Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[francisca]

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

That's hindsight. DL1 was brand spanking new at the time, and this idea of modules being composed of "scenes" littered with things the players must and must not do, and NPCs they must not kill, etc.. was all new. Prior to DL1, the railroading was minor, and an infrequent annoyance. The early DL modules elevated the practice to a full-blown scourge, to many of us. And, we wanted no part of it.

Recently, I have played some DL, and had a good time, but no published modules oops, I mean "adventures" have been used.

At least that's my experience.

 

[Yig]

Standing Stones was pretty boring.

 

[Mark CMG]

Worst D&D adventure of all time?

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...

 

[Staffan]

The intro adventure in the 2e FR box set was pretty bad. Especially the scene in the middle where they say "If the PCs run low on resources, you can have Elminster pass by with his dog. He is waving a stick at it, shouting 'Heel!' trying to get it to walk next to him. However, the stick is a wand of healing, so he'll heal the party in the process. Then he goes away." Also, the adventure is way too tough for a 1st level party (even with the Amazing Healing Elminster), so it's pretty bad for an intro adventure.

Another adventure I recall as being pretty bad was Black Flames for Dark Sun. The party is guarding a caravan between Urik and Raam (or something like that), when a sandstorm hits and separates the party from the caravan. The party is found by a nasty 21st level dragon (wizard/psionicist), who presses them into going to the ruins of Yaramuke to do something for him (because there's a powerful enchantment there that makes everyone who's evil blind). For one reason or another the adventure culminates in a big fight between that dragon and Abalach-Re, the sorcerer-queen of Raam, while the PCs run away.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Wow, those Marco Volo modules sucked. People caught the drift of any potential encounter and tried to dodge them as well as possible because every. Damn. Encounter. Was a fight.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

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!

You undoubtably meant to say "I can accept robots, but warforged? C'mon!"

At least, that's what *I* would have meant to say. Really, if you don't want chocolate in your peanut butter, stay out of Greyhawk.

 

[Joël of the FoS]

I'll nominate TSR's first Ravenloft module.

This is too my all time favorite, with other in the "I" serie of adventures. Indeed, the DM had to hide the adventure cover, but it was often the case back then: the cover gave away many spoilers.

And the "one who shall not be named" adventure turned out quite well with my team. Fun to DM, fun to play. You can't save the world all the time

Joël

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The Return To The Temple Of Elemental Evi. It seemed more like an exercise in template creation and re-writing Greyhawk lore based on a classic module, than an attempt at creating a solid gaming experience.

I don't nominate Castle Greyhawk becuase it's a given that it is so bad that there can be nothing worse. We should name this thread the Castle Greyhawk Award for worst module ever.

P.S. Expedition To The Barrier Peaks is a great module. My high level party is going to go through it in a little while.

 

[DaveMage]

The Sword of the Dales was my least-favorite.

I don't remember the details now, but my party did something slightly out of the ordinary and it invalidated the remainder of the entire module.

I was also pretty peeved because the entire trilogy of adventures really could have been released as 1 product.

 

[kobold]

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.

This module had the ballon-people or bubble-people that popped if you poked them!