City of the Spider Queen? Any good?

[Gundark]

I was looking into getting city of the spider queen as it would be nice to run a mega adventure (with all that's going on in my life it would be nice to not have to worry too much about preperation), is the adventure good? I tried to read some reveiws but the link here on Enworld to get to the right place isn't working.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Haven't actually run it, but I've read through it. Seems like a pretty well-designed module, although it's very combat-heavy. If you run it, you'll want to make sure that the group has a good cleric who can heal all the wounds they'll be taking (and help fight all the undead in the module too). You'll also want a good rogue, because there are a lot of traps to disarm.

 

[Brakkart]

Yeah I've played through most of this module, it is quite a lot of fun. You can find my characters journal of his adventures in the Story Hour section (look through for the Clearwater Crusaders thread). As alreayd mentioned, it is very combat intensive, and some parts of it are a lot more Roll than Role playing. The party needs at least two members capable of healing I'd say. I'd adjust some of the encounters also, as well as start the group at 12th, not 10th level.

 

[BlackFalconKY]

Played It, Loved It

I ran City of the Spider Queen starting in 2002 thru 2003 in a weekly campaign running around 3.5 hours a game. My players and I both throroughly enjoyed the module, but it is a major undertaking... this module is huge. The party will spend most of many months of gaming far, far away from anyone even remotely friendly. Healers are a must. My players had a cohort cleric who carried every healing spell he could muster every single night. A couple of characters got killed, which makes the DM come up with a plausible reason to add characters in such a remote location. Plan ahead!

Some resources were not available when we played through, and now it would be a completely different experience. I'd highly recommend getting the Forgotten Realms Underdark book. Green Ronin's Plot & Poison will let you customize all the numerous drow you'll run into. The new Races of Stone has good supplemental material as well. With all the twists and turns of underground adventuring, I would highly recommend using Tact-Tiles for your map. We used the old-style Battlemat, but it took a lot of erasing and repositioning. I'd have given a kingdom for Tact-Tiles at the time.

Some other items that would have been fun to have would be: Goodman Games' Complete Guide to Beholders, Blue Devil Games' Poisoncraft, and Silverthorne Games' Template Troves Volume II.

One of these days I'll run this module for another gaming group. I simply loved the adventure. I noticed a lot of errors in the stat blocks of the NPCs, but I ran the adventure starting with 13th-level characters (instead of the recommended 10), so I had to re-write them all anyway. You may consider implementing the magic item Craft Point method of item creation from Unearthed Arcana because your PCs are not going to get to do any shopping.

Charles Plemons

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I ran it, too. Fairly combat-heavy and fairly good.

I was (maybe too) friendly with my party back then cause I gave them a couple of opportunities to sell their stuff and get new one. That isn't very easy if you run the module as it is: if you teleport into, in our out of the Undardark, you have to succeed on a hefty spellcraft check or you're geography, and there aren't that many shops in the underdark. And due to the relatively short supply of time you can't just sit down and create some stuff, either. So tell your players beforehand so they can work around that problem or design their characters with the problem in mind.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I am playing it and it is too combat heavy for my tastes
as for short amount of time see my signature.
we average 1 death per session and one lost compleatly per 3 sessions.
we have above av stats and HP and perhaps magic, but we die like flies.
The DM has modified the game somewhat so it might have started harder than list, hopefully it is being run as written or slighty weekened as we are reportedly approaching the end at only
14th lvl ish

 

[Voodoo]

I enjoyed playing it to, though it is very combat heavy and very deadly. I died four times over the course of the adventure, all to 'save or die'.

We had the reverse situation with regard to selling magic items, since we overcame the difficulty with teleporting (the wieldskill spell had not been updated). The number of +1 swords and armour is staggering, we were all covered in magic bling by the end. Depending on which side of the teleporting fence you fall then the party may arrive at the final stage really underequipped and underpowerered.

Also once you start there are no breaks from the plot where you can go and craft magic items. You could head back up top for '53 days' but you know there is a time limit, but really have no idea what it is, so you are constantly pushed to not stop. IF any characters select Item Creation feats i think it is only fair to either use an alternate system or tell them that there not going to get a huge amount of use out of them.

 

[Eremite]

I'm in the "not good" camp.

It desperately needs a base from which the party can work. It lacks variety as it essentially consists of a string of unbroken combat encounters. It will probably require a fair amount of reworking, not just to bring it up to 3.5, but also (and more importantly) to ensure that interest is maintained for the whole adventure.

If WotC had been smart, they would have:

1. set the adventure in the North so that it could tie into the Silver Marches product (as well as more naturally link with the trading town of Mantol-Derith);
2. not linked it to a series of novels that is still not finished four years later.

 

[Wormwood]

Good module. Very detailed, very difficult---and a LOT of work to DM.

The difficulty is exacerbated by the task of updating it to 3.5

 

[Nightcloak]

Sadly, Our group playing this adventure disolved after several months

What we did accomplish seemed a lot of fun, but then again - I occasionaly like to tackle old-school heavy combat adventures. The DM upped our starting levels though do to "issues" he had running the adventure with a previous group.