Companies that make good 1E style Modules

[AxeMental]

Is there any companies actively (and consistently) pumping out good 1E Gygaxian style modules?

Also, what are some good 1E style modules worth picking up that have been published in the last 3 or 4 years.

I'm looking for minimal crap and maximum dungeon crawl. Seriously, no gay artwork no gay story plot, under 30 pages, and just good ol' killing monsters, getting past traps, and finding treasure. Something that might have been published back in the hey day.

[foster1941]

Zero. Zip. Zilch. The only thing I can think of is the two levels of Maure Castle in Dungeon issues 112 and 124, and even those have been pretty heavily 3E-ized by the Dungeon staff (and in the former issue don't even think of looking at the 'redone' levels from WG5 because those have been wholly craptified by the 3E guys; stick solely to "The Statuary" in #112 and "The Chamber of Antiquities" in #124, and hope for more to come (I believe RJK is working on 2 more levels right now, with the possibility of more to come after those)). As far as other ostensibly 'old-school feel' modules from the likes of Necromancer Games, TLG, Hackmaster, or Goodman Games' "Dungeon Crawl Classics," I haven't found any of it to be truly up to snuff (except for perhaps "Dark Druids" from TLG, but there again you've gotta strip away a lot of 3E junk (and ignore TLG's truly hellacious production) to get to the meat inside).

The best bet if you're looking for "new" old-school modules is to track down actual old-school modules you never had back in the day. Do you have all of the pre-1983 TSR modules? Do you have RJK's Creations Unlimited modules (the 4-part Maze of Zayene series and Garden of the Plantmaster)? Do you have The Abduction of Good King Despot? How about Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, and Tegel Manor (all from Judges Guild)? IMO you'd be MUCH better tracking down any of those you don't have than wasting your time with the new crap that tries to pass for "old-school-esque" (except for those two Maure Castle levels -- those are the real thing and both very much worth getting).

[dzubak]

Wow! Pretty harsh Foster.

I enjoyed the rehash of Maure. It was interesting to see how (game) time has effected it from a game perspective. I'll agree that the new levels and the existing levels are very heavily 3E-ized. Especially with regard to some of the monsters and other encounters. But I like modern version as much as the original.

I actually like most of Necro's modules and feel that Tomb of Abysathor (ToA) and the first 2 modules of Rappan Athuk series would meet Axe's requirements stated in his last paragraph. Though ToA does have several plot hooks, they can be ignored and still provide a great dungeon crawl.

I realy like what Goodman Games has to offer but I wouldn't consider them to be old-school. There is just something about the modules that reminds you that it was written by some in the present era of D&D. Further, I own 2 or 3 TLG adventures and would recommend staying away from their offerings other than what is written by EGG.

I'll support your argument that owning all pre '83 modules are probably the best bet for going old school. Though I have to admit, that other than Maure Castle and Dark Druids, I've never enjoyed RJK's other modules. I've read through the Maze series and I have Garden of the Plantmaster on PDF and there's just something about it that reminds me too much of the adventures that I created when I was young.

You might also track down some early issues of Dungeon magazine as they had several good adventures. Also most of the adventure inserts in Dragon magazine before (#100) are your typical hack-n-slash-n-dash type of modules.

One final module I would recommend is Forge of Fury by WotC. Dzubak quickly ducks to dodge incoming rotten tomatos. It doesn't really have a plot and is essentially a kill it an grab the treasure type module.

As I finish this post, I find it sad that only 5 modules can be recommended from the current era of what is D&D. It's like the Dark Age of gaming.

[rogattny]

I own two, well three, actually.

The Dragonfiend Pact is a 3.5 e module from Goodman games. I did a review of it on Dragonsfoot and made some notes on converting to B/X D&D. I decided that it wasn't that bad, but really wasn't quite good enough for me to go through the hassle of converting it until I'm really pressed for material. The list price is only $2.50, so I can't really complain too much.

I get the sense that the other Goodman modules are of about the same quality, just bigger. The hassle of conversion has kept me away. However, I get the sense conversion may not be as big an issue going to 1e rather than B/X D&D since there are more monsters, spells, character classes, etc. already provided for me. (i.e. It'll be easier to convert an elf rogue to 1e than to B/X D&D.)

I have the C&C Assault on Black Tooth Ridge adventure. It's pretty good, but feels a tad skimpy. The maps aren't to my taste, and there's too much focus on the town and not enough on the dungeons. But it is entirely site based with pretty much no plot, and doesn't make for a bad home-base or town to pull out, as the players travel through.

Another C&C adventure I have is The Rising Knight. I have the version that came in the boxed set, but the Trolls recently released a free .pdf version that adds at least one map. I think it's quite a bit better than Black Tooth Ridge (although quite similar is set up and concept). There's a cool, creepy ambiance, and an interesting, if a bit small dungeon.

The other free C&C adventure, The Lion in the Ropes, is a converted 3e adventure. There's some decent ideas in there, but it is so full of hand-holding and nose-leading that it would take some real work to run well. But it is free.

Conversion with the C&C adventures is basically a non-issue, with the one complication being spell casters having quite a few more spells in C&C than in AD&D.

All of these modules are essentially on par with late 80's TSR stuff in terms of content, for better or worse. TSR's production values blow the Troll Lords away, Goodman is a bit closer to the mark.

I'm curious to see what some of the C&C modules made by Sieg, Rob Kuntz, Gygax, etc. look like, since that's out best chance to get new, reasonably compatable, high quality adventures for 1e. However, like Foster said, getting a hold of as many of the early adventures as possible should be your higher priority.

R.A.

[foster1941]

I'm actually completely unfamiliar with Forge of Fury, so for all I know it might actually be good (no tomatoes here). Likewise, I spent perhaps all of 5 minutes looking through Tomb of Abysathor at the game-store, so I may be judging it too harshly as well. I spent a long time looking through Rappan Athuk, though, and had been fully intending to buy it, but found it pretty sorely lacking. Actually, for Axe's specific criteria (a place pre-stocked with stuff to kill and treasures to take with minimal other distractions) it might well fit the bill, but based on all the hype ("the ultimate old-school dungeon-crawl!" "better than Gygax!") I found it pretty disappointing, seemingly no better than what any halfway-decent DM could come up with on his own -- there's a file-drawer in my mom's basement filled with old 'modules' I wrote in the 80s that are I daresay just as good as this. I've spent a similar amount of time looking through various "Dungeon Crawl Classics" (drawn like a moth to the old-school graphic design and Erol Otus covers) but have yet to find one that upon closer perusal I found worth buying -- they definitely look old-school, but (at least from my perspective) they don't particularly feel old-school.

[blackprinceomuncie]

foster1941 said:

I'm actually completely unfamiliar with Forge of Fury, so for all I know it might actually be good (no tomatoes here).

Well, I'm not throwing any tomatoes, but I am completely familiar with Forge of Fury and (while it's really not horribly "gey") I doubt it's what Axe is looking for.

The two WotC modules I'm familiar with from the very early days of 3e (Sunken Citadel and Forge of Fury) do stick to the "back to the dungeon" attitude espoused early on and do contain dungeons full of stuff to kill and treasure to loot, but the conversion work necessary to get them into shape for a 1e game and the amount of politically correct, kiddy-flavored tripe you have to wade through when reading the module is frustrating.

If anything, I would just hork the maps and fill them in with my own classic B2/S4 style dungeon trappings if I were going to try to use them at this point.

[TheDungeonDelver]

I, uh, know of some good old school style 1e modules you can use for absolutely free...!

[AxeMental]

Pretty pathetic when you consider the volume of stuff on the shelves for the past 5 years.

BPoM: " but the conversion work necessary to get them into shape for a 1e game and the amount of politically correct, kiddy-flavored tripe you have to wade through when reading the module is frustrating."

Yeah, I have no ability left to look past anything like this.

[AxeMental]

Foster: "The best bet if you're looking for "new" old-school modules is to track down actual old-school modules you never had back in the day. Do you have all of the pre-1983 TSR modules? Do you have RJK's Creations Unlimited modules (the 4-part Maze of Zayene series and Garden of the Plantmaster)? Do you have The Abduction of Good King Despot? How about Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, and Tegel Manor (all from Judges Guild)? "

I used to brows the comic book stores after classes and picked up a ton of oop modules dirt DIRT cheap. I'm talking 50 cents for B2 in good condition cheap. Anyway, my brother has all that stuff and I'm not sure what I have. I do remember a bunch of Judges guild stuff though (some incomplete, some copies etc.) but still I think I remember seeing plantmaster and dark towre. The others I’ve never seen.

I guess I was looking for some fresh feeling stuff, yet still old school. As stupid as it sounds I hate feeling like I'm playing something extinct. You'd think with all the 3E crap being pushed out someone would try to go after the 1E 30-40 something fan base. Hell, wasn't that what HM started out as. Look at there cover, its obvious they were going for nestalga.

So, BPoM is the stuff you mentioned something were you can just skip to the dungeon and have a non-tard experiance, or is it pretty well malignant? Alot of the 2E and 3E fluff often shows up in the pre-adventure background crap. I've had pretty good results with Dungeon mag dungeons doing this.
What about the artwork, is it 1E looking?

PS Foster, get that stuff out of your mom's basement! Giant rats might eat it. I wish I had kept the 100s of dungeons I had made over the many years of playing. Hell, I don't even have the home made dungeons I played last month never mind 20 years ago.


BTW how many people on this forum have a collection of old hand made modules? I have about 10 or so.

DD I'll have to check out your stuff. I really want the published feel though. Perhaps when one of us wins the Lottery we can start publishing all of our home made modules from a company called TFR out of Trent Foster's mom's basement. (TFR instead of TSR, as in "Trent Foster Rules" Or something like that).

Seriously, I like alot of my stuff as much as the classic Gygaxian modules (though admittedly they enitirely lack his supurb writing style).

[foster1941]

Heh, as long as all that stuff's safely stored thousands of miles away from me it can remain pristine in my memory and I can truly claim it was just as good as the published stuff. However, confronted with the actual products I'd realize how truly lame most/all of it really was (not to mention the fact that I don't think I ever actually finished a single dungeon -- even those we actually played I always ended up improvising the final sections because I hadn't prepared them in advance). The three main ones I remember, the three that I tried hardest to work up into 'module' shape (including sections of boxed text, drawing covers in the classic layout, etc.), were

#1) a trilogy centering around a group of orc slavers, really shamelessly ripped off of the A series (I cringe to think that I may have even included a "party captured and stripped of their gear" segue between parts 2 and 3). I worked a lot on this while I was in 5th grade (1985-86) and distinctly remember that part 3 had one of those 'faux 3-D' maps they showed you how to draw in the back of the DSG (which came out in summer of 86, right?).

#2) the tower of an evil mage, inspired (I shamefully admit) by The Sword of Shannara. This was intended to be a big epic, and went through about a million drafts during the course of my entire 6th grade year (1986-87). I suspect there's less actual finished product here than I remember.

#3) a big tomb, very shamelessly ripped off from my memories of Necropolis (before Necropolis was actually published) and the Tomb of Horrors. I still have the party record from this adventure in my old DM Adventure Log, which shows that we played it from Jan-April 1989 (which fits the timeline -- I played Necropolis in May 88, and realized it wasn't actually going to be published (because NIPI had gone under) that fall).

In addition to those there are a bunch of smaller-scale stuff, but most of those are probably little more than maps, and never actually got played.

[blackprinceomuncie]

axemental said:

So, BPoM is the stuff you mentioned something were you can just skip to the dungeon and have a non-tard experiance, or is it pretty well malignant?

The dungeons themselves are full of politically correct, anthropomorphic monsters (IIRC there's a dragon of some sort "lost" in the upper levels of the Sunken Citadel that's actually a "pet" of the local Kobold tribe and if you "rescue" it, they might help you out with something or other. Basically, all the traditional "monsters" are rather cute & cuddly, implying that if a party just hacks their way through them (despite the fact that they're all listed as "evil" in the MM), that the players are ignorant, unsophisticated, war-mongering roll-players (rather than people out to have a good time in a traditional fantasy-type RPG adventure, rather than a happy-fun-time kids bedtime story where the most dangerous thing the heroes do is rescue the poor wittle kobold's poor cute wittle dwagon ).

Like I said, that's probably the kind of stuff you can just ignore when running the module, but actually reading through all that crap in order to understand the layout thoroughly enough to know what to ignore, what to replace and what to keep is (in my case) so annoying and frustrating and work intensive that it's really not worth what little time and effort the module actually saves me in terms of prepping the adventure. I'd rather just steal the maps and fill in my own stuff which (though it may be more "generic" than what's there) is at the very least not going make my players look at me like I've donned a tutu and grown fairy wings right before their eyes.

[mistere29]

And the maps for Sunless citadel aren't all that great. Just one entrance to the dungeon and only one way to get down to the second level, which is all the way in the back of the first. No significiant secret areas. The second "level" is really just a handful of rooms.

Very lame "video game" Dungeon. where the characters just clear out the area and move on. No actual environment to adventure in.

Pretty much the same thing for Rising Knight.

[foster1941]

I must confess I was so unimpressed by the map in "The Rising Knight" (the sample module included in the C&C boxed set) that I didn't even bother to read the module, and was thus a bit surprised to see RA mention above that it doesn't totally suck. But then again, if I'd judged "Dark Druids" solely on the basis of its maps I never would have bought it...

[mistere29]

i only skimmed over rising knight, but i wasn't terribly impressed by anything i saw. Half the module was dealing with the town, and not a concise way like T1 or B2, but just a handful of plot hooks and tons of flavor text.

The actual "dungeon" didn't really have anything interesting. Mundane encounter and way too much description for basic rooms.

Honestly, sunless citadle was better than rising knight.

[AxeMental]

The key to a good module is this. If you can skip to the dungeon without reading anything else (except perhaps the suggested level on the cover) and have a great experiance that moves quickly. Long room descriptions of boring encounters is almost worse then town descriptions, local politics, the description of Sid the dragons love afair with a gnombe princess, etc.

Sounds like Rising Knight is something I should probably skip as well. Which is making wonder how many here are really digging deep to like their purchases. I know once I lay down cash for something I tend to see it in its best light so I don't feel like a sucka.