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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6488907" data-attributes="member: 4937">One reason is that they took low hanging fruit.   For a module like Tomb of Horrors, it took the low hanging fruit of 'Trap Filled Tomb', and it used it.  So any similar module is now going to be seen as derivative, and if it uses any obvious ideas is going to find itself looking very close to the original.  That isn't to say that Tomb of Horrors doesn't do some really ingenious things, but anything that has to compete with it has to be more creative, more original, and more elegant than the original while not relying on simple obvious tropes.  In other words, it takes more skill to make a better Tomb of Horrors than it took to make the original.Another reason is that Gygax, Hickman, Moldvay, Cook, and others really were good.  Gygax is insanely creative in certain areas, and Hickman has 'big picture' sense of dungeon design that has never been equaled.  So in edition to needing to top the bar to receive the same acclaim, the bar was set pretty high in the first place.Additionally, we've gotten a lot pickier since then.  We demand more from a module than we used to.  We expect more from a game.  The old modules are largely judged by the standards we held at the time.  A new module with the same degree of craftsmanship would be held to a much harder standard.Finally, in some cases I do think there is a nostalgia factor.  IMO, most of Gygax's more popular works - 'Keep on the Borderlands' and 'Temple of Elemental Evil' for example - are deeply flawed, very primitive designs that I would expect any modern DM with decent ability to draw a map can equal.   Aside from a few very Gygaxian touches where he really draws on his deep knowledge of pulp fantasy and emulates it, there isn't a lot to like about the module itself.  Compare for example Gygax maps or even 'setting plots' to what Judges Guild was doing in the same period.  What they are however judged by is less what Gygax provided, than what the GM's that ran them improvised and made from them, as seen through our eyes 30 years ago when the whole idea of an RPG was novel and amazing.  Yes, you can turn 'Keep on the Borderlands' into a really great mini-campaign.  But it requires developing tons of stuff on your own that is at best implied by the text.  As a 10 year old DM, I wasn't up to the task.  As a 17 year old DM much more used to inventing vast swaths of setting, I did a lot better - though looking back it was still fairly primitive what I did.  But the module is really primitive, doesn't really teach you how to go beyond it, and outside of its context I'm sure would not be rated as a great module.   By the time I was 12, I was creating things roughly of the same quality as B2 (once I'd learned the value of asymmetry instead of intuitively drawing buildings that were laid out logically like real world ones, with rooms of similar size lining corridors).All that being said, I1-I6, S1, N1, U1, T1, UK1, and L1-L2 is an amazing set of modules coming out in a very short period and rarely do I see designers even coming close to those in terms of good design.  Almost everything with a '1' on it during that period is amazing.   And seriously, has there ever been remotely a run of quality by any publisher like I1 through I6?</blockquote>

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