Best D&D modules

So there were tons of D&D modules published. Which ones are the best, especially best for Torchbearer adaptation?

You’ll want to look for scenarios that can be taken on in small chunks.

B2 Keep on the Borderlands would serve as an epic megadungeon for TB.
B10 Night’s Dark Terror would be an epic campaign that would likely take your characters from 1st to 7th level.

I tried C3 Lost Isle of Castanamir, and it almost worked. But it’s not short enough to do without use of a nearby town for TB. Trapping characters in a 20 room dungeon until they escape was just too much pressure.

N1 Cult of the Reptile God might work, too. It’s a great scenario, but I haven’t tried it in TB.

The Moathouse from Village of Hommlet is fantastic! I’ve had a lot of success with it.

I’ve also done things like take the goblin, hobgoblin and ogre lairs from Keep on the Borderlands and run those on their own without the rest of the Caves of Chaos. It’s worked very well. I haven’t tried it, but I bet The Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh would work well.

If I can actually get my group to play TB again(*), I intend to take them straight to S1: The Tomb of Horrors. While this is probably a guaranteed TPK in TB, it’s likely to also really require the players to engage fully with the rules, as well as possibly give them a chance to try multiple classes and stocks (you know… the reinforcements/replacements). I also think that it’s a module where each room/area has plenty of opportunity for detailed description.

i Not that they dislike TB, we’re just having plenty of fun with other systems right now.[/i]

I’m looking to convert Keep on the Borderlands as my first DMing projects. I’m pretty impressed so far after starting to dig into it. After reading into the kobold and orc areas, though, I notice the enemy counts seem very very high. Would you tone the numbers down (a LOT) before trying to run it for Torchbearer? That seems to be my first instinct to do.

Given that a group with a map can, without suffering the grind, leave a dungeon section I don’t know why a mega dungeon, though not actually from the 80’s, like Castle of the mad arch mage wouldn’t work. They would of course require lots of trips out and back in. Which should be fine if they’re making a map. (unless I’m missing something, which is highly possible).

Going through the TB book and module together, I’m realizing the numbers aren’t quite as bad as I was thinking… except for the ‘common areas’. I’m only really scrutinizing the kobolds and orcs so far, and the guard numbers will probably get adjusted to remove 1 or 2 from each group of ‘guards’ for the most part to put them in line with what a beginning player party will be able to handle at a time (with a LOT of danger to them if those groups start getting together!). But man, those common areas… the kobold one has something like 40 unarmed, but combat ready males and females sitting in it. It has the potential to make for some interesting stories and creative problem solving having that many in a room nearby where the party will probably go, but I would also feel like I’m setting them up for failure. It seems like the obvious answer would be to possibly cut it in half and reevaluate, but part of me knows it actually makes a lot of sense for the ecosystem having that high of a number in there!

Numbers within Torchbearer can be a little deceiving as well. For example in the adventure within the Torchbearer book, Under the House of Three Squires it consistently throws groups of 6 Kobolds at the players encouraging them to figure out another option beyond killing the poor creatures. Torchbearer rewards you with clever solutions usually making an encounter easier where as trying to kill an entire group of Kobolds would be quite difficult if not near impossible. F20 games reward the hit it till it stops moving mentality.

I have found that most any adventure from the b/e -2e works really well for modules I was hoping to convert a Ravenloft module, Touch of Death into a Torchbearer adventure. I just wanted a little more experience with it before I started to tackle it.

Oh wow, I was actually thinking about dropping a group of 6 kobolds on the players rather early in the scenario thinking it would be a fairly easy kill conflict if they wanted to go that route. I was figuring since the kobolds would have to roll for disposition since kill isnt on their list and also the +1s might bonus that would go to +2s after 2 kobolds were dead would make for a safish combat against players that had a fighter conflict leader.

Is it just that 6 kobold combats over and over wears them down quickly enough that they don’t want to kill 6 kobolds at a time anymore, or is the situation much more dangerous with fresh characters than what I was assuming?

Six kobolds CAN take the PCs out in a straight kill conflict (it isn’t terribly likely), but at the very least they will probably hurt them badly. The compromises in Kill conflicts are very harsh, involving lots of conditions all around or nasty twists. This tends to make having two separate Kill conflicts in the same session kind of hard, unless the party are skilled enough to escape unscathed; going into a second Kill while injured is very dangerous.

On the other hand, repeatedly Driving Off the kobolds is a complicated option since it means you will eventually have to face them en masse if you are of a murderous bent. On the plus side, this probably motivates the players AND kobolds to eventually come to some sort of understanding about the situation. Hopefully…

6 kobolds are not that bad! I had players take more than a dozen kobolds at once. But as with any Kill conflict, its a gamble.

Stay cool :cool:

I wouldn’t change a thing in Keep on the Borderlands…