D&D 5E Rise of Tiamat review

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I'm starting to run HotDQ on Sunday and its quite railroady, but workable. The thing is my players have a tendency to derail the train quickly in this type of adventure.

 

[Tormyr]

For those who have run or read all of these adventures, how do they compare in "openness" to Murder in Balder's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard?

 

[Wolfskin]

For those who have run or read all of these adventures, how do they compare in "openness" to Murder in Balder's Gate and Legacy of the Crystal Shard?

HotDQ is definitely way less open that those two you mentioned, while RoT hits somewhere in the middle: it's open enough for characters to drift from the main storyline, as long as its within the boundaries of "we fight the Cult of the Dragon!". Final episode feels very scripted, though!

 

[sunrisekid]

Personally, I'm comfortable improvising with stuff - even if the adventure is written as a "rail roady sandbox". Doesn't bother me. It might sound odd, but the one major thing that always bothers is poor text layout, as in wall-of-text without obvious indicators to catch the eye - often I'm DMing on the seat of my pants and if I can't spot what I need in a hearbeat then I skip and make it up

I haven't played the two other adventures mentioned, so can't compare. But I do appreciate the scope and scale of the whole RoT adventure arc and look forward to running it.

However, I will explain to the players that there's a kind of script to the plot that they need to meet me halfway to, in order to play through it.

 

[Jester David]

The review seems needlessly negative.

Rise of Tiamat has problems due to its reliance on a free PDF, but that problem exists for a finite time. A month. I doubt very much anyone has finished Hoard of the Dragon Queen and needs to play RoT *right now*.
Likewise, the review focuses on the advanced DMing skill. While RoT might be require more advanced skill, most DMs playing the adventure with have months of experience: playing HotDQ.

A comment that stood out was the statement that the first adventure *must* be accessible to new players. Which assumes that new players will somehow instinctively start playing now rather than last year or eighteen months from now. Any adventure might be someone's first. Really, these adventures are much, much more likely to be consumed by experienced (or returning) players.

 

[Mercule]

Since I'm using Eberron, any thoughts on how Realms-dependent RoT is? I think I've got HotDQ figured out for a conversion, but I really don't want to walk into a situation that's too tied to the Realms.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Since I'm using Eberron, any thoughts on how Realms-dependent RoT is? I think I've got HotDQ figured out for a conversion, but I really don't want to walk into a situation that's too tied to the Realms.

It's pretty tied.

 

[Mercule]

It's pretty tied.

Poop.

 

[MortalPlague]

I'm most of the way through the beta version of this. I had to do some work to tweak or fill out content, but the results have been well worth it.

I even threw in a side quest to go lead an army in Amn, and now my PCs are assaulting a lich before returning to the council. (Same group from my 'A Glimpse Of High Level Play' thread)

 

[smartmonkey]

It's pretty tied.

How? There's nothing iconically Realms about a dragon uprising, or even the cult of the dragon. They should be a snap to slide into Eberron. Replace Tiamat with Khyber and the cult with the Cult of the Dragon Below, and pick out which cities in your chosen campaign area will correspond with Greenest, Baldurs Gate, and Waterdeep, and you're set. There will be a few bits where you might have to improvise (Eberron having much faster travel means the caravan segment might not work without mods, frex) but ROT is very much open to placement in different settings. Nothing about it is explicitly, unstealably Realmsian.