Has anyone played the The Bloodstone Quartet modules? I think they are 2nd ed. I heard they were grueling and hard, and I think a huge chunk of it takes place in the abyss. Does anyone have any info. The Bloodstone Quartet seemed very interesting, and I would love to know more about it and get my hands on it. Hopefully i will be able to convert it to 3.5.
Fizz
Yes! and no... how's that for an answer? ;-)
Back around 1985, TSR released a product called the "Battle System". It was intended to be a "mass combat" system for AD&D. In hindsight, it was more like the ancestor of what would eventually evolve into "the D&D miniatures game". Only each counter (it used cardboard counters instead of miniatures) represented more than one creature (as many as 10 or 100, for example).
Anyway - to market these new rules, TSR put out a line of modules designed to use them: thus was born the H series!
(note that some of the original DragonLance modules also had optional BattleSystem rules scenarios as well).
There were multiple places were players needed to negotiate with large groups of creatures, in an attempt to make allies and raise armies to go into battle with them. You could, of course, attempt to hand-wave the battles away - but that was kind of the whole point, you know? But those battles could take a realllly long time to play.
In the end, the heroes do wind up going into the Abyss to confront Orcus himself! The cover of H4 says "for levels up to 100"! In another bizzare twist - this last one was also marketed as a Forgotten Realms module - even though originally the adventure was not set in the realms at all. But FR was getting popular, so they decided to merge it on over (to increase sales, maybe?) This later got followed up by a product called "Bloodstone Lands" - an attempt to make the area a mini campaign setting... and R.A.Salvatore's recent "sellswords trilogy" is set in this same region.
In recent years, all the H series modules have drawn high prices on Ebay - but it's not clear why, because a) they aren't really "rare", and b) they weren't really that good, and c) they're hard to play without also getting the Battlesystem, etc.
My advice would be to get the PDF versions, if possible, and use the 'Heroes of Battle' book to adapt the mass combat rules to something more playable by non-hardcore miniature wargamers.
Or - Malhavok Press put out a book called "Cry Havok" that was like mass combat rules for 3rd edition. That would be a good Battlesystem substitute.
Either way - you'll have lots of work to do with the conversion, but I think it would be worth the effort.
Good luck!
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*wrote something much better than what I was writing*
I'll second all of that. The Bloodstone battlesystem module was actually pretty cool, but the adventures dragged on and on and on... We never finished the campaign, and I would not recommend investing the time and effort it would require to convert them to 3.x.
I think the Bloodtone campaign was set in the mountains of the Vaasa region - of course, everything in FR happened in the general Moonsea area those days...
I was looking for more of an adventure type thing, not really a mass battle thing. I read the sellsword trilogy a while back, and something sparked in me today to look up the setting. I had read that it was hard and be ready to die during the adventure. I also read you need to be high level and deck out in magical items to even survive. I guess the mass battle thing does change things a bit. I would still like to do something along the story line maybe with some mass battle. I would appreciate any help or ideas anybody has.
Fizz
P.S. I guess the to level 100 thing explains why the characters from the bloodstone lands in the sellsword trilogy basically treated the main characters which are 20th to 25th lv like children that would just get hurt.
IIRC, the first of the four adventures was a pure Battlesystem scenario, the other adventures had few or no scenarios.
The adventures were so-so - in one of the earlier ones, they had to fight a lich in his tower, which was a nice setup, but later in the abyss, the had to fight through a whole city of liches. The liches were not detailed at all, and were just the toughest undead monsters available. And there was an abyssal red dragon with up to 1000 hp (for the level 100 version) - mind you, these adventures were 1st ed, where a red dragon in the RAW could have 88 hp at most.
In general, I think these adventures show pretty clearly that the systems falls apart at the highest levels - challenges are often of the "save or die" type, or as with the liches, ridiculous.
It had some nice ideas for the abyss, IIRC. But today, its nothing new anymore.
Stefan
Now perhaps I'm just old fashioned, but I loved the Bloodstone modules. I converted H2, H3, and H4 to 3rd Edition (non-3.5) and ran characters that were close to 10 years old through them. I skipped H1 entirely due to my players' lack of interest in mass combat, but H3 had some nice military-ish maneuvering between the Witch King's forces and the forces of Damara.
Also H4 (though it did have its flaws - such as the city of liches) contained my absolute favorite scene in gaming of all time. There were a total of twelve 17+ level characters who assaulted the palace of Orcus in a desperate gamble to steal the Wand of Orcus. While they managed to do just that, many characters fell in battle, including a one-armed man who became king of the dwarves (Axe of the Dwarvish Lords). The ramifications of this event are still being felt in my epic campaign, and we played four years ago. Freakin' awesome is what I say to that.
H4 was agonizing. It ranks up there in my mind with the joke module "Castle Greyhawk" for the worst modules of all time. It's the worst aspects of the planes in 1e all bottled up and combined in one goofy giant dungeon crawl.
I cannot take something seriously that even if I claw my eyes out at the over-the-top hokey artwork the module still contains a pot-bellied, chain smoking celestial (St. Sollars) who talks in a syrup-thick texas accent.
It's unrecoverable.
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H4 was agonizing. It ranks up there in my mind with the joke module "Castle Greyhawk" for the worst modules of all time. It's the worst aspects of the planes in 1e all bottled up and combined in one goofy giant dungeon crawl.
I cannot take something seriously that even if I claw my eyes out at the over-the-top hokey artwork the module still contains a pot-bellied, chain smoking celestial (St. Sollars) who talks in a syrup-thick texas accent.
It's unrecoverable.
I have to disagree. I have mentioned on these boards before; H1-4 are my favorite modules of all time. I am currently running my group through a 3.5 conversion of them that I did myself. I have totally glossed over the mass battles, because my group has no interest in a "Warhammer"-type campaign. Instead I write the battles up in story form that I have the players read aloud at the appointed time. I also determine a series of variables that allow the players to have some control over the outcome of each scenario. We are going to resolve the post H2, pre H3 events through a series of emails between games. I'm still not sure if a 20th level 3.5 edition group of seven has a chance in heck against a encounter with 100 glabrezu led by a balor general though!
I'm also not sure if you realize it, but the chain smoking celestial is a poke at Gary Gygax (at least that is what I have heard). I have always found that to be particularly rich.
The modules are definitely geared towards devious DM's rather than players; perhaps that is their greatest flaw. Then again, I am also deeply enamored with Rappan Athuk and The Ravager of Time modules!
Has anyone played the The Bloodstone Quartet modules? I think they are 2nd ed. I heard they were grueling and hard, and I think a huge chunk of it takes place in the abyss. Does anyone have any info. The Bloodstone Quartet seemed very interesting, and I would love to know more about it and get my hands on it. Hopefully i will be able to convert it to 3.5.
I own them.
They had their flaws, but at the time they were innovative, ground-breaking modules; the whole premise was for the PCs to save, then rule a small barony, and eventually a kingdom. H1 was designed around the Battlesystem mass combat rules, but also was specifically set up to engage the party with non-combat/non-dungeon interaction (instead of leaving "the rest of the world and how the PCs fit into it" up to the DM to design/populate). It was loosely set in Oerth, but by default almost everything was set in Oerth when it was published; apart from the "Circus of Doctor Trundles" mention, there is nothing tying it to any specific world or setting. H2 was the first module designed to use the expanded rules in Unearthed Arcana (1st Ed), Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, and Wilderness Survival Guide. H3 was primarily mass combat, but there were also plenty of intrigue and negotiation aspects (plus a very deadly trap-filled dungeon). It was also around this time that Damara and Vaasa were added to the Forgotten Realms. H4 was the first "Epic" adventure (although they didn't use the term at the time) and used many of the rules from The Manual of the Planes (1st Ed).
Now, a lot of what was introduced in this series are old hat and the execution of several parts was flawed by the limitations of the 1st Ed rules. However, the basic structure is still sound and can make a great way to "finish" a campaign.
Also - the first module (H1) featured a traveling circus (of course, all the circus animals are monsters!) - and of course, they all escape and run amok through the city. There's a scene in Age of Worms where a chimera gets loose in GreyHawk - I definitely had flash-backs to H1 when this happened.
Later, an evil cleric starts raising undead in the local graveyard. So you have a virtual army of skeletons/zombies running loose in the streets killing the locals, and the PCs have to fight their way through this hoard in order to get to the cleric and put an end to the attack.
So, while it may take some work to update/adapt/convert, I think there are still lots of good, salvagable ideas to use in a game today using the latest rules set.
Honestly, you're probably better off buying the .pdf versions of the Kingmaker AP and running them with the updated Kingdoms and War rules in Ultimate Campaign at this point.
Pathfinder is close enough to 3.5 that the conversions are fairly straightforward, while 1st Ed AD&D is substantially different.
I also owned the Bloodstone Pass series, and have run it several time for my circle of players in different editions. 2e, 3.0e, 3.5e. I liked it a lot, tho admittedly as DM i changed up the most glaring holes and problems in the 4th. I also had revamped the 3e battlesystem rules into a homebrew variant that my players enjoyed.
The 3e and 3.5e conversions were basically rebuilding everything with class levels which is a lot of work. If you arent willing to put that much work in, i second the suggestion of looking into Kingmaker. (I'm currently in the middle of an expanded playthrough of that and having a blast)
deep necro
did anyone have have the 3.x/PF1e conversion that'd be available for others? it must have been a ton of work, why not share it?