I was recently listening to a conversation with Dael Kingsmill & BardicBroadcasts on Questing Beast's Youtube Channel. The discussion was titled, "Why DnD Is So Great", but the group covered many different topics. If any of you spend a lot of your life commuting or driving children all over creation, it's a great conversation to listen to in the car. Anyway, the topic of Wizards of the Coast's big campaign books came up in the second section of the video, entitled "Most nostalgic module". All of the panelists seemed to make the assertion that they're too big, too cumbersome, and too much of a plot railroad. I think it was Dael who said something to the effect of, "I don't even know what to do with them". I do use Campaign books when running games for the kids, and I'd like to talk about how I think we got here, some of the benefits of the campaign books, what I miss about the old days, and strategies for applying these books