To mark the 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, Quests from the Infinite Staircase updates six older adventures for Fifth Edition. And when I say “older,” I mean it – rather than a thematic collection of adventures, the offerings in Quest for the Infinite Staircase are bound together in that none of them was first published later than 1984. In some ways this gives a glimpse into the past but, thankfully, some of the adventures are significantly updated to avoid things like lots and lots of empty rooms that the characters have to trudge through before finding anything interesting. The six adventures are:

• The Lost City (1982)
• When A Star Falls (1984)
• Beyond the Crystal Cave (1983)
• Pharaoh (1982)
• The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (1976/1982)
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (1976)

They can be played all in a row to form a campaign (levels 1-12), although this is accomplished by making The Lost City award more levels that one might otherwise think was reasonable. The thread proposed to tie them together – the Infinite Staircase and the genie Najas – is really only pertinent if you’re insistent that there officially be some sort of reason why your characters are bouncing around from world to world going on otherwise unrelated adventures.

Up here I will assume that the reader doesn’t really want any sort of spoilers, so I will be very brief, but you can find a more thorough discussion down below the spoiler bar.

• The Lost City, once part of a learn-to-play set, asks the characters to delve into a city buried beneath the desert sands to learn what has become of its people and their gods;
• When a Star Falls, produced by the UK branch of TSR, sends the characters to find a fallen star to answer a sage’s plea;
• In Beyond the Crystal Cave (another UK offering), the characters are presented with two families with a history of rivalry who now just want to get their Romeo and Juliet inspired children back;
• In the bluntly-named Pharaoh the characters must free the soul of, you guessed it, an ancient Egyptian style pharaoh;
• The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is a search for an archmage’s pile of lost treasure; and
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks introduced science fantasy to Dungeons & Dragons, with the characters exploring the wreckage of a crashed spaceship.

Pharaoh is an amazingly clever “dungeon” – for me it’s the highlight of the book and well worth playing. When a Star Falls features several interesting adventure locations and a good plot. And Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is fun if you like the extra technological twist to your fantasy RPG night. The Lost City is probably the weakest of the adventures, as its setup suffers from some structure flaws. Beyond the Crystal Cave and The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth are fine at what they are trying to be (which I’m being vague about because spoilers), but both lean heavily into very different  styles of play that not all groups will be enamored of.

So, from my point of view, that gives Quests from the Infinite Staircase two adventures that any group will enjoy, and several others that will work well if their particular premises appear to your group (and given the differing styles, I’m guessing that most groups will go for at least two out of those three). That a pretty good success rate, even with a weak start in The Lost City.

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All right, now that we’re down here in spoiler land, let me say a bit more about the adventures.

The Lost City has the characters exploring a buried ziggurat from the top, so there’s a cool element where they can figure out what sort of structure they are exploring. There are several factions within the ziggurat that the characters could join – the bad guys, and then three sets of worshippers of forgotten gods who are too fractious to just team up and fight the evil ones. Unfortunately, the presence of multiple active factions seeking new recruits within a seemingly forgotten structure doesn’t really have a good explanation. The characters could theoretically join these factions, but there isn’t really any reason for them to and they have no relevance outside of this dungeon so it’s not like there’s going to be ongoing campaign impact. The dungeon parts are all right and figuring out what happened here is fun, but I think the factions kind of make everything weird and detract from those better parts of the adventure structure.

When A Star Falls has some less straightforward elements than most older adventures. The characters do not receive the details of their mission in a traditional way, but rather from a plot-device of a creature that drains memories when it kills and then sends them into the characters when they kill it. This puts the characters onto a path of intrigue where they have a couple of adventure locations to visit that don’t have to be tackled in a specific order (although there is an order that works out better). The characters will be tested and fail if they’re committed to being looting murder-hobos, which to me is always a good lesson. And the small derro lair is distinctive because of the extensive damage that was recently done to it, placing the characters into a less obvious delve that might be expected. Ultimately the characters must take their fallen star to the sage who needed it, except there’s been a coup at the sage’s tower, which lets the characters used subterfuge to figure out what’s going on and force out some bad guys. Then there’s yet another element of the adventure as the characters have to make use of the fallen star, which involves some fighting but also some talking, another not-what-you-were-expecting mini-dungeon, and possibly a dragon. There’s really a lot going on in When a Star Falls, and it’s all pretty solid.

Beyond the Crystal Cave is unusual in it’s almost total lack of combat. Sure, sure, there are a couple of required combat encounters, but almost the entire adventure is exploring around in wonder at the fey domain to which our Romeo and Juliet have escaped. Some groups will find this a nice change of pace, but others may be left itching to draw their swords at least a bit more. And it buts more weight on the DM’s shoulders to keep trying to invoke that sense of oddity and exploration across the entire adventure.

As I note above, Pharaoh is, in my opinion, the highlight of Quests from the Infinite Staircase. It’s a really, really great dungeon delve with a unique layout, interesting traps, clever puzzles, and distinctive features. There are teleporters, hidden entrances, confusing mists, water to swim through, a breakable wall, gravity reversal, and story elements to discover.

The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth is one really big dungeon delve in search of Iggwilv/Tasha’s lost treasure. If you’re looking for a combat-fest for 9th/10th-level characters, this is the adventure for you. It’s not entirely combat – there are certainly traps and environmental hazards as well – but the focus is on entering the next cavern room and killing what’s there. Any the characters will be forced to enter most of those rooms, because the main puzzle of the second/final floor is that there are six entrances to the final room (all from different directions and different tunnels) but the characters will be teleported away to somewhere else in the cavern until they’ve used all six of the entrances. The big ‘surprise’ at the end is that Tasha’s “greatest treasure” is her daughter. You might think that this is some sort of twist and there’s an interesting story with the daughter, but she’s just there to guard the treasure so the party just kills her. Cool fight, but it seems like Tasha could have just put a demon or something in there instead of condemning her daughter to an eternity locked in a big sphere waiting for adventurers to come and kill her.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is, like The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, a pretty sizeable “dungeon,” but one that’s thematically distinctive and has some story to it. It’s also the adventure that’s most clearly been tightened up from the original. One addition is a computer “friend” that provides the characters with some quests, giving them direction in what is a pretty open exploration setting. (The characters can still go explore whatever, but the direction helps reduce analysis paralysis.) There are color-coded keycards and antigravity tubes to access different parts of the ship, robots and androids that may be helpful or deadly, grenades and laser rifles, technological trinkets to puzzle fantasy characters, radiation, lots of vegepygmies, and the first appearance of the froghemoth. Ultimately the supercomputer turns out to be murderous (because of course it is), and the characters hopefully save the last living member of the crew.

Ultimately, I think that Pharaoh is great and When A Star Falls is pretty good – I think that pretty much any D&D group will enjoy them. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks should be fun as long as your players think that the idea of having a spaceship crash in a D&D game is neat. Beyond the Crystal Cave and the Lost Caverns of Tsojcantch are, I think, a bit more niche. If your group is up for an almost combat-less adventure (Crystal Cave) or a long, combat-heavy dungeon (Tsojcantch) then they will enjoy the applicable adventure, but I don’t think either one has a enough going for it that it will be great for groups that aren’t already inclined towards that style of play. The Lost City has some high points, but it has some real flaws, and it’s not something I would want to use as an introductory adventure – it’s serviceable, but I would rather start at 4th level or grab a different level 1-3 adventure from another source. Still, there’s more than enough in Quests from the Infinite Staircase to make it worth picking up.