Customer Reviews

Descent into the Depths of the Earth (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Module D1-2)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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In the "D" series (which followed the very-similar "G," or Giants, series of adventures), the player characters (who have to be very powerful to have any chance of surviving) spend months in a vast land of caves tens of miles wide, fighting the Drow (a race of evil elves) and their various minions--troglodytes, bugbears, and the like. D2 introduces another evil nemesis, the fishlike kuo-toa. These adventures are fascinating for their relative complexity (a D&D group could meet once a week for three hours and still be working on these modules after six months on that schedule) and for the flexibility that they give the DM to flesh out the situations. The main negative is that not enough creativity was put into the problems facing the players--the modules seem to encourage the combat/heal/combat/heal pointlessness that D&D can become at its worst. (Contrast this with a module like C2, the Shrine of Tamoachan, which seems to require a decision of some kind in virtually every room!) My suggestion for the DM would be to buy the module and then add his or her creativity to it in order to give the players a chance to use their cleverness and skills, instead of just using their battle axes.

I think Against the Giants was my personal all time favorite to play through, but once we got to this series, things got far more complex and a lot more dangerous. My level 13 Ranger had to be raised several times, and by the time we got to the Queen of the Demonwebs, his Con had dropped from 16 to 11.
anyway, that was as a kid. I bought this right after playing through it, and still remember sitting up at night dreaming up ways new ways to approach it as a DM. Later, i played through it again as a tie in to the "Hordes of the Underdark", which was by far the most awesome campaign i ever played in.
So, i decided last summer to start buying these old modules again, and this was one of the one's i made sure to acquire. There is a greatness in the writing and the adventure that just cant be forgotten.

Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth was originally released in 1978 as a totally independent, separate module and the first of the D series of modules. That same year, Shrine Of The Kuo-Toa was also released as the second of the D series of modules. The third and final D series module was Vault Of The Drow, also released in 1978. The module I'm reviewing is a module called Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth (1981), which combines the previously released independent modules Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth and Shrine Of The Kuo-Toa from 1978, the first two of three D series modules.

When I got this module in 1981, I was wondering why it was so thick (32 pages). Well, I later realized that it's thick because it's two previously released modules combined, as described above. When I was getting ready to go through the module for the first time, I remember being a little intimidated by it. The module is for character levels 9-14. I remember being maybe a level 8, but I still wanted to go through it. Big mistake. I got clobbered. This is an underground adventure into the world of dark elves (the drow). You'll explore a dangerous area of underground caverns, caves, and passages called the Underdark. The goal is to eliminate these dark elves. Nearly every creature in this underworld is hostile. There is virtually no light and there are hazards everywhere. You'll also meet the kuo-toa, a group of fish-headed humanoids, not to mention lots of other classic D & D monsters.

If you want to go through one of the all-time classic AD&D modules, this compilation module is a great choice.