Worstest Module EVAR

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Sma
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Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Sma »

Well we now we finished the adventure in the campaign I´ve griping about a couple of days ago.
Came out it wasn´t homebrew at all but heavily based on the "Standing Stones" put forth by John D. Rateliff, written for a 7th level group. After suffering that much, I did the horrible and actually read the adventure to try to fathom the amoutn of stupid that was inflicted upon us. It also seems this had nothing to do with the rest of the campaign apart from letting us find a map.

[spoilers included]



The basis isn´t all bad. Some sorceror gets his mitts onto an advanced form of PaO in a lonesome village and begins to transform lots of animals into people gradually replacing everyone in the village on his quest for world domination.

So far so good.

But not only did he manage to catch each and every animal (mice included) in the surrounding lush forests with a once per day single target effect. He and his fellow 10-16th level cronies are obviously unable to deal with a couple of wild elves, who decided to kill everyone leaving the village. So now everyone is starving because they cannot go to the fields surrounding the hamlet.

Enter the Heroes.

Seeing a dark spirit horseman killing a villager, they happen upon the village and it´s plight. The normal reaction supposed is that they want to help, which shouldn´t surprise anyone. But you´d also assume that there would be some clues for the party to find out they are being led astray.
Far too easy, the only ones who could tell them somethings wrong are the elves and the dark horseman.
Well, as writen the elves won´t under any circumstances talk because they already tried it once and got ambushed by the sorc.
The horseman on the other hand is a former paladin killed by the villagers, who can´t communicate with anyone.

There´s also a couple of completely irrelevant locations (including a dungeon with another good undead a couple of levels above the party who will only ever talk to anyone after being defeated in single combat.Not that he knows anything that has any bearance on the rest of the module) thrown in, if you don´t feel you´re wasting too much of your players time.

Oh and if the players ever find out and want to have revenge they´ll have to kill half the village first who will rise to protect the sorceror and his Vrock friend.
Have fun with laying that combat out.

To think someone got money for writing this makes me want to hit people.

Sma out
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

*Note this thread is going to be spoilerific so don't be surprised if you find some in this post without any spoiler tags*

As it just so happens, last session in our Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil story, we got the beans spilled on some crazy stuff in the Temple's Outer Fane (which lies between the four elemental temples and the Inner Sanctum).

The craziest thing? We were told by their second in command they have an altar that gives away nearly free wishes. If you offer nothing you get a magic item worth 1,000 gp or less, if you offer an item worth more than 1,000 gp or an intelligent creature, you get a wish. We have so much money and items on us we spent half an hour discussing what we could and couldn't do with the altar to make sure we wouldn't turn it into a wish-o-matic and get ourselves some REAL ULTIMATE POWER at VERY competitive prices.
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

The Nocturnum series for Call of Cuthulhu. OMG these things were pieces of crap. I didn't even run them after I read them, because I wasn't going to take the time to fix everything.

Some of the gems:

1. You have to stop a ritual from happening and defeat Big Bad in the first module. There are no numbers involved in any of this. And I mean none, you're supposed to take Big Bad in combat and he doesn't even have any hit points. If I wanted to write a shitty ending to a module I wouldn't have bought yours you fuckers.

2. The werewolf mauling that takes place in the same hotel the PC's are staying . . . IN THE NEXT FUCKING ROOM OVER . . . and the module actually tells you that your PC's don't hear a werewolf break through the window and cover the bedroom in blood . . . two coats.

3. I've blocked the rest from memory, but the next in the series was even worse for inane crap like that.
Sma
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Sma »

Boulie_98 at [unixtime wrote:1104952642[/unixtime]]
The craziest thing? We were told by their second in command they have an altar that gives away nearly free wishes. If you offer nothing you get a magic item worth 1,000 gp or less, if you offer an item worth more than 1,000 gp or an intelligent creature, you get a wish. We have so much money and items on us we spent half an hour discussing what we could and couldn't do with the altar to make sure we wouldn't turn it into a wish-o-matic and get ourselves some REAL ULTIMATE POWER at VERY competitive prices.


Whats wrong with REAL ULTIMATE POWER, you could simply spend two wishes for a sub 1000 gp item before offering them back for something bigger, couldn´t you ?

But first I´d Wish for this altar to be standing somewhere more conventient. That should make it easier for your Wizards to teleport back to it when you need a spare wish :)

Sma
The_Hanged_Man
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

Wasn't the altar made out of PURE EVIL or something? I seem to recall that. But yeah, I bought the Standing STones module. It's bad. Terrible bad. OMFG bad. All sorts of bad.

I've never understood why modules have to be based on people doing stupid and unrealistic things. And players doing stuff w/o having any idea whether what they're doing is right or wrong. I'd bet the average play session I make up randomly as the night goes on flows better than most modules. Dammit.
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

It's powered by Tharizdun, so yeah it probably is. Hence the optional sacrificing of intelligent beings in there. That's also why I'm going to exploit the greed of the others and let them try it out first :biggrin: Also, my character is pretty much damned anyway. It's a cleric of Corellon Larethian but due to that infernal pillar thing Tharizdum claimed him too and he's been getting weird and creepy comments from Cultists ever since. I'm already working on a contingency plan in which I betray the others, offer their bodies to the dread god Tharizdun and take over the Inner Sanctum by force and, of course, the totally sexay Madness domain.

Oh yeah, and I'm also doing City of the Spider Queen. A couple of sessions ago we finally entered that castle where the forces of Kiriansalee's cult (cultists do the darnedest things) have created their base of operations. They put a Forbiddance spell on the entire thing and I don't know how people are supposed to get the password, but I used my Telepath to extract it with Mind Probe from the brain of a drow cleric. I don't think every party has one of those. Also the Balor will beat the absolute crap out of his boss, the Half-Fiend Fire Giant guy, and there's no way he'd follow him, but that's a 3.0-3.5 issue.
Sma
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Sma »

Yes, the demons in City of the Spider Queen have gotten a fun boost in 3.5. I´m running a group through it now and they just reached the gates where they got their asses handed to them and then failed a teleport check, and now are separated all over the Underdark. I´m still thinkin of a noncontrived way to get them together again.

There are some hints on how the GM is supposed to get that password to the players, but they pretty much depend on the players either allying themselves with some of the people down there or basically finding a scroll saying "New Password: Sesame, Burn after reading". But apart from that I think the campaign is pretty good and needs only minor tweaking to be fun. I´m reading your account of the ongoings over at Nifty and its funny to see how other games went.


That dangling dead Guy wrote:But yeah, I bought the Standing STones module. It's bad. Terrible bad. OMFG bad. All sorts of bad.


Good to see I´m not alone. After my rant I went and read some reviews, and there were many that thought it was good. They even made me look at it again. Now it sits there on the edge of my conciousness and poisons everything.

Which brings me to a question. Is there any core module where they actually provide some sort of characterization for the lead NPC´s beyond, he´s trying to take over the world, he´s the sidekick, she´s mad at everyone, and oh, everyone is sort -of immune to charms, detect magics or any other kind of information gathering spell, that is unless they know nothing of importance ?

Stats and stuff are nice, but I´d think the designers would have put some additional thought into the motivations of their NPC´s beyond "They´re totally evil" ?


Sma
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

Sma at [unixtime wrote:1104973627[/unixtime]]Yes, the demons in City of the Spider Queen have gotten a fun boost in 3.5. I´m running a group through it now and they just reached the gates where they got their asses handed to them and then failed a teleport check, and now are separated all over the Underdark. I´m still thinkin of a noncontrived way to get them together again.


It's funny to see how people run into all kinds of problems in the module. My group's main problem is time. We had our asses handed to us in the Mearimydra (sp?) battle and the two survivors used a double planeshift to get away. They ended up in the middle of Anauroch and had to spend two damn tendays walking back. Good luck on getting them back together in a noncontrived way indeed!

Anyway, I ran the Tomb of Horrors module and while it's pretty bad it's also heaps of fun if you're honest about what the players can expect (death, period).

Turning the question around a bit, are there any modules out there that are really good and should be played by everyone? Any recommendations?
The_Hanged_Man
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

For all its problems, i really liked RttTOEE. I think that's a must play.
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

Yeah I think with RttToEE, City of the Spider Queen, and even Tomb of Horrors we're losing track here. The first two were just huge so there was bound to be something less than well thought out in them and the last one was an S-series module meaning it was designed for tournament play. It was supposed to be a meat grinder, because you got points for surviving and achieving goals within a limited time frame.

The Standing Stone is truly awful, because it a) just doesn't make any form of logical sense and b) the author didn't include important pieces of information for completing the module within it.

As for must plays:

Temple of Elemental Evil series
City of the Spider Queen (which includes the G-Series, U-Series, and Q-series.)
Actually I'll stop listing the classic.

I actually really liked the Sunless Citadel and the Forge of Fury. They needed a touch of tweaking, but out of the 3E stuff I thought they were the most ready to run modules out of the box.
Username17
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Username17 »

Oh heck yes. The Forge of fury less so, but the Sunless Citadel is a good introductory adventure that can be cobbled onto the beginning of virtually any campaign. I thik that everyone should end up playing through it at least once.

When I played through it, we captured the White Dragon and made an alliance with the Kobolds against the Goblins. The entire module was a snap, even the quasit area, because we had hard-core players exclusively who all knew when to bullrush and when to use alchemist fire. But despite the relative challenge level, it was a lot of fun.


-Username17
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

I agree that Citadel > the Forge. The Rope was just a silly excuse for a TPK with a bad party or for a good party to get a ton of XP and swank magic items. We were an average party so we just negotiated a better meal for it.

The Heart of Nightfang Spire seems okay, but I haven't played it to be certain. My biggest complaint is considering how rock ass the Cleric already is having a mostly undead module is just going to make everybody else feel even more like teh suck.

I am dying to run The Speaker in Dreams sometime. It looks like a very fun little one-off adventure even though it does require a good bit more bookkeeping on the part of the DM than other pre-canned modules usually do.
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

Tae_Kwon_Dan at [unixtime wrote:1105041659[/unixtime]](which includes the G-Series, U-Series, and Q-series.)


Come again?
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

I totally just figured out what I did wrong. I got City of the Spider Queen confused with the old Queen of the Spider compilation module.

And then I made another mistake as Queen of the Spiders was the G, D, and Q series combined.
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

Actually, I'm wondering what G- D- and Q-series stand for. Are they just letters or do they signify anything?
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

The old modules actually had letter designations associated with them so that you could tell what module followed what.

For example: the G-series was the Giant series (later known as Against the Giants) and included:

G-1: The Stedding of the Hill Giant Chief
G-2: The Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Yarl
G-3: Hall of the Fire Giant King

The D-series was the Drow series:

D-1: Descent in the Depths of the Earth
D-2: The Shrine of the Kua-Toa
D-3: The Vault of the Drow

And the Q-series wasn't really a series:

Q-1: Queen of the Demonweb Pits

They later made a compilation book under the series title GDQ called Queen of the Spiders in which they tied everything together a little better, between the different modules.
Tae_Kwon_Dan
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Tae_Kwon_Dan »

Oh, and this is a great site for old module information.
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

Thanks for the explanation and the link!
Thoth_Amon
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Thoth_Amon »

Dan,

You rock.

It is like going to a concert to see Linkin Park and finding someone else who actually knows something about the 80s.

TA
User3
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by User3 »

It is like going to a concert to see Linkin Park and finding someone else who actually knows something about the 80s.


:sick: ** GURVE ** :sick:
Boulie_98
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Boulie_98 »

Re: the temple of elemental evil's altar of Wish fun

We made it to the altar and the three surviving PCs there bagged about 15-20 wishes each. The DM added some restrictions so we could only wish for new magic items with a 20,000 gp max, a +20,000 gp increase in an existent magic item, or inherent stat bonuses.

Oh yeah, we dumped our cheap magic items for free more expensive ones (ie, a cloak of resistance +3 or less would become a +4 automagically) so we each used another 5-10 wishes on that.
Sma
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Sma »

I want one too :)

Sma
Lago_AM3P
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by Lago_AM3P »

We made it to the altar and the three surviving PCs there bagged about 15-20 wishes each.


Jesus.

I guess that the Word finally overthrew his brother and imprisoned his soul into an altar, huh?
power_word_wedgie
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by power_word_wedgie »

Personally, I've never liked "Danger at Dunwater."

Basically, you kill half of the lizardman (folk) tribe just to learn that this wasn't the point.


It drives me half crazy because one of my favorite adventures was "The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh", the precursor to "Danger at Dunwater."
dbb
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Re: Worstest Module EVAR

Post by dbb »

"Danger at Dunwater" is annoying, but for sheer I-can't-believe-they-put-this-in-a-module-ness, I find it hard to believe that anything could beat out "Vecna Lives!".

--d.
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