I still have my copy from when I was a teen in the 20's. I never actually played it, so I was curious and wanted to watch someone else play it. That's what led me to your channel, but what keeps me there is the fun group of players and the DM. I watched another review video where the DM said he just puts the pool room into other adventures and discards the rest of the module. And maybe that's the best way to use it: Browse through the book and maps, select a few of your favorite features, and drop them into another campaign. Your group never made it to the caverns below, so you could conceivably still take one or two ideas from there (map features, descriptions, objects, or monsters) and integrate them into another module, perhaps to replace or spice up a boring feature there. Likewise, if you see any other Basic D&D modules you don't like, you can still use ideas from them to spice up the modules you decide to use--or put them all together into a homebrew campaign. One thing I read or heard about this module is that it's designed to teach map-making skills to brand new players. This, I believe, is the reason for some of the bizarre map features your group encountered: the tiny rooms, the maze-like hallways, the teleporting rooms that make players think that a hallway disappeared, and the secret doors which make little sense. The module also looks like it has resources for an inexperienced DM for creating NPC's. However, for any other purpose, the other B-series modules are probably a lot better. B2 ("The Keep on the Borderlands") is considered a classic today, and was included instead of B1 in subsequent Basic D&D sets. However, I can imagine small parties being killed off easily in B2 because it has so many monsters to fight in each encounter. Thanks for the review. I'm a couple episodes behind on watching your B5 campaign only because I keep discovering other entertaining D&D/TTRPG channels on Twitch. But I'm looking forward to catching up soon. And whenever you finish B5, I'd like to watch your review of it, too.
Our group plan was to just run modules and I would plan out a plot thread linking everything together so I would be as seamless of a story as I can make it.
I reused some of the traps and rooms from this and mashed them with another module and made a pretty useable dungeon out of it. Love the mushroom room and left a few ways for PC's to use or be harmed by the mushrooms with a few informational clues as well. I did away with the random pool room even though that was classic old school dungeon fodder. I love the Crystal teleport. Did reuse that. Love the pickled cat. I reworked the dungeon as an old forward spy post of the country my characters are from that got shut down as the border moved further west. A rock slide has opened up the formerly well concealed entrance. After the secret border spy post was shut-down a couple hundred years ago, it was forgotten. There is a random rumour I believe that suggests you should eat a rock while in the dungeon. I didn't include eating the rock either. The trap with the iron bars is I think the first example of needing a lift gates bend bars roll. This module isn't really all that useable as is. XLII is 42. They just number their rooms like one through 50? Yikes.
As B1 is suppose to be the introductory adventure (B1=Basic 1) requiring a 'creative' DM to shine is actually a drawback here, as I covered in the video. I had to wedge into the adventure many different plothooks just to keep the PCs engaged, something a good adventure would have built in. For my money, if I have to work so hard to change a pre-written adventure to make it fun I would just rather build something from scratch, pulling out only the parts from this adventure I thought were good if I needed to.
X1 Isle of Dread was the first adventure, in fact the first of anything, to take place in Mystara. All adventures for BECMI were then retconned to take place in Mystara. B1 module specifically references Greyhawk in its text.
@@DeadUnicornClub Fair point about X1 being the first Mystara or "Known World" setting mention, I will concede that point. However the adventure is still not set in Greyhawk the part you are referring to talks about how to set it in Greyhawk if that happens to the world you are playing in, but it does not specifically say it is set in Greyhawk so it is setting neutral.
Its great to see that I'm not the only one who feels this way about this module. I've long since said that if B1 was the first module I'd ever played... It might have well been my last. It was pretty pointless and not that exciting. Also... I love the XLII reference as a big Hitchhiker's fan! Makes more sense as the answer to everything than this module makes sense for why someone should play it.
It is named, "In Search of the 'Unknown' ", after all. You can't claim false advertising on this one. It's probably why they stopped using B1 as the module included with the Holmes Basic Set, and why they switched to B2, as it was much more complete and noobie friendly. My first introduction to D&D was the Holmes Basic Set, and while it didn't come with dice, only a cardboard cutout in the back for cutting up and drawing out of a hat, it did come with the newer B2, so they had already switched from including B1 before the Red Basic Box was ever released.
I still have my copy from when I was a teen in the 20's. I never actually played it, so I was curious and wanted to watch someone else play it. That's what led me to your channel, but what keeps me there is the fun group of players and the DM.
I watched another review video where the DM said he just puts the pool room into other adventures and discards the rest of the module. And maybe that's the best way to use it: Browse through the book and maps, select a few of your favorite features, and drop them into another campaign. Your group never made it to the caverns below, so you could conceivably still take one or two ideas from there (map features, descriptions, objects, or monsters) and integrate them into another module, perhaps to replace or spice up a boring feature there. Likewise, if you see any other Basic D&D modules you don't like, you can still use ideas from them to spice up the modules you decide to use--or put them all together into a homebrew campaign.
One thing I read or heard about this module is that it's designed to teach map-making skills to brand new players. This, I believe, is the reason for some of the bizarre map features your group encountered: the tiny rooms, the maze-like hallways, the teleporting rooms that make players think that a hallway disappeared, and the secret doors which make little sense. The module also looks like it has resources for an inexperienced DM for creating NPC's.
However, for any other purpose, the other B-series modules are probably a lot better. B2 ("The Keep on the Borderlands") is considered a classic today, and was included instead of B1 in subsequent Basic D&D sets. However, I can imagine small parties being killed off easily in B2 because it has so many monsters to fight in each encounter.
Thanks for the review. I'm a couple episodes behind on watching your B5 campaign only because I keep discovering other entertaining D&D/TTRPG channels on Twitch. But I'm looking forward to catching up soon. And whenever you finish B5, I'd like to watch your review of it, too.
When the party wants to leave before ur finished you got a bummer in your hands.
Our group plan was to just run modules and I would plan out a plot thread linking everything together so I would be as seamless of a story as I can make it.
I reused some of the traps and rooms from this and mashed them with another module and made a pretty useable dungeon out of it.
Love the mushroom room and left a few ways for PC's to use or be harmed by the mushrooms with a few informational clues as well. I did away with the random pool room even though that was classic old school dungeon fodder.
I love the Crystal teleport. Did reuse that. Love the pickled cat.
I reworked the dungeon as an old forward spy post of the country my characters are from that got shut down as the border moved further west. A rock slide has opened up the formerly well concealed entrance. After the secret border spy post was shut-down a couple hundred years ago, it was forgotten.
There is a random rumour I believe that suggests you should eat a rock while in the dungeon. I didn't include eating the rock either. The trap with the iron bars is I think the first example of needing a lift gates bend bars roll.
This module isn't really all that useable as is.
XLII is 42. They just number their rooms like one through 50? Yikes.
I actually love the art and style of it.
As a foundation to build on, B1 has a lot going for it, but it requires a creative DM to shine. You might be interested in the free B1 sourcebook.
As B1 is suppose to be the introductory adventure (B1=Basic 1) requiring a 'creative' DM to shine is actually a drawback here, as I covered in the video. I had to wedge into the adventure many different plothooks just to keep the PCs engaged, something a good adventure would have built in. For my money, if I have to work so hard to change a pre-written adventure to make it fun I would just rather build something from scratch, pulling out only the parts from this adventure I thought were good if I needed to.
Just to point out one minor mistake in the video. B1 is set in Mystara not Greyhawk.
X1 Isle of Dread was the first adventure, in fact the first of anything, to take place in Mystara. All adventures for BECMI were then retconned to take place in Mystara. B1 module specifically references Greyhawk in its text.
@@DeadUnicornClub Fair point about X1 being the first Mystara or "Known World" setting mention, I will concede that point. However the adventure is still not set in Greyhawk the part you are referring to talks about how to set it in Greyhawk if that happens to the world you are playing in, but it does not specifically say it is set in Greyhawk so it is setting neutral.
Its great to see that I'm not the only one who feels this way about this module. I've long since said that if B1 was the first module I'd ever played... It might have well been my last. It was pretty pointless and not that exciting.
Also... I love the XLII reference as a big Hitchhiker's fan! Makes more sense as the answer to everything than this module makes sense for why someone should play it.
It is named, "In Search of the 'Unknown' ", after all. You can't claim false advertising on this one. It's probably why they stopped using B1 as the module included with the Holmes Basic Set, and why they switched to B2, as it was much more complete and noobie friendly. My first introduction to D&D was the Holmes Basic Set, and while it didn't come with dice, only a cardboard cutout in the back for cutting up and drawing out of a hat, it did come with the newer B2, so they had already switched from including B1 before the Red Basic Box was ever released.
Yeah B1 was a mess. B2 was a much better introduction to the game.
Thank you for the honesty. Gygax isn't the greatest writer or a good one.
B1 was written by Mike Carr.