D&D 5E Companion Thread to 5E Survivor - Adventures

[Eyes of Nine]

It's not in the bottom half of the published modules, that's for sure. It's loads better than Hoard of the Dragon Queen, for example, which is somehow still on there. But it's a little bit of a railroad. My preference is modules where the PCs have more say in how the module goes. Tomb of Annihilation, for instance, there's a huge variance in how to get to the end. Curse of Stahd involves a lot of direct manipulation of the PCs by the villain, funneling the PCs. I've seen it done very well, but I understand people preferring a different style of adventure. Hoard, for instance, is absolutely terrible in this facet of adventure design. That's why I really, really like Murder in Baldur's Gate, which similarly involves villains manipulating the heroes, but in a less-overpowered way.

It's why I'm upvoting Tomb, I'm running it now, and have played it, and it's way fun. And the sandboxy middle part is great.

 

[MockingBird]

I loved Murder in Baldurs Gate. It was a great read. My own failings as a DM ruined that adventure when I tried to run it. Well, I won't say it was ruined. I'm just not good at running city adventures or intrigue.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Is MiBG for 4e? Or 5e?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Oh, reading the description on DMs Guild

Many sessions had no combat — and might even have no dice rolling! This left a lot on the shoulders of the GMs, who had to figure out how to respond when players offered their freeform responses to the week's dilemmas.

I can see how it could have been quite a load... And depending on when you ran it, there might not have even been the core books out yet for 5e!

 

[MockingBird]

Oh, reading the description on DMs Guild



I can see how it could have been quite a load... And depending on when you ran it, there might not have even been the core books out yet for 5e!

It came out during the Next playtest. It gave you 3.5e, 4e, and Next stats. It requires the DM (and to a certain extent the players) to be fairly familiar with Baldurs Gate. It had some good encounters and true to the description you give they could be handled without combat. There was also things going on in the background or would happen at certain times. The material it gives you is great and really brings Baldurs Gate to life. A good DM could make this a really fun adventure. I admire the adventure, it was just a bit more than I could competently run.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

It came out during the Next playtest. It gave you 3.5e, 4e, and Next stats. It requires the DM (and to a certain extent the players) to be fairly familiar with Baldurs Gate. It had some good encounters and true to the description you give they could be handled without combat. There was also things going on in the background or would happen at certain times. The material it gives you is great and really brings Baldurs Gate to life. A good DM could make this a really fun adventure. I admire the adventure, it was just a bit more than I could competently run.

I wasn't there obviously, but I bet you are being hard on yourself...

That said, you are making it sound like a really cool adventure

 

[MockingBird]

I wasn't there obviously, but I bet you are being hard on yourself...

That said, you are making it sound like a really cool adventure

Thank you!

It's worth checking out. I definitely don't want to scare people away from it. I'll definitely give it another go in the future.

 

[RealAlHazred]

It came out during the Next playtest. It gave you 3.5e, 4e, and Next stats. It requires the DM (and to a certain extent the players) to be fairly familiar with Baldurs Gate. It had some good encounters and true to the description you give they could be handled without combat. There was also things going on in the background or would happen at certain times. The material it gives you is great and really brings Baldurs Gate to life. A good DM could make this a really fun adventure. I admire the adventure, it was just a bit more than I could competently run.

I agree, I think you're being too hard on yourself. I am not really a fan of the Forgotten Realms, have read none of the novels (well, almost none), and have played none of the Baldur's Gate games. But you don't really need any of that. The city gazetteer gives you everything you really need on the locations and NPCs, and the personalities are great -- easy to get into and run with. You can see why each participant is doing what they're doing, and what they want to manipulate the PCs into doing, and it all really works.

If your players had fun with it, you did it exactly right! My players actually got to the "secret" fourth ending, which wasn't exactly unexpected for me, but it fit really REALLY well, and other players had a blast at the very end.

It came out well before the PHB, and was therefore more of a challenge, but it was a blast to run and I plan to run it again at my FLGS once I can start face-to-face games again.

 

[Vael]

Shocked to see Hoard still here ... running it kinda sucked and I have players that are the type to just follow the railroad, but this had me feeling stretched trying to make sense of it.

 

[Vraal]

Yeah, even as an avowed Strahd-hater, I'm still surprised how this is playing out.

And even more so that Light of Xaryxis is still there, and doing quite well, given how negative the reception to the Spelljammer book seemed to be at the time.