Must play old school or osr adventurers?

[Rfkannen]

I just ran my first game of Old school essentials (b/x) on sunday and it went fantastically! I am running tomb of the serpent kings, and the players (and I) are loving it!

this is just a short campaign, but after its over I plan to run a whole OSE sandbox, and am looking for modules and adventurers to populate it! Any idea on what some of the must plays are?

I am looking for adventuers that are both classic and run well. For example, from what I can tell most people think that the temple of elemental evil is an important and interesting dnd artifact, but is not actually fun to play. I am looking for adventures my pcs can have fun with!. I particularly prioritize good adventure design and description, i don't want to decode odd language.

What are some of the best/most classic old school old school or osr modules?

[Composer99]

Give the Isle of Dread (module X1) a look-see. I'm hoping to run it for one of the groups I'm DMing.

[Rfkannen]

Give the Isle of Dread (module X1) a look-see. I'm hoping to run it for one of the groups I'm DMing.

oh that looks like a ton of fun! Definitely going in the sandbox!

[Yora]

Isle of Dread definitely (though I see it more as a starting point than a whole campaign, it has plenty it space to add more content to the isle).

The other one is Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Not a huge fan of the dungeon itself, but the investigation at the start that leads there is something quite unique for D&D and which I had a blast to run.

[LibraryOgre]

Some of my favorites to start with are T1 and B2; in fact, I will frequently combine them.

T1 is pretty awesome... a good dungeon crawl, but without a lot of explicit stuff going on aside the moathouse, which is, itself, a bit powerful and for a 1st level party. It has some nice NPCs to work with, and some fun, low-grade, religious tension within the town (between two neutral religions, plus the evil religions based near the moathouse)

B2 is a good sandbox; it's got a few different things going on (bandits, spiders, lizardmen, plus the Caves of Chaos), and the keep provides a good base of interesting NPCs.

In combining them, I have the Moathouse be Lareth's lair, but not well known. The people of the town and keep know that there is a lair of humanoids nearby (Caves of Chaos, which they don't know where it is), and some humans bandits not too far off (the standard bandits of B2), but Lareth is pulling the strings from the Moathouse, where he keeps his soldiers and some gnoll shock troops (broken off from the gnolls in the caves).

By the time the party is ready for the moathouse, they've built up from fighting the humanoids and priests of the Caves.

[Democratus]

Barrowmaze Complete is a megadungeon and a complete campaign all in one book.

It comes with a great home town, NPCs, politics, local region hex map for exploring, and - of course - the Barrowmaze!

Be sure to get the old-school version and not the 5e conversion! :smallsmile:

[Rfkannen]

Some of my favorites to start with are T1 and B2; in fact, I will frequently combine them.

T1 is pretty awesome... a good dungeon crawl, but without a lot of explicit stuff going on aside the moathouse, which is, itself, a bit powerful and for a 1st level party. It has some nice NPCs to work with, and some fun, low-grade, religious tension within the town (between two neutral religions, plus the evil religions based near the moathouse)

B2 is a good sandbox; it's got a few different things going on (bandits, spiders, lizardmen, plus the Caves of Chaos), and the keep provides a good base of interesting NPCs.

In combining them, I have the Moathouse be Lareth's lair, but not well known. The people of the town and keep know that there is a lair of humanoids nearby (Caves of Chaos, which they don't know where it is), and some humans bandits not too far off (the standard bandits of B2), but Lareth is pulling the strings from the Moathouse, where he keeps his soldiers and some gnoll shock troops (broken off from the gnolls in the caves).

By the time the party is ready for the moathouse, they've built up from fighting the humanoids and priests of the Caves.

Oh that sounds awesome! What level are the pcs by the time they get to the moathouse? Do you have to adjust the moathouse for the past adventurers?

That sounds like a lot of fun, I might do something like that! If I do, do you have any other tips?


Barrowmaze Complete is a megadungeon and a complete campaign all in one book.

It comes with a great home town, NPCs, politics, local region hex map for exploring, and - of course - the Barrowmaze!

Be sure to get the old-school version and not the 5e conversion! :smallsmile:

Huge fan of the Otherworld Miniatures monsters of barrowmaze box set, but I actually don't know much about the module! running it would be a good excuse to get those minis lol.

Is there anything wrong with the 5e version? Or is it just if I want to run an old school game I should use old school rules?

[Mutazoia]

The Hidden Shrine of Tomoachan
White Plume Mountain
The "Slaver" series
The "Against the Giants" series
Pharaoh

[LibraryOgre]

Oh that sounds awesome! What level are the pcs by the time they get to the moathouse? Do you have to adjust the moathouse for the past adventurers?

That sounds like a lot of fun, I might do something like that! If I do, do you have any other tips?


To be honest, I've never gotten that far. Every time I've run it, the game has fallen apart because of grown-up reasons... kids, moving, lack of time, etc.

I have a couple documents on them; one contains maps from the modules, but with notes about how they are different

With Maps (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mbM8pSgj_tjXCI2E22kzaA0SUJrV_So5Y385h6oe-E0/edit?usp=sharing)

Some more overview and NPC list (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W8ACWovJm8hUzYfN9XIY9iymx7X-IVEyZ9aMbwlMbGE/edit?usp=sharing)

This was put together for Castles and Crusades, so a few things might need to be adjusted, depending on your game of choice. As I recall, I was going to have the Hidden Vale be the Caves of Chaos, still, but having been invaded by the various humanoids. Lareth was working on some plan to corrupt the Dancing Place, which was sacred for the appearance of several deities there. It gave some guidance to otherwise rudderless priests in the Caves, and a reason for the gnome to be in the moathouse.

[Khedrac]

I'd say the original I6 Ravenloft is probably a "must see" too.

Also UK7 - Dark Clouds Gather
(Generally all of the UK modules were regarded as excellent.)

[Lord Torath]

L1 Secret of Bone Hill is supposed to be a really great one. I've never actually played it, though.

[Democratus]

Huge fan of the Otherworld Miniatures monsters of barrowmaze box set, but I actually don't know much about the module! running it would be a good excuse to get those minis lol.

Is there anything wrong with the 5e version? Or is it just if I want to run an old school game I should use old school rules?

Nothing wrong with the 5e version. Just wanted you to be aware that there are two versions and to purchase the one you want. A "friend of mine" (totally not me :smallcool:) accidentally purchased 5e when he wanted OSR.

[Rfkannen]

L1 Secret of Bone Hill is supposed to be a really great one. I've never actually played it, though.

The other day when I was organizing my rpg books I actually found a physical copy of the secret of bone hill! I have no recollection of buying it, and I have not read it, but I do have it! so I should probably run it at some point lol,

[knag]

L1 Secret of Bone Hill is supposed to be a really great one. I've never actually played it, though.

L1, like T1, has a great town (Restenford) setting and surrounding countryside with a bunch of content that has absolutely nothing to do with the Bone Hill adventure plot. It's an excellent sandbox to place any adventure in. In my current AD&D campaign, I used the L1 setting and transplanted it from the Lendore Islands to the Salt Marsh, and used it for the town setting for U1 (which is maybe my favorite level 1 adventure published by TSR, but lacks any developed town setting despite needing one). Since then Restenford has evolved into a hub of adventure for my group, with lots of fleshing out of the land and especially islands off that coast (we massively expanded the number of islands in that part of the Azure Sea). One of the NPCs from L1, the baron's daughter Andrella, joined the party adventuring for a while, and her rescue is the overarching plot of the current campaign.

All that, and the party still doesn't know about the dungeon under the baron's castle or the undead catacombs on the waterfront. Really great setting. We've never run the follow-up L2, but it's a murder mystery and looks pretty cool too. Len Lakofka also published more material around this setting on Dragonsfoot.