Organizing My Classic Adventures

Still downsizing. And this weekend I tackled my classic D&D adventures shelf.

In the photo above, from top left, clockwise:

  • Old School, Third Party: Necromancer Games and Gygax dominate this pile. I have another shelf of just Necromancer/Frog God, so this pile will merge into that.
  • D&D, First Party: These are official 3.0 and 3.5 adventures that don’t have a series code.
  • D20 Sourcebooks: Settings, items, NPCs, and general GM utility type stuff that got mixed into my classic adventures.
  • D20, Third Party: Adventures from the 2000s. (The Seven Cities book is mis-filed – it should be in the pile above it.)
  • D&D Gazetteers, 2 Piles: Also filed on the wrong shelf, and now I can move the series to my Settings shelf.
  • AD&D, First Party, 2 Piles: The core of my quest! My beloved collection of TSR adventures.

What was the purpose of my quest?

I have a few goals here.

First, I’ve been in an 80s nostalgia phase of late. Just watched Predator again. Fantastic. Now watching Tron. Also killer. So I want to paw through my old stuff.

Second, this year I’ve dialed in to great detail my GMing methodology for building and running long-term, legendary, homebrew campaigns. So I’m curious how my approach compares to the way adventures were built then, and to trace back my sources of inspiration.

Third, I’m also curious if my memories of these adventures are greater than the actual product quality.

Fourth, I always quest to improve my GMing. So I will be especially keen on reading the best of the classics and learning more from the masters.

Finally, I’m hoping to divest myself of anything I won’t use or want to re-read for fun in the future. Gotta get my shelf count down. 🙂

I’m curious what you recall as being the best adventures published during the AD&D and early d20 eras. Any game system, not just D&D. I think it’s always worthwhile studying great examples.

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
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