Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Mouseferatu]

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."

Much as I hate to do it, I too must stand up and be counted. I love the idea behind ToH, but I honestly feel that the execution doesn't measure up to that promise.

Any DM can kill the PCs, if that's really what he wants to do. For a module like ToH to work, it cannot afford to be arbitrary, and it cannot afford to be too obscure in its hints. It's only satisfying to wipe out the PCs of overconfident players if you could point back and show them where they honestly had a reasonable chance that they simply overlooked or were otherwise too foolish to take.

No offense mant to the Colonel, of course. ToH was a different time, and we can't all have the same preferences for our modules. Still, I'd spent so many years hearing about this one, I must admit I was disappointed when I finally got my hands on it. Though honestly, I don't think I'd nominate ToH for "worst ever"; just saying I'm not fond of it.

Interestingly enough, I do like "Return to the ToH." It's not one of my favorites, and it's got its share of flaws, but I like the overall setup.

 

[ProtoClone]

- every Ravenloft (campaign setting) module ever printed. Every single one. All utterly terrible.

Do you know all the bad things you hear about 2e modules? You can thank the Ravenloft modules for that.

Oh come on. Not every module was crap. I still run When Black Roses Bloom, and in fact, ran it as an XCrawl tie in. Night of the Walking Dead was just plain fun.

 

[TheGM]

Expedition to Barrier Peaks gets nominated for the bunch of stupid, sci-fi garbage in the module. I can accetp warforged, but robots? C'mon!

I'm really surprised so many people complained about RL and DL and it took this long for this one to come up. Complete and utter stupidity.

Follow it with another winner - Needle. Another one where they thought "let's introduce some Sci Fi into your fantasy world complete with idiotic aliens that are smart enough to fly across space, but too dumb to just cook the PCs when they show up with swords". Yeah, no thanks.

 

[hafrogman]

There was a special Dragon Magazine that had an adventure in it. . . somebody's Gauntlet or something like that. A gold dragon had set up a mini dungeon in order to recruit first level adventurers. . .

DM: Okay, you've found the enterance.
Player: Okay, we go on in.
DM: Make a spot check.
*roll roll roll*
Player: Made it.
DM: You see something flying at you out of the corner of your eye.
Player: I take a whack at it.
DM: Okay, hmm, it explodes into Dust of Choking. Make an insanely high fort save for a first level character.
*roll roll roll*
Player: Damn, failed. What happens.
DM: Lets see . . . 3d6 con damage.
*roll roll roll*
DM: Okay, 16 constitution damage. What was you con score?
Player: Er. . . 14
DM: Oh.
DM: You're dead. Sorry.
Player: I wonder what's on Cartoon Network

adventure ends.

 

[Hussar]

Gorgoland's Gauntlet. Yup, that one was pretty bad. The anagram puzzles were just brutal. And the coin dragon thing at the end was pretty much death on wheels. Just a tad overkill on 1st level characters.

 

[Sunderstone]

Oh come on. Not every module was crap. I still run When Black Roses Bloom, and in fact, ran it as an XCrawl tie in. Night of the Walking Dead was just plain fun.

I have to agree, not all were crap.
Feast of Goblyns - remains to this day one of our favorites. We even did this one three times, albeit with some newer players (but not all) each time.
When Black Roses Bloom - one of my few "player" experiences (usually Im the DM), I had fun with this one even though Im not a fan of Lord Soth or any DL in general.
Night of the Walking Dead - Awesome the first time I ran it. A good starter module. Second time wasnt all that great.
From the Shadows/Roots of Evil - again one of the few player experiences. These two were great too, although at times the PCs to a back seat to NPCs. Given the scope and reprecussions of these modules, it was understandable.
Touch of Death - fun when I ran it. The players liked it alot. I dont think it's ever worth redoing.
Ship of Horror - not a bad read and it looked fine to me. I never did get a chance to run it.
Adam's Wrath - Very cool IMO. Lots of fun in this one too.
House of Strahd - one of the best reprints ever. It even had guidelines for running it at higher level. I will convert this one day when I have time.


The Bad?
Touch of Darkness? - forgot the exact name... the one with the Mindflayer crap for levels 12-15 IIRC. I was sorry I bought this book. This one will never see the inside of my backpack, let alone a gaming table.
Book of Crypts - again,not sure of the exact name (it was long ago). The one with all the short filler adventures. Same as above.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Ship of Horrors

So that's what I did with it.

Sounds like it could have been a good module out of the box, if the designers had finished it properly. Thanks.

 

[Staffan]

The dark sun moduals blow. The First one kills off a major villian with Author super characters while the PCs watch.

I think it handled it pretty well. I see Kalak's death as more of a background event than the focus of the module - it's the thing that sets off the chaos in the arena which is what the end of the module is about, but it's not the actual death that's important.

It would have been different if the party had been Rikus', Agis', Sadira's, etc. sidekicks, but that's not what the adventure is about. I don't see "trying to stay alive and possibly help people while the entire city is panicking in a small area because the king was attacked" as fundamentally different than "trying to stay alive during an earthquake".

 

[Saladin4]

I'll nominate TSR's first Ravenloft module. It was actually a very well written module, but the whole adventure was centered around the players slowly discovering the villain's big secret - which was given away from the very beginning by prominantely featuring the secret as the art on the module's cover. That Spoiler ruined what should have been an excellent story.

Ravenloft was and still is one of the best modules ever written. I've run it numerous times, and each time it's different and each time it's challenging.

 

[Saladin4]

I was just going through my box of useless modules and I think there are a few that should get nominated through sheer obscurity...

Mystery of the Snow Pearls?
Bane of Llywelyn?
War Rafts of Kron?
The Lost Shrine of Bundushatur?
A Howl from the North?
The Lost Island of Castanamir?

Lost Island of Castanamir certainly is obscure, but it's still one of my favorite puzzle modules. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's a nice well written little gem.