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

sgtscott658 · Sep 4, 2014

As one who is currently DM'ing this adventure, It required alot of work to rework lol. I like the story arc of some crazy ...snip... cult trying to get their Dragon Queen back on the material plane by raiding and looting treasure and other stuff that in their eyes, would help bring about her presence in their world. But as written, it has to much wonkyness that will make both players and DM's go WTF over. Basically an experienced DM will have fun with this adventure, making changes to fit his campaign and making it less railroad like then whats published.

Scott

GX.Sigma said:
I agree, and it's pretty sad that this disaster is "average."

Mod Edit: The real-world religious commentary was not appropriate. ~Umbran

Tony Semana · Sep 5, 2014

sgtscott658 said:
I like the story arc of some crazy ****** like cult trying to get their Dragon Queen back on the material plane by raiding and looting treasure and other stuff that in their eyes, would help bring about her presence in their world.

WOW. WTF

Wormwood · Sep 5, 2014

Note that I didn't read the entire review as I'm currently playing the adventure, but I have to say that our DM must be a genius because so far we've been having a blast.

The dragon attack was tense (the DM really sold his "random" breath weapon targets) and when our monk critted with his trinket ("ancient arrow of elvish make ") we really believed we'd legitimately driven off the dragon.

Infiltrating the camp was also very entertaining. Granted we did most of the heavy lifting by coming up with a ridiculous, convoluted plan where we pretended to be mercenaries (the Bloody Skulls out of Westgate) escorting our prisoner and loot into the camp. We ended up with over an hour of heist movie style roleplaying... but I'm just old school enough to count an adventure a success by the number of fights we cleverly avoid.

I will grant that we caught occasional glimpses of plot rails, but not so much that it felt forced. Again I guess I should give credit to our DM for elevating the source material.

evilbob · Sep 5, 2014

Thanks for the review!

I had wondered if it was worth picking up this product, although I had hesitated since the 4.0 intro adventure was the worst piece of garbage that ever got released for the entire system. It seems that trend is still somewhat being followed. Good to know it's safe to skip it and wait for some better stuff.

Mouseferatu · Sep 5, 2014

Tony Semana said:
WOW. WTF

No kidding. Inappropriate at best.

Olgar Shiverstone · Sep 5, 2014

I don't think it's quite as bad as the reviewer states, mostly because I see the genericness as a a feature, not a bug -- it makes importing the adventure into other campaign settings, and ransacking it for encounters, much easier.

That said, I agree it's a pretty typical WotC-introductory plot-forced railroad that makes some really stupid choices. I am disappointed because I think a much better adventure could have been provided as the first major 5E release. That said ... 5E is pretty easy to convert existing adventures to, so all is not lost.

Overall, a C from me.

Uchawi · Sep 5, 2014

Probably the biggest challenge is developing an adventure while the rules are in flux, and at the same time not having a familiar feel for the game, classes, etc. But I for one was not excited by the entire concept of making dragons a common theme and adding cultists to the mix. It appears to be well worn territory.

sgtscott658 · Sep 5, 2014

I am no WoTC fanboy as some are here, but you are missing out on a really interesting adventure. As I stated upstream, it does have a nice story arc that begs to be played. And even though it is set in FR, I think it is generic enough to be dropped into any campaign. Essentially the adventure has some great ideas and you as the DM might need to put a little work into fleshing those ideas out and presenting a cool adventure to your players.

Even some assembly required I would highly recommend this module.

evilbob said:
Thanks for the review!

I had wondered if it was worth picking up this product, although I had hesitated since the 4.0 intro adventure was the worst piece of garbage that ever got released for the entire system. It seems that trend is still somewhat being followed. Good to know it's safe to skip it and wait for some better stuff.

Nebulous · Sep 5, 2014

First, props to the OP for writing such an exhaustive review. That must have taken hours. I have this module, and although i was excited at first, my anticipation quickly waned. I wasn't sure why. Was it the art direction? The walls of text? The combat that seems like mostly cultists and kobolds?

The conversational style of the text also stood out in this section. I don’t usually complain about formatting issues, but the style chosen here is crazy. There are details buried all throughout the text of the sections, buried in long paragraph descriptions. You’re going to have to pull out a highlighter and ready it several times and take notes in order to run the thing effectively. I don’t see how it’s possible to refer to the text effectively during play at all. I don’t get this choice at all. It’s like they are purposefully obfuscating what’s going on in order to comply with some design directive to be “conversational."

And this is true to, i would HAVE to break out a pen, highlighter and a separate notebook and meticulously plan out, break apart, reevaluate and carefully modify this adventure before i could run it. And frankly, i expected more from a flagship adventure.

I ran 4e for a while, and i ran Keep on the Shadowfell and a few of the other introductory adventures. Shadowfell i tweaked to make it my own, and for what it's worth, and i'm probably in the minority here, but i enjoyed reading it more and the aesthetic value more than Hoard. Something about the layout of Hoard makes my eyes glaze over.

Quickleaf · Sep 5, 2014

[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?

Neuroglyph said:
Overall, the adventure arc is designed to be quite sandbox-y, or more aptly, a series of mini-sandboxes right from the first episode. Wolfgang made mention of the fact that as designers who have played D&D through multiple editions, they “were drawn toward an older style of play” for Hoard of the Dragon Queen, where not every encounter is fought, but some are resolved through trickery, negotiation, or simply avoided altogether.

Read more here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?358765-4-out-of-5-rating-for-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!

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

sgtscott658

First Post

Tony Semana

First Post

Wormwood

Adventurer

evilbob

Explorer

Mouseferatu

Hero

Olgar Shiverstone

Legend

Uchawi

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sgtscott658

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Nebulous

Legend

Quickleaf

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