Thursday, September 20, 2012

The original "Adventure Path"

Reminiscing some more on those high school gaming days, I was struck by how often we repeated our own sort of "Adventure Path", or string of connected adventures.

Typically, this "Path" consisted of:
T1 The Village of Hommlett
T2-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil
G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief
G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl
G3 Hall of the Fire Giant King
D1 Descent into the Depths of the Earth
D2 Shrine of the Kuo Toa
D3 Vault of the Drow

Then, after D3, there would be some sort of foray into the Abyss or Hell, and big showdown between the party and every single damn Demon Lord or whatever in the MM.

Occasionally, there were variants of this sequence, such as running through the Saltmarsh triligy, followed by the Slavers quartet, but these would still lead back to the "holy" Giant and Drow modules.

In a way, I guess it was like playing a tough video game over and over - we never got particularly tired of playing those adventures, and it was fun to test new ideas and new characters on these challenging scenarios.

I've lamented before the lack of a "flagship" adventure for the OSR - with so many great retro-clones of D&D's various iterations out there, it's surprising that there has yet to emerge that universal adventure (or series of adventures) that everyone has played, with multiple characters.

9 comments:

  1. That is what we are doing for my 1st ed game with the kids.

    We are going to include B1, B2 and Q1 in the mix as well.

    To be 100% accurate though we both should have the A series on our lists.

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  2. Death Frost Doom is as close of a contender that I can think of.

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  3. I've run Tower of the Stargazer followed by Tomb of the Iron God for two groups. Great modules for beginning characters. A good mix of different design styles and challenges.

    What other good modules are there for low level characters?

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    Replies
    1. I've run both Tower of the Stargazer and Pod-Caverns too.

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  4. The Pod Cavern of the Sinister Shroom (lvl2-4) is a swell adventure too, but I don't know many other good adventures in that range.

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  5. Skull Mountain (lvl4-6), Stonesky Delve (lvl4-7) and Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent (lvl4-7) are all excellent and imaginative mid-level adventures.

    I think that we might just have the beginnings of a path there, apart from the hole in the lvl2-4 range.

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  6. @newsalor - there are two follow-up adventures to Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom:

    Down the Shadowvein (for 6-10 adventures of levels 3-5), and
    Mouth of the Shadowvein (also for 6-10 adventures of levels 3-5)

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