Wrecking Classic Adventures

[Bullgrit]

What are the best/worst ways you've seen or participated in thoroughly wrecking a classic [published] adventure?

Did the PCs join the bad guys? Did the PCs kill the important NPC ally? Did the PCs go off on a completely unrelated plot hook?

I'm not suggesting that taking unexpected directions or actions is necessarily a bad thing. But if the adventure is written for the PCs to covertly invade the slaver lair and free the slaves, it does drastically change the published premise, (and all the pre-written encounters), when the PCs decide to stand outside the fort and call out a challenge for a one-on-one duel with the slavelord.

* * *

In my own experience:

I was playing a PC in the Forest Oracle adventure. Our 3rd-level party was ambushed by wererats while we were bedded down in the forest inn. The next morning, our investigation lead us to believe that the innkeeper was in league with the wererats. Things came to a head and we attacked the innkeeper and anyone who stood up for him.

By the adventure text, the innkeeper wasn't in any way working with the wererats. But, then, the whole ambush scenario, (and the whole module scenario, really), was just completely stupid, plot-wise. That adventure fell apart at that point and we never actually went further with the published material.


Another time, I was playing PC in the Temple of Elemental Evil adventure. Our group had explored most of the first level of the dungeon, and had just started dipping our toes in the second level. Then, when between forays, we were shacked up in Nulb for a couple of days. Our 4th-level cleric came up with the idea for us to attack the Nulb assassins guild.

He was all worked up on the concept, (Destroy Evil!), but the rest of us thought it was a bad idea. Surely our 3-5th level group couldn't really destroy a notorious assassins guild. But, we tried.

Although we killed several low-ranking assassins, we failed to do any lasting harm to the guild. Those of us who didn't die in the initial siege, ended up dying individually from assassin strikes in the following nights.

The assassins guild isn't even written up in the ToEE text. It is just mentioned to exist. After that first attack on it, we never got back to the ToEE, and the campaign died with our PCs. (This is possibly the saddest loss for me as a D&D Player: to have never gotten to fully experience the ToEE.)

Bullgrit

 

[Crothian]

Are you suggesting that Forest Oracle is a classic adventure?

I don't know if it was wrecking the classic Keep on the Borderlands module but instead of needing to go explore the caves and deal with the monsters it was set up like a giant Arabian market place. Each different humanoid was done as a bad cliche of different real world cultures. We needed to go to the different groups and buy or acquire different pieces of something (I honestly don't remember what it was). It wasn't completely bad just a very different interpretation of the module.

 

[the Jester]

I had a bunch of pcs reduce the Temple of Elemental Evil to a combination of mud and lava with transmutation spells once.

Oh- and pcs killed the Baron of Restenford and his family in L1, totally destroying any chance of my running L2 (which focuses on the baron's assassination...)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was playing a PC in the Forest Oracle adventure.

There's your problem right there!

We had a high-level party going through Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. In our first encounter with the police robots, we noticed how tough they were, but we destroyed them. About an hour later, we encountered an even bigger group of them, and we had just been dinged up a bit, so we didn't want to mess with them.

So I launched a high-level Delayed Blast Fireball into their midst, targeted on the 'bot in the middle...set for maximum delay so we could get away. The problem was, we didn't know they were something like 4x faster than we were, so 2 rounds later, they were on us and attacking as the DBF slowly...

...ticked...

...down...

...to...

BOOOOOOM!

All of the robots were destroyed, yes, but we took something like 50% casualties, and the survivors weren't in good shape either. So we had to take off.

Never completed that dungeon.

 

[Stormonu]

I had a half-orc character (using Ad&d rules in a BECM module) who in Keep on the borderlands killed the leader of the goblins, took over their tribe and led an assault on the castellan keep. I was able to ransack it, and invited some of the other from the caves to move in.

My brother refused to DM me again for a few years after that one.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Any adventure capable of being "wrecked" is pretty poorly designed, IMO. Adventures really need to recognize the reality of the gaming table and include enough information for a DM to be able to adapt and roll with the inevitable player insanity. B2, which has its faults, at least supports players besieging the keep, for instance.

 

[catsclaw227]

First, I'll give you my example and then tell you why I hate the to-e-described set-up.

OK -- this entirely from memory and the details may be wrong...

I was taking my PCs into the Malhavoc adventure* Banewarrens (pre-Ptolus, no errata) and the arch mage of the major wizards guild (that lived in an invisible upside-down pyramid) asked the PC to save the day and investigate the infiltration of another group to steal the Banes - artifacts than can destroy the world.

My PCs instantly answered with... if this so world shattering, why aren't you dealing with it? There wasn't anything in the module that could explain it....

It happens in some published adventures... If it's such a big deal, why are you calling on 7th level PCs for it?


* I love Malhavoc. I have all their stuff, two Ptolus preorders and every book in either print, PDF or both.

 

[Dausuul]

When my group was playing through "White Plume Mountain," we approached the bubble-room where Wave was kept, and were struck by the presence of three big, flanged iron doors. "Clearly," thought we, "these doors are designed to slam shut and trap us with some horrible monster. We should disable them so we can escape." So we did. Quite thoroughly. We demolished those doors.

Then we fought the crab in the bubble. And I used an area attack.

Hey, I was playing somebody else's character as well as my own, okay? I had a lot on my mind.

Long story short, the bubble burst. The doors, of course, had been intended to keep the dungeon from being flooded if this happened. Boiling water filled the entire dungeon. About half the party survived thanks to the wizard casting dimension door at the last second; then we watched from outside as the whole mountain collapsed.

The worst part was, we'd been hired to bring back one specific item--Whelm. We'd already found Blackrazor, and somebody grabbed Wave just before we teleported out, but the one weapon we'd actually come to retrieve went down with the mountain.

 

[MarkB]

So, would you say it was a little underwhelming?

 

[Chris Knapp]

Details may be fuzzy since I don't have the original modules anymore and this was 20+ yrs ago. . .

I played in a fast-tracked version of the GDQ series in high school. We finished D3 and had just battled all the drow at the end (Egg of Lolth encounter area??) The next step was to go into the abyss and track down Lolth. Instead, there was a large boat docked at the underground sea. We all decided to abandon the quest and become underdark pirates. Frustrated DM tried to get us back on track but gave up after a few sessions.