In the beginning, there were no published adventures. And then there were.

The initial offerings tended to be in the terms of “Here’s a location. Here are its inhabitants. You figure out what to do with this product.”

And then things changed. Adventures were designed more with goals in mind – the players were in them for a reason! And more structure formed around them. Most notably in the Dragonlance series of adventures, which told a single story in twelve instalments (plus extras). But even before that, you can see in the Giants modules this idea of a goal and a path towards that goal.

How strict are the boundaries on that path? When they are very strict, then we tend to call that “railroading”. Especially when it involves doing something that the players would not choose for themselves.

I think the first half of DL2 Dragons of Flame is incredibly strict railroading. It is also, possibly, the adventure that contains the longest continuous sequence of boxed text during which the characters cannot make meaningful choices. Or, really, any choice. (The characters are captured by the dragonarmies and taken on a trek until they are rescued).

After that? The raid on Pax Tharkas? Not that railroaded. But a lot of people do not make it that far.

The end of A3 Aerie of the Slave Lords is railroaded: the party MUST be captured and put in the dungeon for A4 to work.

Below that level of strict railroading, you move into extremely linear adventures. Adventures that have only one path through and no branches. Road trip adventures are often of this sort (you have encounters along the road, which you cannot bypass). But you have small freedoms in the encounters.

Then there are just linear adventures that require one thing to happen after another. Hoard of the Dragon Queen has you following the path of the treasure, so of COURSE it is linear in form. However, in each section, you have a wide variety of options as to how to handle things. It is just that the paths out converge to take you to the next section.

After that, you get into node-based design and “sandbox” play (whatever that means – it is different to everyone).

There is this occasional desire with a sandbox to have absolutely everything mapped out in advance.

The games that come closest to this breadth of sandbox style – where everything is predefined in advance – are computer games. And even they have rails for individual missions. Some are far more obvious than others. I’ve been playing Grand Theft Auto V recently and am amazed at how little I can deviate in a mission. Yeah, GTA-V may have all these sandbox elements, but the moment you try to get onto the story, the rails grab you.

If you want a broad sandbox, it is pretty certain you will need to improvise encounters during play. Random Encounter tables aid this by providing limits on what you can find. So that things make sense. And, honestly, can lead to amazing play. Or awful play.

I am not personally fond of the “I move this encounter to where it makes sense” mode of play. Despite improvising encounters all the time. I like the sense of there being a defined world that the players can explore, even if it has undefined elements that are expressed through random tables.

I am just horrible at prepping for the sessions these days.

I am pretty convinced that there is a sizable chunk of players who LIKE defined stories that they play through. I think the Dragonlance adventures, if released today, would do better in a world used to the idea of story-arc D&D rather when they were released. Some of the adventures don’t hold up and need reworking, but others I think are fascinating. (Sales of Pathfinder APs indicate that the form has legs. Consider that Paizo mostly discontinued their one-shot line of adventures).

And a major part of the reason for these adventures is to reduce the burden on DMs. Creating an entire living, breathing world is a lot of work.

One of the things I have liked about the current range of D&D adventures is that Wizards have experimented with the form. The adventures are not all alike. I pay a lot of attention to the structure of adventures, and they keep trying new things. Not all the experiments are successful (Descent into Avernus is the one I really dislike), but enough are.

And not all the adventures are for everyone. I personally think Tyranny of Dragons is one of the top adventures of all time for D&D. I have run it three times, and it’s been an amazing success each time. But I know that many DMs struggle with it and dislike it. I’m lukewarm on Tomb of Annihilation, but I have friends who absolutely adore it.

Of the current adventures, I would say that Rime of the Frostmaiden is the closest to pure sandbox, even though it has scripted elements. And it has all the challenges for the DM that a sandbox has: lots of details to keep track of, and it works best when the DM is proactively using the villains. (Princes of the Apocalypse would be similar).

I mean – it is 320 pages. Yes, there are bigger adventures, but not many!