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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5108722" data-attributes="member: 80487">Vault of the Drow is actually the culmination of an "adventure" insomuch as Gygax apparently (to my eye) used the term, in just the way more commonly meant today, in those very modules. The relatively linear large-scale structure would of course have been more blatantly expressed in the presentation of the scenarios as successive tournament rounds.Quite a bit is assumed, and rather more necessarily as events proceed along the subterranean channels. Even in the Giants modules, Gygax wrote (IIRC) about the presence of a "script" -- in the process of urging DMs not to imagine that they had merely to follow it.In part because they so often originated to meet the needs of tournaments (following which, the published versions moved like free beer at the conventions), TSR's modules tended to assume a fairly linear default structure.Obviously, that could not so much inform the play of groups that lacked much exposure to the things in the first place. Gradually, though, it became almost officially normative as "the way to play" -- pretty much pushed in rulebooks that today are designed around that paradigm.There are many reasons for that, including ones of convenience and preference as very well informed choices. That level of information may be less common now, the mode more often simply taken for granted and the old campaign dismissed without even grasping it. Still, I think it likely to prevail only a little less with wider understanding of the alternatives.Lack of understanding, though, is seldom an asset in solving problems. Even if, in a general sense, "it must be so" reflects a preference that is not about to change, being able to see how it can be otherwise may open up previously unseen particular possibilities that "don't throw out the baby with the bath water".</blockquote>

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