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Message: <blockquote data-quote="teitan" data-source="post: 8516268" data-attributes="member: 3457">I don't think the adventure path concept started with Dragonlance though. D&D as a sort of story game kinda, sorta, sure but that was long before even Ravenloft. The T1 and then GDQ series were a proto-adventure path, especially GDQ with the Drow being the villains behind the Giants and then the descent into the underdark leading to the Vault of the Drow and the Demonweb Pits. Against the Slavelords was another adventure path and adventurers leveled much slower back then and they took much longer to play through than the average campagin today. Going from 1-5th level in 1e or OD&D was a major feat that could take well over a year for a fight, let alone a wizard player character while in 3-5e era it becomes an increasingly accelerated experience to get to the "sweet spot" or to emulate the sweet spot in all levels with flattened math while trying to escalate power levels. The main difference in the modern adventure path vs the classic style adventure path is what the game seeks to emulate. 0e, B/X/BECMI and AD&D 1e were much more resource management games that allowed for storytelling elements to be incorporated and excelled at dungeon crawls and hexcrawls while 2e was a square peg resource management game hacked into a several storygame based settings thanks to the success of Dragonlance and Ravenloft while Forgotten Realms secretly craved to be a hex/dungeon crawl setting also forced into the storygame genre because of the success of the novel line. FR always seem to tell better stories with a smaller scale than the constant realms shattering events. Even 3e & 4e were better as dungeon/hex crawlers than as storygames and leaned into this old school sense in the early days of 3e with the "back to the dungeon" concept and the first "adventure path", the Ashardalon series of extremely loosely connected modules. 5e is really the first D&D that has been able to be a story game while also supporting hex/dungeoncrawl play without a jarring shift in how the game plays. It's a chameleon game where many optional rules are able to be turned off and on in mid campaign or session with minimal impact to the experience, with the right DM enhancing it when necessary as opposed to it being a continuous distraction. It's the first edition designed with that adaptive design completely in mind because it was designed with modern styles as well as OSR approaches in mind, as laid out by Mearls and Cook in the early days of the NEXT playtests while 3e was designed as a back to basics approach, 4e was designed to play to 3.5's strengths, and weaknesses. 5e seems to homogenize all those experience and also allow for the grand adventure game that emulates a fantasy novel and allows the rules to get out of the way when necessary. It can do old school but not as well as 3e did old school without a lot of bits and bobbles turned on but it can do it and do it very well.</blockquote>

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