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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: 9885578" data-attributes="member: 7052563">When people are discussing the 5E adventure books, one issue that keeps coming up is the fact that the work gets broken up piecemeal among so many writers that it is very difficult for them all to coordinate.  The books have plot holes and other disjointed features because people are rowing in different directions.  I have seen similar complaints about Pathfinder APs on the Paizo forums.  Having smaller teams working together might solve that problem.  The early B series and X series modules definitely had a teaching aid element to them.  They would often include extra caverns, deep dungeon levels, or wilderness areas that DMs could fill in as desired.  B1 expected the DM to stock the Caverns of Casqueton, B2 let the DM choose the names of the NPCs at the Keep on the Borderlands, B4 had catacombs below the Lost City for the DM to detail for themselves, and X1 left some blank areas on the map of the Isle of Dread.  This made sense when RPGs were brand new and nobody knew how to play or run them.  There is still a need for DM instruction, but maybe not in every adventure.  I think it is also interesting to note that at first TSR did not think there was any market for premade adventures or settings, because surely any DM worth their salt would want to homebrew their own.  So they let Judges Guild publish some of the first AD&D adventures and settings, before realizing that there was definitely a market and TSR needed to supply it or else others would.  Gygax definitely had talent as a writer.  You can see it in things like his description of the great underground cavern that players visit in the D series modules, with its enormous vaulted ceiling studded with exotic minerals, lit with the eerie glow of mysterious Underdark energies.  But even the best writers need an editor, and Gygax never had one, so he never learned “kill your darlings” and such.This is a bit of a tangent, but I have been listening to the “When We Were Wizards” podcast, and it emphasizes that after his friend Don Kaye died young of a sudden heart attack, Gygax had no one who could tell him “no” and that caused big problems at TSR right from the beginning.  One could say that other creators like Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas let success go to their heads and lost touch with what made their work matter in the first place, but Gary Gygax seems to have jealously guarded his prerogatives even before he became successful.</blockquote>

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