Best and Worst Module Adventures

[francisca]

Best: X2, hands down. G1-2-3 is next best.

Worst: LNR1 Wonders of Lankhmar. I love Fritz Leiber's work. As a result, I dislike this module because it breaks many of the world's flavor rules. For example, it stats out a female member of Lankhmar's Thieve's Guild. Female guild members are expressly forbidden in Leiber's stories. Also, there are a ton of editing gaffs and references to the included map, which wasn't. This module amounts to a group a imagination-lacking generic adventrues dropped into Newhwon with no regard to the author's body of work.

I don't like WG7, I didn't think it was funny. (OK, a parody of the Random Monster generator was a funny idea, but the module doesn't make me smile.)

B4 is a good module, except for one thing that ticked me off. The author made a statement along the lines of: "make sure your monster placement makes sense. The he sticks a big Blue Dragon in a 30'x50' 8 or 9 levels down. Ughh....

 

[Tzarevitch]

BEST MODULES: Dead Gods (Planescape), Doors to the Unknown (Planescape), Cities of Bone (Al Qadim), Return to the Tomb of Horrors.

WORST MODULES: Deva Spark (Planescape), Something Wild (Planescape), Doomgrinder, Sword of Roele (Birthright), Keep on the Borderlands, any module with the name Vecna in it, most of the old Dark Sun "flipbook" modules, the entire Ravenloft Grand Conjunction series.

Tzarevitch

 

[Ascending Crane]

Favorite Module: Egg of the Phoenix. Have you read this thing?? Great stuff.

 

[Ron]

The best:

GD1-6 -- The giants and drows parts really rocked. The last adventure, where the party went to the Abyss to confront with the Spider Goddess, sucked.

T1 -- The Village of Homlet. Although I like the Temple as whole, I don't think it keep the high standards in the latter parts.

I7- Ravenloft. Fantastic as a single shot.

Worst:

Dragonlance series.

Maze of Zayene: Prisioners of the Maze.

 

[Bulak]

Best: Death/Terror/Madness in Freeport.

Worst: I can't say there is one module that would be the worst for me. I generally don't like dungeon crawls, but there are some really great ones, like RttToEE.
As a player I would say Return to the Tomb of Horrors was the worst I ever played. To much 'save or die'.

 

[VorpalBunny]

The Best:

G1-3 Against the Giants, The "Drow" D1-3 series, and Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits. Also Beyond the Mountains of Madness and Night Floors for CoC, and Southern Mirkwood for MERP/Rolemaster (any adventure that lays out Dol Goldur and stats Sauron is OK in my book ).

Notable Mentions:

Dead Gods, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil, Ruins of Undermountain, City by the Silt Sea, Forge of Fury, City of the Spider Queen, The Harrowing

The Worst

Dungeonland and Beyond the Magic Mirror, For Duty and Deity, Ruins of Undermountain II.

 

[Celebrim]

Without having played every module under the aupices of a good and imaginitive DM, I'm not sure my opinion is fully worth it. But from what I have played and run, I feel I can draw some conclusions based on reading a module and at least throw said modules in a runner up category fairly. The Best/Worst I've actually played and/or ran.

Best Module: I6: Ravenloft. Excellent use of atmosphere, memorable villian, much usually unexplored potential to develope the module for RP/storytelling, best map ever made for a dungeon, diverse challenges in RP, dungeoneering, and combat. Minor complaint: At suggested level of play is impossible if the DM doesn't pull his punches.

Runners Up: I3-I5: Desert of Desolation Series, S1: Tomb of Horrors, U1-2 (U3 wasn't quite as well done), UK1, X2, Dragon Lance, Axe of the Dwarven Lords, and assorted Dungeon modules I can't remember the name of and don't feel like looking up.

Worst Module: S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojocanth. Ok, so in many ways this was the first module ever written, so I should be sparing, but this is a dreadfully done uninteresting killer uber dungeon filled with uninspired fights against various monsters with no particular sense of structure or relationship to each other. WG4 was a rather more interesting write up of the same scenario, and Monte's RttToEE was a rather more interesting version of that.

Runners Up: Terrible Trouble at Tragidore (Tragic Bore is more like it, but it least it tried to have a story), B1, B2: Keep on the Borderlands, GDQ, A1-4, any given 2ed. module not mentioned, Castle Greyhawk and any other collection best reserved for April issues of Dragon.

Most Nostalgic Despite it's Flaws: X1: Isle of Dread.

 

[Davelozzi]

Best: I3-5 Desert of Desolation trilogy, honorable mentions: I6 Ravenloft, X1 Isle of Dread

Most nostalgic: Giants/Drow series, although I didn't like the Queen of Demonweb pits as a conclusion.

Worst: That's tough but definatley some of the FR 2e adventures. I guess my vote for worst goes to the Marco Volo trilogy, although I agree with Eric that Nightmare Keep was up there too. Also I agree with Mr. Fidgit that the Avatar trilogy was terrible, but fortunately, I never ran it, I just looked at the modules as sourcebooks on the events of the novels.

 

[menglish]

I may be five years late to this thread, but I'll post anyway!

My favourite Module is UK5 Eye Of The Serpent. These days its the one I always use for beginning characters. It has just the right amount of freedom and danger for a good time to be had by all and the Crazy Lizard Man is something else. I also have a soft spot for the Desert of Desolation series and U1, the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Unfortunately, U2 and U3 were not at all good and are among the worst I have played or DM'd. Though my least favourite module has to be either the first in the Slave Lords series, which may have worked as a competition module, but basically doesn't work without at least redrawing the map; the same can be said for B3, Palace of the Silver Princess (original edition) and Dragonlance was also terrible, in my opinion, because of the railroading that others have mentioned.

Mike

 

[Lanefan]

I may be five years late to this thread, but I'll post anyway!

Well, fifteen years actually...

For me: best is L1 Secret of Bone Hill for both design and playability; with about ten worthy runners-up scattered across the various editions.

Worst: probably any of the "Portals..." series from Judges' Guild, though a lot of complete dreck also came out during the early 3e days before the d20 craze had heard of quality control...