When I think of 2nd edition, I think of the setting material and not modules. That being said, I've heard good things about the Night Below and Gates of Firestorm Peak- what were some others worth tracking down?
Labyrinth of Madness, 2e's answer to Tomb of Horrors, by Monte Cook was good.
I've never read it myself, but Brendan keeps talking about Feast of Goblyns for Ravenloft or some such. I really want to check this one out.
Most of the great 2e modules were in Dungeon Magazine. There are a couple of threads on DF and Purpleworm discussing this. I have picked up many of the cherry issues and they are in fact pretty groovy, with a nice range of levels and themes.
Get that collection going!
Cheers
Quote from: Benoist;734420I've never read it myself, but Brendan keeps talking about Feast of Goblyns for Ravenloft or some such. I really want to check this one out.
I definitely recommend Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn. What I like about feast of Goblyns is you can pretty much ignore the adventure if you want and use the content as a basis for running any campaign set in Kartakass.
The "Darkness Gathering" series is my favorite, and about the only 2e modules I bought that werent purely Spelljammer oriented. Pretty good set of modules by Cordell. Fairly free roaming too as you did not have to do things in any particular order and there was more than one way to approach various encounters.
Did not like Return to White Plume Mountain, felt... cheap? And a friend of mine picked up Return to Keep on the Borderlands and did not like that one at all. Have not had a chance to look at it myself yet so cant say.
Quote from: Omega;734468Did not like Return to White Plume Mountain, felt... cheap? And a friend of mine picked up Return to Keep on the Borderlands and did not like that one at all. Have not had a chance to look at it myself yet so cant say.
A lot of the stuff from the late 90s looked cheap (i think due to financial issues at the company). I recall the ravenloft line suddenly going from having these gorgeous borders and Fabian art to being printed on plain white background with art that just didn't work for the setting.
Return to the Keep of the Borderlands isn't bad, it's just a little dull. There are some neat references in it to other modules, like one of the NPCs is from the Lost City (B4)
I liked Return to the Tomb of Horrors a lot better though.
I really wasn't impressed with the Dungeon Magazine stuff. They used the same authors over and over, and rarely was it site based adventures, it was often plot heavy stuff. And ironically (given its name), very few "dungeons", only really one memorable one that used its treasure (magic items) as traps.
Quote from: JeremyR;734484I liked Return to the Tomb of Horrors a lot better though.
I have never run that one but played in it fairly recently and it was very good. How much was the GM, and how much was the module, do not know.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734444I definitely recommend Feast of Goblyns and Castles Forlorn. What I like about feast of Goblyns is you can pretty much ignore the adventure if you want and use the content as a basis for running any campaign set in Kartakass.
Feast of Goblyns has just been put up on RPGnow for those who are curious.
Quote from: One Horse Town;734486Feast of Goblyns has just been put up on RPGnow for those who are curious.
And it is still on amazon, used, for 12 bucks. If you can get the physical product, i highly recommend it (just make sure the seller is selling the entire module and not the sleave or leaving out maps). This module is like a pinata. It has a poster, bunch of maps, a gm screen and new character sheet.
Quote from: Benoist;734420... Feast of Goblyns ... I really want to check this one out.
Oh, you should. Really. It's that good.
Plus: Stephen Fabian artwork.
Quote from: Teazia;734441Most of the great 2e modules were in Dungeon Magazine.
And that as well. I guess half of everything I ever ran was built from bits and pieces from Dungeon Magazine alone.
Off the top of my head:
Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff (the first half of it, anyway)
Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Return to White Plume Mountain
Return to the Keep on the Borderlands
...
;)
Quote from: thedungeondelver;734514Off the top of my head:
Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff (the first half of it, anyway)
Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Return to White Plume Mountain
Return to the Keep on the Borderlands
Return to White Plume Mountain
...
;)
So you liked Return to White Plume Mountain twice as much as the others eh?
Quote from: JeremyR;734484Return to the Keep of the Borderlands isn't bad, it's just a little dull.
I didn't find it any duller than the original Keep. But I suppose expectations of adventures had changed.
If you really are looking to run a 2E campaign, just buy Night Below and be done with it. It's excellent, and it will take over a year to play it out.
But if you're looking for a one-shot, Return to White Plume Mountain is okay.
Quote from: Exploderwizard;734523So you liked Return to White Plume Mountain twice as much as the others eh?
Ha! Fixed! :)
With a bit of work the Fighter's Challenge solo module can be turned into quite a decent mini campaign.
I believe Feast of Goblins can still be legally DL'ed free from the previous editions downloads page via the Wayback machine
My experiences with the 2e adventures I purchased went something like this:
"Hey, that looks/sounds cool...*purchase*...*read*...WTF is this shit?...*disappointment*"
The only one I can think of that didn't fit that pattern was Return to the Tomb of Horrors, which I thought was pretty good.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734481A lot of the stuff from the late 90s looked cheap (i think due to financial issues at the company). I recall the ravenloft line suddenly going from having these gorgeous borders and Fabian art to being printed on plain white background with art that just didn't work for the setting.
Ive got I think the 2nd boxed set. The one with the BW Tarokka deck.
Quote from: Omega;734726Ive got I think the 2nd boxed set. The one with the BW Tarokka deck.
That one wasnt bad, they still used the Fabian art and had the borders. It was around Bleak House and Grim Harvest i believe, that the borders dissapeared and the art changed. I just remember things feeling thin at that stage.
It's all very well saying that it's great, but what about it is great?
Quote from: One Horse Town;734740It's all very well saying that it's great, but what about it is great?
Not sure if this is directed at me, but just to be clear, Bleak house and Grim Harvest are the opposite of great.
Feast of goblyns was great, at least for me, because it came with so much useable setting material and offers a blueprint of how a darklord might interact with the party without being the main antagonist. It also took the concept of the living NPC from the first ravenloft module and ran with it, emphasizing that all the major ones (Harkon Lukas, Ariel Lukas, Doctor Dominiani, Radaga, Daegon and even Duke Gundar) have agency and react to what the players do. So these characters were meant to roam and pursue their agendas. That style of play really clicked for me. Beyond that are the maps and map detail entries. There are:
-Two rural houses (Ontash home and Jacque's home) on the cardstock sleave
-Local terrain of houses on the same sleave
-Two sided character sheet on inside if sleeve
-a fold out gm screen with a super cool werewolf
Also a fold out map with the following:
-map of kartakass to be used with hex overlay
-Map of the kartakan inn in 3d and 2d
-3d map of Doctor Dominiani's estate (including a panel for the grounds)
-second map of kartakass
-map of the new town of Homlock (comes into existence through events in module)
-large map of town of Skald
-map of town of Harmonia
Inside the module itself is:
-the adventure
-full description of Harmonia
-map of the jail in harmonia
-description of Ontash home
-Full description of Skald
-full descirption of kartakan in (one of the best aspects of the module)
-map and description of the gorge and the cavern of the undead preistess
-map of the cavern of the crown of souls
-description of the crown of souls
-description of doctor dominiani's estate
-New domain (Daglan) with description of Homlock and map of a church
-new monsters: Goblyn (more awesome than they sound), carnivorous plant, and greater wolfwere
So the module is just brimming with stuff and it is tied together by the machinations of ariel lukas and doctor dominiani who try to draw the players into their dark plot. I have only ever actually used the adventure premise as presented once or twice, but have run the module countless times by taking the key elements and using them as i need (you can do almost anything by just focusing on the crown of souls for example and ignoring the stuff with ariel and dominiani or you can just focus on adventures set in harmonia and skald...all kinds of options). If you also have the castles forlorn boxed set it is even better because the domain in that module is right next store and the crown of souls ties in nicely.
Quote from: BedrockBrendan;734733That one wasnt bad, they still used the Fabian art and had the borders. It was around Bleak House and Grim Harvest i believe, that the borders dissapeared and the art changed. I just remember things feeling thin at that stage.
Bleak House at least had the Fabian covers for the individual books, but yes, the Grim Harvest modules marked a shift in layout and art direction. They'd just changed up the editorial team at that time--something that happened on Ravenloft fairly regularly--but Stan!, while he's done good work elsewhere, never really seemed to get Ravenloft, and falling in between the great runs of Steve Miller (some great 1995 stuff like the Guides to Fiends and Vistani and The Evil Eye) and Cindi Rice (Domains of Dread and its follow-ons) makes it look all the worse in retrospect. And this was just before TSR went under, so I imagine production values and the like might have taken a hit.
Second Edition books were really hit-or-miss. Not only content-wise (railroads) but also production-wise (choice of paper, illustrations, layout).
Some books had extremely large type fonts and margins/borders.
The Shattered Circle is a decent low level dungeon exploration (noteable in that it doesn't do giant rats and orcs) that gives the PCs some interesting choices to make and potentially campaign changing points- so in that way more of a game changing feel than provided by many low level adventures.
Return to Keep on the Borderlands is ok. When I ran it I took some from the original and some from the "sequel" and ended up pretty happy with it.
Quote from: One Horse Town;734740It's all very well saying that it's great, but what about it is great?
Well for Darkness Rising it was the general openness of the series. You had goals, but you were not forced into one way of getting from A to B. It also presented some interesting places to visit or even re-visit later that just begged to be fleshed out and explored. That and it made good use of the Illithiad supplement.
These threads always turn into "Name every fuckin' title produced." I too would like to know just what the good modules were.
Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;734916These threads always turn into "Name every fuckin' title produced." I too would like to know just what the good modules were.
Depends a lot on what you like.
But I could fuel an entire campaign around Feast of Goblyns as the 'surface' and Night Below as the underworld.