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View Full Version : Do you like new modules or converted older modules better?



ken-do-nim
2008-09-13, 08:04 PM
There's a lot of converted older modules or modules based on older ones out there: Expedition to Ravenloft, Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Citadel of Fire, etc. There's also plenty of new stuff like Red Hand of Doom and all the campaign-specific modules for Forgotten Realms and Eberron.

So ... which do you like better, as a whole? What I'm getting at is wondering whether the newer ideas of today's era stand up to the ideas that first came out in the late 70s/early 80s.

RTGoodman
2008-09-13, 08:17 PM
Personally, I'm a fan of both. A lot of the old stuff is still good, as shown by how hard it is to even get copies of stuff like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil (which is only from 3.0), but I think some of the newer adventurers are just as good (RHoD, as you mention, is up there with all the "classics" in my book).

half eaten oreo
2008-09-13, 08:34 PM
Some of the old stuff can be pretty fun. Even more fun if you get the nostalgia factor, but lately we've been mostly playing newer stuff. RHoD was great, Paizo's adventure paths are also excellent.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-13, 10:18 PM
Newer ideas?

The old D&D/AD&D modules are about entering dungeons or wilderness and fighting monsters. (Or about entering various dimensions and fighting monsters and a demon god, I guess.) The new ones are... about the exact same thing.

I suppose "non-combat challenges" may be a new idea, but they're really not that prominent in 3.X modules.

D&D's never been very modern. I think that the actual newer ideas - challenges, adventures, and even campaigns based entirely around non-combat, character personalities, and abstract concepts or emotions - all encouraged or supported by mechanics - are way cooler than fighting goblins, generally.

Cainen
2008-09-13, 11:40 PM
I can't really think of any modern module as good as the classic Planescape adventure modules, so I'd have to go with older ones.

nagora
2008-09-14, 07:42 AM
D&D's never been very modern. I think that the actual newer ideas - challenges, adventures, and even campaigns based entirely around non-combat, character personalities, and abstract concepts or emotions - all encouraged or supported by mechanics - are way cooler than fighting goblins, generally.
Which of those are new? They all sound like stuff people have been doing with D&D and CoC - to name two - for a very long time. Or are you just saying that you needed mechanical help before you could play that way?

AstralFire
2008-09-14, 08:03 AM
I don't really like modules. Haven't found a one I enjoyed, though there were a few with good ideas.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-09-14, 08:03 AM
I'm saying a system like Pendragon's is far superior for gaming focused on, I don't know, passions and personality traits. Old school CoC was stupidly combat- and survival-focused (then again, it still is, for many players, because the book still encourages that), but a game like Trail of Cthulhu has mechanics to really put the focus where it should be.

And I'd like to see a D&D module of any edition that isn't about killing monsters and taking their treasure. Even the Ravenloft modules of old follow this mold, which helps them fail horribly at being horror. Some Planescape adventures had a bit more twists to the plot, I suppose, but they still centered around killing monsters in strange places.

Thane of Fife
2008-09-14, 08:46 AM
And I'd like to see a D&D module of any edition that isn't about killing monsters and taking their treasure.

You might want to look at some of the Spelljammer modules, then. At least, the only one I've seen is very much not about killling monsters and taking their stuff (Goblin's Revenge, or something like that, maybe? You have to infiltrate a Scro base by pretending to be mercenaries, and then you need to find ways to steal secret information without getting caught).

Also, realize that the game is called Dungeons and Dragons. If you're not into a game which focuses on going into dungeons and fighting dragons, then you may want to look elsewhere. Would you play Call of Cthulhu if you didn't want to play a game with Cthulhu in it?

nagora
2008-09-14, 08:58 AM
I'm saying a system like Pendragon's is far superior for gaming focused on, I don't know, passions and personality traits. Old school CoC was stupidly combat- and survival-focused (then again, it still is, for many players, because the book still encourages that), but a game like Trail of Cthulhu has mechanics to really put the focus where it should be.
Well, I've never played a game of CoC that wasn't focused on investigation, which usually revolves around talking to NPCs and so on. Brute force is a very disappointing approach to CoC that people tend to try only once, IME.


And I'd like to see a D&D module of any edition that isn't about killing monsters and taking their treasure. Even the Ravenloft modules of old follow this mold, which helps them fail horribly at being horror. Some Planescape adventures had a bit more twists to the plot, I suppose, but they still centered around killing monsters in strange places.
Well, if you are restricting your complains to modules - which wasn't obvious in your post, then perhaps.

I have seen G1 "solved" without major combat, though, so again, perhaps the issue is really that players assume combat is the solution, rather than the scenarios. I have the opposite problem with some of my players, who have trouble coping with the idea that some people/things are not interested in their "rational argument" and simply do want to kill all the babies and enslave all the adults rather than to settle down and become accepted productive members of the community :smalleek:

ken-do-nim
2008-09-14, 08:13 PM
Newer ideas?

The old D&D/AD&D modules are about entering dungeons or wilderness and fighting monsters. (Or about entering various dimensions and fighting monsters and a demon god, I guess.) The new ones are... about the exact same thing.


First of all, I wouldn't paint all adventures with the same brush like that. You take an adventure like B1 "In Search of the Unknown" and it is exactly that - an adventure about exploration. Sure you will fight monsters in there, but the main thrust is about exploring the unknown as opposed to killing the monsters. It's a subtle but important distinction.

At any rate, even given the premise of entering a dungeon and fighting monsters, there can be a difference between new & old because of how it is done. There's the ever elusive to describe feel, there's the tactical situations they present, the monster diversity, etc. Lots of stuff to talk about here :)

It just seems to me that while the D&D rules keep evolving, the D&D adventures to a certain extent seem to have peaked and are now simply being rehashed.

Hawriel
2008-09-14, 10:25 PM
Im liking both. I do wish wizards put more effort into writing adventures than splat books. I just go the Red Hand of Doom. I flipped through it and like it alot. I'm now thinking about putting it in my campian that is already running along similar lines. As for converting old stuff. Last week I picked up Eye of the Wyvern and Wrath of the minitor. Today I picked up an adventure about Flint's Axe. I hope to convert this and torment the young kids that started gaming with me. I just need Tomb of the Lizard King.

Rad
2008-09-15, 02:27 AM
Im liking both. I do wish wizards put more effort into writing adventures than splat books. I just go the Red Hand of Doom. I flipped through it and like it alot. I'm now thinking about putting it in my campian that is already running along similar lines. As for converting old stuff. Last week I picked up Eye of the Wyvern and Wrath of the minitor. Today I picked up an adventure about Flint's Axe. I hope to convert this and torment the young kids that started gaming with me. I just need Tomb of the Lizard King.

I really wish wizards put out more things like the red hand of doom rather than more splatbooks. Old modules have a problem: Combat was MUCH faster in older editions (before the battle grid came by) so you could have a very big dungeon (I mean VERY big, 100 areas or so) and explore it completely in two or three sessions. Return to the temple of elemental evil is the example of what happened with new rules: combat is much more detailed but also much slower and dungeons that big take several months to finish (!).
Red Hand of Doom, on the other hand, is an exemplar of the new style: very few combat, very small dungeons, all of it meant to be meaningful to the story with almost no "filler" rooms with just 10 goblins or so.
I did play out a converted module from OD&D but it was peculiar with how few combat it featured anyway; it worked out OK but combat still took longer that it should have in the designer's mind, I think.

ken-do-nim
2008-09-15, 09:42 AM
Return to the temple of elemental evil is the example of what happened with new rules: combat is much more detailed but also much slower and dungeons that big take several months to finish (!).


Oh yeah, that took our once-a-month group about 3 years to finish. I got *so* bored in the middle of it.

Edit: I believe the reason that WOTC prefers splatbooks to adventures is that usually only the DM buys adventures whereas all the players buy the splatbooks.

KillianHawkeye
2008-09-15, 09:58 AM
In my opinion, modules work best in whatever system they were designed for, for some of the same reasons others have already mentioned. That being said, I believe they can work if the DM takes enough special care "personalizing" and adjusting the adventure to suit the needs of the group.

hamlet
2008-09-15, 10:04 AM
Oh yeah, that took our once-a-month group about 3 years to finish. I got *so* bored in the middle of it.

Edit: I believe the reason that WOTC prefers splatbooks to adventures is that usually only the DM buys adventures whereas all the players buy the splatbooks.

Yes, that is most likely the reason. By turning D&D into a collectable game even more than it was in the past, WOTC has managed to milk its fan base for obscene totals of cash.


One of the biggest problems I find with the new modules is that they rely on a plot over much. There's a definitive story to them as opposed to a backstory and a location and letting the DM determine what's actually going on in the module.

Charity
2008-09-15, 10:46 AM
Yes, that is most likely the reason. By turning D&D into a collectable game even more than it was in the past, WOTC has managed to milk its fan base for obscene totals of cash.


One of the biggest problems I find with the new modules is that they rely on a plot over much. There's a definitive story to them as opposed to a backstory and a location and letting the DM determine what's actually going on in the module.

TSR published plenty most of which are still making money (http://www.dndworld.com/kb/aadnd.html)

hamlet
2008-09-15, 11:09 AM
TSR published plenty most of which are still making money (http://www.dndworld.com/kb/aadnd.html)

Not saying that TSR didn't publish cruddy modules. They did.

But taken as a whole, the older modules tended to rely much less on story and plot and much more on what was actually at the location. The plot was determined entirely by the PC's and not by the author.

By the way, can't see your link. The Firewall of Doom +12 is stopping it.

Curmudgeon
2008-09-15, 11:54 AM
I prefer new modules because of the conversion errors. I'm running my group through the 3.5 update of Tomb of Horrors, and some of the vestiges of the old module are confusing. Like doors that require lifting up or pulling down to unlock -- Open Lock in 3.5 doesn't care about that.

hamlet
2008-09-15, 11:57 AM
I prefer new modules because of the conversion errors. I'm running my group through the 3.5 update of Tomb of Horrors, and some of the vestiges of the old module are confusing. Like doors that require lifting up or pulling down to unlock -- Open Lock in 3.5 doesn't care about that.

One of the reasons I preferred the original version, really.

Instead of challenging my luck and dice, it put pressure on the player to think fast and do something rather than dither or resort to the comfort of the dice.

Keld Denar
2008-09-15, 12:55 PM
I've run the old "A Night Below" mod twice, once in 3.0 and once in 3.5. It was a ton of fun. Its got the right blend of combat, RP, and intrigue. There's even a bit of inter-faction politicing, which particularly scheming players love. It adapted pretty easily to third edition. I created most of the major antagonist NPCs (only about 2 dozen or so throughout the 3 books) by hand quick, and then had some default mooks that I threw in as needed.

Only problem with the mod, is it can get really long, especially part 2, which contains a fair bit of dungeoncrawling. Once you get to part 3 though, it flows pretty good, especially considering some in game time constraints you can establish.

Great old mod.

Curmudgeon
2008-09-15, 07:39 PM
One of the reasons I preferred the original version, really.

Instead of challenging my luck and dice, it put pressure on the player to think fast and do something rather than dither or resort to the comfort of the dice. I see I wasn't clear enough in my original statement. I prefer the first versions of modules to the conversions, because of the errors that crop up specifically due to the conversions. Some things just don't translate well. Personally I don't really care what version people use, though currently I'm running the 3.5 version because most of the folks in my group can't find their old AD&D books any more.

Beleriphon
2008-09-15, 07:51 PM
Not saying that TSR didn't publish cruddy modules. They did.

But taken as a whole, the older modules tended to rely much less on story and plot and much more on what was actually at the location. The plot was determined entirely by the PC's and not by the author.

By the way, can't see your link. The Firewall of Doom +12 is stopping it.

That was more a response to the splatbook statement. TSR produces tons of splatbooks too, many of equally questionable quality.

I iz dapimp
2008-09-15, 08:25 PM
Me, I'm all about the classics, in fact, I'm about to start up the old AD+D module "The Apocalypse Stone" Laytuz, pimpin'

hamlet
2008-09-16, 07:49 AM
That was more a response to the splatbook statement. TSR produces tons of splatbooks too, many of equally questionable quality.

Of course they did, but I thought the topic was modules?

If you want to talk splat books, you'll notice that 1e really didn't publish that many and was all about the adventure modules.

If you want to talk about 2e, yeah, to the 2e crowd's shame, TSR threw out a huge amount of not just questionable material, but utterly terrible material. The Greenbond Ranger springs to mind as a particularly egregious example. But again, many of us tend to ignore those splat books utterly and restrict ourselves to what made 2e great, the core and its backwards compatibility with 1e.

I don't think I'd even have to mention 3.x's shame in the splatbook trade, but suffice to say you surpassed 2e in even its wildest dreams.

But back on the topic of modules, I think the absolute best module would have to be Dwellers of the Forbidden City. Just great stuff there.

Knaight
2008-09-16, 07:58 AM
I'm more of a converted, somewhat older modules better person. Most of the modules I like are from 2002 ish, and originally made for Fudge, which is what I would normally play, but if they have to be converted then they get converted(as per title). Another fine mess was incredible, as was A Bad day at the Lab, and even the superhero one was pretty good. The one with the vampire lord who woke up, got addicted to pinball, and you have to get to him before hunters do because he's defenseless because he's playing pinball isn't bad either.

DigoDragon
2008-09-16, 08:51 AM
Hmm... well I do love the Goodman Games "Dungeon Crawl Classics" series. Though I'm not sure which catagory that would fall under. I suppose several of them are converted from older modules...

hamlet
2008-09-16, 08:55 AM
Hmm... well I do love the Goodman Games "Dungeon Crawl Classics" series. Though I'm not sure which catagory that would fall under. I suppose several of them are converted from older modules...

No, those are all, to my knowledge, originals.

Though they try to be "old school," they do not often capture that indefinable quality of "old school-ness" that is so inherent in some of the very oldest modules. But they are certainly entertaining really.

Charity
2008-09-16, 09:48 AM
We played one of those Dungeon crawl classics the other day... well I say play, we approached one.

The initial encounter was so hardcore we never made it into the dungeon... The first fight was with 3 goblins and a seriously badass ogre with character levels vs a fresh first level party, no chance to circumvent the monster...
I don't know what the designer was thinking would happen, but it was a TPK, the ogres barbarian levels meant we couldn't even effectively run away. Not the best balanced encounter I've ever faced.
Dunno about the rest of them but that one was very poorly thought out.

hamlet
2008-09-16, 09:49 AM
We played one of those Dungeon crawl classics the other day... well I say play, we approached one.

The initial encounter was so hardcore we never made it into the dungeon... The first fight was with 3 goblins and a seriously badass ogre with character levels vs a fresh first level party, no chance to circumvent the monster...
I don't know what the designer was thinking would happen, but it was a TPK, the ogres barbarian levels meant we couldn't even effectively run away. Not the best balanced encounter I've ever faced.
Dunno about the rest of them but that one was very poorly thought out.

Pansy.:smallwink:

Which module was it?

Charity
2008-09-16, 10:06 AM
I can't recall, I was a player, but I can ask Dorisfrog he was running it... Soon as he gets back from holiday that is.

I was an human archer cleric I died in on hit, it did 19 damage to a first lvl character, and that wasn't a crit... (and it hit me on a roll of 8)
Bad times. I think I prefer the plotty, modern adventures, I ran Orcfest, and RHoD and they were both OK... my DMing is not the greatest it must be said.