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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdrakeh" data-source="post: 4174354" data-attributes="member: 13892">For me, modules like the Adlerweg series and Saltmarsh series were the golden standard because things were happening for a reason -- these modules contained distinct personalities and plots, timelines and backstory, and reasons why things were as they were. Internal consistency was just creeping into adventure adveture design; I can recall playing these modules for the first time and being blown away. Sure, there were some artefacts of early adventure design present (the completely nonsensical appearance of giant weasels in the encounter chart for the haunted house in Saltmarsh comes to mind) but, by and large, these modules were internally consistent and made some kind of sense. They didn't have that artifical "Here, I've lined up these waliking sacks of XP for you to fight. . . just because!" feel. Stuff was happening in the world around the PCs, plots were unfolding, and gone were the random gauntlet runs. So. . . what other old-ish modules can you think of that were light on the random encounters, heavy on the story (or story seeds, anyhow), and presented in a way that moved them away from a very transparent 'bank run' scenario (i.e., a scenario that existed primarily to provide PCs with a source of XP, setting/world be damned) and toward a more story-like structure that gave PCs thing to care about other than racking up levels?</blockquote>