What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules?

[Bullgrit]

Kinda funny how this thread went from "wost adventures of AD&D1" to "best adventures of AD&D2"

Bullgrit

 

[Erik Mona]

And yet so many of the classic 1e adventures started out as tournament modules - G1-3, D1-3, A1-4, Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Ghost Tower of Inverness, Dwellers of the Forbidden City.

At a guess I'd say that's likely in part due to the stylistic and preference differences between Frank Mentzer, who started the RPGA and ran it in the early years, and Jean Rabe, who was a major force in the organization in the later part of the 80s. Jean is a wonderful GM and a great human being, but her adventure designs are much more light-hearted and less dungeon-crawly than Frank's.

I suspect that both coordinators were publishing scenarios that reflected the interests of the gamers of their day. It's quite likely that the narrative, jokey RPGA scenarios were in large part a result of players growing tired of the "hack and slash" dungeon exploration of the early tournament modules.

--Erik

 

[Maggan]

Although I would rate my experience with Tomb of Horrors as one of singularly most boring session I've ever ran, resulting in a TPS* halfway through, I wouldn't call it one of the worst.

It didn't click for me or my players, but there are modules that fared even worse with my group, such as Savage Coast.

But then again, we enjoyed Earthshaker, so we're probably freaks.

/Maggan

*TPS = Total Party Suicide

 

[billd91]

I suspect that both coordinators were publishing scenarios that reflected the interests of the gamers of their day. It's quite likely that the narrative, jokey RPGA scenarios were in large part a result of players growing tired of the "hack and slash" dungeon exploration of the early tournament modules.

--Erik

That certainly makes some sense to me. My experience with RPGA tournaments definitely went away from the hack and slash dungeon exploration direction. That style was more for the AD&D Open, which was geared toward groups of players showing off their rule knowledge and good adventure-playing, trap-finding, trick-foiling, fight-surviving tactics.

The RPGA events I participated in were more designed to foster individual advancement of players based on role-playing the character. Though there were traps, tricks, puzzles to solve, and some fights, those were typically secondary to playing the character in an interesting way. I don't believe you even needed to finish the mod to advance, you just needed to be judged the best player at the table. And the narrative jokey scenarios offered more to role-play with/against than the adventure formula in the AD&D Open.

 

[Tewligan]

IMaybe you're confusing it the Obscure Death rule for NPC's.This basically asks the DM to always keep in mind an "out" to explain how an NPC's body was never recovered so they can come back later. And all this was just a published way to do what DM's had been doing for years anyway: preventing their story from breaking when the PC's do something unexpected.

It was a published way to do what BAD DM's had been doing for years.

 

[TarionzCousin]

It was a published way to do what BAD DM's had been doing for years.

Doing the Happy Dance immediately after a TPK?

 

[ExploderWizard]

I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play - something interesting and exciting is more likely to happen and that's what I want when I play an rpg. Prodding everything with a 10' pole, or getting your orc slaves to enter every room first, is the play style Tomb of Horrors encourages. This, to me, is a bad play style.

In fact, Gary says how much he dislikes this play style in the 1e DMG:



Make up your frikkin' mind, Gary!

EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?

You don't have to know. All you need to know it that what is put in the mouth doesn't come back. Common sense says that entering said hole is a very bad idea unless faced with certain death if you don't enter.

 

[Erik Mona]

Wait, what?

What sort of "teleporter" teleports only a foot of whatever you put into it? How would that work with, say, a character's arm?

I'm willing to say right here and now that every single character devoured by the Green Face DESERVED to die. It was their punishment for being lousy adventurers and not being cautious enough in what is obviously (and intentionally) a deathtrap dungeon.

--Erik

 

[Eridanis]

That's easy: the maps.

<snip>

DL8 - Map to the Tower of the High Clerist: A castle that is nearly 800 feet tall, with level after level after level of floor map designs and layouts for you to fill with whatever your heart desires. Still the largest published Castle Map of all time, AFAIK. If you wanted to run the whole damn dungeon as one campaign - 1st to 20th a la WLD, you easily do so. As the lair of your BBEG and the last dungeon crawl of your campaign? This is >>Da Shizznit<<. I have often re-used sections of this map in other campaigns. I don't think my players ever recognized it either. It's a MASSIVE castle. The module itself does not even pretend to detail less than a few dozen areas. There are Hundreds and Hundreds of area in the thing. It's MONSTROUSLY HUGE, okay?

You inspired me to go down and pull out my copy of DL8. I have to admit that I probably - make that definitely - haven't cracked it open since I bought it in 1985, so it was crisp as if brand new. (We were playing the modules at the time, so I didn't read them; we got through DL6, IIRC, before the group fell apart, and I never found time to go back and really read through.)

You are NOT KIDDING about the map of the High Clerist's Tower. About 22"x32", 16 levels plus the 3 levels of the Knight's Spur, highly detailed - PLUS an overhead battlemap of the whole place on the flip side. Incredible. Plus, on flipping through the module, it has a full page dedicated to sheet music for hymn of the Solamnic Knights. Talk about detail and immersion in the campaign world.

Oh, and the cover price? $6. (That's about $12 in 2010 dollars.)

****************
The "shared experience" observation is spot on, but I think some of the blame for poor 2E product needs to be laid at the feet of TSR's business practices. As a consumer, I got more and more frustrated at products with large fonts, huge white margins, poor maps, and ended up not buying a lot of 2E past '94 or so. (Didn't help that I went back to college and had no spare $$ for such things.)

It seems to me that as TSR's financial situation got more and more dire, they tried to cut corners and save money with such tactics, and it ended up backfiring on them in the end. Eric noted Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Gates of Firestorm Peak as good 2E mods; both of those were produced after the WotC purchase, IIRC. In my opinion, a solid, stable company and manangement supporting the creative team made for a higher quality product.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Dragons of Despair? That's the super-railroad one right?

This. Nothing like using wandering armies of draconians to make your players conform. At least the stinkfest that was Forest Oracle had unintentional humor to redeem it.

Edit: Fun quotes from my original dead tree copy of DL1 below:

Players may wish to use PCs from the ... story, detailed on character cards at the center of the module. It is generally an advantage for players to use these characters rather than bring their own into the campaign.

Gee, I can't make/play my own character? Well, at least we get to read poetry ...

Event 4: Reading. On one of the nights the party is camped (your choice), pass around [the poem] found at the end of this book. As though around the campfire, have each player read one verse aloud, from first verse to last, until they finish the poem.

Lucky our characters all memorized the same poetry in school! At least we can go where we want ...

Event 7: The Armies march. Just after dusk on the fifth game night, the armies begin to march and conquer all the land to the south; every 4 hours thereafter, and encounter area falls into their hands. The general trend of the captured areas should direct the PCs toward (area 44). If PCs are in a captured area, they see the front lines of the army approaching them at a movement rate of 9". This gives them a chance to flee the army toward (area 44).

Never mind, I guess we're just going to area 44! (Never mind that area 44 is in the northeast of the map, and would immediately be cut off by armies advancing southward.) Ah, well, at least we can kill people and take their stuff:

This module introduces several enemy NPCs ... since these NPCs appear in later ... modules, try to make them have "obscure deaths" if they are killed: if at all possible, their bodies should not be found. ... The same rules apply to the PCs on pages 17-18 of the module ... this does not apply to PCs other than those who are part of the story.

I think that last bit settles the question of early campaign PC plot-immunity.