Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Per the direction of our fearless leader, I'm taking the discussion started in the Introduce Yourself thread here, and making a general inquiry to my illustrious peers in YAFGC fandom. What was your favorite D&D module from "the good old days," and why?

I'd intended to keep the list confined to first-edition modules, but that's no fun for more recent gamers, so let's open it up wider than that, to modules in general. Which one sticks out in your mind more than the others, and why? There were so many good ones to choose from over the decades...

I'm having a really hard time choosing just one, but in interest of fairness to others, I will indeed lavish praise on only one for now, that being first-edition module I2, The Tomb of the Lizard King.

Mark Acres really outdid himself. I was used to Gygaxian modules when it came out -- the long overland wilderness hike to find the place, the fondness for traps and secret doors, the very tactical structure to the key monster encounters and the need to thoroughly check every corner of the site twice for things missed. I knew to keep the cleric close, to invest in rope and torches and flint and steel and oil, and stutter "I'm checking for traps again now" between every other breath.

And then, this module began with an interrogation. One in which the players had to really think about what they wanted to ask the witnesses, and one in which the picture didn't quite add up, if the party was clever enough to reflect on the strategy used by these "brigands." While the party's shifting gears and taking notes, the DM keeps to slip in new hints that something isn't right, and if the party doesn't react quickly, they're caught in a flame strike by an assassin.

What an immersive introduction! It really set a shocking tone for the events to come, rather than the sleepy "arrive at the border town, rest, equip, stock up supplies and trudge overland, occasionally tangling with the local fauna along the way to the adventure's site." Downright cinematic, and the DM's notes really helped to cultivate a sense of moving time and urgency, and the need for quick reactions.

And then there were the NPC's. Stephen DeManis, Barto Trume, John Brunis, Sakatha and his bride, and of course, Aulicus -- you never forget your first dragon. The River of Nothingness, the halls of paintings, and the final battle -- what a ride it was! All the traps-and-secret-doors joy, combined with an oddly intense cinematic opening scene, with a race against the clock that the players don't know about, and a most vexing combination of illusions and not-illusions.

Its followup trilogy, the Desert of Desolation arc, was also magnificent. But I've prattled on for far too long already. What were your favorites?

When black roses bloom. Gothic as tombstones, plenty of detail and much room for choice. In general, Ravenloft modules left you with a feeling of having visited the actual place.

There sure was some magnificent writing in the Ravenloft modules, wasn't there? And Ravenloft had such a strong and pervasive palpable atmosphere of dread. I tried to capture some of that "everything's filtered through a heavy psychoemotional tinted lens" vibe for my outer planes writing, but I fear I was only successful with some of them.

The best of the writing in the DLE module arc approached that sense of immersion in a world, though I'm not fully convinced now they were the masterpieces I thought they were in my college years. I fear Dragonlance hasn't aged well for me; given so many opportunities to meet and interact with dragons, dragons began to feel like a neighboring race, rather than the climax of an entire campaign I feel they ought to be. (Others' mileage may -- and surely shall -- vary, I'm sure!)

We seldom used modules in my table-top gaming experience, preferring adventure in our home-brewed settings. More recently, I have migrated to the Forgotten Realms, as that is where my friends mostly play, but still steer clear of packaged adventures.

However, I do have a soft spot for some modules from the early days, such as B2, "The Keep on the Borderlands", which was the first adventure I ever played in. My halfling (race & class - this was Basic set!) was unclear on the concept (as was I, as was my DM), and proceeded to loot the castle, evade guards and prowl around until caught (and killed) by the Lord Castellan's soldiers.

I only learned that there were caves full of monsters and treasures a ways distant from the keep, intended as the adventure's destination, when I got my own Basic Set later that summer.

I am also a fan of the original Underdark modules, from "Against the Giants" (G1) through "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" (Q1), when drow were a danger even worse than the tales told of them, and very firmly in the Monster category where, as a DM, I prefer to keep them most of the time.

As I noted in the other thread, my favorite has to be the Tomb of Horrors. No other module so rewards the foresighted and reasonably cautious, or so punishes the foolhardy. Oh, does it punish the foolhardy.

BTW, if any of you are playing it and stumble over a dead dwarf in the third room, would you be so kind as to take the signet ring back to my family? Many thanks.

A 1-4, Against the Slavers, is pretty cool too, as is White Plume Mountain. But ToH is tops.

I dunno, man. Tomb of Horrors was hilarious as a DM, but as a player, I was really unimpressed. Survival depended largely on random chance. Which entrance do you use? Step left or right to avoid the next impossibly deadly trap? I brought in a party of 6 characters on the DM's recomendation and didn't survive past the third encounter. It was too much. A munchkin module if ever there was such a thing. Designed to kill off as many characters as possible.

I never did see a copy of B1. What PRECEDED Keep on the Borderland?

I think my favorite module experience wasn't a module technically, but an adventure in a Dragon magazine. I can't for the life of me remember what it was called or what it was really about, and I was the DM! But I do remember an encouter with Orcs dressed in leather jackets (That read "Mess with the Best, Die like the Rest!" on the back) and a bunk bed with a totally unconscious Halfling surrounded by bottles labeled "Mad Dog #5". Both became longstanding jokes in our Gaming careers. It became a contest to see which GM could come up with a more deadly and frightening "Mad Dog #5" at ever tavern or bar any of our characters ever visited. And this wasn't just D&D anymore. We ordered the Dog in Star Wars, Doctor Who, Fantasy Hero, SuperHero, Al Qadim, Vampire, Call of Cthulu, Toon, Star Trek, Jovian Chronicles, Paranoia, Teenagers From Outer Space, Shadowrun and any other game we ever found ourselves playing. And the drink arrived in just as varied forms. Everything from an old, bad beer to an eerie green glowing fluid taken with tongs out of a hazardous waste container by a guy in a hazmat suit which slowly ate through the glass it was served in. And, of course, in one game with a perverse GM who took it the other direction, it was just a glass of water but we were too scared to try it.

I enjoyed playing For Duty and Deity: vibrant backstory, clever encounters. But that 7 level 10 adventurers would just sneak into the Abyss to steal a captured deity from Grazzt...it did not compute.

As for Tomb of Horrors i really want to use it but i will have to tweak it, set it in a Dreamscape, make the deaths non permanent. Dying is too easy and not necessarily the result of your actions.

Finally i would vote for homebrewed over prepackaged, but the latter can be used as spare parts, when you know the mad wizard you invented is in the tower but you are out of ideas as to what defenses mad wizards use!

Ah, this would be B1, In Search Of The Unknown! The party was charged with searching the caves of Quasqueton, to find out what happened to the cave-homes of two semi-admired but sadly deceased adventurers, Roghan and Zelligar. It was a nifty module, to the best of my fairly dim memory, and it featured the "rumors table" like B2 did, but it wasn't quite as stand-out as B2, and was dropped in favor of it.

And then, there was B3, The Palace of the Silver Princess, recalled for having "risque" art and reissued. That story's well documented elsewhere, but suffice it to say, I didn't find it even remotely challenging to social mores back then, when I finally saw the "censored" version.

I must agree about Tomb of Horrors, too. While I loved the module for what it was -- part of the S series, the 'Special' modules, the huge playerkilling nightmare traps, meant to be virtually impossible to get through alive -- I fully admit I found playing through them something of a nightmare. C2, while a brilliant module, was also a serious playerkiller, in my memory.

It was a different time. The idea of characters being killed was much more accepted by D&D players...until, of course, your character was killed. There were articles in Dragon about coping with the death of a beloved character (see Roger E. Moore's editiorial about Harley Davidson Quinn in Dragon #123), and a real sense that adventuring was dangerous, and if the dice said you died, it was only fair to accept that and move on. I notice that, while there's always an element of "play fair and accept bad fortune," the early modules didn't always account for players being terribly attached to their characters, and seemed quite comfortable putting them through amazingly lethal death traps.

It was a different time. Growing out of wargames, there was a time when players didn't identify personally with their characters quite so much. But again, though I fear I overuse the word, it was a zeitgeist, and we look at characters very differently now, and that degree of wanton undervaluation of character life seems pretty grim to us in a day of actual roleplaying, versus the more wargame-like "roleplaying" of the early days.

I'm glad that you treat death with so much more dignity in YAFGC, and that you let the passing of beloved characters be marked with time for the audience, as well as the characters, to mourn.

Well, part of the fun of the Tomb is that it is exactly what it says on the tin: The final resting place of an archmage so evil he not only became a lich, but was promoted up to demilich. Oh, and he hates visitors, especially the unannounced kind that steal everything not nailed down and on fire.

First rule for surviving the Tomb is shut up and think it over.

But yes, we used to view PCs as constructs. Game pieces on the board. The funny thing is that as much as Chick ripped on us with the whole Blackleaf thing, there are people now who are so wrapped up in their characters that they'd follow that plot scenario right down to the knot on the end of the rope.

Second rule is "invest in a plethora of hirelings who'll go first?"



Ah, Dark Dungeons! I was so disappointed when I reached ninth level, and my DM didn't offer to teach me "real spells." Maybe I was too ugly for real-world magic. Heaven knows my comeliness required a negative sign followed by E-notation...

But yes, you're right. Around 1990, there was an epic paradigm shift from "roleplaying as wargaming" to "roleplaying as storytelling," and suddenly you had the vampires and the werewolves tromping about arguing that RPG's were essentially a form of method acting. Some things were gained from that transition, and some were lost, and while I appreciate the new energy and direction that the Rein*Hagan devotees brought to the RPG scene, I agree that it resulted in a rather solipsistic, and therefore quite narcissistic, view of the purpose of roleplaying, and the dissolution of the Team into the We're The All Main Character Here, Just Ask Us (tm) ego parties. It was this generation of gamer where I first saw epidemics of Forgetting It's Just A Game drama storms, and met some people who took player-character affinity into directions I feel would best be addressed by professionals.

I admit, while I've never considered noosing myself over a deceased character -- if I felt strongly at odds with a game session and conversations with the DM were fruitless, I agreed to disagree, retconned the last gaming session, and tucked the character (minus last adventure) away for another person's game someday, no harm, no foul -- I'm probably closer to the "method actor" spectrum of roleplaying than the "wargame" end of it, despite my age. (Just read my Ageragck/Windsor writeup and fear the inner drama student!) I relate to characters as people, and I'm not comfortable with modules that aren't written to respect that stance of mine.

That said, putting aside my preferences in the interests of art appreciation, the S series modules were masterworks, with brilliant puzzles and hideous traps. I owned S3 (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks), and boggle at the difficulty of getting through it alive!

Hirelings aren't really as useful as multiple wands of Detect Traps and Detect Secret Doors. After all, the first sign of forethought is preparation.

But the degree of people's involvement in their make believe worlds is rather disturbing. And it isn't just RPGs---we had a student attempt suicide a couple years ago because of some plot development in her favorite soap. I've held for a while that Chick Tracts, while ridiculously comical in many regards, do raise several distressing points about our hobby.

Back on topic, I never was in S3, but WPM was a delicious puzzle box of a place.

Hail Keraptis, nasty bugger extraordinaire! So nasty, in fact, that Return to White Plume Mountain brought you back in most distressingly fractured ways!

And tell me, which (if any) did you manage to take away from the mountain? Wave, Whelm, or Blackrazor?

All three, but never at the same time. Being a dwarf (usually), I always wanted the hammer.

For me, two stand head and shoulders above the rest: C2 - Ghost Tower of Inverness and X2 - Castle Amber.

Ghost Tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Tower_of_Inverness was my first exposure to D&D, and I'll never forget it. I loved the way the characters all had sordid pasts (except for LiHon the Monk) that "obliged" them to retrieve the Soul Gem for the Duke: get the Gem, die trying, or return empty-handed and have your asses thrown back into the dungeon for the remainder of your miserable lives. Cool monsters (Umber Hulks and Fire Giants) and puzzles of logic, like the Chess room. I also loved the Central Tower, where the party progressed upwards through levels that represented all four of the elements. All that, and at the end a good shot at dying irrevocably at the hands of the Soul Gem itself!

Castle Amber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Amber_(Dungeons_&_Dragons) was a cool module made great by a smart and creative DM. I remember this one as being very atmospheric and rich in detail and eccentricity...especially the variously demented members of the Amber family. The best part was squaring off against the 100' tall Colossus at the end, swooping in on a flying broom armed with nothing but a small bag of magic dust...

Good times, good times.

I remember a particulary vexing encounter (I think made up by the DM) where our party was locked in a room where the walls were lined with barrels and the ceiling and upper portions of the walls were thick with Yellow Mold. No problem, right? Set the mold on fire, just as every good adventurer knows. Should've checked the contents of the barrels, dammit (grain alcohol). I think even my character sheet was reduced to ashes. That was the end of the entire party and that adventure, but for some reason that encounter stands out in my mind as one of my favourite.

When i first saw the Chick Tract i kept reading to reach the punchline. I had to read it twice to realise it wasn't a joke.