I played Quagmire in the 80s. I liked the sunken city and rhino hunting. The adventure gave me a love of lizard men, which I immediately wanted to play - and soon got to! As a DM a decade ago, I recognized the slog and only ran the best parts.

Quagmire is one of my favourites! The Sunken City, Lizardmen. My players enjoyed this one!

I’ve heard both negative and positive things about this module. I enjoy wilderness exploration-type adventures, especially ones set in swamps, and there are very few Expert adventures of this kind, so I bought it and I’m looking forward to DMing it.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Have you ran X-9 Savage Coast? It is another wilderness adventure. I prefer it to quagmire.

I've owned this module for decades. I've played it once and DM'd it exactly twice. I ultimately found that I had to do too much doctoring and railroading to keep it interesting though so I started harvesting parts of it for use in my homebrew campaigns (all in Mystara). There are a few nice gems if you read it through.

I have not GMed Quagmire, and I admit that I just only skimmed through it. The feeling I get is that the cities themselves are very half-baked, with most of the attention of the module on the travel part. Basically, they wrote the travel part and then realized that they were running out of time and pages, and threw the rest together in a hurry. No doubt it can be mined for good ideas, but yeah, it needs more fleshing out. That being said, Journey to the Rock holds a special dislike for me, and I think I would prefer this module to that one. At least here there seems to be good ideas that can be developed further. But yeah, the escort mission should be at least ten times as many people (so 420, if not more), and the travel to the new city should be the important travel part, not the getting to Quagmire. Add some interesting NPCs and interpersonal drama and it might be very fun to play.

@Mr_Welch

Ай бұрын

The fix for that module is to just run all three paths back to back to back. It doesn't save it from being a bad module but at least it gives the party more to do

@anarionelendili8961

Ай бұрын

@@Mr_Welch Agreed. It still leaves the Rock itself very underwhelming.

Building a giant spire in a swamp feels like a bad idea no matter what else is going on.

@john-lenin

Ай бұрын

"Everyone said I was daft to build a spire on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up."

@singledad1313

11 күн бұрын

If the spire is built on pilings that go down to bedrock it wouldn't be an issue.

@jonothanthrace1530

11 күн бұрын

@@singledad1313 Now I'm wondering how many wizards that took and how much they charged.

I think a series of 'worst ever modules' sounds like a fun idea - but, like all 'knowingly ironic humour' the joke would wear thin rather quickly. Then you'd be left with just some bad modules.

I never went into modules, but I've heard that CM8, The Endless Stair, was the worst!

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

I never heard of this module. But I want to check it out now!

@TheDungeonMinister

Ай бұрын

@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler The concept sounds good, but the structure of it - a staircase rising into the sky - means it's the ultimate railroad. The cover art is also awful. I gather it was one of the big three 80's TSR artists, but whoever it was was rushed and didn't like the result, so gave it the default "I don't like how it turned out" fake name attribution.

@Mr_Welch

Ай бұрын

You are correct. I have reviewed it it is awful. It's pretty much a walking simulator with no monsters. And worse it's by Ed greenwood. I hope you like boxed text.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

@Mr_Welch OK. I watched your video and it sounds horrible. Back then I had to save up to by modules. I'm so glad I skipped this one.

@SimonAshworthWood

Ай бұрын

@@Mr_Welchboxed text is useful for those of us who are busy with things in life other than RPGs. We don’t have time to devote to working out how to translate unboxed text into a blurb to say to players.

1 gp to cross a river may be affordable to adventurers, maybe, but comparing it to average prices for lodging and food, it does seem very overpriced.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Your right. But I admire the hustle!

I remember reading a blog post about this module which claimed there was a lot of Executive Meddling with it. Sounds as if there was a germ of a good idea here, but it got ruined in the edit. And of course it all got ret-conned a few years later by the Princess Ark!

DMing in the 80s I picked this one up. After reading thru, I determined never ever to run it. So boring. Lost City, Castle Amber, Horror on the Hill, Ravenloft, now those were adventures.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Those are some great adventures. Lost city is my all time favorite.

I'm unfamiliar with this one in particular, but I am very familiar with the absurd logistic elements in a lot of BECMI and AD&D modules... How were like 42 people holding out against 600 lizardmen? That's wild to me🤣 It sounds like one writer wanted to make a sandbox and somebody over their head said: "no it needs a linear plot, and the deadline is 3 days from yesterday btw"

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Great comment. I would definitely like to know the story on how this module was created.

I loved this module, one of the first i ever bought. Sorry it didn’t work for you :-(

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

No I am sorry. I tried not to bash it and I talked about things I liked about it.

It needed work but Quagmire was ok. Journey to the Rock and The Endless Stair were simply awful as I recall.

Modules should be good by themselves. You pay the designer for ideas you couldn't think by yourself and guidelines to make it fun. I can fill blank spaces in a map, and run generic monsters that fight until kill by myself. Most BECMI adventures understood this and went hard on page optimization, factions, new monsters, and maps. So, no "Any good DM can make it work" doesn't work here.

Agreed. I own this, read through it back in the day and never played it. Zero loot and a lot of boring encounters. Replayed Castle Amber or Drums on Fire Mountain instead.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

10 күн бұрын

Castle Amber was a classic. I played drums of fire mountain but I don't really remember too much of it. I'll check it out again.

This is one of the few BECMI modules I never owned, ran, or played. Too bad I don't have a copy, it looks like it would be fun. The three cities being essentially the same map are no big deal in my mind. It's not like the players are going to be making detailed maps or notes on each location.

It was kind of meh.... Today I can appreciate the potential but it would need a lot of work to make it more engaging. That means expanding the cities and the population, creating interesting NPCs. Maybe come up with an infamous pirate ship in the area. But back in the 80s I mostly played adventures as written. And there is not too much to gain there that way.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

I totally agree with you. I like the infamous pirate idea.

Giggedy

@takanobaierun

Ай бұрын

Had to scroll to long for that!

I don't like tropical adventures because everyone should just die of malaria or yellow fever. Plate & padded armor is too hot and heavy for the tropics, but who cares about dehydration, right? I was totally unfamiliar with X6 before watching our review, but you made it sound like a gem in the rough. You compared it to some real classic pioneering adventure modules. I think it is now more recognized this stuff is really hard to write and needs review, play-testing, and editing.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Great comment! I totally agree with you.

@jamesnell1999

Ай бұрын

@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler 🙂

I had planned to run this, but the other dm decided to jump settings as he couldn't keep what little of his campaign straight because of his critical role obsession. Shame really his original campaign was miles better, but he genuinely was incapable of running even the one shots his campaign had devolved into.

Sounds cool but poorly executed. Just from what you reviewed I could make a fun adventure out of it. Maybe 10 sessions, levels 3-6

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

Ya. It's just low effort rather than really bad. But I bet you can fix it up!

Quagmire is the worst module lol, for years my friends would say Quest for the Heartstone was the worst, but that's only cause of it's very railroady nature, I actually love that adventure.... but yeah Quagmire is the worst i think.

@RichardtheDungeonCrawler

Ай бұрын

I was disappointed in Quest of the Heartstone. Did you have those figures. I wanted war Duke so bad.

@Sesheyan101

Ай бұрын

@@RichardtheDungeonCrawler No I didn't have the figures, but my DM has them so I get to check them out haha

"My name is Richard - and I'm the Dungeon Crawler" - or "I'm Richard, the Dungeon Crawler."