Module Reviews?

[Greg M.]

Own-up time: back in my sadly truncated TORG-running days, I never once used any of the official modules or adventure collections. The reason for this was simple; a 64-pg. adventure at $12 did not seem like a good value compared to a 128-pg. sourcebook at $18, so I sank most of my then very limited funds into the sourcebooks. These days I am a bit more well-heeled and have acquired several of the modules, and am trying to read them in sequence to maybe get a better sense of the metaplot that eluded me back then. So far I've gotten through the Relics of Power trilogy and Cassandra Files; Queenswrath is up next.

I guess what I'm looking for are the opinions of more experienced GMs who actually ran some of these beasts; I'd like to know about your favorites, your most-hated, which ones ran better than they read and which ones read better than they ran (with real live guinea p... uh Storm Knights). I suppose it's incumbent upon me as the initiator of this thread to putt out the first gutta-percha, but all I really feel capable of saying about Relics of Power right now is that I like the overall structure, but certain aspects of it would have struck me as hopelessly corny even back in 1991. Hopefully somebody else will feel like picking up the ball...

[Stormchild]

Favourites: Relics of Power, High Lord of Earth

Most hated: Gaunt Man returns, Before the Dawn (Adventure Book) and of course War's End (it doesn't exist, True 100)

But I have to look into the modules again as it is a long time since I GMed any published Torg adventure.

[Kansas Jim]

A big problem with looking at the modules in retrospect is that a lot of them will play very differently if you include rules from the sourcebooks which came out after the modules. For example, Manwaring becomes a much more significant threat to the PCs if you run the Relics of Power modules with his writeup out of the Orrorsh SB (ie, Power of Fear) instead of the writeup given in the modules (a generic vampire much less dangerous by comparison).

Despite that though, I've found that the earlier modules tend to be the most enjoyable. There tends to be too much power creep in the later modules and in some cases the writer clearly didn't understand the genre(s) he was supposed to be working with (John Terra for example admitted that he doesn't like the horror genre but WEG kept hiring him to write stuff involving Orrorsh. It showed.)

My groups have generally enjoyed Before the Dawn, the Relics of Power trilogy and bits out of Queenswrath. Reactions were mixed towards Operation: Hard Sell and High Lord of Earth. No one liked City of Demons, The Gaunt Man Returns and The Temple of Rec Stalek. The rest of the modules I've never run for a group, either I could tell just from reading it that it was bad or my campaigns went off in directions that didn't lead to using those modules.

[Stormchild]

That was also my feeling, the earlier modules worked better. In later modules there was always the tendency to cooperate with the invaders and the reasons for that where often quite idiotic. Before the Dawn has a big problem: the slowdown of the earth. I left this out of my game and used Before the dawn to prevent the slowdown. This works, but if you play it in the process of the slowdown it tends to get ridiculous.

I used Manwaring from the Orrorsh SB, I didn't even realize that he was weaker in the module. Queenswrath and the Cassandra Files are both very mixed. Some adventures lack reason for the players to commit themselves to the adventures. Some are too generic (especially in Queenswrath, some look a lot like D&D) and some are inconsistent. The best in my opinion are the fatal tanks and Berlin cinephile in Cassandra Files also the tunnel and crystal obsession in Queenswrath

[John_Feaster]

The only official adventures I've ever run have been from Queenswrath and the Cassandra Files. Simple, bare bones ideas that could be extended or linked together into larger adventures with a little extra work. I had a lot of fun reusing throwaway villains like Chief Inspector Tal Achmedi from "Blood Cult", The Scorpion from "The Scorpion Gang", Kabar from "The Movie Menace" and Professor Zotak from the "Stolen Brain" (who I brought back again as the inventor of the hypnotic machine in "City of Slaves"), all of which I'd later use to found the The Black Pentad - a group of low-level villains who were backed by the Martians in an attempt to distabalize the Nile Empire from within, while Doctor Mobius was distracted (in my campaign) by the Kefertiri Idol almost abandoning him for Hades.

[skeloric]

while Doctor Mobius was distracted (in my campaign) by the Kefertiri Idol almost abandoning him for Hades.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
The Keferteri Idol does probably count as the "trusted lieutenant" as far as the evil overlord list is concerned.