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The 30 Greatest D&D Adventures of All Time
Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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In November 2004, Dungeon Magazine published a list of the 30 Greatest D&D Adventure of All Time, as voted by an esteemed list of contributors:
* Keith Baker
* Eric L. Boyd
* Andy Collins
* Wolfgang Baur
* Monte Cook
* Bruce R. Cordell
* Ed Greenwood
* Gary Holian
* Alan Kohler
* Mike Mearls
* Christopher Perkins
* Clark Peterson
* Chris Pramas
* Jean Rabe
* John D. Rateliff
* Bill Slavicsek
Each item contains a description, comments from selectors, and the "defining moment" of the adventure. This geeklist contains a summary of each and the defining moment with a spoiler tag. Full text available in the magazine, which can be purchased from Paizo Publishing here:
http://paizo.com/store/magazines/dungeon/issues/2004/v5748bt...
In the magazine article, they were "counted down" in order, and I will do the same. If you really want to see the "Top 5", skip to the second page of this Geeklist.
A sidebar to this article listed the 10 best Dungeon Magazine adventures of all time. It's geeklist is here:
http://rpg.geekdo.com/geeklist/47370
Your comments on these items are welcome too!
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Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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What begins as a journey into the Barrier Peaks quickly turns into a cross-genre expedition into the realm of science fiction. The adventurers slowly discover that the strange metal cave in the mountains is actually a buried spaceship that crashed years ago after a plague killed its crew. The ship's robots and androids continued their jobs, and over time the numerous strange and alien creatures the crew had collected from hundreds of worlds began to grow and claim portions of the wreck for their own. When several of these aliens are released into the surrounding wilderness and make their way to civilization, the PCs are called upon to investigate and find a dungeon unlike anything that had come before.
Mike Mearls remembers the first time he flipped through this module. "I had this terrible, terrible conflict within myself to immediately tell my friends about it at war with a maniacal, desperate drive to keep it hidden at all costs." And Bill Slavicsek asks, "Who doesn't remember fighting robots and finding ray-guns in the bowels of a crashed spaceship? Swords and sorcery meets blasters and technology in a classic dash of genres - not something you want to do often with your D&D campaign, but it makes a memorable diversion."
Keith Baker was more impressed with the adventure's other notable feature - the art. "Aside from being a complete change of pace from every module that had been released before, Expedition came with an entire book of artwork. My favorite thing in the whole module? The before-and-after images of the carnivorous plant with the built-in bunny lure." And Monte Cook saw Expedition as a welcome ally. "When I was young, I tried to show the guys in my game group 'The Temple of the Frog' in the Blackmoor supplement to show that it was OK to mix science fiction elements into D&D. It wasn't until Expedition came out, however, that my opinion was vindicated."
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): In the heart of the crashed spaceship lurks a huge indoor garden, rife with alien plants and animals just waiting to bring the pain to the PCs. The undisputed king of this realm, though, is the froghemoth, a massive amphibious menace that got its own full-page color illustration in the adventure.
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Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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It began in 1979 with an innocent little adventure called The Village of Hommlet. The adventure presented a fully detailed village that "remains, even today, one of the best places to set a campaign," according to Andy Collins. It also boasted of a follow-up adventure that would present the cult's primary headquarters, the Temple of Elemental Evil. It took six years, but that follow-up eventually came in the form of a 128-page monster that reprised Hommlet and added a five-level dungeon with some 200 encounters.
"This adventure set the standard for the dynamic dungeon," says Monte Cook, who revisited the locale in 2001 's Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil "This is a well-organized and well-defended fortress rather than just a simple dungeon, with the bad guys replenishing their ranks and reacting with innovative strategies against the invading PCs."
Four factions (one for each element) competed with each other for control of the edifice, but all danced on the puppet strings of Iuz the Evil, a depraved demigod who actually shows up in the module's thrilling climax. Also present was Zuggtmoy, the so-called Demon Queen of Fungi, a merciless PC killer.
What John Rateliff calls "perhaps the single best dungeon crawl ever" has enjoyed such commercial success that it spawned seven printings of The Village of Hommlet, five printings of the supermodule (including two well into the second edition era), a Gen Con tournament in 1985, the Return to the Temple third edition adventure, two popular (and deadly) LIVING GREYHAWK scenarios, and a monstrously popular computer game from Atari. "All that paper and ink spent printing and reprinting the thing," observes Jean Rabe. "Must be a keeper, eh?"
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): On the third level of the Temple, in an "inky chamber" behind a secret door, the PCs discover a black iron coffin holding the corpse of a vampire, a wooden stake driven into its lifeless heart. Like any true heroes, they lop off the foul creature's head - killing the glamered paladin Prince Thrommel of Furyondy.
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Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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This is it, the deadliest, most impossible, most outright unfair dungeon crawl of them all. The grand daddy of killer dungeons. The PCs
begin at the door of an ancient lich's tomb, and the adventure ends when
the last hero has been killed. Virtually every room holds a deadly trap or fiendish creature, and a picture booklet featuring the art of first edition masters like Erol Otus, Dave Sutherland, and Dave Trampier shows the players in loving detail which dungeon fixings are about to kill their characters.
Clark Peterson puts it best: "This is the definitive module. It is not the best from a payability standpoint, but for sheer Gygaxian genius, which is what D&D is all about, it has no peer. This module has 'total party kill' written all over it. Not just in one spot, but in practically every room, trap, or encounter."
"Stop pushing me through the gender-changing archway or I'll just pull you in after me!" warns Bruce Cordell. "But wait, before we mess with that, where does this tunnel in the Great Green Devil Face go?" Bill Slavicsek remembers one player who learned the danger of stubbornness the way only Tomb of Horrors can teach it: "One player killed his character at the altar trap, then tried again with his next character (same result), and his next character (same result) before the rest of the party convinced him to stop touching the altar."
"The module was not constructed to be conquered," says Gary Holian, "but merely survived." And as Mike Mearls puts it: "Anyone who claims they made it through without losing a single PC from the party is a liar, a cheater, or both."
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): The most memorable location in the most memorable dungeon in D&D's history is a pit trap-filled tunnel that ends in a huge green devil face with a gaping mouth of utter blackness that looks like a tunnel entrance. The "tunnel" is in fact a "fixed" sphere of annihilation that has probably killed more characters than any other trap in the last 30 years.
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Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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As Ravenloft begins, the PCs have their fortunes told at a gypsy camp. The results of this card reading actually determined not only the placement of important treasures in the castle, but also set the villain's goals for the adventure. All in all, a brilliant way to let fate drive the plot and evoke the mystery and mystique of Barovia, a gothic realm haunted by mysterious gypsies and monsters and ruled by Count Strahd Von Zarovich, arguably the most infamous villain in D&D history.
Bill Slavicsek observes that Ravenloft "was the first to really mix tone, story, and dungeon crawl into a D&D adventure, and it did it in a mere 32 pages." Andy Collins agrees. "The first time I can remember where atmosphere was as important as the monsters you were facing."
Clark Peterson notes "This module spawned a setting. Ravenloft had amazing maps, a great NPC antagonist - perhaps one of the best villains of all time behind Acererak the demi-lich and Eclavdra from the G-D series. You could arguably put the first few DRAGONLANCE modules here, but no single one of them is better than Ravenloft."
John Rateliff points out some more innovations: "An unsurpassed castle map filled with many interlocking layers and small cul-de-sacs; a clever randomizing plot element that insured even those who'd played the adventure before could never be sure what's going on; and the brilliant device of giving a monster character class levels make for one of the all-time great modules... A real breakthrough in adventure design."
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): The catacombs below Castle Ravenloft consist of an area roughly 110 feet by 180 feet, and are filled with dozens of crypts. Each crypt bears a specific, unique epitaph, and many of them are infested with undead. One of the most harrowing crypts has a trap that uses teleportation magic to exchange PCs with wights. The tele-ported PC ends up inside a sealed coffin, while to his allies it appears as if he has transformed into a monster!
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Thom Denholm
United States
Seattle
Washington
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In 1986, TSR released the last great first edition supermodule, a 128-page compilation of no fewer than seven AD&D adventures, all of them classics in their own right. The epic campaign first began in 1978, with TSR's first stand-alone adventure, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief and its two sequels, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl and Hall of the Fire Giant King. The adventures, later repackaged as Against the Giants, sent the heroes on a preemptive strike against three giant lairs as a response from civilized kingdoms lately terrorized by frightful raids from these mountain strongholds. In Hall of the Fire Giant King, AD&D players first encountered dark elves in the form of Eclavdra, the manipulative drow priestess behind the giant invasions. Even today the drow remain the most popular D&D villains, thanks in large part to their exciting introduction here.
"This bare-bones, hack-and-slash classic is so packed with action that you couldn't fit it all between two covers today without hurting yourself," says Andy Collins of Against the Giants. "I've run this adventure more times than any other." "This is the one," says John Rateliff, "that showed us all how to create a themed adventure, how to unfold a hidden plot hint by hint and clue by clue, when to leave something a mystery (the shrines of Elemental Evil), how to introduce a new monster type (the drow), and just how much grief a cave complex filled with fifty-six trolls can cause. Still an extremely effective adventure even today."
Against the Giants offered a tantalizing taste of the drow, but the rest of the series absolutely dripped with pure dark elf goodness. The next two adventures, Descent into the Depths of the Earth and Hidden Shrine of the Kuo-Toa, set the PCs on Eclavra's trail through the subterranean Underdark, where they cut through teeming troglodyte warrens and an eerie shrine to Blibdoolpoolp, the lobster-headed goddess of the piscine kuo-toa. "The Underdark has become a classic place to set adventures," observes Alan Kohler. "This is where it all started."
But a journey is nothing without a destination, and the original "D" series ended with an undisputable classic that would easily have made the top 5 on its own - The Vault of the Drow. Vault presented an overview of the dark elf metropolis Erelhei-Cinlu and the massive cavern that contained it, complete with competing drow noble houses, male and female fighting societies, and more intrigue than had ever before appeared in a D&D adventure. "Nothing like this had been done before," says Clark Peterson. "Sure, Judges Guild had done The City State of the Invincible Overlord, but this was an underground city of evil monsters - the drow, who, then, were new and mysterious as opposed to tired and overused as they are today."
Monte Cook agrees. "Vault of the Drow was probably the first 'open-ended' adventure where the PCs have more of a choice than deciding whether to go left or right at the T intersection. Plus, the drow in this module were wonderful and depraved but organized individuals. If I could find someone who wasn't familiar with this module (and those that precede it in the series), I'd run it today in a heartbeat."
The original series ended in dungeon module Q1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits, in which the adventurers ventured from the Vault of the Drow to the fabled Abyssal lair of Lolth, the Demon Queen of Spiders and patroness of the party's drow enemies. This excellent adventure, co-designed with artist David C. Sutherland III (Gygax's only credited co-author in the entire series), introduced a nightmarish realm of polished stone pathways suspended within a chaotic maelstrom of foul-smelling fog. In places, the web abuts a Material Plane world in the process of being absorbed into Lolth's Abyssal realm, such as the undead-filled Nightworld of the vampire Vlad Tolenkov or the elven Kingdom of Caer Sidi, where sophisticated elves might offer the adventurers a brief respite (or offer their heads to Lolth if they offend their delicate sensibilities). The adventure ends (of course) with a thrilling fight against Lolth herself. As Bill Slavicsek says, "A classic adventure full of strange locations, bizarre encounters, and weird maps. It was among the first adventures to try to illustrate the planes as a place to play, and it set the stage for a lot of what came after it. And it's got Lolth."
Despite the brilliance of its components, the seven adventures lacked explicit connections, and there's no good reason for the party to set off on the quest in the first place other than "there be giants in them there hills." The 1986 Queen of the Spiders compilation solved these flaws with new bridging material by Dave Cook and Jeff Grubb that introduced an exciting framing device. In the supermodule, the heroes come to Istivin, a city partially encased in a hemisphere of black energy. The PCs eventually discover that the hemisphere is actually the first sign of Lolth attempting to draw the characters' campaign world into her treacherous Demonweb! The series then becomes a race to get to the bottom of the strange affair in Istivin and, ultimately, to save the world.
"I chose Queen of the Spiders because it crams an the entire classic descent into the drow-held Underdark into one mammoth adventure and campaign setting - that promptly opens out into a smorgasboard of campaigns, thanks to Lolth's side-worlds reachable from her Web in the Abyss," says Ed Greenwood.
Jean Rabe provides another angle. "It's just the best - dark and mysterious and filled with an evil that's palpable and capable of sending a few shivers down your spine. And the Queen is one of the best D&D villainesses ever. Beautiful, crafty, and insidious. A fantastic adventure to run, and a just plain good read. Plus, the cover looks great."
In a supermodule compiling seven great adventures, there are plenty of memorable moments to go around.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): Deep within the halls of the fire giant King Snurre, behind a wall covered with grasping tentacles and snapping beaks, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS players got their first-ever glimpse of the ebony-skinned drow in the form of Eclavdra, a villain memorable enough to appear in the Epic Level Handbook 24 years after her debut.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): In a moment that could come only from first edition, the PCs enter a seemingly unimportant Underdark chamber to encounter, lying in a niche in the wall, a 20-HD lich named Asberdies who has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot of the adventure. What fun!
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): Atop a huge ziggurat in the hidden shrine of the kuo-toa stands an imposing statue of the fish-god Blibdoolpoolp, in all her naked glory. Characters who grasp her hand and pronounce her name correctly (no mean feat) are teleported to her ghastly undersea realm.
Spoiler (mouseover to reveal): Characters used to surface towns will enjoy (or, in the case of paladins, hate) the depraved drow city Erelhei-Cinlu. where "green cloaked illithids rub shoulders with dark elves... ghasts and ghouls roam freely, and an occasional shadow or vampire will be seen."
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Plainville
Massachusetts
-Dave
California
The only time I ever killed the whole party off as a DM was in T1, where the party got trapped between a group of Gnolls and a Group of Ghouls on a staircase between levels.
S1 is ugly, but an experienced party with no time pressure can demolish this place. A group of us literally turned the place into a museum exhibit when we were done. How? Lots of summoned monsters died terrible deaths and we weren't insane enough to take on Acererak at the end. To be fair I had run the adventure about 20 years prior, and the DM had been told this (she wanted to compare what would happen running 4 very experienced players through vs 6 relatively inexperienced players. The 6 mostly died terrible deaths, one became the opposite sex and one got out with only his alignment flipped). She altered things for us, but it didn't matter.
Fridley
Minnesota
Seattle
Washington
The ones that have are listed in comments after the entry. Instead of 3rd and higher, it might be more fun to play with some of the retro games, such as Castles & Crusades
30° 12′ 38″ N, 95° 45′ 2″ W