Quote from: Haffrung;251774Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia - Fantastic sword and sorcery setting and mini-campaign. If this had come out back when most RPGers read Robert E. Howard, it would be considered a classic.

I recently picked this up used but haven't played.  I think it might have suffered slightly from the name and cover presentation.  Until someone described it, I and several others assumed it was a historical fantasy about the actual Mesopotamia.  It's actually very much in the vein of Howard and his contemporaries.

Now this is a good topic, and it dredges up one of the reasons why I spent an inordinate amount of time tracking down the CD-ROM of Dragon mag.

10) The Ghost Tower of Inverness - The first tournament module that we ever ran, and when you think you're going into a creepy ghost infested place you're thrown off the track by all of the funky stuff in the tower itself.

9) The Isle of Dread - Jurassic Park meets D&D.  'nuff said.

White Plume Mountain - The promise of intelligent weapons leads many adventurers astray.  And whomever came up with that frictionless trap has my utmost respect.

7) Expedition to the Barrier Peaks - When my group started going through this module, things were normal at first.  Then things got weird real fast, until we finally realized this was Roswell meets D&D.

6) Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - The scene of my group's first TPK, and it was due to the freaking landslide of all things.

5) Tomb of Horrors - To whomever implied that Gary Gygax didn't write difficult enough modules, I can only say, "Thanks a @#@$#@ lot for inspiring Gary to pen this."

4) Against the Giants - I honestly liked G1-G3 better than D1-3, because what became known as the Underdark didn't appeal to me as much.

3) Fedifensor - This adventure found in the old Dragon magazine not only introduced the Githyanki into the D&D universe, but dangled as the carrot that wondrous munchkin enabler, the +5 Holy Avenger.  Oh, and astral travel being built into the adventure was incredibly cool, too.

2) Queen of the Demonweb Pits - There weren't many early adventures that dealt with fighting a deity (outside of the homemade variety that allowed the players to fight Orcus or Demogorgon and then grab ALL THAT TREASURE!), and this certainly fit the bill.  This is the adventure where you had the opportunity to go after Lolth on her home plane.  At the same time, however, there was a nagging feeling that you're never going to make it out of here alive and back into a real happy peaceful place, much less your home plane.

1) Keep on the Borderlands - Going back to the old module all these years later, you can see all of the little side quests and adventures that allowed characters to get their feet wet before even going to the Caves of Chaos.  You can build a really good campaign off of that module, and it was always there for the taking.  (Of course, being 11 or so at the time, that aspect of it was completely lost on us, but I can appreciate that now.)  It was a great intro to D&D, and allowed fledgling DMs to stretch their wings.

--Mike L.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;252107Now this is a good topic, and it dredges up one of the reasons why I spent an inordinate amount of time tracking down the CD-ROM of Dragon mag.

I'm still waiting for a copy that's even marginally affordable.

Quote from: flyerfan1991;252107Keep on the Borderlands - Going back to the old module all these years later, you can see all of the little side quests and adventures that allowed characters to get their feet wet before even going to the Caves of Chaos.  You can build a really good campaign off of that module, and it was always there for the taking.  (Of course, being 11 or so at the time, that aspect of it was completely lost on us, but I can appreciate that now.)  It was a great intro to D&D, and allowed fledgling DMs to stretch their wings.

This is what frequently gets lost in the discussion of Keep on the Borderland.  I've seen many people complain about the lack of detail in the adventure -- none of the NPCs are named, for example -- but rarely does anyone acknowledge that Keep provides all the game mechanics for a full Basic D&D campaign, and only requires the DM to create fluff (which, IMHO, is the easy part).

I ran a campaign using KotBL for a group of seasoned players a few years back.  I called the keep "Grenzlander Schloss" ("Borderland Castle" in German), gave everyone German names, and spread the Caves of Chaos over several hills (instead of one big clump).

I think we got through about eight full sessions before anyone realized I was running KotBL.

Quote from: Zachary The First;252109I'm still waiting for a copy that's even marginally affordable.

The place I bought it from was still selling it for the regular asking price of $50 (or thereabouts).  What's it going for now?

::goes to eBay::

Holy crap; that's as much as my copy of AH's Civilization.

--Mike L.

Quote from: Jackalope;252144This is what frequently gets lost in the discussion of Keep on the Borderland.  I've seen many people complain about the lack of detail in the adventure -- none of the NPCs are named, for example -- but rarely does anyone acknowledge that Keep provides all the game mechanics for a full Basic D&D campaign, and only requires the DM to create fluff (which, IMHO, is the easy part).

I ran a campaign using KotBL for a group of seasoned players a few years back.  I called the keep "Grenzlander Schloss" ("Borderland Castle" in German), gave everyone German names, and spread the Caves of Chaos over several hills (instead of one big clump).

I think we got through about eight full sessions before anyone realized I was running KotBL.

I think that's the one thing I really like about the Nentir Vale campaign found in the 4e DMG and 4e's H1 and H2 (H3 is a bit more like old S2 or S3, where the module is only nominally attached to the Vale).  There's plenty of stuff to fill out a campaign in, and enough hints as to what lies beyond the Vale (which is what, the size of England or something?) to allow a clever DM to insert this wholesale into a home-brewed world.  Another nice thing is that a DM can make the campaign stretch out rather than rapidly go bang-bang-bang through the character levels by enabling the PCs to work to improve the long term security of the Vale as a whole.  Remember the old "advance high enough and you'll get a Lordship" routine?  You can have the PCs claim an abandoned keep somewhere and develop that themselves.

--Mike L.