A Series

[davegibsongreyhawkdm]

What are various thoughts and experiences you all have DM'ing and playing the A series dungeon modules?

I remember DM'ing A1 and A2, and I bought A3 to continue, and then I read the tournament option railroading of play section and was disappointed.

I bought A4, but I don't think I ever DM'ed A3 or A4.

I wasn't a fan that one of the slave lords was Edralve the Drow...what's up with the name similarity to Eclavdra?

Q1 was the first hint to me that something was going wrong with AD&D, but the A series direction ended up confirming for me things weren't the same...

[geneweigel]

Playing it with good DMs was a factor but when I popped them open afterwards I was like "THIS IS IT???"

I look at them as official parallels to the better not so official stuff like Lizard King.

There was flawed material galor around that time. FIEND FOLIO could have been much better. I hate to say it but there were a lot of complaints.

[davegibsongreyhawkdm]

Jun 19, 2018 13:34:23 GMT -5 geneweigel said:

Playing it with good DMs was a factor but when I popped them open afterwards I was like "THIS IS IT???"

I look at them as official parallels to the better not so official stuff like Lizard King.

There was flawed material galor around that time. FIEND FOLIO could have been much better. I hate to say it but there were a lot of complaints.

I guess Tomb of the Lizard King's existence as a tournament module in 1980 explains why its content is significantly better than much of the other modules released after 1980?

I don't remember Mark Acres publishing anything else significant? Did he actually create the 1980 tournament module, or did he modify the tournament module to create the I2 publication? Incidentally, was I2 the first module cover released by TSR titled as a "fantasy adventure module?" It's interesting that within the module narrative text it is referred to instead as dungeon module I2.

It's interesting because N1 (also published in 1982) as presented seems forgettable to me - I2 is in another league in comparison...

[geneweigel]

I played through it twice as DM for different people. The 2n time I was completely unprepared and it was people who wanted to try D&D. Not like B2 that kept rearing up every 5 seconds that it became like a gas station.

[foster1941]

I've got a kind of ambiguous relationship with the A series modules. On the one hand I have very fond memories of first playing in and later running them back in the 80s - to me at the time these were the quintessential AD&D adventures, and the ones I tried most closely to emulate in my own stuff. Those memories and experiences were real so I don't want to dismiss them entirely. I do think these adventures make for a nice "canned" tournament-style game and are well-suited to provide a first sample taste of the Advanced-style game to newbies and people whose previous exposure is the Basic and Expert lines (being for levels 4-7 makes them ideally positioned for that: you start with the Basic Set, work your character up to level 3, get the Expert Set, work up to about level 5-6, and then when you get hungry for something more the A-series modules are there as the perfect transitional step (that the first two were written by the same guys who wrote the 1981 Basic & Expert Sets makes the transition even smoother).

And yet, for all that, these adventures (and Q1) in retrospect unquestionably mark the turning point where "TSR" and Gary Gygax began moving down different paths. Prior modules had all (so far as I can tell) grown out of the authors' home D&D campaigns before they joined TSR. Yes they were edited/distilled versions where things had been changed for the sake of publication and integration into TSR's house style and such, but I'm pretty sure that most of the encounters and settings in C1, C2, S2, L1, and I1 were all things that came organically out of Johnson's, Hammack's, Schick's, Lakofka's, and Cook's "real" D&D campaigns. By contrast, the A series was created by committee in a lab, as a product first and a game-experience second. The premise and formula was laid down, each author was assigned a section and told to create something that fit. There may have been some elements smuggled in from home campaigns (e.g. the whole prisoner gimmick of A4 apparently was inspired by a game Harold Johnson ran) but the genesis and overall shape of the project were dictated from above, and for commercial reasons - we need an AD&D tournament to run at GenCon that can later be marketed as a series of modules. That represents a total inversion of the create process that had formerly guided TSR's releases, and it also explains why the modules feel so perfunctory and shallow - there doesn't seem to be any additional depth or context beyond what's presented in the modules because there IS none. What You See Is What You Get.

They were also the first adventures with a pre-determined railroaded "story" complete with cliffhangers and a pre-determined climax, and that fact that the audience by and large not only accepted but praised it surely paved the road for "Operation Overlord" (i.e. Dragonlance) a few years later. It's also significant that these were the first "major" AD&D releases that didn't really involve Gary Gygax - he only shows up with a playtester credit in A1. Prior to this his name had appeared on almost every AD&D product, but starting with this series the balance shifted - by the time S4 was released a year later it almost seemed like a throwback to a different/earlier era, stylistically out of step with the other stuff TSR was releasing at the same time, like N1 and the U series and I2 & 3. All of those feel much more like the children of the A series - shallow, story-driven.

So for all those reasons, the A series is a net negative for me. And yet, I still remember how thrilling it was to play through A4 - to escape from prison with no gear, and then finally face off against the Slave Lords on the docks as the city of Suderham burned in the background. It was (non-coincidentally!) the first time playing D&D felt like being in a scene in a movie.

[davegibsongreyhawkdm]

Jun 22, 2018 15:17:37 GMT -5 foster1941 said:

I've got a kind of ambiguous relationship with the A series modules. On the one hand I have very fond memories of first playing in and later running them back in the 80s - to me at the time these were the quintessential AD&D adventures, and the ones I tried most closely to emulate in my own stuff. Those memories and experiences were real so I don't want to dismiss them entirely. I do think these adventures make for a nice "canned" tournament-style game and are well-suited to provide a first sample taste of the Advanced-style game to newbies and people whose previous exposure is the Basic and Expert lines (being for levels 4-7 makes them ideally positioned for that: you start with the Basic Set, work your character up to level 3, get the Expert Set, work up to about level 5-6, and then when you get hungry for something more the A-series modules are there as the perfect transitional step (that the first two were written by the same guys who wrote the 1981 Basic & Expert Sets makes the transition even smoother).

And yet, for all that, these adventures (and Q1) in retrospect unquestionably mark the turning point where "TSR" and Gary Gygax began moving down different paths. Prior modules had all (so far as I can tell) grown out of the authors' home D&D campaigns before they joined TSR. Yes they were edited/distilled versions where things had been changed for the sake of publication and integration into TSR's house style and such, but I'm pretty sure that most of the encounters and settings in C1, C2, S2, L1, and I1 were all things that came organically out of Johnson's, Hammack's, Schick's, Lakofka's, and Cook's "real" D&D campaigns. By contrast, the A series was created by committee in a lab, as a product first and a game-experience second. The premise and formula was laid down, each author was assigned a section and told to create something that fit. There may have been some elements smuggled in from home campaigns (e.g. the whole prisoner gimmick of A4 apparently was inspired by a game Harold Johnson ran) but the genesis and overall shape of the project were dictated from above, and for commercial reasons - we need an AD&D tournament to run at GenCon that can later be marketed as a series of modules. That represents a total inversion of the create process that had formerly guided TSR's releases, and it also explains why the modules feel so perfunctory and shallow - there doesn't seem to be any additional depth or context beyond what's presented in the modules because there IS none. What You See Is What You Get.

They were also the first adventures with a pre-determined railroaded "story" complete with cliffhangers and a pre-determined climax, and that fact that the audience by and large not only accepted but praised it surely paved the road for "Operation Overlord" (i.e. Dragonlance) a few years later. It's also significant that these were the first "major" AD&D releases that didn't really involve Gary Gygax - he only shows up with a playtester credit in A1. Prior to this his name had appeared on almost every AD&D product, but starting with this series the balance shifted - by the time S4 was released a year later it almost seemed like a throwback to a different/earlier era, stylistically out of step with the other stuff TSR was releasing at the same time, like N1 and the U series and I2 & 3. All of those feel much more like the children of the A series - shallow, story-driven.

So for all those reasons, the A series is a net negative for me. And yet, I still remember how thrilling it was to play through A4 - to escape from prison with no gear, and then finally face off against the Slave Lords on the docks as the city of Suderham burned in the background. It was (non-coincidentally!) the first time playing D&D felt like being in a scene in a movie.

I think that now I would rather use the A1 dungeon module and its Aspis monsters somewhere within the general vicinity of Hommlet, as it is a potential implication that {Myrmidon} Rufus could possibly be (unwittingly?) manipulated by the slavers, with the slavers themselves manipulated by the Scarlet Brotherhood?

[geneweigel]

Its been a while so I don't even recall but I had put off playing the A series until 1984 because 1) I didn't own them and 2) every one knew it was a set. I finally got them in one of those module packs that were packed with three adventures because I just cleaned out a toy store of all it's D&D in Summer-Fall of 1983. So I had this don't look mentality because that was the trend at the time to not spoil it so I was sick of DMing and I had my friend Taylor do it because he was a regular at a game with a real adult DM, who I found out later was churning out glib play the sort that later would be called a "story teller". Anyway this neglect made Taylor's nitpickiness go into overdrive and he wanted "official" or nothing. Sort of this time I'm doing it right. Thats when everything went as by the book as we could. He wanted all new characters as the old "I forgot about this stuff my PC has as well" routine was getting tiresome. This began a hyper intense search for D&D purity because I had been DMing non-stop almost everyday since the Fall of 1981 and I was getting tired of playing with casuals. I had people sleeping over then taking the bus to high school for years. It was crazy, parents showing up and saying I have to see this for myself. During that time, the Summers were bone dry for that set of HS D&D players its then I'd get more casual and play lighter with my cousins and my brother. Only one cousin stuck and he wouldn't get involved D&D-wise with any of them.

So the A series I have listed: Me as playing Grok the Grim a pre-UA barbarian but his notes are gone so I don't even remember except I know my brother was in A2 -A4 but not A1 because someone who was staying at the house forever had to go back home. He was a friend of my mother's son who got into trouble and was cooling off in "Corn"-neticut with us.

So my brother played his paladin and he was trying extra-hard to keep it in-line but I'm guessing that he probably looked at the modules because that is just the way he was. When UA came out he converted him to a cavalier and wanted to play this character all the time.

I remember there was an elf PC and a dwarf PC at some point and a cleric. I only used the one character but Taylor had his illusionist PC as an NPC because it was consistent when we played Pcs together in C3 LOST ISLAND OF CASTANAMIR just priorly I was like why don't we just round it out by saying Grok sent him a message. So basically he got no real say but I was like the one who had to watch out for his well being. So it was like a quasi-henchman sort of thing.

The only highlight apart from the in-module unarmed escape in the dark in A4 was my maneuver at the end where I pre-planned to throw my overfilled bag of collected extra weapons at something it just happened to be against the leaders on the dock and honestly I think it was useless but unless Taylor remembers its lost to time.

[Scott]

Unfortunately there wasn't enough material available that encouraged the old school, sandbox gaming style. First Fantasy Campaign is all I can think of. A lot of the early TSR stuff was originally created for conventions, but because that's all they were putting out, it became the default style of play.

[geneweigel]

I did follow up with Taylor and remembered DMing it but he can't recall what ruling he gave throwing the bag of weapons. I vaguely recall it was a dud. He was pretty strict.