So, while reading up on the closure of Ray Bailey's recent 1e KS @ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dgg-03/dd3-the-misty-halls-of-kalavorka/posts/2662226 I read Ray's snippet about his next project, which mentions:
I hope you will all come back to support my next project — DD4 Secret of the Silver Spire. This adventure will be somewhat unusual in that it features a semi-living, dimensional-hopping tower inhabited by intelligent ape-men who use science-magic, modrons (I hear some groans, but trust me on this one), and their overlords, the Silver Masters. I ran this one for my weekly gaming group a few years ago, and they all loved it. With this Kickstarter will be another Side Quest module. This one is tentatively titled “The White Queens Rage”. For characters levels 8-10, it involves the players exploring a frost giant queen’s mountain castle.
Now I've loathed modrons for nearly as long as I've loathed anything in the entire corpus of D&D (and yes, I loathe modrons more than I loath 3.x, and Anything magic items, and WG7 Castle Greyhawk, and the lame RPGA-trash branded as Greyhawk during 2e, and... You get the idea, I hope.
So, is it possible to redeem the lowly, despised, and reviled modrons? Have any of you done ever so?
Allan.
Of course, monodrones featured heavily in Zjelwyin Fall as the only random encounter room to room. Because of the party's level, I think they were actually quite fun and terrifying. The party was never quite sure if they were about to be attacked or ignored. I think the LESSER modrons work pretty wonderfully as programmed guards in the outer planes because they are immune to mind-affecting spells and (if memory serves) that even extends to psionics. So, obviously I'm fine with them in moderation based on my use in the module.
That said, I've never been fond of Modrons. And I think HATE is not too strong a word for past-me; whereas current me thinks of them as useful in small doses for that alien flavor.