What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules?

[Eridanis]

The worst AD&D adventure I have ever played in my life was "Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga". At the end of the adventure, my friend wanted to write a letter to Lisa Smedman to ask for refunds.

Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine treatment of Baba Yaga's Hut was so superior to this that when I bought the module, I glanced through it once and never opened it again. Ugh.

 

[MToscan]

Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine treatment of Baba Yaga's Hut was so superior to this that when I bought the module, I glanced through it once and never opened it again. Ugh.

These excerpts speak for themselves

----------------------------------------------------
Area f3: Alternate Reality Tokyo
This area takes the form of the modern Earth city
of Tokyo, shrunk to a scale where a 30-story skyscraper
is abou t five feet tall. Tiny homes and
pagodas dot the landscape, and the average city
inhabi tant is just one inch high in comparison to
the PCs. The scrying relay for this area is a rotat+
ing radar dish on top of one of the skyscrapers.
Three doors seem to hover in mid-air one
foot above the ground. All three are made of
wood but one (leading to Area G) has a handle
made of gOld. If the proper sequence of knocks is
used (4/6/2) it gives access to Area G1.
A gray mist forms the "walls" and 30-£00thigh
"ceiling" of this area. This mist is the Ethereal
Plane.
Rampaging through the city is a lizard like
creature that is tearing grea t chunks out of the
bu ild ings. In relation to the PCs, it is about six
feet tall. Tiny figures flee in terror from it, while
fist-sized metallic "beetles" (tan ks) shoot tiny
projectiles that bounce off the lizard. To them, the
monster is 430 feet tall.
If the PCs merely watch from a doorway, the
lizard ignores them. Should they step down into
the city, however, it immediately attacks this new
threat. The PCs remain at their current size; to the
The Deadly Dance
inhabitants of Tokyo, a six-foot-tall human PC is
a 430- foot giant. Unless they are ca reful, the PCs
wil l squash dozens of innocent civilians with
each step.
Besides its phyical attacks, the lizard has a
triple-tiered gaze weapon. On the first round it
acts as a ray of enfeeblement. On the second round
it acts as a cone of cold, inflicting Id4+20 points of
damage, and from then on fires magic missiles at a
rate of two per round (one from each eye) tha t
cause 3d4+3 damage each.
If the lizard is reduced to one-quarter hit
points, it lumbers off into the mist. Without some
magical means of entering the Ethereal Plane, the
PCs will be unable to follow.
Giant Lizard: AC 5; MY 15; HD 12; hp 58; THACO
9; <AT 3; Omg ld6/1d6/5d8; AL NE; SA gaze
weapon; SD nil; MR 20%; ML steady (12); XP
4,000.
----------------------------------------------------

and

----------------------------------------------------
There are thousands of books in this room,
w ritten in a multitude of languages. Many
are from other worlds and cover subjects thai
are incomprehensible to the PCs (nuclear
physics, cybernetics, ecology of alien creatures,
etc.) The "boo ks" take many forms:
papyrus sc ro lls, clot h ~bou nd books, clay
table~ven computer disks!
----------------------------------------------------

I think we quit when we reached this room.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

These excerpts speak for themselves

See, that was the stuff I liked about it. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for in Baba Yaga's hut, and I liked Moore's version quite a bit also, but I dig wild & woolly stuff like that. Plus, I've always liked the idea of wizards having libraries filled with books from across time and space.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I know they're not classic D&D modules, but I pretty much hated all the darksun modules. I mean, our DM was awful, but the nature of the modules was basically to get the PCs to wander the planet and arrive everywhere just in time to see NPCs do cool, world-altering stuff that they had no effect on.

As for TOH, I think the key is that it's basically not D&D. I mean, you COULD play D&D in the style that is required to succeed at TOH, but you can also play D&D in a style where optimization runaways like pun pun or the hulking hurler are somehow balanced (I can't think of any 4e cheese that's nearly as crazy as those).

 

[Celebrim]

Of the 2e adventures I ran A Paladin in Hell and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords were the best. I actually was able to run Axe twice with totally different groups to good success.

That's actually encouraging to hear. One of the problems I have recommending any 2e module is that even the ones that are well written and read well don't look like they'd play all that well. 'Axe' in my opinion is the best written 2e module, but 'Axe' has serious conceptual problems IMO with how it plans to make fighting 600 goblins interesting. I've never tried to run it, but I'm encouraged to hear that it can be run because it is so well written.

 

[Crothian]

That's actually encouraging to hear. One of the problems I have recommending any 2e module is that even the ones that are well written and read well don't look like they'd play all that well. 'Axe' in my opinion is the best written 2e module, but 'Axe' has serious conceptual problems IMO with how it plans to make fighting 600 goblins interesting. I've never tried to run it, but I'm encouraged to hear that it can be run because it is so well written.

It was not easy to run or for the players. It is a challenging module and since the place is so big and the PCs can move around in it pretty easily. Plus there are some very complex encounters in there with monsters from different sections being able to react to the PCs.

But after it was all done and it did take plenty of sessions the players all expressed their enjoyment and wondered what to do with the Axe they had.

 

[Erik Mona]

It seems to me that as TSR's financial situation got more and more dire, they tried to cut corners and save money with such tactics, and it ended up backfiring on them in the end. Eric noted Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Gates of Firestorm Peak as good 2E mods; both of those were produced after the WotC purchase, IIRC. In my opinion, a solid, stable company and manangement supporting the creative team made for a higher quality product.

My memory (already proven faulty in this very thread, so take it for what it's worth) suggests that Gates of Firestorm Peak was released around the era of the "Player's Option" books near the tail end of TSR's reign. I'd guess that module was published by TSR before the implosion.

I remember hearing about Bruce Cordell's manuscript for Return to the Tomb of Horrors at Gen Con before the WotC buyout. I think it was written during the last days of TSR, held in an "Alternity-like" state of finished but unpublished during the "printer problems," and finally released by Wizards of the Coast.

There were some cool creative things happening at TSR before the buyout. Roger Moore was bringing back Greyhawk, the Planescape folks were jumping around the Multiverse, and Birthright was doing whatever it was exactly that Birthright did. The printer problems nipped that in the bud, but much of what WotC published in the first year or so was, as I understand it, already more or less "in the can" at the time of the purchase.

--Erik

 

[Filcher]

EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?

FWIW, a teleporter that only sends part of something is just as deadly as a disintegrator. I can imagine a PC ending up on the other side, cut into 100 narrow fillets as his momentum carried the already dead body through the maw.

Bad choice, either way.

 

[Joshua Randall]

They were convinced that they had discovered a magical gate to the Abyss, or Hell, or somewhere. Which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting, the wizard's reputation, the supernatural-looking blackness, and the demonic frame around it.

Ironically, in Return to the Tomb of Horrors, that is exactly what it is -- a portal.

 

[Fifth Element]

My opinion is that the Tomb isn't unfair at all; it's simply too hard for most groups. It requires them to flex their brains in creative ways that they aren't used to having to do in D&D.

Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in the Tomb when the party was obliterated, and I'm not trying to sound superior here.

Perhaps a better way of putting it is that the way you have to play ToH to survive is not how some groups like to play the game. It caters to a specific playstyle and only that playstyle.

So it's not that they have to flex their brains in creative ways, it's that they have to play in way they don't enjoy.