Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth 1976
What is a "classic" module? Taking the definition from the Six Cultures of Play article we can say that modules made during the time when the classic style of play was prevalent is a good starting point. The "classic style of play" being that style which focused primarily on posing unique and unusual challenges to players in overland hex crawls or "sprawling labyrinths".
D1, 2, 3 & S1 1978
Though back in the day I never considered these modules to be "short" on story or narrative, they were decidedly different from later endeavors that began in late '83 when Gary was being pushed out of TSR by successive degrees.
B1 In Search of the Unknown 1978
1983 is a nominal stopping off point, and more traditional styles of play were certainly on the rise. But with the publication of the Dragonlance modules and later works such as Ravenloft and Pharoah we get a decided shift from a more classical style of adventuring to a more storydriven one.
T1 Village of Hommlet & S2 White Plume Mountain both 1979
C1 & 2 Hidden Shrine & Ghost Tower 1979
And, of course, there were other modules that came after the 1983 mark that could certainly be said to have been more classic in approach than traditional. But that is a post for another time.
What I found to be the case in running these adventures, though I have not run them all, was that it really didn't matter how the characters went about attacking the challenges present, or navigating the location. At least it didn't matter storywise. A story would very naturally arise out of the player's interactions with the environment and the denizens thereof. They didn't need to follow a narrative to be "successful". A single foray into part of the location which ended with at least one party member still living and able to bring some form of treasure back to civilization was a success. It was never really a pass/fail mission.
Even though many of these adventures began as tournament modules, as the Slaver Series famously did (the telling of which in Dragon magazines subsequent to the Gen Con that year are the stuff of epic gaming tales), and had a definite winning and losing game group, the fact was you still measured the distance you got and what you were able to accomplish point wise. The A series and others clearly present a "situation" that the characters are supposed to approach and resolve. But the unfolding campaign in actual play was so potentially "sandboxy" that they played in perfectly classic style.
X1 Isle of Dread and X2 Castle Amber 1981
By '82 things were beginning to change. And we begin to see an even greater level of attention to story, or narrative arc that characters were supposed to follow in an adventure. Most of the adventures published this year were still basically classic in mode however and for this reason I would include them in what I call the classic tradition.
Danger at Dunwater U2, The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun WG4
Again, I feel the need to make clear, that these modules are not void of story or narrative. Though it was common, a la B2 Keep on the Borderlands that the setting is a massive monster lair out there waiting for the adventures to stumble across. Some of these adventures had clear goals. But the goals were more of the "save the princess" variety, than follow this chain of events to a satisfactory conclusion. There are some adventures on this list that I would personally exclude as strictly "classic" in nature, but of we take 1983 as a hard line this is what results. There are certainly others out there published after '83 that would be considered more classic than traditional as well, and some that trend towards later styles of play. These are, after all, arbitrary classifications we impose on a past that did not really understand them. They are just the kind of ideas I find useful in exploring the game and it's transformations over the years.
