Best and Worst Module Adventures

[Endur]

Favorite Modules
old modules (1970's - early 1980's)
B2 Keep on the Borderlands
GDQ Giants/Drow/Lolth
The Court of Ardor (ICE/MERP super-module quest to save the world)

recent modules: I like Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, the best of the "Return to" modules in my opinion. In many ways, I found RTTOEE to be a better module than the original.


Worst Modules
Hard to say, I guess I'd go with various modules where the ecology didn't make sense. "X is living next to Y?!??! and they are both still alive????"

B1 didn't have any encounters in it, just a floor plan.

I didn't find "Tomb of Horrors" to be that bad, because I understood that the party is not intended to win in that module, the party is intended to be wiped out. If you thought you had a chance, well, then I could understand being upset when you find out that your chance is somewhere between slim and none.


Tom

 

[Daiymo]

Nostalgia kicking in here:

Favorites: Keep on the Borderlands. Your first love is in someways your strongest. Bree-yark!

Worst: Anything with Volo in the title

 

[Talvisota]

Love these threads. You can learn a lot about someone if you know what modules are his favorites. . . .

Favorite? GD without the Q, the original Temple of Elemental Evil, and several OD&D mods, like B10, X4-5. Most anything written in the late 70's.

Least favorite? Meaning I felt ripped off because I had spent money on them? Again, lots of OD&D ones, like "Skarda's Mirror", or "Earthshaker." Also did not like any of the "pseudo -finished" stuff, like Undermountain. When I buy an adventure, I want it complete.

 

[Ycore Rixle]

Favorite: L1 The Secret of Bone Hill. I love so many adventures, but L1 has to be my favorite because I've had two very long, very fun campaigns that featured Bone Hill and Restenford.

Least Favorite: None, I love 'em all - although anything without at least one map with keyed encounters draws my ire. I even liked Nightmare Keep, which Eric panned above. In fact, I loved it. See, an archmage NPC in our campaign had just died, and... well, it fit in with the module perfectly.

 

[kenjib]

My favorite is Dwellers of the Forbidden City. For starters, it first introduced the aboleth, mongrelman, tasloi, and yuan-ti. It's also completely non-linear and there are many different little adventures that can take place. There are various factions in the city, all with different agendas, allowing for a wide range of roleplaying experiences and options for the players. The adventure locations are all creative and diverse -- battles in trees, on the edges of crevasses, in collapsed buildings, etc. The encounters are also very diverse - wrestling matches, more than one strange cult, furtive scavengers, etc. The locale is remote and the premise is simple enough that you could drop it into any world with no problem. It's also got a really cool Weird Tales vibe with the story and the Erol Otus artwork to match.

It's really flexible and open ended.

 

[Frostmarrow]

The Silver Key is my favorite. It was an utter blast to play. I've since then read the module and even though it has it's flaws it's still a great adventure. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to A) Play a group of military infiltrators or B) Play a group of rowdy orcs with bad breath and temper.

 

[Roderick]

My favourites:

Non - D&D:

1.) The Enemy Within Campaign (Warhammer FRPG)
The best fantasy campaign ever.

2.) Masks of Nyarlathotep (CoC)
With about twenty character deaths, it had the highest bodycount, I ever encountered in a campaign. We lost at the end, but had a great time.

3.) Rogue Mistress (Elric)
A great piece of planehopping

AD&D 2e

The great Modron March/Dead Gods

D&D 3E

1.) The Witchfire Triology (Privateer Press)

2.) The Coin series (Kenzerco)

3. ) The Serpent series (Sword&Sorcery)
Looks promising so far.

Bad ones:

I don't like mega-dungeons, so I didn't enjoy the Undermountain adventures and RttToEE. I wouldn't exactly call them bad, they are just not my cup of tea.

The worst adventure I ever bought was Fortress of the Ogre Chieftain. What were these people thinking?
On the other hand there seems to be money in publishing crap like this. Maybe I should dust off the first adventures I wrote in the early eighties for our Tunnels & Trolls game

 

[Wippit Guud]

Favorite for Nostalgia: The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth - first ever AD&D adventure I went on, way back in '83 (I think)

 

[wighair]

The worst adventure I ever bought was Fortress of the Ogre Chieftain. What were these people thinking?

Me too! This absolutely stinks. I got it in a bargain bin for £3 and still feel like I was robbed. I was looking for more info ('cos it was so bad!) and found a page on RPGunited that says the guy who wrote this also created the Dark Sun universe! Is this right?

http://www.rpgunited.com/authors/authors/brownt.html

Now, I'm not Dark Sun's greatest fan, but it was infinately better than this. I find it hard to believe it came from the same man.

As for my faves. Hmm...

The Grey Knight - Pendragon

Chicago by Night - Vampire

Temple of Elemental Evil - I've actually played this three times over the years. My memory is flaky enough in relation to games to allow me to do so! One was so bad we renamed it the temple of elemental boredom. The other two were excellent. The three experiences were totally different, which I guess shows that anyones opinions on an adventure must be taken VERY subjectively, especially when "playing" rather than "running".

The Plantation - Call of Cthulhu

 

[Melan]

Older editions:
Favourite: C1 - Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Contrary to the OP's position, I believe the poison gas and the panicky rush from the deadly vapors added to the feel of the module. Of course, if you die, you are dead, but that should have been excepted, no?
Runner up: Dark Tower Conanesque advenmture from Judges Guild. Deadly.
Least favourite: Terrible Trouble at Tragidore This module came with the 2e DM screen and it sucked. It had a really lame and unintreresting setup, really lame and uninteresting encounters culminating in a really lame and uninteresting anticlimax.

3e/d20:
Favourite: The Tomb of Abysthor Fun dungeon-minicampaign, we spent eight sessions playing it. Very good value for the money.
Least favourite: no idea. I have had luck thus far.