New D&D Sourcebooks Keep Leaning Into Shorter Adventures, And That Might Be a Good Thing

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Many people picture massive, years-long storylines when they think of Dungeons & Dragons, similar to a tabletop version of The Lord of the Rings – a grand adventure shared with friends. While classic D&D adventures often fit this mold, recent sourcebooks are increasingly offering shorter, self-contained adventures. At first, this shift seemed unusual, but I’ve come to believe it could be a good thing for many D&D players.

2025 has been a year of changes for Dungeons & Dragons. If you look at the new adventure books available on D&D Beyond, a clear pattern emerges. Recent releases like Dragon Delves, Heroes of the Borderlands, and Adventures in Faerun are more like collections of smaller adventures. We haven’t seen a full, traditional campaign book since Vecna: Eve of Ruin in May 2024. This move towards shorter adventure collections instead of longer campaigns has been happening for a while, and it does have some downsides. However, I’m surprisingly okay with this new approach.

Anthology-Style Adventures Allow More DM & Party Flexibility… But They’re Also More Work

My first time playing Dungeons & Dragons was with a Dungeon Master who liked to stick closely to the rules and story. He often read directly from the Curse of Strahd book and spent a lot of time checking details to make sure everything was correct, rather than making things up as we played. Not all DMs are like that—some prefer to change the story and improvise. But some DMs probably prefer not to do a lot of creative storytelling and would rather just enjoy playing the game with their friends. Recently, there’s been a trend towards adventure collections, and these actually require more work from the DM if they want to create a connected, meaningful story.

Consider Dragon Delves as an example. Each adventure is a complete story on its own, and while you can play them one after another with the same characters, there isn’t much to naturally connect the different locations and events. If your Dungeons & Dragons group wants a large, ongoing story, you’ll need to build that connection yourself. This gives Dungeon Masters more freedom, but also requires more effort and imagination when preparing the game – it can feel like writing a story!

Dungeons & Dragons has always included collections of short adventures, and the current edition (5e) has seen several, like Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos and Candlekeep Mysteries. Lately, though, there have been more of these shorter adventure releases than longer, full campaigns. Next year, 2025, will mark a full year using the updated rules from 2024, and the new adventure book, Adventures in Faerun, continues this trend. While it’s a substantial book with lots of information, it’s another collection of shorter scenarios that Dungeon Masters will need to connect to create a larger story. Perhaps offering more options for quick adventures isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Scheduling is the Final Boss of D&D, And Shorter Stories Could Help

Many Dungeons & Dragons players struggle to find a time when everyone can play together regularly. For those of us with busy lives, playing D&D as often as we’d like can feel impossible. But this book, which offers self-contained adventures, might be a solution. What if each D&D session didn’t have to advance one long story? Lots of groups already play one-shot adventures or shorter campaigns, and while my group usually prefers longer ones, having more exciting, shorter options could help us all fit more D&D into our schedules.

While reading through the stories in Adventures in Faerun, I started thinking about who would enjoy each one. It made me realize I’d been too focused on linking these smaller adventures together into a long campaign. Maybe the real benefit is that these shorter adventures – ones we can finish in just a few game sessions – would let us all play D&D more often. It makes sense that one-shot adventures are so popular! If we don’t need the same players at every session for months, we could potentially play much more frequently.

Rather than committing to one lengthy campaign, you could enjoy shorter adventures in various settings with different groups of players. You can continue playing the same character across these adventures, or try out new characters and playstyles. With our busy schedules, these shorter adventures offer a great alternative to the long, traditional campaigns many people think of when they play D&D.

I don’t want short, self-contained adventures to completely replace longer campaigns. However, I think there’s definitely room for both. These shorter adventures, often called anthologies, have always been great for one-time games. It seems Wizards of the Coast is offering more of these options, which is good because it gives players flexibility in both the stories they tell and how they play the game. I still hope to see some full-length adventures for 5th Edition in 2024, but I’ve started to appreciate having these anthology-style options available, too.

Do you prefer adventure collections or standard D&D campaign books? Share your thoughts in the comments and join the discussion on the ComicBook Forum!

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2025-11-09 23:11