Good Adventures and Campaigns

[Polydamas]

I was never in a game store which had adventures which are useful even if you don't play the exact system. So this thread is the reverse of the thread on published GURPS adventures by Refplace.

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"?

Some adventures are good because they do all the bookkeeping of creating balanced encounters and rewards in fussy systems like 3.x D&D. Those are useful too, but not what I am looking for.

[dcarson]

I've run two campaigns using mainly published adventures for Space 1889 adapted to Gurps rules. Added lots between the pre done ones of course but I think the slight majority was the pre done stuff.

[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.

[sir_pudding]

The most fun I have ever had with a published adventure was The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues for Paranoia by our own late great John M. Ford, but it's obviously pretty setting specific.

[Gollum]

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

Furthermore, since Call of Cthulhu works with the same logical basis than GURPS (neither level of power with hit points improving at each level, nor special abilities depending from a character class, but attributes, skills, hit points depending from bulk and vigor, armor reducing damage, and so on), it is very simple to adapt a Call of Cthulhu adventure to GURPS rules.

This is not as much fun as what I could create myself but far much more.

[sparcipx]

There were a number of scenarios for Car Wars published in Autoduel Quarterly that were more roleplaying-heavy than combat heavy... therefore easily adapted to GURPS (Autoduel).

So far, our group has played through Grand Theft Autoduel from ADQ 3-1 and Mutant Zone from 7-2, to great success.

Next up will be a GURPS Autoduel/Cthulhupunk version of Midwest Passage from ADQ 4-1.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Gollum

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

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]

Chaosium's Masks of Nyarlathotep is definitely a respected and influential campaign. The adventure The Haunting, which is included in the CoC Keeper's Guide, has served as the introductory investigation for many CoC players. It is short, quickly gets to the point of the game, and provides some loose threads for any survivors to pick up as leads to further adventures. Other long campaigns are Beyond the Mountains of Madness and Two-Headed Serpent. Convertings these and the ones discussed below to GURPS is not particularly difficult.

I'm also partial to the free adventures offered by Pelgrane, The Murderer of Thomas Fell and The Keepers of the Woods, which are tightly focused, if a little railroady, and confront the PCs with a pointed moral dilemma. I have used both of these as introductions to GURPS on with different groups with great success. Pelgrane's much more sandboxy campaign The Armitage Files presents a larger set of investigations all stemming from a small set of clues. The precise investigations are purposely not mapped out by the author. Instead, the book presents clues, NPCs, setting details, and advice on how to improvise around the PCs' reactions to the clues. I'd love to see something like this for a GURPS setting like Transhuman Space.

[Baldo]

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"?

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=844

In the Link above, you will find LOTS of fine adventures, and many of them are also free or very cheap. More goodness is available from Amazon (I strongly suggest The Blackapple Brugh -the PDF is free-, Sision Tower and Date of Expiration) and/or DrivethruRPG (The Traveller Adventure from GDW is old but still a *great* SF campaign, please stay away from the Mongoose Publishing remake).

However are you searching for detailed reviews, or a mere "Buy this, it's great!" advice is enough?

[Polydamas]

I think a friend once had a WFRP campaign set based around a city in the Empire. But I read it 20 years ago and can't remember the name. 30-something self might react differently.

Originally Posted by Baldo

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=844

In the Link above, you will find LOTS of fine adventures, and many of them are also free or very cheap. More goodness is available from Amazon (I strongly suggest The Blackapple Brugh -the PDF is free-, Sision Tower and Date of Expiration) and/or DrivethruRPG (The Traveller Adventure from GDW is old but still a *great* SF campaign, please stay away from the Mongoose Publishing remake).

However are you searching for detailed reviews, or a mere "Buy this, it's great!" advice is enough?

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.