B1-9 In Search of Adventure abridgments
by Andrew TheisenAFAIK, the abridged modules in B1-9 were thus:
B1: In Search of the Unknown- Abridged in its entirety. The only bits from this module still present are the maps and a mention of Zelligar and Rogahn.
B2: The Keep on the Borderlands- The Keep itself was removed, as were certain encounter areas and a map of the surrounding region. I believe the Caves of Chaos are there in their entirety, though.
B3: Palace of the Silver Princess- I think this module is printed in its entirety (from the Green cover module), though with the introduction altered to fit the means by which the PCs arrive on the scene (and references thrown in to Thyatis and Karameikos).
B4: The Lost City- The lower levels of the city, including the caverns of Zargon, have been removed from the module.
B5: Horror on the Hill- Several encounters along the trek up the hill have been removed, as was (possibly?) some information on Guido's Fort.
B6: The Veiled Society- This module was printed in its entirety, I believe, except for the original city map (which was superseded by the most recent map of Specularum from Gaz1).
B7: Rahasia- I've never seen the original modules, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't abridged, given the sheer size of the adventure in B1-9.
B8: Journey to the Rock- As B1-9 notes, there were originally three different paths to the Rock, which were consolidated into one path in B1-9. Several encounters along the way are thus left out (including a foray into the city of Tuma itself), as well as notes on how to expand the module and where it could be located.
B9: Castle Caldwell and Beyond- The scenario "The Abduction of Princess Sylvia" has been left out, but the other scenarios are more or less intact. The Great Escape has been modified to fit the new location of Karameikos (making it an escape from the Black Eagle's clutches, rather than a neighbouring kingdom).
I love B1-9, and thought it was a great idea of how to reintroduce all those old modules and expand on them with the setting developments that had come into play later with the publication of the Gaz series. My only real complaint about it would be that some of the paths were just too long for the suggested levels 1-4 development (Rahasia itself is pretty much its own campaign, in my experience). They could have linked them together into shorter arcs in order to get the PCs to Specularum for the Veiled Society finale that they were going for; as is, (again, in my experience) the PCs were generally already at Expert levels (4-5) by the time they got to B6, depending on which path they took. Not a huge issue, just one observation.
I always wished they'd done one for the Expert series and beyond, though I think by that time they had been going in a different direction with the setting so didn't get to it. It would have been a bit more difficult to do, particularly given later developments of Mystara (notably along the Serpent Peninsula and Savage Coast). I'd actually started work on an X1-X13 SuperModule some time back, but haven't quite gotten back to it for various reasons (I think I was undecided on whether to keep it under the same rules set, but with campaign guidelines/structure, or whether to do the latter but update the rules to 3E).