D&D General Best and Worst Editions- For Adventures.

[R_J_K75]

2E had the longest time if Dungeon support, a lot of good adventures in them.

3E went monthly though so probably has a similar number of issues.

You are probably correct but wasnt there a point to where both Dragon and Dungeon ceased publication for quite awhile in both 2E and 3E?

 

[Zardnaar]

You are probably correct but wasnt there a point to where both Dragon and Dungeon ceased publication for quite awhile in both 2E and 3E?

Briefly in 2E when TSR was bought out and 2007 when they went out of print for good.

If Dungeon is included 3E would be over 5E.

Issue 124 and 125 are beside me along with parts of Paizos Mummy's Mask AP.

Both being mined for 5E. And I own most if the 5E APs. Without Dungeon 5E over 3E. 3E WotC ones weren't that good IMHO.

 

[Coroc]

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.

 

[Zardnaar]

Coric I'm specifically talking about adventures. 2E had great settings, adventures not so much at least outside Dungeon and a handful of late material.

Eberron isn't an adventure either.

 

[teitan]

Whew, good question but I am going to have to disagree with the OP that 3e adventures are poorly regarded. Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury? Red Hand of Doom? The Expedition adventures were great! I loved Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, a sequel that surpassed the original! City of the Spider-Queen was interesting and had some great encounter designs. Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde was pretty keen too.

I started with 1e and have fond memories of a lot of those adventures.

2e came out a year after I started playing and we got fully into it when I was a junior in high school. There was a lot of really weak material in the early days but those Planescape adventures were great. The late unbranded modules were also good like Paladin in Hell, Gates of Firestorm Peak, Rod of Seven Parts, Return to the Tomb of Horrors. All good but overall the edition had the weakest adventures of any edition.

4e had a big problem, it was a whole cloth new system. 1-3e all had the same DNA, it wasn't difficult but 4e got saddled with a late 3e innovation and that was the encounter a page adventure design. An awful idea that made it difficult to crack how to write for the game. Essentials really helped turn that around I think. The adventures that came with the boxed sets were spectacular, I didn't get to run them but they had a classic vibe and excellent encounter designs. Something I expect from a homebrew. Gardmore Abbey looked like a LOT of fun but the edition didn't have a lot of adventures to really be comparable with any previous edition in that regard. Look back at the line it was all mechanics and not a lot of heart. Even campaign settings seemed to suffer a bit. Coulda been a great system and its half sad WOTC had to abandon it.

5e has some decent stuff. Most of the hardcovers are not just adventures but also sourcebooks for the Forgotten Realms, following a similar design philosophy to Paizo's Pathfinder paths. Details about a region and factions, a smattering of player's option but not quite far enough in that regard. I think 5e could benefit from smaller adventures. Little 64-120 page adventures.

Basic... never really played any of the modules.

Dungeon: breeding ground for the best D&D designers. Greenwood, Baur, Cook, etc. ANY edition.

But for adventures, Pathfinder kills everyone. Critical hit.

 

[Coroc]

Coric I'm specifically talking about adventures. 2E had great settings, adventures not so much at least outside Dungeon and a handful of late material.

Eberron isn't an adventure either.

Well I meant some of the Eberron adventures. cannot name them specifically atm. I just read a few.

2e if you count the Ravenloft adventures (there are about 30 or so that I do own and that's not all of them)
as being a "setting" because most describe a domain very detailed ? Anyway, most of these are extraordinary.

Also with a setting came adventures, bluebox greyhawk contained a lot e.g.

Of the greyhawk adventures of the WGR or was it WGA series some shine others not so much.

FR 2e had some good boxed set adventures, but you always had to do some work on these. As I said if you look for things instantly playable w/o alterations then you probably got to go with 5 e stuff or maybe some 3e products.
Maybe this was also a thing were 4e was good with, I cannot tell.

 

[Zardnaar]

Whew, good question but I am going to have to disagree with the OP that 3e adventures are poorly regarded. Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury? Red Hand of Doom? The Expedition adventures were great! I loved Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, a sequel that surpassed the original! City of the Spider-Queen was interesting and had some great encounter designs. Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde was pretty keen too.

I started with 1e and have fond memories of a lot of those adventures.

2e came out a year after I started playing and we got fully into it when I was a junior in high school. There was a lot of really weak material in the early days but those Planescape adventures were great. The late unbranded modules were also good like Paladin in Hell, Gates of Firestorm Peak, Rod of Seven Parts, Return to the Tomb of Horrors. All good but overall the edition had the weakest adventures of any edition.

4e had a big problem, it was a whole cloth new system. 1-3e all had the same DNA, it wasn't difficult but 4e got saddled with a late 3e innovation and that was the encounter a page adventure design. An awful idea that made it difficult to crack how to write for the game. Essentials really helped turn that around I think. The adventures that came with the boxed sets were spectacular, I didn't get to run them but they had a classic vibe and excellent encounter designs. Something I expect from a homebrew. Gardmore Abbey looked like a LOT of fun but the edition didn't have a lot of adventures to really be comparable with any previous edition in that regard. Look back at the line it was all mechanics and not a lot of heart. Even campaign settings seemed to suffer a bit. Coulda been a great system and its half sad WOTC had to abandon it.

5e has some decent stuff. Most of the hardcovers are not just adventures but also sourcebooks for the Forgotten Realms, following a similar design philosophy to Paizo's Pathfinder paths. Details about a region and factions, a smattering of player's option but not quite far enough in that regard. I think 5e could benefit from smaller adventures. Little 64-120 page adventures.

Basic... never really played any of the modules.

Dungeon: breeding ground for the best D&D designers. Greenwood, Baur, Cook, etc. ANY edition.

But for adventures, Pathfinder kills everyone. Critical hit.

In regards to 3E particular it doesn't have a lot of good/great adventures. Didn't claim it had none. Same with 4E which seems to have 2 good adventures one of which is Madness at Gardmore Abbey.

If you can only find a relative handful of good adventures it's probably not a great edition in terms of good adventures.

OD&D predates most published adventures so it might be fair to exclude it.

Rating 2E is also difficult, if you don't like a setting you're not going to like the adventures.

 

[Enrico Poli1]

My Top 10 Adventures:

10) Tie between Curse of the Crimson Throne AP (Pathfinder), Kingmaker AP (Pathfinder), Eyes of the Stone Thief (13th Age)
9) Die Vecna Die! (last module of AD&D2e)
8) Dragon's Crown (AD&D2e, Dark Sun)
7) Norworld Trilogy: Test of the Warlords, Death's Ride, Sabre River (BECMI)
6) Master of the Desert Nomads Trilogy: Master of the Desert Nomads, Temple of Death, Red Arrow Black Shield (BECMI)
5) Curse of Strahd (considered inclusive of original Ravenloft module; D&D 5e)
4) Tie between Tomb of Annihilation (D&D 5e) and Return to the Tomb of Horrors (considered inclusive of original Tomb of Horrors; AD&D2e)
3) Reign of Winter AP (Pathfinder)
2) Savage Tide AP (considered inclusive of original Isle of Dread; D&D 3.5)
1) Age of Worms AP (D&D 3.5)

So in the end each edition had great adventures (I didn't play 4e). The greatest of all, IMO, come from 3.5 and the Dungeon Magazine under Paizo.
5e started weak but has its own good products.

 

[S'mon]

Best:
BX/BECM - Best for adventures at low level (Basic, 1-3) and low-Expert (Isle of Dread, Castle Amber, both for 3-6 and originally for BX). I like the later & higher level stuff much less than the BX era stuff.
1e AD&D - some great low level adventures, but notably shines at the mid-levels ca 5-8.

Middle:
3e D&D for a few good things, notably Red Hand of Doom, some Necromancer Games stuff, and Paizo's Rise of the Runelords. Skimpy compared to Classic & 1e though. I'll put Paizo's Pathfinder in here too.

Worst:
4e D&D, only the Goodman Games DCCs are at all decent (I don't have Harkenwold or Gardmore Abbey though); honourable mention to Dungeon #155 Heathen as good fun once you cut some encounters.

Currently 5e is probably below 3e & Pathfinder, ahead of 4e, but could well end the edition ahead of them. Probably too derivative to surpass 1e and too few low level adventures to surpass Classic/BECMI.

 

[Nebulous]

It's an art form.

Writing large adventures seems hard.

It does look very difficult to pull off well. I've been pleased with the 5e stuff so far, but I've only run LmoP, PotA, and ToA. And a handful of one shots, like Saltmarsh and Ravenloft.