First Adventure Path?

Bullgrit · Dec 1, 2009

What was the first official published adventure path series for Dungeons & Dragons? How many official APs have been published so far?

Bullgrit

Morrus · Dec 1, 2009

Depends what you mean by "official adventure path". Do you mean the first series of interlinked adventures which used the term "adventure path" or the actual first series of interlinked adventures?

Alzrius · Dec 1, 2009

The first series of adventures that were actually called the Adventure Path were, I believe, the first series of modules WotC put out when 3E began, beginning with The Sunless Citadel and ending with The Bastion of Broken Souls. That said, I think the term "Adventure Path" was only used to refer to those adventures, and not in the products themselves.

Bullgrit · Dec 1, 2009

Do you mean the first series of interlinked adventures which used the term "adventure path" or the actual first series of interlinked adventures?

Isn't this sort of like, "Do you mean the first book which used the term 'adventure module' or the actual first published adventure?"

As for "official" I mean published by the official owners/publishers of D&D (vice a second or third party).

Bullgrit

jdrakeh · Dec 1, 2009

Bullgrit said:
Isn't this sort of like, "Do you mean the first book which used the term 'adventure module' or the actual first published adventure?"

If you're viewing any linked series of adventures as being an adventure path, then the G Series would be the first (having begun in 78). They were compiled in one book as Against the Giants in 81.

Morrus · Dec 1, 2009

Bullgrit said:
Isn't this sort of like, "Do you mean the first book which used the term 'adventure module' or the actual first published adventure?"

:shrug: Sorry. Just wanted clarification so I could try to answer your question. Different things mean different things to different people.

delericho · Dec 1, 2009

Bullgrit said:
As for "official" I mean published by the official owners/publishers of D&D (vice a second or third party).

Even that's controversial - Paizo did three Adventure Paths in Dungeon (Shackled City, Age of Worms, Savage Tide). By the terms of their license, these were "100% official" D&D (not d20) adventures.

I believe that since the term was coined, there have been five and a half paths published:

The first path, from "Sunless Citadel" to "Bastion of Broken Souls"
The three aforementioned Dungeon paths
The H1-3/P1-3/E1-3 path for 4e
The "Scales of War" path currently running in eDungeon.

Prior to that, there was the GDQ1-7 path, and also a significant number of trilogies (or more) of adventure modules. I'm not sure if any of those are really long enough to be full-blown paths, though.

Unofficially, we have "War of the Burning Sky" (actually, 2 of these), "Rise of the Runelords", "Curse of the Crimson Throne", "Second Darkness", "Legacy of Fire", "Council of Thieves" (in progress), plus at least one trilogy of mega-modules from Mongoose, and probably some others I'm not aware of.