Failed promises

[Felon]

There's always someone bigger.

If that's somebody to strive take down, fine. If that's a patron who genuinely needs your help, fine. If that's somebody to actually do all of the important adventuring while the PC's do mop-up work, kindly turn in your DM credentials at the door.

That's a somewhat hyperbolic way of putting it, but suffice to say, if you don't think PC's should ever be doing anything of significance, go ahead and make sure they know that up front so they'll decide for themselves if your campaign is a waste of their time.

 

[Teflon Billy]

The previously mentioned Dragonlords of Melnibone is the reigning champion for me (and will likley hold the title for eternity...I don't really buy stuff sight-unseen anymore)

 

[Maggan]

For me ...

... DungeonWorld.

A great concept, with IMO poor execution. I was disappointed.

And also the Wicked Press adventure "What's that smell?", a book that didn't live up to the adkmittedly absurd expectations I had for it (granted, those expectations came about because of the implied promise that Wick would raise the bar for presentation and game design, and teach WotC a lesson, with this module. Sadly, it didn't happen).

Also, the Withfire Trilogy. Cool world, superb illustrations, a railroad adventure with lots of heavy-handed pointers to put the PCs on track.

And, The Pit of Loch Durnan. An adventure that got rave reviews, but which I found to be less than deserving of the praise. A real disappointment for me, both plot and presentation and structure and everything was, IMO, subpar even in the early days of d20.

D&Dg is nowhere near the top of my list. It promised stats for gods, it delivered stats for gods. It's damn near to useless, but I felt it delivered what it promised.

Cheers!

Maggan

 

[S'mon]

My biggest disappointment was Grim Tales, I was expecting a sourcebook on running pulp fantasy/sf adventure with some rules to support that. Instead it was nothing but crunch, mostly adapted from the d20 Modern SRD (& I dislike Action Points) that did nothing to evoke the pulp genre. Hm, I should probably buy Savage Worlds...

Actually I am a sucker for sourcebooks that promise the perfect ruleset, I have vast numbers of rules books I'll never use. Looking for an Arthurian sourcebook I bought "Relics & Rituals: Excalibur", but it's almost entirely Prestige Classes, Feats & other PC-centred stuff. It does almost nothing to adapt D&D to an Arthurian feel; it even keeps Monks and the regular spell lists! There may be something useful in there but I haven't found it yet.

edit: "Bastion of Broken Souls" was crap, but I didn't have high expectations to start with, so not a huge disappointment. I hate the art in my 3.0 Monster Manual, but the stat blocks are mostly usable. Necropolis seemed ok to start with, until I actually tried to run it...
Traveller 20 seemed a bit disappointing, both bland and too stuck to D&D's class/level system with overcomplicated NPC stat blocks, but maybe I haven't given it a fair go yet.

Lost City of Barakus initially seemed overly simplistic & a bit bland, but in contrast to Necropolis it has really grown on me. I still think it would benefit from proper room/area descriptions, but it makes a really good campaign sourcebook, full of scenarios & scenario ideas - it's so easy to build on. And it seems well balanced for low-level play, which is rare these days.

 

[S'mon]

The Lost City of Gaxmoor fills me with dread to this day. Why it's still sitting on my bookshelf, I'll never know. Oh wait, that's right, nobody else wants it...

I generally enjoyed Gaxmoor a lot, though I paid far too much for it. I made a big mistake though in not toning down Harecules' OTT stats, he ended up permanently killing maybe 8 or so PCs IMC before they brought in one of the toughest NPC fighters on the planet to finally kill him. A CR 20+ BBEG in a scenario for "level 1-10" is no good. Gaxmoor is fun (I think) and unusual in its non-dungeon design, but has no concept of balance. The Gygaxes playtested it with I think a party of *16* 1st level PCs! Its actual playable PC levels are roughly 4th-12th for a 4-PC group, but you need to tone down Harecules from CR 20 (actually more like 21) to about CR 14. Detailed (numbered) maps would have been nice, too. I gave it *** in my review.

 

[Mystery Man]

Planar Handbook. I still remember my Rant of a Thousand Flames...

 

[JediSoth]

My biggest disappointment were The Deep and Creature Collection (the first, pre-MM one). I ended up using one creature from the CC in a purely role-playing encounter and The Deep looked so cool flipping through it on the shelf. When I got it home and started getting into it, though...Ugh. Well, you win some, you lose some.

I was really pleased with Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed. His web diaries and the hype didn't do it for me; I bought it on a lark at GenCon when it premiered and couldn't put it down the rest of the weekend. I was also really impressed with the Eberron CS. They both were just what I was looking for (though I didn't know it at the time).

JediSoth

 

[Particle_Man]

Actually I am a sucker for sourcebooks that promise the perfect ruleset, I have vast numbers of rules books I'll never use. Looking for an Arthurian sourcebook I bought "Relics & Rituals: Excalibur", but it's almost entirely Prestige Classes, Feats & other PC-centred stuff. It does almost nothing to adapt D&D to an Arthurian feel; it even keeps Monks and the regular spell lists! There may be something useful in there but I haven't found it yet.

Off-topic, but you might like "Legends of Excalibur: Arthurian Adventures" by RPGObjects. Instead of modifying Arthur's setting to fit the rules, they modify the rules to fit the setting.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Sure it does. The PC's are the stars of the campaign.

The problem is that Champions of Ruin gives us the following scenario:

"Hey, are we cool or what! We all have gotten our first epic feat, when we defeated Kezef, the legendary Chaos Hound, the one even Mask runs away from. Now, if we go on adventure for another year and get another dozen of levels, we can defeat that lich there that noone has ever heard of."

We have the Elder Evils, right out from the Realms' worst nightmares, bane of the gods, harbingers of the Apocalypse. And they're a bunch of losers that will die if you accidently hit them with a rock. On the other hand, we have some no-names like Aumvor the Undying, noone has ever heard of him except the wisest of Oghma's loremasters. And he wipes the floor with the elder evils and the party that defeated them - all at once. And with his free hand, he defeats a couple of high priests.

It's really bad design. If you want the players to be stars - fine! Go ahead, make the most legendary of Creatures defeatable. But don't do it in a world where we have undead elder brains with over 40 levels of wizard to boot, and really don't do it in a book where you give the stats for a lich with 32 levels of wizard at the beginning of the very same chapter.

 

[TerraDave]

jumping right on a fast moving band-wagon:

Deities and Demigods

I was excited about 3.0. I thought an update of this old classic had to be great...

But I learned quickly with that. And thanks in large part to EnWorld I have had few serious disapointments since.