Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Lost Island of Castanamir?

You're nuts. That's a great little module and it introduced one of the few really useful and interesting new categories out outsiders. (Which are strangely absent from 3E, so maybe I'm alone in loving them.)

I'd say "Castle Greyhawk," the attempt to repair the damage, "Greyhawk Ruins" (the prize at the bottom of the package/dungeon should not be a tie-in to SPELLJAMMER!) and the other allegedly Greyhawk modules around the same time.

EDIT TO TELL WHY:
1) "Castle Greyhawk": After nine or so years, the payoff to finally getting Castle Greyhawk in print was ... a comedy module? A bad one at that? No. A thousand times, no. Imagine, during the 2E era, if TSR had released a second set of Undermountain levels, but this time based on old Abbott and Costello movies, and that was about the reaction from most D&D fans regarding this module.

2) "Greyhawk Ruins": Allegedly the serious module to fix the psychic damage done by the previous module, this was an incredibly generic, at best, module that happened to sit in the most hallowed spot in the AD&D world. It was so generic, in fact, that it was used to hook into whatever else TSR was pimping at that point, including other settings, culminating in a spelljamming helm and ship being the ultimate prize in the dungeon that should have been knee-deep in D&D history.

3) The other modules at this time were as bad as any professionally published module ever. They didn't make sense, they weren't even remotely balanced and, most importantly, they were boring. If they didn't say "Greyhawk" at the top, no one would have picked them up. They genuinely come off as some sort of passive-aggressive attempt to justify dropping the Greyhawk line. That's idiotic, I know, but it's hard to come up with a reason they exist otherwise.

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Total crumminess from start to finish.

Sounds like it. I have to wonder though if maybe railroading might not be perfect for some beginning groups.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Curse of the Azure Bonds.

Total from start to finish. You follow the storyline of the nevel, complete with potagonists (The requisite sexy girl and her extra-dimensional Lizardman Paladin buddy) and watch them have the adventure while you tag along.

Sucked hard.

Three comments.

1) Wow, I didn't know you could use that word here.

2) Was that a computer adventure? I just googled it, and they all talked about a PC or Commodore 64 game.

3) Sounds like an over-the-top example of why some people don't like the Forgotten Realms.

I don't know the name of this one, but the worst 3e adventure I've been in was a 3.0 adventure involving a ghost orc druid that was summoning some kind of evil spawn. We had to deal with broken advanced air elementals, wimpy solitary half-dragon giants (crappy Will saves ... did they bother to playtest?) and the only way to advance the plot was to raise some nobody from the dead (not speak with dead) and have the Track feat. Our party didn't have the latter ability, so guess how well we did.

 

[VirgilCaine]

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?

You must explain WHY. Stupid monsters/encounters? Railroading? Too much goofiness/silliness? Bad maps? Without details, the thread is combinations of bad/weird names and places.

 

[kenobi65]

I'll nominate TSR's first Ravenloft module.

Ravenloft had, for me, a much bigger issue. The party is essentially set up to die. Killing Strahd is *so* difficult, and there are so many ways to die in the mod (esp. when the mod specifically says to not let in any cleric who might have a chance of turning the more powerful undead) that a TPK was a very likely result.

 

[francisca]

X3: Curse of Xanathon, just plain old stupid. The things the players were expected to do would make a wookie defense: it just don't make sense.

The Castle Greyhawk parody that wasn't. Just not funny.

Most of the 2e lankhmar stuff is crap, from a setting/Leiber fan perspective. Female thieve's guild members? What you say? Did they even read the books? Blasphemy! Seriously, you have to dig hard in most of those books to find some nuggets, and most of them are the bad kind.

Oh, and the 1e DL modules. I got off the DL plot train and ended up bad mouting the setting for literally 20 years. All aboard the plotline express!

 

[francisca]

You must explain WHY.

Naw. Much more fun to speculate.

 

[GlassJaw]

Quest for the Heartstone was/is a real stinker. I bought it as a kid because I liked the line of D&D posable action figures, but writing an adventure around a line of toys is a real bad idea. Lots of random, senseless encounters that exist for no other reason than to get you to buy the line of plastic monster toys. Ugh.

All true but the map of the complex was very cool. You could easily stock it in an intelligent fashion and have a great dungeon on your hands.

Any of the adventures from TSR's "repeatedly stab Greyhawk in the face and hope it dies" phase, from the late 80s, early 90s:

Castle Greyhawk
Puppets
Gargoyles
Child's Play

Puppets is salvageable. The first half is nothing more than a couple of random encounters strung together but the 2nd half, when the party is investigating in the city and eventually encouters the "puppets", is pretty cool.

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I didn't like the Temple of the Frog. I never liked the batch of futuristic modules to begin with but TotF was just lame.

 

[A'koss]

You must explain WHY. Stupid monsters/encounters? Railroading? Too much goofiness/silliness? Bad maps? Without details, the thread is combinations of bad/weird names and places.

Think of them as death by mediocracy. They're just so mind-numbingly dull they end up consigned to the dustheap and forgotten. They don't even enjoy the notoriety of being one of the Elder Awfuls.

 

[Teflon Billy]

From the same period as Curse of the Azure Bonds was another steaming pile that I can't recall the name of.

Divine magic goes away (just vanishes...praying doesn't recharge spells anymore for Clerics), so the PC's are expected to find out what the deal is.

First order of business according tot he Adventure? Go ask Elminster what's going on.

Secondly, you get 2 full pages of boxed text for the players to listen to, which details exatly what Elmister says, and in that crappy accent that they affected for him.

2 pages and 10 minutes of exposition later what is the answer? He doesn't know, and for whatever reason...is unwilling to find out.

We were like "look, Elminster...just cast Wish or something. The world is screwed".

Nope. He, as written, thought that doing anything might be the wrong thing, and refused to appreciably help.

We quit on this one. Just told the DM to pack it up, we were playing Car Wars starting now. Next week, we switched DM's...to me.