From: rnmg1200@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (A Lady and her Walrus)
Subject: Re: Adventure Modules
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 05:24:50 GMT

In article <COVIN.92Sep9143343@despair.cs.uchicago.edu> covin@tartarus.uchicago.edu (David Covin) writes:
>
>Well, I don't have GDQ 1-7, and I don't know that T2-4 ever came out
>individually (as opposed to in "supermodule" form); but I would have
>called T1-4 a very impressive piece of work.  Not only did it contain
>so many typos and typesetting errors as to be, in spots, almost
>completely illegible-- it actually *added* typos and typesetting
>errors not present in the original (T1) module.  Truly, a noteworthy
>achievement.

In the first place, there's no need to be sarcastic.  Try a little politeness;
it gets you a lot farther than being willfully malicious.  In the second place,
I was only referring to the GDQ module.  Sorry if I didn't make that clear,
going back and looking at it, your interpretation is valid, but that was *not*
what I meant.  Note that the original quote said (And I erased it for brevity
before I decided to quote it, but if you go back and look, you can see this
is correct), paraphrasing, "[reprinted] T 1-4 and GDQ 1-7 (IMO, an impressive
piece of work)" with the parenthetical statement referring to GDQ 1-7.
But I liked T 1-4 too, and had no problem with the typos. *shrug* No biggie.
I just didn't like it as much as GDQ 1-7, partially because it felt more
like ye olde dungeone crawl than did GDQ, since the latter had some overland
travel thrown in as well.  It had more of the feel of an "epic quest" to it. 
And no, T 2-4 never came out individually, much to my chagrin when, as a
beginning DM, I ran the module thinking that the next one would indeed be
"coming out soon". (grump, grump)

>I have the individual modules G1, G2, etc. through Q1; what is in the
>GDQ supermodule that was not in those?

Connecting stuff; Mostly encounter tables, a nice breakdown of the overall
story, and an opening series of encounters/mini-adventures designed to
start off the party, whether or not you had played A 1-4 as part of the
series.  The originals, which I also have, were classics, but there's
more (or at least it seems to me) of a cohesive story in the collected
supermodule.  I always had trouble following and understanding the plot
in the originals.  This was probably not so difficult once they combined G 1-3
and D 1-2, but the versions before those didn't really go into much
detail, and I didn't have the collected G 1-3 anyway.   The "bubble of Lolth"
is, I think, original to the supermodule;
I don't think the others went into as much detail about how Lolth was 
threatening Sterich, only saying that the party had been hired by the
lord/ruler/whatever to oppose her.  I also personally liked having 
everything in one book, being the neat freak that I am, and the empty
pages for notes were nice.  Also, having all the maps in one booklet, while
being a little awkward at times, was handy; as long as you had the booklet,
you knew you had the map you needed.  Said booklet also included stats for
every type of monster included in the module, in condensed form.  Made it
quite handy when running an encounter, although I took the time to write
out the stats for each encounter ahead of time.  I did have a couple of
complaints, but this was mostly with the design of the module itself, which
dates back to the originals (where else can you find a hammer of thunderbolts,
gauntlets of ogre power, and a girdle of giant strength, all in the same 
series of modules?  Of course, by the time you got the girdle you were in
Lolth's palace, so it didn't do you much good against the giants.)  As I
said, it's entirely in *MY* opinion that it was good; if somebody else
doesn't like it, I'm sorry, but different people have different tastes.

David Covin                           covin@despair.uchicago.edu

The Walrus