1. A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords (1981)
Tops in my book because it's a city adventure in a dungeon sandwich!
The Slavers modules follow a pattern from A1 to A3 of escalating hit dice -- with orcs being the main enemies in A1, hobgoblins in A2, and gnolls in A3. A1 and A2 do a better job at presenting an ecology for their monsters. You don't get a good sense for how the gnolls live in A3, but you do get a sense that they are just slaves guarding the salt mine, easily fooled into thinking they are working for their own demon-god. I had originally thought the dungeon was just okay, but I ran the module again recently and the dungeon encounters stay really interesting and challenging throughout.
Suderham is tons of fun -- I love running the city section because it's so nasty and awful and that means it's full of more fun things to do than most city adventures have. You can do it the "right" way and follow the clues for an adventure in intrigue, or you can do it my wife's way and lay siege to the Slave Lords' citadel directly! It's a challenging, but winnable fight to get into the sewers without needing to solve how to get there.
And that final battle -- so epic! I've never seen the Slave Lords actually win it, but it's come close. This is, for me, the perfect combination of tournament-style dungeon crawl and campaign-level intrigue -- with beautiful Jeff Dee artwork!
2. S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1982)
For a long time, I considered this the top module, as it seemed like the perfect blend of home base, wilderness adventure, and dungeon, with even a whiff of political background and a firm grounding in the World of Greyhawk campaign setting. However...
A few years back I ran this and was disappointed that it had not aged better. The home base seemed "exotic" then, but it's hard to imagine a gnome warren being very exciting today.
Some of the wilderness encounters are fun, and I had fun developing stories for how all those war bands were hunting for each other and why, but there is an awful big chance of getting lost for too long in the wilderness and really throwing off the momentum of the adventure.
The dungeon reads really well, with an "exotic" Arabian theme, planar gates, and a host of new monsters. But it's also super random; this is Old School tournament module style where each room typically has one monster in it waiting to be killed, with no ability or desire to team up with its neighbors. Of course, you could do this yourself, like how I made up backstories for the war bands, but I made the mistake of running the dungeon as-is and the game suffered for it. And that final battle...it should be so cool, but it always disappointed and wound up being anti-climactic.
But, on the other hand, you also got a big, fat preview of the Monster Manual II that came with this module, with even better art than the MMII came with (this was back in the days before TSR had to reuse all their old artwork to pinch pennies). So this module still ranks very high because of its groundbreaking combination of wilderness and dungeon, groundbreaking packaging (including its own "monsters & treasure supplement"), and gorgeous artwork of consistent quality from Jim Holloway, Erol Otus, Jeff Easley, and Stephen D. Sullivan.
3. T1 Village of Hommlet (1979)
One of my friends once, perhaps jokingly, called this "the module where you're supposed to kill and loot from farmers." And while you could play it that way (and, in fact, the module is almost written as if daring you to do so), this module was groundbreaking as presenting the first realistic mini-campaign setting for D&D. Lots of adventures have you saving the day; these farmers are the people you're saving the day for.
As set-up, you're supposed to arrive in Hommlet dirt poor and badly in need of supplies. If you run it that way, you have a perfect excuse for the characters to spend time interacting with the locals, maybe run some quests for them or otherwise work for them to save up for better equipment. It's also assumed that you're playing with a small party that needs to hire henchmen, because the village is full of potential ones, all with their own agendas.
And on top of that, the obligatory dungeon near the village is pretty good too. The moathouse is iconic for a lot of things, including its layout, some of the more distinctive encounters (like the ogre with his fleshed out prisoners) and its very dangerous end boss battle (better level up before facing Lareth!).
Perhaps most importantly, module T1 infamously teased a sequel module that we had to wait six years for back in the day. Hommlet and its moathouse not only tied into the Temple of Elemental Evil but, by extension, tied very deeply into the World of Greyhawk campaign setting.
4. EX1 Dungeonland (1983)
Now, I have never run Dungeonland in a campaign (I very seldom run high level campaigns), but as a one-shot adventure Dungeonland can hardly be beat. The opportunities for hilarious role-playing are almost endless. I have run Dungeonland many times in the past and we always had a great time with it. That many of the encounters are equally solvable by both role-playing and combat shows great flexibility rarely seen in modules this early.
Not only a fun adventure, but one of the first that had a plot that included scenes and not just encounter areas. The plot is no stranger, of course, to anyone who's read Alice in Wonderland, so it's not too big a spoiler to say that following the knave is important and ending the module requires some tweaking if the players don't.
Module S4 had a final boss battle, but this is the first module with a final boss battle (and well before these would become common video game staples) that is truly on a grand scale and really challenging.
5. I6 Ravenloft (1983)
Gygax’s flavor text had brought mood to the setting before, but never in the way that Ravenloft just dripped with Gothic flavor. Tracy and Laura Hickman's masterpiece really changed the game on how modules would look and feel from this moment onward. The 3-D map is a real treasure, and created sea change in dungeon mapping to isometric maps.
While other modules had plots going on behind the scenes, or before the characters arrive, Ravenloft has a plot that unfolds during game play, and can be different every time the module is run. Like EX1, Ravenloft has set scenes that are meant to take place (like first encountering Strahd at his organ), but none of them are forced and the game can continue if the players miss them.
Although filled with gothic horror cliches, the characters in Ravenloft come alive in the hands of even a moderately good DM. Strahd von Zarovich was a character who felt so real, I assumed back then that he was a character from literature (and was him for Halloween one year!).
Ravenloft was the first module that read better than it played, and the problem with that is that PCs of up to 7th level have access to way too much destructive magic that can destroy that beautiful castle. Indeed, a sorcerer with a wand of fire could torch the whole castle in a few turns and send the vampires scurrying for cover. And yet, if your characters are too much lower in level, they can't stand up to the vampires at all. It's a delicate balance, making sure your players' characters are just right for this adventure.
The Ravenloft boxed set would try to fix this years later by making the really good spells "evil" and corrupt you.
But you're probably better off running this as a one-off scenario anyway -- who wants their campaign characters facing the risk of that much energy draining?
6. B5 Horror on the Hill (1983)
A great combination of wilderness and dungeon. The hill itself has such a variety of encounters on it that it is practically a complete adventure without ever reaching the monastery. It's the monastery and its dungeon levels that really make this module, though. Each dungeon level has a unique identity. I've run this module many times in the past and it always went well. If the module had not glossed over a "home base" -- Guido's Fort is just a name and we know it's nearby, but know nothing else about it -- this module could have scored even higher for me.
7. G2 Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl (1978)
The first dungeon that really used the environment itself against the PCs. Never mind the frost giants -- just watch out for the icy ledges! From waves of frost giants to falling ice to just plain falling damage, this is a really dangerous scenario, with a such variety of challenges, but just plays really well and is fun to play too.
8. B4 The Lost City (1982)
The first indoor sandbox campaign? Lost City’s strengths are its size and its competing factions. Played as-is, by B/X rules, it is insanely dangerous, particularly if you don't have strong support from one of the factions helping the PCs by giving them safe places to rest and food to eat. It is a wonderfully imagined setting, using the step pyramid to illustrate the concept of each level of the dungeon being bigger (both physically, but also in terms of risks and rewards) than the ones above it. Its weakness is its implausible ecology (of course, most dungeons didn't make sense back then), but it remains fun to play.
9. T2-4 Temple of Elemental Evil (1985)
The first “super”-module. The Temple was just amazingly big! There are opportunities for role-playing, interacting with competing factions, and even planar exploration -- but these factors are clearly subordinate to hack n' slash as written.
ToEE has some very Old School qualities to it that don't always hold up well. There is a lot of empty space in the dungeon, as most Old School dungeons had, but the empty space is all top-loaded. You can have an entire first session of going through nothing but empty rooms (this happened to me once), and then every session after that is packed with encounters. Like B4, there is no thought given to how all these people live together in these confined spaces. None of these problems aren't fixable, of course. You can add more encounter areas on your own, or move them around to spread them out. You can add a labor force that goes down into the temple and feeds the occupants. For elevating the scope of what a module can contain, ToEE just had to stay high on this list.
10. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (1981)
The fact that the dungeon doesn’t seem to fit inside a palace only adds to the weirdness that pervades this module. Combine the Moldvay rewrite with the original Wells version and you get a remarkably weird adventure -- with an interesting setting outside, and a very dangerous indoor palace that has been twisted and distorted by evil magic. It is one of the earliest plot-heavy modules, with a very specific goal, but never fails to entertain.
11. X4 Master of the Desert Nomads (1983)
A great, story-driven wilderness adventure. In fact, I consider it the wilderness adventure, with an army all around that is too powerful to directly confront, so the party has to navigate around it ...kind of like they were navigating a dungeon. The actual dungeon at the end is practically an afterthought.
12. B2 Keep on the Borderlands (1981)
Ninety percent of the dungeon is generic as can be, but this is still the quintessential mix of village, wilderness, and dungeon served as a self-contained universe for a mini-campaign.
13. A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade (1981)
One of the earliest dungeons that made sense, the Stockade is an early masterpiece of dungeon ecology. At the same time, fighting hobgoblins over and over did get old after awhile.
14. EX2 Land Beyond the Magic Mirror (1983)
Not as much fun as its predecessor, but the second “Dungeonland” module was still a treat and for much the same reasons. Not just a scenario, but a mini-campaign setting, if your characters wish to stick around...
15. G1 Steading of the Hill Giant Chief (1978)
One of the first early dungeons to imply that monsters were not static, but ate, slept, etc. Though a cake-walk for the party levels recommended, it is a good adventure for mid-level characters.
16. DL1 Dragons of Despair (1984)
An epic first try, with mixed results, at trying to cram a huge campaign setting into one module. The maps are neat, the dungeon has its moments, and draconians are, well, cool.
17. “Baba Yaga’s Dancing Hut” (Dragon, 1983)
Roger Moore's answer to every player who wrote Dragon magazine demanding tougher dungeons. This menagerie of every tough monster there was in the rule books circa 1983 was designed as a meatgrinder for hack n' slash characters. I always wanted to use it.
18. UK6 All That Glitters… (1984)
A treasure map, a plot that tied the dungeon settings together, and exotic locales across the World of Greyhawk (though altered in names). This was dungeon crawling meets pulp adventure.
19. “The Twofold Talisman: Part 1″ (Dragon, 1983)
A fun, funny little gem from Dragon magazine that I had a great time with back then.
20. “Citadel by the Sea” (Dragon, 1982)
Good dungeon design (possibly the first where it mattered how pure the dungeon air was) and an interesting plot has brought me back to this adventure time and time again, but this is a scenario that needs a "home base" for characters and, curiously, at no time that I've run it has any group ever finished it.
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