Worst D&D products ever.

[Emiricol]

The opposite of the Best D&D Products thread. The title should make this one self-explainatory.

I'm going to go with:

• 2E (right here at the top of my list!)
• 3E splat books (Song & Silence in particular)
• Strongholds & Dynasties (Good writing, horrid editing, and the realm management rules for which I bought it are incomplete at best).

 

[JeffB]

Hmmm...worst products of those I owned...

Can't remember the name , but the "magic viewer" Solo mod from 1E (Midnight on Dagger Alley?)
Horror on the hill
The Veiled Society
DragonLance modules...(liked the books , just not the gaming products)
Shady Dragon Inn
Fiend Folio (a few gems and great cover, but...)
MM2 (1E version)
Ruins of Zhentil Keep
The Vilhon Reach
Avatar Trilogy modules
"X of the Realms" complete X style books
Drow of the Underdark
Villains of the Realms (or whatever it was called)
The Scarlet Brotherhood
Against The Giants: The Liberation of Geoff
Return to the Keep on the Borderlands
The Marklands
Tales of the Lance box
HollowWorld
Hero Builders Guide
Sword & Fist
D&DG (3E)
Epic Level handbook
3E DM Screen
All the adventure path mods except for TSC and FoF
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil
DragonLance Campaign Setting (3E)

 

[Janx]

Y'all missed the WORSTEST D&D product ever.....

CardMaster

Or maybe, unlike me, you all avoided wasting your $20 on it.

This "thing" was sold as a random adventure maker kind of deally. There weren't any reviews on it, or good explanations. It was a boxed set.

It had, cards for monsters and rooms. it even had cardstock room props so you could build the rooms.

You were supposed to take your characters and go through the dungeon in random format.

You flipped over a card, revealing the room.

You then figured out if there was a monster, and revealed the monster card.

You then fought the monster

You then moved to the next room.

Yes folks. I paid $20 for that damn thing. We even tried it for a few hours, just in case there was fun inside we missed. I was wrong. In hindsight, I basically paid $20 for some dice.


This was a AD&D 2e product, back in the day...

Janx

 

[rogueattorney]

But, as I said, I'm old, and mostly befuddled, and probably a poor judge of what makes truly compelling games. Still, I have fond memories of Tomb, especially a paladin called Sir Godboy and his holy sword, and the sphere of annihilation, and jumping in after the weapon . . .

Nah... The Tomb of Horrors is clearly not the worst D&D product of all time. The people who say so are just trying to stir it up. There are so many items TSR put out that were of horrible quality in regards to editing, presentation, writing, utiltiy, and overall production quality that a fairly-well put-together old-school adventure like S1 couldn't possibly be the worst of all-time by any standard, even if some people don't like the content of the module.

I, for example, think that I6 Ravenloft and the DL series of modules were beyond awful, changing the face of gaming for the worse ever since. I'd go so far as to say that they were the single most detrimental products to the way I think D&D should be played, in the history of the game.

However, I'm not going to say they're the worst D&D products ever made, because they weren't. How could they be? They're pretty well-written, well-presented, and obviously play-tested. I just hate the story style content of the adventure and would prefer to play a module more like S1

Compare them (and S1 for that matter), for example to some of the latter B- and X- series of modules (X6, X9, B6, B8 and B9 come to mind), pretty much the entire AC series, the sheer crap produced for 1e in 1988 (the Survival Guides being the most prominant), the un-playtested and un-edited series of splat books produced throughout 2e's history, and much of the low-quality third party 3e junk.

Some people simply don't like the purpose for which S1 was designed. That doesn't mean it was designed poorly. People are perfectly free to dislike it. But calling it the worst D&D product of all time is pure hyperbole.

R.A.

 

[Janx]

In response to the "everything 2e", I just remembered another item I think was the worst:

The AD&D Player's Handbook, 1st edition. Y'know, the one with the demon statue on the cover with a thief popping it's ruby eye out.

Story on how I know coming up.

The writing absolutely sucked. The print style was hard to read.

The art was cartoony and bad.

Incidentally, written by Gygax as I recall. His Gord novels sucked too. I own them. Gary Gygax is a pretentious author and is a horrible crafter of prose(go read his Dragon magazine articles) .

Way back in the year of '90, a friend of mine mail-ordered our first D&D books. We lived in the sticks. We knew about D&D (read comics, saw the ads), read the novels, all that. We scraped together our $$$ and sent in an order for the DMG2e, PH2e, FRA, CBW and some dice.

We got pretty much everything, except for one subtle mistake. They sent me the 1st edition PH and not the 2nd. Just by reading the PH and DMG, you could see a world of difference. The formatting was better in the 2e book. The explanations were clearer.

We actually played a few sessions with the PH1e, until my correct PH arrived. Let me tell you, that made a world of difference. It was far easier to read and understand, and to be able to find the things we were looking for.

Put it this way, THAC0 and AC were pretty obvious ways to present the math. Yet the PH1e had to present a frickin' table of AC vs. weapon. What a mess!

Now for all you naysayers of 2e, who're thinking, how could 1e be hard to read? Beats me? Figure it this way, I was a Junior in high school. I programmed computers for fun and profit, had an IQ over 120. I played Battletech, and had seen plenty of other FASA RPGs. I had no problem deciphering it, I'm just saying it was a pain in the butt, and the PH2e was way easier to read and follow and get the job done.

Simply put 1E had a huge barrier to entry, being that it helped to have an experienced player to present it. Whereas, 2e was pretty easy for a bunch of high school kids to get started on with fewer mistakes.

Janx

 

[VirgilCaine]

In response to the "everything 2e", I just remembered another item I think was the worst:

The AD&D Player's Handbook, 1st edition.
...The writing absolutely sucked. The print style was hard to read. The art was cartoony and bad.

We got pretty much everything, except for one subtle mistake. They sent me the 1st edition PH and not the 2nd. Just by reading the PH and DMG, you could see a world of difference. The formatting was better in the 2e book. The explanations were clearer.

We actually played a few sessions with the PH1e, until my correct PH arrived. Let me tell you, that made a world of difference. It was far easier to read and understand, and to be able to find the things we were looking for.

Simply put 1E had a huge barrier to entry, being that it helped to have an experienced player to present it. Whereas, 2e was pretty easy for a bunch of high school kids to get started on with fewer mistakes.

Janx

I wouldn't say it all sucks. There's good stuff in my 1e DMG, but I wouldn't want to have to USE it or READ it for the first time ever. Definitely VERY STRANGE organization decisions made there. There's useful things, (for me as a 3.0 DM) but they're scattered all over the book...as is everything else.

I don't think any of the art is cartoony and bad. Its better in some ways than the 3e art (customizing characters page picture, anyone? Leather suit, IIRC?)...

 

[Melan]

<STUFF>

Wow. Just wow.
Again, wow. You are, like, Negative Me. Let's not get close to each other, because we would explode or something.

 

[Davelozzi]

I can't believe no one's mentioned the so called Greyhawk module Child's Play, it was absolutely horrible, and not even set in Greyhawk. (Much like the "Forgotten Realms" product Cities of Mystery, although that one was otherwise okay).

Other clunkers included a lot of the 2e Forgotten Realms adventures:
Marco Volo series
Randal Morn/Spiderhaunt series
Nightmare Keep

I'll agreet that the Maztica line was pretty weak, but I though that the Horde stuff was pretty good, and I think the Black Courser trilogy would be fun as long as the DM loosened up the railroad tracks a little bit.

I'm surprised that anyone mentioned the 2eWorld Builder's Guide. Like Psion, I think that book is great and still use it when needed.

 

[kerakus]

Back in my 2nd ed days, I was searching around for a good adventure for first level characters. I found a little gem called The Silver Key (I believe). The premise was to retrieve this key from an orcish army or somesuch. Apparently the only possible way to do this was for the party to be polymorphed into orcs and start accumulating "Orc Points" which would eventually turn you into an orc and NPCize you. That and the orc encampment had no map, just a random series of possible encounters with no apparent rhyme or reason.

That is the only D&D product I've ever purchased that I felt I wasted my money on.

Q

 

[DaveMage]

IOther clunkers included a lot of the 2e Forgotten Realms adventures:
Randal Morn/Spiderhaunt series

That would be my #2. I never minded railroading until I tried to run this. The PCs *never* did what the modules expected and after running them I ran my own adventures until 2E ended.

The worst has to be the 2E DMG. After the 1E DMG was so packed with info, this one was extremely disappointing.