "story-driven" adventures. This is what I hate about a lot of the later adventures... In earlier adventures, the characters are the story. In later adventures, the story happens to the characters! I can't remember the module, but there was one I read in the latter days of TSR that was essentially little more than a "pick-a-path" adventure, where the DM would read what happens and give the players two or three choices. Then the DM would read more of what happens to their characters, and so on. The characters, and thus the players, did not drive the action, they were driven by it!
Another factor in this was the "dumbing down" of the position of DM. In order to enable more players to become DMs, they produced modules that required minimal preparation time and investment of ability on the part of the DM to run a game... I guess this was to get more people playing overall, maybe. Not my cup of tea, but I guess if it worked for the players, more power to them. I know, after playing in several games from the era, the so-called "adventures" just bored me to tears.
As for people complaining about Undermountain, that's just the cheap-ass nature of gamers coming to the fore. You'll not please most gamers with the amount of stuff they get in a $20 boxed set until it includes 500 pages of books, 22 maps, 46 cards, and a $50 bill...
Badmike wrote:I would love to see the look on a college professors face when you told him that
Ekim Toor wrote:And the U series deals with "smugglers"?... for the first half anyways.No one has mentioned the Doppleganger in A1, talk about an evening of good old-fashioned paranoia, even better than Ned in U1.
Badmike wrote:If none of it is objective, then truly, Dr. Seuss is as good a writer as Salmon Rushdie.
While I agree with this, it's not true of ALL adventures published after 1989...Ruins of Undermountain being a prime example (here's a giant underground dungeon of three levels, here are some set encounters, here are lots of empty spaces to develop your own encounters/scenarios, go for it!)
Yeh, so they just raised the bar to $100 boxed sets full of goodies...cmon, game designers out there, isn't there a happy medium? Castle Whiterock looks cool, but $100 is just pushing it....
serleran wrote:In no particular order, in my opinion:Tomb of HorrorsKeep on the BorderlandsCastle AmberRavenloftDescent into the Depths of the EarthLost TamoachanAssassin's KnotThe Forgotten Temple of TharizdunThe Village of HommletExpedition to the Barrier PeaksWhite Plume MountainQueen of the Demonweb PitsThe Giant SeriesDark TowerCaverns of ThraciaTegel ManorTreasure HuntIsle of DreadIsle of the ApeShrine of the Kuo-ToaFrank Mentzer's R-Series (I forget all the names of them, individually)(Probably more I'm forgetting, but I'm tired.)
bclarkie wrote:You are still missing the point. Even if the College Professor would think I was crazy for saying so, that doesn't make it any less of his own opinion versus mine own opinion. Both are firmly rooted in one's own personal preferences and are not rooted in facts. If you want to say that a guy writes with a much greater vocabualry or writes with a more complex storyline, those are measurable things that can be compared. However, that still does not make one better than the other in everyone's opinions. Some people prefer to be able to understand what they are reading without having a dictionary nearby too look up all the words that they don't understand, while others may prefer less complex storylines, but it all boils down to a matter of personal preference and none of what ones personal likes and dislikes are, are rooted in facts.
jamesmishler wrote:The fact that most such modules are priced even lower still than the rate of inflation is indicative of how hard hit the people in the industry are today, and why writers and editors in the game industry get paid a tenth or less of the rate they would writing novels or in other literary endeavors...
