Zardnaar
Legend
The following are my thoughts on D&D adventure design broken down by eras. The design goals of adventures has changed over the years and these are the major breaking points of adventure design. The dates are not absolute as you can fiind "prototype" adventures for the next era where I have drawn the lines.
Genesis (1974-77). Very few adventures date from this era as the goal was to essentially design your own.
Golden Age(78-85) Argueably 81-85 but a lot of the classic D&D modules date from this era. Roughly Tomb of Horrors through to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
Plotted Course (85-94) Dragonlance became popular and their adventures are not well regarded today. To many adventures became narrative driven railroads tied to metaplot where PCs got a participation trophy. There were exceptions and Dungeon magazine came into being. 1E being ruined post Gygax and bad 2E tropes date from this. Dreck to gem ratio was out of whack.
Silver Age (95-99)
D&D was dying and they seem to have gone back to basics with things like The Night Below, Return to adventures. Glimpses of modern adventure design start to turn up eg in part 1 of the Night Below and Dead Gods and Mere of Dead Men. Marrying the better ideas of the Golden Age dungeon hacks with plot but not to heavy. As 2E died they reached new heights of quality strangely enough.
Bronze Age 2000-2002
3.0 came out and adventures sort of became self contained and harkening back to the golden age. Probably due to new edition with very different mechanics. I guess it takes a few years to figure the new dynamics out. Not a great age as classic adventure design collided with 3E dynamics. How many classic 3.0 adventures exist outside of Dungeon Magazine 3-5?
Golden Path (2002-2006) Paizo aquired Dungeon magazine and "invented" the adventure path. There were echoes of this in previous editions (Against the Spider Queen, Temple of Elemental Evil, Mere of Dead Men, Night Below) but the APs were designed from the ground up as a coherent story.
Dark Ages ( 2008-2013) Much like 2E the 4E era is not well regarded for adventures with the number of good adventures in the low single digits (1-3 generally) depending on who you talked to. Then new adventures essentially stopped. The Golden Path diverged and kept going with Paizo though to 2010-14?
Silver Path (2014-2020)
Basically from Lost Mines of Phandelver through to Ice Wind Dale. Essentially WotC started copying Paizo adventure templates from 2004-10 or so but truncated the adventures to level 1-15 or 1-10. Lost Mines isn't to drastically conceptually to The Evils of Harranshire in The Night Below or pt 1&2 of Savage Tide, Age of Worms or Rise of the Runelords. Most were built on the shoulders of giants with throwbacks to older editions.
2021+ Current Era. To early to rate but not looking good from the sounds of it. Kind of a transitional era atm with experiments on content and delivery.
Genesis (1974-77). Very few adventures date from this era as the goal was to essentially design your own.
Golden Age(78-85) Argueably 81-85 but a lot of the classic D&D modules date from this era. Roughly Tomb of Horrors through to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
Plotted Course (85-94) Dragonlance became popular and their adventures are not well regarded today. To many adventures became narrative driven railroads tied to metaplot where PCs got a participation trophy. There were exceptions and Dungeon magazine came into being. 1E being ruined post Gygax and bad 2E tropes date from this. Dreck to gem ratio was out of whack.
Silver Age (95-99)
D&D was dying and they seem to have gone back to basics with things like The Night Below, Return to adventures. Glimpses of modern adventure design start to turn up eg in part 1 of the Night Below and Dead Gods and Mere of Dead Men. Marrying the better ideas of the Golden Age dungeon hacks with plot but not to heavy. As 2E died they reached new heights of quality strangely enough.
Bronze Age 2000-2002
3.0 came out and adventures sort of became self contained and harkening back to the golden age. Probably due to new edition with very different mechanics. I guess it takes a few years to figure the new dynamics out. Not a great age as classic adventure design collided with 3E dynamics. How many classic 3.0 adventures exist outside of Dungeon Magazine 3-5?
Golden Path (2002-2006) Paizo aquired Dungeon magazine and "invented" the adventure path. There were echoes of this in previous editions (Against the Spider Queen, Temple of Elemental Evil, Mere of Dead Men, Night Below) but the APs were designed from the ground up as a coherent story.
Dark Ages ( 2008-2013) Much like 2E the 4E era is not well regarded for adventures with the number of good adventures in the low single digits (1-3 generally) depending on who you talked to. Then new adventures essentially stopped. The Golden Path diverged and kept going with Paizo though to 2010-14?
Silver Path (2014-2020)
Basically from Lost Mines of Phandelver through to Ice Wind Dale. Essentially WotC started copying Paizo adventure templates from 2004-10 or so but truncated the adventures to level 1-15 or 1-10. Lost Mines isn't to drastically conceptually to The Evils of Harranshire in The Night Below or pt 1&2 of Savage Tide, Age of Worms or Rise of the Runelords. Most were built on the shoulders of giants with throwbacks to older editions.
2021+ Current Era. To early to rate but not looking good from the sounds of it. Kind of a transitional era atm with experiments on content and delivery.
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