I said that I don’t like published adventures the other day, which isn’t entirely true. What I should have said is that I don’t like published adventures run straight up with no adaptations, I do like published adventures as a starting point for generating ideas. Even the ones that suck often times have something interesting that you can beg borrow steal.
The 5th edition adventures are not very good from what I’ve seen/played through/read/heard. The one that like the best of probably the Rise of Tiamat which is funny because from what I’ve seen that one is reckoned to be GARBAGE by the general public. Rime of the Frost Maiden is the most interesting concept to me, possibly because it reminds me of Bards Tale, but the worst execution. The clergy of Frosty McGee is supposed to be the big bad in my mind but they’re not even in it?
Back in the olden times they had Adventure Paths for 3.5 and Pathfinder and most of those were solid. In the pathfinder era each path was six adventures (although what is an “adventure” really? Each of the six could be like 10 game sessions or more) and for me they followed the same pattern. Pretty good intro, great follow up, weird tangent that has nothing to do with the story, then high level bullshit I don’t care about.
They came out with a hardcover collection of the first adventure path for 3.5 Shackled City but the switch to pathfinder happened before they could do the same with Age of Worms which is what I would really like. All three of the 3rd edition paths were good but Age of Worms was the best to me.
People super duper love the Kingmaker adventure path, so much so that they released it for 5th edition even though it was a Pathfinder thing and also they made it into a video game. I don’t get it. The kingdom rules are kind of neat but I don’t know why you’d want to spend table time on kingdom administration. One of the dudes in my group super dee duper loves Kingmaker so I tried to incorporate some of those concepts into a couple of games and it was never well received.
Right before the pandemic I was planning on running a version of the Ironfang Invasion but then my buddy beat me to it and did the same thing on Roll20 in pandemic times. If you like Storm King’s Thunder you should play the Giantslayer Adventure Path.
My favorite of the Adventure Paths is probably Crimson Throne. It’s one of the few Pathfinder things I kept during the great purge. I’ll probably never run it but it’s cool. That was originally a 3.5 product made by Paizo but then they released it as a collected hardcover and updated it to Pathfinder 1st edition rules.
I’m trying to think of other non-D&D published adventures that I like but nothing comes to mind. Most Shadowrun adventures as meh to me although they have some collections of short adventures that are pretty good. Most of the Shadowrun “classics” are very blah to me.
Most of the adventures from world of darkness were pretty bad in my memory. One of their first published adventures I remember was a friggin dungeon crawl for vampires. I think they were still learning how to make a game that wasn’t D&D.
I don’t remember any of the published Star Wars adventures being that great. I am obsessed with them though because I remember reading a Star Wars adventure where you were out in the jungle and the Imperials were coming and you had to rig up whatever defenses you can, and there was another one where you were on a cruise ship for some reason and you were being attacked by TIE fighters. I don’t know if they’re any good but I can’t find them and I know they exist and it drives me crazy that I can’t figure out what they are.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of my favorite Star Wars gaming memories and one of my favorite gaming memories overall. We were playing through a module where you’re in a Star Destroyer that’s been crunked up and is falling into the atmosphere to blow up so you have to escape. It was good and fun overall but a moment that will forever live in infamy is when the force adept guy told his R2 unit to jump into the shaft we had to climb down. Throwback to the funniest RPG question, that was a moment where we all roared with laughter and almost died but would not be funny to anyone else. See, see how it’s not funny to you hearing about it now?
I have nostalgia love for FASERIP Marvel Superheroes but it was not a good system. In my mind the MX series of adventures Nightmares of Futures Past were cool but that could be because I was 10 when they came out and that was before marvel comics went to the dystopia Sentinel mutant future well 88 trillion times and beat that dead horse into powder. Also it’s just much easier to think things are cool when you’re ten.
Dungeon Magazine had a lot of crap adventures in it, but plenty of good stuff too. The Styes sticks in my mind as a favorite. Salvage Operation I remember liking a lot. Tammeraut’s Fate, Beast of Burden, Slave Vats of the Yuan Ti, those are good ones. I’m not a 100% sure what’s going on with Dungeon Magazine these days but I think digital copies are out there for free for real, not stolen.
Pretty sure Dungeon stopped publishing a decade ago. Dragon stopped around the same time, restarted as a free online thing, and now is dead again.
Kind of unfortunate that D&D is the biggest it’s ever been, but magazines are so dead that they can’t keep it going.
The DCC funnel adventure I ran for you troublemakers is called Sailors on the Starless Sea and is probably one of the most fun I’ve had running in a long time. I very much enjoyed the Ironfang Invasion, but playing virtually is less than desired for myself. I’m still hoping that I can run a Numenera game someday, but it seems like the system frustrates several players.
I feel like I 100% agree with the statement of “Don’t run an adventure as written, just take elements from the written adventure that you want to play.”
That SW adventure you were thinking of is called Return of the Jedi, it was pretty good. (I think really those were in Instant Adventures, but could be wrong)