There are plenty of D&D modules that never get much discussion because they were a few flaws short of a classic. Are there any in particular that you think could really shine in the hands of a creative GM willing to carve the brilliance out of the rough? Have you tried to salvage one?

Yeah, taking the Spirit Naga out of N1 and making it something as tough but in a different way - your own kind of lizard being, or whatever.  As it stands the module is a complete railroad.  You have to have the high level wizard come with you to use his spell of minor invulnerability to shrug off the spirit naga's fireball spell.  Otherwise the party is toast, the GM must find a way to make him come with the party.  Shades of Elminster

Gates of Firestorm Peak from late 2E. Good but I ran it with 3E rather than Players' Option 2E, and also changed around some of the clues in the adventure - the module as-is has a layout where you find e.g. torn out diary pages that form a sort of breadcrumb trail I found a bit convenient /cheesy; I made a bit more of it PC knowledge at the outset, and some of the rest findable from NPCs.

N2 - The Forest Oracle

It's an attempt to be a hex crawl of sorts, but apparently the author wrote it for 5 year old children.

And yet there's a certain charm to it.

I would say X7 War Rafts of Kron hardly ever gets mentioned. The beginning is forced, but after that it is a large sandbox (except underwater!). I feel the ideas behind the adventure were way ahead of its time. The World of Warcraft Cataclysm expansion took the same ideas from this module.

A3 - Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. The city demands to be fleshed out.

Quote from: zend0g;729725A3 - Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords. The city demands to be fleshed out.

Then do it.  That's the beauty about a lot of those old modules.  They give you just the outline, letting you flesh it out to fit your own world.


On topic, I would say the UK series: Sentinel and Gauntlet.  Great modules already, but a bit railroady.  Fix that, and they're really good.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;729726On topic, I would say the UK series: Sentinel and Gauntlet.  Great modules already, but a bit railroady.  Fix that, and they're really good.

But nothing in them forces a plot.
I ran the Adlerweg series twice, and the second group left out all the encounters and went straight for the "final" location (which I won't mention for spoiler reasons) in UK2 The Sentinel.
They found the place "most interesting" when looking on the player's map.

(And after that, they went "backwards" and visited some of the other locations as well, so nothing from the module was "lost".)

technically an adventure site more then a module but Tarth Moorda really needed to give stats for more of the npcs

Quote from: JeremyR;729387N2 - The Forest Oracle

It's an attempt to be a hex crawl of sorts, but apparently the author wrote it for 5 year old children.

And yet there's a certain charm to it.

Seconded.  I'm biased because this module was the first one my favorite AD&D character ever went through.  Still, like you say there is just something to it which isn't properly realized.

Judges Guild's Modron.

It has these great bits, but no direction. The online OSR would wax nostalgic about it as a "sandbox", but most GMs at actual tables of gamers called it "WTF do I do with it?"

One of these days, I will probably flesh it out using the various adventures I've used it for over the years.

Judge's Guild's Citadel of Fire is a mess conceptually, but it is totally filled with seemingly random stuff that could be made coherent with effort. Which is why I've used it multiple times without my players recognizing it.

I agree with Spinachat about Modron too.

To me a fixer-upper is an essentially flawed module/adventure that requires effort to be usable. Virtually all modules require work, but I can literally drop the keep on the borderland into any of my standard campaigns with almost no work. Too many 2nd edition, late 1st edition, & 3rd edition modules (especially the adventures in Dungeon mag.) were over written with stupid or merely pointless back stories. Too often the designer wants to write a plot not an adventure. Instead of relying on the GM to give his players proper motives for pursuing the adventure.

N1's mention here is an example of what I mean. One should not have to bring along NPC X just to survive or complete an adventure. If this grows organically out of one's campaign then that's a different story, but writing it into a module is overwriting. The trend to overwrite only got worse as the years have gone on. I don't quite know what changed in the years between the publication of the Village of Homlet and publication of Marco Volo: Departure, but it seemed to occur with all publishers at the time not just TSR/WotC.

speaking of modrons also not technically an adventure but the manual of the planes modron web enhancement it left out the major matter of rate of new modron production theres no way to tell how fast you have to kill them to destroy the whole race