So what 3E adventures were worst?

[DM_Jeff]

Heart of Nightfang Spire was a true stinker. More yawns than excitement, and a lot of exclamations of the word "again?!" And I'll go on record again: my RPGA group playtested this adventure and warned them, repeatedly and strongly about the difficulties, and they merrily ignored each and every one of our requests and suggestions. We were appalled at the final cut.

Fortress of the Ogre King was a module by Fast Forward (I guess this shouldn't surprise anyone) that I remember looking through at my FLGS that cause uproarous laughter among the crowd there when it described a 4th level party going up against an entire fortress of ogres and gave away treasure piles each which included millions of gold pieces and every ioun stone ever made.

-DM Jeff

 

[Festivus]

Can I point out Age of Worms stinkers in this thread? Encounter at Blackwall Keep was underchallenging for the party, and not terribly interesting storywise. The best part was running an encounter where the players took on the persona's of the guards and told a pre-story of what was happening at the keep... and this was a reader suggestion on their forums.

Another AOW stinker that swings the other way was the Spire of Long Shadows... which much to the opposite of the keep adventure, TPKed my party and my campaign with rediculously difficult encounters taht occured way too frequently.

Lastly, others have said it, Scourge of the Howling Horde, probably great for a newer DM, but production values on the product were subpar, the story very linear and predictable, and the grey text in a grey sidebar made 20% of the product useless to me.

 

[Wormwood]

One more vote for Standing Stone and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Both frustrating for different reasons.

And the Bat-Men from Deep Horizons? Not nearly as compelling as the author appeared to believe.

Okay, that's enough hating for one day. I need a shower.

 

[R_kajdi]

Can I point out Age of Worms stinkers in this thread? Encounter at Blackwall Keep was underchallenging for the party, and not terribly interesting storywise. The best part was running an encounter where the players took on the persona's of the guards and told a pre-story of what was happening at the keep... and this was a reader suggestion on their forums.

Another AOW stinker that swings the other way was the Spire of Long Shadows... which much to the opposite of the keep adventure, TPKed my party and my campaign with rediculously difficult encounters taht occured way too frequently.

Lastly, others have said it, Scourge of the Howling Horde, probably great for a newer DM, but production values on the product were subpar, the story very linear and predictable, and the grey text in a grey sidebar made 20% of the product useless to me.

From what I've seen, none of the Age of Worms adventures are true stinkers. Encounter balancing seems to be towards the high end in all the Adventure Paths, so just plan on over leveling the party slightly (that's my current plan) Savage Tide has some slower and more scripted adventures (Sea Wyvern's Wake is the worst of these IMO. Never combine travel adventures with a bunch of railroading. I can almost garauntee that this will grate against most player groups) The more of Age of Worms I read, the more I like. Especially the freeform way getting into the various dungeons is handled. I much prefer this to the more scripted way things are handled in Savage Tide.

 

[Puggins]

Ya know, the truly tragic part about Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was the abrupt shift at the 25% mark that sent the whole book into the gutter.

Hommlet was wonderfully detailed. Loved it.

The Gatehouse was awesome. The players couldn't believe what they were fighting. Really memorable. And the newer sections at the bottom were creepy and cool.

Nulb was memorable.

Then the whole thing fell into the gutter. You can almost hear the thought pattern: "well, I really want the PCs to be really high level for the conclusion, so I'll jam in a nonsensical circular dungeon crawl that has no connection to classic ToEE."

Yeah, that worked out well.

 

[freyar]

You know, I'm going to go against the grain and say that I didn't like Wizard's Amulet very much on a read-through. Not that I had anything against the encounters, etc, but it seemed very rail-roady. First of all, someone just has to play a specific pre-gen character. In the actual adventure, boxed text tells the character on watch "you leave the campfire to investigate the noise," and, before the PC can take an actions, they're attacked. After reading that, I just can't imagine ever putting players through it. YMMV, of course, and I like the other Necromancer stuff I've looked at.

 

[amethal]

Fortress of the Ogre King was a module by Fast Forward (I guess this shouldn't surprise anyone) that I remember looking through at my FLGS that cause uproarous laughter among the crowd there when it described a 4th level party going up against an entire fortress of ogres and gave away treasure piles each which included millions of gold pieces and every ioun stone ever made.

I have Fast Forward's Slave Pits of the Goblin King, and that's pretty bad as well.

From what I remember, the CR of the encounters is all over the place, its not clear why the PCs are even there, and some of the fights expect the poor DM to run a hundred goblins at once. (This is not a playtest review, for obvious reasons )

However, there is the germ of a good idea (or even several good ideas) in there; its just the execution was terrible.

 

[Zaukrie]

This would be fine, or even a good thing, except that the module is full of errors.

Does this really matter? Can't you just play it as is, and not worry about the errors? How many DMs (especially new ones) would look at the stat blocks and try to reverse engineer things? I just play 'em as I get them. If the stats are off, those monsters are just "not normal" for their race, or whatever.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

You know, I'm going to go against the grain and say that I didn't like Wizard's Amulet very much on a read-through. Not that I had anything against the encounters, etc, but it seemed very rail-roady. First of all, someone just has to play a specific pre-gen character. In the actual adventure, boxed text tells the character on watch "you leave the campfire to investigate the noise," and, before the PC can take an actions, they're attacked. After reading that, I just can't imagine ever putting players through it. YMMV, of course, and I like the other Necromancer stuff I've looked at.

Yeah, the leucrotta encounter was a fail in my experience. TPK because the party ended up killing the cub so mommy came in and cleaned house.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I actually liked Nightfang Spire quite a bit.

Spoiler:

Spoiler

Gulthias's cctv, a vampiric gibbering mouther, and a tombstone golem were all nice touches. In particular, the final battle in the vertical chamber was one of the great set pieces of my last campaign.

However, we did get a running joke out of it: Every time the party is clearing out a dungeon and there is a room with nothing in it, someone (sometimes even I) will mention "funerary wrappings". If you ran/played Nightfang Spire, you'll get the joke.