1. Have the adventures in Dungeon gotten less memorable since the conversion to 3rd Edition?
Yes, I would certainly think so, but I don't necessarily blame 3rd edition for that.
2. Is the quality of the adventures not as good, or better?
I think the writing quality is actually better, as there are better guidelines and possibly better editors. 3rd edition is also a much more streamlined systm that allows for better adventures technically speaking, a consistent stat-block, basic information such as ceiling height always at the same place etc.. This does not make the adventures better in an imaginative way though.
3.Are the adventures from the early issues of Dungeon more imaginative than the adventures from the more recent issues?
I think so, yes, and this can possibly be blamed on 3rd ed's slogan of "everything the NPCs can do, the PCs can do." While not necessarily a bad thing, this does make a lot of adventures static and depending on feats, spells and skills. I don't think adventures such as the one with the amnesiac paladin, the dream-like setting of the Titan's Tower and the wonderfully weired Old Man Katan could have been done with the current system.
As of late I've pondered longer and longer at my local gaming store of whether or not I would buy Dungeon.. I lost interest in the adventure path after they left Diamond Lake, and am not too interested in Eberron adventures (even though Murder in Oakbridge seems to be a nice murder mystery easily adaptable). The latest issues doesn't really bring anything to me, although I had to purchase 129 simply because it had a Wil Upchurch module.
Fortunately for me, I've gotten hold of every back issues of Dungeon (yes, I have every one from #1 to #129), so now I'm scouring old issues to convert to 3rd ed. So this thread is gold for me.
3.Are the adventures from the early issues of Dungeon more imaginative than the adventures from the more recent issues?
I think so, yes, and this can possibly be blamed on 3rd ed's slogan of "everything the NPCs can do, the PCs can do." While not necessarily a bad thing, this does make a lot of adventures static and depending on feats, spells and skills. I don't think adventures such as the one with the amnesiac paladin, the dream-like setting of the Titan's Tower and the wonderfully weired Old Man Katan could have been done with the current system.
I don't really buy this. There is nothing specific to the Old Man Katan and his Amazing Mushroom Band that is impossible to do within 3rd edition. He's a unique fellow admittedly but one can make any character unique if it serves the plot - there is no requirment to take a unique personality feat or anything. The Campestri are unique monsters but again Dungeon seems willing to put in unique monsters if it really serves the plotline.
Nor, I think, is Dungeon slavishly following the idea that PCs and NPCs follow exactly the same rules. That giant morphing tree thing we saw a few issues ago could not be made by a PC.
I just think where really jaded - dungeon inside giant morphing tree thing with a split personality disorder...yawn.
I also think we are suffering from rose coloured glasses. When I made a list of some of my favourites earlier on this thread I was suprised at how often I had comments like "OK this adventure needs some work but..."
In some ways these are exceptional adventures partly because we took the best ideas from them and then fixed them to suit our own tastes. I really find this a lot with the current campign I'm running. Its heavily based on old favourites from Dungeon. Almost all of them from between issues #1 and #50. Their great - but its partly because I have filled them out and fixed the problems over the last decade and a half - and in fixing the problems I have redesigned them to my own tastes - sure makes them seem even more brilliant to me anyway. Thats not to say everything in the old issues is lousy - its just often not as good as we remember it to be.
Still - its possible that the staff at Dungeon are being slightly to conservative in their picks. Personally I think that Old Man Katan module was a brilliant read and a lousy module to play - but a lot of people think it was right up there near the top of the best adventures ever made. Its possible the staff should stop being quite so inclusive and take some chances on modules that half of us will think are bad joke modules while maybe the other half consider to be the inspired work of a genius. There is danger in making a module everyone everywere can use easily in their campaign in that its less likely to be a really unique module.
On a related theme I think its possible that the current staff might have shot down adventures like Ex Libris and A Hot Day in L'Trel. Both these adventures are brilliant - but more conceptually then how they are written. Ex Libris is a phenominal concept for a dungeon but it does not really pan out in terms of plot once your playing it. Similier deal for A Hot Day in L'Trel. Brilliant idea but, by and large, I think a lot of the execution leaves something to be desired. In each case I have every intention of running the module in the near future but both will undergo extensive rewrites.
I think we are seeing a lot of pre-#50 adventures in the list because the majority of the posters in this thread are in there 20s, 30s, and 40s, meaning those issues fell squarely in their adolescence, teenage years, and early twenties. Not surprisingly, these are formative years for many people, and when making lists (regarding any subject), you regularly see stuff from ones formative years dominating those lists. Also, issues after #50 through the advent of 3e date from the mid-90s, which coincided with the eventual collapse of TSR and doldrums in the gaming hobby (I for one, left gaming for 10 years around this point).
You now see a lot of people talking about the adventure paths, and I can easily imagine that in 10 years, when making lists of our favorite Dungeon adventures, that adventures like "The Styes" will not make people's lists.
I haven't actually played Old Man Katan, so I can't vouch for its playability, but I still think it couldn't have been printed today unless they had a Handle Animal Skill DC for campestri or something.. I guess I'm a little fond of that magazine as it was the first one I bought. "A Way with Words" was also a beautiful little module with poetry reading kobolds..
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It's probably a similar reason to the common misconception that movies were better in the "old days" and that they make a lot more bad movies today. Truth of the matter is that bad movies (and bad adventures) are forgotten, while the good ones live on. Dungeon has certainly had its ups and downs as a whole, but that's the nature of anything that runs for so many years.
As for unusual locations like a titan's dream or non-euclidian dungeons or other highly unusual environments, there's absolutely nothing in 3rd edition that prevents such strange environments or adventures. Just in the last year, we've certainly featured some unusual environs, including "Quicksilver Hourglass" and "Root of Evil." We've got some weird locations coming up as well. However, in the case of really strange locations, less is more—the weirder a dungeon gets, the tougher it is to fit into a campaign. Since Dungeon's primary focus has to be "baseline" D&D at least 75% of the time, you can expect the weird locations to be fairly uncommon.
And of course... we can only print what you send us! ;-)
I haven't actually played Old Man Katan, so I can't vouch for its playability, but I still think it couldn't have been printed today unless they had a Handle Animal Skill DC for campestri or something.. I guess I'm a little fond of that magazine as it was the first one I bought. "A Way with Words" was also a beautiful little module with poetry reading kobolds..
Amen to both those adventures. :)
GGG
It's probably a similar reason to the common misconception that movies were better in the "old days" and that they make a lot more bad movies today.
Yeah, they don't make movies like they did before.. it's true..it's damn true :)
I always thought _any_ kind of dungeon could be fitted into any campaign.. after all, it's a dungeon, not a geographically-depending terrain location or a feature-dependant city like Sharn..
I guess nostalgia and the fact that the older modules help me get into the game is an important factor as well. That being said, if you ask me this same question in 5-10 years, I'll probably add a few 3,5 ed adventures to my list of must have adventures as well.. On the top of my head.. the Whispering Cairn.. Forest of Blood.. the Iron Satyr.. possibly also Jackal's Redemption and Porphyry House of Horror..
I think we are seeing a lot of pre-#50 adventures in the list because the majority of the posters in this thread are in there 20s, 30s, and 40s, meaning those issues fell squarely in their adolescence, teenage years, and early twenties.
I think the crux of this is that in those years we also had time to _play_ every darn adventure in an issue of Dungeon. My all time favorite was the Flame adventure in issue 1, but there have been some amazing adventures in recent issues and some fantastic elements ripe for the stealing:
- Issue 120 - I stole the jackalweres for another adventure - great group of baddies- Forsaken Arch and Temple of Demogorgon also have some very unique elements (haven't played/run either one).
- The Istivin series - great read and some stealable elements.
- Queen with the Burning Eyes - Very extensible. I was able to use this adventure in my Eberron campaign with very little modification (the map was horrible, so I redrew that), but the adventure had all the elements of a good pulp.
- Fiend's Embrace - Another great read. Haven't run it.
- Maure Castle - retro-goodness.
- Murder at Oakbridge - a simple murder mystery with lots of hook-ins for any campaign. I have a modified version of this lined up in my Eberron campaign.
- PANDEMONIUM IN THE VEINS - the gladiator adventure. Converted this to Eberron and my kids loved it.
I think there's a new era of Dungeon classics... maybe it's just me, though. I can remember heavily modifying adventures from 1-50 and still not being all that happy with them. In recent years, I've run several Dungeon adventures with almost no mods with happy results... And I think the quality has gone up since about issue 119...considerably.
#90 is a personal favorite of mine. An excellent stand alone issue.