Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Remathilis]

Damn... Only D&D modules eh?

I must admit, that Bleak House was pretty horrible and a railroaded mess.

Whispers of the Vampire's Blade is another mess on wheels.

however my alltime crapatistical award goes to The Deva Spark (PS). The module is you following a demon across the planes, nearly getting killed in the Abyss (opening of the module) and creating a new mosnter type (half-deva, half-bebelith) that is neither described well nor pictured, let alone statted.

Miserable, just miserable.

 

[Maggan]

It's not about Stradh being a vampire

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

Ok, to start with I6. It's one of my favourite modules ever. For us it was never about discovering that Stradh was a vampire, it was discovering his backstory and how it all fitted together. Every time I've run it myself (was a player first time), even if no one saw the cover, they pretty quick identified what Stradh was. "Hmmm ... this setup ... hmmm ... these names ... a castle with a lord ... it's a vampire ... cool".

To contribute with naming a module I didn't like, I'll nominate Earthshaker, the companion level adventure with a huge gnome-operated machine thing. Never liked the adventure. Also the master-series adventure were not to my liking.

As for non-D&D, and only d20, I nominate ... oh wait, that would be straying from the topic. I guess you're gonna have to lay awake at night wondering what I think the worst d20 adventure is.

Cheers!

M.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

For 2^nd Edition I'd have to say Return To The Tomb Of Horrors. Extra-Planar? Eh.

Man...I still think this is one of the greatest adventures ever, and it's my favorite boxed set. A great adventure, with tons of atmosphere. It's the scariest module I've ever had experience with.

Expedition to the barrier Peaks was also extremely fun - we lapped it up when it first appeared. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that there would be a module like this early on. Mixing genres was something my group had already been doing before we even saw this module.

Back to the worst.

Five Shall Be One and Howl From The North wouldn't be so bad, except that as soon as the PCs complete the quest

Spoiler

Iuz appears in disguise as a barbarian god and takes the swords the PCs have worked hard to gather and scatters them across the world. The author doesn't even leave room for the PCs to do anything but give up the swords and watch as they vanish. Durned frustrating. I worked out a far different ending to avoid such an unfair conclusion.

 

[Grand_Director]

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.

My players rebelled also! A three year game flushed because of this game. I made the mistake of thinking that the players would love the twist and the challenge. I learned that players will stand for anything EXCEPT changes to characters that affect the way they play. The PCs get so nerfed in this adventure that it causes nothing but frustration.

A hard lesson to learn, but one I have never forgot.

 

[Caspiar]

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?

Castanimir is actually one of the main reasons i got back into D&D during the 2nd edition...

War Rafts was fun.....a little goofy

and Bane of LLewelyn was the second part of to Find A King....taken by itself it makes no sense, but as a two parter it is an excellent mystery, wilth a helluva twist ending...
i liked it so much, i added the kingdom to my Greyahawk...

the worst one is simply Gargoyles (any time snowcones appear in a module, it can not be good)...

and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.......at the time i did not want technology in my D& D and it just did not work for me.......

 

[rogueattorney]

Curse of the Azure Bonds.

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

Sucked hard.

Yeah, that's a really good one... er bad one.

I actually thought the previous module in that series FRC1 Ruins of Adventure was worse. That'll be my candidate.

R.A.

 

[rogueattorney]

B3 had a map that was essentially unplayable - stairs missing, encounters misnumbered, etc. To save it you almost had to completely rewrite it.

If you're referring to the orange covered version that is now available for free download from the WotC OOP downloads page, that is precisely what happened, it was recalled and completely rewritten.

If you're referring to the green version that was mass produced back in the 80's, then I don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about. There's a lot of reasons why the green version of PotSP isn't my favorite module of the day, but poor editing isn't one of them.

R.A.

 

[jcfiala]

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!

Well, I don't think it's bad because it has robots. But it's still not a very strong module. You're wandering up in the mountains, trying to find out where the rediculously strong and weird monsters are coming from. You get three days to wander through a spaceship where most everything is either dead, a plant, or a robot, and at the end of it all there's not much you can do to solve the problem other than to bury the entrances.

I added a lich with an interest in extraplanar travel and had him turn the whole thing into his personal dimention travelling castle. And the players are going along with it. *laugh*

 

[Steel_Wind]

Many of the DL campaign modules are open ended and feature some of the greatest maps ever done for D&D in any edition.

DL1 is a heavy handed railroad. It lightens up progressivley until the railroad disappears half-way through the series.

They were feeling their way. To dismiss all 12 modules because of the first few, or worse, one DM you had 20 years ago, is naught but uninformed opinion.

 

[wingsandsword]

Signs the Adventure You're Writing Might End Up in this Thread:

1. It's based entirely around some metaplot/storyline event to your world, where there is only one real way for things to unfold, especially if it lets major NPC's do all the important stuff while the PC's are just spectators.

2. You think something "silly" or "wacky" is nice for a change of pace or you are writing a comedy or parody module in anotherwise serious game.

3. The railroading is so heavy that PC's have no choice but to follow one very linear path, with a total inabilty to make any actual choices, or even worse, be immediately punished if they even try to deviate from the predetermined path.

4. The adventure is out-of-genre with the source material. This includes robots and rayguns in a normal fantasy setting, or being very unfaithful to the novels or other original material for your setting.

5. You directly interfere with the players ability to play their characters. Starting out an adventure by crippling, aging, or debilitating them, and making them play through the entire module to undo whatver horrible bad thing happened to them at first just to get back to normal.

6. A super-powerful NPC acts as a Deus Ex Machina, completely obliviating any need for the PC's, or just as bad, is blatantly there and refuses to help the PC's for no apparent reason than to be an adventure hook (he could solve the entire adventure with one spell, or a trifling amount of work, but instead puts you through life & limb challenges for only the metagame reason that otherwise there would be no adventure).

7. Your adventure is blatantly written to be just product placement for your tie-in merchandising, and is meant to be unrunnable without them.

8. One Huge Spoiler could ruin the whole adventure, and it's on the very cover of the product or in the very name of it.

9. It introduces a new monster, that breaks all the existing rules of the setting, especially if it isn't completely described or even statted up.

10. Anybody want to finish off a Top 10 List?