The Best and Worst of 2E adventures

[MerricB]

G'day folks!

Editing this thread to make it more non-Semlak-y.

What are the best and worst of 2E adventures?

Please limit your answers to ones you've played or DMed, rather than those you've just looked at - the experience is important!

In my case...

The Avatar Trilogy (Shadowdale, Tantras, Waterdeep) shows off some of the worst of the 2E railroading and NPC-dominance traits. My players got utterly sick of the NPCs doing everything, talking amongst themselves without reference to the PCs, and Elminster popping up. I don't think we even finished Tantras before things finished.

This is somewhat of a pity, because a lot of individual encounters aren't that bad. (Actually, the adventure ideas in Arabel in the first module may be the best part of the entire series! )

Five Shall Be One! sort of ends up in both my best and worst list - the basic idea is excellent, the execution is pretty good, but the sequel - Howl from the North - is just pathetic, tainting an otherwise solid module.

Vecna Lives is also an interesting one, a great concept, some great investigative adventuring... and a fairly limp rail-roaded ending. My players loved it though, which is why I've included it.

What are your thoughts?

Cheers!

 

[johnsemlak]

I posted a very similar question here:
Best 2e Adventures?

I got quite a few responses.
Best praise goes to Ruins of Undermountain, which I agree with.

 

[johnsemlak]

Well, I can't contribute too much here, having not played in the 2nd Edition era. Nevertheless, I'll try to make the thread more semlaky (spelled correctly without a hyphen )

I've read a couple of reviews of Ruins of Undermountain (good) and Vecna Lives (bad).

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

I think i might actually post this reply, or at least parts of it in another thread....
It seemed like you could do a lot with Ruins of Undermountain, but I've never delved really deep into the boxed set...

Here's my favorites: there may be some spoilers...

The Shattered Circle--this is quite simply one of the best adventures I have ever read in my life. My players had a blast going through this, and it was a pretty easy read to plan the encounters. The plot is simple but can be twisted around, the NPCs are great--Clinker the deep gnome became a regular NPC...hell more of a DM-controlled PC since my group at the time had 2 players... The Chitines are a pretty interesting race, and their city can make for a great encounter...

This is a great dungeon-crawl and is perfect for low-level characters to get a start--pick this one up and convert to 3e!

Ravenloft TSR Silver Anniversary Edition--This is really just a reprint of the classic module, but it DID do all of the updating work for you. I had a blast running through this adventure. Awesome villain, some great opportunities for tactical play (on both the villain's and the PC's parts), and by golly, you can play it several times since the goals change because of the tarot card game.

The WORST:
The Accursed Tower--This FR adventure BLOWS... I stopped running it I think... I dunno, but the players cried nothing but "get on with it!" and "will this ever end." It's a mildly amusing wilderness adventure for the first half of it...and then you get to the dungeon. Good god, what a horrible dungeon crawl... ack!

 

[Darrin Drader]

Best - Ruins of Adventure. Honestly I don't remember if that was early 2nd or late 1st. Even though it was based on a computer game, there was just so much to it and so many things to do. In keeping with my computer game adaptation fixation, I'm also going to vote for Curse of the Azure Bonds. I ran both of these and had a great deal of fun with them.

Aside from those two, I gotta give props to Monte Cook's A Paladin in Hell.

The worst - yep, you guessed it, the Avatar trilogy. I could never figure out if it was supposed to be an actual module or just an abridged version of the books. In retrospect I wish I would have never spent my money on them.

 

[Daedalus]

For best I'd have to put my vote in for "Dead Gods" by Monte Cook...

 

[Staffan]

I'm a bit of a fan of Night Below, what with all the handouts and stuff. Handouts are good - they should make more handout-heavy adventures.
As for bad adventures, the one that immediately comes to mind is Black Flames for Dark Sun. It's a starting-level adventure (3rd level), and includes having the PCs forced by a 22nd-level dragon (defiler/psion) to go to a ruin city to do something, and then things culminate with a fight between that dragon and a sorcerer-queen (also level 20+ dualclassed) that the PCs can't do much about. Ick.

 

[Hardhead]

Dead Gods

Best. Adventure. Ever.

And the one that set up Orcus for his return to life in 3e, I might add.

The players must stop Tenobrus, an undead god (not a god of the undead, but litterally a god that died and has been brought back in a sort of divine unlife), from recovering Orcus's wand. Tenobrus already has the First Word, (literrally, the first word spoken to create the universe) and has killed another god with it already. Wooot! It's an awsome adventure that somehow manages not to be munchkiney or dumb despite the epic storylines. And it has one of the most inventive bits ever, where the PCs experience a past event by taking up new characters and playing through a sort of mini-adventure, that reveals what had come before.

It's excellent. It's been released as an ESD here: http://store.yahoo.com/svgames-store/tsr2631esd.html