So what 3E adventures were worst?

[howandwhy99]

The vast majority are truly bad unfortunately. We've actually gone back to poor man's 1E modules because the rules are so incompatible conversions of those gems are difficult. Not to put down Goodman Games at all. They just don't include as much flavor as many of the originals IMO. They could use a less barebones approach and a more Gygaxian imaginative flair. Expedition to Greyhawk Ruins actually got this right.

 

[James Jacobs]

I don't recall the name, as I was a player, but there was this adventure where we had to assault a castle on a mountain, with the final boss being an orc ghost (druid?). This was long ago, so I probably mixed up some details...

HA! Yup, that was "The Thunder Below," an adventure I wrote for the WotC website back in the day. One of the problems, of course, is that high-level D&D is kind of broken—this was ESPECIALLY true in 3.0. A protection from evil spell, for example, pretty much shuts down a ghost's possession attack. Anyway, sorry you didn't have fun with the adventure, but it does sound like the DM was being a bit too unfair with the group in a lot of places. For example, the adventure pretty much calls out speak with dead as one of the spells that WILL work to extract answers from the dead body with the clues. Raise dead certainly works better, but the adventure, as written, doesn't say that speak with dead won't work. In another case, the adventure specifically calls out teleport as "the most efficient and safe way for the characters to approach the castle." Sounds like the DM was making some poor calls to me.

I do aggree about the half-dragons, though. They got used WAY too much during 3.0. Which is the main reason I put a ban on them when I started editing Dungeon... Half dragons need to be justified, not just there becasue "ha ha the troll's a half black dragon and now he's immune to acid ha ha I WIN!"

I'd be curious to see what you thought of the adventure after you read it!

 

[Brennin Magalus]

Complementing the other thread ... what were the worst published 3E adventures? Do any rise to the craptacularness that is N2, The Forest Oracle?

For me, it is Deep Horizons, the module that promised a strange, mysterious enemy in the Underdark to rival the hated drow ... and instead, gave us bat people.

LOL. They should have used crab people instead.

"Taste like crab, talk like people..."

 

[Brennin Magalus]

return to the temple of elemental evil.

edit: i wasn't sure anyone could make the original (t1-4 (1985)) worse than it was.
i was wrong.

making it d02 really did screw the pooch.

Threefold Blasphemy! My hat of (Rtt)ToEE hat knows no limit!

 

[BlueBlackRed]

All of the recent hardback WotC modules were so bad that I've written off any future WotC modules.

 

[Numion]

So I belong to a really limited group who liked Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil? Well, at the point we played it, we were mostly students and gamed a really lot - so it was nice to have a really grand scale adventure. Not all my players liked it, though, I racked up a stack of dead PCs. Then again, we even liked Nightfang Spire - but I can see how it could get repetitive. By sheer luck and good tactics the endless Girallon fights went past quickly.

Biggest disappointment in the first adventure path was Lord of the Iron Fortress. Now, it did include interesting and varied locations, but all that went to the toilet due to a new crappy monsters and the really crappy 'boss fight'.

I've read a lot of craptastic adventures, but I just chose not to run them, and thus don't remember them

 

[Terraism]

I tend not to run modules unless they really wow me, so, personally, not a lot of experience with the horrid ones. That said, I have read many of them, because I do like to pick up modules to use as inspiration. Shadows of the Last War and Whispers of the Vampire Blade really are as bad as suggested. [Shudder.]

All of the recent hardback WotC modules were so bad that I've written off any future WotC modules.

But all that said, I want to point something out - there really are some gems. The recent Eberron adventure, Eyes of the Lich Queen, is pretty much hands-down amazing. The forced aberrant marks can come off a little kludgy, but with some DM-elbow-grease, it slides in quite nicely. Just saying - worth smiling at the good memories while we toss out the trash.

 

[wayne62682]

Let me cast my vote for Shadows of the Last War and Whispers of the Vampire's Blade. I actually thought both were fun adventures with lots of action, but they had lots of problems.

Shadows: The biggest problem with this was that the adventure takes place in the Mournlands, where healing magic doesn't work at all. Granted, Keith Baker wrote it when that wasn't finalized, but there are some hefty encounters that can really drain you. Also, the dungeon has traps for nonsensical reasons; my players found the 'real' entrance and went around to the fake entrances, setting off the traps at each one (that was funny though). The whole color-coded key things were a bit stupid, too. Perhaps worst of all is the fact the players are supposed to surrender the item they came to retrieve (well, a copy of it) to the bad guys, or risk a TPK by trying to fight them.

Whispers: Even worse, due to a totally railroaded plot that pretty much REQUIRES DM fiat if you don't want it over in 30 minutes. The action scenes were great, but it would really annoy players to constantly have the bad guy escape five times (or however many, I lost track) just because the plot requires it. This one could have been a LOT better if it wasn't so linear.

 

[JeffB]

Hmm..guess I'll steer clear of these Eberron modules should I decide to start running a Eberron campaign.

 

[allenw]

My second pick would be Speaker in Dreams. It seemed as if half the adventure was missing. I kept waiting for a web enhancement with the rest of it.

As I recall, Speaker in Dreams actually had a pretty substantial web enhancement. Didn't change the plot, but it gave more city details, encounters, and NPCs.