Forgotten Realms Avatar Trilogy - your experiences?

[Mark Hope]

Thirteenth thread of a series on the younger classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure modules. It is interesting to see how everyone's experiences compared and differed.

Shadowdale and the Avatar Trilogy

Synopsis: The Gods of the Forgotten Realms have been cast out from their heavenly domain and wander the land as mortals - extremely powerful mortals, to be certain, but mortal nonetheless. They seek the lost Tablets of Fate, key to their return. When a band of adventurers are hired by a young apprentice to rescue her sorceress-mentor, little do they realize the size of the stakes they will soon be playing for.

This, ah, controversial series of adventures - starting with FRE1 Shadowdale and continuing with FRE2 Tantras and FRE3 Waterdeep was based on the Avatar series of novels by Richard Awlinson and was designed to change Forgotten Realms campaigns over from 1e to 2e. As it is the season for edition changes, I'm throwing this one out for discussion. Did you play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)? What were your experiences? Did you complete it? What were the highlights for your group?

(With thanks and a tip of the hat to Quasqueton for his ground-breaking series of classic adventure discussions.)

 

[Jack99]

Did you play or DM this adventure?

I DM'ed it, in fact, I believe it was the first module that I DM'ed

What were your experiences?

It was pretty rail-roady as I recall but to be honest, it has been a while

Did you complete it?

Yes

What were the highlights for your group?

When we were done.

 

[freyar]

My group in high school was just about to start these when we kind of fell apart. The group that ran it a year ahead of us seemed to have a blast, though.

I'm hoping to run these in the not-too-distant future, so maybe someone has some advice: any ideas of how to remove the railroading or make it a little less painful?

 

[jdrakeh]

Did you play or DM this adventure (or both, as some did)?

I was a player at the time.

What were your experiences?

Many of the setting changes can also impact PCs. In retrospect, I suspect that this is not a big issue if you're creating new characters specifically for playing through these adventures (though players may still not like having their character changed by designer fiat). For many in our group (and their long-standing characters) these modules were 100% Pure Fail.

Did you complete it?

No, we didn't complete the adventures. In fact, we stopped playing AD&D altogether for a period of time because of these adventures, instead switching to the Palladium RPG and Shadowrun, respectively. The next time that we did play D&D, it was Basic D&D. In fact, I don't think that we did anything with AD&D again until almost three years later.

What were the highlights for your group?

As another poster mentioned, when we were doen with the modules. These modules are responsible for the second worst actual play sessions of D&D that I have ever experienced (they're bested in this regard by the only slightly more railroaded Dragonlance modules).

 

[CsonTep]

I think we got half way through Tantras, or maybe finished it, but never got to Waterdeep. The thing I remember well though is that most of the encounters seemed designed for characters well above the 1st - 3rd recomended on the cover. The nest of perytons was almost a TPK.

 

[SSquirrel]

I never played teh adventures, but I've read the books several times. I was bored so I'm actually working on the 2 follow ups to the Avatar Trilogy right now, specifically the Trial of Cyric the Mad. I've never been quite as down on that series of books as my friends tho

 

[Vague Jayhawk]

I DMed the these back in high school. They read really good, but played really bad.

These are the modules that taught me all about railroading and having PCs always being out-shined by NPCs.

 

[Darrin Drader]

If I remember the modules, they were actually written more as narratives with a few encounters rather than a bunch of encounters with a few narrative elements. They seemed far worse to me than Dragonlance in that respect. I remember buying them, sitting down to prepare for them, then putting all three down and declaring them unplayable. Instead, I used a bunch of Dungeon adventures as the backbone of my campaign and it ended up lasting about three years.

 

[MerricB]

Worse than Dragonlance.

In Dragonlance, you're railroaded, but at least you get to be the hero.

In Avatar, you're railroaded, and you get to see a bunch of NPCs be the heroes. Not cool.

I think I ran 1-1/2 of these adventures before we gave up. Ed Greenwood tries in Shadowdale to put in interesting encounters (the section before you actually reach the plot is pretty good), but they're utterly depressing, as is what they do to the Realms.

Cheers!

 

[DM_Jeff]

The modules were pathetic. Unplayable as-is.

But the story had promise. So, I spent a couple months and rewrote the NPC parts as the character parts. It became one of my more memorable FR campaigns that still gets war stories told of its glory to this day.

-DM Jeff