Where our heroes end up on a crashed spaceship. Probably. Or maybe an abandoned moonbase? Who knows man, this is all kinds of crazy. What happens when late 70s sci-fi collides with 70s high fantasy? Find out as Jon takes us on the Expedition to the Barrier Peaks!
If this is your first time checking out our little D&D Adventure Blog, you might want to check out this post that explains the setup and format of the game. You can check out all “Big Fish” content on this nifty landing page.
Keith (me, Jim Clocks) is this week, and it’s going to be a little fast and loose. I’ll be in black, Jon (our DM) is in blue. Because blue is his favorite color. If you’re enjoying these, tell your nerdy friends!
If you’re not familiar with “Barrier Peaks” I’ll try to keep the history lesson brief. In 1975 there was science-fiction RPG called “Metamorphosis Alpha”, created by James M. Ward for TSR. This would ultimately evolve into what we know (and love) as Gamma World today. In 1980, in an effort to bring Metamorphosis Alpha to more players, Gary Gygax created an entry into TSR’s “S-Series” of gaming modules called “Expedition to the Barrier Peaks” which was essentially Metamorphosis Alpha but intended to be played by Dungeons & Dragons players.
So what does that mean? That means Wizards and Fighters will explore an irradiated crashed spaceship for no real reason! Thanks Gary!
Monsters are plaguing the Grand Duchy of Geoff: go figure it out. That was the plot. I really wanted to have someone named “Jeff” send you on the quest but that was an obvious Elise moment.
Maybe it could have been her cousin? “Hey guys, this is my cousin Jeff, he’s got a mission.”
One of the neat things about modules in the “S-Series” is that TSR included a special booklet of illustrations for the DM to show to the players. It’s a cool little thing that certainly helps immerse players. Especially considering these modules were from an era before a DM could just image search a visual reference.
We played the Tomb of Horrors (the first and most famous “S Series” campaign) a few years back and after wrapping it up we kind of talked about running Barrier Peaks because it seemed completely bonkers.
Those visual references are a real treat. Mostly amateur art but whoever was drawing them was obviously having a lot of fun with it. There are like 90 in the book which is a pretty significant investment in page count for a module.
Most of these were apparently done by Erol Otus (who brought us the amazing cover of “Deities and Demigods”. But we can also thank Jeff Dee, Greg K. Fleming, David S. LaForce, Jim Roslof and David C. Sutherland III for these hokey-ass illustrations. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Where a great big axe gets a wonderful name. This is Part 2 of “Brubax and the Abominable Snowman”.
Where our heroes (the authors, who are the real heroes) try to remember the earlier sessions of the Big Fish campaign that we didn’t actually think to write about.
