Module Database, H series

H series:

Series overview: The entire Bloodstone Mines series is set in the lands of Vaasa and Damara. Initially, these lands weren't found in any of the official game worlds. With the release of FR9 (Bloodstone Lands), both of these countries were firmly placed in the Forgotten Realms.Hence the H series can be considered to take place there. Note that although only H3 specifically has Battlesystem battles, the Battlesystem rules can be used for the background events of the other modules too.

Personal notes

This is a great idea poorly executed. The concept of mega level adventure that really stretches you is fun, sadly the modules are all sub standard, suffering from baffling logic or badly designed complexes. This series has a mythical status (mostly because it has demons in it and is hard to find for sale) well don't worry your not missing anything in particular. The last installment is fine but the other three are lame almost to the point of being thrown out of my collection.

H1: Bloodstone Pass

Setting: AD&D 1st Edition, Forgotten Realms

Characters: ? of levels 16-18

Personal notes

Paper houses to cut out and built things with. Lots of counters the battle system.. arrrggghhhh!

Value to modern players

Get a proper war game, AD&D is for heroes not war gaming tables.

H2: Mines of Bloodstone

Setting: AD&D 1st Edition, Forgotten Realms

Characters: ? of levels 16-18

Personal notes

This is a strange dungeon, the first 40 rooms are a breeze, hardly capable of scraping the shins of a decent 9th level party. Then we get these insane last 10 rooms (the tests!) which are killer rooms designed by someone how is stuck in the bad old days. Tarrasques, rooms that are full of killer traps, insane logic rooms. These rooms spice up what is a disappointing dungeon. The last battle with a semi formed Orcus is sadly a wasted opportunity.

H3: Bloodstone Wars

Setting: AD&D 1st Edition, Forgotten Realms

Characters: ? of levels 17-20

Notes: This module uses Battlesystem rules.

Personal notes

Utter drivel, I can not really express how bad this module is. The excuses for the battle system clutter up over half of the pages and then we get a assassins guild test. This is the sort of nonsense I knocked out when I was eleven and I convinced myself that any thief or assassins guild would have a house full of traps , slides and swishing blades to 'test' its members, shockingly poor. Worse still the guild house idea is from Ed Greenwood, he must have had a serious off day when he committed it to paper.

Value to modern players

None, zip, nothing. Pulp it and make it back into a tree.

H4: Throne of Bloodstone

Setting: AD&D 1st Edition, Forgotten Realms

Characters: ? of levels 18-100

Personal notes

This is about the best of the lot and even this is hardly wonderful. The best bits are the tiny sections on planes you can enter. The stupid comedy avatar should be taken out back and kicked to death by any DM with an once of credibility. The city sections are ok if you work at them but the over reliance on stupidly huge combats (e.g. The rooms guarded by 50 type V demons) wears very thin indeed. The last battle is ok but if you worked through these modules you will probably have your expectations set really low by this stage. great cover though, Ill give it that.

Value to modern players

Forget it, some shop owner will rip off 30 bucks for a less than mint copy of this, save yourself the trouble, throw the money in the bin and pretend you wasted it on any of the bloodstone modules. If they get a re write (and I mean a real serious re write) then you may get some value but don't hold your breath.