S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Review

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is an adventure written by Gary Gygax for use with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. The module is intended for use with characters of 8th to 12 levels of experience. The module is 76 pages long but more than half of that is maps and illustrations. The adventure was published in 1980 by TSR.

This was the first module that I ever participated in as a player. When I began playing Dungeons and Dragons in the summer of 1979 we had two dungeon masters. Both were friends of my older brother who had come back home from college for the summer. Each had played Dungeons and Dragons at their respective colleges and had come home intending to start a group with friends from high school. As the tag along little brother I came to the group with my older brother. The better of our two dungeon masters chose this module to run. By better I mean more skilled. The other DM was far more eager to run adventures on a regular basis so he tended to run most of the games. But this was one hell of a fun adventure at the time.

Mysterious attacks from creatures never seen before have devastated the lands in the Grand Duchy of Geoff. The Grand Duke has summoned the greatest adventurers in the land to go explore the source of these raiders and put an end to the raids.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks Link

What I like about Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

This adventure involves a space ship that has landed on the World of Greyhawk. But it easily could have landed in your own campaign world. It is a multi-leveled ship with aliens, altered or mutated creatures from D&D and even robots. There are futuristic weapons and all kinds of futuristic technology.

One thing that is very well done in this module is the limits on this high tech stuff. Gary clearly understood how this kind of thing could blow up a campaign. Allowing characters unlimited access to laser guns and blaster rifles and grenades might make them overpowered and ruin any later fun. But these items all have limited charges. And they will soon deplete and be worthless.

The module does a great job of giving you illustrations to show the players. These illustrations allow the dungeon master to create the flavor of this future star ship without the need for boxed text.

The ship has six levels. Each level has a different theme. Each of these themes introduces different elements of the far future to the story.

There is no one big bad guy in this adventure. It is up to the players to explore and figure out how to complete their mission here.

Lots of new creatures and lots of new items fill the pages of this adventure. Granted….most of these will not be really useful for other adventures. But it is all new and different.

This adventure has lots to explore and plenty of combat challenges. But this is not a hack and slash type adventure. The place itself is a mystery. And the players must solve the mysteries in order to complete their mission.

What I do not like about Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

There is a bit of repetition in monster encounters. There are a lot of robots. They can be encountered on several levels. There are a lot of vegepygmies. They can be encountered in many places.

There is not a lot of history given about the aliens or why they are on this world. That is left for the players and dungeon master to guess.

A lot of high tech gear is introduced in this adventure

Would I recommend this adventure to others?

Absolutely. This one is a classic. Once players are in this level range this is a great adventure to play or run. One could hardly go wrong running this with a group. It is fun to play and provides hours of entertainment.