Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Barendd Nobeard]

Heart of Nightfang Spire was pretty bad.

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.

OK. I remember it as lots and lots of the same monster over and over. I'm sure it must have had some variation, but those damn mutant gorillas (girallons) over and over....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?

 

[Glyfair]

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

Adventure, novel series, computer game, all tied together. Too tightly, in fact.

Poll of Radiance was the first, but it was just lackluster (the maps were exactly the computer game type).

 

[Glyfair]

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.

IIRC, it was the Forgotten Realms tie-in to the 2nd edition change (Greyhawk's was Fate of Istus). There were three tied together with the "Time of Troubles" Shadowdale/Tantras/Waterdeep.

 

[Cam Banks]

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!

This is the gaming equivalent of getting on an elevator and immediately hitting the button to open the doors while complaining that the floor was moving and you had to get off before the thing took you somewhere.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[caudor]

I was not too thrilled with the Marco Volo trilogy, although Arrival was the best of the three.

 

[spunky_mutters]

Ravager of Time

We had a lot of modules go badly, but Ravager of Time was the worst. The party gets turned into geriatrics in the early going, and must finish the adventure like that. Eventually they have to fight the lifebane duplicates of themselves who are better than the old versions (and the bbeg is there too). I don't see any way to avoid a tpk unless you softball the party a lot. My players rebelled, and I don't blame them.

 

[Zelligars Apprentice]

Under the Storm Giant's Castle

I hate to throw Judges Guild under the bus like that, but I had to. It's a god-awful module.
And yes, JG had permission to produce "official" D&D products back then.

I have to respectfully disagree. By far the worst D&D module that Judge's Guild produced was Temple of Ra Accursed by Set. Why? First off, the map was designed to use Brix Blox to create the Temple. Literally. "The walls of the temple are made of gigantic blocks of red, white and blue stone (the colors of the Brix Blox pieces)". It would have been slightly better if they had used Legos, but no, they used a knock-off brick building set.

The map of the temple had no rhyme or reason, just a bunch of encounters that made no sense. The monster at the bottom of the temple was the worst. It looks like half a dozen diffrent random mosters glued together. Ugh!

Add to this the fact that this was the FIRST thing I ever got from Judge's Guild. This module was so bad, for years afterwards I refused to buy anything else made by them. Which was a pity, because a lot of their other stuff sounds pretty good, and I wish now that I had gotten more of it (I did eventually get some of the City State material, much, much later).

Oh, and I also agree that Castle Greyhawk, Puppets, and Child's Play were among the worst TSR D&D modules. And that someone at TSR was trying to kill Greyhawk by slapping the Greyhawk label on these pieces of drek. Along with allowing Rose Estes to write Greyhawk novels, of course (I STILL cannot believe how bad Master Wolf was.)

I wonder: Is there is a neurosis caused by exposure to bad role-playing adventures?

 

[Pants]

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!

In Search of the Unknown gets nominated for being just dull. It's nice that Gygax and Co created an adventure specifically to help novice DM's (that's a worthy goal!), but the adventure outline is just dull.

That Epic Adventure in the ELH. My god. What a horrible adventure. What's the best way to showcase an Epic Level Party's abilities? Why, a dungeoncrawl of course! But, it's on the Elemental Plane of FIRE. You know, the Plane that's really HOT. And everything, every creature in the adventure is EPIC with a capital E with many exclamation points following. Ugh, please, this adventure just sucks.

 

[the Jester]

From my experiences I'd have to say the first run of Dragonlance modules. No offense to their defenders, but I've never dealt with more heavy-handed railroady adventures.

I know some folks like 'em- we're exchanging opinions here! I even enjoyed Castle Greyhawk, though certainly not as a Greyhawk module...

 

[wingsandsword]

That Epic Adventure in the ELH. My god. What a horrible adventure. What's the best way to showcase an Epic Level Party's abilities? Why, a dungeoncrawl of course! But, it's on the Elemental Plane of FIRE. You know, the Plane that's really HOT. And everything, every creature in the adventure is EPIC with a capital E with many exclamation points following. Ugh, please, this adventure just sucks.

Not to mention that the main villain is an "Epic" dragon that requires a weapon to breach it's DR that's so powerful that a character of the level suggested for the level can't even normally have it by normal wealth guidelines, since it requires /+7. That was a textbook case of bad playtesting.

I'll have to give a Dishonorable Mention to Die Vecna Die *shudder*. A Ravenloft/Planescape crossover module that wrecks the continuity and basic setting considerations of both (Vecna, a demigod, is powerful enough to force his way out of Ravenloft, then proves more powerful than the Lady of Pain (who kills Greater Gods with ease). Whoever wrote that module needs to walk the walk of 1000 4-Siders.

Further Dishonorable Mention goes to Reverse Dungeon. I didn't look at the module itself, I don't know exactly how bad it was (since the concept wasn't half bad of playing the inhabitants of a dungeon, but I just know how the DM ran it), I just played in it when a DM I knew ran it, but it was pretty bad. First section, the PC's are generic, basic Monster Manual standard goblins in a goblin layer. Here come The Adventurers! The adventurers beat you up with overwhelming force, kill you, and take all your stuff. Second section, you're slightly more powerful monsters in a more complex dungeon, so here comes much more powerful adventurers to steamroller over you and take your stuff from your corpse. We didn't even bother with the third part of the module when it became clear the whole point was to get TPK'ed by the heroes.

Castle Greyhawk was pretty bad. I played in that once, and just about cried at the sheer badness of it. Game shows? Horrible puns? Pretty bad.