Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Mark CMG]

I'm not sure how it actually got published in the first place, but anyone can guess what Gary had lost when he wrote the semi-LARPing, time-warping quest The Hunt for my Car Keys...

Um, heh heh . . . Ya see, the premise is that Gary lost his car keys but had a game planned for that afternoon. So he planned a sort of LARP thing for his players, so that they'd unwittingly help him find the keys. However, later, his notes on the game were found and accidently published...

 

[xnosipjpqmhd]

A couple of the most disappointing adventures I've read, though not strictly within the "official D&D" parameters of the thread:

Desert Plots, part of the Amazon Mutual series, by Dragon Tree Press. Chock full of bad puns. Quite awful really. I remember reading this about 15 years ago and thinking, there's got to be *something* in here I can use. Got to the end of the book. Nada.

Nightmare Maze of Jigresh, for Empire of the Petal Throne, By Judges Guild. More poor adventure design, without even the occasional bad pun for variety's sake. Some of the Petal Throne stuff is kind of neat, but this is just really poor. In form, it's sort of a ToH-ish dungeon, but with fewer cool traps, more random combat, and a very irritating, hard-to-DM, and essentially pointless maze. Move along, nothing here worth seeing.

ironregime

 

[Voadam]

Any suggestions?
Using the salvageable modules from the Grand Conjunction is something I would like to do (i.e. not the last two, and not Touch of Death).

Ship of Horrors

1 the detachable body parts never get used. Use them. I had one of them sitting in the basement with no head but a pen and paper and a different head sitting next to him. His head was with the BBEG next to the second head's body. Dictate to one head who writes down the message at the other end = creepy magical communication system. It also leaves notes for the PCs to discover when they go raiding and so they know the BBEG will be warned they are coming.

2 use the ghosts more to drive the plot and direct the party to evil family. Evil family killed them and gave bodies to BBEG.

3 BBEG animates lots of undead. Empower them as per standard ravenloft rules.

4 I gave the BBEG the possess undead undead spell from tome of magic (this was 2e) and he inhabited one of his super empowered commanded and controlled zombies to be a badass tough necromancer for the final fight. I also gave him a bunch of nonstandard cold spells from rolemaster and used their crit charts for some of the spell's effects (probably would not do this in 3e, but worked really well in 2e) He looked really frail to me for the fight otherwise despite his high level as a spellcaster.

5 find some mansion plans you can use for when the PCs go to the evil family manses.

6 consider cutting out the giant starfish attack(wish I had cut this scene, giant starfish are not really gothic horror). The diving for old bones parts are pretty cool though as they dive into darkness.

7 I had the BBEG secretly possess a party member in their climactic fight after the PC missed a save (everyone thought it was just a death curse that explained his new lack of weapon skills). The party fled when the temperature started to drop and they feared an avalanche cave in after burning the zombie body. The necromancer then went on the boat with the party, killed two crewmen to use their skins as components and animate their bodies empowering them as super undead ravenloft bodies and taking up residence in a zombie. He convinced the party he only wanted revenge against the captain who betrayed him and if they held a fair trial of the captain he would kill the captain and let them leave. The trial went wonderfully with great speaches and the party jumping the BBEG at an arranged signal, although some division among the party about who to support. The captain died amidst a magical cold huge area of effect spell along with many crew and horribly injuring many PCs and the BBEG zombie got away as the half broken ship sailed off in the mother of all storms.

So that's what I did with it.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

So... not being as well-versed in Greyhawk lore as I'd like... do rayguns and robots make any other appearances in the setting?

Off the top of my head, in addition to the crashed spaceship in the Barrier Peaks, there's a fair amount of thinly-veiled high technology associated with Lum the Mad and General Leuk-O. In the less futuristic category, there's a character (Myrlund) who's basically an old West gunfighter.

Anybody think of any others?

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Ugh, yeah Dragon Mountain was 'orrible. I don't think anyone had the patience to get through the first book, less to say myself and I was the guy running it. Walk, walk walk FIGHT walk, walk, walk, FIGHT walk, walk, walk ad nauseum. "Hm! Interesting that you want this piece of this medallion that is utterly useless for me and you will pay me for it. NOW YOU HAVE LEFT ME WITH NO CHOICE BUT TO FIGHT YOU!"

Child's Play was nauseating as well. I picked it up because it was (supposedly) for Greyhawk. Whoops. Was there even really a point to that thing?

The Murky Deep didn't impress me very much either. It stunk like a weak retread of the UK series of modules.

Curse of the Azure Bonds left me very unimpressed. It didn't help that the maps were just graph representations of the computer game's "dungeons." Does anybody need a map for one corridor that goes straight, left, straight, right, straight, right, straight, left...and that's it?

I didn't mind B1, namely because you could fit it into B2 so easily. I even hid the map in Castellan Keep for the PCs to find.

 

[frankthedm]

....and ending with a vampire weaing special sunglasses so daylight won't affect him immediately. On top of being a hasted 13th level sorcerer (in 3.0--two spells a round!), let's reduce the effectiveness of using sun light to stop a vampire. Where's that "rolls eyes" smiley when you need it?

That Illo was the epitome of DungeonPunk

 

[frankthedm]

The only module I've run that has a good tie-in to a novel is Freedom! for Dark Sun

The dark sun moduals blow. The First one kills off a major villian with Author super characters while the PCs watch. This single event, the death of Kalak, if changed, NEGATES every published peice of dark sun material that follows.

 

[Voadam]

The dark sun moduals blow. The First one kills off a major villian with Author super characters while the PCs watch. This single event, the death of Kalak, if changed, NEGATES every published peice of dark sun material that follows.

Not to mention the first novel series for the setting changes the setting drastically by killing Kalak and taking on the dragon, etc. What a way to invalidate major features of the setting immediately after the setting is released. But that is off topic as it is ripping on TSR novels and not modules.

 

[DM_Matt]

I know this borders on blasphemy, but I'd have to nominate the original Tomb of Horrors. The words "save or die" show up way to often in the text. Also, it's usually a complete toss up whether a particular action will safely unlock the next part of the adventure or simply kill you outright. We eventually resorted to just flipping coins to decide what to do; a strategy that seemed to work as well as careful deliberation.

Fellow heretic here. The origional ToH is full of "do X within 5 seconds or die," "No matter what you do you have a flat and unavoidable percentage chance of dyinf," and utterly arbitrary rules made up as the module goes on. The 5 second time limits make a lie of the quote in Thanee's sig from Gygax that its a "thinking mans module."

 

[Algolei]

Off the top of my head, in addition to the crashed spaceship in the Barrier Peaks, there's a fair amount of thinly-veiled high technology associated with Lum the Mad and General Leuk-O. In the less futuristic category, there's a character (Myrlund) who's basically an old West gunfighter.

Anybody think of any others?

My character scored a tank from Baba Yaga's Hut.