Keith the Thief wrote:Learned something new after finding a copy of GDQ1-7 at a used bookstore.
A guy there told me it forms part of the Slaver story arc.
I'd never known this.
But lo and behold, The Acaeum has it written up all nice & purty ...  

Three of the supermodules were slightly edited to form a contiguous series; T1-4 leads to A1-4 which leads to GDQ1-7.  The material in A1-4 Scourge of the Slave Lords was revised to bring the target character levels to 7-11, thereby making the continuity from T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil a bit smoother

Just curious if any of you have any of you played the T --> A --> GDQ modules in a back to back (to back) like this?

I ran that campaign once years ago. My own AD&D house rules give no experience for treasure, but I do give experience for the players doing things with their characters and for characters practicing their skill during down time between adventures and even during adventures. So, for my campaigns the characters cannot reach the levels of experience needed just running from temple to A1-4 to GDQ1-7. As for the linking material in the supermodules, I found it to be complete crap and didn't use it.

Instead I fit in other modules moving the location of the U1-3 series close to Verbobonc and ran the characters through that long before they go to the temple.

I also do not railroad players, so while A1-4 is a fun tournament series it involves forcing characters into situations for the sake of the story regardless of what actions the characters take. I did run A1 which is a very enjoyable adventure, and A2, but changed the location of the slavers to the City of Greyhawk and only used the slaver NPCs from module A3 and A4. From there the characters go north and deal with adventures in Furondy and then the bandit kingdoms.

This was a campaign that ran two and a half years and it took a long while for the players to even reach the fire giant hall and discover the drow, and once underground the campaign took even longer before the characters discovered the vault of the drow and the demonweb pits. Sadly they never confronted Lloth and the campaign broke apart with the characters still on one of the alternate earths in the demonweb.

I've seen the supermodules run back to back with experience being heaped on the characters so they can make it to the next series and found the adventures pretty hollow and lacking the depth and breadth of wonder and imagination that these adventures can generate.

I never liked the way they shoehorned the T/A/GDQ supermodules into a continuous "Grand Tour of Greyhawk" series. Other than a couple of oblique references in T1/T1-4 to Lolth (Lareth, etc.) there isn't really a coherent plotline linking them. Even if you wanted to run them this way, the very limited additional material added to the supermodule versions and the few modifications made to the A-series to make it "fit" feel tacked on, and don't give you enough to string them together believably.

For what it's worth, I've run the GDQ series by-the-book (i.e., with XP awards for GP treasure value), as part of an ongoing campaign, and never had a problem with the adventure feeling hollow or forced.. But trying to railroad the PCs to travel from the Pomarj to Sterich just so they can be press-ganged into fighting a bunch of giants..not sure how that'd work out. I used B2 as a starting point, placing it in the noman's land near the location of N1, ran than, and then let the PCs tool around the vicinity in sandbox fashion until they were ready for G1.