What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules?

[David Howery]

did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign? I never did. I always imagined it as a one-shot you'd run just to see if anyone could beat it, using the pre-gen characters rather than risk long established PCs. As for equipment... except for the demi-lich itself, which is harmed only in a couple of ways, equipment isn't much of a help in the tomb. So many of the traps are 'do this and you die', or 'you have two choices; make the wrong one and you die', that having certain equipment or spells won't help much (except for a Ring of Wishes, I suppose)...

 

[Corathon]

did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign? I never did. I always imagined it as a one-shot you'd run just to see if anyone could beat it, using the pre-gen characters rather than risk long established PCs. As for equipment... except for the demi-lich itself, which is harmed only in a couple of ways, equipment isn't much of a help in the tomb. So many of the traps are 'do this and you die', or 'you have two choices; make the wrong one and you die', that having certain equipment or spells won't help much (except for a Ring of Wishes, I suppose)...

I played in it as part of a campaign. Since our PCs knew that the place was reputedly a fiendish maze of death traps, we acted with great caution. A lot of spells did, in fact, help. We didn't advance one step without a find traps spell running, and doubtful items/areas were viewed with true seeing prior to moving into an area or touching an item. The result, we had no casualties until fighting Acererak, and we did destroy him despite our losses (we had weapons capable of damaging him).

 

[Jhaelen]

did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?

I did. It's a marvellous campaign-ending device.

After the party's third unsuccessful attempt to delve deeper than the first third of the dungeon with the only survivor being the cleric, all players agreed we should better shelf the adventure and the campaign.

Incidentally, that was exactly what I as the DM had intended.

 

[lordxaviar]

hey do you have a pdf of the P series....

lol

 

[lordxaviar]

I played in it as part of a campaign. Since our PCs knew that the place was reputedly a fiendish maze of death traps, we acted with great caution. A lot of spells did, in fact, help. We didn't advance one step without a find traps spell running, and doubtful items/areas were viewed with true seeing prior to moving into an area or touching an item. The result, we had no casualties until fighting Acererak, and we did destroy him despite our losses (we had weapons capable of damaging him).

I never ran it as such, but i went through it twice... failed miserably the 1st time, many deaths.. only finished it because one of the players had actually read it before hand,

 

[The_Warlock]

Did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?

Much like Jester, I ran RttToH as part of the final push of a 13 year campaign, converting it to 3.x, upping the lethality of some things to match the level of my PCs, and using the original as the prime resource for the Tomb itself if there were any conflicting design choices. Being a generally no holds barred DM, and having racked up over 30 PC deaths over 13 years, the Players understood that I was presenting a challenge, but a fair one.

[sblock]
The PCs navigated it with no deaths, though several close calls, like when the flying rogue was investigating the teeter/tapestry room, and someone outside of the room decided to fire a crossbow bolt into the tapestry he was approaching in order to scare out anything hiding behind it.

This of course caused the tapestry to turn to green slime and engulf the thief, and thus blinded, he flew screaming around the room triggering the other tapestries until, hearing the shouts of the party through his dissolving ears, he flew madly out into the hall, while fireballs were arced into the room triggering the brown mold tapestries to explode in growth, causing the rest of the PCs to scramble away from the doorway madly, while the thief screamed across the mindlink to fireball him for love of all that was holy.

Good times.
[/sblock]

All in all, there were a few players who were trepidatious about the module's reputation, but because they were long standing characters played by wily people who knew it was important to bring their A-game, they did, and smote Acererak's ruin.

As such, I've never found ToH to be appropriately targeted as a "worst" module, in any class. Unenjoyable or Inappropriate for some groups, absolutley.

If I was going to call out bad old modules, I'd go with the following:

Castle Caldwell (which I gutted and reworked successfully years later into a fun romp which generated some of the best game stories ever)

The Dymrak Dread

Terrible Trouble at Tragidore (Sorry Mr. Mona)

Quest for the Heartstone

Throne of Bloodstone

Needle (Oh, do not get me started about the stupid Mercantile Moon Spiders who domesticate Brass Dragons!)

Quagmire

and Palace of the Silver Princess (some interesting ideas hidden in it, but damned if it wasn't just a mess overall)

 

[rogueattorney]

and Palace of the Silver Princess (some interesting ideas hidden in it, but damned if it wasn't just a mess overall)

Which version?

The orange recalled version that was posted on the WotC boards for ever I find to be a gloriously goofy inspired mess. I'd love to run it, but am not sure that I could.

The green version that I grew up with is boring, boring, boring.

 

[The_Warlock]

Which version?

The orange recalled version that was posted on the WotC boards for ever I find to be a gloriously goofy inspired mess. I'd love to run it, but am not sure that I could.

The green version that I grew up with is boring, boring, boring.

I've had both in my possession or in the possession of a DM I was playing with at various times, and the end result was that both are a mess in their own way. That said, like Castle Caldwell (which many would consider a loss in it's normal form, I certainly do), there's enough stuff in PotSP for an inventive GM to cull, cut stomp and reforge into something, but the basic module suffers from the arbitrary stick in a lot of places.

 

[David Howery]

which adventure module was written by a guy named 'Harry Knuckles"... always found that name to be suspicious... I apologize if it is actually someone's real name...

 

[Luz]

A dead but really interesting thread, so I'll ressurect it.

I agreed with several already mentioned (Castle Greyhawk, Gargoyle, Dragonlance) so I'll add a few more notables that haven't been mentioned:
X12 Skarda's Mirror
N4 Treasure Hunt
WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
WGA4 Vecna Lives! and its horrible sequel Die Vecna! Die!

Most of these I ran at least once and my players unanimously refused to finish them. Some were just plain bad like WG4 (and I know this one commonly appears on several top 10 favorites list) but if ever there was a Gygax lemon, this was it IMO. Others, like Treasure Hunt, were just plain snoozers. Interesting concept (starting with 0-level characters) but dull execution.

Special mention goes to the Avatar trilogy, or almost any other module written by Ed Greenwood.