Historians talk about their favorite adventures from D&D’s Quests from the Infinite Staircase

Some of the best adventures released for Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition can be found in Wizards of the Coast’s popular anthologies, including Traveling through the shining citadel, Keys from the Golden Vaultand my personal favorite, Candle mysteries. But D&D’s decade-long renaissance has also given us plenty of classic adventures revisited for new audiences, including the legendary Tomb of horrors. This summer, fans will have access to a new series of historical modules called Quests of the Infinite Trapwhich is packed with some of the weirdest encounters from the groundbreaking role-playing game.

To find out 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 choose his favorite module from the book, Stu Horvath, founder and publisher of Can’t win and the author of Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground: A Guide to Tabletop Roleplaying Games, from D&D to Mothershipwas final in his choice.

“Easy 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. remark: What follows will spoil elements of it Quests of the Infinite Trapan anthology of adventures, some of which are almost 50 years old.)

Written by Graeme Morris, whose credits include Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Mystara, and Star Frontiers, it begins with a confrontation with an obscure creature from D&D lore known as the obliviax, a moss creature that has not been revisited since 4th edition .

“It’s this living moss that eats people’s memories,” Horvath said. “The first meeting in When a star falls is that the party encounters and kills an obliviax, then transfers its most recent memories in the form of this strange montage illustration and a list of impressions that you read to the players. That’s actually the impetus for the quest, because it ate the last guy and you get his memories. It’s so weird and bizarre, but no one has ever done something so weird, and it uses a really interesting monster that you can only find in Dungeons & Dragons.”

Like all adventures Quests of the Infinite Trapyou can still find the original When a star falls for sale as a PDF or softcover book at The Dungeon Master’s Guild.

Bestselling author Jon Peterson (Heroes’ party, Game Wizards: The Epic Battle of Dungeons & Dragons, The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977) also has a soft spot for the British authors of the original D&D publisher TSR. He called Past the Crystal Cave like The Lost Caves of Tsojcanth for special recognition, but the big draw for him is that of the late Jim Ward Expeditions to the Barrier Peaks.

“Barrier peaks goes back (to) 1976, where it was the tournament at the second Origins Convention that (D&D co-creator Gary) Gygax hosted,” he said. “It contained material that (…) Ward had developed for his game, Metamorphosis Alphathat was aimed at colony ships.”

Also called “generation ships,” these were common ships in popular science fiction at the time. The idea was that these enormous spaceships should travel so far that several generations of people could grow up during the journey. It’s a trope that’s now common in franchises like Fallout, as well as the hit Apple TV Plus show Silo.

“The idea that one of these could crash into the world of Greyhawk,” said Peterson, “half buried underground (would be) something of a dungeon, something of a labyrinth, a place you can go through and plunder the world . coming up with rooms and all kinds of strange tools that you might not see elsewhere, I think that’s pretty cool.”

Because it was a colony ship, Peterson said, the interior included a huge agricultural space intended to grow food for colonists on the long voyage. All that biological material provided a great setting for strange mutations, especially one monster called “wolf-in-sheep’s clothing.”

“(It’s this) little bunny sitting on a tree stump,” Peterson said. “Look at the cute little bunny sitting on a tree stump! Then it turns out that the whole rabbit and the stump are part of this larger organism that you get as you approach it in an attempt to communicate with the rabbit.

Quests of the Infinite Trap is now available for pre-order on the Wizards of the Coast website, where it includes additional digital content and a two-week digital early release period for $69.99. You can also pre-order it from your friendly local game storeor pick it up online at stores like Amazon for less. It is designed for characters from level 1 to level 13, and the retail release is scheduled for July 16.