With the endless D&D 2024 talk, I actually forgot that Quests From the Infinite Staircase released today

Old school Dungeons & Dragons was super weird. There were octopus-headed cosmonauts. Squares of acidic Jell-O gelatin. Floating  balls of criminal-minded eyestalks. Those things, despite their weirdness, became definitive of D&D. Today, we know what mindflayers, gelatinous cubes, and beholders are because D&D dared to be super weird. Somehow it worked.

Back in 1976, just before Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope would redefine science-fantasy forever, a Midwestern wargame designer named Gary Gygax was introducing science-fantasy to D&D players. D&D was already established as a fantasy brand filled with, well, dungeons and dragons. But Gygax also wanted spaceships and lasers. He did it with a subversively titled adventure called Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I mean, does that sounds like the title of something with spaceships and lasers in it to you?

Along with five other remastered old school adventures, the futuristic Expedition to the Barrier Peaks appears in the newly released adventure anthology, Quests From the Infinite Staircase. If you forgot that Infinite Staircase was launching today, me too! That's because the last trailer released for it was a month ago. And then the floodgates opened for D&D 2024 Core Rulebook info.

The Infinite Staircase itself is a "dreamlike expanse" with doors punching their way into a bunch of different fantasy (and science-fantasy) worlds. The staircase is overseen by a genie who fulfills people's wishes with the aid of adventurers like you. It's an appropriately super weird premise for super weird 1st Edition D&D adventures that have all been revamped for 5th Edition players and...modernized sensibilities and cultural sensitivities, let's say. 

Look, the '70s were also a super weird time (I could say the same thing about the '20s that we're living in). But the '70s saw some things in a better light, and some things in a worse light. Publisher Wizards of the Coast has done its best to preserve the best that era's adventures had to offer, while retouching or discarding what needed to go.

Quests From the Infinite Staircase can be run as standalone adventures, or you can run them cover to cover for a 1st through 13th level campaign. There are Wikipedia pages on all these classic adventures, if you want to read up on what you're mostly getting into:

• The Lost City – Explore a buried ziggurat, dig up the remnants of a forgotten realm. Face that unkillable unicorn cyclops tentacled godlike thing.
• When a Star Falls – A cosmic adventure where you rescue a fallen star and defend prophecy.
• Beyond the Crystal Caves – A Feywild romance with two Romeo & Juliet-inspired lovers. There's an enemy that can turn you into a tree.
• Pharaoh – Go tomb raiding, dodge curse bullets, and "bring peace" to a pharaoh's ghost.
• The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth – I think it's pronounced with a silent T. And a silent -th. Explore Iggwilv's old lair (I can't pronounce Iggwilv either; that's probably why renamed her Tasha, as in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything).
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks – Set on a crashed spaceship, with robots, future tech weapons, and a "deceptively cheerful artificial antagonist." It's also comedian Stephen Colbert's favorite adventure ever—and that dude is even more of a D&D nerd than you.

You'll fight some super weird bosses along the way. Like Zargon, a tentacled cyclops with a mouth like South Park's Terrance and Phillip, and a sword-like unicorn horn for some reason. Or the granddaddy of all froghemoths. Which is exactly what it sounds like. 

You can buy digital or hardcopy (or both at a discount) versions of Quests From the Infinite Staircase on D&D Beyond. But only if you're done clutching your pearls and can accept that D&D isn't restricted to pure fantasy.