Worst D&D products ever.

Ironclad · Sep 10, 2004

Red Steel

It even came with a cheesy soundtrack to enhance it's suckfulfess.

Ourph · Sep 10, 2004

Dungeoneer's Survival Guide (Douglas Niles, how could you have gone so wrong?

)
Wilderness Survival Guide
LNA3 Prince of Lankhmar (blech!)
LNR1 Wonders of Lankhmar (double blech!)

I'll go along with the Hero Builder's Guidebook.

Top of my list, though, has to be Masters of the Wild (Dear WotC, thanks for including the Oozemaster and Frenzied Berserker. They were just what I needed to cure my RPG buying addiction!

)

FireLance · Sep 10, 2004

Does anyone remember Sages and Specialists? The 2e book that made classes of the blacksmith, the guide, the healer, the appraiser, the seer and a whole host of other NPCs? (I seem to recall an engineer, but I may just be hallucinating.) The one with flavor text concerning a warrior woman's quest to reclaim a powerful magic sword to kill a dragon? As far as I am concerned, that was the absolute low point of D&D.

Thank goodness for 3e and the expert and the adept.

EDIT: I suddenly remembered - I think it had a cartographer class, too.

Alzrius · Sep 10, 2004

BiggusGeekus said:
I can honestly say that I've never been truly unhappy with a D&D product. There was a couple of early d20 ones (publishers no longer existant), but even the "worst" D&D book I ever picked up, I felt was at least a low average.

I feel the same way, none of the actual D&D products I have truly struck me as bad; some weren't great, but I liked, to various degrees, all of them that I have. In terms of d20 badness, I got one of those little flip-book style adventures from, I think it was, Fantasy Flight Games, called The Last Gods. It seemed cool at the time, but running my group though it, the execution of what I still think was a cool idea was god-awful (pun intended).

Crushed: The Doomed Kitty Adventures from Team Frog/Nightshift Games was incredibly bad, but you got the feeling it was sort of supposed to be that way. As it is, its like watching Plan 9 From Outer Space...so bad it's great fun.

Knightfall · Sep 10, 2004

MrFilthyIke said:
I liked Maztica, but had no use for it. :\

My worst? The Complete Priests is one. But I liked most of my books, even broken ones. I loves my presciouses...

I love Maztica. But I haven't had any real use for it, other than inspiration when creating my own homebrewed worlds. Same for Kara-Tur.

I didn't like The Horde line of products until after I had bought the main boxed set. It felt stale after a while. On the other hand, Land of Fate is one of my favorite boxed sets.

I agree, the Complete Priest's Handbook wasn't the best book. But I was so into splats back then that I bought almost all of them. (Yes, I bought the Complete Ninja's Handbook! No, I did not buy Sages and Specialists!)

The Complete Book of Elves was so uber. I loved uber! I doon't love it so much now. I liked the Complete Book of Humanoids more. It took my campaigns in directions that I hadn't considered before. (I was a real newbie back then.)

Note: I cut my teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. I didn't get into the older books until later on.

For 3e, Sword & Fist is a particularly bad book. I tried to get into it, but just couldn't. Complete Warrior is better, but mainly for the Warrior Deities.

For 3.5e, Complete Divine has some unforgivable typos in it. (Complete Arcane better be flawless... or I won't buy it. After all, I have Tome & Blood, which is an excellent book.)

For d20, the superheroes book that came out called Foundation. That was a BAD book.

KF72

Staffan · Sep 10, 2004

I actually liked the Complete Priest's Handbook, but that might be my DM side talking. I liked the priesthood templates - OK, they were terribly generic, but it was a great improvement over the PHB with just the genericleric and the druid. The priesthoods could have used a little power boost, but the book was right in its main idea that the cleric was overpowered.

As for sucky, the thing that comes to mind is "Black Flames", a Dark Sun adventure for 3rd level characters. The plot can basically be summed up as this (spoilerized):

PCs are travelling through the desert when a sandstorm hits.
PCs are found by Fakharu, a 22nd level dragon (wizard/psionicist with some draconic traits, for those who don't know Dark Sun)
Fakharu tells them "Go to the oasis of Black Waters and explore the ruins there, and get me the McGuffin. I can't go there myself because there's a powerful spell there that makes me blind."
PCs go there, there's some zombie and/or skeleton fighting, and find McGuffin.
PCs return to Fakharu, who then demands to be lead to other thingy in the ruins.
Abalach-Re, Sorcerer-Queen of Raam shows up. She and Fakharu fight. PCs try to stay out of the way of two blind level 21+ wizard/psionicists who toss spells around.
I think there may have been something about cleansing the oasis of Black Waters as well from the ancient curse on it.

I may be misremembering details, but that's more or less correct. Too bad the name can easily be confused with "Black Spine", which is a pretty good high-level Dark Sun adventure involving planar stuff.

Crothian · Sep 10, 2004

Ourph said:
(Dear WotC, thanks for including the Oozemaster and Frenzied Berserker. They were just what I needed to cure my RPG buying addiction! )

THe Oozemaster is a missunderstood classic. Its really the art that ruined it, as the class is very well put toghether. Still rates as one of the most creative prestege classes we have seen.

Ourph · Sep 10, 2004

Crothian said:
THe Oozemaster is a missunderstood classic. Its really the art that ruined it, as the class is very well put toghether. Still rates as one of the most creative prestege classes we have seen.

Creative? Yes.....in a "I am teh SnotMaster!!!1!1! Fear my oozy globs!1!" kind of way.

Gothmog · Sep 10, 2004

I'd have to go with:

Complete Psionics Handbook- just plain broken.
Complete Elves Handbook
Deities & Demigods 3e- useless
Epic Level Handbook- just so much toilet paper

Incenjucar · Sep 10, 2004

Dark Jezter said:
Maztica

I always considered it more cliche than bad. What's nice, it's free now, so you can get ideas from it without the cost.

Wilderness Survival Guide

If you mean the 1e book, I agree. Only book, in my entire life, that I brought back to the store.

Complete Book of Elves

Mechanically, sure. But you gotta laugh at how far elven tree-hugging can go. They had some niiice flavor behind all the power up stuff.

Complate Ninja's Handbook (I'm not joking: this book really exists)

Aside from the general hatred of all things cliche`, I've never understood why so many people hated it. The ninja class itself was actually fairly nice. No uber abilities, no silliness, and the thing didn't actually have to be a ninja so much as a sneaky warrior. What, is it the fact that it helped push feats in to D&D? The weapon group option? Egg shell grenades? The Superninja? The kits? UberKatanas?

Complete Cleric's Handbook

I found it a big shrug. So I can't entirely argue. Same with most of the Complete series. I own all of the basic ones, simply because I wanted to get a strong feel for D&D (seeing as I got in to D&D during the Ninja/Planescape era).