D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)

Mad Zagyg said:

HUGE SPOILERS BELOW

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I've heard that HotDQ is designed for 4 PCs.

If that is true, then your spoilers mean that it's even more nuts.

Steel_Wind said:

Please appreciate that I come to this as someone who played in the session -- not as someone who ran it.

The DM has about 30+ years experience as a DM, makes up a LOT of things up on the fly and spends a lot of time differentiating the context in which combats occur and in adding the flourishes which could make a real difference in how I received those combat encounters.

What I am trying to say is that I enjoyed it a lot -- but I can't say for sure that I enjoyed what was on the page -- or maybe I just enjoyed the flourishes he added to it. I'm not able to confirm that with you either way.

I can say that we initially:

• investigated some mysterious deaths, ascribed to a disease and then later investigated to be poisoning;
• fought some kobolds and cultists in the forest who were attacking some women who were fleeing Greenest; this may be an entirely made up encounter - I just don't know. There was a fair bit of roleplaying and moral choices which transpired out of this combat by reason of the capture of the kobold and cultist and the fact we did not trust these ladies we were rescuing;
• We got to the town managing what we had left of the caravan to find it under attack by a dragon (Blue or black was unclear -- probably blue) and many cultists and kobolds. The Big Ass dragon scared the bejezus out of us and we cowered like little bitches, but we got our hero on as we saw the kobolds and cultists attacking the city and killing civilians with kids in tow that were running towards us for safety as we watched the horror spread out before us as we crested the hill and looked down on to Greenest;
• The variation in the three combats with the Cultists/kobolds was differentiated through the threats posed to the civilians and the city streets/houses where the combats took place. They got a little "samey", but that had more to do with the effectiveness of Sleep and FireBolt in 5E then it did with the tactics and environment, imo;
• We avoided a final encounter with winged kobolds when my familiar spotted them on the wing and we ran and hid to avoid them. (Did I mention we ran heroically to avoid them?);
• We also had a brief exploration of a sewer/ sally port entrance into the Keep where we dealt with 2 rat swarms in 5e. While not as large as 3.xx/PF swarms they were mostly just as annoying; and
• We ended it off with a roleplaying encounter with the local lord and his dwarven castellan.

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It sounds like you have a really awesome and creative DM, because most of that is not in the adventure as written. The first two points aren't in the book at all, and the rest seems like a really good DM's interpretation/improv of encounters that are barely described in the book.

Tony Semana said:

I find the adventure, like many of Kobold Press' / Baur's publications, very well thought out. And while it IS very railroad-y at the beginning, as to be expected as it's setting up the ToD 'story', it gets more open in the latter part of the book.

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I have a few small concerns about the adventure myself. But I agree that it opens up quite well. Episodes 2 and 4 are quite well put together.

I really hope 5E adventures are not all written with the organized play in mind. Organized play operates under fundamentally different assumptions as regular home play. I love the 5E system and intend to use it going forward. But if this (and Dragonspear Castle) are to be the norm for 5E adventures, I'm going to have to put aside my hopes for strong adventure and setting support and prepare to run a completely homebrewed campaign.

Haffrung said:

I really hope 5E adventures are not all written with the organized play in mind. Organized play operates under fundamentally different assumptions as regular home play. I love the 5E system and intend to use it going forward. But if this (and Dragonspear Castle) are to be the norm for 5E adventures, I'm going to have to put aside my hopes for strong adventure and setting support and prepare to run a completely homebrewed campaign.

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I couldn't possibly agree with this more.

Mad Zagyg said:

I couldn't possibly agree with this more.

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Yeah, me too. I don't dislike the 5e adventures at all. But I do hope they deviate from the organised play mentality.

rastus_burne said:

Yeah, me too. I don't dislike the 5e adventures at all. But I do hope they deviate from the organised play mentality.

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Given how difficult it can be to find an Adventurer's League game due to poor group search and coordination tools on the D&D website or the lack of Encounters games with vacancies, putting too many eggs in this basket would be a particularly stupid thing to do.

Braumeister said:

Given how difficult it can be to find an Adventurer's League game due to poor group search and coordination tools on the D&D website or the lack of Encounters games with vacancies, putting too many eggs in this basket would be a particularly stupid thing to do.

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Yeah, it strikes me as odd that such a prominent company can have such an appalling website. The new layout is cool, but in terms of usability it's surprisingly archaic.

GX.Sigma said:

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It sounds like you have a really awesome and creative DM, because most of that is not in the adventure as written. The first two points aren't in the book at all, and the rest seems like a really good DM's interpretation/improv of encounters that are barely described in the book.

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Well, it is certainly starting to look that way.

The good news is, minor adaptations to breathe life into these things aren't all that hard to do (if you know what you are doing).

The bad news is, not every DM has that skillset.

I'm going to have to withhold judgment on the adventure as published at this point. It may, indeed, suck as written.

The bright side is that it doesn't mean that it need suck when played.

Hi ya-

I am also running HotDQ with 4 players. The party consists of 2 Clerics, one of Kord (Greyhawk) and the other Celestian (Greyhawk) one Wizard and one Rogue, there is a fith player but his schedule could be hectic at times and he play a LG Human Paladin of St Cuthbert.

As the DM in the OP did I to expanded the encounters in HotDQ.

******Spoilers Alert*******













In my game, we are going on the 3rd session and the players will now be starting HotDQ this week. The previous adventures were to build up towards the Dragon Cults raid, get the players to know the NPC in Hommlet (yes the campaign is in Greyhawk) and instead of having just a raid, lets make it a seven samurai type of adventure at start, a low level epic set piece battle where the Dragon cult attacks a hasty defense.

As I said I ran two sessions prior to this coming adventure, I wanted to get the PC's up to 3rd level, I felt personally if ran as is, might be too tough on 1st level PC's. The First session had the players leaving Greyhawk City and travailing to Hommlet to help the Priests of St Cuthbert deal with a demon fish that has been plaguing the nearby Donitz River Basin. (it turned out to be a larger then usual Tuna, a big tuna lol) On the road to Hommlet the players come a cart and several dead Goblins around the cart and two Owl bears feasting on them. A fight ensues with the Owe Bears getting beat down. Flank attacks with rogues is brutal coupled with sneak sneak attacks.

The players find raiding plans in the cart as well as loot from various farmsteads, the plans are fake and are to make the Hommlet militia think that the raiders will attack in a couple of days time, this is not the case, the Dragon cult raiders plan to attack on the Feast of St Crispens day, one of the holiest days for St Cuthberts followers.

Ill say one thing about players, they are a greedy bunch, the Rogue player says he is going to try and track where the Owebear lair is, no skill in tracking so I had him use his survival skill with a high DC of 18 or better. Of course he roll a nat 20 and finds the owebear lair, well I'm the DM so lets throw a wrench into the players plans, they find a baby Owebear in the owebear lair. Plus a magical short sword and Amulate. So what would you do with a baby Owebear?

The players reach Hommlet with baby and cart of loot. The Players try to pawn off the baby owebear on the Druids but they refuse to take the creature in. So the Paladin turns to his church and asks Father Flanagan (all preists of St Cuthbert have Irish names lol) if the Church would take of the Owebear, Father Flanagan says sure, it would be a great to teach the ideal's of St cuthbert to this creature. Or just have it as a mascot for the Church's local soccer matchs.

In our second session the players find out that there is an advance party of Dragon Cultists raiding the local farming areas. The players find that the these raiders are hiding out in an old cave but the Boss in charge is a Lizard man Monk (5th lv Monk). A few encounters ensue with the players overcoming the Caves guards but the fight with the monk was epic, Flurry of Blows and stunning as bonus attacks are nice spoilers to a rogues sneak attack. Anyway the players defeat the monk finally and recover some of the lost loot and return to Hommlet to rest and enjoy the feast of St Crispens day on the morrow.

So far running these adventures has been nice and nostalgic, especially running Hommlet and the Welcome Wench Inn. My personal thoughts here is that the HotDQ is a brilliant adventure with an excellent combo of both wilderness, town and dungeon encounters. Cant wait to see and read the next installment of the campaign from WoTC.


Scott