Wrecking Classic Adventures

[DrunkonDuty]

I'm no vulcanologist, but doesn't a load of water pouring into an active volcano = BOOM? Something like the superheated steam expands at such a rate that , well, BOOM.

Still, a very cool end to a classic module.

 

[Stormonu]

I'm no vulcanologist, but doesn't a load of water pouring into an active volcano = BOOM? Something like the superheated steam expands at such a rate that , well, BOOM.

Still, a very cool end to a classic module.

No lava is involved - White Plume Mountain is essentially a mountain-sized old faithful. However, the water pouring is literally boiling hot. Considering what guards Wave, you wouldn't need to go to Red Lobster for years.

 

[The Shaman]

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.

You have a standing invitation to join any game I ever run.

 

[Asmo]

Forge of Fury is a classic - with the Roper, a CR 10 for a third level party?

Well, there you go!

Asmo

 

[TarionzCousin]

One of the guys in our group was an avid "punk rocker." He only played every once in a while, but the first two magic items his character received were both Plant Control.

After that, it became a joke among us rotating DM's to give his PC as much Plant Control magic as we could.

I ran Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and early on the PC's encountered the vegepygmies. They were cute and possibly harmless, but there were so many of them the group was worried. Then Punk Rocker stepped in, saying "Wait. Did you say they have green skin and plants growing out of their heads?"

He soon had a few dozen vegepygmies obeying his every command, scouting ahead and becoming fodder for the robots and lasers. I wouldn't say it "wrecked" the module, as everybody loved it, but it definitely changed the way it was played.

 

[Wycen]

I suppose it is all relative or subjective. I don't think I've "wrecked" any game I've been in, and looking back on things, I've played very few "classic" adventures, read them mostly, and I suppose depending on age, classic could mean Monte Cook's Ptolus stuff mentioned above.

We totally sandboxed the Temple of Elemental Evil in gross and epic ways. My character bought the village of Hommlet and the surrounding countryside. We owned Burne and Rufus' tower and erected 2 more. Went planehopping and had enough henchmen to take care of all the essential rackets in town, except the magic item store which was owned by Al Bundy, the alchemist. You didn't screw with him. The assassin mentioned above would have been sent to take my character out, but the alu-fiend lover/bodygaurd I recruited from where ever intercepted the poor soul. In no way would I ever say we wrecked it.

More recently, my enjoyment of discovering the Isle of Dread in Paizo's 3.5 Savage Tide format was ruined by the game ending when a player basically had his character flip out and attack some NPC's and then a session or two later after we'd retconned the situation basically say he was frustrated and bored. He was frustrated his PC couldn't influence the defense of Farshore. Because he had a 6 CHA and 8 INT. Those points of course he put into his DEX at character creation.

It is more likely we wrecked unpublished adventures, but frankly it's hard to pull memories of 20+ years of gaming out of the old 'noggin.

 

[Jhaelen]

Forge of Fury is a classic - with the Roper, a CR 10 for a third level party?

Well, there you go!

Well, using 3.5 rules it actually became a CR12 monster

My group didn't have any problems with that encounter. I made it sufficiently clear that the roper was beyond their abiliies, so they wisely decided to negotiate:
In exchange for providing it with the corpses of slain enemies (food!) it released the party member it had grabbed and used as a hostage.

I remember only one classic adventure that we successfully wrecked:
It was "Tor der Welten" (~ Portal of Worlds) for the "Das Schwarze Auge" rpg (The Dark Eye):
The adventure is conveniently front-loaded with (magical) treasure, most of it being consumables, intended to be used up in the second, main part of the adventure, set in a different 'world'.

Basically, the adventure assumed that the party would be trapped at some point in the entry dungeon leaving them no other escape route than the title-giving portal to another world.

Naturally, our group was savvy enough to avoid falling into that trap (particularly after seeing the adventure's title) and simply left the dungeon with a full complement of magical treasure that served us well in our future adventures.

 

[Scott DeWar]

This was homebrew and as to me wrecking it, I would call it more of thinking outside the box:

setting: as mentioned it was hombrew back during My military days

system: A d and D, as there was not even 2ed yet

my character was an expiramental race class combo of gray elf M-U / Ill working with spell points.

the party was evil, except mine (Lawful neutral). we were geased to bring a paladin's wor horse to this evil cult that we had stumbled upon. I asked the question: does the horse need to be dead? we had come up wioth all kinds of schemes of how to bring a dead horse. all escept just beating the dead horse anyway.

the group asked "what exactly did I have in mind?" My answer: send the horse with paladin attached and his followers in tow. we give the paladin a reason to attack the evil cult. horse sent with!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I got Mordenkainen's baby killed. In the last bit of the adventure. In the explosive destruction of an Artifact, so there weren't even ashes.

My PC survived though!





(The player of the LG warrior who destroyed the Artifact was PISSED!)

 

[terrya]

When DMing keep on the borderlands I had the biggest headache of all time pop up! After discovering the caves and killing the ogre the pcs retreated back to the keep and managed to convince the castalin that there was a giant horde of monsters camped only a mile from the keep, convincing him to launch a full scale attack that resulted in every cave but the temple being evacuated, which meant even tho the dramtic battle between the temple and the keep was awsome, a large part of the module was rended null and void !