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View Full Version : The best premade campaigns and modules made in the history of D&D(any edition)



stenver
2015-05-13, 05:13 AM
Im familiar with good pathfinder campaigns(rise of the runelords, kingmaker) and modules(The Harrow, the master of fallen fortress, we be goblins).
But i dont know really good premades by other editions and seeing how light-weight 5e is, i would maybe like to convert and play some of them.
In addition, how good are the 5e premades compared to other edition premades?

Yora
2015-05-13, 09:17 AM
Isle of Dread: The characters find a map to a large tropical island which supposedly holds an ancient ruined city full of treasure. The island is inhabited by various native tribes and many dangerous beasts. It's very simple: Find the ruin, get the treasure, be rich and famous. But how the players are going to plan their expedition of the island and what help they might be able to get from the natives is where the most fun lies.

Against the Giants (Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl, Hall of the Fire Giant King): Bands of giants are raiding villages and someone has to stop them. The characters are the ones who try. Each of the three giant clans has their own fortress and all the players have to do is to sneak in and cause enough damage so the giants won't be a problem anymore. Since the enemies are dozens of giants, they have to be clever and use traps and ambushes to survive.

Descent into the Depth of the Earth (and Shrine of the Kuo-toa and Vault of the Drow): Can be used to continue the campaign after the giants are all defeated. In that case there are clues in the Fire Giant Fortress that the giants didn't attack randomly but had been organized by mysterious elves that come from deep below the earth. The first two modules are the long expedition into the underworld, while the last one leads them to the city of the drow. (Unfortunately, the conclusion of the campaign, Queen of the Spiders, was handled very badly and the final module does not actually have anything to do with the enemy who was behind the entire story. It's more like "Well, since we're already down here and the villain is already dead, let's take this portal into the Abyss and kill a random evil goddess we know nothing about before we go back home".)

Against the Cult of the Reptile God: People are disappearing from a town. The responsible are a secret cult of humans and troglodytes who worship a monster that lives in a large cave nearby. It's a pretty basic dungeon crawl, but unlike most others there's a clear goal instead of just looking around for treasure.

The Styes (Dungeon 121): Someone is killing people in a stinking and rotting harbor town and it's assume that some evil force is turning people mad. The truth has something to do with corrupt merchants, evil cults, and tentacled sea monsters.

Escape from Meenlock Prison (Dungeon 146): The characters are tricked to enter an underground prison that has been overrun by little monsters that drain peoples minds and drag them into their holes beneath the earth to transform them into more of their own. The characters are locked in and have to find a way out while avoiding the fate that has taken most of the prisoners.

Brendanicus
2015-05-13, 09:21 AM
Reading abut all of the cool 2ed modules makes me wish that there was more out there for 5th ed.

Wartex1
2015-05-13, 09:53 AM
Tomb of Horrors and Return to the Tomb of Horrors are both great due to the absurd difficulty. It would be fun for a game where each session is running it again until you make it through.

jedipilot24
2015-05-13, 10:12 AM
Red Hand of Doom and Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.

stenver
2015-05-13, 10:30 AM
Thanks for the replies, keep them coming! :)

Grac
2015-05-14, 10:05 AM
B2 Keep on the Borderlands, the intro adventure for Basic D&D is awesome and possibly my fav, and Caverns of Thracia for OD&D is also pretty awesome.

DragonBaneDM
2015-05-14, 11:54 AM
Cairn of the Winter King!

This was such a great adventure for introducing people to DnD. It had thematically great fights, contained a wicked fun skill challenge, a fun riddle, gave me plenty of opportunities for customization and embellishing, and gave my players a definite feeling of dread, heroics, and glory.

Plus it came with the Monster Vault, my favorite of the Essentials books.

illyrus
2015-05-14, 12:17 PM
Temple of Elemental Evil and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil were probably my favorites.

I liked that you had 4 sub cults with their own partially conflicting agendas that didn't get along allowing you to ally with or manipulate them into engaging each other.

The 5E module Princes of the Apocalypse seems to do somewhat of the same thing.

cobaltstarfire
2015-05-14, 12:45 PM
Reading abut all of the cool 2ed modules makes me wish that there was more out there for 5th ed.

They seem to be pretty easy to convert, we're playing 5e, and the GM has been running 2e modules he has without any real trouble. Though he does toss in his own twists, and sometimes finds way to make sense of some of the really weird nonsensical stuff in 2e. (Ex, when we did The Lost City (B4) there's a floor that just has lots of random monsters on it...we never did the floor but he told us if we had he'd have fluffed it as the mid-bosses menagerie)

Amphetryon
2015-05-14, 12:50 PM
Module S2: White Plume Mountain

critter3of4
2015-05-14, 01:36 PM
B10 Night's Dark Terror

Amazon, physical copy: ranging from $70+(parts missing) to $300

DrivethruRPG, PDF: $5.

I'm reading through it right now and it has inspired me to run a campaign in Karameikos (campaign setting in BECMI D&D).

Eldan
2015-05-14, 01:58 PM
Harbinger House, Planescape. One of Sigil's political factions is covertly maintaining an asylum in the city, the inhabitants of which are people with strange powers, who might be on the treshold of ascending to godhood. Their goal is to have one such god ascend inside Sigil and make it their domain. The house where they are doing it, Harbinger House, is itself a locus of mysterious power.
Now one of those godlings has broken out. Or was broken out by unknown parties, as there's some strange things going on, such as the jailer's mysterious new lover, who vanished on the night of the attack...

The PCs come into this while either investigating a strange cult or a series of murders or, if they have connection to the right political groups, directly investigating what is going on. Some chases, some investigating, some exotic environments, culminating in a battle between multiple parties (at least three or four, more if the PCs alert anyone) in what is basically a magical haunted house of horrors full of insane almost-gods.

The basic story is fantastic, as are a few set pieces. Sadly, it needs some rewrites, mainly of the chapter milestones, which feature some very annoying "but at the last moment before you get him, the bad guy dramatically escapes! No, you can't chase him". Also, there's some investigation to be done in the first part which is stupid. "Hm. There's chalk footprints. Clearly, the killer is hiding in a chalk warehouse. Of which there is only one in a city of millions. And he had this chalk on his feet while walking through all these muddy streets and it's still visible." Find some better clues and it's some of the best I've ever seen.


Also, Desire and the Dead. It's a third party adventure by Planewalker, written to introduce players to Sigil. The PCs are hired to protect a slum against gang threats, basically. Of course, there's more going on. Quite sandboxy, in that there's lists of encounters and places and a vague idea when what kinds of events happen, but the PCs are quite free. I like it a lot.