u/jasonite

Just curious what people thought of it if they have run through it

For those not aware, I've been going through each adventure Dungeon produced in the 2e era, issues 18-81, and reviewing them. I most recently talked about it in this thread.

I go over my process more on my blog site, but I rated them on a scale from 0-4 on situation clarity, decision density, table usability, distinctiveness, and DM patch burden, and the final score is an average.

I've just finished my second batch, and it's available for you to read on my blog right here.

Again, it was a massive amount of work, taking longer than I thought, but I did my best and I think it turned out well. I'll get to working on the third and final batch once I've taken a little breather.

Edit: I meant 2e not 2d, whoops.

For those not aware, a while I ago I announced that I would be reviewing every 2e adventure and rating them on 5 different dimensions, then recommending the best ones so people have a resource for playing them if they want. The thread is here. I got feedback to take the results and post them on my web site, as posts on here fade away.

It was a helluva lot more work than I thought it would be, but I finished off the first batch, issues 18-38. Here is my post with that batch: https://sagaofthejasonite.com/best-dnd-2e-adventures-dungeon-magazine/

I talked about my process more there, but I rated them on a scale from 0-4 on situation clarity, decision density, table usability, distinctiveness, and DM patch burden, and the final score is an average. What I found is that I really needed to up my standard to very high levels or I'd have a ton of adventures, and there are already a lot, so even the lowest-rated ones need to average 3.

If you are interested in me reviewing a specific adventure from those issues let me know, I've got my workflow down now. After this I'll work on issues 39-59.

I’ve been trying to make sense of Reagan for a while, partly because modern conservatism still speaks his vocabulary and I wanted to understand where that actually came from. I used Iwan Morgan’s biography as my primary source.

The two pieces ended up being pretty different in focus, so I’m linking both:

Part 1: How Ronald Reagan Became a Republican
This part looks at Reagan’s shift from New Deal Democrat to leading conservative. What stood out to me was how Reagan used FDR’s wartime language of 'freedom versus slavery' and applied it to criticize the American state. To most people, it didn’t feel like a break from the past. Instead, it felt like a return to something familiar.
https://sagaofthejasonite.com/how-ronald-reagan-became-a-republican/

Part 2: Reagan’s Presidency and Legacy
The actual governing record. My argument is that his biggest wins all required him to override his own philosophy, and his biggest failures are where it ran unchecked.
https://sagaofthejasonite.com/ronald-reagan-legacy/

Happy to discuss either piece in the comments.

Probably none of these entries will shock you, but I think these 8 are head and shoulders above the rest of the published modules for 1e, in terms of module design. I evaluated a lot of them, and I think they fall more or less in this order, too.

S3 Expedition isn’t the top module because of sci-fi nostalgia or its ideas. I think it's overall #1 because of its design. Yeah sandboxes are fun, but a lot of them fall apart under close inspection because they stop detailing the rooms partway through and leave the rest for the DM to figure out. S3 on the other hand does all the work. It takes on the challenge of showing fantasy characters how to understand alien technology and solves it right there in the adventure, using simple feedback loops, clear menus, and flowcharts. The whole thing is tightly built and self-contained, so the DM gets a complete package instead of having to fill in the gaps.

I6 Ravenloft is part of a 3-way tie for #2. Don't think of Ravenloft as just a mood piece or a railroad. It's a super smart, tightly designed adventure that puts real pressure on the players. The Tarokka deck a brilliant because it changes the layout of the castle every time you use it. When you add the vertical maps and the routine for Strahd that keeps him hunting the party instead of waiting in a room, you get a great adventure. The only small drawback is that the book can’t run Strahd for you. To get the most out of him, the DM needs to think on their feet and make smart decisions. For me that's not much of a drawback.

S1 Tomb of Horrors is also #2. Just put aside its reputation and look at it as a carefully built puzzle. Gygax created a logic challenge by taking away dice rolls and typical combat, so players have to solve problems by paying close attention to their surroundings. The booklet is good and lays out clear consequences for player actions, so it doesn't leave much to chance. Yeah it's hard, but that's part of the design, and it gives DMs a complete adventure that doesn’t need extra fixes or made-up results.

N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God is tied for #2. If you want to run a town investigation scenario that really works, N1 is perfect. Other early modules might give you a nice village setting and leave the DM to handle the fallout, but N1 creates a total web of paranoia. Niles lays out the village in detail, describing each building, who lives there, and exactly how each person will react when PC's start asking questions. As the DM, you just need to manage the town's responses instead of fixing broken motives or making up clues to keep the mystery going.

Saltmarsh is a beautiful example of great storytelling and well-paced information. It changes from a haunted house mystery to a smuggling plot, with no wasted words or missing links. The Caverns of Thracia pretty much pioneered the dungeon sandbox, and showed that it can feel complete. Its 3D layout and faction rules let the DM run the adventure without having to fill in gaps. Night’s Dark Terror makes the jump from a small-scale siege to a big regional campaign look easy. It gives you the tools and timeline tracking that other modules like X1 left for the DM to figure out. Keep on the Borderlands is still probably the best intro ever, because it clearly lays out the base-to-wilderness-to-dungeon loop, showing you how to run a world right from the start.

Did I miss one? I left out the mega-modules like Temple of Elemental Evil or adventure chains like Dragonlance, as they are a little different animal.

Here's what we all know about the 2e era: TSR reduced module publishing in favor of settings and supplements. The official adventure side was thin, and a lot of what did ship was forgettable. Dungeon Magazine consistently did better than the official releases, and it was threads over at Dragonsfoot that put me on to their qualify. Some of those adventures would have blown the boxed product off the shelf if TSR had bothered to give them a color cover and proper distribution.

The issues are all downloadable for free at archive.org. So I'm going issue by issue, #18–81, to find out what holds up the best today.

Every adventure gets scored across five dimensions:

- Situation Clarity. Can a DM understand the premise and run it without inventing stuff?

- Decision Density. Do players have real choices, or is it a corridor with monsters?

- Table Usability. Does the text give you what you need at the table, including failure handling?

- Distinctiveness. Is there something here you won't find in a generic dungeon crawl?

- Patch Burden. How much does the DM have to invent to make it work?

Each dimension scores 0–4. I'm labeling them with a final grade of Exceptional, Strong, Interesting-but-Flawed, Historically Interesting, or Lame.

I'm also reading for choke points, basically text that overrides player choices to force a plot outcome a certain way, that tanks the score automatically.

What I'll post: Results by issue batch as I work through the run. Full score breakdowns for anything that hits Exceptional, but if people want Strong ranking I can include those two. Then I'll give a final ranked shortlist at the end.

EDIT: I've received requests for my bull blog post discussing the best sandbox campaigns. It's here: https://sagaofthejasonite.com/best-ttrpg-sandbox-campaigns/

I want to say right away I'm NOT talking about the best campaign setting. I'm not saying this world is better than other ones. I recently wrote a piece about the top 8 sandbox campaigns in RPG history and this was one. Here is an excerpt:

The term “sandbox” gets used really loosely, but what exactly is it? A sandbox campaign is a published campaign built for open-ended play, with no required sequence of events, where players decide which opportunities to pursue. The world can absolutely have structure, conflict, or major antagonists, but the book can’t require players to engage them in a fixed order — and, crucially, it has to give you reasons to keep playing in it.

"The Tyr Region offers a campaign area filled with rival factions, dangerous landscapes, slavery, raiders, and political chaos, but there’s no set storyline. The world itself creates enough tension that a scripted plot isn’t needed.

Dark Sun is a sandbox campaign paragon because its main ideas are more than just background details. Scarcity, oppression, and environmental threats affect every choice players face, from where they go to who they trust and how they survive. This gives the sandbox real momentum: Athas is always creating new conflicts because the land, society, and rulers are all unstable.

It’s more than a great fantasy setting, it’s a brilliant example of campaign design built to support open-ended play through constant pressure. Again, I am not saying that Athas is a richer world than the Forgotten Realms, Planescape, Spelljammer, or anything else — it’s that the Dark Sun box was designed as a pressure-driven campaign engine in a way those settings were not."

Birthday gifts, I'm excited

Mine is the decade from the early 80s-early 90s. I was growing up at the time and the Redskins were dominant almost every season, capping it off with the legendary 91 team. The 49ers, Bears, Giants and my Redskins were all trading blows at the top of the NFC.

Montana and Marino were playing along with other all-time greats like Payton, Rice and Sanders, truly great games were played like Super Bowl XVI and XXV, and and the league struck this perfect balance of parity and personality. Dynasties felt earned, upsets felt seismic, and every January game seemed to have a few Hall of Famers writing another chapter in NFL history.

Denny O'Neil is obviously a legend. I'm attracted to the idea of a very fallible hero who routinely gets his ass kicked, makes philosophical and tactical errors, and often fails at saving his city, but keeps pushing anyway. Haven't read it though.