Best and Worst Module Adventures

[Wippit Guud]

Mine go back a ways....

Best Serious Adventure: All The Glitters... fairly-low level adventure, and somewhat of a mini-epic. Had some unique encounters, including my favorite: running into a distance distortion bound to an earth elemental that wen insane, so the hallway kept expanding and contracting.

Best Comedic Adventure: Castle Greyhawk. 13 adventures rolled into one, and the levels were hilarious: a level of animated food (look out of r the Pilsbury dough golem), running into comic book characters (the amazing Driderman, the Inedible Bulk), and landing in a fast food war between Colonel Sandpaper (cockatrices and pyrolisks... regular or extra crispy?) and King Burger (who looks a lot like Juiblex, and features soft-drink elementals).

Worst Adventure: I might get flak for this from old-school players, cause it's a tournament module, but I'm picking The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. It was written well, including a booklet of pictures for certain rooms, but the idea of a poisonous temple that'll kill you in 12 hours unless you get out put a bit of strain on the players, they felt rushed.

 

[Donatello]

My favorite module(s): The Desert of Desolation series. I must have run these three a dozen times for a dozen different groups in my day. Between the issue of trying to survive the harsh desert, getting wrapped up in the politics of the sheiks, and then trying to get through the brutally difficult dungeons, it was a masterpiece.

Least favorite: The Tomb of Horrors. I know I'm going to get a lot of criticism for this, but the whole module full of traps forces the PC's to break character and think completely out of the context of the game. The players, rather than the characters, have to solve the situations or else their characters die, and that's not a good structure IMO. I know my style of D&D playing doesn't match with many others, but I'm a hardcore storyteller/director GM (to use the Dragon magazine archtypes) and I don't like any situation where the players have to think OOC to win.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

Castle Greyhawk. 13 adventures rolled into one, and the levels were hilarious: a level of animated food (look out of r the Pilsbury dough golem), running into comic book characters (the amazing Driderman, the Inedible Bulk), and landing in a fast food war between Colonel Sandpaper (cockatrices and pyrolisks... regular or extra crispy?) and King Burger (who looks a lot like Juiblex, and features soft-drink elementals).

and the Temple of Really Bad Dead Things!

favorite: Ravenloft (I6)

last favorite(s): all of the Dragonlance mods and the Time of Troubles FR mods (Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep). i really don't like the mod-based-on-novels approach, and the fact that the PCs really couldn't affect anything (no matter what the PCs did, the events still played out the same) IMHO, of course

 

[Crothian]

Favorite: White Plume Mountain or Sinister Secret of Salt Marsh. I never get tired of them.

Worst: I don't recall specifically which DL's where bad, but they had some really pourly done ones.

 

[DSC-EricPrice]

I think 100 responses to this thread will land you 100 different answers. The problem here is its hard to nail down what makes a mod the "best". We each favor different things in our adventures and even the things that I as one person liked about a mod have changed over the last 20 years.

If you force me to answer though Im going to say my favorite is "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" for its integration into an existing storyline in a new and at least quasi-believable way (Though like all mega mods its SO long its very difficult to run)

My least favorite would be along the lines of that solo mod for wizards from way back in the day. I cant remember the name.

 

[National Acrobat]

Favorites: The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh and Cult of the Reptile God. Both are great for lower levels. I am also partial to The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.

Worst: The Night Below, and I know a lot of people love it but the group that I was in that went through it had major obstacles to overcome in the form of the dm. He wouldn't allow Psionic characters and he provided no assisstance in dealing with the mind blast of the Illithids. So what had been a very rich and enjoyable campaign for over a year ended in a TPK when we were attacked by 6 mind flayers. Took less than 5 minutes to destroy about 1 1/2 years worth of campaigning.

 

[EricNoah]

My favorite, I think, is an adventure that was published in Dungeon Magazine: it was a Planescape adventure called Umbra (I think) by Chris Perkins (again, I think). I was able to hang much of my campaign around that one and it just worked out really slick.

I have a fondness for Undermountain (the original boxed set).

A least favorite wasn't one I ran, it was one I read -- Nightmare Keep. It was ostensibly a Forgotten Realms adventure but you could tell that it was just a generic adventure plopped down somewhere at random, and it was just the dumbest high-level dungeon crawl ever.

 

[NiTessine]

Most Favourite: Of the ones I've actually run, this must be Sunless Citadel. Really neat little module. Of ones I've only read, it would be the Ruins of Undermountain. Really neat great big module.

Least Favourite: Castle Greyhawk. Sorry, I just don't think it's funny in the least. And my copy smells like cigarettes. Blech.

 

[Zappo]

Best module: Dead Gods.

Worst module: eh... I just don't buy or run bad modules. The Book of Lairs was relatively bad, though.

 

[DungeonKeeperUK]

Mine go back a ways....Mine go back a time too, its been a long time since I really bought an adventure writing them all or converting my old favourites for the past good few years...

Best Serious Adventures : White Plume Mountain, Ravenloft, Egg of the Pheonix, The Slavers Series, A Night at the 3 Feathers (In a White Dwarf Magazine), Tomb of Horrors but favourite may have to be Castle Amber

Worst Adventure : Earthshaker (Gnome build a 20 story robat and wreak havoc on the world... sorry I hated it... )

Most Nostalgic Keep on the Boarderlands.. just looking at that map brings back the whole adventure that I first played.....