Good Adventures and Campaigns

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

Could you name them? I have heard there are some great CoC campaigns and adventures, but when I read some sample adventures on the Chaosium website they were "fight scene, instigation to move to the next fight scene." So some CoC adventures are pretty simple.

I have heard that Masks of Nyarlathotep is a classic Call of Cthulhu adventure, but my FLGS never carried Chaosium products.

I suspect that Ken Hite's Dracula Dossier would be fun and GURPSable. You might have to adapt it to make sure the party can't get stuck if they fail an information-gathering roll.

Shostak did answer with a lot of detail just above.

I would just add Horror on the Orient Express, which is a very good one too, and some precisions.

• Two Headed Serpent is clearly a pulp adventures written for the Pulp Cthulhu rules.
• Masks of Nyarlathotep is more pulp than standard Cthulhu adventures.
• Horror on the Orient Express is the most classical.
• Beyond the Moutain of Madness is very railroaded. That's not a problem for me because, if I'm not good at writing interesting adventures, I became quite good at adapting them to my group of player characters and at giving them all the freedom they want.

Finally the last editions of Horror in the Orient Express and Beyond the Mountain of Madness are full of gaming aids. They are heavy now: two or even three big volumes!

All Call of Cthulhu adventures can also be bought as PDFs and some are also avalaible on roll20.

Side note: I didn't know at all The Dracula Dossier. Thanks for the hint.

[whswhs]

I haven't adapted it to GURPS (but rather to DC Heroes, using the Mayfair Exponential Game System or MEGS), but I think highly of White Wolf's Midnight Circus. It gave me a really good setting with multiple possible branches for the resulting story, depending on what you chose to emphasize and what player characters encountered.

[Baldo]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

In the original post, I asked for lists of good adventures meeting specific criteria. The list in the blog post is great, but links to a few specific adventures which meet those criteria would be even more helpful!

A sentence or two about the adventure and what is good about it would help.

OK, let's start with the four sample adventures I've posted above, they all qualify:

https://basicfantasy.org/downloads.html#kh1
https://www.amazon.com/Blackapple-Br.../dp/B091F5Q9G6
The Blackapple Brugh
Almost a fairy tale in a lovely rural setting, the children will love it (and the adults too: 154 positive ratings on Amazon, and the PDF is free);

https://www.amazon.com/Sision-Tower-.../dp/B09MYXZ1PG
Sision Tower
Literally an unearthly location (and a really interesting dungeon), let's hope the delvers have the Hidden Lore (divine servitors) skill.
In addition, the prequel (Praise the Fallen) is free, and you can ask the author/artist for the player-friendly maps of both (also free, but forgot where is the specific page in the blog).

https://www.amazon.com/Date-Expirati.../dp/B09GJS7RJS
Date of Expiration
Another superb adventure from the same author/artist of Praise the Fallen and Sision Tower. "You have never seen a dungeon like this before!!!" for sure, and NO Hidden Lore specialty will be useful here, this time.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...ller-Adventure
The Traveller Adventure
No saving the galaxy here: you are normal spacers just doing their best to repay the bank's loan. But still a *VERY GOOD* campaign (just ask James), and easy to relocate to different stellar clusters in different settings exactly because the 'heroes' are (and remain) nobodies in space.

I'm posting more stuff when/if I've the time and the inclination.

[finn]

I have enjoyed running "The Golden Geniza of Ezkali" for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy/DFRPG. Great to run with a play group who have developed their characters somewhat and can enjoying bantering with each other.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

What are some published adventures that you remembered after reading and which you could mine or adapt to other systems? Which made you say "this is at least as much fun as I could create myself"? Or "this had so many cool creative ideas that I can use even if I tweak the mundane bits and the background"?

I've been gaming since almost the start of the hobby and have bought a lot more adventures than I've used. These days, I've often gone back to my library to run stuff in GURPS.
Some of the more notable ones:

TSR 7902 "Murder in Harmony" for Gangbusters by Mark Acres - this is a really excellent murder mystery that I ran in GURPS a couple of months ago. It's got a great plot, memorable suspects, and plenty of useful details. I had to fix a couple of things, but it was very useful. My players enjoyed the heck out of it. Most useful for 1920s or 1930s crime investigation, but it could be adapted to just about any time period and location.

TSR 7904 "The Vanishing Investigator" for Gangbusters by Mark Acres - Another excellent investigative mystery. My only problem with it is that it hands the players the solution without really requiring them to do anything, but that was easy enough to fix by cutting out some of the gimmes.

TSR 7808 "Mutiny of the Eleanor Moraes" for Star Frontiers by Ken Rolston - This is an off-beat science fiction planetary exploration adventure that involves the exploration team crash-landing on a hostile planet and needing to trek overland back to their ship to stop a mutiny. It's got a lot of neat little encounters for overland trekking followed by a difficult but logical struggle to retake the ship at the end that can't easily be brute-forced but needs diplomacy and cunning. I've never run this entire adventure, but I've adapted parts of it for a couple of games. It's a hidden gem.

Paizo's Savage Tide Adventure Path for D&D3e by various authors - This series of adventures is an inconsistent mess, but some of the early adventures are quite useful for a sea travel focused DFRPG game. i wrote up my experiences about running them in DFRPG here: https://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.co...Savage%20Tides.

TSR 9075 "Castle Ravenloft" for AD&D by Tracy & Laura Hickman - The actual adventure is kind of inconsistent, but I've run two campaigns that explored a castle that was strongly based on Castle Ravenloft and most of the individual encounters were pretty solid. There were some rough parts, but I'd say 80% of the original adventure provided good inspiration for my games.

I've run bits and pieces of a lot of other adventurers, but those 5 stand out as either being really useful or being the inspiration for entire campaigns.

[Isosceles]

Shadowrun - Mercurial - Fantastic atmosphere. It's like the Big Sleep of cyberpunk adventures, very complex plot, needs a little tidying up. On the punkier side of cyberpunk rather than the mercenary side.

From actual plays I've listened to

Delta Green - Last Things Last - the intro scenario really sets the procedural, Lovecraftian mood.

Delta Green - Extremophilia - A well plotted, almost sanboxy exploration of a Montana town where an unappreciated contagion event is ongoing. Could there be mysterious government contractors involved?

[bocephus]

TSRs Temple of Elemental Evil. AD&D 9147

One of my favorite inspiration Books. Is beginner level stuff but old school so, hard beginner level stuff :)

There is so much in this, not the least of which is one of the most developed villages I have ever seen.

I have used this in so many different ways and reskinned so many parts of it. It's one of my go to for a quick "something near a town" or just something that has a map cause some players really like maps.

There is an old school dungeon crawl with 4-5 levels plus some portals to other dimensional spaces.

If a group really was to play this through, I expect it would take much more than 50 hours.

[Polydamas]

I never read the Tomb of Horrors. I remember that Lost Tomb of Kruk-ma-Kali (2002) was a solid 3e D&D dungeon crawl but I never used it (never had a party of 8th to 14th level characters.

Maybe I will buy some classic adventures and some of the new Gumshoe adventures.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

We mess with very few published campaigns. Like you say most of them are pretty horrible. I remember (Granted back in the 90's) that 1st Edition Warhammer Fantasy adventures were fairly epicly written. Well organized, good maps, well-staged combats and good opportunities for RP inserted in the encounters.

Seconded.

The WHFRP combat system is also "gritty" enough that opponent levels scale well to GURPS and there are fan-made GURPS conversions of the WHFRP rules.

File the serial numbers off and a WHFRP campaign could work really well with DF.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Gollum

All the good adventures and campaigns designed for Call of Cthulhu.

The CoC adventures generally have good maps and lots of player hand-outs which help players get immersed into the period and the genre.

In general, Chaosium does very good adventures.