Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Arnwyn]

A Good DM ...

Which, of course, is completely irrelevant as to whether a module is adequately designed or not.

 

[Psychic Warrior]

Which, of course, is completely irrelevant as to whether a module is adequately designed or not.

BINGO! We have a winner!

 

[Sledge]

Labrynth of Madness was rather insane.
Not just a killer dungeon, but infuriating search for tattoo granting items
Crazy death traps of all sorts
invisible trolls with metal staves that had glass globes that contained black puddings - whack an adventurer and enjoy
Ladders that blast you with lightning so you fall onto the finger of death type trap
But the real fun was trying to track down tons of hidden areas that would grant tattoos.
This tattoos were needed to access certain areas and back tracking was needed as sometimes you needed a tattoo to reveal something that previously wasn't in the room.
Add in the fact that there was an error that made it impossible to collect the tattoos needed and you have quite the winner.

Well seeing as I got the errata the same day I got the module, I can't count that as a fault. Lot's of modules are accidentally missing very important things. I found that this adventure was a lot of fun, and no where near the awful kind of adventure it could have been. Looking forward to revisiting it.

I can't say what the worst official game I've run is because I always fix them. Kinda the DM's job.

 

[KenM]

My vote is for a competion module ran at one of the very first Massconfusion convetions back in the 1980's. It was called Lady Ellien's Castle. The stairs on the maps would not line up right. Bob Jennings, the person that wrote it is your textbook example of a rat bastard DM. You look up Rat bastard DM in a dictonary, you see his picture. He told us once that "I Look at being a DM as I'm an enemy general out to take out the players." His adventures are designed to be run thugh one way, if you don't do it excatly that way, you are dead. The second level of the place was over the courtyard. During playtesting, me and other people were going to run it at the con, some asked "what if a player asked about the level being over the courtyard?" Bob said to him "they won't notice that.". During the game, a player did ask that same DM that, and the DM just looked at him and said " The writer of the module said that you would not notice."

 

[ZuulMoG]

For me it is a toss-up between Ravenloft and Dragonlance. I'm not just going to leave it as that, because your outraged howls of protest smote my ears like thunderclaps before I even clicked 'submit reply'.

Ravenloft is a roach motel, PCs go in, nothing comes out. Any setting that is a one-off PC setting is by default a loser and waste of time. If you can't play your main PC there, why bother?

Dragonlance is a marvellous series of books, and I've loved every one I've read. But as a setting for D&D it is an abject failure, much like Middle Earth would be. All of the important things that happen in either series of books have all been done by the protagonists of the novels. Each has plenty of heroes to go around, PCs need not apply. As a rule, I've found that epic fantasy novels make piss-poor settings for fantasy RPGs for that very reason. There's not much fun in running around slaying dragons when you know the Important Dragons are all going to be slain by someone else. The only way I could ever RP in a Middle Earth setting is if the rules assume, and state to the players, that Gandalf, Aragorn, Bilbo, Frodo, Legolas, Gimli, Faramir, Eowyn, Theodred, et al never existed, and all of the heroics they were destined to do must now fall to the PCs to do, or ME will be covered in darkness. Problem with that is, those were great stories because of the great characters. Just any thirteen dwarves and a halfling rogue setting out to slay a dragon would not have made nearly as good a tale as Bilbo, Thorin, Gandalf and Co. The same holds true of Dragonlance, what would the Inn of the Last Homely House be without Tika, who but Raistlin could challenge the Queen of Darkness, who but Tas could save them all?

Leave the books to the characters that their authors gave life.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Two votes for me...

The Dragonlance Series (Thanks for forcing me to make the same retarded decisions, or play second fiddle to a bunch of losers) My favorite scene was when the GM looked at me and said: "Kitaira stabs you in the eye and you die, Sturm." WTF?

And....

The Time of Troubles series.

THOSE losers becoming Gods? The module was crappily fleshed out (the map for the castle, where Mystra was stuck in the prismatic sphere in the novel was rediculous) and played like lepers do gymnastics.


Two series of modules that would have been better off having been left blank sheets of paper and sold as "Build your own PC sheet" kits.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Ship of Horrors is a masterpiece compared to Thoughts of Darkness, a "gothic horror" module which features:

a realm that looks like something off the cover of Heavy Metal Magazine

Roving bands of 15th to 18th level drow warriors, wizards, and rogues

Massively overpowered hordes of spellcasting, vampiric Illithid

And a ridiculously stupid "God brain" that reads like something out of 60's era DC comics.


It's absolute garbage from start to finish, a hackfest module that takes the supposed feel of Ravenloft out behind the woodshed and beats it with an axe handle. I don't know how the hell the module ever made it past concept stage, let alone onto store shelves.

Patrick Y.

Thank you for reminding me of that monstrosity! Argghh!

You forgot that the final giant brain couldn't be harmed by any of the PCs but had to be stopped by NPCs who turned up in the nick of time with their special widgit.

I bought it (shrink wrapped) because I thought "a high level mindflayer-based adventure! In Ravenloft! How cool could that be?". Unfortunately it was utter garbage without any redeeming elements. Pah.

 

[OnCider]

Uh ... it's been mentioned perhaps more often than any single other module. At least a dozen citations. You have read the entire thread, right?

Uh ... Its the first time its been mentioned. You're getting confused with the Time of Troubles adventures.

Terrible Trouble at Tragidore was the adventure you got free with with 2nd edition DM Screen.

Never ran it myself...

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

My favorite scene was when the GM looked at me and said: "Kitaira stabs you in the eye and you die, Sturm." WTF?

To be fair this is never part of the module, in fact the closest thing to this railroad is a small note in a list of ways to defeat the blue dragonarmy that gives something like a +2 morale modifier for a self sacrificing heroic leader.

Your dm either had issues with you or was beholden to the novels; neither had anything to do with the modules.

(And it was through the heart anyway, not the eye)

 

[OptionalRule]

Ironically the shortest worst adventure of all time is "Pie and Orc". An orc is trapped inside a giant pie and you have you eat your way to him to get him out.