Worst D&D adventure of all time?

[Saladin4]

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.

Ravenloft: It WAS a deadly module. *Spoiler Warning* I had a group of players finally get to Strahd's coffin and kill him, but they were all 2nd level by that time, having been level drained all the way down. Now... the players admitted it was a fantastic adventure, and that it was very challenging, and they felt great accomplishment in victory, but losing all those levels really hurt. That's about the time I invented the handy 'Potion of Restoration', and I made it possible for them to regain levels fairly quickly, so it didn't leave such a bad taste in their mouth.

NOTE: Most of these BAD modules could be fixed by a good DM, and who hasn't had a BAD DM ruin a well written module?????

 

[Saladin4]

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.

Ravager of Time, like many modules from the early days, had moments when it was imbalanced, but that's easy to fix for a good DM. (I do it all the time, even with 3.0 and 3.5 modules, which are far more scientifically balanced). But Ravager of Time... was a GREAT story. A fantastic trip through the swamp, with mystery and turns to the story that kept it interesting till the end. One of the better story modules. If you like dungeon crawls, I suppose you wouldn't like this.

 

[Saladin4]

Egg of the Phoenix. It apparently was a series of RPGA modules strung together, as I recall. I remember it as a poorly-written mess. It just didn't hang together well.

Needle - another poorly written, boring module.

Needle - I believe this was playtested in Gen Con before it was actually published. I think Frank Mentzer wrote it. We had a horrible DM (At Gen Con) and it sucked so bad, that I went up to Frank and told him so. I will always regret that, because I could honestly tell his feelings were hurt. Hence, in hindsite, I blame the DM.

 

[Saladin4]

Very much so. I used to have them back when DL was fairly new, and even then after looking at them I thought it would be more fun for the group to just sit around and read the novels together. At least then you don't try to fool yourself into thinking your choices make a difference in how the plot plays out.

You guys are all short sighted about the Dragon Lance Modules. First of all, the modules were an attempt to tell an EPIC story from start to finish. If your idea of a great 'epic' adventure is going through a dungeon randomly populated with monsters (that have no business being there no matter how you try to explain it.) The DL modules called for some changes to the way normal adventures had been played (up to that point), but the PAYOFFS were IMMENSE. A Good DM took away the feeling of being Railroaded, and instead gave you the feel of taking part of an EPIC adventure, becoming heroes in a true world saving story.

A second point is that the first novel in the series, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, told the story of the first two modules. This turned a lot of players and DMs off because players who read the book ruined the adventure. They realized their mistake, and the further modules and novels told different stories.

Third, most of the modules are VERY well done, with really innovative maps, NPCs, puzzles, monsters, and settings.

If you felt railroaded through these adventures, your DM FAILED YOU.

 

[Tzarevitch]

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).

Lackluster? Are you kidding? Pool of Radiance was a pile of camel dung. They simply took the old SSI Gold Box computer game and made a module out of it.

Tzarevitch

 

[rogueattorney]

Off the top of my head, in addition to the crashed spaceship in the Barrier Peaks, there's a fair amount of thinly-veiled high technology associated with Lum the Mad and General Leuk-O. In the less futuristic category, there's a character (Myrlund) who's basically an old West gunfighter.

Anybody think of any others?

That depends on the extent to which you think that Dave Arneson's Temple of the Frogs/City of the Gods Blackmoor = the Greyhawk Blackmoor.

Greyhawk adventures are littered with "easter eggs" including a light sabre in WG4 and a model of the Starship Warden from Metamorphosis Alpha in (I think) C1.

Generally speaking, the pulp fantasy of the 70's and earlier was a lot more free in mixing genres than the conformist fantasy of the 80's (which was pretty much all patterned after Tolkien, who was something of a Luddite). Thus in the earlier rpg settings you see sci-fi elements trickling in, in some cases (Greyhawk, Wilderlands), flooding in, in others (Blackmoor, Arduin), and still others where you'd be hard-pressed to catagorize the setting as fantasy or sci-fi (Tekumel).

R.A.

 

[sniffles]

It was not your DM. The Times of Troubles modules were a horrible concept - the DM was to let the PCs fight non-entities while the characters from the books did the waycool important things they did in the books and the DM was to describe it so the PCs are awed at being in the presence of such wonderful folk/gods. :\

My wife stopped running the first one and we never bought the others, we just played in FR without the Times of Troubles.

Actually I should really give kudos to my GM for making those modules fun anyway, even though I'd like to kick whoever wrote them. He had us be transported back in time 50 years to experience the Time of Troubles, which gave us a lot of fun with roleplaying, especially when it turned out my character had been disguised and had her memory rearranged so she wouldn't know she'd already lived through the ToT once before.

My (admittedly minimal) experience seems to be that authors of modules never take into account that players will not necessarily be playing archetypal characters, and that GMs may want to insert modules into existing campaigns rather than playing them separately.

 

[radferth]

Worst module I ever ran: N4 Treasure Hunt: I remember premade 0-level characters with androgynous illustrations rolling boulders down onto a melee between pirate orcs and goblins. And there was some weird funhouse-like mansion and a railroaded ending.

Worst module I ever bought: Whichever Vecna module had the hand-headed guy and was set in Greyhawk. I couldn't even finish reading it. It's just over-the-top and silly and too save-the-world-made-for-TV-movie-ish. I hate that the 3rd ed core rules have Vecna as a deity.

Worst module I ever played that I am pretty sure wasn't just the DM's fault: Some FR thing where we were attacked by wereboars, and then captured and stripped of most of our magic. I played a gnome wizard, and I spend most of my 3rd level spells on suggestion to keep other party members from wandering off. (Partly because the DM was a friend and I wanted to help, partly because I wanted to get to the final fight and be done.) Oh, and some BGGs came in at the end and rescued us from the final fight with the BBG.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

Tale of the Comet. And I don't want to talk about it. Except to my Braindoc. My group forced me to run it. ...

 

[Thotas]

I'm gonna run back to the first page and stand with Teflon Billy. I was a player in "Curse of the Azure Bonds", and it was unfun; and as many have pointed out in arguements about the "right" or "wrong" way to play, it comes down to the fun. CotAB was not fun, and it wasn't my fault or the DM's fault. It was the fault of the storyline that (SPOILER!!!!!) allowed the enemy a free hold person spell at the beginning of Every Single Major Confrontation ... that I failed, every time. Essentially, every time it came to the stuff I was at the table for, I got removed from the game immediately, through no fault of my own. At one point, suspecting (hoping?) that it was something she could only use against targets as opposed to area effect, I turned myself invisible going in, thinking that might exempt me. So I failed the save, was rendered stiff while invisible on the battlefield, and ended up in the line of a lightning bolt cast by someone who didn't even know I was there. Halfrogman, at least you got one shot in before you died in the Gauntlet thing. I died in a fight I wasn't even in, in an adventure I really didn't participate in.

I Hate this Crummy Adventure. And on the 3e change to hold person such that you get a new save every round ... I abstaine from having an opinion 'cause I can't be objective.