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Delandel
2009-08-04, 06:15 PM
I want to string a bunch of the best 3.5 modules together to form a campaign that starts at level 1 and ends around level 10. My friends and I have been playing d&d for a year now and are quite familiar with core, but I thought starting at level 1 would be a good way to ease people into the Complete books.

What do you guys nominate as the best 3.5 modules? I know I'll probably be doing RHoD for 5-10 but what else? :smalltongue:

PurinaDragonCho
2009-08-04, 06:58 PM
I played through Scourge of the Howling Horde, Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard (?) and RHoD - they all seemed to flow together pretty well, and it was a great campaign, actually.

Thurbane
2009-08-04, 09:44 PM
I played through Scourge of the Howling Horde, Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard (?) and RHoD - they all seemed to flow together pretty well, and it was a great campaign, actually.
Weird - that's exactly the same 3.5 modules I've played through. I'd second that they are all good modules. Our group is currently playing Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk. After that, I'll be DMing either Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil or Expedition to Castle Ravenloft...

RTGoodman
2009-08-04, 10:02 PM
I've run "Scourge of the Howling Horde" as an intro to a RHoD-based game. The goblin-dragon tie works out, and you can put a note from Azarr Kul or one of the lesser Wyrmlords somewhere on the leader of the Howling Horde to tie them together. I don't really know what can go in the middle though.


Another option is the FR module Sons of Gruumsh. I don't know specifics, but I know on the RHoD campaign journals I've read (Caligula's over on the WotC forums) talked about doing that one before RHoD. I bet there's also some kind of Dungeon Crawl Classic by Goodman Games that'd fit in the level range and with the theme, and would provide a nice foil for the mass battle style of RHoD.

Epinephrine
2009-08-04, 10:31 PM
We're having fun with Age of Worms. Runs 12 chapters, from level 1 to 20.

Tam OConnor and I both have an Age of Worms journal; one warning is that Age of Worms has a few pretty deadly modules in it, but as DM you can of course soften them as needed. What I like about it is that it runs the gamut from in-city intrigue to dungeoncrawl; there's a chapter in which the focus is largely a dinner party with a victory-point type system to determine how the evening goes (based on who you impress and by how much), another one will have you in a gladiatorial combat. The players seem to really enjoy it, which is always good.

dragoonsgone
2009-08-04, 10:46 PM
Worlds Largest Dungeon looks pretty nifty.

Natael
2009-08-05, 09:47 AM
The campaign I'm currently running started the characters at level 3 running through The Forge of Fury (3.0 module, I converted to 3.5 and added some Tome of Battle plus other splat books to important NPCs), which will lead into RHoD via a work order to Vraath Keep being found in the forge ran by the Durugar.

A little off topic, though mostly on, are there any good modules that RHoD could easily flow into, or at least having any good modules for level 12+ characters?

Delandel
2009-08-05, 02:03 PM
Thanks for the responses everyone! Basically all your suggestions are stuff I never stumbled upon, so I google'd them up to read reviews (it seemed like amazon.com had a bunch of useful reviews).

It looks like The Scourge of the Howling Horde (1-2?) is a good starter for the campaign. My only concern is will it be too easy for experienced d&d players?

Shattered Gates of Slaughterguard (1-6) I've only read good things about. Definitely considering this one.

Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (8-13) I never heard about but I looked at some reviews and it seems like one of the best for its level range. Up until this point I didn't know of good 10+ lvl modules, thanks for the suggestion!

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (4-14) appears to be 3.0 not 3.5 . Was it easy to convert it to 3.5 or is there another module? It seems to have excellent reviews.

Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (6-10) is what I'm currently running for my group actually. It sounds like a very interesting module so far, but dang I hate their layout! You really have to read the entire thing (and it's over 200 pages) before you can start DM'ing it I feel. They have their information scattered all over the place and it really messed me up when my party entered the church to confront the source of the zombie infestation. If you read the entire thing ahead of time and understand it then you're golden though.

I heard great things from Age of Worms as well, the variety of encounters sounds appealing. But where can I get these modules? I can't find them anywhere.

Sons of Gruumsh (4-5?) has excellent reviews as well, and looks like a perfect tie-in to RHoD if I run it.

About Forge of Fury -- it seems to have good reviews. Actually, I read a bunch of places that the entire series is good:
"Ashardaldon Series"
The Sunless Citadel (1-3)
The Forge of Fury (3-6)
The Speaker in Dreams (5-7)
The Standing Stone (7-10)
Heart of Nightfang Spire (10-13)
Deep Horizon (13-15)
Lord of the Iron Fortress (15-18)
Bastion of Broken Souls (18-20)

But my question is, how hard is it to convert 3.0 to 3.5 and is it worth it instead of running 3.5 modules? I've never played anything other than 3.5

More searching and I stumbled upon an RHoD recap by a fellow named Caligua. He mentioned that he started a campaign from lvl 1 onward with modules. This is his plan:


In our campaign, we played The Wizards Amulet (1st level), The Crucible of Freya (2nd), Destiny of Kings (1st-4th), Sons of Gruumsh (4th), and then Red Hand of Doom (5th-10th). City of the Spiderqueen (10th-18th) will be the grand finale of our huge campaign.

Interesting layout. Any comments on this?

So far... ALOT more options than I thought there would be. Wow. I'm very excited now :smallbiggrin:

Epinephrine
2009-08-05, 02:52 PM
I heard great things from Age of Worms as well, the variety of encounters sounds appealing. But where can I get these modules? I can't find them anywhere.

The Paizo (http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/ageOfWorms) site would carry all the pdf files (issues 124-135) for the adventure path.

== Warning to those who might play AoW - contains spoilers. Lots of spoilers. ==
If you want to read the campaign arc over, here's the background material (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jzc) for the campaign.

There are also some free resources to download from Paizo, I'll spoiler the links. These links are also spoilers for the AoW campaign.

issue 124 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jyk)
issue 125 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jz8)
issue 126 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9k12)
issue 127 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k1r)
issue 128 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k34)
issue 129 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k4)
issue 130 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k52)
issue 131 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k62)
issue 132 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#vv5748eaic9k6t)
issue 133 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k6u)
issue 134 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k85)
issue 135 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k9n)

Doc Roc
2009-08-05, 03:00 PM
Red Hand of Doom, Age of Wyrms. I'm fond of the Expedition Series, particularly the demonwebs one. It's not overwhelmingly well-made, but it takes you to places I love.

Eldariel
2009-08-05, 03:23 PM
Red Hand of Doom, Age of Wyrms. I'm fond of the Expedition Series, particularly the demonwebs one. It's not overwhelmingly well-made, but it takes you to places I love.

I dislike the Expedition to Demonweb Pits due to how logic doesn't work on it. I've played through it and the whole "everything happens JUST when you arrive in a given place, not a second before or after and you cannot miss ANY events no matter how hard you try" just doesn't work for me.

Taking the general shell of the adventure and writing your own off it would most likely result in far superior play experience than the adventure as written. I find it a fine template with solid fundamentals, but lacking tons in execution.

Spoilers regarding the adventure:
Also, you have to jump through a few hoops to finish the adventure without a Lawful or a Good party member (it's doable, just...annoying). There whole Tower of the Prophet-arc is just...bleh.

It also contains some of the most worthless Legacy Weapons ever and somehow you're expected to need to make use of them to win. And the "weapon you should use to slay the aspect" is a friggin' Bastard Sword; the most worthless type of weapon ever!

And the whole "Son-of-Graz'zt"-subplot doesn't actually matter at all. I saw through his guise in the very first meeting and yet pretty much had to go through with everything asked simply to, y'know, finish the adventure. And there's no point at which you can really bring it up so that it'd make a difference.


I definitely sign Red Hand of Doom and Age of Wyrms though. Some of the best-written modules I've ever seen. Also, Expedition to Castle Ravenloft is pretty darn good, though it's really a campaign onto itself rather than just module (well, same could be said for RHoD).

Also, "Bastion of the Broken Souls" (3.0 adventure, but trivially convertable) is pretty darn enjoyable. It's a level 20 adventure that actually assumes the information gathering/movement capabilities level 20 characters should have so you don't have to start pulling stuff outta your had immediately once spells like Scrying, Teleport/Plane Shift or Contact Other Plane get involved. It has quite a few epic encounters and an awesome plot quite fitting for your ascension into epichood and definitely fitting for the level it's written for.

Delandel
2009-08-05, 03:58 PM
The Paizo (http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/ageOfWorms) site would carry all the pdf files (issues 124-135) for the adventure path.

== Warning to those who might play AoW - contains spoilers. Lots of spoilers. ==
If you want to read the campaign arc over, here's the background material (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jzc) for the campaign.

There are also some free resources to download from Paizo, I'll spoiler the links. These links are also spoilers for the AoW campaign.

issue 124 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jyk)
issue 125 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9jz8)
issue 126 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news/v5748eaic9k12)
issue 127 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k1r)
issue 128 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k34)
issue 129 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k4)
issue 130 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k52)
issue 131 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k62)
issue 132 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#vv5748eaic9k6t)
issue 133 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k6u)
issue 134 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k85)
issue 135 (http://paizo.com/dungeon/news#v5748eaic9k9n)


Thank you for these links! I'm pretty sure I'll be running age of worms now since everyone speaks so highly of it.

I have more questions regarding age of worms though:
1) Is the module intended for characters using core-only books, or is it fine if I allow my players all books for char creation?
2) Could anyone link any helpful resources on running this campaign? I'm sure there are a little flaws in the campaign, perhaps balancing encounters or plot issues, that people have already discovered and suggested good ways to fix. Epinephrine, you mentioned you have journals, I would love to read them to glean insight on how to run it myself.

Thanks again everyone! I hope to wrap up my 6th level homebrew campaign next monday and then start this module.

Epinephrine
2009-08-05, 04:06 PM
1) I think you can get away with non-core classes just fine. Obviously, if the players optimize like crazy the enemies need to be tweaked. As with any modules, there are issues with poor feat selection or spell selection, but those can be changed by the DM to adapt the modules to the party's level of optimization.

2)Here are two links -
Tam_OConnor's journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109209)
My Journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110851)

If you end up having questions, we can always PM. I had a lot of tweaking at first since we were running gestalt, but we switched to single class, as it was too much work adapting everything.

Doc Roc
2009-08-05, 04:32 PM
Taking the general shell of the adventure and writing your own off it would most likely result in far superior play experience than the adventure as written. I find it a fine template with solid fundamentals, but lacking tons in execution.

Seconded. I just like that it offers some 3.5 crunch for places I loved in 2E.

Shademan
2009-08-05, 06:12 PM
mask of death is pretty cool...

RTGoodman
2009-08-05, 08:16 PM
It looks like The Scourge of the Howling Horde (1-2?) is a good starter for the campaign. My only concern is will it be too easy for experienced d&d players?

Well, it's generic low-level D&D fare. You're some up-and-coming adventurers that get sponsored by a village to go take out some goblins that have been plaguing them recently, instead of living peacefully like normal. I don't remember it being too easy when I've played it, but I don't remember it being particularly difficult either. (I do remember the final encounter being somewhat trivial, but that can be solved by upping the dragon a couple of HD or even up to a CR 4 Very Young black dragon if you've got a larger-than-normal party.)



Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (4-14) appears to be 3.0 not 3.5 . Was it easy to convert it to 3.5 or is there another module? It seems to have excellent reviews.

I've played bits of it, and I enjoyed it. It's pretty simple to convert to 3.x (it's mostly DR and stuff like that), and it's pretty enjoyable. If you can find it, it could be fun, but I've had a hard time getting a hold of it.



About Forge of Fury -- it seems to have good reviews. Actually, I read a bunch of places that the entire series is good:
"Ashardaldon Series"
The Sunless Citadel (1-3)
[...]
Heart of Nightfang Spire (10-13)
[...]
But my question is, how hard is it to convert 3.0 to 3.5 and is it worth it instead of running 3.5 modules? I've never played anything other than 3.5.

I've always heard good things about Sunless Citadel, and it seems to be one of the most famous and well-liked low-level modules. I don't know the others, though, but I can tell you that Heart of Nightfang Spire looks, frankly, like a TPK waiting to happen. Well, maybe not a TPK, but a grinder of an adventure nonetheless. I'd use caution if I went with that.

As far as 3E -> 3.5E conversion, it's pretty simple. DR/+X converts to some other form, a few spells and class features change, and a few monsters change a bit, but overall you can run a 3E module with little effort in 3.5.

Thurbane
2009-08-05, 09:29 PM
It looks like The Scourge of the Howling Horde (1-2?) is a good starter for the campaign. My only concern is will it be too easy for experienced d&d players?
When my group played it, it was sufficiently challenging, and we're a reasonably seasoned group.

Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (8-13) I never heard about but I looked at some reviews and it seems like one of the best for its level range. Up until this point I didn't know of good 10+ lvl modules, thanks for the suggestion!
This is the module were playing at the moment - I've really been enjoying it. A good, fun module. :smallsmile:

Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (4-14) appears to be 3.0 not 3.5 . Was it easy to convert it to 3.5 or is there another module? It seems to have excellent reviews.
I haven't started running it yet, but I have downloaded a very comprehensive 3.5 (fan made) conversion document. link (http://www.zansforcans.net/v35/RttToEE%20Errata%20and%20FAQ%20v3.5.pdf)