A question for role-playing fans out there ...

[WVUFAN]

Has anyone played or know if this would be worthy to purchase for a rpg group?

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1594720290 (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1594720290)

Just want to know if anyone has experience with the module before I plunk down money for it. It won't be 100$ for me, one of the advantages of working for Amazon.com is the nice employee discount, but it's still more than I'm usually accustomed to spending on modules.

[RendeR]

NO, but as an old school RPG-er I'd love to get back into gaming with something like this. Sounds prefect for my old group's style.


Hack slash, wash off the blood and rake in the goodies!

[WVUFAN]

NO, but as an old school RPG-er I'd love to get back into gaming with something like this. Sounds prefect for my old group's style.


Hack slash, wash off the blood and rake in the goodies!
I agree, there's something to be said about table-top gaming that you just don't get in a MMORPG.

[RendeR]

Yeah, I'm an avid Warhammer player and hobbiest now, but sometimes I just long for that snack munchin mountain dew chugging all weekend-er of gaming that leaves you all but passed out at work on monday.

[WVUFAN]

Yeah, I'm an avid Warhammer player and hobbiest now, but sometimes I just long for that snack munchin mountain dew chugging all weekend-er of gaming that leaves you all but passed out at work on monday.
That sounds just like my group. :) Too bad you don't live near Huntington, you'd be welcome in our RPG group.

BTW, If you're a fan of Warhammer and football, you should give Blood Bowl a shot, if you haven't already.

[RendeR]

I have, I even have a fully boxed edition sitting in my hobby room that a friend of ours left here for me to "get aquainted with", too many other things going on for it these days.

[CraigSca]

Lightning bolt, lightning bolt, baby!

[Shkspr]

It's not a bad purchase for a few bucks, but the "World's Largest" gimmick means it doesn't hang together as a cohesive whole. It's more like 20 or 30 dungeons with an overriding theme that requires a suspension of disbelief. Essentially, the place was built as a prison for Big Nasty Things (demons and giants and such) and natural disasters and invasions by other races has left the place as a series of small fiefdoms, each with a different mix of critters. The ecology of the place is a little strained.

It's kind of fun, though, to lay out the whole thing and then tell your players where they are:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/336/picture0746eb.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

Scale of this thing...assuming 5x5 squares, the big gold circular room between the lava flows is 250 feet wide. The rules recommend you make the squares 10x10, instead.

A quote from the intro..."Wizards are hosed." Apparently, the fact that PCs will be in this thing for two years (their time) means it's tough for wizards to add spells into their spell book, if playing under conventional rules.

Also, this thing encludes 1,612 encounters...so XP per battle is muted to make sure the characters only level up 19 times during this thing.

[Mustang]

I always like the old Middle Earth Roleplaying (MERP) module - Moria. Had random tables and such to explore Moria under the assumption that Moria was so large and vast that it couldn't have everything mapped. Plus, I've seen other modules/rules with random dungeons. If you have a hacky slashy type group, easier just to do that and flush it out with 10-12 encounters..

*sigh* I miss PnP RPGs... :(

[sachmo71]

Wow...this would be such an unattainable goal for my group. Meeting for 8 hours once every other month has gotten us through a few adventures, but this thing, while interesting, would probably just get boring. Neat idea for more active groups, though.

[Honolulu_Blue]

Wow...this would be such an unattainable goal for my group. Meeting for 8 hours once every other month has gotten us through a few adventures, but this thing, while interesting, would probably just get boring. Neat idea for more active groups, though.
Yeah, I'm not sure if a huge dungeon crawl would work with my group either. Back in the day, when we all lived nearby, we played through "The Night Below", which is a huge campaign/module that takes your characters from first to 14+ levels. It was pretty fun. I think it may even be a better bet than this module. There seems like there'd be more oppurtunities for role-playing in "The Night Below" than this one. Though it depends on what your group prefers.

Our "Night Below" campaign was, well, interesting. Our GM was merciless. We were pathetic.

Since this thread is calling out to role-playing geeks, I'll take the oppprtunity to mention an excellent board game: "Arkham Horror." It's based on Lovecraft/Call of Cthulu. It's an excellent board game. A beautiful design with great pieces and fantastic art. Each player plays an investigator (there are like 16, each with their own background, skills, etc.) and all the players work together to try and stop some massive Cthulu beast from coming into this world. It's a lot of fun and provides a great opportunity for cooperative play. The "monsters" pretty much run themselves, so no one really has to play the "bad guy." It's a bit pricey, but still one of the best board games I've played in a while. I think there is an expansion coming out soon.

[Mustang]

Since this thread is calling out to role-playing geeks, I'll take the oppprtunity to mention an excellent board game: "Arkham Horror." It's based on Lovecraft/Call of Cthulu.

I 2nd that... possible to actually play solitaire.

[Grammaticus]

It looks like an interesting resource, but too massive for an actual campaign. My group kinda balked at taking on Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

[GrantDawg]

It's not a bad purchase for a few bucks, but the "World's Largest" gimmick means it doesn't hang together as a cohesive whole. It's more like 20 or 30 dungeons with an overriding theme that requires a suspension of disbelief. Essentially, the place was built as a prison for Big Nasty Things (demons and giants and such) and natural disasters and invasions by other races has left the place as a series of small fiefdoms, each with a different mix of critters. The ecology of the place is a little strained.

It's kind of fun, though, to lay out the whole thing and then tell your players where they are:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/336/picture0746eb.jpg (http://imageshack.us/)

Scale of this thing...assuming 5x5 squares, the big gold circular room between the lava flows is 250 feet wide. The rules recommend you make the squares 10x10, instead.

A quote from the intro..."Wizards are hosed." Apparently, the fact that PCs will be in this thing for two years (their time) means it's tough for wizards to add spells into their spell book, if playing under conventional rules.

Also, this thing encludes 1,612 encounters...so XP per battle is muted to make sure the characters only level up 19 times during this thing.

Good review. My DM had it and considered running it, but real life has put our group out of commision. I would love to game, but I don't have the time. I miss it so much.

[KWhit]

Good review. My DM had it and considered running it, but real life has put our group out of commision. I would love to game, but I don't have the time. I miss it so much.
Let me know if you decide to start back up. I'd like to start playing again, too.

[Draft Dodger]

I don't have the time to play anymore, but I did dl this just to check it out. nice concept - no way in heck any group I ever played with could finish it.

[SirFozzie]

If I ever run a game online, it will be using XCrawl.

Dungeon Crawling on Pay Per View, in an American Roman Empire.. and if you die.. YOU DIE!

[Honolulu_Blue]

Good review. My DM had it and considered running it, but real life has put our group out of commision. I would love to game, but I don't have the time. I miss it so much.
I hear ya. I pretty much do all my gaming over the course of two weekends each year. My old group always heads to GenCon and spends the majority of the 4 days rping in the hotel room. We just started adding a second weekend during the year for a similar thing. We pretty much just play "one shots". We try to fit 2-3 in over the weekend and play some board games. The days of extended campaigns have passed us by.

[sachmo71]

My favorite dungeon crawl was Against the Giants. Kewl stuff.

[Honolulu_Blue]

My favorite dungeon crawl was Against the Giants. Kewl stuff.
Ah, yes. The good old days. Frost Giant Jarl, how I hated you so very, very much...

I think, looking back on it, I liked White Plume Mountain a lot. It was incredibly odd in a lot of ways with the floating river and the frictionless room and the weird trap that kept getting hotter and hotter, but the pay-off was excellent: Black Razor. Whelm and Wave were pretty cool too.

[Eilim]

Darn, can't believe I missed this thread earlier. If you have a few hundred hours to spare, you can listen in on a group playing through WLD: http://www.rpgmp3.com/ .Nice thing about the recordings is the group is made up of a few experienced roleplayers and a few players new to AD&D, so you can get a good feel for how it would play out for your "average" group and even see (err.. hear..) some of the house rules implemented to make the game more enjoyable.

I've considered picking it up a few times but the new edition of Mutants and Masterminds has its hooks in me and I just can't go back to "Fantasy" rpgs yet.

[Eilim]

Dola..

If your interested in something to run a full campaign with your group and don't want it to all be hack'n'slash, you might want to check out Shackled City (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977007103/sr=8-1/qid=1141604962/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-9436777-9571927?%5Fencoding=UTF8) . It was run originally as a series in dungeon magazine and got rave reviews.

"Book Description
Evil schemes are afoot in Cauldron, a metropolis of merchants built into the caldera of a long-dormant volcano. To foil the agenda of evil cultists, your band of adventurers must brave haunted jungle ruins, slay mighty dragons, and bind themselves to a layer of the infinite Abyss. Will their swords and spells be enough to save the Shackled City? Originally published as 11 linked adventures in the award-winning Dungeon magazine, the Shackled City Adventure Path is the most ambitious official Dungeons & Dragons campaign ever created. Now, for the first time ever, everything you need to play the campaign has been compiled into a deluxe 416-page full-color hardcover that also includes an 8-panel fully detailed map of the City of Cauldron, a 16-page full-color map and illustration booklet, and a brand new Shackled City adventure written by fan favorite author Christopher Perkins."

[Honolulu_Blue]

Darn, can't believe I missed this thread earlier. If you have a few hundred hours to spare, you can listen in on a group playing through WLD: http://www.rpgmp3.com/ .Nice thing about the recordings is the group is made up of a few experienced roleplayers and a few players new to AD&D, so you can get a good feel for how it would play out for your "average" group and even see (err.. hear..) some of the house rules implemented to make the game more enjoyable.

I've considered picking it up a few times but the new edition of Mutants and Masterminds has its hooks in me and I just can't go back to "Fantasy" rpgs yet.
What are the highlights of the new edition of Mutants and Masterminds? I have the original book and am curious to hear what they did to improve.

[Eilim]

Well, having only started getting hardcore into the crunch of M&M2e recently, I'd just have to say it seems much more balanced and less "exploitable". While you still have to keep an eye on things as a GM, it seems more in relation to the specific campaign your running than general funkiness in the rules that can turn your game on its head.

Other than that all I can really say is I just seem to be having more fun playing and GMing 2e over 1e. Everything feels more streamlined, and the bits that did have more complexity added to them, needed it.

For some more answers from people much more articulate than myself on such things:

http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?t=14730

http://www.atomicthinktank.com/viewtopic.php?t=11439&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=difference&start=0

One thing that some people have had issue with is 2e is less of a "toolkit" product than 1e was using just the corebook. All the alternate rules and more advanced construction guidelines will be in the Mastermind's Manual being released later this month. (and which I can't wait to get my grubby mits on.)

[Bee]

I heard the World's Largest Dungeon was a nice resource to pull stuff from, but not something you'd want to run as written.

My group is about to finish up The Banewarrens and I'd highly recommend it for anyone wanting a long campaign style module. We play once every 2-3 weeks (depending on availability) and it's taken us almost 2 years to complete. Despite that, I don't think anyone got bored playing. It's full of intrigue and lots of surprise twists and turns. If you're looking for a more short term module, I really enjoyed Of Sound Mind.

Edit: I'm a player not a GM, so I don't know how difficult these are to run. Our GM is a lawyer with his own practice so I doubt he has a lot of time for preparing stuff so I doubt it's too much work to prep.

[sachmo71]

watch this movie, geeks!


http://revver.com/video/11925/5683/?__session_just_started__=1