Wizards of the Coast Announces the Return of D&D Modules

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At this year’s annual Gary Con in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Wizards of the Coast Vice President Dan Ayoub announced that Dungeons & Dragons modules will soon be coming back. These short, bite-sized adventures represent a fairly significant departure from WotC’s traditional D&D publication format, which has tended to favor larger campaign books that can take months or even years to play through.

So what exactly will these modern modules look like and when can we expect them to arrive? Below, we break out everything we know so far.

What exactly is a D&D module?

If you’re not familiar with the term, “module” is the original name used from the early 1970s to the late 1990s to refer to D&D’s numerous short, pre-published adventures. Each was also given an alphanumeric designation to indicate which edition and series it belonged to (for example, B2: Keep on the Borderlands). After the introduction of D&D 3rd edition in the early 2000s, however, the term was largely abandoned by then-publisher Wizards of the Coast in favor of the designation “adventure” and today is largely an anachronistic term (although it is still occasionally used in the OSR scene).

And while there is some debate as to the exact definition of a module, in general they’re regarded as single, self contained adventures that can be wrapped up in a few sessions; although some modules were connected together to make a larger campaign arc (for example the “super module” consisting of The Temple of Elemental Evil, Scourge of the Slave Lords and Queen of the Spiders). In this sense, modules are really the precursor to modern D&D one shots.

What will the new D&D modules consist of?

While there’s much we still don’t know about what this new version of modules will entail, according to D&D VP Dan Ayoub they will be part of Wizards of the Coast’s upcoming D&D Seasons initiative, which are three-to-four month time periods built around a single theme (such as the Season of Horror, the Season of Magic and the Season of Champions).

It’s also possible these new modules may be part of the upcoming D&D Encounters program, which is designed to promote short, single session adventures for use at local game stores. It’s not clear, however, if these will be available in print or available only as digital formats on D&D Beyond (although the latter option sounds more likely).

Technically, Wizards of the Coast has produced a number of adventures that fit the old school definition of a module (including recent examples like Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn, Hold Back the Dead and Scions of Elemental Evil) but these tend to be few and far between and for the most part modules we have seen are often adventures taken from existing campaign books or larger adventure anthologies.

Final Thoughts

It’s interesting to see modules fit into the new D&D franchise model and the idea of producing more bite-sized adventures and less sprawling campaign books sounds like a smart move on the part of Wizards of the Coast. Whether this is a legitimately novel approach, however, or simply a new name for an old idea, remains to be seen.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story in the days ahead and will update this page with more information as it’s made available.

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