I’ve been enjoying Dungeons and Dragons for decades. 
One of my first adventures was ‘The Temple of Elemental Evil’, which I consider a classic. (I have used it to introduce many people to the game.)
I have just found out ( according to Wikipedia ) that this module was ranked 4th in the all-time list in Dragon magazine.
Does anyone know the top 3? Is the list still around anywhere?
Thanks (and may you always make your saving throw 
)
I’ve got every issue of Dragon, ever… (thanks to the digital versions on the archive CDs, for the early ones)… so if you found an issue number, I could help.
You lucky chap!
Apparently it was a 2004 issue to celebrate their 30th anniversary…
#1 was GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders, #2 was I6 Ravenloft, and #3 was S1 Tomb of Horrors.
The complete article is in Dungeon #116, pages 72-81. See the References at the bottom ofthe Wiki page.
Thanks for that. 
Actually I can’t believe Tomb of Horrors was rated as anything. It was full of random traps and the suggested party given in the module couldn’t even beat the final monster. :eek: :smack:
For a more complete listing, consult the Wikipage on D&D Modules.
I love the Tomb! I adapted it for my own custom-built campaign world.
Dude, you haven’t been bored on a Saturday until you’ve been bored enough to run back through Keep on the Borderlands with a party of 13th-15th level characters.
Since this is about entertainment, I am moving it to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Do most ADnD players play purchased campaigns and units?
Is my old group unusual in that we only ever played self-created campaigns and campaign worlds?
No, I’ve always done self-created. The most we’ve ever done is steal certain ideas, story starters or scenarios from published modules, then plugged them into our own campaign setting.
Aaaaand? What did you all do that would entertain such characters in that beginner-level setting?
That somewhat reminds me of the time our 4th level characters had to hold off the kobold army’s attack on someone’s village. Did you know that if you play a 4th level fighter (2-weapon specialization) with +3 damage modifiers against half-HD monsters, you can skewer 7 or 8 of them per combat round without bothering to roll damage?
I was the DM. The party was in transit from one campaign location to another, several months away. I slipped in the beginning to KotB as a “randomly rolled encounter,” but I had actually planned on doing it to them since finding the old module a few days before. Eventually, the players realized what was going on (since we had all played the module years before), but everyone played it relatively straight. I think they were half-expecting me to drop the hammer on them at any moment with an encounter actually suited to their level, so even though there were a few snickers, there were no smart remarks. It had its own odd kind of tension.
And I still remember that “BREE-YARK!” does not mean “we surrender” in Goblinish.
OneCentStamp, that was cruel. Well done. 
I loved Keep.
I played it as a PC three times. (Making sure to inform the GM that I had played it before.)
I did abuse OOC knowledge once, though…
I made sure to lead the third group I played it with to the Mimic-Tower, on purpose.
I’ve done both. As a matter of fact, I was at one point running a Forgotten Realms campaign one night a week, and my homebrew world on another. Featuring mostly the same player base.
Hmm. I would have been expecting a level 15 Kobold Anti-Paladin to show up, if I was one of the players…
One of the other things that I found that scares the be-jeebus out of melee types is the rust monster. “Ok. Your +5 sword of God Slaying needs a 16 or better to save. Roll 'em!”
My group uses both, although we usually have to tailor existing modules, both for balance and to fit in with our storylines.
We might be unusual in that we all take turns to DM…
That’s basically what they were worried about. They’d kick in the door to the guardhouse, massacre the four 1HD orcs (well, 1st level Warrior orcs; I converted it to 3rd Edition), then kind of look around at each other nervously (the players as well as the PCs).
We used to take turns, but never in the same world. Each DM had his own gameworld, and the players just had characters for each. And we also used to have multisession one-offs usually with different systems (Star Wars and Cyberpunk 2.0.2.0. were popular as was Paranoia). The one-offs allowed players who didn’t DM regularly to try out their skills and also for us to trial new games. We were lucky in as much as the school allowed us to use a classroom at lunch and after school in the week, so we had lots of sessions available. The saturday sessions were the big campaign sessions. It was an awesome group of players, one that when I went to university and joined the RPG Soc I felt lucky to have played with.
My RPG Soc career lasted three sessions, all three games (2 ADnD, 1 Shadowrun) I played had DM’s reading from pre-bought modules… and they sucked. The Shadowrun session was the worst, the DM read word for word from the module, and the players squabbled OOC over a gun that one of them had invented, and no one was interested in helping me make a character or even explaining the basics of the game (I’d never played Shadowrun before). With the exception of maybe a 5 or 6 sessions in the past 13 years, that was the end of RPG as a hobby for me… and I miss it dreadfully.