When many of us think of Dungeons & Dragons, we envision sprawling years-long campaigns that tell epic stories. Like The Lord of the Rings in tabletop form: us and our friends, on a great journey together. And many of D&D‘s iconic adventures fit the mold, offering epic stories that span multiple chapters and take parties years to complete. But recently, more of the new sourcebooks have featured more anthology-style, shorter adventures. This new direction initially feels a bit surprising, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it could actually be a positive for many D&D fans.
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2025 has been an experimental year for D&D in many ways. And looking through the list of new adventure sourcebooks on D&D Beyond makes one shift pretty stark. Recent releases that fit into the “adventure” category include Dragon Delves, Heroes of the Borderlands, and Adventures in Faerun. In fact, we haven’t really gotten a new, traditional style of campaign since May 2024’s Vecna: Eve of Ruin. This trend towards more anthology-style content over traditional campaign books has been a long time coming, and it has some drawbacks. But actually, I’m not as mad at it as I thought I’d be.
Anthology-Style Adventures Allow More DM & Party Flexibility… But They’re Also More Work
My first D&D experience was with a DM who was a fairly by-the-book kind of guy. He’d often read directly from the Curse of Strahd sourcebook and spent time flipping through pages to confirm canon-accurate responses to questions rather than improvising much with the source material. Of course, not every DM is like that, and some prefer to play fast and loose with the story as written. But some DMs no doubt would rather have the creative storytelling bits off their hands so they can enjoy rolling dice with friends. If there’s one thing the trend towards anthology-style books does, it puts more work on the DM if you want to tell a cohesive story.
Take Dragon Delves, for example. Each adventure is its own small, self-contained story. They do range in character levels, so you could take the same party through them in quick succession. But there’s not as much connective tissue there to explain how or why a party might find themselves in so many vastly different settings and situations. If your D&D party wants a big, epic tale, you’re going to have to work at crafting it. It both allows for and, in some ways, demands more creativity from the DM. And that can make prep more intensive, turning it into a creative writing class for those eager to map out an epic tale.
Anthologies and shorter adventures have long been a part of D&D. And 5e has already had its fair share of them with releases like Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos and Candlekeep Mysteries. However, the balance has shifted away from longer adventures towards anthology-style releases in recent years. And in 2025, we’re rounding out the first full year with the 2024 revised rules with Adventures in Faerun. So I was a little surprised to realize that this new Forgotten Realms adventure book may be an impressive tome full of information, but it’s also another anthology. Yet again, the book features many shorter scenarios that a DM and party would need to work to weave together into an epic. But maybe giving more options for shorter adventures isn’t actually a bad thing?
Scheduling is the Final Boss of D&D, And Shorter Stories Could Help
Most D&D players know the pain of trying to align schedules to get the full party at the table week after week. For those of us who work full-time and have outside obligations, playing D&D more often becomes a distant wish. But this anthology style of adventure book might actually offer a solution. What if every D&D session didn’t need to be part of the same big, extended story? No doubt many groups have trended in this direction already, opting for one-shots or shorter adventures. My own table tends to go for longer campaigns, and I’m sure many others still do, as well. But perhaps having more compelling, shorter scenarios out there can help us find new ways to fit more D&D into our lives.
As I read through yet more anthology content in Adventures in Faerun, I found myself thinking about the different groups who might enjoy each story. And that’s when I realized that being so focused on the connective tissue required to turn smaller adventures into a campaign was maybe missing the point. Shorter adventures with a beginning, middle, and end that can be reached in a few sessions could let us all play more D&D. There’s a reason one-shots are so popular, after all. If we aren’t invested in having the same people around the same table for every session for months on end, we might be able to enjoy rolling dice more often.
Instead of a long campaign, you might dip in and out of different worlds with different people at the table. You could bring the same character through those journeys, or you could experiment more with new classes and builds. And in our ever-busy lives, there’s a place for the occasional shorter run of an adventure compared with the traditional campaign many of us associate with D&D.
I’m not saying I want short, anthology-style adventures to fully take over here. But I do think there’s a place for more of that style of content to live alongside longer campaigns. Anthologies aren’t new, and they’ve always been useful for one-shots. But it seems like Wizards is increasingly leaning into offering more options like this, which give flexibility not only for the story you tell, but how you play the game. I do hope we see some more new full-fledged adventures for the 2024 5e, but I think I’ve come around a bit on having anthology-style content on offer, as well.
What do you think of adventure anthologies versus more traditional D&D campaign books? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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