There is all sorts or arguments that can be made for the best and worst editions.
However I'm going to use a different criteria.
What are the best and worst editions of D&D based on the quality of the adventures?
This is kind of a spin off from another thread where the 5E adventures came up. 5E would do well if it was most consistent adventures, the worst 5E adventures aren't truly dreadful but overall the're not really hitting the heights of other editions either.
Very briefly IMHO each edition examined.
OD&D
Very hard to rate, not many adventures released for it and most people are probably not familiar with it. I own OD&D but 0 adventures for it so yeah
1E
A good contender for a high spot. A lot of classic adventures here, but a few have not aged well or were good at the time IMHO. Still I suspect an early contender.
B/X and BECMI
Several classic adventures B2,3,4, and X1 come to mind. A lot of the other adventures are overshadowed or forgtten about but there are several hidden gems such as B5 and B10. Good contender for a high spot perhaps.
2E
2E adventures are kind of notorious for being bad. Often metaplot heavy and tied to campaign settings. Still Dungeon had several great adventures and several great ones did get released late in the editions lifetime (1995-2000) but are probably fairly obscure. Can fans save this editions reputation?
3E.
Not really a well regarded edition, and not much in the way of nostalgia. However I suspect this could be a sleeper as 3E had lots of great adventures and several got converted into 5E in the Tales of the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Dungeon also had a very good run especially under Paizo from 2002. Two excellent APs also date from this era the Age of Worms and the Savage Tide.
4E. Oh dear. Even 4E fans admit the adventures here tend to be woeful. When you can only really nominate 1 or 2 adventures as great yeah well. Kind of expect a low/last placing here.
5E. One great adventure with several good ones and nothing truly bad although maybe 2 come close. However there is a lot of 3pp stuff as well and some of it is very good. Popular editions, lots of new fans who are not familiar with older material one kind of expects a decent placing.
Thought about this and I am going to include Pathfinder as well.
Pathfinder
Paizo has a reputation (well earned IMHO) of great adventure design. However a lot of that reputation is from the 3.5 era and in this thread it well be treated as 3E material so Pathfinder has to stand on its own. Pathfinder also has a lot of 3pp stuff some of which has been converted to 5E.
For arguments sake if it comes down to an editions rule set assume the adventure gets converted to 5E well. Is this a good adventure regardless of the rules of the edition. Some adventures might run a bit better or more faithfully in their original ruleset but for example I thought The Styes was a good adventure in 3.5 and the conversion to 5E looks decent.
1e has some adventures who are heavy into hack'n'slash
2e I strongly and absolutely disagree. It has some of the best stuff on a level never reached again in D&D
Several of the Ravenloft adventures for 2e stick out there. Absolutely detailed NPC characters, partially playable w/o altering much. If you are categorizing adventures by how little work a DM has to put into them to make them suitable for his table, then I agree there are some 2e adventures who plot- and idea wise are absolutely top, but unplayable as written, you gotta do a lot of adaptive work as a DM.
Planescape, Darksun, partially Dragonlance although this is a railroad, those are fantastic settings because the plot is great, the ideas are unconventional. Just read Shemeskas planescape story hour on this forum, then you learn what can be doen with a setting like planescape, although I believe he used 3rd ed.
3e did not play PnP during that time but has some good stuff, Eberron comes to mind.
4e nope
5e did play LMOP now did like it but it does not stand out, it is a great adventure for beginners but not so much for experienced players. OOTA the thing I play now, so no spoilers pls. I really love this one although the underdark presented in the menzoberranzan 2e set and other 2e products seems more grim sometimes.
Generally 5e is the best edition for tabletop, there cannot be any doubt about it.
Other editions had their features, which some people like but some of their aspects are a absolute PITA for smooth tabletop RP:
- 1e/2e: THAC0, saving throws, loads of tables, low level killer-spells like sleep and hold person.
- 3e: buff a lo mania, leveldip multiclass for powercreep, expected magic item level, feature prerequisites. - 4e: Everything the same but with different names for it, the failed attempt to put WOW like mmorpg to
a table, combat taking up eternities.