My Favorite Modules of 2023
It's a fashionably late year-end list!
It’s time for the great American past-time… the year-end list!
In 2023, I had the opportunity to review five classic D&D modules: Tomb of Horrors, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and In Search of the Unknown. It was a good year!
This list will rank those five modules. This is the grading criteria:
Does this module make me excited to play roleplaying games?
OK, let’s get into it!
5. Tomb of Horrors
Tomb of Horrors is a legendary module. Infamous for its ruthless lethality, it was designed specifically to challenge veteran Players. This included Gygax’s son Ernie, whose magic-user Tenser (namesake of the spell Tenser’s Floating Disc) was one of the first D&D characters to reach 13th level. Though just nine densely-packed pages, it includes 20— yes, twenty— pre-made characters. Expect a bloodbath.
There are some good ideas in this short module. It’s stuffed with art and it’s a piece of tabletop gaming history. But running it for your Players— at least without major modifications— would offer a lot of tedium for relatively little challenge or fun. Its myth— as a fabled dungeon that only the most clever and powerful can overcome— is, like any barkeep’s rumor, partially false. Beating the Tomb of Horrors is a matter of doggedness, not smarts.
💡 Cool idea: A false entrance to the dungeon. Surprise those jaded players.
4. The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
Though published in 1982, the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth was written in 1976, when Gary Gygax ran it as a tournament module at WinterCon. Reading it today, you can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed: darkness, fungus, ambushing foes, save vs. something horrible. It disappoints because it sticks so closely to the genre’s conventions.
But remember: this thing was written in 1976. The genre didn’t have any conventions. Gygax and company were creating it, and that fledgling genre— what gamers would someday call a “dungeon crawler”— is archived here in one of its earliest forms. Have better dungeons been made in the 47 years since this was published? Absolutely. And while you’re probably better off playing one of those, Tsojcanth has earned our respect.
💡 Cool idea: Corpses that have calcified into stalagmites. Imagine melted gargoyles.
3. In Search of the Unknown
B1: In Search of the Unknown, published in 1979, is the first of the “B” (“Beginner”) modules designed to introduce players to the then-nascent game of Dungeons & Dragons. To ease new DMs into the creative process, it’s a “stock your own dungeon” where many rooms are left empty— allowing the DM to populate them with monsters and treasure of their choosing.
Between these slim cardboard covers, you won't find many groundbreaking ideas, set-piece battles, or memorable NPCs. And yet, In Search of the Unknown is permeated by an elusive feeling of innocence— even wonder— that is rare in our fantasy-adventure games. From the iconic entrance to the Tom Sawyer-style escape— glimpsing a crack of sunlight in the gloom of the Grand Cavern of the Bats— B1 manages to bottle a feeling of true adventure: tales of treasure maps, storied heroes, and, sure enough, the abounding promise of the unknown.
💡 Cool idea: Fantastic old-school names. Laggamundo, Wilberd the Silent, Sho-Rembo… there are 48 of these things!
2. White Plume Mountain
In 1978, a young Lawrence Schick applied to work at a growing company called TSR. He included in his application a dungeon of his own design, cobbled together from various adventures he’d made as a DM. Sure enough, TSR liked what they saw. They gave him the job and published the adventure as is, labeling it— you guessed it— Module S2. These origins make sense, as White Plume Mountain often plays like a greatest hits record sequencing set-piece after set-piece in a tightly organized, quest-driven package.
This module is packed to the brim with table-ready stuff. There are also so many threads to pull. Take Sir Bluto, wanted by the Royal Magician-Detectives for the River of Blood massacre, or the evil wizard’s “fanatically loyal company of renegade gnomes”. Yes, the information presentation is cumbersome (forgive them, it was 1979) but with a little preparation, you and your table will have an absolute blast.
💡 Cool idea: A room heated by induction; the farther you go, the hotter conductive material gets— until armor melts to your skin.
1. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks isn’t your standard old-school module. This thing is science fantasy. A strange vessel has crash-landed in Greyhawk and the Players are hired to investigate. Waiting for them is a veritable spacecraft mega-dungeon: truly hilarious broken robots, plot coupons (colored key cards), space-age weapons, the first D&D mind flayer, and— of course— vegepygmies.
While large and sometimes repetitive (you can encounter only so many vegepygmies and key cards and trashed rooms before begging for RPG night to be over), Expedition to the Barrier Peaks contains some of the most memorable encounters you’re likely to find in any published adventure. At turns hilarious, tragic, and surprising, it’s hard to read this and not feel inspired to play games with your friends.
💡 Cool idea: A robot bodyguard, lightyears from its own universe, doomed to die protecting you.
Thanks for reading and subscribing. Here’s to more old-school adventures in 2024!