Friday, December 3, 2010

The Evil Temple of Fraz-Urb'luu

Back in '83, as a fledgling DM, I decided to kick off my first campaign.

Queston.

If you own (and 66 people do!  Thanks so much!) my "Wilderness Alphabet" then you'll have read a few of my references to this campaign and this campaign world.  It's still my dream to write it up and put out a book a'la the Arduin Grimoires...

I started off by drawing outdoor maps on that 11x17 hexpaper TSR used to sell (I hope to find and scan those someday...) and eventually I started writing adventures.

"The Evil Temple of Fraz-Urb'luu" was my very first.

Its obvious that I was influenced (early on) by the concept of "module".  It's got maps and very complete descriptions for each room.  I'm ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE that the thing was COMPLETELY WRITTEN UP before play began.  I did improvise some during play and it's these bits that I remember best.  It was in a ring binder originally, but now it's in a red paper three-hole folder.  I probably moved it into the folder soon after play concluded (for safe keeping!)

For the next few weeks, I'm going to go through this module in a series of posts.  Little by little, I'll document my rememberings and thoughts about the adventure.  I'll put up some scans of the maps and the room descriptions.  Eventually, I'll post the whole thing so you can see it in one piece.

Maybe you'll even want to use it in your campaign somewhere!  :)

6 comments:

James said...

Groovy! I wish I had my ancient DMing notes. Alas, very little has survived the years.

Sean Robson said...

Cool! I love seeing peoples old adventures, maps, and notes from when they were kids. They have such a freshness that is hard to come by some thirty years later - I find them inspiring. I sure wish I still had some of my old adventures and dungeons.

scottsz said...

This rocks.

Matthew Schmeer said...

Oh man, this series of posts is great! ()I backtracked here to make my comment.) I hope when you are done, you'll PDF-erize them for us.

Jim said...

@Matthew -- when the posts are done, I'll be putting the PDF in my files section. I hope everyone enjoy's the posts. :)

Martin R. Thomas said...

Hey @Jim - thanks for posting the link to your Queston stuff on my blog. It's been a great read! Your first module was way more complete and thorough than the one my game group made all those years ago.

I've been having a blast going through all of my old game stuff. I never throw anything away, pretty much, so I have it all, including scraps of old homework assignments on the back of which my friend and I were playing a D&D game in class. He was the DM and would write on the back of the homework sheet, "You see a statue. It comes to life and attacks you! What do you do?" and then I would have to decide if I run or attack it or whatever, and right back. We'd just hand the paper back and forth during class when the teacher wasn't looking. I can't believe I kept all that stuff, but I just put it all in my gaming folders and kept carting it around every time I moved.

Cheers!