D&D General Dungeon Magazine Hidden Gems 1986-2007.

[Zardnaar]

• #1

In previous threads I have argued that a lot of good adventures were in Dungeon Magazine. This is particularly true IMHO for 2E and 3E which were not known for their masses of high quality adventures.

Dungeon had a circulation that seemed to vary in the 30-60k range and relative to the numbers of D&D players it never had the impact of say Keep on the Borderlands and each issue had multiple adventures so standing out from the crowd is probably harder.

So in this thread I am going to go through the magazine starting at issue 1 and picking the best adventure IMHO that stands out and is the most interesting to run. This is a bit flawed as I have not played all of the adventures but if I have I will mention it.

I can also do requests as well so if you want to pick an issue suggest it and I will see what I can do. IDK if that is a great idea but I'll see how it goes. Several names that are still around now also crop up in the pages of Dungeon- Wolfgang Bauer, Erik Mona and Mike Mearls come to mind.



Issue 1

In 1986 First Edition was the D&D of choice while BECMI was still around. Work on 2E had not yet started AFAIK (that was 1987 IIRC) Issue 1 has 1 D&D adventures in it with 5 AD&D adventures. Its probably not to hard to figure out whats popular. Of the 6 adventures you notice one stands out. Into the Fire eats up 19 pages out of 64, the rest of the adventures are quite small. Its also the best one and the Boucher brothers who authored it turn up in future issues. The adventure is my pick for the best one not due to its length although it perhaps helps but because its also interesting with an outdoors overland hike to get to the dungeon. It also has a somewhat decent plot hook.

The basic gist of it is a group of nights decided to confront Flame a red dragon and they all perish with one exception. One escapes with a necklace from the Dragons horde. The survivor dies and the necklace is sent to the King who recognizes that it belongs to his missing son who died at sea (guess what destroyed the boat).

So a bit of travel, exploration, a mission for a king all tied back to the Dragons lair. Not a bad effort at an intro and tying things together with a touch of mystery. Like any good villain Flame also returns in a future issue.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

So youwill point out the best adventure of each issue, whether is's actually good or not? Interesting.

Will also be interesting how your results match up with Bryce Lynch's over at tenfootpole. He reviewed every single dungeon magazine from 1 -150, almost losing his sanity in the proces.

 

[Uller]

Is there a digital resource where some of these can be resurrected? DDI was a great resource for sandbox campaigns...just look in the Dungeon Index for appropriate level adventures, scatter some hooks for you players to find and the campaign practically runs itself. I think the last one I was able to run was the one that took you through Evard's mansion...it was very Dying Earth-esque...

 

[Parmandur]

So youwill point out the best adventure of each issue, whether is's actually good or not? Interesting.

Will also be interesting how your results match up with Bryce Lynch's over at tenfootpole. He reviewed every single dungeon magazine from 1 -150, almost losing his sanity in the proces.

I appreciate the service that he provided, but my final conclusion from reading his posts is that he doesn't like Dungeons & Dragons all that much?

 

[bryce0lynch]

I, also, will be following along.

Dungeon suffered from a lot of things that still seem to plague the adventure industry today. It went through it's "Story Games" mode of scene-based railroads ala Giovanni Chronicles. It also suffered, I think, from very poor editing. Not copy-editing but content-partners and layout. One of my core conceits is that the adventure is, first and foremost, a play aid for the DM at the table. In this respect most of them were poor. Bad formatting, trivia descriptions, and so on. This continues to befuddle folks today; there exists no good resources for an aspiring adventure writer. (The sole exception being Ray Vallesse's Writing with Style, on DriveThru, which is more of a copy-edit guide for the RPG adventure writer.)

If you want to READ adventure then Dungeon is a good resource. If you want to spend a lot of prep time on adventures or mine ideas to run then you might be ok.

But ... this ain't my thread. I'm looking forward to seeing someone elses journey.

 

[Sacrosanct]

There were two adventures called something like “champion” series, where each one was like an obstacle puzzle course that were really good. Unfortunately I can’t go look them up because last month, after decades of not being touched in my trunk, I gave away my entire Dungeon and Dragon magazine collection to someone who would actually use them. So the timing of this discussion is pretty funny in an ironic way lol.

 

[Parmandur]

I, also, will be following along.

Dungeon suffered from a lot of things that still seem to plague the adventure industry today. It went through it's "Story Games" mode of scene-based railroads ala Giovanni Chronicles. It also suffered, I think, from very poor editing. Not copy-editing but content-partners and layout. One of my core conceits is that the adventure is, first and foremost, a play aid for the DM at the table. In this respect most of them were poor. Bad formatting, trivia descriptions, and so on. This continues to befuddle folks today; there exists no good resources for an aspiring adventure writer. (The sole exception being Ray Vallesse's Writing with Style, on DriveThru, which is more of a copy-edit guide for the RPG adventure writer.)

If you want to READ adventure then Dungeon is a good resource. If you want to spend a lot of prep time on adventures or mine ideas to run then you might be ok.

But ... this ain't my thread. I'm looking forward to seeing someone elses journey.

I'm pretty sure Dungeon was operating under the assumption that the main use cases for the readership would be reading, extensive alteration in prep time and idea mining, though? Much like the modern 5E adventure books.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I appreciate the service that he provided, but my final conclusion from reading his posts is that he doesn't like Dungeons & Dragons all that much?

I think his own take would be that he loves D&D.

 

[Zardnaar]

So youwill point out the best adventure of each issue, whether is's actually good or not? Interesting.

Will also be interesting how your results match up with Bryce Lynch's over at tenfootpole. He reviewed every single dungeon magazine from 1 -150, almost losing his sanity in the proces.

Well hopefully I'll get the right one, it's not going to be super in depth

 

[Carmen Sbordone]

There were two adventures called something like “champion” series, where each one was like an obstacle puzzle course that were really good. Unfortunately I can’t go look them up because last month, after decades of not being touched in my trunk, I gave away my entire Dungeon and Dragon magazine collection to someone who would actually use them. So the timing of this discussion is pretty funny in an ironic way lol.

Believe it was challenge of the champions actually. And upwards of 6 adventures

Challenge of Champions

The Challenge of Champions adventures by Johnathan M. Richards formed a series that was quite different from the normal scenarios that appeared in Dungeon magazine. The adventures represented an annual adventurers' guild competition, with the PCs' party being one of a number of teams aiming to...

rpggeek.com

Dungeon had alot of good adventures, alot bad, and alot of ok ones. Remember for most of its history they were reader submitted adventures. I still have mostof my 150 issues and still use them