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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9883806" data-attributes="member: 7052563">I do not remember “Valley of the Earth Mother”, but a Celtic-themed adventure would definitely be relevant to my interests today.  I wonder how it holds up.  Interesting but perhaps unsurprising that in 1985 Gary Gygax already thought that the pendulum had swung too far towards the role-playing side of the hobby, and away from the gaming side.  The culture of D&D play has definitely changed a lot over the years.  The somewhat adversarial and competitive early culture of D&D (and arguably the entire RPG hobby) was no doubt a result of its original wargaming roots.  As wargaming has declined over time, new D&D players have been recruited from other existing fandoms and communities, and I believe this has helped change the style of play and even contribute to some of the divides we see in the RPG hobby as a whole.More and more players seem to enjoy detailed backstories for both PCs and NPCs, and a style of role play that encourages staying in character as much as possible.  I believe this is due to an influx of theater kids into the hobby, as well as the popularity of actual play streams like Critical Role, many of which feature professional actors used to developing and using backstories in their work.  There has also been a growing focus on the canonicity and detail of setting lore, which is something we see among many fandoms these days: superhero comics, fantasy franchises like LOTR, and sci-fi franchises like Trek and Wars.  This inevitably leads to conflict whenever fans disagree about the direction a setting is taking,  The growing concern over whether or not a particular new RPG book or adventure respects the canon and ethos of a particular setting (just look at the huge arguments we see here about Greyhawk, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun) makes a stark contrast with the freewheeling “anything goes” spirit of early D&D, which had knights in shining armor teaming up with wizards and hobbits to fight robots and alien horrors in a crashed spaceship.As a kid I was weirdly resistant to new games and settings, preferring D&D to rival RPGs and Greyhawk to Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms, not for coherent personal reasons but mostly because I encountered them first.  Now I try to be a bit less rigid in my preferences, but I still do not like some of the specific changes made in DL. The comic relief aspects of tinker gnomes, kender, and especially gully dwarves always fell flat for me.</blockquote>

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