First off I want to say thank you to such a wonderful community and also the work that is put in, I wouldn't be playing without everyone here.
I have been DMing a CoS campaign and spending a lot of time researching old module content trying to filter it through the current playthrough.
I have only been playing/DMing for 12 months and when looking to buy older modules the price is really crazy. Is this purely because they are collector's pieces?
I have seen softcover reprints on dmsguild and trying to work out what if that is what I should be looking for. The older content looks like it is a mix of softcover and hardcover, if a piece was softcover only, I would prefer to purchase a reprint and leave the original to a collector. Is there a resource that could help or has anyone had any experience with purchasing the older modules or have them in their collection?
How much older? The really spendy old ones might be for previous editions, and have long ago gone out of print, could be the reason for the prices. And if you’re a new DM, you should probably avoid trying to update things from past editions, since many of the changes won’t be as intuitive. I’d say stick with stuff that’s native to 5e.
How old of modules are we talking? Like 1e 2e? Or more like 3e onward? From what I remember most of the 1e 2e stuff is available in pdf format for free. If you truly want to you could always print them out and bind them at a Staples or similar office store.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Don't bother trying to track down physical copies of old out of print modules. Anything in good condition is in the "collector's" market so unless you literally want to invest in vintage material, don't.
Best way to track down old D&D edition material legitimately is through the DMsGuild which hosts I think pretty much all the out of print D&D material published by TSR and Wizards (some stuff may be floating around in pdf format for "free", but that is still technically piracy, moreso since WotC does maintain those materials in its market place for sale. A lot of it is print on demand, and from what I've seen and heard from others it's usually a good quality reproduction (though read the reviews which may note things about color bleed, map quality/legibility etc.)
From what I can tell from your post, your running CoS, and you're interested in reading older publications re: Strahd/Ravensloft to inform your running of CoS. By going to DMs Guild, narrowing your options (left hand bar on most browsers), then using "Curse of Strahd" as the menu option for "Storyline" and "D&D Classic" for the menu option for Content, you'll get this page:
I don't know if it's completely comprehensive but it's at least a fairly comprehensive back catalog of D&D old products thematically relevant to CoS. As Xalthu pointed out, I'm not sure whether any of that is necessary. I mean if you have some really old school gamers in your group, maybe you might get kudos for dropping a reference here and there, but really CoS stands up on its own pretty darn well. Other thing is while the mechanics of prior of editions may in some instances bare a cosmetic resemblance to 5e, they're actually not in sync and I wouldn't belabor adapting a bunch of prior edition stuff to 5e when you have something as thorough as CoS. The only thing I could really see doing that sort of archival dive for is lore. A lot of lore in those works can be found nowadays on wikis, and really a lot of the lore is already distilled into CoS (Plus continuity of lore between editions of D&D isn't exactly perfect aligned, so might actually lead to confusion and frustration, unless you find an aspect you like better, in which case run with it).
If you feel your CoS game needs "more" I'd instead not use D&D Classic but instead use DMs Guild:
The latter is stuff specifically written to "correspond" with Strand while also conforming to Adventurer League's standards (personally, I'm not an AL person so that's usually irrelevant to me, but some folks do thing AL has some sort of "standard" in the community, if you're really curious about CoS stuff in the AL campaign, I'm sure that section of the forum can fill you in).
The prior stuff the, DMs Guild stuff varies greatly in quality, and I'm not entirely convinced sales figures are the best metric as its very clear it's a gameable system (though no different than any other self-publishing market place). Pay attention to the designers credited on CoS, or game designers you may like (if you haven't been playing long, you probably don't have any in particular so disregard). It's not all that uncommon people on the design team with stuff that "didn't make it" into the official book release stuff on DMs Guild, sometimes with notes on how to incorporate it into the official adventure. Sometimes, the stuff is impressive stuff, sometimes ... it's very apparent why it was cut. I wouldn't guide my selection so much by star ratings (so many people rate high, particularly influencers who often to get comp copies in the future for their channels), rather read the actual written reviews (and sometimes responses form the author) to get a more substantial sense of whether it makes sense to purchase or not. Almost everything will also give you a few pages of preview to tell you whether it's your cup of tea or not.
Also, a possibly more low cost and time efficient method would just catch a few YouTube vids. There's a number of folks who put analysis of present 5e lore and relate it to past lore. It's often thought provoking if you're simply looking for inspiration.
That is an amazing amount of information, thank you. I was looking into everything from the start, but 2e there is a lot of context around Ravenloft, I guess more specifically I am interested there rather than only Barovia.
I have been filtering in lore where applicable but doing additional reading because I have thoroughly loved all aspects of Ravenloft. I have read through all the MandyMod and DragnaCart content on Reddit and just thirsty for more, this is why I started to read more historically. I guess a lot of this is in anticipation to the VR guide to Ravenloft coming out, I think it will be a really great book.
+1 to Pang. I mean if you take a certain pleasure in reading old adventures in that format, I wouldn't stop you. However, if you're just looking to sort of "map out" the larger story arguably informing CoS, Pang's wiki cites take a lot less time (and $). Heck, with the amount of research you're doing, maybe you'll wind up contributing to one of them.
Glad you found the DMsGuild Guidance of use. It's quite a resource if you do (like me) like looking at game history through "primary sources."
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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Hi All,
First off I want to say thank you to such a wonderful community and also the work that is put in, I wouldn't be playing without everyone here.
I have been DMing a CoS campaign and spending a lot of time researching old module content trying to filter it through the current playthrough.
I have only been playing/DMing for 12 months and when looking to buy older modules the price is really crazy. Is this purely because they are collector's pieces?
I have seen softcover reprints on dmsguild and trying to work out what if that is what I should be looking for. The older content looks like it is a mix of softcover and hardcover, if a piece was softcover only, I would prefer to purchase a reprint and leave the original to a collector. Is there a resource that could help or has anyone had any experience with purchasing the older modules or have them in their collection?
Thank you!
How much older? The really spendy old ones might be for previous editions, and have long ago gone out of print, could be the reason for the prices. And if you’re a new DM, you should probably avoid trying to update things from past editions, since many of the changes won’t be as intuitive. I’d say stick with stuff that’s native to 5e.
How old of modules are we talking? Like 1e 2e? Or more like 3e onward? From what I remember most of the 1e 2e stuff is available in pdf format for free. If you truly want to you could always print them out and bind them at a Staples or similar office store.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Don't bother trying to track down physical copies of old out of print modules. Anything in good condition is in the "collector's" market so unless you literally want to invest in vintage material, don't.
Best way to track down old D&D edition material legitimately is through the DMsGuild which hosts I think pretty much all the out of print D&D material published by TSR and Wizards (some stuff may be floating around in pdf format for "free", but that is still technically piracy, moreso since WotC does maintain those materials in its market place for sale. A lot of it is print on demand, and from what I've seen and heard from others it's usually a good quality reproduction (though read the reviews which may note things about color bleed, map quality/legibility etc.)
From what I can tell from your post, your running CoS, and you're interested in reading older publications re: Strahd/Ravensloft to inform your running of CoS. By going to DMs Guild, narrowing your options (left hand bar on most browsers), then using "Curse of Strahd" as the menu option for "Storyline" and "D&D Classic" for the menu option for Content, you'll get this page:
https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45471_45507_0_0_0_0_0_0&src=fid45471
I don't know if it's completely comprehensive but it's at least a fairly comprehensive back catalog of D&D old products thematically relevant to CoS. As Xalthu pointed out, I'm not sure whether any of that is necessary. I mean if you have some really old school gamers in your group, maybe you might get kudos for dropping a reference here and there, but really CoS stands up on its own pretty darn well. Other thing is while the mechanics of prior of editions may in some instances bare a cosmetic resemblance to 5e, they're actually not in sync and I wouldn't belabor adapting a bunch of prior edition stuff to 5e when you have something as thorough as CoS. The only thing I could really see doing that sort of archival dive for is lore. A lot of lore in those works can be found nowadays on wikis, and really a lot of the lore is already distilled into CoS (Plus continuity of lore between editions of D&D isn't exactly perfect aligned, so might actually lead to confusion and frustration, unless you find an aspect you like better, in which case run with it).
If you feel your CoS game needs "more" I'd instead not use D&D Classic but instead use DMs Guild:
https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45469_45507_0_0_0_0_0_0&src=fid45469
And maybe Adventurers' League:
https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45470_45507_0_0_0_0_0_0&src=fid45470
The latter is stuff specifically written to "correspond" with Strand while also conforming to Adventurer League's standards (personally, I'm not an AL person so that's usually irrelevant to me, but some folks do thing AL has some sort of "standard" in the community, if you're really curious about CoS stuff in the AL campaign, I'm sure that section of the forum can fill you in).
The prior stuff the, DMs Guild stuff varies greatly in quality, and I'm not entirely convinced sales figures are the best metric as its very clear it's a gameable system (though no different than any other self-publishing market place). Pay attention to the designers credited on CoS, or game designers you may like (if you haven't been playing long, you probably don't have any in particular so disregard). It's not all that uncommon people on the design team with stuff that "didn't make it" into the official book release stuff on DMs Guild, sometimes with notes on how to incorporate it into the official adventure. Sometimes, the stuff is impressive stuff, sometimes ... it's very apparent why it was cut. I wouldn't guide my selection so much by star ratings (so many people rate high, particularly influencers who often to get comp copies in the future for their channels), rather read the actual written reviews (and sometimes responses form the author) to get a more substantial sense of whether it makes sense to purchase or not. Almost everything will also give you a few pages of preview to tell you whether it's your cup of tea or not.
Also, a possibly more low cost and time efficient method would just catch a few YouTube vids. There's a number of folks who put analysis of present 5e lore and relate it to past lore. It's often thought provoking if you're simply looking for inspiration.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
That is an amazing amount of information, thank you. I was looking into everything from the start, but 2e there is a lot of context around Ravenloft, I guess more specifically I am interested there rather than only Barovia.
I have been filtering in lore where applicable but doing additional reading because I have thoroughly loved all aspects of Ravenloft. I have read through all the MandyMod and DragnaCart content on Reddit and just thirsty for more, this is why I started to read more historically. I guess a lot of this is in anticipation to the VR guide to Ravenloft coming out, I think it will be a really great book.
Those modules are great, absolutely, but this is the internet age: if you're looking for information there's almost always a wiki or two to peruse. This is no different: http://www.fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Main_Page - https://ravenloft.fandom.com/wiki/Ravenloft_Wiki
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
+1 to Pang. I mean if you take a certain pleasure in reading old adventures in that format, I wouldn't stop you. However, if you're just looking to sort of "map out" the larger story arguably informing CoS, Pang's wiki cites take a lot less time (and $). Heck, with the amount of research you're doing, maybe you'll wind up contributing to one of them.
Glad you found the DMsGuild Guidance of use. It's quite a resource if you do (like me) like looking at game history through "primary sources."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.