Greetings...
I realize that this will sound self-serving, since I help administer the Living Forgotten Realms campaign ... but if you're looking for D&D (or non-D&D) adventures that are specifically designed to be playable from start to finish in 4-5 hour time slots, then you should definitely look into the various "organized play" options that are available. For example, the RPGA (the organized-play arm of Wizards of the Coast) produces a massive number of free D&D adventures every year.
These programs can be a tremendous source of new adventure content for home games as long as you are willing to do a little bit of work to adapt them. You don't have to enroll your home game in the campaign, either. The vast majority of organized-play adventures can work just fine outside of the context of the ongoing campaign for which they were originally written. Even if you aren't using the "expected" campaign setting, it's generally not hard to adapt them to whatever campaign setting you are using (including your homebrew). After all, what do you really need out of an adventure? A story for the adventure, a couple of plot hooks, some neat encounter ideas, maybe a couple of statted-up combats with battle maps, and a few creative NPCs.
Because organized-play adventures are usually designed around the needs of conventions, which tend to offer "slots" of 4-5 hours in length, the adventures end up being the perfect length for playing at home within the confines of one or two typical sessions. Most organized-play adventures feature a mix of combat, roleplaying, and investigation encounters, because they are designed to appeal to a wide variety of players. The other good thing about these adventures is that the majority of them do not assume a whole lot about which other adventures (if any) the players/characters have already been through, so they tend to be very self-contained. This is ideal for a home game where you want to have a start and finish and get something tangible accomplished in your typical weeknight session.
Membership in the "sanctioning organization" is almost always free, and the adventures are generally available either for free or for a nominal fee (depending on the organization). Sometimes you have to jump through a few hoops to get access to the adventures (in the case of the RPGA, you have to attend an RPGA event, get a membership number, and pass an online rules test before you can "order" adventures, but you only have to go through that process once and after that there is no limit to the number of adventures you can download -- and Wizards of the Coast has a nice player/DM rewards program for RPGA members that will give you free stuff).
There are a huge number of organized-play programs out there right now, covering a variety of systems and settings. To name just a few:
Living Forgotten Realms (RPGA / Wizards of the Coast) is producing 4th Edition adventures set in (obviously) the new Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. The campaign is putting out 15-16 brand-new 4E adventures every three months (1-2 per week). If your home game meets once a week then you could pretty much run a new LFR adventure every week and never run out of content. These adventures all feature Forgotten Realms elements but the Forgotten Realms is archetypical high fantasy, so the adventures should be pretty broadly adaptable. Visit
www.rpga.com for more information. You do have to join the RPGA before you can get access to the adventures, but membership and the adventures are both free.
Living Arcanis (Paradigm Concepts) is producing D&D 3.5 adventures set in Paradigm's Arcanis, the World of Shattered Empires. Living Arcanis adventures tend to be a bit more strongly tied to the themes of the campaign setting, but I think most DMs could work with the adventures pretty easily. If you are looking for a long-running epic story to adapt for your home campaign then you could do a lot worse than to check out Arcanis. There are well over 100 adventures available. Visit
www.livingarcanis.com for more information. Most of the adventures can be downloaded for free directly from the campaign website with no enrollment/membership required.
Pathfinder Society (Paizo Publishing) is producing D&D 3.5 adventures set in Paizo's Golarion (Pathfinder Campaign Setting). (At Gen Con Indy 2009 the campaign will switch from D&D 3.5 to the forthcoming Pathfinder RPG.) Visit
paizo.com for more information. Membership in the Pathfinder Society is free although you do need to create an account on the Paizo website. The adventures can be purchased from Paizo for a nominal fee (and they include artwork, which is unusual for organized-play adventures).
Witch Hunter: Dark Providence (Paradigm Concepts) is producing adventures for the Witch Hunter system, which is a non-d20 game of swashbuckling colonial horror. Visit
www.darkprovidence.net for more information. Most adventures can be downloaded directly from the campaign website with no enrollment/membership required. Adventures are made available to conventions and retail stores a few months before they are posted to the website. I think good horror adventures are especially tricky to write so having a source of these kinds of scenarios is very handy.
There are quite a few other organized-play campaigns; I could try to list them all, but I would invariably forget some (and bear in mind that I have a primarily D&D-centric / USA-centric exposure). Some others include:
Dave Arneson's Blackmoor: the MMRPG (currently D&D 3.5, converting to 4E in 2009; visit
mmrpg.zeitgeistgames.com for details)
Legends of the Shining Jewel (D&D 3.5, visit
www.theshiningjewel.com for details)
Fellowship of the White Star (d20-based horror set in the early 1900s; visit
www.fellowshipwhitestar.com for details)
Shadowrun Missions (Shadowrun 4th Edition; visit
www.shadowrun4.com/missions for details)
There are a LOT more out there so please don't take my omission of any particular publisher or campaign as a deliberate slight. The bottom line is that if you like a particular game system or publisher there is a good chance that you can find organized-play support for that system or from that publisher (or that publisher's fans). Organized-play scenarios run just as well in the context of your regular home game with very little work required to strip out the parts you don't need and graft in the parts you do need. Certainly they are no more work than adapting any other published adventure and because they are short (by design) it is usually very quick and easy to file off the serial numbers and bend these adventures to your own nefarious purposes.
Organized-play is often thought of as only being for people who go to conventions but it is just as good for home games, even if you have no interest in the "shared world" aspects of a particular campaign. I think it's certainly worth any DM's time to check out the (usually free) adventures on offer and see if there is something you might want to use in your home game. You could do a lot worse than to have hundreds of free adventures to pick through for inspiration. Particularly if your home game sessions typically last about 4-5 hours since that is exactly the length that most of the adventures are written to satisfy. Organized-play adventures also tend to get field-tested by hundreds if not thousands of players and DMs, which means you benefit indirectly from all the feedback that those players and DMs provide to the campaign's organizers and authors (and believe me the amount of feedback is copious).
Hope that helps someone out there!
Talk to you later --
Sean
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M. Sean Molley | sean [at] basementsoftware [dot] com
Living Forgotten Realms Global Administrator (Western Hemisphere - South)
and former Campaign Director, Living Arcanis
