This module was, for me, a great gift when I first got it as a 12 year old in 1980. I had always loved learning about the "lost" civilizations of Central America and South America (thank you Reader's Digest for your book The World's Last Mysteries which my parents owned and I read over and over as a kid, and to National Geographic for stories about various sites and the archaeological digs in them) but with AD&D I had fallen into the standard concepts of European setting adventures. This module showed me how I could expand my ideas and I embraced it, creating adventures based roughly on the lost civilizations of Mesoamerica, Egypt, Rome, Polynesia, and Greece and the legends and stories from those civilizations. The majority of my gaming (2/3 or so) has taken place in the "generic" European standards, but I have enjoyed tossing in adventures from other lands, as have my players, and including not just settings but also items, like magical weapons made of obsidian, unusually enchanted leather armor made from the pelts of black panthers, and other items decorated with totemistic fetishes. While it is true that I might have started creating such adventures later in my teens (when I had gained enough DMing experience that I began to feel comfortable with creating more than just simple dungeons and the like) without the help of this module, and its inspiring illustrations too, gave me the jump start to get to it sooner. I'd never consider this module problematic as it dealt with its subject matter seriously, though I understand why you may have felt obligated to class it as such. I personally find that classification to be somewhat offensive, especially considering the era when this came out was one that contained pulp novel references to such things and within a few years we'd have the greatest movie tomb robber in history starting his movie career plundering a Mesoamerican site in the name of entertainment. If the couatl in the Monster Manual isn't a problem, neither is this module.
Thanks ever so much for reviewing C1. I'll be running it, per tournament rules, in this year's NTRPG, and having read it thoroughly again I found it, as you mention, to be a real exemplar of old school D&D design. Being a trained Mesoamerican anthropologist, I have to say I am quite impressed by Johnson and Leason's adaptations of Aztec and Mayan gods and motifs. As to the shoehorning of this pantheon onto the World of Greyhawk, I wonder to what extent it may have been co-ordinated with the release of Deities and Demigods, which came very soon thereafter and of course included an extended Mesoamerican pantheon? At any rate, they really did do an outstanding job of integrating those motifs into the module - except perhaps for Jeff Dee's depiction of chamber 33, 'Ancient Tamoanchan', which kind of looks partly inspired by ancient Chinese tombs. Go figure 🙃
Technically not; if you look at the nonhuman deities (not to mention the Cthulhu and Melnibonean pantheons in the original). Also, I was referring to the gods of Greyhawk, which are most definitely not in the real world.
I ran this in about 1984 at school after my players escaped on a boat from the slave lords after A4 and were lost at sea - I shoehorned the hidden shrine into the central plateau on the Isle of Dread, which in turn I shoehorned into the island chain in the Amedio Bay - we spent two school semesters playing through that lot and had a great time with it. Never got to play it since, but I did recently rediscover my monochrome version packed away with some old books
I've managed to hold on to my original C1 (with the green ogre cover). Fully agree with your assessment, it had a really unique, exotic flavor for its time. The Gibbering Mouther could have squirmed out of a volume of Leiber or Lovecraft. That nereid . . .super-sexy and described with such provocative prose I think she ushered us into puberty!
Thanks for the video! I hadn't played that one back in the day but one year at Nexus Game Fair in Milwaukee, Harold Johnson ran it for a handful of us. He also brought along some of his original notes and design journals, as well as a couple of the tomes he used to do the research for it. What a treat!
The first time I saw D&D being played I was about 10 or 11. The DM was running a game at my local library and he had a copy of C1 with him I was blown away and hooked. Since I've had a long relationship with this module. I ran it a few times back in the day. Then when I could not play D&D I converted it for Neverwinter Nights and then Never Winter Nights 2. More recently I had the privilege of running the 5e version for an Extra Life charity event at my local gaming store. I ran the AD&D version at a local gaming conventions and I've published various maps I've created for the adventure online. This is one of my absolute favorite adventures of all time.
In my opinion, To Find a King (C4) is the best tournament module (but it's not in Greyhawk alas). But The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a good one too!
I don't think I'd even heard of the Pinkertons outside of wild west RPG scenarios or movies until WizBro decided to go full tyrant mode. Part of me hoped it was a stunt done as part of a Boot Hill reboot. Wishful thinking 😂.
My players hated tournament modules... except this one. The setting, pre-gens, and setup was just so well done that it was just so fun to play. The fighter escaping his tribe as he was chosen to be sacrificed to the gods, the cleric on the run since she discovered her fellow clerics couldn't case higher-level spells, and the rogue/wizard growing up on the streets but taken in by the old wizard. My players loved the setup and I remember them starting and complaining about their starting spells... only to find them non-damaging spells so useful and having to come up with creative ways to use them.
This Sunday I will be running my group through the last few rooms of this dungeon. Except it's been the 5e update from the Tales from the Yawning Portal book. I knew it was an old module. Thanks for showing it to us. I think I'll have to pick up the POD of the original just for fun.
I have always had mixed feelings about this adventure. The good: Of all of the original 1st edition modules, none were so well thought-out and excellently themed. It was a great introduction to a non-European style adventure. Both the layout and the dungeon ecology make sense. I even like the way they tied part of the story into the Rain of Colorless Fire. The bad: The writing is incredibly tedious. There is twice as much verbiage as there needs to be, making it a pain to run fluidly (which is why I have never DM'd it). Overall, it foreshadowed the insanely overproduced adventures of the 2e era: better adventure concepts, but way too much unnecessary information.
I commented on this module previously on Facebook, and I don't want to just repeat that comment wholesale, but thanks for the video and the great description! One thing I'm curious about, Joe: do you read modules for their own sake, for fun? Since I seldom get a chance to actually play D&D, and don't expect to play much more of it between now and when I go, I often just read modules for enjoyment, including both old ones like this and newer ones.
Thanks Grognard! Timely, as I was just looking at 5e artwork for Tamoachan. Can’t wait to play it; trifold and handouts alone seem worth the price of admission.
There was a weird thing almost the whole day long where about 1/3 of the videos I tried to watch wouldn't play. This was one of them. But now, 8:30 pm EST, it is finally playing. Hallelujah! Just in case your numbers on this one seem weird, that might be why.
I kept this one in reserve for a campaign I ran four years ago. The PCs were on a mission to the Amedio Jungle to rescue a lost archaeologist/ alchemist who was needed to craft a magic item for them. One of the PCs was unruly and got into an altercation with the captain of the ship that was transporting them. He planned to later start a mutiny and take over the ship. It would have surely failed, and the captain, in retaliation, would have marooned the party in the jungle. That’s when they’d start hearing the drums of the natives. And they’d then be pursued through the jungle, eventually stumbling into a lost city. And as they’re entering the city, intent on exploring it, the ground gives way beneath them… I never got to do it. The unruly player chickened out on his attempted mutiny, thus NOT derailing my main campaign.
Nice, a module I never ran or played in. I should have bought it and run it in the 80's when I saw it but my campaign was not Central America themed, so I didn't buy it.
I "cheated" when I ran this in the middle of a campaign - I just had a high-level magic-user patron teleport them to the starting location. They had to find a macguffin for him then make it outside so they could get a message out for pick up. Lots of handwaving at the start and end because this really was an aside to the main campaign. Of course they enjoyed it immensely.
My party fought a gibbering mound. My character, a ranger named foba bett kept taking pot shots at it from a balcony. That was a fun group to play with
Me too. It even influenced my DMing style. As part of my prep I'll do some quick line-art drawings, like establishing shots or POV images, to show my players. Nothing elaborate, with detailed backgrounds and proper perspective and all, just some images to support my narrative. It helps that I have layout experience so I can draw a couple up in maybe an hour or so. And, come to think of it, that gives me regular practice in composition and framing, helping my illustration work.
It's nice that they brought this back for 5e as well… but the anime fan in me can't help but laugh at the title. XÞ I know there's no linguistic connection, but _still!_
Can you provide a Link in an upcoming video (or reply here) to a pdf of D4 City of Spiders? For whatever reason (I'm an old Grognard) I'm having trouble finding it. Thanks!
This module was, for me, a great gift when I first got it as a 12 year old in 1980. I had always loved learning about the "lost" civilizations of Central America and South America (thank you Reader's Digest for your book The World's Last Mysteries which my parents owned and I read over and over as a kid, and to National Geographic for stories about various sites and the archaeological digs in them) but with AD&D I had fallen into the standard concepts of European setting adventures. This module showed me how I could expand my ideas and I embraced it, creating adventures based roughly on the lost civilizations of Mesoamerica, Egypt, Rome, Polynesia, and Greece and the legends and stories from those civilizations. The majority of my gaming (2/3 or so) has taken place in the "generic" European standards, but I have enjoyed tossing in adventures from other lands, as have my players, and including not just settings but also items, like magical weapons made of obsidian, unusually enchanted leather armor made from the pelts of black panthers, and other items decorated with totemistic fetishes. While it is true that I might have started creating such adventures later in my teens (when I had gained enough DMing experience that I began to feel comfortable with creating more than just simple dungeons and the like) without the help of this module, and its inspiring illustrations too, gave me the jump start to get to it sooner.
I'd never consider this module problematic as it dealt with its subject matter seriously, though I understand why you may have felt obligated to class it as such. I personally find that classification to be somewhat offensive, especially considering the era when this came out was one that contained pulp novel references to such things and within a few years we'd have the greatest movie tomb robber in history starting his movie career plundering a Mesoamerican site in the name of entertainment. If the couatl in the Monster Manual isn't a problem, neither is this module.
Thanks ever so much for reviewing C1. I'll be running it, per tournament rules, in this year's NTRPG, and having read it thoroughly again I found it, as you mention, to be a real exemplar of old school D&D design. Being a trained Mesoamerican anthropologist, I have to say I am quite impressed by Johnson and Leason's adaptations of Aztec and Mayan gods and motifs. As to the shoehorning of this pantheon onto the World of Greyhawk, I wonder to what extent it may have been co-ordinated with the release of Deities and Demigods, which came very soon thereafter and of course included an extended Mesoamerican pantheon? At any rate, they really did do an outstanding job of integrating those motifs into the module - except perhaps for Jeff Dee's depiction of chamber 33, 'Ancient Tamoanchan', which kind of looks partly inspired by ancient Chinese tombs. Go figure 🙃
I mean dude, the entire deities & demigods are real world.
Especially Hastur and Cthulhu!
Technically not; if you look at the nonhuman deities (not to mention the Cthulhu and Melnibonean pantheons in the original). Also, I was referring to the gods of Greyhawk, which are most definitely not in the real world.
@@GreyhawkGrognard I choose to believe St Cuthbert is real. Also, Cthulu just to be on the safe side.
ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
@@elliotvernon7971
Y'ai 'ng'ngah, Yog-Sothoth h'ee - l'geb f'ai throdog uaaah.
I ran this in about 1984 at school after my players escaped on a boat from the slave lords after A4 and were lost at sea - I shoehorned the hidden shrine into the central plateau on the Isle of Dread, which in turn I shoehorned into the island chain in the Amedio Bay - we spent two school semesters playing through that lot and had a great time with it. Never got to play it since, but I did recently rediscover my monochrome version packed away with some old books
I've managed to hold on to my original C1 (with the green ogre cover). Fully agree with your assessment, it had a really unique, exotic flavor for its time. The Gibbering Mouther could have squirmed out of a volume of Leiber or Lovecraft. That nereid . . .super-sexy and described with such provocative prose I think she ushered us into puberty!
Thanks for the video! I hadn't played that one back in the day but one year at Nexus Game Fair in Milwaukee, Harold Johnson ran it for a handful of us. He also brought along some of his original notes and design journals, as well as a couple of the tomes he used to do the research for it. What a treat!
In part thanks to you, I am loving reading these old modules and prepping to run them.
"Stay safe from Pinkertons!"
Yep. Keep reminding everyone of what kind of scum WATC/Hasbro has become.
They've been doing their best to destroy the ttrpg hobby, it would seem. . .
The first time I saw D&D being played I was about 10 or 11. The DM was running a game at my local library and he had a copy of C1 with him I was blown away and hooked. Since I've had a long relationship with this module. I ran it a few times back in the day. Then when I could not play D&D I converted it for Neverwinter Nights and then Never Winter Nights 2. More recently I had the privilege of running the 5e version for an Extra Life charity event at my local gaming store. I ran the AD&D version at a local gaming conventions and I've published various maps I've created for the adventure online. This is one of my absolute favorite adventures of all time.
In my opinion, To Find a King (C4) is the best tournament module (but it's not in Greyhawk alas). But The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan is a good one too!
I don't think I'd even heard of the Pinkertons outside of wild west RPG scenarios or movies until WizBro decided to go full tyrant mode. Part of me hoped it was a stunt done as part of a Boot Hill reboot. Wishful thinking 😂.
Just got the email from Troll Lord games. Looks we got some a whole lot more great reprints of Gary’s work coming out.
My players hated tournament modules... except this one. The setting, pre-gens, and setup was just so well done that it was just so fun to play. The fighter escaping his tribe as he was chosen to be sacrificed to the gods, the cleric on the run since she discovered her fellow clerics couldn't case higher-level spells, and the rogue/wizard growing up on the streets but taken in by the old wizard. My players loved the setup and I remember them starting and complaining about their starting spells... only to find them non-damaging spells so useful and having to come up with creative ways to use them.
My favorite module!
This Sunday I will be running my group through the last few rooms of this dungeon. Except it's been the 5e update from the Tales from the Yawning Portal book. I knew it was an old module. Thanks for showing it to us. I think I'll have to pick up the POD of the original just for fun.
I have always had mixed feelings about this adventure. The good: Of all of the original 1st edition modules, none were so well thought-out and excellently themed. It was a great introduction to a non-European style adventure. Both the layout and the dungeon ecology make sense. I even like the way they tied part of the story into the Rain of Colorless Fire. The bad: The writing is incredibly tedious. There is twice as much verbiage as there needs to be, making it a pain to run fluidly (which is why I have never DM'd it).
Overall, it foreshadowed the insanely overproduced adventures of the 2e era: better adventure concepts, but way too much unnecessary information.
I commented on this module previously on Facebook, and I don't want to just repeat that comment wholesale, but thanks for the video and the great description! One thing I'm curious about, Joe: do you read modules for their own sake, for fun? Since I seldom get a chance to actually play D&D, and don't expect to play much more of it between now and when I go, I often just read modules for enjoyment, including both old ones like this and newer ones.
Thanks Grognard! Timely, as I was just looking at 5e artwork for Tamoachan. Can’t wait to play it; trifold and handouts alone seem worth the price of admission.
There was a weird thing almost the whole day long where about 1/3 of the videos I tried to watch wouldn't play. This was one of them. But now, 8:30 pm EST, it is finally playing. Hallelujah! Just in case your numbers on this one seem weird, that might be why.
I kept this one in reserve for a campaign I ran four years ago.
The PCs were on a mission to the Amedio Jungle to rescue a lost archaeologist/ alchemist who was needed to craft a magic item for them.
One of the PCs was unruly and got into an altercation with the captain of the ship that was transporting them. He planned to later start a mutiny and take over the ship. It would have surely failed, and the captain, in retaliation, would have marooned the party in the jungle.
That’s when they’d start hearing the drums of the natives. And they’d then be pursued through the jungle, eventually stumbling into a lost city.
And as they’re entering the city, intent on exploring it, the ground gives way beneath them…
I never got to do it.
The unruly player chickened out on his attempted mutiny, thus NOT derailing my main campaign.
Nice, a module I never ran or played in. I should have bought it and run it in the 80's when I saw it but my campaign was not Central America themed, so I didn't buy it.
I "cheated" when I ran this in the middle of a campaign - I just had a high-level magic-user patron teleport them to the starting location. They had to find a macguffin for him then make it outside so they could get a message out for pick up. Lots of handwaving at the start and end because this really was an aside to the main campaign. Of course they enjoyed it immensely.
My party fought a gibbering mound. My character, a ranger named foba bett kept taking pot shots at it from a balcony. That was a fun group to play with
You are very correct in that the tournament style of that module was just indicative of the style of play in the game back then :)
I always liked the art that shows what the characters see.
Me too. It even influenced my DMing style. As part of my prep I'll do some quick line-art drawings, like establishing shots or POV images, to show my players.
Nothing elaborate, with detailed backgrounds and proper perspective and all, just some images to support my narrative.
It helps that I have layout experience so I can draw a couple up in maybe an hour or so. And, come to think of it, that gives me regular practice in composition and framing, helping my illustration work.
I remember that module fondly even though I only ran it once or twice. I have the later brown colour cover but it was certainly deadly & fun.
It's nice that they brought this back for 5e as well… but the anime fan in me can't help but laugh at the title. XÞ I know there's no linguistic connection, but _still!_
The "stay safe from Pinkertons" gets me every time. XD
Great review of a classic adventure module.
🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉
Great stuff, love the retrospectives!
Can you provide a Link in an upcoming video (or reply here) to a pdf of D4 City of Spiders? For whatever reason (I'm an old Grognard) I'm having trouble finding it. Thanks!
Just go to the blog (www.greyhawkgrognard.com) and click on "Free Resources" at the top. You'll find it there.
KEEP GREYHAWK ALIVE!
Very cool
"Duck" really out did himself on this one! One of my personal top five dungeons. Excellent!
To railroady