What do the letters and numbers after an adventure name mean? (H1, P2)

Question

This may arguably be a two-fold question, but as far as I understand it, the whole coding system that WOTC adopted for the 4th edition is intrinsically connected with the worlds that were created throughout the campaign books.

One thing that I couldn't quite manage to define was the listing as well as the division of all the worlds that are contained in the 4th Edition books.

Only a few of them have I managed to enlist, such as:

• Dark Sun
• Eberron
• Forgotten Realms
• Neverwinter
• Shadowfell

I feel that there are many other worlds and this whole coding system is a way of separating the campaign and tools' books accordingly.

For instance "Orcs of Stonefang Pass" is a HS2 book, which I completely fail to understand what that HS2 means, as well as which world does that campaign belong to.

Some other examples are:

• Keep on the Shadowfell H1
• King of Trollhaunt P1
• Demons Queen's Enclave P2
• Assault on Nightwyrm Fortress P3

I can clearly see a pattern there for the previous 3 books, P1, P2 and P3, being each previous book a prequel campaign for the following one. Still, the P code is a mystery to me.

I could place a world to the for campaigns listed above, being all of them situated into the Shadowfell world, as well as "Death's Reach E1", which is an E1.

Well. I guess you get the picture. If you could help me out listing the worlds as well as getting the hang of these codes' meanings, I think it would be a great source for latter apprentices, just like me.

Answer 1

The product codes for 4e books have nothing to do with worlds. Rather, they say what tier the characters are expected to be: Heroic, Paragon, or Epic. The number after the letter is their publishing order, starting from 1, and generally means that they can be used one after the other to create an adventure series.

HS stands for Heroic Standalone, a Heroic-tier series of adventures that are not intended to be used in sequence, unlike the H1–2–3 series — i.e., each adventure "stands alone."

You can learn more about 4e adventure product codes at the Wikipedia article on D&D adventures.