D&D 5E Storm King's Thunder is someone's Demonweb Pits

[Stormonu]

For 2E, maybe the Hero’s Challenge modules, Night Below, Gates of Firestorm Peak or some of the adventures from Dungeon (A lot of 2E modules were reeeealy bad and buried in the volume of releases so there’s not a lot of shared experiences with the dearth of content from that time, poor writing and splits among the various campaign worlds).

Can’t speak much for 4E, but Keep on the Shadowfell May have had quite a few players, but it was badly written.

PS Rise of the Runelords is pathfinder, not 3E - maybe you mean Age of Worms?

 

[jgsugden]

Yes and No.

A lot of people will have fond memories in 40 years of the Adventure Paths they played as a teen. However, it won't be the same as the people playing now look back on the Modules from our youth. That is absolutely true. Many that played Demoneb in the year it is released will also have fond memories of current Adventure Paths as well.

However, it was a different world in the 1980s. There was no internet. Video games were on the Atari 2600. Most of us played theater of the mind D&D because we had no miniatures (and certainly no VTTs). Our lives were different, and the role of D&D was a different element of those lives than it is now.

When we played the Demonweb Pits, we didn't have piles of Google available information. We were exploring D&D for the first time as new core material was being introduced. It was a disorganized and messy adventure into rulebooks and source material that had a lot of rough edges to cut ourselves upon.

If you're a Batman fan, and you've been reading Batman since 1939, you're a very different fan than someone that started reading in the 1960s, which is different than a fan that started in the 1980s, and is different than a fan that started reading/watching in the 2000s. All might love Batman, but all have a very different idea of what Batman is.

The same is true of D&D players. Those that started before AD&D, those that started in BECMI, those that started in AD&D, those that started in 2E, 3E, Pathfinder, 4E, 5E ... all see the game very differently. And even within our generations there are a lot of different views, especially amongst the grognards.

While new players can treasure the adventure paths as much as we treasure Demonweb pits, they won't be having our experience. It just isn't possible to relive it when so much has changed.

 

[Reynard]

Yes and No.

A lot of people will have fond memories in 40 years of the Adventure Paths they played as a teen. However, it won't be the same as the people playing now look back on the Modules from our youth. That is absolutely true. Many that played Demoneb in the year it is released will also have fond memories of current Adventure Paths as well.

However, it was a different world in the 1980s. There was no internet. Video games were on the Atari 2600. Most of us played theater of the mind D&D because we had no miniatures (and certainly no VTTs). Our lives were different, and the role of D&D was a different element of those lives than it is now.

When we played the Demonweb Pits, we didn't have piles of Google available information. We were exploring D&D for the first time as new core material was being introduced. It was a disorganized and messy adventure into rulebooks and source material that had a lot of rough edges to cut ourselves upon.

If you're a Batman fan, and you've been reading Batman since 1939, you're a very different fan than someone that started reading in the 1960s, which is different than a fan that started in the 1980s, and is different than a fan that started reading/watching in the 2000s. All might love Batman, but all have a very different idea of what Batman is.

The same is true of D&D players. Those that started before AD&D, those that started in BECMI, those that started in AD&D, those that started in 2E, 3E, Pathfinder, 4E, 5E ... all see the game very differently. And even within our generations there are a lot of different views, especially amongst the grognards.

While new players can treasure the adventure paths as much as we treasure Demonweb pits, they won't be having our experience. It just isn't possible to relive it when so much has changed.

I am guessing you don't mean it this way, but this post feels very gatekeeper-y.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

PS Rise of the Runelords is pathfinder, not 3E - maybe you mean Age of Worms?

I may be mistaken but wasn't Rise of the Runelords written by Paizo for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. Pathfinder as a game didn't come out till later. Right?

 

[Reynard]

I may be mistaken but wasn't Rise of the Runelords written by Paizo for Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. Pathfinder as a game didn't come out till later. Right?

Correct. Rise of the Runelords was the first Pathfinder Adventure Path after Dungeon was canceled, but it was still in 3.5

 

[jgsugden]

I am guessing you don't mean it this way, but this post feels very gatekeeper-y.

I'm not keeping anyone from doing anything now. We can all do anything we want that is available now in D&D. I encourage people to try lots of different styles of play.

However, some experiences are just not possible any more (unless you cut yourself off from the modern world and lock yourself up with old D&D books). We're shaped by our experiences, and people of different generations have been shaped in different ways.

 

[MGibster]

I am guessing you don't mean it this way, but this post feels very gatekeeper-y.

If you're going to drop a bomb like that at least explain why it feels that way to you. I am in agreement with you that people will look at Dragon Heist, Prince of the Apocalypse, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Curse of Strahd, and others as their classics. But it's not gatekeeping to recognize that the experiences of those born in 1999 is going to be different from the experience of those born in 1979.

 

[Gorg]

Interesting. My first experience was with the B/X sets and Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of dread. I was too poor, lol to buy and play ALL the adventures that came out then, but I did play some- like Village of Hommlet; and Ravenloft. Our middle school D&D club also played Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. Still, to this day, ANY adventure with that sort of cover makes my eyes light up! I know exactly what I'm looking at, and what kind of content it's likely to have.

Since then, I've collected as many of those OG 1st ed AD&D/ D&D B/X modules as I could. When 3rd ed came out, and a 3rd party publisher started putting out Dungeon Crawl Classics with that style of cover, I bought those, too! Lots of good stuff in there. True, many were "story lite", but so what? It just made it easier to incorporate them in whole or part into your own game. Frankly, I found them easier to use, with their separate covers, with the map on the inside- a bonus DM screen!- than the subsequent editions, with stapled on covers or today's hard covers.

OTOH, when we taught my friend's wife and kids to play, 3rd ed was "THE" game. They learned to play with the linked adventures beginning with Sunless Citadel, and a few pulled from my Dungeon collection, as well as his homebrew adventures. (3rd ed was a wonderful time for Dungeon mag!!) So, they'll look back upon those days fondly as the good ol days, and that will be their version of D&D. (well, that and all the wild stories of games past they grew up hearing from us!)


Both are very different experiences, and both are equally valid.

I can say that my buddy and I encountered a lot fewer rules arguments in our formative years than those learning 3rd ed and beyond. Whether due to our style of play, or the rulesets themselves who knows? 3rd ed WAS pretty crunchy, though- and could easily get confusing, if playing as theater of the mind as we do. I guess I'm lucky, in that none of the groups/people I played with were power-gamery; min/maxers; or rules lawyers. True, we liked our characters powerful, and loved our kewl loot- and relished a good brawl. But I was completely taken by surprise, reading about all the "Broken"; OP; or horribly abused stuff everyone was always railing about on the boards. Nothing like that ever happened in the games I played... We just didn't play like that, lol.

 

[Zardnaar]

Mines of Phandelver is really in a position to be the new Keep on the Borderlands for how many have played it.

This that's going to be the new one imho.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Mines of Phandelver is really in a position to be the new Keep on the Borderlands for how many have played it.

And for having crammed so much of the whole checklist of what new players (and old) expect out of D&D into the first 5 levels of play. It includes a village, a cave, a mine, lots of goblins, a few orcs with an ogre, bandits, an evil wizard, a necromancer, a bunch of undead, a dragon, a few days of overland travel, and even a ruined keep in a borderish land. I've run two groups of newbies and new-to-5e-bies through it and while I won't say the adventure particularly wowed anyone I will vouch for it having provided exactly what they seemed to expect when they signed up to play D&D.