D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen - a solid D effort.

[Psikerlord#]

I havent read the OP because I may end up playing this module.

But I DM more than I play, so I flipped through the first section in the shop, to get a feel for it.

I really liked what I saw. A cool attack on the town, random goings on as the PCs run about trying to help, or stay alive, or whatever the hell they want to do. A few bits of boxed text here and there, very good. To me, there was a lot left to the DM to decide, and I liked that very much. My feeling was it was a very flexible bunch of encounters all mashed into one location, and could do in all sorts of directions. Which appeals to me. I noticed some comments above about teh dragon and not killing the PCs outright. That's the sort of thing which is up to the DM in my opinion, depending on what the PCs do, so I dont find that a problem (in my case, I'd just ignore it, and do what seems realistic, and if some PCs die, tough luck! Reroooooll!).

Having said all that, I really loved the Isle of Dread module they redid for the playtest. I hope they redo all the best old modules. Just that would keep us going to we'd had enough of 5e.

 

[MerricB]

[MENTION=5868]Olgar Shiverstone[/MENTION] (and others feeling this adventure is a railroad), I'm curious what you thought of [MENTION=85633]Neuroglyph[/MENTION]'s recent review of Hoard of the Dragon Queen?

Because it looks like we are getting vastly different reviews on the same dang product. Some folks say its a railroad, others that it's a sandbox!

It's basically impossible to do a sandbox for any adventure where there's a strong story involved. However, that doesn't mean that individual episodes of the adventures can't allow the players a variety of approaches (and the DM a variety of approaches in how to handle them). It doesn't change the fact that certain things have to happen to lead the characters onto the next episode, but it does mean that the adventure isn't 100% forced.

The first episode of Hoard of the Dragon is a good example of this style of design. Let's look at its structure:

Introduction: The players come to Greenest for a variety of reasons and discover it's under attack by a dragon, kobolds and humans.

Opportunities for Adventure: The DM presents the players with a number of adventure opportunities: The players see the cultists burning the mill. They encounter villagers needing escort to the keep. The dragon attacks the keep. The cultists attack the church which has villagers inside. A warrior of the cult challenges the defenders to send out a champion.

The players can react to any of these events. They can ignore them entirely. They can wander around the village attacking random cultist encounters. There's a general expectation that the group will meet the Protector of the village and offer to help (because, in the end, this is an adventure about heroes), but there's a lot of freedom for the players in DM in which encounters to use and how to approach each encounter.

Conclusion and Continuation: After six hours or thereabouts, the cultists finally cease their attack. The player characters, assuming they survived, gratefully go to rest and, the next morning, the Protector asks for their help investigating the cultist camp.

The link between episodes is going to be a railroad. It's extremely hard for it not to be. The problem really comes when the link doesn't make sense at all to the players. I haven't read the later episodes in much detail, so I'm not going to comment on how the links work, but that's the theory behind it. However, in the first episode, there's a wide variety of options available to the players.

The biggest trouble Episode 1 has may not be a problem. Quite simply, the opposition is overwhelming. Most groups simply cannot fight for as long as the adventure allows. Part of this is due to the monster stats being in flux during the writing of the adventure (they got tougher towards the end), so the suggested groups could well be too tough for the players. But another large part of it is that it is meant to be overwhelming. The players are meant to come out of it thinking the Cult of the Dragon is a threat. That they were lucky to survive. (Perhaps they didn't all survive - that's quite possible). My own feeling is that the monsters are indeed too tough, so that the party is depleted too soon. The party "losing" is not a problem for me, it's how fast they lose that is the problem. As a result, I've upped the healing available to the party in my running of the adventure, but by the end of the first episode, they're still going to be in trouble.

That's my view of it, anyway! I do know I'm very much enjoying running the opening stages of the adventure, and I hope the later stages are as enjoyable!

Cheers!

 

[dd.stevenson]

It's basically impossible to do a sandbox for any adventure where there's a strong story involved. However, that doesn't mean that individual episodes of the adventures can't allow the players a variety of approaches (and the DM a variety of approaches in how to handle them). It doesn't change the fact that certain things have to happen to lead the characters onto the next episode, but it does mean that the adventure isn't 100% forced.

Although I'm not a huge fan of his adventure designs, I really like [MENTION=23937]James Jacobs[/MENTION] analogy of a "sandbox on rails."

 

[Quickleaf]

The link between episodes is going to be a railroad. It's extremely hard for it not to be. The problem really comes when the link doesn't make sense at all to the players. I haven't read the later episodes in much detail, so I'm not going to comment on how the links work, but that's the theory behind it. However, in the first episode, there's a wide variety of options available to the players.

Thanks for the downlow. Yes, it is those "links" that I'm most curious about.

It's only moderately challenging to write an isolated adventure with lots of cool meaningful options for the players. It's far more difficult to write a series of connected adventures (or one long adventure with multiple episodes) with lots of cool meaningful options for the players.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I dont mind those kinds of links between episode most of the time. Ultimately the players can just ignore them and go on side treks if they like, or they can follow the link if they want to keep on with that story.

Typically, I am not a fan of "big", continuing modules (in the vein of the old module boxed sets like Undermountain). But where they are flexible enough to allow side treks, etc - ie it isnt an always urgent time frame - then its fine. And frankly, most of the time, the DM can resolve any urgency issues even if they are there. That way the "railroad" aspect of it is minimalized, and the players can do whatever is most interesting to them.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t have the book, so I can only comment on what I read:

Why is it so bad that there is a scripted fight at the beginning of an adventure?

Usually that early, the characters have not made any trouble to the cultists. The actual guard may be more important targets than some random lot, barely knowing how to fight or cast magic.

Why should the dragon waste its powerful breath at some rubble from the streets instead of the trained soldiers?

I can guess which mindset is behind this line of thinking:
Players characters are the only persons that matter, everyone else is unimportant. And the DM has to always challenge the players fairly, because the PCs should be able to solve every problem.

This in fact is the opposite of what in my opinion should happen at the beginning. If my DM would specifically attack me with a dragon, I would ask him, why of all the more important targets would he pick me out to kill.

So I have not read more from your review, but it seems to boil down to playing style.

 

[Lanefan]

Having glanced over this adventure the other day and now having read the OP's review, I wonder:

Is the adventure's underlying problem simply one of being too big and-or trying to do too much?

I mean sure, they wanted the first adventure for 5e to be a big hard-bound book, but I find those sort of adventures don't work so well unless you a) commit to the whole mini-path they present, and b) either commit to the backstory as presented (which in this case means committing to a boatload of FR canon) or be ready to do a lot of work to fix it.

Some are comparing it to 4e's Keep on the Shadowfell; and while KotS wasn't always brilliant it really did have one great thing going for it: it was at its heart a simple dungeon module that one could (and I did) plop in to pretty much any setting and-or locale and have it play as intended. [disclaimer: I ran it converted to 1e after which it certainly did *not* play as intended; but that's more the system's fault than the module's]

I wonder if Hoard...Queen might have worked better if released as a series of smaller, more modular adventures; which could be run as a path or as stand-alones in a larger campaign, as desired by the DM. I think here of 1e's A-series (Slavers) which are intended to be run as something of a path but can - at least in the case of A1 and A2 - be easily used as stand-alone adventures without reference to any of the others.

Lan-"if the so-called 'hoard' here is representative of the treasure levels throughout 5e my players will never convert"-efan

 

[SoulsFury]

I liked how it was much more generic. I play a homebrew setting. I could care less about the Forgotten Realms. However, I don't have time to come up with homebrew campaigns all the time. I like to run published adventures, changing them to suit my setting. I think you made valid points and you did a great job reviewing the product, but for some the reasons you completely detested the module, never even crossed my mind to be upset about. Could it have been better? Yes. Could it have been worse? Yes. Overall I am pleased with the purchase of the book. I did expect better for the flagship adventure though. I hope the Rise of Tiamat is better.

 

[bryce0lynch]

It's basically impossible to do a sandbox for any adventure where there's a strong story involved. However, that doesn't mean that individual episodes of the adventures can't allow the players a variety of approaches (and the DM a variety of approaches in how to handle them). It doesn't change the fact that certain things have to happen to lead the characters onto the next episode, but it does mean that the adventure isn't 100% forced.

The first episode of Hoard of the Dragon is a good example of this style of design. Let's look at its structure:

Merric is absolutely correct here ... at least until that second paragraph. D&D Encounters requires a certain play style: everyone MUST be on episode 2 the next week. I'm fine with that. I could argue that the transitions could be done better, or that the HARDBACK $30 book is NOT for the D&D Encounters program and therefore should have been tweaked differently ... but 'Episodic' is what it is.

INSIDE the episode you need freedom. No "the dragon man kills you no matter what" or "the dragon man survives no matter what so he can come back, pointlessly, in episode 3." HDQ largely fails in this regard.



One more point. The support for the DM DOESNT mean railroading. It means providing the DM the tools they need to run a great adventure. That means evocative imagery to inspire the DM, not to hobble them in to a railroad. Again, HDQ fails. It is boring.

 

[Imaro]

INSIDE the episode you need freedom. No "the dragon man kills you no matter what" or "the dragon man survives no matter what so he can come back, pointlessly, in episode 3." HDQ largely fails in this regard.

I don't have the adventure yet but I'm curious about this... is it that no matter what he can't be killed or that he is such a high level that there's almost no chance he can be killed?