# What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules?



## Bullgrit

There have been lots to discussions, articles, and lists for the best classic D&D adventure modules. But I don't think we've ever talked about the worst of them.

What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules ever published? Why are they bad?

For this discussion, let's keep "classic D&D adventure modules" to mean: officially published by TSR -- Mod Code Index

Bullgrit


----------



## renau1g

Dragons of Despair?  That's the super-railroad one right? 

I also dislike Tomb of Horrors, but that's because I dislike that playstyle. I usually invest more heavily in PC's and to have a "gotcha" moment that destroys them without mayn options for me to have avoided it bugs me.


----------



## billd91

I know there will be jabs at modules like WG11 - Puppets and the notorious WG7 - Castle Greyhawk, but for my money, the biggest disappointment I've ever personally run or played was T-14 - The Temple of Elemental Evil.

The Temple of Elemental Evil starts great. The village of Hommlet is a great starter module. The temple has good potential with factions that the PCs can exploit if they figure out there are nasty rivalries. But the dungeon crawl is too tedious and long, the 4th level's layout is silly, the elemental nodes can be completely dispensed with. The whole thing needed a much tigher focus and streamlining to be worth playing until completion.

Given its good bits, I couldn't classify the whole thing as the worst classic module, but I would put in the running for biggest disappointment.


----------



## Vyvyan Basterd

I never liked:
B8 Journey to the Rock
B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond
H1-4 Bloodstone Pass series (there was a tarrasque in a room as part of a test!)
WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure
WG7 Castle Grehawk (although if played for laughs, maybe)
WG9 Gargoyle
WG11 Puppets


----------



## Piratecat

Oh lordy, WG9 Gargoyle. So... BAD. I still wince every time I think of it. Based entirely on the illustration of the wingless gargoyle in the 1e MM, the module assumes that gargoyles can remove their wings. One gargoyle's wings get stolen and you have to go save them.

Twitch.


----------



## ExploderWizard

The worst award certainly goes to N2 _The Forest Oracle_. This one was bad enough to get it's own thread here which has been ressurected several times. The thread still lies in wait.....slumbering.....for now.


----------



## Mallus

_Tomb of Horrors_ gets my vote. 

I'll concede it's also one of the best, depending on what you think defines the classic D&D experience.


----------



## Lazybones

ExploderWizard said:


> The worst award certainly goes to N2 _The Forest Oracle_. This one was bad enough to get it's own thread here which has been ressurected several times. The thread still lies in wait.....slumbering.....for now.



I was coming in here to post that one. That thread was... memorable. I think I may actually still have the module somewhere.


----------



## renau1g

I remember reading that thread too having never experienced it in all its "glory", but at least I got to live vicariously through all of you lucky souls who got to play it.


----------



## TerraDave

I have been looking at these classics as part of my little history project. 

Did you know that between 1978 and 1988, TSR produced about *150* modules for the various editions of D&D? 

About 50 of these were between 78-83. This includes the 30 or so "classic classics" that make the lists of best modules and tend to come up a lot, plus some "near classics" (Bone Hill, Master of the Desert Nomads...) and some oddities, like solo modules with invisible ink. 

But then there are the other ~100 that would come out in the next 5 years. 

Outside of the Dragonlance ones (which shall be discussed in this thread) the horrid Castle Greyhawk (also for this thread) and a few like Black Arrow. Black Shield and Bloodstonepass, there are like 85 I have never heard of, and this is when I was following D&D pretty closely. 

Just forgettable, too late, or maybe there are a lot of not very good "classics"?


----------



## renau1g

A lot on that list seemed to be for convention events only, not for release. Especially the valuable ones.


----------



## Shemeska

H4. 

Oh God it's bad. Worst depiction of the planes and worst atmosphere and style for a planar module ever. Hands down. I want to buy every extant copy just so I can light them on fire and pee on the ashes*.


*not to say that there aren't other things in the world I could see doing this for as well, but that's another topic entirely.


----------



## TerraDave

renau1g said:


> A lot on that list seemed to be for convention events only, not for release. Especially the valuable ones.




The acaem list has some of those. 

But excluding those, and compilations, its still like 150.

Anyhoo, I will be starting another thread on it.


----------



## Bullgrit

Not many people are explaining why their choices are the worst modules.

Bullgrit


----------



## TerraDave

A big list of mods:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...ok-what-all-these-adventures.html#post5172106

See if you can find some crappy one and you can post about it here.


----------



## Pbartender

Mallus said:


> _Tomb of Horrors_ gets my vote.
> 
> I'll concede it's also one of the best, depending on what you think defines the classic D&D experience.




"It was the best of adventure modules...  It was the worst of adventure modules."


----------



## ExploderWizard

Bullgrit said:


> Not many people are explaining why their choices are the worst modules.
> 
> Bullgrit




The module is sitting on shelf in a shrink-wrapped package. It is neither screaming at you or trying to hide on the shelf. Some of the shrink-wrap has come undone at the top corner but this in no way causes the module to smell like pineapple or perform backflips. 

You gotta check out the recently necro'd thread.


----------



## an_idol_mind

The Avatar Trilogy that bridged 1st and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms were terrible as adventures. Quite literally the only time the PCs get to do anything is during random encounters. Several points in the adventure flat out state, "The PCs should not be able to effect these events," and there is a very stupid forced capture in there as well. The PCs get to witness climactic events such as Mystra dying and Elminster fighting Bane, but don't actually get to do anything during what are essentially cut scenes. At one point in the Shadowdale module, there is literally a span of 3+ pages of pure flavor text, during which the PCs get to do nothing but stand around and watch. And the ultimate reward for getting through the whole trilogy? Watching a bunch of NPCs become gods.

Other modules have lame plots or stupid design, but I don't think anything can be quite as un-fun as going through the Avatar trilogy as written.


----------



## SoldierBlue

I remmbering playing "The Forest Oracle" on New Year's Day, 1990. 

It was a new decade - the Berlin Wall had fallen, peace was breaking out all over, and I still was no closer to having a girlfriend.

But heh, I was only 14, and as much as I wince to admit it, I loved "The Forest Oracle"...

Worst modules: The Gem and the Staff was extremely dull, but it did have an interesting concept. You and your buddy took turns DMing for each other through two similar modules, and then you scored each other. 

M1 - Somebody bought it for a birthday present. It was awful and unplayable. I think all the M modules were bad...

Castle Greyhawk remains one of the greatest disappointments of my adolescent years...


----------



## doctorhook

an_idol_mind said:


> The Avatar Trilogy that bridged 1st and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms were terrible as adventures. Quite literally the only time the PCs get to do anything is during random encounters. Several points in the adventure flat out state, "The PCs should not be able to effect these events," and there is a very stupid forced capture in there as well. The PCs get to witness climactic events such as Mystra dying and Elminster fighting Bane, but don't actually get to do anything during what are essentially cut scenes. At one point in the Shadowdale module, there is literally a span of 3+ pages of pure flavor text, during which the PCs get to do nothing but stand around and watch. And the ultimate reward for getting through the whole trilogy? Watching a bunch of NPCs become gods.
> 
> Other modules have lame plots or stupid design, but I don't think anything can be quite as un-fun as going through the Avatar trilogy as written.



That sounds horrible, and exactly like the first campaign I ever DM'd. For some strange reason, that group didn't want to play anymore...


----------



## Crothian

Of the ones I've run these two were the worst.  

Blizzard Pass
Earthshaker!


----------



## Steel_Wind

The DragonLance modules were _*far*_ from the worst; some were among the best.

There are a few encounters in DL1  which made the railroad unacceptable (elven Rangers - I'm looking at you), but the entire design concept in terms of the story flow was VERY new to what had essentially up to that point been some pretty lame location based advantures which were almost entirely of the Old Skool dungeon designs where "plot" and "motivation" was something that was almost entirely absent from the adventures' "story".

What became obvious in terms of DL1 and DL2's flaws were corrected in later module designs within the DL series. These are only "obvious" mistakes now because of Tracy Hickman's and the rest of the DL design team's initial work. Somebody had to be first to make the mistakes in order to correct them. They blazed the way in both capacities.  They deserve to be cut a little slack.

We seem to go through a _DragonLance_ hate thread every  year or two on EnWorld. The conlusion is the same  in most of the threads, so why not try and cut it off at the pass before we spend another 50-100 posts on it, shall we? 

It comes down to this: _DragonLance_ was released ca. 1984 and was the first module series directly supported by novels. This was the real problem, as the tendency of DMs' to try to "force" the characters playing the module to do the same thing as the characters in the novels was repeated time and time again and colors the experiences and recollection of most players. Those problems  had exceedingly little to do with the design of the actual modules themselves, but was a consequence of the novels and the age of the players and DMs involved.  There are a few exceptions to this - but most of those over-arching railroad problems were fixed by DL6 when the obscure death rule is wiped from the game's design after a fan backlash.

A lot of the DragonLance module series designs were, in fact, quite brilliant and original. DL4 is an awesome dungeon, as is DL6. The War fought in DL8 and 9 using the Battlesystem rules was very entertaining and innovative and the artwork stunningly detailed and superb. 

To this day, the map for the Tower of the High Clerist in DL8 has NEVER been surpassed in detail and size in a single structure map depicted in any other module product published by any other company in any other product line since then -- and they've had 25 years to equal it since the map to the Tower of the High Clerist was released. _* TWENTY-FIVE FRIKKIN' YEARS*_.  That's a Looooong time folks.

So be a little more balanced on the "DragonLance modules suck" stuff. 

I would argue that DL10 and that module's '"dreamtrack design" was incredibly clever and allowed a DM to wipe out his entire party of players with maniacal glee in a TPK - more than once in the same adventure. The value of the look on the player's faces during that event alone was well worth the price of several of the DL modules.

In the end, people recall their experiences with the DragonLance modules as much younger players or as much younger DMs -- and in the vast majority of cases, the real problem with the modules related to the age of the people who were running them and playing them  -- and the fact that the DM and players both were *far* too hung up in recreating the stories of the modules as depicted in the novels, as opposed to actually playing and creating their own stories.

Played on their own, with original characters and without a DM bound and determined to try to make the PCs do "something the way they were supposed to", the DL modules were among the very best modules released for either 1st or 2nd ed.  

There is also no doubt that in terms of impact on modern adventure design, the DragonLance series had probably as great an impact - indeed, maybe _greater than_ any other module series ever published, in all of FRPG history. Yes, that "ever" would include _Keep on the Borderlands_ and _GDQ1-7_.

The plot based structure of the DragonLance module series remains with us today and lies at the core of Paizo's Adventure Path design.


----------



## howandwhy99

I would have to go outside TSR published D&D adventures for the absolute worst published modules.  Some were nothing more than "Play the Monster Manual Alphabetically".


----------



## Chris Knapp

Never mind that I think Dragonlance is so NOT in the worst category, but I will definitely catch heck for my nomination for worst:

S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
Robots, crashed spaceship, bunny-stumps, Vegepygmies! laser guns, and the map had the initials EGG on it. How lame!


----------



## S. Baldrick

an_idol_mind said:


> The Avatar Trilogy that bridged 1st and 2nd edition Forgotten Realms were terrible as adventures. Quite literally the only time the PCs get to do anything is during random encounters. Several points in the adventure flat out state, "The PCs should not be able to effect these events," and there is a very stupid forced capture in there as well. The PCs get to witness climactic events such as Mystra dying and Elminster fighting Bane, but don't actually get to do anything during what are essentially cut scenes. At one point in the Shadowdale module, there is literally a span of 3+ pages of pure flavor text, during which the PCs get to do nothing but stand around and watch. And the ultimate reward for getting through the whole trilogy? Watching a bunch of NPCs become gods.
> 
> Other modules have lame plots or stupid design, but I don't think anything can be quite as un-fun as going through the Avatar trilogy as written.




I totally agree with you.  The Avatar Trilogy was no fun to go through.  The characters were just along for the ride.


----------



## Corathon

The Forest Oracle is truly awful for reasons that have been discussed in another thread.

H4, the adventure for 100th level charcaters was also extremely bad. The fact that it was an adventure for characters level 20-100 (or whatever) pretty much guaranteed that it's be terrible from the outset, IMO.

Some of the Dragonlance modules were the most appalling railroads. This is not just a flaw of the early ones. It was true of at least some later DL modules such as DLA3 (which I read recently for the first time). OTOH, I have never read the majority of the DL modules, so I cannot comment broadly.

I never read the Avatar modules, so I can't comment on those either.

IMO, the worst was Castle Greyhawk. After years of waiting we get this? A lame and useless joke module? Seemed to me like someone was trying to get payback on Gary Gygax.


----------



## Joshua Randall

*Noncontroversial choices: *

*The Forest Oracle*. It's badly written, incoherent in some places, and it introduces a new monster that is basically... a pig. That's right; you're a heroic adventurer and you're fighting Wilbur from Chalotte's Web.

*Dragonlance Adventures*. Sorry, but these are crap. Anything that takes all agency out of the players' hands in favor of basically reading them a story is so counter to what makes D&D fun that it actually makes me angry.

*Edgy, postmodern choices:* 

*Tomb of Horrors *epitomizes all that was wrong with early D&D. Namely, total arbitrariness, blatant (and encouraged) DM vs. player antagonism, and overreliance on traps. On the plus side, nice pictures to show the players.

*Keep on the Borderlands* is not an adventure. It's just a map of a keep and some caves, and it leaves the DM to do the work of filling in the details. And there's no actual problem for the PCs to solve. Probably a big hit among the [-]aimless wandering around[/-] sandbox crowd, but utterly boring to my tastes.

*One that I love and hate at the same time:*

*Egg of the Phoenix* is a series of awesome, creative vignettes and set-pieces interspersed among a terrible, convoluted, and railroady plot. It commits sins like making certain NPCs unkillable, and forcing the PCs to become passive bystanders as the more powerful NPCs actually do stuff. But it also has the virtues of incredibly cool locations (the tiny graveyard planet that is orbited by a sentient, evil moon) and innovative dungeon design (the timed foray into a vampire's lair to steal several potions of dragon control before they can be used against the PCs' silver dragon allies). Mine it for ideas, but don't ever try running it.


----------



## Harlekin

Worst classic D&D module I played: Keep on the Borderlands.
Why: Mearls sums it up nicely (The Inside Scoop on Gaming - RPGnet)

Worst classic D&D module I read: Tomb of Horrors
Why: <McEnroe>You cannot be serious<\McEnroe>


----------



## MortonStromgal

renau1g said:


> Dragons of Despair?  That's the super-railroad one right?




Depends on how you run it, if you give the staff to a PC as back-story (rather than run it with an npc) you can run it 100 different times and never have the PCs do the same thing. The first 3 DL aren't nearly as bad IMHO as the later ones. I think DL1 railroad can be boiled down to 1. poor layout, 2. having a character in the book that is either played by a PC or NPCed that is crucial to the story when you could have easily given the item to any PC character with a paragraph of backstory on how they got the item.

[edit] DL  1 should have been summed up as give this item to a PC, they remember X much about how they got it from some temple but dont know the details, wondered around in a delirious state for awhile. Then go into details about how to track the army movements and what it means for each town (this is actually in the book but written in a choose your own adventure style rather than in a way the GM can handle it). Now have people after the staff and eventually figure out they have to take the item back to the temple. Thats really the story, where do we need to go because they are after us and how do we get there, meanwhile the armies take over more and more friendly areas that might lead to their capture and the staff going into the hands of the enemy.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Corathon said:


> Some of the Dragonlance modules were the most appalling railroads. This is not just a flaw of the early ones. It was true of at least some later DL modules such as DLA3 (which I read recently for the first time). OTOH, I have never read the majority of the DL modules, so I cannot comment broadly.




I make no comment on those. The classic DragonLance modules of the 1st Ed era were DL1-DL14, where DL5 was essentially a worldguide and DL11 was a boardgame.

DL1-4 (Vol 1), DL6-9 (vol 2), and DL10 + DL12-14 (vol 3) for the three trilogies of the classic campaign. They were released over the course of two and a half years or so.

The two of the DL modules that followed it (DL15 and 16) were not part of the original campaign as such. 

All, or nearly all, of the subsequent modules were in the 2nd Ed era and are unconnected with the classic DL module campaign.  By that time, TSR was clearly milking the DragonLance brand for all it was worth.


----------



## Stormonu

I can't agree on the DL modules, I find them quite good.  DL16 - World of Krynn, however, is another story (Soth with the Tarrasque in his closet, really ?!?)

I also vote for WGS7 Castle Greyhawk as THE WORST; that module should never have been made.  Strangely, both Dungeonland and Through the Magic Mirror seem to be decent, if really, really strange.

H4 is horrible as well - it is unintended comedy displaying that the staff of TSR had no idea how to handle high-level adventurers intelligently.  The Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga shows the same absurdity.

I'll also throw in D1 - Descent into the Depths.  It seems to be nothing more than "lets throw the entire monster manual into one big area and let the adventurers loose in it" sort of module.  I don't even seem to remember it having a plot.


----------



## Filcher

SoldierBlue said:


> But heh, I was only 14, and as much as I wince to admit it, I loved "The Forest Oracle"...




Sign me up as well as a FO lover. But a Caldwell cover and an isometric map of a ruined keep went a long way in those days.


----------



## Mistwell

Steel_Wind said:


> The DragonLance modules were _*far*_ from the worst; some were among the best.
> 
> There are a few encounters in DL1  which made the railroad unacceptable (elven Rangers - I'm looking at you), but the entire design concept in terms of the story flow was VERY new to what had essentially up to that point been some pretty lame location based advantures which were almost entirely of the Old Skool dungeon designs where "plot" and "motivation" was something that was almost entirely absent from the adventures' "story".
> 
> What became obvious in terms of DL1 and DL2's flaws were corrected in later module designs within the DL series. These are only "obvious" mistakes now because of Tracy Hickman's and the rest of the DL design team's initial work. Somebody had to be first to make the mistakes in order to correct them. They blazed the way in both capacities.  They deserve to be cut a little slack.
> 
> We seem to go through a _DragonLance_ hate thread every  year or two on EnWorld. The conlusion is the same  in most of the threads, so why not try and cut it off at the pass before we spend another 50-100 posts on it, shall we?
> 
> It comes down to this: _DragonLance_ was released ca. 1984 and was the first module series directly supported by novels. This was the real problem, as the tendency of DMs' to try to "force" the characters playing the module to do the same thing as the characters in the novels was repeated time and time again and colors the experiences and recollection of most players. Those problems  had exceedingly little to do with the design of the actual modules themselves, but was a consequence of the novels and the age of the players and DMs involved.  There are a few exceptions to this - but most of those over-arching railroad problems were fixed by DL6 when the obscure death rule is wiped from the game's design after a fan backlash.
> 
> A lot of the DragonLance module series designs were, in fact, quite brilliant and original. DL4 is an awesome dungeon, as is DL6. The War fought in DL8 and 9 using the Battlesystem rules was very entertaining and innovative and the artwork stunningly detailed and superb.
> 
> To this day, the map for the Tower of the High Clerist in DL8 has NEVER been surpassed in detail and size in a single structure map depicted in any other module product published by any other company in any other product line since then -- and they've had 25 years to equal it since the map to the Tower of the High Clerist was released. _* TWENTY-FIVE FRIKKIN' YEARS*_.  That's a Looooong time folks.
> 
> So be a little more balanced on the "DragonLance modules suck" stuff.
> 
> I would argue that DL10 and that module's '"dreamtrack design" was incredibly clever and allowed a DM to wipe out his entire party of players with maniacal glee in a TPK - more than once in the same adventure. The value of the look on the player's faces during that event alone was well worth the price of several of the DL modules.
> 
> In the end, people recall their experiences with the DragonLance modules as much younger players or as much younger DMs -- and in the vast majority of cases, the real problem with the modules related to the age of the people who were running them and playing them  -- and the fact that the DM and players both were *far* too hung up in recreating the stories of the modules as depicted in the novels, as opposed to actually playing and creating their own stories.
> 
> Played on their own, with original characters and without a DM bound and determined to try to make the PCs do "something the way they were supposed to", the DL modules were among the very best modules released for either 1st or 2nd ed.
> 
> There is also no doubt that in terms of impact on modern adventure design, the DragonLance series had probably as great an impact - indeed, maybe _greater than_ any other module series ever published, in all of FRPG history. Yes, that "ever" would include _Keep on the Borderlands_ and _GDQ1-7_.
> 
> The plot based structure of the DragonLance module series remains with us today and lies at the core of Paizo's Adventure Path design.




For someone completely unfamiliar with this modules, and only vaguely familiar with the novels, what would you say is the one thing in these modules worth pulling out and plopping down into an entirely unrelated campaign?


----------



## Steel_Wind

Mistwell said:


> For someone completely unfamiliar with this modules, and only vaguely familiar with the novels, what would you say is the one thing in these modules worth pulling out and plopping down into an entirely unrelated campaign?




That's easy: *the maps.*

The adventure maps for virtually all of the first two thirds of the series are brilliantly inspired and heavy in atmosphere. They are as follows:

DL1- *Map to Xak Tsaroth*:  The ruins of a city that have been swallowed by the earth, party turned upside down and in a vast cavern below ground level. 

DL2 - *Map to Pax Tharkas:* A keep astride a pass, featuring a central mechanism which drops an improbably large block of stone which seals off the pass. There is a secret passage and small dungeon below the keep which provides an interesting entrance into it.

DL3 - *Map to Skullcap: *A Wizard’s lair that has exploded in a colossal event in the past, leaving a twisted and melted ruin beneath. A final boss battle with a mechanical hydra located in a maze of invisible walls can save or damn the party from breath weapons.

DL4 - There are some dungeon geomorphs to Thorbardin, a Dwarven city that is on the scale with - and more complicated than Moria. These are interesting and useful - but ultimately, anything that big is difficult to actually use. 

*The Map to Duncan's Tomb* is a floating castle/Dungeon ripped from the ground and hovering hundreds of feet up in the air. Repurpose the map for whatever purpose your heart desires. I have used this map several times in other unrelated campaigns. It's a great map.

DL6 - *Map to Icewall Castle:* The lair of the BBEG, carved from a glacier, complete with secret ways in via tubes in the ice created by - and still inhabited by - Remorhaz.

DL7 - *Map to the Temple of the Dragon:*  a Huge Temple to a dragon, resembling a dragon carved from Stone and set in to the side of a cliff.  Epic looking - though perhaps not as much fun as the earlier map designs, despite its epic appearance.  

DL8 - *Map to the* * Tower of the High Clerist:* A castle that is nearly 800 feet tall, with level after level after level of floor map designs and layouts for you to fill with whatever your heart desires.  Still the largest published Castle Map of all time, AFAIK. If you wanted to run the whole damn dungeon as one campaign - 1st to 20th a la WLD, you easily do so.  As the lair of your BBEG and the last dungeon crawl of your campaign? This is *>>Da Shizznit<*<.  I have often re-used sections of this map in other campaigns. I don't think my players ever recognized it either. It's a MASSIVE castle.  The module itself does not even pretend to detail less than a few dozen areas. There are Hundreds and Hundreds of area in the thing. It's  MONSTROUSLY HUGE, okay? 

The maps in the later adventures are also good - though not nearly as good as those that appear in the first 8, imo.

The thing that grabs me with DragonLance has always been the production values in the maps. Most were reprinted in one form or another in the Atlas of the Dragonlance World as well - which is actually going for pretty cheap on eBay these days.  The number of copies of each these modules that TSR was selling at the time was_ ridiculously high_ by today's standards, and as these were the flagship products of TSR in the mid 80s, they sunk a lot of time and money in to making these maps. They have stood the test of time.  Even today, they are among the finest FRPG maps ever made, imo.


----------



## ExploderWizard

Mistwell said:


> For someone completely unfamiliar with this modules, and only vaguely familiar with the novels, what would you say is the one thing in these modules worth pulling out and plopping down into an entirely unrelated campaign?




The actual theme of the real gods turning their backs on mortals and the need to bring awareness of their existance to civilization is pretty cool and could be done as the overall theme of a campaign minus the heavy railroading.


----------



## Chris Knapp

Mistwell said:


> For someone completely unfamiliar with this modules, and only vaguely familiar with the novels, what would you say is the one thing in these modules worth pulling out and plopping down into an entirely unrelated campaign?




This is a great tangent but should probably be forked so as not to derail the OP.

That said, in my opinion and experience, DL is best taken as a whole, not its collective parts. You can pick individual sections apart but taken as a grand epic, it was revolutionary for its time. Much more so than GDQ.

The most original thing is the Silvanesti Nightmare module (DL10.) The entire 2nd half is a waking dream and the chance to revist past deeds and previously slain enemies (and allies) messes with players heads to no end. Plus foozle is the baddest green dragon ever!


----------



## MortonStromgal

Mistwell said:


> For someone completely unfamiliar with this modules, and only vaguely familiar with the novels, what would you say is the one thing in these modules worth pulling out and plopping down into an entirely unrelated campaign?




I would just add DL1-3 are incredibly good for ideas on how to run world events vs character events if your willing to sit down and take the time to reorganize the whole thing. Rather than choose your own adventure, read each section and tie it in to all the other possibilities for that section. The ideas were solid even if the execution was poor. A lot of the earlier storyline adventures were formatted badly.


----------



## rogueattorney

A lot of people are picking adventures from the earlier part of the 80's for stylistic reasons.  Keep on the Borderlands, Tomb of Horror, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, and the Dragonlance series may not be your bag, but I'd say they were largely successful at achieving what they set out to do.

I believe the worst AD&D modules were mostly published from about 1986 to 1990, in the transition between 1e and 2e.  TSR was moving away from adventures as the featured support for the game and concentrating on campaign settings and rule supplements.  That's where their main efforts were going.  They also started publishing Dungeon magazine during this time period, and although I was not a subscriber, I've had more than one person tell me that the good adventures were being put in the magazine.

A lot of the adventures during the time period seemed to be slap dash, barely edited, space fillers.

For the worst, I'd pick the following:

The railroad-y Avatar trilogy has already been mentioned, as have the early 2e revival of the WG series - Puppmaster, Gargoyle, etc.  

I'd add the FRC series, which straddled 1e and 2e, and read and played more like advertisements for the Gold Box CPU games than D&D adventures and the horrible I10 sequel to Ravenloft, which turned the events of the original into a dream.

Also OP1 Tales from the Outer Planes anthology was pure dreck.  In the first adventure, the party literally has nothing to do until the end scene.  Until then, they are led by the nose through a series of planar scenes.  Horrible!

Interestingly, many of the adventures in this era had tiny print runs (compared to the monstrous print runs in the hundreds of thousands for the modules in the earlier part of the decade) and despite their inferior quality actually are pretty darn expensive to get a hold of.

Some of the worst D&D modules were published a little before the bad AD&D period.  D&D seemed to be where the b-list of contributors was being shunted.  About the same time AD&D started going down hill, Bruce Heard (1987-ish to 1992-ish) took over as the D&D product manager, and he did a great job of getting some top-flight freelancers to work on the D&D projects, as seen in the generally high-quality GAZ series of products.

But some of the worst from the earlier phase were:

B8 Journey to the Rock (1984)
X6 Quagmire! (1984)
B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond (1985)
X9 The Savage Coast (1985)

All four suffer from similar problems of being just plain empty of any good content.  Very thin for the price tag back then and very thin for what you'd have to spend t get a hold of one of them now.


----------



## Lancelot

N2 - The Forest Oracle is far from bad. Yes, it's illogical in some places. Yes, it has plot holes. However, it's an awesome module for teaching new players (especially female players) about D&D. Bear with me here...

It has a high proportion of fey. There's a dryad and a nymph and a trapped pegasus. There's a wicked ogre. It's set in a magical forest with druids and crumbling ruins. There's an enchanted lake with a sleeping "prince".

I've used this module to show my girlfriend what D&D was about, and she loved it. I've DM'ed this module for an ex-girlfriend and her (female) friends, and they loved it. Name me any other "classic" module with a vibe that makes it attractive to casual, first-time, female players.

Please note that I'm *not* suggesting that all female players are girly-girls who like flying horses. However, if I had a daughter, N2 would probably be the first module I'd DM for her.

I'll join the defense of the Dragonlance modules as well. Yes, many of them are railroads (and I hate that aspect of them). But there are too many good things about them to call them the "worst". The maps, in many cases, are outstanding. The world-building aspects are outstanding. Some of the NPCs are outstanding.

If you want "worst" modules, you're looking at some other candidates that have been raised here. My personal vote goes to H1-H4 (...if we're only talking the "classics"). They are truly appalling. The tarrasque in a room, with no explanatory notes, as a random encounter. A chubby gun-toting Texan angel. Encounters that are simply "100 Type 6 demons". Poor maps. No story-line to speak off. No compelling NPCs. Nothing that is attractive to new players. Poor artwork (except for the covers). Terrible... just terrible.


----------



## ExploderWizard

Lancelot said:


> N2 - The Forest Oracle is far from bad. Yes, it's illogical in some places. Yes, it has plot holes. However, it's an awesome module for teaching new players (especially female players) about D&D. Bear with me here...
> 
> It has a high proportion of fey. There's a dryad and a nymph and a trapped pegasus. There's a wicked ogre. It's set in a magical forest with druids and crumbling ruins. There's an enchanted lake with a sleeping "prince".
> 
> I've used this module to show my girlfriend what D&D was about, and she loved it. I've DM'ed this module for an ex-girlfriend and her (female) friends, and they loved it. Name me any other "classic" module with a vibe that makes it attractive to casual, first-time, female players.




This module has all the _trappings_ of a _potentially_ cool adventure but that's about it. A good DM can effectively re-write the thing into something playable. 

Another classic? UK1 _Beyond the Crystal Cave. _Romeo and Juliet gets em wet


----------



## kaomera

S2 White Plume Mountain

I know it's a classic, but my (several) experiences with this module where simply absurdly bad. The group I played with simply was not interested in doing the whole "fetch us a shrubbery magic item" thing, especially if it meant trekking way out into the wilderness. If the powers that be can't be bothered getting it themselves, then we certainly can't be bothered to walk into the trap, thanks. On top of this, once forced into the dungeon it's simply a series of random obstacles, none of which we had any real reason to engage. The room with the spheres and the room with the hanging platforms I remember as being particularly odious.

Anyway, that's just my remembrances from playing through the module (abortively) three times... I read it years ago, and remember being dismayed to find what I thought at the time was uncharacteristically bad DMing was in fact the way the module recommended playing it.


----------



## TarionzCousin

kaomera said:


> S2 White Plume Mountain



What? This module is made of Awesome Sauce™!!!

Spoiler alert for the eight people who don't know about this module:
[sblock]
It's short and sweet and full of weirdness: a sphinx with riddles, a puzzle golem, a gigantic crab that loves to dance, a stream that flows through the air, and hanging platform circles over lava.







Okay, I made up the part about the crab loving to dance. [/sblock]


----------



## Lancelot

ExploderWizard said:


> This module has all the _trappings_ of a _potentially_ cool adventure but that's about it. A good DM can effectively re-write the thing into something playable.
> 
> Another classic? UK1 _Beyond the Crystal Cave. _Romeo and Juliet gets em wet




Yeah, I suspected that someone would mention UK1... but it's not really indicative of the D&D experience. UK1 is the "don't kill *anything*" module. The optimal path through it is to avoid all combat, which isn't really the essence of D&D (kill orcs, take their pies). The Romeo & Juliet elements are only there at the end. Most of the module is actually pretty odd, and rewards a certain level of intelligence and sophistication from the player.

N2, on the other hand, is very basic. There's this crazy dwarf, see... and he thinks the ugly rats are out to get him! And there's this hideous ogre, and he's holding the flying horsie captive! Simple PC motivations and simple challenges. Good for the kids, and introduces them to the basic tropes of fantasy roelplaying (...but, admittedly, pretty suckful for us hardened veterans).

I'll maintain, however, that claiming N2 is worse than H4 (or the Avatar trilogy, or Puppets, or Castle Greyhawk, or Beyond Castle Caldwell)... man, have you *read* any of those latter modules?!? Eeeyuck.


----------



## Henry

spoiler about White Plume Mountain:

[sblock]Not Lava, Boiling Mud. The Mountain is a steam geyser.[/sblock]

As for my picks:

N2 Forest Oracle, because IMO something THAT much in need of an editor does not need to see print. Cool concepts are great, but cool concepts can get completely lost in the face of really bad writing.

Also, I still have to go with the the Avatar Triogy as the worst I've ever tried to play. It was King of the static cutscene -- even the Dragonlance modules don't approach it. It was like playing through Hamlet as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, except you don't have the relief of dying part way through.


----------



## Marx420

Put another one in for tomb of horrors. I lost 8 of my thief characters in that death pit. When finally we reached the demi-lich I lost it and used the burning module to light my first joint. Gary Gygax was an unprecedented gaming visionary but his fantasy ideal was a few shades more brutal than mine, though I will admit it was a valuable dungeoneering experience. Also the 2e rehash return to the tomb of horrors somewhat redeemed it in mine eyes an I still stick Acerak into any campaign I can.


----------



## JRRNeiklot

How does something get to be a classic, yet still suck?  Unless it's so bad that it remembered just for being so horrible.  Forest Oracle gets my nod for that.  But the absolute worst module ever is Castle Greyhawk.  Everyone involved with the publication of that abomination should be locked in a room with the Golden Girls and forced to watch reruns of Roseanne for all eternity.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Marx420 said:


> Put another one in for tomb of horrors. I lost 8 of my thief characters in that death pit. When finally we reached the demi-lich I lost it and used the burning module to light my first joint. Gary Gygax was an unprecedented gaming visionary but his fantasy ideal was a few shades more brutal than mine, though I will admit it was a valuable dungeoneering experience. Also the 2e rehash return to the tomb of horrors somewhat redeemed it in mine eyes an I still stick Acerak into any campaign I can.




In fairness to EGG - it was a Gencon Origins tournament module, intended to be a joke, that was created for one shot play. It was just 101 ways to die by ridiculously unfair traps and wholly unbalanced challenges with a character you had absolutely nothing invested in. It was never, ever, intended to be more than that. It's a classic because the encounters were more in the nature of a puzzle - and not a standard combat module.

At least the classic _Mud Sorceror's Tomb_ was designed to be theoretically survivable. _Tomb of Horrors _wasn't and didn't hold itself out to be anything other than it was: a cruel and unfair meatgrinder


----------



## Filcher

It's got to be Castle Greyhawk. Not "classic" by any stretch, and the worst bit of dreck ever to receive a stat block. 

After that, any "classic era" module for character levels 20+. Even Isle of the Ape was terrible in this regard.


----------



## Connorsrpg

I would have to completely agree with what was said about the DL modules. I only played the first few, but felt like a spectator. We HAD to do what the novel characters did and when I found out my PC couldn't die?!

But, I don't think they are bad modules/adventures. I agree it was more the novels' fault and stupid rules being added. I would actually like to run someone through the adventures one day.

We played Castle Greyhawk as a one-shot humourous session. We had fun, but I would have absolutely hated it as an adventure inserted into any standard campaign - which also leads me to agree with the post regarding judgement of The Tomb of Horrors as being harsh.

Tournament modules are completely different 'monsters' than adventures designed to slot into your campaign. There is a process of elimination (of PCs) to help the scoring. I like them for what they are, but would heavily modify them if I was to use them in a campaign.

Gargoyles was stupid when you think about the hook too, but overall I don't think I have run or played in a module that was a complete disaster. (Where it was the module's doing anyway). But I have avoided several despite owning them for many years. "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" I am looking at you..

C


----------



## Derulbaskul

billd91 said:


> I know there will be jabs at modules like WG11 - Puppets and the notorious WG7 - Castle Greyhawk, but for my money, the biggest disappointment I've ever personally run or played was T-14 - The Temple of Elemental Evil.
> 
> The Temple of Elemental Evil starts great. The village of Hommlet is a great starter module. The temple has good potential with factions that the PCs can exploit if they figure out there are nasty rivalries. But the dungeon crawl is too tedious and long, the 4th level's layout is silly, the elemental nodes can be completely dispensed with. The whole thing needed a much tigher focus and streamlining to be worth playing until completion.
> 
> Given its good bits, I couldn't classify the whole thing as the worst classic module, but I would put in the running for biggest disappointment.




I absolutely agree. It was nothing other than an unimaginative dungeon crawl and its publication marked the point where I realised that Gary, as talented as he was, was simply incapable of meeting a deadline. The fact that there was a 5-year wait and then this hack'n'slash fest was published with several incomplete levels turned me off TSR products for a more than a few years. Not only that, here was a temple of _elemental evil_ and no effort had been made to make the clerics of each element feel at all different to each other.

Woeful.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Connorsrpg said:


> I would have to completely agree with what was said about the DL modules. I only played the first few, but felt like a spectator. We HAD to do what the novel characters did and when I found out my PC couldn't die?!
> 
> But, I don;t think they are bad modules/adventures. I agree it was more the novels' fault and stupid rules being added. I would actually like to run someone through the adventures one day.




I think you'll find that the obscure death rules were removed and that there were options other than what happened in the novels.

I don't doubt that was your experience; I'm saying that the main problem was the usual one: it was your DM  rail-roading you, not the text of the module itself.  Don't get me wrong - there are some significant rail-road elements in there - but not _nearly _so many as players report.

If you have a look at the updated versions of the modules DL1-4 in the book _[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Dragonlance-Dragons-Autumn-Cam-Banks/dp/1931567336"]Dragons of Autumn[/ame] _, which completely re-visits the modules for D&D 3.5 rules by Cam Banks, you'll find that those problems are gone.

The only real problem is that the novel _Dragons of Autum Twilight_  really is a blow-by-blow account of the first two modules. After that, thankfully, the novels stop ruining the modules and the module experience - and the novels - both greatly improve.


----------



## Marx420

I have to agree with several others assessments of the Temple of Elemental Evil, I feel that this is one megamodule that is severely overrated (speaking from experience, lost 4 of my characters in the original, never finished the 3e Monte Cook remake after losing 3 more, and lost countless characters in the buggy computer game version). It is very much a slog with capricious difficulty and balance issues which are all the more tragic due to the magic that is the village of Hommlet, though a competent DM could probably wring some fun out of it.


----------



## Bullgrit

Interesting, all this dislike of _Temple of Elemental Evil_. It's in my top three adventure modules of all time. I love it dearly. I only played through 1 to 1.5 levels of it, but I own it and have read it all the way through. To me, it is the ultimate example of what D&D is.

Bullgrit


----------



## Erik Mona

Temple of Elemental Evil is not a "perfect" module by any stretch (although Village of Hommlet is close). But I hope everyone is aware that the dungeon parts are primarily the design of Frank Mentzer, rather than Gary himself. 

So while Gary's inability to finish the adventure himself is not exactly a shining point in his design career, it's not really fair to blame him personally for a too-long dungeon crawl he didn't really even write.

For me, I think it's too long and ultimately boring. And the "watch the gods fight" ending is a pretty textbook example of how _not_ to end a big adventure. But if there had been more advice regarding how to run the adventure as a series of forays into a huge dungeon and perhaps just a touch more narrative structure, I think it would have been a lot better.

It's still one of my favorite adventures, despite its flaws.

--Erik


----------



## thedungeondelver

The *DRAGONLANCE* modules and the *DESERT OF DESPAIR* modules are terrible.  Your characters _will_ go here.  They _will_ do this, and they _have to_ survive.  If they don't, you, the DM, make up a reason that they did.  Up to and including being saved by a powerful NPC.

I6 is particularly heinous (yes, I don't like *RAVENLOFT*) for railroadyness.  But it has nothing on modules with friggin' song lyrics and french fry recipes in them.

*ST1 UP THE GARDEN PATH* is ing terrible.  By it being incredibly rare, the world is spared a horrible fate.


----------



## Bullgrit

Erik Mona said:
			
		

> But I hope everyone is aware that the dungeon parts are primarily the design of Frank Mentzer, rather than Gary himself.



The text reads very much like Gygax's writing.



> it's not really fair to blame him personally for a too-long dungeon crawl he didn't really even write.



The dungeon crawl is very much in Gygax's style.

The book has EGG's name on it. It's all in his writing and design style. EGG never disavowed any of it. A not insignificant part of why I like the adventure is because it is EGG's work. It's kind of strange to try to disconnect him from the material when someone criticizes it.



> the "watch the gods fight" ending



There is no such ending in ToEE.

Bullgrit


----------



## billd91

Bullgrit said:


> The text reads very much like Gygax's writing.
> 
> The dungeon crawl is very much in Gygax's style.
> 
> The book has EGG's name on it. It's all in his writing and design style. EGG never disavowed any of it. A not insignificant part of why I like the adventure is because it is EGG's work. It's kind of strange to try to disconnect him from the material when someone criticizes it.
> 
> There is no such ending in ToEE.
> 
> Bullgrit




I've heard that it was Mentzer working off of Gygax's note from other sources as well. I believe that was actually pretty well established. 

And if you don't believe there's a god fight, check encounter area 433. If an Iuz follower calls on him, he has a 90% chance of showing up. And if he does and good character are there, St. Cuthbert has a 90% of appearing as well.


----------



## TerraDave

Bullgrit said:


> Interesting, all this dislike of _Temple of Elemental Evil_.




It (and Return to) always comes up as a great disapointment. I know it, and you know it, just like Steelwind new DL was going to be in here. It could even be why you started this thread. 



Derulbaskul said:


> its publication marked the point where I realised that Gary, as talented as he was, was simply incapable of meeting a deadline.




He had some other stuff going on.



Erik Mona said:


> Temple of Elemental Evil is not a "perfect" module by any stretch (although Village of Hommlet is close).
> --Erik




Mr. Mona, as always thanks for stopping by. We agree on Hommlet. For the ToEE I have always hear that Mentzer did it "based on Gygax's notes". Its also my understanding that Gygax did run it in campaign style, though I wonder if Mentzer was one of those players.


----------



## Bullgrit

billd91 said:
			
		

> I've heard that it was Mentzer working off of Gygax's note from other sources as well. I believe that was actually pretty well established.



I really don't want or intend to get into an argument to defend ToEE, but. . .

Gygax's name is on Q1 (with Sutherland) also, and he though he wrote well of it in the adventure preface itself, he disavowed it later. Gygax's name is on OA and he disavowed it as well.

But ToEE has his name (as well as Mentzer), and he never distanced himself from it. It is written and designed in the same style as other works he wrote 100%. I understand that Mentzer organized/assembled ToEE from Gygax's manuscripts and notes, but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone try to seperate Gygax from ToEE.



> And if you don't believe there's a god fight, check encounter area 433. If an Iuz follower calls on him, he has a 90% chance of showing up. And if he does and good character are there, St. Cuthbert has a 90% of appearing as well.



Are you looking at the text as you write this? I'm not, but I've read it many times. If I'm remembering correctly, (and I'll check when I'm home in a couple hours), the chance of Iuz showing up to a calling is only 5%. Cuthbert will show up 90% only if Iuz comes first. And even if this 5% chance is rolled, the gods will merely revive any dead mortal combatants, and then vanish to settle their issues in private.[Edit: see below]

So there is no "watch the gods fight" in that.

ToEE has flaws, sure. But don't call out flaws that aren't there.

Bullgrit


----------



## thedungeondelver

It's wrong to slam Gary on *T1-4*'s lateness considering what was going on in TSR at the time.  Cut a guy some slack for God's sake.


----------



## billd91

Bullgrit said:


> I really don't want or intend to get into an argument to defend ToEE, but. . .
> 
> Gygax's name is on Q1 (with Sutherland) also, and he though he wrote well of it in the adventure preface itself, he disavowed it later. Gygax's name is on OA and he disavowed it as well.
> 
> But ToEE has his name (as well as Mentzer), and he never distanced himself from it. It is written and designed in the same style as other works he wrote 100%. I understand that Mentzer organized/assembled ToEE from Gygax's manuscripts and notes, but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone try to seperate Gygax from ToEE.
> 
> Are you looking at the text as you write this? I'm not, but I've read it many times. If I'm remembering correctly, (and I'll check when I'm home in a couple hours), the chance of Iuz showing up to a calling is only 5%. Cuthbert will show up 90% only if Iuz comes first. And even if this 5% chance is rolled, the gods will merely revive any dead mortal combatants, and then vanish to settle their issues in private.
> 
> So there is no "watch the gods fight" in that. 95% chance that no gods show up at all, 5% chance to they show up for a few seconds and then disappear.
> 
> ToEE has flaws, sure. But don't call out flaws that aren't there.
> 
> Bullgrit




I can understand Gygax not distancing himself from it, T1 is his work and T1-4 incorporates it.

And yes, I'm looking at the text. You also don't want to defile Iuz's altar. No Iuz cultist necessary to bring Iuz to the party on that one.


----------



## Bullgrit

Just found this here on ENWorld:


			
				Gary Gygax said:
			
		

> He did only the 3rd and 4th levels of the ToEE to the best of my knowledge, stepping in to complete the place when I was too busy to get to the project in a timely manner.



http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/193204-gary-gygax-q-part-xiii-25.html#post3778940



			
				Gary Gygax said:
			
		

> That;s when Frank Mentzer took a hand and filled in the lower levels that I hadn't detailed. That's why they ended where they did instrad of proceeding downwards more to where the EEG's area was going to be.



http://www.enworld.org/forum/archive-threads/46861-q-gary-gygax-pt-3-a-9.html#post987398
Interesting to note that the dungeon crawl was intended to be even bigger.

There are 4 levels to the temple, plus the nodes, plus the moathouse. So if Mentzer did levels 3 and 4, that means the majority of the adventure was by Gygax.

Bullgrit


----------



## billd91

Bullgrit said:


> Interesting to note that the dungeon crawl was intended to be even bigger.
> 
> There are 4 levels to the temple, plus the nodes, plus the moathouse. So if Mentzer did levels 3 and 4, that means the majority of the adventure was by Gygax.
> 
> Bullgrit




Does it really matter how much was whose? The thing needed a serious editing as far as I am concerned. Making it even longer (without tightening its focus) would probably only prolong the boredom.


----------



## KidSnide

Henry said:


> Also, I still have to go with the the Avatar Triogy as the worst I've ever tried to play. It was King of the static cutscene -- even the Dragonlance modules don't approach it. It was like playing through Hamlet as Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, except you don't have the relief of dying part way through.




Wow... you tried to *play* those?  At least some of the Dragonlance modules read well.  The Avatar modules read like... well... umm... 

Let's just say that they compare poorly with watching the GM play solitaire for six hours.

-KS


----------



## Bullgrit

Looking at the text now:

If a Temple leader calls, 90% chance for Iuz to come. If Iuz comes, 90% chance for St. Cuthbert to come. If they show up, they will revive any fallen followers “with a gesture,” and then “will vanish together in a puff of smoke and thunderclap, as they will not discuss or settle their differences in the presence of their followers or other mortals.”

So, though I got the percentages wrong, there still is no “watch the gods fight” in this. If the gods show up, they only revive their followers and then go away again.



> Does it really matter how much was whose?



Well it apparently mattered when y'all said it wasn't really Gygax's. Now that we see it was really/mostly Gygax's, it doesn't really matter anymore.

Bullgrit


----------



## billd91

Bullgrit said:


> Well it apparently mattered when y'all said it wasn't really Gygax's. Now that we see it was really/mostly Gygax's, it doesn't really matter anymore.
> 
> Bullgrit




Go back and reread my posts. It never mattered to me.


----------



## Erik Mona

Interesting. I appreciate you digging through the Q&A thread on that, as I always thought Frank did all four levels based on some notes from Gary. I wasn't aware that Gary designed the first couple levels.

Anyway, you're right that the gods don't actually fight each other. I still think their appearance in the module is pretty lame, regardless.

--Erik


----------



## Lanefan

Worst TSR modules I've ever had the (dis)pleasure of running and-or playing in:

1. Night's Dark Terror.  Some of the set-piece battles are fine, but the threads that hold it all together are tenuous at best and easily missed by the players - and the DM, unless her reading and comprehension skills are very very good.  My party, after losing enough people to turn over its entire membership twice, packed it in before ever reaching the Lost Valley bit and went elsewhere.

2. To Find a King and the companion one (I forget the name) that comes after it.  These two modules are actually a series of 8 little vignette-size adventures that get really boring after about the first two.  That said, the very last 'otherworld' bit holds some merit - my suggestion would be to pluck it out and use it somewhere else.

3. About a tie between Dragons of Winter Ice (what are minotaurs, a sub-tropical species, doing living in the high arctic???) and any of the single-player ones (Forest Oracle, Elven Quest, etc.)

But if you want to really step into the badness, turn away from TSR and check out some of the stuff Judges' Guild was putting out in that era.  With TSR, it was generally a matter of finding and avoiding the relatively few bad ones.  With JG is was like panning for gold in a muddy river - usually, all you got was mud.  But even if you found gold (and half a dozen or so of their modules are at least vaguely decent e.g. Tower of Ullision, Maltese Clue) it'd usually still need a complete rewrite before you could play it.

Lan-"there was a lot of mud"-efan


----------



## meomwt

A real clunker from the dying days of 2E: The Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad. 

You get: maps of two levels of interconnecting chambers, numbered, totalling 50 locations in all; 100 unkeyed room descriptions containing logical, word and mathematical puzzles; instructions "to put them together as the DM desires."

So to run an adventure which consists of the players solving lots of puzzles, the DM has to put together all the donkey work. 

Luckily, my group heard the word "Lich" and headed out of range in double-time, so I didn't have to disappoint them with this stinker.


----------



## Celebrim

Lancelot said:


> I've used this module to show my girlfriend what D&D was about, and she loved it. I've DM'ed this module for an ex-girlfriend and her (female) friends, and they loved it. Name me any other "classic" module with a vibe that makes it attractive to casual, first-time, female players.




UK1: Beyond the Crystal Cave


----------



## olshanski

I've never read the Avatar series: so keep that in mind... they sound like they could be worse than the "Marco Volo Trilogy".

One of My votes for the worst is the Marco Volo trilogy.  They were actually pretty well written, somewhat humorous, just terrible to play.  This was a series where the party basically followed around the NPC Marco Volo, who got to do all of the interesting stuff.  Marco Volo was written as totally annoying, yet with lots of good dialog as well, so the party was not only useless, but also completely outshined, and burdened with a completely annoying NPC.  Simply unplayable.

My other vote for the worst is B9 Castle Caldwell.  The crappiness was alleviated only by its brevity.  
The first "adventure" is when the party is asked by a guy to clear out a keep that the guy inherited.  The keep is basically a donut shape, surrounded by rooms filled with completely arbitrary monsters.  The party has to circumnavigate the keep, going room to room, killing the monsters.  one room has bandits. The next room has kobolds, the next room has slime, the next room has stirges, the next room has orcs, next room has a mummy, etcetera.    In the middle of the keep is a door that cannot be opened until the party has cleared everything on the top level. Then the guy who inherits the keep gives the party a key to the locked door.  The party is asked to clear the basement of monsters.  This is roughly a repeat of the first level, the party goes from room to room getting rid of the completely random monsters.... except at one point there is a "trick"  There is a secret exit that can only be opened if the party recites the lines "Owah tagoo Siam" 3 times (oh, what a goose I am).
This is the only adventure that I ever threw away.  I sort of regret throwing it away, because I'd like to go back to it and make a "worst module ever" thread similar to the treatment received by the Forest Oracle.  I do believe that Castle Caldwell is as bad or worse than the Forest Oracle.


----------



## olshanski

Lanefan said:


> 2. To Find a King and the companion one (I forget the name) that comes after it.  These two modules are actually a series of 8 little vignette-size adventures that get really boring after about the first two.  That said, the very last 'otherworld' bit holds some merit - my suggestion would be to pluck it out and use it somewhere else.




Whoah, I really liked these: these are C4 (To Find a King) and C5 (Bane of Llewellyn), they are competition modules with "scores" for how well you did.  I think that there were some really clever bits in there, and they were extremely challenging. 

I have recycled bits from these adventures in many campaigns for the past 20 years.

Did you actually read them or only play in them?  There is one excruciating bit where a buerocrat has been bribed to delay the party as long as possible... so in roleplaying this, the party has to recognize that they are being screwed with and take charge... the longer they are delayed, the further the bad guys are able to get away... If your players are too obedient, they will be totally screwed, but if the players are suspicious and don't trust the beurocrat, then the'll do much better.


----------



## rogueattorney

KidSnide said:


> Wow... you tried to *play* those?  At least some of the Dragonlance modules read well.  The Avatar modules read like... well... umm...
> 
> Let's just say that they compare poorly with watching the GM play solitaire for six hours.
> 
> -KS




My group sort of played through the first one...  ("Shadowdale?")  We found that it did indeed compare poorly with watching the GM play solitaire, and we scrapped plans to keep playing it.

I believe it was the series that created the Elminster as the Omni-Mary Sue character for the entire Realms trend.


----------



## Chris Knapp

thedungeondelver said:


> * . . . and they have to survive.  If they don't, you, the DM, make up a reason that they did.  Up to and including being saved by a powerful NPC*.



Its one thing to not like the Dragonlance modules for their railroadyness, but don't make stuff up please. If you died in the Dragonlance campaign, you died. Maybe you're confusing it the Obscure Death rule for NPC's.This basically asks the DM to always keep in mind an "out" to explain how an NPC's body was never recovered so they can come back later. And all this was just a published way to do what DM's had been doing for years anyway: preventing their story from breaking when the PC's do something unexpected.


----------



## Celebrim

Various thoughts:

1) The DL modules are actually very good.  However, the DL's demanded more from most DMs that were running them than most DM's (especially ones in high school) could be reasonably expected to handle especially given the fact that prior to DL, most adventures were simple dungeon crawls in some form.  Don't blame the module for your bad DM.

2) The same is true of ToH.  Moreover, don't blame your lack of play skill (at the time) for your experience of ToH.  There is nothing at all 'arbitrary' for instance about ToH.  The amazing thing about it is that it is one of the least arbitrary modules ever written.  Having a monster get a critical hit with a battle axe and suddenly you are dead is arbitary.  ToH is not unfair.  It's one of the most fair modules ever written.  You almost can't die to bad luck in ToH, and a clue is provided to avoid pretty much every obstacle.  Grimtooth's traps are frequently arbitrary and unfair, but unlike Grimtooth, Ascerak plays fair.  ToH is not actually deceptive or tricky.  There aren't alot of 'gotcha's that you find in later products inspired by ToH.  Touching something that gets you killed after you've been warned by a clue not to touch it is not arbitrary.  Charging ahead without investigating what you were charging into and then dying after you know that you are in a tomb filled with lethal traps is not arbitrary.  You may have had an arbitrary DM running it, but that is not the same thing.   What is true about ToH is that if you leave anything to luck, very very soon you will die because ToH has very very little mercy on those that expect the dice or their hit points to save them.

3) Virtually all the 2e modules were terrible.  However, for the same reason, there a virtually no classic 2e modules.


----------



## the Jester

Chris Knapp said:


> If you died in the Dragonlance campaign, you died.




You sure about that? I recall the "obscure death" rule _explicitly_ applying to pcs in the early modules. I don't have any of the early ones anymore, though- and I do know that the "obscure death" rule was later applied only to important npcs, such as Kitiara and Fizban. That's almost worse, imho; why the hell _can't_ the party kill their enemy?? Ridiculous. Plot immunity has no place in an RPG in my opinion.


----------



## Doug McCrae

the Jester said:


> why the hell _can't_ the party kill their enemy??



Ask Doctor Doom.


----------



## rogueattorney

the Jester said:


> You sure about that? I recall the "obscure death" rule _explicitly_ applying to pcs in the early modules. I don't have any of the early ones anymore, though- and I do know that the "obscure death" rule was later applied only to important npcs, such as Kitiara and Fizban. That's almost worse, imho; why the hell _can't_ the party kill their enemy?? Ridiculous. Plot immunity has no place in an RPG in my opinion.




My recollection is similar, and I recall reading the passage in DL8, I believe, that stated that rule was no longer in effect for pcs.

Nothing about pc plot immunity is in the first installment of the DL series.  It was introduced somewhere from DL2 to DL5.


----------



## MortonStromgal

rogueattorney said:


> Nothing about pc plot immunity is in the first installment of the DL series.  It was introduced somewhere from DL2 to DL5.




IIRC its DL4...Because we used to play DL1-3 every Christmas holiday and we died a lot, destroyed Haven a few times, and generally ran amok before finding the temple. (even tried to attack the elves and unicorn)


----------



## Mouseferatu

meomwt said:


> A real clunker from the dying days of 2E: The Crypt of Lyzandred the Mad.




I don't know how _CoLtM_ would play as a module, but I found it a _great_ resource for pulling out logic puzzles to use elsewhere. And there was a wide enough variety of them that I could avoid the kinds I don't like, and still find plenty to use in my own adventures.


----------



## olshanski

From DragonLance Volume 1 (Adventures 1-4) Page 5, titled "Dungeonmaster notes".



> Several NPCs, members of the the Draonarmies appear throughout this adventure. Try to make them have "obscure deaths" if they are killed; if at all possible, their bodies should not be found. Then, when the NPCs appear later, you have a chance to explain their presense. Be creative; think up an explanation for their "miraculous" survival.  if this becomes awkward, or your players become suspicious, then let the NPC die, but be prepared to create a similar (but not identical) NPC to take the dead NPCs place later in the adventure.  If you are willing to do this, you may eliminate the "obscure death" rule entirely.




I could find no similar quote regarding PCs.
Reading the introduction it appears to me that they have made several steps to try to make it a non-railroad... the adventures are pretty bad railroads nevertheless.


----------



## olshanski

MortonStromgal said:


> IIRC its DL4...Because we used to play DL1-3 every Christmas holiday and we died a lot, destroyed Haven a few times, and generally ran amok before finding the temple. (even tried to attack the elves and unicorn)




I've just finished looking at the PDFs of DragonLance Vol2 and Vol3, (Each of these volume had 4 adventures, so VOL3 contains the adventures "Dragons of Dreams, Dragons of Faith, Dragons of Truth, Dragons of Triumph")
Vol2 had nothing to say about PC death, but repeated the "Obscure Death for NPCS" in Volume 1.
Volume 3 repeats the same "obscure death" for NPCs, and points out Fizban and Kitiara in particular.  It then goes on to say:


> This is true of NPCs only. The obscure death rule does not apply to player characters. If a PC dies in this or later adventures--say good-bye!




PS: before WoTC pulled the PDFs, I had gone back and purchsed every adventure module I had ever heard of but never played... mostly the 2nd edition adventures, since I was an avid player of 1st and 3rd edition D&D.


----------



## Chris Knapp

rogueattorney said:


> My recollection is similar, and I recall reading the passage in DL8, I believe, that stated that rule was no longer in effect for pcs.
> 
> Nothing about pc plot immunity is in the first installment of the DL series.  It was introduced somewhere from DL2 to DL5.



Well, I stand corrected. I just pulled out my dead tree versions of DL1-4 and its DL3 where the Obscure Death rule starts applying to "name" characters and villains. It later says "characters" = PCs. All these years, I always assumed characters meant NPC's only, like Eben & Gilthanas, etc.


----------



## Lanefan

olshanski said:


> Whoah, I really liked these: these are C4 (To Find a King) and C5 (Bane of Llewellyn), they are competition modules with "scores" for how well you did.  I think that there were some really clever bits in there, and they were extremely challenging.
> 
> I have recycled bits from these adventures in many campaigns for the past 20 years.
> 
> Did you actually read them or only play in them?



I ran them.  A short way in, my players already couldn't wait to finish and get on to something else; but I'd tied the modules to the PCs and their fate in such a way that they pretty much had to finish...so they did.

20 years later, eyes still roll at mention of that series of adventures.

Lanefan


----------



## Erik Mona

Celebrim said:


> 3) Virtually all the 2e modules were terrible.  However, for the same reason, there a virtually no classic 2e modules.




You make a compelling point.

Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?

The two best ones I can think of, Night Below and Dragon Mountain, suffered from some similar flaws to TOEE--they're simply repetitive and boring and almost impossible to keep the players interested throughout the whole thing. I ran Dragon Mountain for about a year, and even with an engaged group I had to cut out about a third of the last book. You can only fight so many cheese-tactic kobolds before you start getting bored. And I mean _really_ bored.

I like Carl Sargent's "City of Skulls" quite a bit, though I never got a chance to actually run it. Because it was from the short print run era at the end of the Greyhawk product line I imagine most people are not aware of this module, but it's one of the better ones from the edition.

Beyond that...

I like  Monte's Labyrinth of Madness well enough, but a printing error actually makes the main puzzle in the module unsolvable, and it's more of a one-upped Tomb of Horrors than a classic module in its own right.

Any other 2e candidates?*

--Erik

* Please no one mention Terrible Trouble at Tragidore...


----------



## NN

The obvious 2E Classic would be Undermountain

I rate the Al-Qadim set "Cities Of Bone" highly.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Erik Mona said:


> You make a compelling point.
> 
> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?




_Mud Sorceror's Tomb_ gets the nod here Erik - though that's a classic adventure, as opposed to a module.

I don't know if Skip Williams' _Rod of Seven Parts_ rates as a classic or not.  The nature of the _Rod of Seven Parts_ boxed set is that it is quite chaotic and not as linear as most classic modules. I think it failed, ultimately, but it was a valiant try.

I was not a fan of the similar treatment given to _Axe of the Dwarvish Lords_, but I attribute that to taste as much as anything. It's been a long time since I read it - and I never ran it.

Frankly, I think another kick at the _Rod of Seven Parts i_n AP format  would be well justified.


----------



## Fifth Element

Erik Mona said:


> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?
> 
> The two best ones I can think of, Night Below and Dragon Mountain, suffered from some similar flaws to TOEE--they're simply repetitive and boring and almost impossible to keep the players interested throughout the whole thing.



One of my groups finished playing through a 3.5 conversion of _Night Below_ last year. It took us 18 months of regular play to finish it - the second book (of three) is a complete and total slog.

The only classic 2E module for me is _Fighter's Challenge_, though I daresay very few would agree with me. It's a classic or me just because of the number of times I've been through it (or bits of it) as a player, and the number of times I've used parts of it as a DM. Never played it as a solo adventure like it was intended to be, always adapted it for a group.


----------



## Mouseferatu

Erik Mona said:


> The two best ones I can think of, Night Below and Dragon Mountain, suffered from some similar flaws to TOEE--they're simply repetitive and boring and almost impossible to keep the players interested throughout the whole thing.




Yep. I'm a huge fan of the _concept_ of Night Below, but you couldn't pay me to run it or play in it unmodified. At the very least (as Fifth Element says), the second book has to be massively changed. If something is so much of a slog that a potential DM can't even bring himself to _read through it_ (guilty as charged), actually _running it_ seems a bit much to ask.


----------



## Fifth Element

Mouseferatu said:


> Yep. I'm a huge fan of the _concept_ of Night Below, but you couldn't pay me to run it or play in it unmodified. At the very least (as Fifth Element says), the second book has to be massively changed. If something is so much of a slog that a potential DM can't even bring himself to _read through it_ (guilty as charged), actually _running it_ seems a bit much to ask.



Indeed. "Finished off the quaggoths? Good, now go kill the hook horrors." (Spoilers, schmoilers.)

I'll give my DM credit for the sheer amount of work he put in to converting the thing to 3.5 (which did manage to make some of the fights more interesting that they would have been by a straight-up conversion, for instance adding levels of Dread Necromancer to one of the aboleths), but he should of omitted much of book two...


----------



## Erik Mona

Steel_Wind said:


> Frankly, I think another kick at the _Rod of Seven Parts i_n AP format  would be well justified.




The Age of Worms Adventure Path outline was originally conceived as a 20-module series that would include a quest to reassemble the Rod of Seven Parts, which would then be used to kill Kyuss at the end. My kick-off adventure, "The Whispering Cairn," includes a lot of foreshadowing of this plot line, which was later reduced considerably when WotC rejected the outline and (probably wisely) made us trim it back down to 12 adventures.

With that said, "The Whispering Cairn" would work, I think, equally well as a kick-off adventure for a campaign based around the Rod of Seven Parts as it does as a kick-off for a huge campaign against Kyuss. The dungeon featured in the adventure is a Wind Dukes of Aqaa tomb, and I drew fairly heavily from Skip's adventure for inspiration on the culture of these ancient beings.

I don't really think that the Rod of Seven Parts super-adventure is otherwise all that great, though, I must admit.

--Erik


----------



## Steel_Wind

Erik Mona said:


> The Age of Worms Adventure Path outline was originally conceived as a 20-module series that would include a quest to reassemble the Rod of Seven Parts, which would then be used to kill Kyuss at the end. My kick-off adventure, "The Whispering Cairn," includes a lot of foreshadowing of this plot line, which was later reduced considerably when WotC rejected the outline and (probably wisely) made us trim it back down to 12 adventures.
> 
> With that said, "The Whispering Cairn" would work, I think, equally well as a kick-off adventure for a campaign based around the Rod of Seven Parts as it does as a kick-off for a huge campaign against Kyuss. The dungeon featured in the adventure is a Wind Dukes of Aqaa tomb, and I drew fairly heavily from Skip's adventure for inspiration on the culture of these ancient beings.
> 
> I don't really think that the Rod of Seven Parts super-adventure is otherwise all that great, though, I must admit.
> 
> --Erik




Yes, I recall reading up on Skip's adventure as I was running _Age of Worms_ looking for more hooks and inspiration.

_Whispering Cairn _definitely makes the cut for 3.5. But in all seriousness - was that because you reached for - and achieved - a "shared experience" adventure in a way that the 2E modules did not?

Was part of the problem with 2E that the sheer mutiplicity of settings fractured the fan base so much that a shared experience module was just not possible? (Greyhawk, FR, Krynn, Birthright, Al-Qadim, Spelljammer, DarkSun, Ravenloft, Planescape, Mask of the Red Death, on and on...).

Pretty hard to have a "shared experience" -- which in my opinion is a prerequisite to get "classic" status -- when so relatively few of us were playing in the same setting to begin with.


----------



## Erik Mona

I think that's part of it, but I also think that TSR bought into the "modules don't sell" (because they _don't_) mindset before WotC was even invented. So they farmed out most of the 2e modules to the RPGA. And what works wonders in a 4-hour pick-up game at a con doesn't necessarily translate well to a real campaign, especially because the late 80s and early 90s were a particularly "hokey" era for the RPGA.

I think a lot of people had burned out on old school dungeon crawling, and so you were more likely to get stuff like Fluffy Quest, the joke Castle Greyhawk module, Puppets, Gargoyles, and the like. Heck, many of the adventures I just listed started out as RPGA scenarios. 

Take a close look at the "generic" adventure modules released for 2e, and with a couple of exceptions (most fairly late in the edition cycle), these things were farmed out to the B or even C squad. 

The setting fragmentation of second edition definitely struck a blow against the "shared experience" feel that so often generates what we tend to think of as classic modules, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the modules in second edition were sad crap written by hacks.

The more I think about it, the more some better adventures start to come to mind. Bruce Cordell had a couple of really good ones in the form of Gates of Firestorm Peak and Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Monte Cook did some excellent work in Planescape with the Great Modron March and Dead Gods.

I think there was a bit of a creative renaissance very near the end of TSR, with folks like Monte Cook, Bruce Cordell, and Colin McComb. It's the stuff BEFORE that that's almost uniformly terrible.

--Erik


----------



## olshanski

I pretty much despised all of 2E... I didn't play it, but after I got back into the game with 3E I went and back-purchased most of the adventures to see if I had missed anything.
Some of them had good production values but mediocre adventures (Axe of the Dwarven Lords, Rod of 7 parts).
I think the closest things to classic might be Dead Gods or Return to the Tomb of Horrors.


----------



## Derulbaskul

Erik Mona said:


> (snip) Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules? (snip)




I agree with you on _Night Below_ (although it needs A LOT of DM work), and I think _Gates of Firestorm Peak_ is another classic and one I am itching to run in 4E (I also like Bruce Cordell's other late-2E era adventure _The Shattered Circle_ and suspect that would have been considered a classic if released at any other time).


----------



## mhensley

The best 2e adventures were all in Dungeon.


----------



## FireLance

Erik Mona said:


> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?



The best ones I can think of are the Planescape modules The Great Modron March and Dead Gods. 

I never actually ran or played them, but I thought they had quite an epic feel and fit very well with the flavor of the campaign setting.

EDIT: Ninja'ed by your subsequent post - I really ought to read to the end of the thread before replying!


----------



## MerricB

olshanski said:


> From DragonLance Volume 1 (Adventures 1-4) Page 5, titled "Dungeonmaster notes".
> 
> 
> 
> I could find no similar quote regarding PCs.
> Reading the introduction it appears to me that they have made several steps to try to make it a non-railroad... the adventures are pretty bad railroads nevertheless.




You need to go to the original printings of the modules.

PCs had the obscure death rule up until DL8 (Dragons of War) where Sturm is meant to meet his fate on the High Clerists Tower. From that point onwards, it's gone.

NPCs lose it about DL12, I think.

Cheers!


----------



## D'karr

I don't know if I'd call them classic but the three adventures for the Illithiad were pretty cool.  I would not run them exactly as written but there are some beautiful ideas in that trio.  I know this is a thread about the worst, but somebody asked if there were some classics in 2e, I think these fit that category.

A Darkness Gathering 
Masters of Eternal Night 
Dawn of the Overmind


----------



## xuebao009

I like the idea, cool!


----------



## Lanefan

Erik Mona said:


> You make a compelling point.
> 
> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?



It may or may not be considered a classic, but I got quite decent mileage out of "For Duty and Deity" once I got done tweaking it to fit my storyline.

Probably the best use I ever got out of a 2e module, though, did not come from running it - or even from reading the whole thing.  At the end of "Howl From the North", maybe as an appendix, is a brief write-up on 5 swords named (I think) Dreamsinger, Greenswaithe, Stalker, Edge and Harmonizer.  Those write-ups and the corresponding swords became the kernel for what ended up as a 6-adventure arc - of which "For Duty and Deity" was the core of the last.  Well worth the money! 

Lanefan


----------



## Mark Hope

Erik Mona said:


> You make a compelling point.
> 
> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?




I wondered about this a while back and did a series of threads on potential "younger classics" inspired by Quasqueton's original groundbreaking series and based on suggestions from other posters.  I did about 15 until I got bored of it (yeah, fickle like that) but I came to more or less the same conclusion.  There are very few 2e adventures that rate as classics, for various reasons.  Quality aside, some of it seems to be that the customer base was so fractured that acheiving a shared play experience was pretty hard.

I can't find the index thread (think it got lost in the crash) but here are the adventures we discussed.  Those without links also seem to have disappeared, which is a shame, because some of those were pretty interesting:

1. The Night Below

2. Greyhawk Ruins

3. Ruins of Undermountain

4. Return to the Tomb of Horrors

5. Dragon Mountain

6. Curse of the Azure Bonds 

7. Dead Gods 

8. Rod of Seven Parts 

9. The Gates of Firestorm Peak 

10. Dragon's Crown

11. Wildspace 

12. Return to White Plume Mountain

13. Avatar Trilogy 

14. Tale of the Comet

15. Vecna Lives!

There were about a dozen other suggestions from posters that I never got around to, including stuff like City of Skulls, Ruins of Myth Drannor, Nightmare Keep and Gargoyle, heh heh.  Either way, though, it's clear that the heyday of classic adventures was the early 1e period.  2e had some great adventures, but many were flawed in one way or another.  Interesting to see how the approaches in adventure design differed over the years.


----------



## Echohawk

Erik Mona said:


> * Please no one mention Terrible Trouble at Tragidore...



Too late! You mentioned it. Horrible memories surfacing. 

TTaT was the first published adventure I ran. Until then, I had always prepared homebrew adventures, but since TTaT was a freebie with the DM's screen, I thought I'd give it a try. It was an experience that turned me so completely off published adventures, that the next one I ran was _Red Hand of Doom_ (a much more pleasant experience).


----------



## Doug McCrae

How about Wolfgang Baur's Assassin Mountain for Al-Qadim. Any good? Or Bruce Cordell's Reverse Dungeon? Seems like a strong concept.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Erik Mona said:


> I think that's part of it, but I also think that TSR bought into the "modules don't sell" (because they _don't_) mindset before WotC was even invented. So they farmed out most of the 2e modules to the RPGA. And what works wonders in a 4-hour pick-up game at a con doesn't necessarily translate well to a real campaign, especially because the late 80s and early 90s were a particularly "hokey" era for the RPGA.



And yet so many of the classic 1e adventures started out as tournament modules - G1-3, D1-3, A1-4, Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Ghost Tower of Inverness, Dwellers of the Forbidden City.


----------



## InVinoVeritas

I always thought that 2e wasn't much for adventures/modules anyway. They excelled in settings, and so their worlds were much better than any plot-driven happenstance within them.

That suited me just fine; very quickly I started running my own adventures in 1e and stopped buying or looking at modules. Honestly, I can't think of a single module I ran through. Tamoachan perhaps, because it was my favorite, but that was about it.


----------



## Stoat

Erik Mona said:


> You make a compelling point.
> 
> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?




Not many.

I'd vote for _Paladin in Hell_ and _Gates of Firestorm Peak_.

I also suspect that a lack of shared experience arising out of 2E's plethora of settings is part of the problem.  Frex, I hear a lot of good things about _Modron March_ and _Dead Gods_, but I was never a Planescape fan, so I don't know anything about 'em.  

2E is most notable for classic videogames.  Starting with _Pool of Radiance_ and going all the way up to _Baldur's Gate_ and _Planescape: Torment_.


----------



## billd91

Stoat said:


> I also suspect that a lack of shared experience arising out of 2E's plethora of settings is part of the problem.  Frex, I hear a lot of good things about _Modron March_ and _Dead Gods_, but I was never a Planescape fan, so I don't know anything about 'em.




I think your suspicion is pretty good one. I never got into Planescape either so I don't have the shared experience with those mods. My friends and I also really liked the Al Qadim materials, including several of the modules. The Oriental Adventures modes of the time are also pretty good. *Test of the Samurai*, *Ronin Challenge*, and *Ninja Wars* were pretty well done and a lot of fun. But as far as widely shared experiences, not nearly the same as the old 1e mods in the early days of that edition.


----------



## Steel_Wind

Oh - another potential classic I recall from the 2E era was Christopher Perkins "_Seeking Bloodsilver_".  An awesome map and a great adventure that I have used twice over the years... Chris Perkins, as always, was one of TSR's best adventure authors, periodical editor of _Dungeon_ / _Dragon_ and remains one of the guilding lights at WotC.  _Seeking Bloodsilver_ was published at about the same time as the _Birthright_ boxed set was released in 1995.

Which of course is the point. Once again, the best adventure was published in _Dungeon_ #59 and not as a stand alone module.

*sigh* I really did enjoy the _Birthright_ setting. One of the best things about the 2E era. It came later in the product cycle, however. I can't say as I was much of a fan of the "Player's Secrets"  aspect of the product line as that seemed a blatant attempt to come up with a way to "sell crap modules to players" ...but the core design of the world and the idea of bloodlines, etc. was very cool. 

Which of course might speak to the issue at hand and highlight it more clearly. TSR put effort and "A" list creative talent in to their settings products, but did not devote the same care with their stand-alone module lines.

From what I recall, _Birthright_ appealed to older grognards and veteran gamers, but caught very little traction among newer and younger gamers.


----------



## CleverNickName

I don't know what you guys are talking about.  Everything TSR ever published was 100% amazing and awesome.

Just kidding.  In fact, just typing those two sentences made me puke a little.

The worst I have ever actually played (and later had to apologize profusely for) was _Tomb of Horrors_.  We picked it out because it was rumored to be "the hardest module ever" or something, and we wanted a challenge.  But this module wasn't challenging; it was boobytrapped for the sole purpose of destroying PCs.  A _sphere of annihilation_ in a statue's mouth?  Give me a break.  After the fourth character died MOST unfairly, the players began threatening me with violence.  I actually had to use that lame "it was all a dream" cop-out, from the Dallas television show, to save my hide.

A close second was _Earthshaker,_ but for a different reason.  A giant steam-powered robot attacking the city?  The concept was so absurd, everyone kept making fun of it.   Like when the machine comes to life with the booming words "I AM EARTHSHAKER!!!!," everyone at the table started singing Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" instead.  And oh my gods, the railroading: page 22 even states that no matter what the PCs do, Earthshaker will be stopped with or without their help.  "They eventually hear how it was defeated and how some local noble became rich selling the scrap iron."  Really?  That's it?


----------



## thedungeondelver

CleverNickName said:


> I don't know what you guys are talking about.  Everything TSR ever published was 100% amazing and awesome.
> 
> Just kidding.  In fact, just typing those two sentences made me puke a little.
> 
> The worst I have ever actually played (and later had to apologize profusely for) was _Tomb of Horrors_.  We picked it out because it was rumored to be "the hardest module ever" or something, and we wanted a challenge.  But this module wasn't challenging; it was boobytrapped for the sole purpose of destroying PCs.  A _sphere of annihilation_ in a statue's mouth?  Give me a break.  After the fourth character died MOST unfairly, the players began threatening me with violence.  I actually had to use that lame "it was all a dream" cop-out, from the Dallas television show, to save my hide.





You didn't read through the module first before running it?


----------



## Celebrim

CleverNickName said:


> The worst I have ever actually played (and later had to apologize profusely for) was _Tomb of Horrors_.  We picked it out because it was rumored to be "the hardest module ever" or something...




First of all, IMO, for the suggest character levels, I6: Ravenloft is a much harder module than S1.  Strahd is a proactive villain, and Acererak not only sits back and waits, but 'plays fair' by providing honest clues, rewarding heroics, and correctly labeling the stuff in his tomb.  (This is so obvious, that RttToH feels the need to provide an in game reason why he does this.)  I6: Ravenloft is an almost gauranteed TPK with a good DM that plays the module straight and doesn't put on the kid gloves.  With Tomb of Horrors I would expect most experienced players to get through with 50% or fewer fatalities, though granted I wouldn't expect any of them to have actually 'won' the module, just survived it.



> ...and we wanted a challenge.  But this module wasn't challenging; it was boobytrapped for the sole purpose of destroying PCs.




No, it is challenging AND boobytrapped to destroy PCs.  Your players weren't up to the challenge.  That's ok.  _It is challenging_.  No one faults your (or your players) lack of skill for not winning 'ToH'.   We've been there.  It severely tests even the best and most experienced of us.  However you died, at least some of us made the same mistakes.  If it was easy, then it wouldn't deserve its reputation.



> A _sphere of annihilation_ in a statue's mouth?  Give me a break.




That really ought to be in a spoiler tag, but yeah, that's completely fair.  If you crawl into a devil's mouth, then you ought to expect to be destroyed.  And Acererak plays fair.  It's not random or arbitrary.  Random and arbitary would be if some devil's mouths were good and some were bad, or if the path to destruction was covered by an illusion that made it appear safe and inviting.   That's one of several reasons why most attempts to emulate ToH fall flat.  If you crawl into a pure black hole without testing to see if it is safe with a 10' pole, you get what you deserve.

Look, I sympathize with the fact that you (or rather your players) died that way.  I knew a really good experienced group of players who the first time through the ToH lost the whole party to the SoA trap (party loyalty and cohesion convinced them that they had to 'go in after' the first character through so they could save him from whatever fate befell him).  Having learned that Acererak the Eternal doesn't play around, they made it through his tomb the second time with no deaths.

The proper response to losing a character in ToH is to laugh about it, because it happens to just about everyone.  It is challenging.



> After the fourth character died MOST unfairly, the players began threatening me with violence.




Now, I'll say this.  I'd never run long term characters that players were attached to on ToH.  Unlike what players are used to, ToH is not stacked in their favor.  And unlike most modules, ToH has very little mercy on mistakes.  Your hit points won't protect you very much from errors.  And saving throws can't be relied on to let you luck through the module with good dice rolls.   Likewise, I'd never run long term characters on Ravenloft until they were a level or two above the suggested levels.


----------



## Doug McCrae

I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play - something interesting and exciting is more likely to happen and that's what I want when I play an rpg. Prodding everything with a 10' pole, or getting your orc slaves to enter every room first, is the play style Tomb of Horrors encourages. This, to me, is a bad play style.

In fact, Gary says how much he dislikes this play style in the 1e DMG:



> Assume that your players are continually wasting time (thus making the
> so-called adventure drag out into a boring session of dice rolling and
> delay) if they are checking endlessly for traps and listening at every door.
> If this persists, despite the obvious displeasure you express, the requirement
> that helmets be doffed and mail coifs removed to listen at a door,
> and then be carefully replaced, the warnings about ear seekers, and
> frequent checking for wandering monsters (q.v.), then you will have to
> take more direct part in things. Mocking their over-cautious behavior as
> near cowardice, rolling huge handfuls of dice and then telling them the
> results are negative, and statements to the effect that: "You detect
> nothing, and nothing has detected YOU so far - ", might suffice. If the
> problem should continue, then rooms full with silent monsters will turn the
> tide, but that is the stuff of later adventures.




Make up your frikkin' mind, Gary!

EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?


----------



## CleverNickName

I was sort of being tongue-in-cheek when I wrote that post.  But yes, I read the module beforehand, and we all tried our best to have fun with it.  It was just too forthright in its eagerness to destroy the PCs.  Not just kill--this module wants to crush, humiliate, even _annihilate_ them.  So halfway through, I decided to make this one "not count," and everyone relaxed and enjoyed the (very short) ride.

Still, it wasn't what I would call a great adventure module.  Even without the sucker-punch boobytraps, it's kind of weak.  The plot is unimaginative, the setting is cliche, and the rewards do not merit the risk.  IMO, of course.



Celebrim said:


> That really ought to be in a spoiler tag...
> 
> (snip)
> 
> If you crawl into a pure black hole without testing to see if it is safe with a 10' pole, you get what you deserve.



Woops, sorry about the spoiler tag (or lack thereof.)  But come on.  Does a character really deserve to be annihilated--not just paralyzed, or cursed, or even slain--for failing to carry a ten-foot pole?  FWIW, they did "test" the opening by throwing pebbles into it.  All that did was reinforce the theory that they had found a portal.



Celebrim said:


> I knew a really good experienced group of players who the first time through the ToH lost the whole party to the SoA trap (party loyalty and cohesion convinced them that they had to 'go in after' the first character through so they could save him from whatever fate befell him).



Yep.  This is exactly what happened to the rest of the party.   (Well, those that survived all of the previous traps and such leading up to that point.)  They were convinced that they had discovered a magical gate to the Abyss, or Hell, or somewhere.  Which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting, the wizard's reputation, the supernatural-looking blackness, and the demonic frame around it.  I had to sit there silently and watch as they all marched into oblivion like ants.

I suppose a lot of DMs would think this was funny.



Celebrim said:


> Now, I'll say this.  I'd never run long term characters that players were attached to on ToH.  Unlike what players are used to, ToH is not stacked in their favor.



Agreed.  And these are the biggest reasons why we didn't particularly care for it.

I guess I was a bit too harsh when I implied it was a "bad module."  It is a classic, after all.  What I probably should have said was "of all the modules we have played, this was the one we enjoyed the least."


----------



## Celebrim

Doug McCrae said:


> I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play - something interesting and exciting is more likely to happen and that's what I want when I play an rpg. Prodding everything with a 10' pole, or getting your orc slaves to enter every room first, is the play style Tomb of Horrors encourages. This, to me, is a bad play style.




Well, you have a right to say that it is a bad play style, but I wish that you wouldn't redefine terms to make your point.  It may be true that playing in a way that interesting and exciting is more fun than playing in a manner that is skillful and that might make skillful play a bad play style, but lets not reappropriate the term just because everyone would like to be thought of as skillful lest we no longer have terms that mean anything.

By skillful play, generally it is meant 'play that by the creativity, experience, and intelligence of the player, allows hazards to be overcome and the life of the character to continue'.  Whether this is fact 'fun' or desirable is a different question.



> Make up your frikkin' mind, Gary!




Gary has made up his mind.  You just don't agree with it.  Read that passage again.  How does Gary plan on dealing with players that are overly cautious?  By punishing blind and excessive caution with instant death in the form of probably the most arbitrary lethal monster in the game - the ear seeker.  



> Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?




All this is true, and it was the assumption made by the party of the experienced player aforementioned.  However, two things mitigate this conclusion.  First, even by the time you reach the Devil's mouth, the Tomb should have already installed in you the attitude of expecting the worst from everything.  And second, if you make the correct assumption that Acererak doesn't use alot of reverse pyschology (on the grounds that that would indeed make the module unfair and arbitrary), you will correctly assume that whatever else happens, you aren't climbing into the devil's mouth.  Thirdly, the general practice of not going into something blind encourages you to look for an alterative to the obvious exit, and one is standing right nearby.  Now... if attempting to solve the nearby puzzle resulted in instant death (and by this point, I was afraid to touch anything), then yeah, that would be arbitrary, but it doesn't.


----------



## billd91

CleverNickName said:


> Yep.  This is exactly what happened to the rest of the party.   (Well, those that survived all of the previous traps and such leading up to that point.)  They were convinced that they had discovered a magical gate to the Abyss, or Hell, or somewhere.  Which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting, the wizard's reputation, the supernatural-looking blackness, and the demonic frame around it.  I had to sit there silently and watch as they all marched into oblivion like ants.
> 
> I suppose a lot of DMs would think this was funny.




I confess, I *would* find that funny. But then, even without a 10' pole, there's no way I would be walking into something I suspected was a portal that gave me no reason to believe I'd be able to come back out again. Tossing in pebbles won't do that - I'd toss in the knotted end of a rope or something and make sure it came back. If it got cut off, I'd be imagining what would happen if I started going into the "portal" and stopped briefly. Would it teleport only part of me like it did the rope? At that point, I'd be avoiding the supposed portal as too mysterious to risk.

Now, as luck would have it, when I played through ToH, my character *did* have a 10' pole. He did prod at the darkness in the demon's mouth. He successfully avoided that doom.


----------



## Celebrim

CleverNickName said:


> Still, it wasn't what I would call a great adventure module.  Even without the sucker-punch boobytraps, it's kind of weak.  The plot is unimaginative, the setting is cliche, and the rewards do not merit the risk.  IMO, of course.




You are entitled to your opinion, and in general, I agree with this one.  The plot is thin.  The setting is cliched, albiet, you could argue that it created the cliche, and the rewards certainly do not merit the risk.  In fact, at one level, the module is an interesting test in recognizing when the rewards don't merit the risk because normally one of the meta-assumptions is that rewards always merit the risk.



> Does a character really deserve to be annihilated--not just paralyzed, or cursed, or even slain--for failing to carry a ten-foot pole?




Well, yes.

I'm not going to defend whether or not it was a good module.  I don't think that's something that can really be asserted objectively.  But I do get irritated when people dimiss the module as arbitrary or unfair.  I feel those are claims that are just objectively wrong.  Of all the modules I've ever played, it felt the least unfair and seemed to put my fate in my hands better than any other module.   Moreover, while its harsh, because it is less arbitrary I don't even consider it the hardest module out there.  So many modules come down almost entirely to luck, even if you do make the 'right' decisions you still have to pass saving throws and hope you don't get hit by the monster that has the death touch.  When whether you succeed depends on whether the DM throws a high number, or whether you throw a high number regardless of your actions as a player, then that is arbitrary.  ToH is almost never like that.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Celebrim said:


> Well, you have a right to say that it is a bad play style, but I wish that you wouldn't redefine terms to make your point.  It may be true that playing in a way that interesting and exciting is more fun than playing in a manner that is skillful and that might make skillful play a bad play style, but lets not reappropriate the term just because everyone would like to be thought of as skillful lest we no longer have terms that mean anything.
> 
> By skillful play, generally it is meant 'play that by the creativity, experience, and intelligence of the player, allows hazards to be overcome and the life of the character to continue'.  Whether this is fact 'fun' or desirable is a different question.



I would stand by my use of the word. To be skillful is to do something well based on experience, on learned practices. The question is, what is it to play a roleplaying game well? People disagree quite a bit on this. To Gary in the 1970s it was the ability to win the game of D&D - keep your PC alive, gain treasure, go up levels. To me it's to entertain the other participants.

I admit that terms like 'skillful play', 'the superior player' and the like are strongly associated with the Gygaxian play style. I normally refrain from using them partly for that reason and also because I'm uncomfortable with saying that one way to pretend to be an elf is better than another. Very uncomfortable. That's why I feel the need to add an 'imo' or the equivalent.


----------



## olshanski

CleverNickName said:


> Yep.  This is exactly what happened to the rest of the party.   (Well, those that survived all of the previous traps and such leading up to that point.)  They were convinced that they had discovered a magical gate to the Abyss, or Hell, or somewhere.  Which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting, the wizard's reputation, the supernatural-looking blackness, and the demonic frame around it.  I had to sit there silently and watch as they all marched into oblivion like ants.
> 
> I suppose a lot of DMs would think this was funny.




When I played, as soon as my wizard stuck his head in the portal, the remainder of his body from the neck-down dropped lifelessly to the floor.  That was our first indication that this was a seriously deadly dungeon, as we were able to get past the other traps fairly easily:  I believe my corpse was ressurected, so I was able to continue on with the adventure.  I died again when a green slime curtain fell on my character and disolved him... most of the rest of the party bought it soon afterward at the juggernaut.  We had a blast!

*In the long hall with all of the pit traps: we just had a person using LEVITATE to choose to put just enough weight on the floor to see were the traps were, without falling in.  When we got trapped in a false entrance, we used "stone to flesh" and cut our way back out.  The adventure really didn't seem that deadly until the sphere of annhilation.


----------



## Lidgar

*Best 2e Module*

Supposed this is almost forked at this point - but it seemed like I played all of 2e in either _Undermountain _or _Al Qadim_. For _Undermountain_, _Skullport _and the _Lost Levels _were "classics". For _Al Qadim _it was more about the setting. Oh, and _Menzoberranzan _was quite fun - although we tweaked that quite a bit.


----------



## Bullgrit

Kinda funny how this thread went from "wost adventures of AD&D1" to "best adventures of AD&D2" 

Bullgrit


----------



## Erik Mona

Doug McCrae said:


> And yet so many of the classic 1e adventures started out as tournament modules - G1-3, D1-3, A1-4, Tomb of Horrors, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, Ghost Tower of Inverness, Dwellers of the Forbidden City.




At a guess I'd say that's likely in part due to the stylistic and preference differences between Frank Mentzer, who started the RPGA and ran it in the early years, and Jean Rabe, who was a major force in the organization in the later part of the 80s. Jean is a wonderful GM and a great human being, but her adventure designs are much more light-hearted and less dungeon-crawly than Frank's.

I suspect that both coordinators were publishing scenarios that reflected the interests of the gamers of their day. It's quite likely that the narrative, jokey RPGA scenarios were in large part a result of players growing tired of the "hack and slash" dungeon exploration of the early tournament modules.

--Erik


----------



## Maggan

Although I would rate my experience with Tomb of Horrors as one of singularly most boring session I've ever ran, resulting in a TPS* halfway through, I wouldn't call it one of the worst.

It didn't click for me or my players, but there are modules that fared even worse with my group, such as Savage Coast.

But then again, we enjoyed Earthshaker, so we're probably freaks. 

/Maggan

*TPS = Total Party Suicide


----------



## billd91

Erik Mona said:


> I suspect that both coordinators were publishing scenarios that reflected the interests of the gamers of their day. It's quite likely that the narrative, jokey RPGA scenarios were in large part a result of players growing tired of the "hack and slash" dungeon exploration of the early tournament modules.
> 
> --Erik




That certainly makes some sense to me. My experience with RPGA tournaments definitely went away from the hack and slash dungeon exploration direction. That style was more for the AD&D Open, which was geared toward groups of players showing off their rule knowledge and good adventure-playing, trap-finding, trick-foiling, fight-surviving tactics. 

The RPGA events I participated in were more designed to foster individual advancement of players based on role-playing the character. Though there were traps, tricks, puzzles to solve, and some fights, those were typically secondary to playing the character in an interesting way. I don't believe you even needed to finish the mod to advance, you just needed to be judged the best player at the table. And the narrative jokey scenarios offered more to role-play with/against than the adventure formula in the AD&D Open.


----------



## Tewligan

Chris Knapp said:


> IMaybe you're confusing it the Obscure Death rule for NPC's.This basically asks the DM to always keep in mind an "out" to explain how an NPC's body was never recovered so they can come back later. And all this was just a published way to do what DM's had been doing for years anyway: preventing their story from breaking when the PC's do something unexpected.



It was a published way to do what BAD DM's had been doing for years.


----------



## TarionzCousin

Tewligan said:


> It was a published way to do what BAD DM's had been doing for years.



Doing the Happy Dance immediately after a TPK?


----------



## ExploderWizard

Doug McCrae said:


> I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play - something interesting and exciting is more likely to happen and that's what I want when I play an rpg. Prodding everything with a 10' pole, or getting your orc slaves to enter every room first, is the play style Tomb of Horrors encourages. This, to me, is a bad play style.
> 
> In fact, Gary says how much he dislikes this play style in the 1e DMG:
> 
> 
> 
> Make up your frikkin' mind, Gary!
> 
> EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?




You don't have to know. All you need to know it that what is put in the mouth _doesn't come back. _Common sense says that entering said hole is a very bad idea unless faced with certain death if you don't enter.


----------



## Erik Mona

Wait, what?

What sort of "teleporter" teleports only a foot of whatever you put into it? How would that work with, say, a character's arm?

I'm willing to say right here and now that every single character devoured by the Green Face DESERVED to die. It was their punishment for being lousy adventurers and not being cautious enough in what is obviously (and intentionally) a deathtrap dungeon.

--Erik


----------



## Eridanis

Steel_Wind said:


> That's easy: *the maps.*
> 
> <snip>
> 
> DL8 - *Map to the* * Tower of the High Clerist:* A castle that is nearly 800 feet tall, with level after level after level of floor map designs and layouts for you to fill with whatever your heart desires.  Still the largest published Castle Map of all time, AFAIK. If you wanted to run the whole damn dungeon as one campaign - 1st to 20th a la WLD, you easily do so.  As the lair of your BBEG and the last dungeon crawl of your campaign? This is *>>Da Shizznit<*<.  I have often re-used sections of this map in other campaigns. I don't think my players ever recognized it either. It's a MASSIVE castle.  The module itself does not even pretend to detail less than a few dozen areas. There are Hundreds and Hundreds of area in the thing. It's  MONSTROUSLY HUGE, okay?




You inspired me to go down and pull out my copy of DL8. I have to admit that I probably - make that definitely - haven't cracked it open since I bought it in 1985, so it was crisp as if brand new. (We were playing the modules at the time, so I didn't read them; we got through DL6, IIRC, before the group fell apart, and I never found time to go back and really read through.)

You are NOT KIDDING about the map of the High Clerist's Tower. About 22"x32", 16 levels plus the 3 levels of the Knight's Spur, highly detailed - PLUS an overhead battlemap of the whole place on the flip side. Incredible. Plus, on flipping through the module, it has a full page dedicated to sheet music for hymn of the Solamnic Knights. Talk about detail and immersion in the campaign world.

Oh, and the cover price? $6. (That's about $12 in 2010 dollars.)

****************
The "shared experience" observation is spot on, but I think some of the blame for poor 2E product needs to be laid at the feet of TSR's business practices. As a consumer, I got more and more frustrated at products with large fonts, huge white margins, poor maps, and ended up not buying a lot of 2E past '94 or so. (Didn't help that I went back to college and had no spare $$ for such things.) 

It seems to me that as TSR's financial situation got more and more dire, they tried to cut corners and save money with such tactics, and it ended up backfiring on them in the end. Eric noted Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Gates of Firestorm Peak as good 2E mods; both of those were produced after the WotC purchase, IIRC. In my opinion, a solid, stable company and manangement supporting the creative team made for a higher quality product.


----------



## Olgar Shiverstone

renau1g said:


> Dragons of Despair?  That's the super-railroad one right?




This.  Nothing like using wandering armies of draconians to make your players conform.  At least the stinkfest that was Forest Oracle had unintentional humor to redeem it.

Edit: Fun quotes from my original dead tree copy of DL1 below:



> Players may wish to use PCs from the ... story, detailed on character cards at the center of the module. It is generally an advantage for players to use these characters rather than bring their own into the campaign.



Gee, I can't make/play my own character? Well, at least we get to read poetry ...



> Event 4: Reading. On one of the nights the party is camped (your choice), pass around [the poem] found at the end of this book. As though around the campfire, have each player read one verse aloud, from first verse to last, until they finish the poem.



Lucky our characters all memorized the same poetry in school! At least we can go where we want ...



> Event 7: The Armies march. Just after dusk on the fifth game night, the armies begin to march and conquer all the land to the south; every 4 hours thereafter, and encounter area falls into their hands. The general trend of the captured areas should direct the PCs toward (area 44). If PCs are in a captured area, they see the front lines of the army approaching them at a movement rate of 9". This gives them a chance to flee the army toward (area 44).



Never mind, I guess we're just going to area 44! (Never mind that area 44 is in the northeast of the map, and would immediately be cut off by armies advancing southward.) Ah, well, at least we can kill people and take their stuff:



> This module introduces several enemy NPCs ... since these NPCs appear in later ... modules, try to make them have "obscure deaths" if they are killed: if at all possible, their bodies should not be found. ... The same rules apply to the PCs on pages 17-18 of the module ... this does not apply to PCs other than those who are part of the story.




I think that last bit settles the question of early campaign PC plot-immunity.


----------



## darjr

I ran the tomb for my kids. They wanted to play monsters. A vampire and a werewolf. The vamp would go first to setoff the traps turning into vapor when crushed under rocks and such.  Both having regeneration helped a ton. At the green face they thought sure it was teleportation until the fingers they lost grew back. Dead giveaway.


----------



## tylerthehobo

NN said:


> The obvious 2E Classic would be Undermountain
> 
> I rate the Al-Qadim set "Cities Of Bone" highly.




IMO, Undermountain - excluding many of the follow up one-off modules - had some merits as a classic dungeon crawl.  There could have been more set up as to why your party was there, but taking it on the surface that Undermountain was just so danged famous a dungeon, there didn't need to be too much set up.  Adventurers galore haunted the place to find riches, so that's why your party was going.

But yeah, by the time the one-off modules expanding it got going, it was just silly.


----------



## Stormonu

I think that one reason there are so many 1E modules remembered as classic and fewer 2E and 3E modules (and 4E modules) is that Dungeon magazine became the primary delivery system for adventures.

Yet for some reason, most people seem to forget that Dungeon is a part of D&D.  It's almost treated like the red-headed stepchild of the game.  I assume part of it is was the (bi)monthly nature of the magazine - and the fact it was a magazine, not an "evergreen" product like other adventures or supplements.  Unlike the modules, if you didn't grab the latest magazine, it didn't hang around in stores for multiple printings.

I'd like to see folks mention what _Dungeon Magazine_ modules they feel are classics.


----------



## darjr

Oh, the last time I played keep on the borderlands I was player in the game with my kid. We played for several hours, Moldvay basic. The GM was very good. I don't think we ever left the keep. It was my sons first and only time playing that module.


----------



## the Jester

Erik Mona said:


> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?




_Gates of Firestorm Peak_ and _Return to the Tomb of Horrors_ are the only two I'd rate as classics, but I have not read or played a lot of the 2e modules. Most of the ones I checked out looked pretty awful, though.

I'm curious as to peoples' take on _the Apocalypse Stone_- I saw but never read it, and it vanished quickly after 3e came out.

As to the fairness of the Tomb of Horrors, a skillful group of pcs _can_ get through it intact if they are careful and use their wits carefully. I ran _Return to the Tomb of Horrors_,  converted to 3.5 at the cusp of epic level _for my regular campaign_ and the pcs came through with shining colors. And I am a ruthless, rat bastard, high-lethality campaign dm- shucks, we just played Friday and Saturday (different group by now, of course) and the same player lost _two_ characters! So believe me when I say that I showed no mercy at all. Yet they made it through the Tomb of Horrors section of RttToH almost untouched by the traps, despite being harried by three burly vampires while they were doing so.

My opinion is that the Tomb isn't unfair at all; it's simply _too hard_ for most groups. It requires them to flex their brains in creative ways that they aren't used to having to do in D&D.

Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in the Tomb when the party was obliterated, and I'm not trying to sound superior here. I'm just saying that it _can_ be successfully investigated and survived.


----------



## Celebrim

the Jester said:


> My opinion is that the Tomb isn't unfair at all; it's simply _too hard_ for most groups. It requires them to flex their brains in creative ways that they aren't used to having to do in D&D.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in the Tomb when the party was obliterated, and I'm not trying to sound superior here. I'm just saying that it _can_ be successfully investigated and survived.




I agree.  One of the reasons that ToH remains such a timeless classic is that all the various attempts to emulate it largely fail in this regard.

In RttToH for example, there are several places where some lurking monster effectively is able to attack, and if the creature hits, the character dies with no save allowed.  That really is 'unfair', because whether you live or die is then almost entirely a matter of luck.  Your life is in the hand of some die.  But its not like that in ToH.  Your life is in your own hands.  

I think that's honestly what feels 'unfair' to players with a D&D background.  The normal D&D adventure puts your life largely in the hands of dice, and then stacks the odds heavily in your favor so that you can succeed by and large by just straightfoward attacks, character optimization, and luck.  In ToH none of those things are of much help to you. The module eats, chews and spits out characters without much regard to the mechanics of the game.  If it gets to the point where you are rolling dice to determine outcomes, you've already failed.  Your average D&D player goes into ToH with the expectation that the mechanics are there to defend him, and that crutch gets kicked out from under them and they say, "No, fair!"  It's an entirely understandable response, but like many claims of missing fairness, not actually a valid one. 

To my knowledge there has never been a module that is both as fair and as hard as ToH, and there certainly has never been another one to combine those attributes in a way that feels so terrifying instead of just cheesy.  For what it is, it is just about perfect.


----------



## ColonelHardisson

Erik Mona said:


> You make a compelling point.
> 
> Were there _ANY_ "classic" second edition modules?
> 
> The two best ones I can think of, Night Below and Dragon Mountain, suffered from some similar flaws to TOEE--they're simply repetitive and boring and almost impossible to keep the players interested throughout the whole thing. I ran Dragon Mountain for about a year, and even with an engaged group I had to cut out about a third of the last book. You can only fight so many cheese-tactic kobolds before you start getting bored. And I mean _really_ bored.
> 
> I like Carl Sargent's "City of Skulls" quite a bit, though I never got a chance to actually run it. Because it was from the short print run era at the end of the Greyhawk product line I imagine most people are not aware of this module, but it's one of the better ones from the edition.
> 
> Beyond that...
> 
> I like  Monte's Labyrinth of Madness well enough, but a printing error actually makes the main puzzle in the module unsolvable, and it's more of a one-upped Tomb of Horrors than a classic module in its own right.
> 
> Any other 2e candidates?*
> 
> --Erik
> 
> * Please no one mention Terrible Trouble at Tragidore...




The ones you name are good candidates, and I'd add A Paladin in Hell, Axe of the Dwarvish Lords and Return to the Tomb of Horrors to the list. I think they all came so late in 2e's run that they could never get the traction to be viewed as classics; the advent of 3e overshadowed them. 

A Paladin in Hell actually took an iconic D&D pic as its inspiration and came up with an adventure that takes the PCs into some tough, unusual adventure sites. Axe was, in my opinion, the best depiction of an abandoned dwarven city TSR ever did. Return to the Tomb of Horrors was tough and spooky.

I'll add that The Shattered Circle should rightly be considered a classic low-level module. It also suffered from appearing so close to the end of 2e and the beginning of 3e.

But since this is about the worst modules, I'll chime in with my candidates:

Gargoyle - Already mentioned, and I'll add that I looked at it long and hard to see if there was a way to rework it into something usable. Even given that I used to look at stuff like that as a challenge, I just could never see how to make it into something I'd want to run.

Castle Greyhawk was a shock because instead of delivering the module so many of us had waited long years for, we got a joke-filled bit of nonsense. Now, I would say it could be used as a side trek for an extended, "real" Castle Greyhawk campaign, along the lines of how there were entrances into a Wonderland or Barsoom world from Gary's Castle Greyhawk. But that doesn't take away that TSR's "Castle Greyhawk" is one of the biggest disappointments in gaming.

I'll pile on The Forest Oracle, too. Poor writing is what did it for me.

Egg of the Phoenix is a module that irritated me. It simply doesn't hang together well, and the seams show badly where a number of modules were crammed together. Stuff like that works occasionally - the GDQ modules being the best example - but it failed badly in this instance.

Modules C3 (The Lost Island of Castanamir), C4 (To Find a King), and C5 (The Bane of Llywelyn) left a bad taste because they were simply lackluster. They came at the tail end of the classic era of modules, and were the first ones I recall not wanting to run at all. Plus C3 introduced the term "gingwatzim," for which I can never forgive it.


----------



## MToscan

The worst AD&D adventure I have ever played in my life was "Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga". At the end of the adventure, my friend wanted to write a letter to Lisa Smedman to ask for refunds.


----------



## Crothian

Of the 2e adventures I ran A Paladin in Hell and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords were the best.  I actually was able to run Axe twice with totally different groups to good success.


----------



## ColonelHardisson

Derulbaskul said:


> I also like Bruce Cordell's other late-2E era adventure _The Shattered Circle_ and suspect that would have been considered a classic if released at any other time




I made my above post before I got to yours. I'm glad someone else has noticed how good The Shattered Circle is.


----------



## Eridanis

MToscan said:


> The worst AD&D adventure I have ever played in my life was "Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga". At the end of the adventure, my friend wanted to write a letter to Lisa Smedman to ask for refunds.




Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine treatment of Baba Yaga's Hut was so superior to this that when I bought the module, I glanced through it once and never opened it again. Ugh.


----------



## MToscan

Eridanis said:


> Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine treatment of Baba Yaga's Hut was so superior to this that when I bought the module, I glanced through it once and never opened it again. Ugh.



These excerpts speak for themselves

----------------------------------------------------
Area f3: Alternate Reality Tokyo
This area takes the form of the modern Earth city
of Tokyo, shrunk to a scale where a 30-story skyscraper
is abou t five feet tall. Tiny homes and
pagodas dot the landscape, and the average city
inhabi tant is just one inch high in comparison to
the PCs. The scrying relay for this area is a rotat+
ing radar dish on top of one of the skyscrapers.
Three doors seem to hover in mid-air one
foot above the ground. All three are made of
wood but one (leading to Area G) has a handle
made of gOld. If the proper sequence of knocks is
used (4/6/2) it gives access to Area G1.
A gray mist forms the "walls" and 30-£00thigh
"ceiling" of this area. This mist is the Ethereal
Plane.
Rampaging through the city is a lizard like
creature that is tearing grea t chunks out of the
bu ild ings. In relation to the PCs, it is about six
feet tall. Tiny figures flee in terror from it, while
fist-sized metallic "beetles" (tan ks) shoot tiny
projectiles that bounce off the lizard. To them, the
monster is 430 feet tall.
If the PCs merely watch from a doorway, the
lizard ignores them. Should they step down into
the city, however, it immediately attacks this new
threat. The PCs remain at their current size; to the
The Deadly Dance
inhabitants of Tokyo, a six-foot-tall human PC is
a 430- foot giant. Unless they are ca reful, the PCs
wil l squash dozens of innocent civilians with
each step.
Besides its phyical attacks, the lizard has a
triple-tiered gaze weapon. On the first round it
acts as a ray of enfeeblement. On the second round
it acts as a cone of cold, inflicting Id4+20 points of
damage, and from then on fires magic missiles at a
rate of two per round (one from each eye) tha t
cause 3d4+3 damage each.
If the lizard is reduced to one-quarter hit
points, it lumbers off into the mist. Without some
magical means of entering the Ethereal Plane, the
PCs will be unable to follow.
Giant Lizard: AC 5; MY 15; HD 12; hp 58; THACO
9; <AT 3; Omg ld6/1d6/5d8; AL NE; SA gaze
weapon; SD nil; MR 20%; ML steady (12); XP
4,000.
----------------------------------------------------

and 

----------------------------------------------------
There are thousands of books in this room,
w ritten in a multitude of languages. Many
are from other worlds and cover subjects thai
are incomprehensible to the PCs (nuclear
physics, cybernetics, ecology of alien creatures,
etc.) The "boo ks" take many forms:
papyrus sc ro lls, clot h ~bou nd books, clay
table~ven computer disks!
----------------------------------------------------

I think we quit when we reached this room.


----------



## ColonelHardisson

MToscan said:


> These excerpts speak for themselves




See, that was the stuff I liked about it. It wasn't exactly what I was looking for in Baba Yaga's hut, and I liked Moore's version quite a bit also, but I dig wild & woolly stuff like that. Plus, I've always liked the idea of wizards having libraries filled with books from across time and space.


----------



## Saeviomagy

I know they're not classic D&D modules, but I pretty much hated all the darksun modules. I mean, our DM was awful, but the nature of the modules was basically to get the PCs to wander the planet and arrive everywhere just in time to see NPCs do cool, world-altering stuff that they had no effect on.

As for TOH, I think the key is that it's basically not D&D. I mean, you COULD play D&D in the style that is required to succeed at TOH, but you can also play D&D in a style where optimization runaways like pun pun or the hulking hurler are somehow balanced (I can't think of any 4e cheese that's nearly as crazy as those).


----------



## Celebrim

Crothian said:


> Of the 2e adventures I ran A Paladin in Hell and Axe of the Dwarvish Lords were the best.  I actually was able to run Axe twice with totally different groups to good success.




That's actually encouraging to hear.  One of the problems I have recommending any 2e module is that even the ones that are well written and read well don't look like they'd play all that well.  'Axe' in my opinion is the best written 2e module, but 'Axe' has serious conceptual problems IMO with how it plans to make fighting 600 goblins interesting.  I've never tried to run it, but I'm encouraged to hear that it can be run because it is so well written.


----------



## Crothian

Celebrim said:


> That's actually encouraging to hear.  One of the problems I have recommending any 2e module is that even the ones that are well written and read well don't look like they'd play all that well.  'Axe' in my opinion is the best written 2e module, but 'Axe' has serious conceptual problems IMO with how it plans to make fighting 600 goblins interesting.  I've never tried to run it, but I'm encouraged to hear that it can be run because it is so well written.




It was not easy to run or for the players.  It is a challenging module and since the place is so big and the PCs can move around in it pretty easily.  Plus there are some very complex encounters in there with monsters from different sections being able to react to the PCs. 

But after it was all done and it did take plenty of sessions the players all expressed their enjoyment and wondered what to do with the Axe they had.


----------



## Erik Mona

Eridanis said:


> It seems to me that as TSR's financial situation got more and more dire, they tried to cut corners and save money with such tactics, and it ended up backfiring on them in the end. Eric noted Return to the Tomb of Horrors and Gates of Firestorm Peak as good 2E mods; both of those were produced after the WotC purchase, IIRC. In my opinion, a solid, stable company and manangement supporting the creative team made for a higher quality product.




My memory (already proven faulty in this very thread, so take it for what it's worth) suggests that Gates of Firestorm Peak was released around the era of the "Player's Option" books near the tail end of TSR's reign. I'd guess that module was published by TSR before the implosion.

I remember hearing about Bruce Cordell's manuscript for Return to the Tomb of Horrors at Gen Con before the WotC buyout. I think it was written during the last days of TSR, held in an "Alternity-like" state of finished but unpublished during the "printer problems," and finally released by Wizards of the Coast.

There were some cool creative things happening at TSR before the buyout. Roger Moore was bringing back Greyhawk, the Planescape folks were jumping around the Multiverse, and Birthright was doing whatever it was exactly that Birthright did. The printer problems nipped that in the bud, but much of what WotC published in the first year or so was, as I understand it, already more or less "in the can" at the time of the purchase.

--Erik


----------



## Filcher

Doug McCrae said:


> EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?




FWIW, a teleporter that only sends part of something is just as deadly as a disintegrator. I can imagine a PC ending up on the other side, cut into 100 narrow fillets as his momentum carried the already dead body through the maw. 

Bad choice, either way.


----------



## Joshua Randall

CleverNickName said:


> They were convinced that they had discovered *a magical gate *to the Abyss, or Hell, or somewhere.  Which is not an unreasonable assumption, given the setting, the wizard's reputation, the supernatural-looking blackness, and the demonic frame around it.



Ironically, in Return to the Tomb of Horrors, that is exactly what it is -- a portal.


----------



## Fifth Element

the Jester said:


> My opinion is that the Tomb isn't unfair at all; it's simply _too hard_ for most groups. It requires them to flex their brains in creative ways that they aren't used to having to do in D&D.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I've both run and played in the Tomb when the party was obliterated, and I'm not trying to sound superior here.



Perhaps a better way of putting it is that the way you have to play ToH to survive is not how some groups like to play the game. It caters to a specific playstyle and only that playstyle.

So it's not that they have to flex their brains in creative ways, it's that they have to play in way they don't enjoy.


----------



## TarionzCousin

MToscan said:


> The worst AD&D adventure I have ever played in my life was "Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga". At the end of the adventure, my friend wanted to write a letter to Lisa Smedman to ask for refunds.






Eridanis said:


> Roger Moore's Dragon Magazine treatment of Baba Yaga's Hut was so superior to this that when I bought the module, I glanced through it once and never opened it again. Ugh.



Which one of these had the tank in it? That was weird and completely unexpected.


----------



## Beginning of the End

Doug McCrae said:


> I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play - something interesting and exciting is more likely to happen and that's what I want when I play an rpg. Prodding everything with a 10' pole, or getting your orc slaves to enter every room first, is the play style Tomb of Horrors encourages. This, to me, is a bad play style.




Judging the _Tomb of Horrors_ as if it were supposed to fit into a normal campaign is to take the module out of context. It's a special, one-shot dungeon that's specifically designed to do something that *isn't the normal style of play*.

And when it's used in its proper context, it's a fun little scenario.



> EDIT: Using the 10' pole on the devil's mouth won't even tell you it's dangerous. It comes back with the end missing, but it's reasonable to assume it's been teleported rather than disintegrated. The former being more common dungeon weirdness than the latter. I think this is what people mean by arbitrary - it could be a teleporter, it could be a disintegrator, how are you to know?




I've run the module several times. Every group that has used the 10' pole trick has correctly intuited that there's something wrong with the demon's mouth. (Largely because there's an _actual_) magic portal right next to it that they can compare behaviors with: The archway gives them their pole back; the demon's mouth doesn't. Even when they've considered the possibility that the end of the pole has simply been teleported away, they hedge their bets and go for the known-safe option.)

Other successful mouth-avoidance techniques: Correctly interpreting the poem ("shun green if you can"; the demon bas relief is green). Throwing an object through both portals and then using a _locate object_ spell. Divination spells. And an _identify_ spell.

In fact, I've only had three fatality incidents involving the demon's mouth: One group sent two PCs through before bothering to do any kind of investigation. Another group thought of the _locate object_ tactic but didn't have the right spell prepared, so they decided to use _locate person_ instead to figure out where the portal went (only to discover it wasn't a portal). And a third group dead-ended elsewhere in the tomb and back-tracked to the demon's mouth to "see where the other portal went" (having concluded that it must _not_ be dangerous like they thought, since there wasn't anywhere else for them to go -- they were wrong on both counts).

In other words, every single group I've ever played with has correctly determined that the demon mouth was dangerous once they decided to actually investigate it. (Although in one case they later out-thought themselves back into the wrong conclusion.)

I will also give a dishonorable mention to the guy who saw what happened to the pole and then stuck his hand in to "see if it will do that with organic stuff, too". (It did.)


----------



## Mark Hope

Beginning of the End said:


> I will also give a dishonorable mention to the guy who saw what happened to the pole and then stuck his hand in to "see if it will do that with organic stuff, too". (It did.)




A player in the first group I sent through the Tomb did this too, except he thrust his entire arm in.  Ouch.


----------



## MoxieFu

*Shun green?*

Wasn't there a hint in the adventure that the characters were to "shun green"? The demon's head surrounding the black orb was GREEN. I don't think players have any right to complain if they forgot or ignored that warning. 

When we played it back then our DM warned us of it's lethality. We decided to roll up new characters of the appropriate level and were allowed to keep them if we survived. This to me was a very fair way of handling the module.


----------



## unan oranis

Mark Hope said:


> A player in the first group I sent through the Tomb did this too, except he thrust his entire arm in.  Ouch.




I watched a whole party of five hop in one after the other.  lol.


----------



## Eridanis

TarionzCousin said:


> Which one of these had the tank in it? That was weird and completely unexpected.




I'd have to pull out the module to check it (please don't make me!!!), but the Dragon adventure definitely had a Soviet tank in one of the rooms.


----------



## Quartz

Doug McCrae said:


> I regard crawling into a devil's mouth as skillful play




A truly rat-bastard designer would have spheres of darkness in the mouths, leading to greased chutes with Spheres of Annihilation at the bottom.

"Yes, it's safe to enter the mouth!"


----------



## kyuss

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I've read through this entire thread and am amazed that no one mentioned Red Sonja Unconquered (or any of the Conan modules).  I've just finished re-reading this module last night.  Horrible is too kind.  Dumb plot, terrible writing, nothing for PCs to really do, silly new game mechanics (that apply only to the pre-gen characters.  What??), perversely high level suggestions (10-14th), terrible BBEG.  It's not even that sort of fun in an interesting to read kind of bad either.  I can't imagine subjecting a group of players (even ones that I hated) to the 30 min or so of play time needed to finish this garbage.  Worst. Module. Evar.


----------



## billd91

The Red Sonja module is probably not widely held by a lot of people out there. Not that widely known. I think I have a copy of it, but I had completely forgotten about it when this thread initially came up.


----------



## Ulrick

It looks like all the regular "classic" modules have been criticized already. What about modules by third party publishers like "The Judge's Guild." Do they count? 

See, I have this module "Approved For Use With Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" called *ZIENTECK*, published in 1981. 

The plot is simple: Explore the ruins within the Black Angel woods to recover the treasures of the dead wizard Zienteck. But beware the Dragon Griendal! 

Other areas (undeveloped) to explore include the Temple of Borlg in the Pentan Swamp within the Nyltige Valley. You can possibly purchase supplies at the Town of Meyrorkton. And then there's some weird location on the map call the Qualak's Triangle within the Plain of Boulders. A village called Pahuut-Kaou resides within the Kaou mountains. 

If you like the lame names of these fantasy locations, you'll love the running commentary from the author himself through the descriptions of the dungeon!

*#1* Very obviously, this in an entry room which is essentially empty but for three huge mosaics dominating the wall...

*#11* This room is a gas- literally. Just past the bend in the hallway is a pressure plate that will release paralyzing gas into the entire hallway.... the effects of this gas last for d6 days. 

*#12* Formerly tastefully decorated, this room is now an unmitigated mess...

*#15* Careful watch you step! Any wanderer who doesn't tread carefully will find themselves stumbling down a deep incline...

*#17* Another cell-- or is it? The requisite bed and chest are here, yet the bed is king-sized...

*#20* Great battle scenes in the arena are depicted in this hallway. In the center of the hall, however, is a mural of a Spear with Stars all around it. Odd, to say the least. 

*#22* The walls of this hallway depict scenes of well-armed men carrying away beautiful women from this burning castle-- the party's over. 

*#23* A barracks containing three bunk beds and three chests. There is nothing of valure here. Looks familiar, doesn't it?

*#27* Surprise! You're in another hallway...

*#56* An empty hallway don't waste your time here. 

*#66*A barracks room which also acts as a receiver for room #58. The prerequiste  three bunk beds and three chests are to be found here. Not to be found here, however, is any treasure or did you already guess that? 



Finally, in my copy of the module, pages 24 and 25 are colored purple. I don't know why.


----------



## DragonLancer

A lot of the early modules were truely awful and I find it amazing that some us (myself included) still see them as classic. I would never run them but just owning them gives me some squee value.

The whole deathtrap style modules (Tomb of Horrors for instance) for me were a waste of time. I could never get exxcited about such adventures.

To be fair I don't think there have been many good ones. Publsihed modules are far too heavy on combat and lacking in reason and plot.


----------



## TerraDave

Marx420 said:


> Put another one in for tomb of horrors. I lost 8 of my thief characters in that death pit. When finally we reached the demi-lich I lost it and used the burning module to light my first joint. Gary Gygax was an unprecedented gaming visionary but his fantasy ideal was a few shades more brutal than mine, though I will admit it was a valuable dungeoneering experience. Also the 2e rehash return to the tomb of horrors somewhat redeemed it in mine eyes an I still stick Acerak into any campaign I can.




Reading through this again, this is probably some of the highest praise I have seen for a module and the impact it can have.


----------



## lordxaviar

Vyvyan Basterd said:


> I never liked:
> B8 Journey to the Rock
> B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond
> H1-4 Bloodstone Pass series (there was a tarrasque in a room as part of a test!)
> WG5 Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure
> WG7 Castle Grehawk (although if played for laughs, maybe)
> WG9 Gargoyle
> WG11 Puppets





Hey now I liiked Puppets..  first exposure to dyvers, I even fit it into the Dyvers living greyhawk campaign, though it was ignored by the powers controlling that mess

X-1 isle of dread... a king kong story line... pretty weak.. has my vote.


----------



## lordxaviar

DragonLancer said:


> The whole deathtrap style modules (Tomb of Horrors for instance) for me were a waste of time. I could never get exxcited about such adventures.
> 
> To be fair I don't think there have been many good ones. Publsihed modules are far too heavy on combat and lacking in reason and plot.





very true on ToH... I always used the modules as a beginning, spent way too  much time re-writing some of them.

Like one of my Fav... N-1 I even redid the map because it didnt fit for a town of 300. and no one was related to anyone else etc...


----------



## Frankie1969

In terms of low quality, I would vote for pretty much anything written by Dale "Slade" Henson.

But in terms of damage to gaming as a whole, I would vote for B1 and B2. TSR begged, borrowed & outright stole so many great ideas from Tolkien, but one concept that they sadly failed to import was the master-apprentice relationship at the start of an adventurer's career. Sending groups of 1st level characters off on their own was a terrible design decision. RPGs as a whole would be so much better, IMO, if mixed-level parties were the standard.


----------



## jdrakeh

I don't think that they have been mentioned yet, so allow me to add my own two least favorite modules to the list - EX1: Dungeonland and EX2: The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror. I understand that both modules are supposed to represent a kind of side trek from a normal dungeon but, this is no excuse for sloppy, unoriginal, design. 

Both EX1 and EX2 suffer from an _extreme_ dearth of creativity, being largely cribbed from Lewis Carrol with little (if any) attempt made to hide that fact. Also, for me, combining the absurdity of Lewis Carrol with the arbitrary deadliness of Tomb of Horrors resulted in some of the most unfun play I've _ever_ experienced in D&D.


----------



## DragonLancer

I'll tell you something else that bugs me about older modules (and even a fair few more recent ones). Stupidly laid out dungeons with pointless U shaped bends in the middle of an otherwise straight corridor or irritatingly shaped rooms that could just as well be square or retangular (the original Temple of Elemental Evil suffered from this bucket loads). Why did designers and module authors think this was/is a good idea?


----------



## Beginning of the End

jdrakeh said:


> Both EX1 and EX2 suffer from an _extreme_ dearth of creativity, being largely cribbed from Lewis Carrol with little (if any) attempt made to hide that fact.




They're explicit adaptations of the material. I'm not a particular fan of them, either, but this is like critiquing the LOTR movies for being largely cribbed from J.R.R. Tolkien with little (if any) attempt made to hide the fact.



DragonLancer said:


> I'll tell you something else that bugs me about older modules (and even a fair few more recent ones). Stupidly laid out dungeons with pointless U shaped bends in the middle of an otherwise straight corridor or irritatingly shaped rooms that could just as well be square or retangular (the original Temple of Elemental Evil suffered from this bucket loads). Why did designers and module authors think this was/is a good idea?




(1) Because the assumed playing style included player mapping: Chambers with unusual dimensions and non-linear corridors would confuse player maps unless care was taken in-character to map accurately.

(2) Because it's more realistic. Look at actual floorplans of actual buildings. Most rooms aren't actually perfect squares.


----------



## Philotomy Jurament

Haven't read the whole thread, but the worst ones I've read, run, or played include:


Gargoyle
Child's Play
Dragonlance Classics
Castle Greyhawk (WG7)
Forest Oracle


----------



## jdrakeh

Beginning of the End said:


> They're explicit adaptations of the material.




Well, _clearly_, they're copypasta Lewis Carrol. My problem is that I think the authorial voice tries to pass them off as some kind of largely original innovation and downplay the significance of the source material. I've even had forum conversations in the past where fans have tried to defend them as entirely original work merely inspired by Carrol rather than explicit adaptations. And I can't see that _at all_.

[Edit: Just for the heck of it, I went back and read the credits and introductions to both modules. _Nowhere_ is there an explicit mention of Lewis Carrol. There are some vague allusions to the 'land where Alice went' and such, but that is about as close as you get to the author acknowledging the actual source material.]

[Re-Edit: All of that aside, the modules have some serious design flaws, IMO, starting with the arbitrary ruling that certain magics don't work 'just because'. Robbing the players of their powers just because you couldn't find a way to design the adventure in such a way that said powers wouldn't break it? _Classic_ crap design.]


----------



## JacktheRabbit

Chris Knapp said:


> Its one thing to not like the Dragonlance modules for their railroadyness, but don't make stuff up please. If you died in the Dragonlance campaign, you died. Maybe you're confusing it the Obscure Death rule for NPC's.This basically asks the DM to always keep in mind an "out" to explain how an NPC's body was never recovered so they can come back later. And all this was just a published way to do what DM's had been doing for years anyway: preventing their story from breaking when the PC's do something unexpected.




Actually it is true. There is a point in DL11 I believe (when the party is near the new Silvanesti in exile homeland) that it clearly says that new characters can be brought in if the main characters die and then even gives suggestions on new character ideas.

The implication is quite clear that the main characters are not to die up to this point.


----------



## Beginning of the End

jdrakeh said:


> [Edit: Just for the heck of it, I went back and read the credits and introductions to both modules. _Nowhere_ is there an explicit mention of Lewis Carrol. There are some vague allusions to the 'land where Alice went' and such, but that is about as close as you get to the author acknowledging the actual source material.]




EX1, pg. 27: "It is presented in a light-hearted and zany spirit. In order to get in all the necessary details, however, not too much space can be devoted to really capturing the true spirit of Dungeonland. Therefore, the Gentle Reader is urged to read Lewis Carroll's story, _Alice in Wonderland_. Read this book carefully. You might even find you enjoy sections sufficiently to reread them. Do this just before you begin having your players adventure in Dungeonland, and then really let yourself go!"

EX2, pg. 26: "In order to be in the proper frame of mind for superior DMing of this module, I urge you to accept it as a fun experience first and foremost. Then, please pick up a copy of Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_. After you have finished reading this book (and that won't take long at all), you might find it helpful to re-read it. Then, with the intentions that the good Mr. Carroll had in mind when he penned this tale, undertake a masterful moderation of the scenario."

Again: I'm not defending the modules. I think they're poorly designed. But they are _explicitly_ adaptations of Carroll's work.



DocMoriartty said:


> Actually it is true. There is a point in  DL11 I believe (when the party is near the new Silvanesti in exile  homeland) that it clearly says that new characters can be brought in if  the main characters die and then even gives suggestions on new character  ideas.
> 
> The implication is quite clear that the main characters are not to die up to this point.




DL2, pg. 3: "Since these NPCs appear in later DRAGONLANCE modules, try to make them have 'obscure deaths' if they are killed: If at all possible, their bodies should not be found. Then, when the NPCs appear in later modules, you have a chance to explain their presence. (...) *The same rule applies to the PCs on pages 17-18*. Most of them have roles in future modules, and must be able to return to life somehow. This does not apply to PCs other than those who are part of the story." (emphasis added)

That's pretty explicit.

DL3, pg. 2: "Because DRAGONLANCE is a story, both heroes and villains often figure prominently in later modules. If “name” characters or villains should be killed, arrange “obscure deaths” for them. Their bodies should not be found. (...) When a “name” character no longer plays a part in the story, his death can occur. Player characters brought into this adventure from outside can be killed normally."

This is less explicit, but the implication is pretty clear that PCs who _aren't_ brought in from the outside aren't to be killed. This text was repeated in DL4. In DL5 the section was expanded with a more explicit discussion of the comic book origins of the "obscure death" concept, and then--

DL5, pg. 5: "If the character is a PC, you can handle it the same way as an NPC (but tell the PC how he "miraculously survived" so that he can tell the others when he shows up), or you can create a short one-on-one adventure so that the PC can role-play his way out of danger."

This is followed by a list of ideas including comas, miraculous escapes, and being saved by an NPC.

The rule is not stated in DL6, although there are references to the DM applying the rule to the NPC Sleet. In DL7 the rule is again stated for NPCs, but PCs are not mentioned.

And then the ban on PC death was lifted in DL8.

DL8, pg. 2: "Beginning with this module, no PC is subject to the obscure death rule. If a PC dies in this or later adventures -- say goodbye!"

When the series was reprinted in the Dragonlance Classics trilogy, it looks like they tried to eliminate the PC application of the rule. (Which may be why some people think it never existed.) But it still creeps in by implication.

DLC2, Chapter 10, pg. 52: "Beginning with this chapter, no PC is subject to the obscure death scenario. If a PC dies in this or later adventures--say goodbye!"

DLC2, Chapter 13, pg. 73: "Remember that player characters are no longer subject to obscure deaths. If a PC dies, he's gone forever!"


----------



## jdrakeh

Beginning of the End said:


> EX1, pg. 27: "It is presented in a light-hearted and zany spirit. In order to get in all the necessary details, however, not too much space can be devoted to really capturing the true spirit of Dungeonland. Therefore, the Gentle Reader is urged to read Lewis Carroll's story, _Alice in Wonderland_. Read this book carefully. You might even find you enjoy sections sufficiently to reread them. Do this just before you begin having your players adventure in Dungeonland, and then really let yourself go!"
> 
> EX2, pg. 26: "In order to be in the proper frame of mind for superior DMing of this module, I urge you to accept it as a fun experience first and foremost. Then, please pick up a copy of Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_. After you have finished reading this book (and that won't take long at all), you might find it helpful to re-read it. Then, with the intentions that the good Mr. Carroll had in mind when he penned this tale, undertake a masterful moderation of the scenario."




Well, I stand corrected! 



> Again: I'm not defending the modules. I think they're poorly designed.




Yes, starting with the lists of spells that won't operate in the modules for no other reason than they might aid the PCs in successfully navigating the adventures. There was some of that in Tomb of Horrors, as well, if I recall correctly.


----------



## MerricB

jdrakeh said:


> Yes, starting with the lists of spells that won't operate in the modules for no other reason than they might aid the PCs in successfully navigating the adventures. There was some of that in Tomb of Horrors, as well, if I recall correctly.




And Descent into the Depths - you can't teleport out. Lot more in the Outer Planar adventures, of course.

This doesn't bother me that much when you're using it in other-planar adventures (as Dungeonland is) as opposed to just changing the rules for normal adventures. In Dungeonland, things aren't as you expect, so it doesn't worry me that not all spells work as advertised...

Cheers!


----------



## David Howery

not sure I understand all the hate for Tomb of Horrors.  Didn't EGG say that he specifically designed it to be a horrific PC-killing playground?  It succeeds admirably in that.


----------



## MerricB

David Howery said:


> not sure I understand all the hate for Tomb of Horrors.  Didn't EGG say that he specifically designed it to be a horrific PC-killing playground?  It succeeds admirably in that.




Oh, it certainly does. Especially with inexperienced players with high-level characters. My group (back in the 80s) was entirely the type of group it was meant to humiliate. 

I've got a sneaking suspicion that if I played it today with no knowledge of the module... I wouldn't go in! On the rare occasions I play D&D, my friends are surprised at how cautious I am in my play. That's because I know full well how DMs think... and especially the deadliness of certain types of play. (One interesting thing: although I've killed many a PC in the past, as I grow older I'm more attracted to story and role-playing over the challenge of combat/tricks. Hmm).

Of course, to truly appreciate Tomb of Horrors, you need to read Gary's introduction to "Return of the Tomb of Horrors"...

Cheers!


----------



## TarionzCousin

I can't believe nobody has mentioned "The Forest Lair of Pig Man" yet. Sure, some people claim P3 "The Lost Body Cavities of Pig Man" was worse--but at least it was sandboxy!


----------



## NN

The hate for "Tomb of Horrors" as a "worst" module is just grognard-baiting or ignorance. Theres other "adversarial" adventures done worse - and then theres the complete wastes of paper (eg: Gargoyle) that anybody, of any gaming style, would fnd useless.


----------



## howandwhy99

NN said:


> The hate for "Tomb of Horrors" as a "worst" module is just grognard-baiting or ignorance. Theres other "adversarial" adventures done worse - and then theres the complete wastes of paper (eg: Gargoyle) that anybody, of any gaming style, would fnd useless.




ToH is a muddled attempt, but it's best to remember it is one of the very first modules ever written.  There is some great stuff in there and some serious problems.  The number of death traps without any means of discovering or beating them is what most point out as the worst stuff.  I'd agree.  

As far as grognard-baiting, I hope not.


----------



## JacktheRabbit

Fifth Element said:


> Perhaps a better way of putting it is that the way you have to play ToH to survive is not how some groups like to play the game. It caters to a specific playstyle and only that playstyle.
> 
> So it's not that they have to flex their brains in creative ways, it's that they have to play in way they don't enjoy.




To me the problem with ToH is simple. What is needs and what it wants are two different things.

What it needs are well designed characters whose players know them well and who after a long campaign have researched things like the demilich and will possibly have the weapons and equipment available to actually destroy the creature in the end.

What it wants is a one off adventure with generic pregenerated characters with no meaning. This means that no matter how well you do in the module the odds of the characters actually having the right items to destroy the demilich is almost nil.


----------



## David Howery

did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?  I never did.  I always imagined it as a one-shot you'd run just to see if anyone could beat it, using the pre-gen characters rather than risk long established PCs.  As for equipment... except for the demi-lich itself, which is harmed only in a couple of ways, equipment isn't much of a help in the tomb.  So many of the traps are 'do this and you die', or 'you have two choices; make the wrong one and you die', that having certain equipment or spells won't help much (except for a Ring of Wishes, I suppose)...


----------



## Corathon

David Howery said:


> did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?  I never did.  I always imagined it as a one-shot you'd run just to see if anyone could beat it, using the pre-gen characters rather than risk long established PCs.  As for equipment... except for the demi-lich itself, which is harmed only in a couple of ways, equipment isn't much of a help in the tomb.  So many of the traps are 'do this and you die', or 'you have two choices; make the wrong one and you die', that having certain equipment or spells won't help much (except for a Ring of Wishes, I suppose)...




I played in it as part of a campaign. Since our PCs knew that the place was reputedly a fiendish maze of death traps, we acted with great caution. A lot of spells did, in fact, help. We didn't advance one step without a _find traps_ spell running, and doubtful items/areas were viewed with _true seeing_ prior to moving into an area or touching an item. The result, we had no casualties until fighting Acererak, and we did destroy him despite our losses (we had weapons capable of damaging him).


----------



## Jhaelen

David Howery said:


> did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?



I did. It's a marvellous campaign-ending device. 

After the party's third unsuccessful attempt to delve deeper than the first third of the dungeon with the only survivor being the cleric, all players agreed we should better shelf the adventure and the campaign.

Incidentally, that was exactly what I as the DM had intended.


----------



## lordxaviar

hey do you have a pdf of the P series....

lol


----------



## lordxaviar

Corathon said:


> I played in it as part of a campaign. Since our PCs knew that the place was reputedly a fiendish maze of death traps, we acted with great caution. A lot of spells did, in fact, help. We didn't advance one step without a _find traps_ spell running, and doubtful items/areas were viewed with _true seeing_ prior to moving into an area or touching an item. The result, we had no casualties until fighting Acererak, and we did destroy him despite our losses (we had weapons capable of damaging him).





I never ran it as such, but i went through it twice... failed miserably the 1st time, many deaths.. only finished it because one of the players had actually read it before hand,


----------



## The_Warlock

David Howery said:


> Did anyone actually run ToH as part of their campaign?




Much like Jester, I ran RttToH as part of the final push of a 13 year campaign, converting it to 3.x, upping the lethality of some things to match the level of my PCs, and using the original as the prime resource for the Tomb itself if there were any conflicting design choices. Being a generally no holds barred DM, and having racked up over 30 PC deaths over 13 years, the Players understood that I was presenting a challenge, but a fair one.

[sblock] 
The PCs navigated it with no deaths, though several close calls, like when the flying rogue was investigating the teeter/tapestry room, and someone outside of the room decided to fire a crossbow bolt into the tapestry he was approaching in order to scare out anything hiding behind it.

This of course caused the tapestry to turn to green slime and engulf the thief, and thus blinded, he flew screaming around the room triggering the other tapestries until, hearing the shouts of the party through his dissolving ears, he flew madly out into the hall, while fireballs were arced into the room triggering the brown mold tapestries to explode in growth, causing the rest of the PCs to scramble away from the doorway madly, while the thief screamed across the mindlink to fireball him for love of all that was holy.

Good times. 
[/sblock]

All in all, there were a few players who were trepidatious about the module's reputation, but because they were long standing characters played by wily people who knew it was important to bring their A-game, they did, and smote Acererak's ruin.

As such, I've never found ToH to be appropriately targeted as a "worst" module, in any class. Unenjoyable or Inappropriate for some groups, absolutley.

If I was going to call out bad old modules, I'd go with the following: 

Castle Caldwell (which I gutted and reworked successfully years later into a fun romp which generated some of the best game stories ever)

The Dymrak Dread

Terrible Trouble at Tragidore (Sorry Mr. Mona)

Quest for the Heartstone

Throne of Bloodstone

Needle (Oh, do not get me started about the stupid Mercantile Moon Spiders who domesticate Brass Dragons!)

Quagmire

and Palace of the Silver Princess (some interesting ideas hidden in it, but damned if it wasn't just a mess overall)


----------



## rogueattorney

The_Warlock said:


> and Palace of the Silver Princess (some interesting ideas hidden in it, but damned if it wasn't just a mess overall)




Which version?  

The orange recalled version that was posted on the WotC boards for ever I find to be a gloriously goofy inspired mess.  I'd love to run it, but am not sure that I could.

The green version that I grew up with is boring, boring, boring.


----------



## The_Warlock

rogueattorney said:


> Which version?
> 
> The orange recalled version that was posted on the WotC boards for ever I find to be a gloriously goofy inspired mess.  I'd love to run it, but am not sure that I could.
> 
> The green version that I grew up with is boring, boring, boring.




I've had both in my possession or in the possession of a DM I was playing with at various times, and the end result was that both are a mess in their own way. That said, like Castle Caldwell (which many would consider a loss in it's normal form, I certainly do), there's enough stuff in PotSP for an inventive GM to cull, cut stomp and reforge into something, but the basic module suffers from the arbitrary stick in a lot of places.


----------



## David Howery

which adventure module was written by a guy named 'Harry Knuckles"... always found that name to be suspicious... I apologize if it is actually someone's real name...


----------



## Luz

A dead but really interesting thread, so I'll ressurect it. 

I agreed with several already mentioned (Castle Greyhawk, Gargoyle, Dragonlance) so  I'll add a few more notables that haven't been mentioned:
X12 Skarda's Mirror
N4 Treasure Hunt
WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun
WGA4 Vecna Lives! and its horrible sequel Die Vecna! Die!

Most of these I ran at least once and my players unanimously refused to finish them. Some were just plain bad like WG4 (and I know this one commonly appears on several top 10 favorites list) but if ever there was a Gygax lemon, this was it IMO. Others, like Treasure Hunt, were just plain snoozers. Interesting concept (starting with 0-level characters) but dull execution. 

Special mention goes to the Avatar trilogy, or almost any other module written by Ed Greenwood.


----------



## Scrivener of Doom

_Temple of Elemental Evil_.

I know, it's heretical to say this but it's true.

After waiting 5+ years I was expecting at least two things:

1. That it would be a completed product. It was not. 
2. Some effort would be made to actually make it feel "elemental". We got generic clerics and randomly generated level-appropriate monsters.

Personally, I loved - and still love! - T1 and, in particular, the Moathouse. That's an almost perfect dungeon, IMO. After that, I love some of the Gygaxian prose describing the effects of the titular temple on the environment:

"When the Temple of Elemental Evil flourished, earthquakes, storms of all sorts, great fires, and flash floods struck areas nearby with seeming capriciousness. All that ceased when the Temple was assaulted and sealed." (page 27)

but then no effort is made to connect those sorts of events with the temple. There's is little to distinguish it from a randomly-generated dungeon.

And what a horrible slog.

ToEE was bait-and-switch: we got promised something that was finished (OK, that's an implied promise) and something elemental. It failed to deliver on both counts. 

And, Luz, totally agree with you about the Avatar triology. I just re-read them last week. There are some great pieces of Realmslore in there if you're a bit of a hardcore FR fan but they're absolute disasters as adventures. Ed has a different way of DMing that most people. It seems his groups are almost like hardcore improv actors - he refers to the fact that they rarely roll dice or use rules. While that's great if you like the way he creates Realmslore - and I do - that doesn't really translate into the sort of adventures most of us want to play.

Sadly, when he does write something more D&D-esque, you get the _Haunted Halls of Eveningstar_ which is Gygaxian in its incompleteness... because the then-TSR removed about two-thirds of what Ed wrote.


----------



## Mark CMG

Bullgrit said:


> What are the worst classic D&D adventure modules?





The top three might be In Search of my Car Keys, Assault on the Center of the Sandwich, and Piss Pots of the Outer-City.  The last was a real stinky.


----------



## jasper

I don't remember the title, pre 1987 more like 1983. Lime green cover, had random treasure chart and random monster chart for the rooms. And a t rex as the boss monster.

EDIT to add thanks remus it was B1 with the yellow/lime green cover.


----------



## Remus Lupin

jasper said:


> I don't remember the title, pre 1987 more like 1983. Lime green cover, had random treasure chart and random monster chart for the rooms. And a t rex as the boss monster.




Wasn't that B1?


----------



## Luz

Scrivener of Doom: although I wouldn't rank ToEE as one of the worst modules, it was definately a big letdown. So much more could (and should) have been done with it. Back in those days we still enjoyed it, even though my group did not survive.

The second time I ran ToEE I had to make some serious changes to make it more interesting, including reworking most of the key NPCs using some of the elementalist options from the Tome of Magic. There was much more emphasis on Nulb since my players really liked spending time there. A lot of modifications were also made to the nodes and dungeon levels as well, so the original module was nearly unrecognizable.


----------



## RobShanti

Chris Knapp said:


> ...I will definitely catch heck for my nomination for worst:
> 
> S3 - Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
> Robots, crashed spaceship, bunny-stumps, Vegepygmies! laser guns, and the map had the initials EGG on it. How lame!




I'm with you on this, Chris.  I was probably only about 13 or 14 when I played this, and I wasn't very discriminating at that age, but even then I was turned off by the big reveal about the crashed spaceship.  I didn't like the mixing of genres...the sci-fi elements in my fantasy game.

Now don't get me wrong...I'm a HUGE science fiction and space opera fan.  I like sci-fi and space opera WAY more than I like fantasy.  But I didn't like the idea of the two genres mixing.  I was in a sword-and-sorcery mindset, and suddenly, there's a spaceship there.  That ruined the feel of the game for me.


----------



## randomwizard

RobShanti said:


> Now don't get me wrong...I'm a HUGE science fiction and space opera fan.  I like sci-fi and space opera WAY more than I like fantasy.  But I didn't like the idea of the two genres mixing.  I was in a sword-and-sorcery mindset, and suddenly, there's a spaceship there.  That ruined the feel of the game for me.



As a kid, I had a similar view. Not sure why I did not like mixing 'chocolate' with 'peanut butter'.
But I ran S3 again not too long ago and it was a blast. I had to change it to be much, much smaller and less of a random explore a huge dungeon (crashed space ship). What made it so great were the Otis illustrations and the players trying to figure out what the technology did. Otis did a great job on obfuscating the laser guns, etc...


----------



## randomwizard

Luz said:


> Special mention goes to the Avatar trilogy, or almost any other module written by Ed Greenwood.



I thought the basic D&D module Endless Stair by Ed Greenwood was quite enjoyable. Certainly enough there to mold into a thinking over fighting style of adventure.


----------

