Reviews

I reviewed B2: The Keep on the Borderlands today, if anyone wants to read it. I have also reviewed the entire "A" series (A1: Slave Pits of the Undercity, A2: Secret of the Slavers' Stockade, A3: Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords, and A4: In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords).

I'm planning on getting to all my RPG materials with reviews over the course of the next year or so.

Thanks, StormRaven. Your reviews bring back some nostalgia as well as providing some reminders (e.g., why we didn't play A3 much if at all!). Was there really no provided plot hook to get the party from the keep to the caverns?? I didn't know (or had forgotten) that, but then, I've never experienced it as a DM, only as a player. Presumably my DM at the time made something up. :D

I didn't know people were cataloging and reviewing game modules on LT but it's great to see! I'll look forward to seeing subsequent reviews. :)

As written, the module has no defined hook to move the PCs from the Keep to the Caves, and the opening blurb dumps the PCs outside the front door of the Keep. There is the table of rumors, but most of them are pretty vague and in any event, the way the table is supposed to be handled, no group of PCs is likely to get enough of the rumors to direct them to the Caves.

I figure that it was assumed that the PCs lust for treasure and experience points would be enough to set them looking for the Caves, but other than wandering about the countryside hoping to stumble upon them, there isn't any guidance on how to get there. Even the handful of outdoor encounters don't really point towards the Caves, being more of less just random villainous denizens of the swamp and forest.

There are hints that the inhabitants of the Caves are somehow a threat to the Keep, but that's hard to figure as the Keep is in an extremely defensible position, is described as having very thick granite walls, and is manned by what seems to be an unusually large number of heavily armed soldiers, while the Cave inhabitants amount to little more than an armed rabble lacking in siege equipment, organization, or sufficient numbers to pose any kind of actual threat.

Your DM probably came up with some sort of direction to guide your party to the Caves - like I said, there is fodder here that a good DM could turn into something fun, but as incomplete as the module is in some areas, a new DM would probably have a hard time moving the party from hanging out at the Keep to the adventure.

I have reviewed B1: In Search of the Unknown, for anyone who cares.

I have reviewed Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, if anyone is interested in reading it.

I've been thoroughly enjoying the reviews! I never actually played Return but it does sound intriguing -- definitely much expanded and improved upon the original, as the review noted.

I know that some of these old classic modules got a redux for 3.x ... I wonder if any of them are being brought into 4.0 as well?

The only classic module I know of that got a 3e redux was The Temple of Elemental Evil which was released as a computer game converted for 3e (with an active modding community at www.co8.org), and had an updated version released as Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Return to the Keep on the Borderlands had the misfortune of being released at the tail end of the 2e era (as I noted) and was not tied to that eras flagship setting of the Forgotten Realms, which is why I think this otherwise quite good adventure has been mostly overlooked.

I have not converted to 4e myself, which is why I didn't mention it in my review. I should probably amend my review to include that.

White Plume Mountain and Tomb of Horrors both got an official redux for 3e and were available for free download on the WotC site. I think you can still get them from there, but it'll take a little digging to find the links.
There was also a 33 Return to the Temple of the Frog based on the old module.

8: Thanks for the information. I did not know that S1: Tomb of Horrors and S2: White Plume Mountain were given a 3e update, but I didn't spend a lot of time hanging out on the WotC webpage either. I'd like to see the Temple of the Frog update.

I'm more or less going through and reviewing my old modules in alphabetical order. I should get to S1 and S2 (and S3) in a couple months.

I reviewed B5: Horror on the Hill for anyone who cares.

I have posted my review for B12: Queen's Harvest. I didn't find it to be a very good module, and I'd like to see what others think of it.

I have added my review of the supermodule B1-9: In Search of Adventure.

#12: Thanks for that. It's very thorough and I enjoyed reading it; those old adventures bring back memories :) It also inspired me to look for Rahasia, which is not one of the ones I have.

I got a touchstone for it working: In Search of Adventure

I'm puzzled by one part of your review. In the 7th paragraph you say "Of course, Grubb doesn’t add anything to make this link particularly strong either". I guess that is a reference to Jeff Grubb, but how is he involved? Or is Grubb the name of an NPC? I couldn't quite tell.

Jeff Grubb is listed as the designer of B1-9: In Search of Adventure, which is as close to an overall author as I think you can get for the product. I made a small change to the review to make that more clear.

Thanks! I for one have been enjoying this series of reviews.

Thank you for reading, and for your feedback. I'm enjoying going through all these adventure supplements and I'm glad someone else is enjoying my musings on them. One thing that doing this is bringing into focus for me is what constitutes a well-designed adventure, and how many of the "classics" that people remember don't seem to hold up as well as one might think, leading me to believe that much of the good memories people hold for these supplements are the result of skilled DMs rather than skilled writers.

I'm planning on going through all of the adventure modules I have, no matter the edition, starting with the old ones (doing the old letter designated ones in more or less alphabetical order) and moving on to the newer ones. This will obviously take some time.

I can only speak for myself here, but I remember the classics fondly because they were from a time when I was young, role-playing was new, and everything was exciting. The "inexperienced DM" was a lot more common than the "skilled DM", but that didn't take away the sparkle.

These days it takes a lot more to rouse my interest, and I actually have trouble designing a campaign because nothing I think up seems worth playing. It's the other end of the spectrum. I may have to take drastic measures to reset my clock.

I see it in your reviews, too. In some places you sound like you are bored of hobgoblins.

17: I'm not bored of hobgoblins. I'm bored of adventures that consist of nothing but hobgoblins. An adventure that consists of little more than room after room of hobgoblins is, to me, simply bland (and something I could easily come up with on my own with minimal effort). Mix some hobgoblins into an adventure with some other opponents, or give them some interesting tactics or terrain, or something. But a series of rooms like this:

1. This room has two hobgoblin guards armed with swords. They have 1d6 gp each.

2. This room has six hobgoblins armed with battleaxes, they have 2d4 sp each.

3. This room has four hobgoblins armed with javelins and maces. They have 1d3 pp each. In a corner of the room is a sack full of 400 sp.

4. This room has nine hobgoblins . . .

Well, that simply bores me (and that's more or less what some of the adventures amount to). I don't think I'm alone in this. It's only marginally better in something like B12: Queen's Harvest where you have a fort garrisoned with one room with 50 goblins, one room with 25 hobgoblins, and one room with 25 human mercenaries. Bland, bland, bland.

Yeah, anything can succumb to overkill and become boring. And some modules did seem to over-rely on orcs, hobgoblins and bugbears.

Amtep makes a good point, too, about nostalgia -- I think that it's often easy to recall these old modules (and many other things) as great because we remember not the mechanics of the module itself, but the wonderful time we had while playing. Then, months/years/decades later, looking back and analyzing the module with a dispassionate eye, one can see the flaws inherent in some modules. Of course, that doesn't mean they weren't still fun at the time. :)

I have posted my review of CM6: Where Chaos Reigns.