Frog, Rostoff, and similar brethren,
I completely understand where you're coming from. The original adventure modules (most of them Greyhawk or proto-Known World) were like the Dead Sea Scrolls for me when I was growing up. I played nearly all of them as a kid, and when I got back into D&D after a brief absence around the time second edition came out, I pulled them out of mothballs and started studying them all over again. It was during that process, more than anything else, that I began to see a pattern in the old modules. Even though most had little more than a paragraph of "world building" in them, they fit into a larger tapestry of an emerging world that Gygax was also building in his novels and Dragon articles. I love that world, and I love the adventures that were (and are) its single most important component.
My associate editor (James Jacobs) and art director (Sean Glenn) are exactly the same way, although each of us brings different experiences, areas of expertise, and interests to the table. Once upon a time, D&D was _about_ adventures. It's our intent to match the excitement and brilliance of those original modules while at the same time attempting to provide something new. The tastes of gamers in general have shifted, somewhat, over the three editions of D&D. We can't always publish "old style" dungeon crawls, but we certainly embrace the format and aren't running away from it by any means.
We've got a lot of demographics to cover with the magazine. Lots of folks like the Forgotten Realms, others are dying to learn more about Eberron, and still others care nothing about setting, seeking only great plots and interesting NPCs. Each of the members of my staff, including myself, fit into these groups, but all of us are well versed in the classics that kicked this whole thing off, and it's certainly our intent to try to match the sense of wonder, danger, and exploration inherent to nearly every adventure with an alpha-numeric code.
I know you've got enough adventures to last forever. All of us do. But what makes us DMs, I think, is an appreciation for a well-crafted encounter, a sense of wonder about just what might be lurking in the dark corner of that abandoned ruin, and a curiosity about how our friends will react when presented with our interpretation of a given module's events.
We're going to aim for the fence in the new Dungeon. We'll probably end up hitting our share of foul balls, but we've every intention of delivering some memorable game balls to our old school fans in the outfield stands.
Give us a try over the issues with the giant Greyhawk map. Give the adventures a good look, and let me know what you think. I suspect you'll like what you see.
Thanks for your time and your interest in the magazine.
--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dungeon Magazine
