The greatest D&D adventure path, was the first one.

 

Dungeons and Dragons modules have come a long way for good or for ill, preferences may vary, from the days of B1 and B2. Side note, B2: Keep on the Borderlands is a near perfect module and any perspective DM should cut their teeth on that one. Back where we were: today's adventures look much different than those of the early days of D&D. Gone for the most part are the sandboxes, with intentionally left blank sections for the DM to input and create for his own devices. Today's adventure module is almost always going to have a story with a defined resolution. Some of these are contained with a single adventure, while others can span multiple different adventures across an entire region of said fantasy world, the adventure path. 

Companies like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo have made their bank accounts swell on the backs of numerous adventure paths over the years. Paizo in particular has a host of these which have helped shaped and define the setting for the Pathfinder RPG. Almost all of them start with the heroes dealing with a localized threat to a town or village, eventually expanding out to unravel in some cases a global threat which must be put down or doom to all who should live to see such days. I am fan of numerous of these adventure paths, having run and played in several and if you're curious, I previously published a ranking (at that time) of the 5E adventures which should be considered adventure paths for this discussion.

But what if I told you the greatest of all of these, was the very first one written primarily by the founder of the D&D game itself, Gary Gygax. Some call it the Greyhawk Adventure Path, the modules were all produced independently of each other, but weaved together they form perhaps the greatest D&D story and adventure ever told. For those unfamiliar these adventures are ordered as such: Temple of Elemental Evil (T1-4) >> Slavers series (A1-4) >> Against the Giants (G1-3) >> Descent into the Depths / Drow (D1-3) >> Queen of the Demon Web  Pits (Q1).

This series of adventures sees the lowly bunch of cutthroats and ne'ed-do-wells arrive in the Village of Hommlet looking for easy coin, but what they find is a dark cult thought put down, now on the fringes of escaping again. Surviving the epic Temple of Elemental Evil is no small task, but should they overcome, next they must unravel and get to the core of a rotten slave business plaguing the coast of the lands of Oerth, it won't be easy and they well find themselves slaves themselves if not careful. With renown such as they have earned by this point, only a rare few would be called upon to stop the march of the giants in the lands of Keoland. Is there anything that can stop these massive creatures and who is bringing them together on the small folk? Finally, the real threat is revealed, an ancient race who plagues the dark tunnels of the underworld beneath the surface of the world. Our heroes must pursue the culprits to their ancient and wicked city and stop the menace at its root.

This is the elevator pitch, but the plots interlaced into these modules is barely touched upon by Gygax, but with a bit of work and imagination, a good DM can easily expand the story that is occurring here which is epic in proportions. If you have not played or run this series, I can't recommend them enough, this is the original adventure path and in my opinion, the best.

Wrapping up Rappan Athuk

 

I'm way past due to update how my Rappan Athuk campaign is going....umm....well really just way past due to even provide a new blog post. I'm finally past my kid's dance and gymnastic competition season, so hopefully more time to post this summer...no promises though to whichever poor soul is actually reading these blog posts.

My group and I are roughly over 20 sessions into our Rappan Athuk game that has been running for the past couple of year online. If you remember from a previous post, I had taken the reigns a bit of the campaign, which was quickly turning into a homebrew affair, and an imminent battle was about to take place at their newly reconstructed castle just west of the small town of Zelkor's Ferry. I had played around and brainstormed a few options on how to accomplish the whole mass combat session for this 5E game. I borrowed bits from the Stronghold's and Followers source book, letting my players role up troops and followers whom had come to their cause and in support of their claim to the region. These turned out to be not used as much in the battle, but more on that later. Each player also was able to randomly roll for an NPC support character that had come to the castle as well (blacksmith, sage, diplomatic aid, etc.). For the battle itself, I ran this as a chain of encounters, starting with the landing at the docks in Zelkor's Ferry, moving to the skirmishes in the countryside and concluding with the siege and final showdown of the arch-mage leader of the elves. The players had the option to spend their troop resources in these encounters for advantage and/or a means to reduce the creatures encountered.

My planning for the balancing of this assumed the group would be stretched pretty thin by the end of this string of encounters which included a showdown with a young silver dragon, multiple grey elves (reskinned drow for this campaign), and the culmination battle with the arch-mage and his escort of troops. Sadly, my group, now full of magic items which continue to break the balance big time in 5E cake walked it mostly, with some brief close calls in the final battle. The 200+ HP dragon went down in under two rounds, after being stunned locked by the monk in the opening round....sigh....I hope they had fun with it at least.

With the battle won, I set forth the shift to get the group back into the megadungeon and pursuing putting an end to Orcus and minions that populate the depths below. To accomplish this, I had the undead army muster up and help drive off the grey elves who were sieging the castle, presenting them as "allies" to the group, with the vampire leader of these forces stating that one of the players had sworn allegiance to Orcus....was this a lie to my players or did someone in the group really betray the others?.....regardless, it set off some amazing roleplay between the players as they tried to determine the validity of these claims amongst themselves. The other piece of direction, was providing information that beneath their very own castle was a portal to the dark layers of Rappan Athuk.

With a new level up, the group decided to find this portal and without much prodding...surprisingly...They stepped on through. I had this portal send them to level 4 of the megadungeon, the First Chapel of Orcus. Per the book and I quote: "This encounter should fully test the players. Don't hold back, you should except several deaths, but the players will feel great accomplishment for overcoming this major obstacle of the dungeon." Well....I'm sure that was the case for this encounter when originally published for 3rd edition, not so much now in the 5E days of player invincibility. Again, my players stomped everything I throw at them, saves continually made and monsters felled one after the other. This is one of my complaints with Rappan Athuk, at least as presented for the 5E version, the amount of low-powered / minion type creatures in these encounters serves no purpose and just feels like lazy design....I digress.

With no where left to go but down at this point, the group collected their loot and set off towards the 5th level and layer of the mad doctor Banth. By this point in the campaign I had learned my lesson and manually adjusted the monsters for the planned encounters on this level and it helped greatly. The highlight of this level of the megadungeon is certainly the laboratory of the mad doctor Banth, who is essentially a high level wizard / transmuter. I had worked part of a story arc for one of the players here, who was a captive of the mad doctor. The culmination encounter with Banth was really great, a good mix of adversaries are mixed and pop-up throughout the encounter, including the captive who gets tossed into the melee after being transformed back to a human from a mouse previously....it is pretty wild, you'll just have to read it yourself....some close calls, but the party pulls through in the end. 

This gets us caught up to present, the group has found a passage back to the surface and I provided a rumor / clue directing towards the lair of Zelkor, "the don't go down the well guy". When I started running Rappan Athuk, I never intended to hit every level and encounter, but before we wrap up this campaign, I'd like to at least hit some of the fun and more memorable all the while tying this massive sandbox into a fitting story end for my group. Having now run Rappan Athuk for a good part of two years and up to player level 12, I'm less a fan of it than I was going in. There are great encounters and adventures to be had, but man is it a lot of work to tie together and work your way through the fluff and bloat of this book. If you've made it this far, thanks for reading again, we'll be back soon for will likely be the conclusion of the Rappan Athuk campaign and onto more great adventures in the D&D universe.