Of course it's this one. Was there ever any doubt? There are two kinds of gamers: Those who think B10 is the greatest D&D module of all time, and those who are wrong. This is the absolute peak of D&D right here, everything that made the game great is within these covers. And you'll notice the Union Jack on the masthead; this was one of the contributions from the UK, and they really went all out to make this the best of all time.
Night's Dark Terror is pitched as a bridge between the claustrophobic dungeon crawling for beginners found in the Basic rules, and the far-reaching wilderness exploration of the Expert rules. And it more than lives up to the billing. This is an epic, spanning a large chunk of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, the default beginner setting for the BECMI series of D&D rules. Most of the Basic modules and several of the Expert modules were set here, either retroactively or explicitly. Karameikos is the heartbeat of Mystara, aka the Known World. And Night's Dark Terror had a huge part in defining Karameikos as presented in the Gazetteer series. Doing a full synopsis would take too long, but here's a brief summary.
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The party begins with a seemingly simple task: escorting a herd of horses to the remote Sukiskyn homestead in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Upon arrival, they are immediately thrust into a desperate, night-long defense of the farmstead against a massive, coordinated siege by multiple goblin tribes. This opening battle reveals that the attacks are more than mere raids; they are part of a larger plot by a sinister slaver organization known as the Iron Ring, who are searching for a specific magical tapestry that holds the key to a lost civilization.
Following the siege, the adventurers embark on an expansive wilderness trek across more than 20,000 square miles of territory. They must track the Iron Ring’s agents and their goblin allies through various locales, including riverside villages and ruined cities like Xitaqa, to rescue a kidnapped homesteader named Stephan. Along the way, they discover a magical needle and thread that, when used with the recovered tapestry, reveals a hidden route through a northern mountain range into a secluded sanctuary.
The adventure culminates in the Lost Valley of Hutaaka, where the party finds themselves in the middle of a conflict between two ancient cultures: the jackal-headed Hutaakans and the primitive Traldar. Exploring the valley leads to a final confrontation within the Vault of the Elders, where the players must contend with the remaining leaders of the Iron Ring and an ancient "crawling horror". After securing the valley's treasures and resolving the factional war, the party must navigate a treacherous escape as former allies may turn on them to claim the spoils for themselves.
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Trust me, that only scratches the surface of what's inside. The siege of Sukiskyn plays out on a large map with counters (provided with the module). There are nearly twenty total maps covering different locations, and plenty of side quests as well. This is an adventure that will take many sessions to complete, even if the party is laser-focused on the main plotline and doesn't waste any time with the side quests.
But B10's greater legacy is its impact on the development of Karameikos. Prior to this module's publication, information on Karameikos itself was limited to a few blurbs in the Isle of Dread module, the canonic placement of several Basic modules in the setting, and the city of Specularum detailed in B6, The Veiled Society (details that would be drastically changed upon the publication of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos gazetteer, GAZ1). But here, we get tribal factions, information on the Iron Ring, homesteaders with names that point to the Slavic heritage of the Traladaran people, and even some detail on the Callarii elves of eastern Karameikos. This is a treasure trove of information on Karameikos, and served as a primary source for the 'bible' of the setting, GAZ1.
I'm not sure I really need to add more to this; B10 is a classic by any measure, and everyone should play through it at least once just to really get that feel for the land of Karameikos, and because it's a fantastic adventure in its own right. I cannot recommend this any more strongly than this: If I could only play one D&D adventure for the rest of my life, it's this one.
And that wraps up my diversionary project on my top ten adventures of all time. Next time...I have no idea what I'll be talking about. But hopefully it will be interesting. See you then.
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