D&D’s next anthology includes 6 classic adventures and 1 really big spaceship
Some of the best adventures released for Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition can be found in Wizards of the Coast’s popular anthologies, including Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, Keys from the Golden Vault, and my personal favorite, Candlekeep Mysteries. But D&D’s decade-long renaissance has also given us loads of classic adventures revised for new audiences, including the legendary Tomb of Horrors. This summer, fans will be given access to another new set of historic modules called Quests from the Infinite Staircase, which is full to bursting with some of the seminal role-playing game’s weirdest encounters.
To learn more about the significance of this new anthology, Polygon sat down with two D&D historians to pick their brains about what’s inside.
Asked to pick his favorite module from the book, Stu Horvath, founder and publisher of Unwinnable and the author of Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games from D&D to Mothership, was definitive in his choice.
“Easily When a Star Falls, UK4,” he said in a recent interview. “It has the best setup and introduction of any Dungeons & Dragons adventure of all time.”
[Ed. note: What follows will spoil elements of Quests from the Infinite Staircase, an anthology of adventures, some of which are nearly 50 years old.]
Written by Graeme Morris, who worked on Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara, and Star Frontiers, among other legacy settings, it begins with a confrontation with an obscure creature from the lore of D&D known as the obliviax, a moss creature that hasn’t been revised since 4th edition.
“It’s this living moss that eats people’s memories,” Horvath said. “The first encounter in When a Star Falls is the party encounters and kills an obliviax, and then it transfers its most recent memories in the form of this weird montage illustration, and a list of impressions that you read to the players. Basically that’s the impetus for the quest, because it ate the last guy and you get his
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