Immortal-Level D&D Adventures?

August 11, 2007 7:29 PM

Can you recommend any epic-level D&D-style adventures that might still be available? I'm looking for what used to be called "Immortal Level" adventures, stories including flight, multiple continents, other dimensions, astral realms and travel, wars directed over whole realms, floating cities, ancient beings, gods, that kind of stuff.

Anyone have any old favorites they'd like to recommend? I remember seeing the cover of one D&D adventure that had a spiral staircase that you could travel up or down and on each level was a different world. I'm looking for ideas in that kind of thing. This doesn't have to be "D&D" by the way, since I won't play these adventures, I'm more just interested in what writers and gamemakers have come up with for challenges when the players have achieved god-like status. Any game modules or books I sohuld check out?

posted by wavejumper to sports, hobbies, & recreation (9 comments total)

I'm more just interested in what writers and gamemakers have come up with for challenges when the players have achieved god-like status.

You may be interested in The Primal Order, a pretty good system for handling players who are deities. Alas, last I checked it was out of print — Wizards of the Coast was publishing it, and it went out the window when M:tG started looking like the Next Big Thing.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:51 PM on August 11, 2007

Have you looked at Amber? The characters in there are god-like if not outright gods. You start the game being able to travel between worlds and accomplish other fantastic feats. It's out of print, but I would be surprised if you couldn't find a copy at a local gaming store.
posted by oddman at 8:40 PM on August 11, 2007

Wow. I don't think I would ever hear of someone who actually knows about the Amber DRPG.

Read Roger Zelazny's Chronicals of Amber, which the DRPG is based.

I haven't played the tabletop, but I've heard really cool things about it.
posted by sethwoodworth at 9:55 PM on August 11, 2007

Cool, guys. Yet, I'm looking for adventure modules / stories, not systems. Any other suggestions?
posted by wavejumper at 10:46 PM on August 11, 2007

This thread on the d20-dedicated EN World messageboard lists some, along with discussion of why there aren't more out there.

When it comes to current, published adventures, the only two appear to be Hellstone Deep and Bastion of Broken Souls, along with a few that were in Dungeon Magazine- one that was in Dungeon #123, Quicksilver Hourglass, is apparently for 30th level characters.
posted by a louis wain cat at 1:59 AM on August 12, 2007

The extremely old-school G-D-Q series of adventures ended up with characters at a very high level. Much of Q1 was pretty freeform, with characters doing open-ended and high-level stuff. It was only rated as lvls 10-14, but it seemed like you needed more.
posted by GuyZero at 5:29 AM on August 12, 2007

Also, you may be thinking of module CM8, The Endless Stair.
posted by GuyZero at 5:31 AM on August 12, 2007

Amber is largely intended for PvP political roleplaying, and works best in that context. Often that sort of game is the easiest to GM, as players come up with more than enough to keep each other amused, and the GM can sit back and enjoy the fun a bit more. :)

A good friend of mine gave me some very good advice about modules: read them thoroughly once, re-read the plot twists and the parts that strike you as cool ideas, make some notes, copy the stat blocks and maps (for combats) and pictures (for handouts), then put the module away, and run the game without it. Chances are it will work better, not least because you "give yourself permission" to simply make up details on the fly rather than rummaging through the book in search of some tiny detail that's probably irrelevant anyway.

Good DMs shamelessly plagiarize. Change the names and locations, and make it fit your campaign, and you don't even need to stay in the same genre. The superhero genre is a good source of inspiration for high-level fantasy; much like a Justice League, the PCs are household names, respected and looked up to (assuming they are heroes) by the common folk, a source of political tension to both their own nominal rulers and the rulers of enemy nations. They are capable of the kind of feats that superheroes perform: instant travel around the world, nation-altering magics, fighting vast and terrible armies from the realms below the world, etc etc.

I strongly recommend this story from enworld's Story Hour, the "Lady Despina's Virtue" series - it's a very, very good write-up of an excellent high-level D&D campaign that largely revolves around cosmological and philosophical perspectives, rather than conventional politics.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 11:14 PM on August 12, 2007

There were the original Immortal-level adventures for the D&D system:

• The Immortal Storm [IM1]
• The Wrath of Olympus [IM2]
• The Best of Intentions [IM3]

posted by Chrysostom at 7:44 AM on August 13, 2007