D&D 5E Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle - what did you think?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
pedr
Explorer
WotC staff and guests are playing it live right now on Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/wotc_dnd - as part of the Extra Life 25 hour thing. Once they're done it'll be available for replay on Twitch, and then separated into shorter segments for the D&D YouTube channel.
I'd love to hear some opinions on this adventure as well. (Pretty please!)
jamesmanhattan
Explorer
I read it and am running it for just two players, controlling 4 PCs.
It is indeed a very excellent adventure. Someone said what makes the Forgotten Realms great is the unabashed love of detail. The amount of detail in this story is incredible. From why Daggerford is named Dagger Ford, to how almost every single NPC and a lot of monsters are named, and even given personalities. Two dead bandits Urval and Telmek are described even though they're dead. There's a large group of half-orcs and like 8 of them all have names.
If the adventure was aiming to hit the "three pillars of D&D" Exploration, Role-playing, and Combat, then it hit them damn well.
It's also very "adult" compared to all the 4E stuff. Orcs took female prisoners specifically to breed with. There's a brutal description of a hanging. There's a ton of read-aloud text, which I love. I'm not a Shakespearan actor and I don't have Stephen King's skills of exposition so read-aloud text is what really sets the scene in my games.
Warning! Spoilers
What strikes me as awesome is you've got these big personalities, the Dragon, Sir Isteval, the secret spy, a lich, and others, and you get major face to face interaction with all of them. So, some people say that the adventure is a rail-road. Well it is somewhat linear in the sense of getting the player where they need to go, but once they get their it's all exploration and nothing is forced, it all happens because these actors in the story are truly much more powerful than the party at their level. So the party goes off and possibly retrieves this macguffin(its technically not their goal), and there is a much more powerful NPC who also wants it. And they devote a page to how that NPC could possibly go about getting it, with a lot of flexibility to what the party does. So that NPC has an almost 99% chance of doing it, but is that forced? I don't think so, I think it's more simulationist. You could say its cool that the party can interact and hold its own among those big players, instead of "go kill the rats in the cellar". There's quite a few times the party comes into contact with like obviously superior forces, so some players could get annoyed, "damn I want to kill a dragon", "I want to kill a lich", but they're only level 1, so an experienced player actually gets somewhat terrified. One of my players said he was truly fearful negotiating with the arrogant dragon because this aint no "level appropriate" challenge.
The random encounters in the swamp can go on way too long, since its very unclear how to actually arrive at your destination in the swamp (you must interrogate something, and players might not think to do that).
There's a nice mix of some random encounters and some huge elaborate set-piece encounters. There's some absolute great dungeon delving. There's a quite a lot of homages to old adventures. There's several pools of elemental liquid in one room, and interacting with each one is quite a bit of fun, more so than I've seen in any dungeon in a while. The dungeons have a story to them, which you can figure out by exploring. As the players explore they can put together clues and say "ah ha! I figured out what happened here" Also, because this is D&D Next, they seemed to have written things so that players can approach and solve problems in a wide variety of ways. They included all the details if you wanted to talk your way through the lizardmen, or sneak your way, or slaughter your way, which has been missing in a lot of the 4E stuff.
Speaking of detail, there's a room that most players would probably not waste time exploring, but if they do they find a coin, that is from an ancient dwarven kingdom, that doesn't come into play til 2 adventures later. It is a key for something. Something not crucial, but an extra cool benefit. It's nice for players who do want to explore every nook and cranny and/or speak to every monster, they will be rewarded with interesting stuff for it.
They threw in a lot of tropes that happened in games when I was a kid, that haven't happened since. I was reading it and was like they threw in everything including the kitchen sink of classic D&D. To a long-time player some of these are even cliche, but very enjoyable. Like being able to befriend and pick up an awesome magical beast companion for a while. One of my favorite NPC's is a blubbering Half-Ogre who lost his pet rat. There's a very nice Dwarf roast. When the party returns to town, guess what? they are famous. All this has been done in other modules, but they crammed all that into this one. I really enjoyed the party spending a bunch of time with an imposter, and then coming face to face with the real one and putting it all together, and guessing wrong that it was a doppelganger, and getting sort of upset at the whole betrayal, which will only make the ending all that more sweeter.
The magic items are thoroughly wondrous. I was saying last night that one of my favorite things in D&D Next so far, is that each potion has its own visual description and you can take sips to test them out. There's a potion that is described as having three layers, brown, gray, and silver, and when you sip it you are overcome with tingling and the desire to climb.
There are some really offputting modern idioms and such that can really rub people the wrong way. Like Boo Boo Doll, and some yo-mama jokes. It helps if you have a sense of humor and ignore them or remove them depending on you and your group. I can't stand Mike Mearls' stupid metal top-hat wearing ex-rapper Fighter in the "Lich Queens Beloved" youtube videos WTF! man
Is it the best adventure every published? No. I'd say a solid 4 stars out of 5.
It is indeed a very excellent adventure. Someone said what makes the Forgotten Realms great is the unabashed love of detail. The amount of detail in this story is incredible. From why Daggerford is named Dagger Ford, to how almost every single NPC and a lot of monsters are named, and even given personalities. Two dead bandits Urval and Telmek are described even though they're dead. There's a large group of half-orcs and like 8 of them all have names.
If the adventure was aiming to hit the "three pillars of D&D" Exploration, Role-playing, and Combat, then it hit them damn well.
It's also very "adult" compared to all the 4E stuff. Orcs took female prisoners specifically to breed with. There's a brutal description of a hanging. There's a ton of read-aloud text, which I love. I'm not a Shakespearan actor and I don't have Stephen King's skills of exposition so read-aloud text is what really sets the scene in my games.
Warning! Spoilers
What strikes me as awesome is you've got these big personalities, the Dragon, Sir Isteval, the secret spy, a lich, and others, and you get major face to face interaction with all of them. So, some people say that the adventure is a rail-road. Well it is somewhat linear in the sense of getting the player where they need to go, but once they get their it's all exploration and nothing is forced, it all happens because these actors in the story are truly much more powerful than the party at their level. So the party goes off and possibly retrieves this macguffin(its technically not their goal), and there is a much more powerful NPC who also wants it. And they devote a page to how that NPC could possibly go about getting it, with a lot of flexibility to what the party does. So that NPC has an almost 99% chance of doing it, but is that forced? I don't think so, I think it's more simulationist. You could say its cool that the party can interact and hold its own among those big players, instead of "go kill the rats in the cellar". There's quite a few times the party comes into contact with like obviously superior forces, so some players could get annoyed, "damn I want to kill a dragon", "I want to kill a lich", but they're only level 1, so an experienced player actually gets somewhat terrified. One of my players said he was truly fearful negotiating with the arrogant dragon because this aint no "level appropriate" challenge.
The random encounters in the swamp can go on way too long, since its very unclear how to actually arrive at your destination in the swamp (you must interrogate something, and players might not think to do that).
There's a nice mix of some random encounters and some huge elaborate set-piece encounters. There's some absolute great dungeon delving. There's a quite a lot of homages to old adventures. There's several pools of elemental liquid in one room, and interacting with each one is quite a bit of fun, more so than I've seen in any dungeon in a while. The dungeons have a story to them, which you can figure out by exploring. As the players explore they can put together clues and say "ah ha! I figured out what happened here" Also, because this is D&D Next, they seemed to have written things so that players can approach and solve problems in a wide variety of ways. They included all the details if you wanted to talk your way through the lizardmen, or sneak your way, or slaughter your way, which has been missing in a lot of the 4E stuff.
Speaking of detail, there's a room that most players would probably not waste time exploring, but if they do they find a coin, that is from an ancient dwarven kingdom, that doesn't come into play til 2 adventures later. It is a key for something. Something not crucial, but an extra cool benefit. It's nice for players who do want to explore every nook and cranny and/or speak to every monster, they will be rewarded with interesting stuff for it.
They threw in a lot of tropes that happened in games when I was a kid, that haven't happened since. I was reading it and was like they threw in everything including the kitchen sink of classic D&D. To a long-time player some of these are even cliche, but very enjoyable. Like being able to befriend and pick up an awesome magical beast companion for a while. One of my favorite NPC's is a blubbering Half-Ogre who lost his pet rat. There's a very nice Dwarf roast. When the party returns to town, guess what? they are famous. All this has been done in other modules, but they crammed all that into this one. I really enjoyed the party spending a bunch of time with an imposter, and then coming face to face with the real one and putting it all together, and guessing wrong that it was a doppelganger, and getting sort of upset at the whole betrayal, which will only make the ending all that more sweeter.
The magic items are thoroughly wondrous. I was saying last night that one of my favorite things in D&D Next so far, is that each potion has its own visual description and you can take sips to test them out. There's a potion that is described as having three layers, brown, gray, and silver, and when you sip it you are overcome with tingling and the desire to climb.
There are some really offputting modern idioms and such that can really rub people the wrong way. Like Boo Boo Doll, and some yo-mama jokes. It helps if you have a sense of humor and ignore them or remove them depending on you and your group. I can't stand Mike Mearls' stupid metal top-hat wearing ex-rapper Fighter in the "Lich Queens Beloved" youtube videos WTF! man
Is it the best adventure every published? No. I'd say a solid 4 stars out of 5.
Last edited:
GX.Sigma
Adventurer
It sounds like a cool adventure, but this part worries me. What bothers me in adventures is too much detail. It makes it difficult to run on-the-fly if there are paragraphs upon paragraphs for every single encounter. Is it the kind of adventure you have to read front-to-back before you can run it?
Blackwarder
Adventurer
I think that you need to read every adventure front to back before running it. IME when I didn't I had a lot of inconsistencies during play.
Warder
werecorpse
Adventurer
I am just about to start running this and was looking to see what other peoples experiences were. My comments from a read through are
<spoilers>
1. There does not seem to be enough experience available for the players to go up the levels as stated. Has anyone else found this?
2. The initial plot ( as described -to go, at first level, and to spy on a fort attacking black dragon in its lair) seems likely to cause the players to say " are you kidding, send someone more experienced".
3. The first adventure ( given point 1) seems to pit the players against monsters way too tough
</spoilers>
<spoilers>
1. There does not seem to be enough experience available for the players to go up the levels as stated. Has anyone else found this?
2. The initial plot ( as described -to go, at first level, and to spy on a fort attacking black dragon in its lair) seems likely to cause the players to say " are you kidding, send someone more experienced".
3. The first adventure ( given point 1) seems to pit the players against monsters way too tough
</spoilers>
Rhenny
Adventurer
Man, I love when this happens.
When I ran a modified Blingdenstone for my group, the players felt that same fear when they had to negotiate with the Mind Flayer. I had the Mind Flayer tickle their minds and speak with them telepathically. It really freaked them out. Although the Mind Flayer had 2 large bodyguards, if the PCs wanted to focus fire on the Mind Flayer, they probably could have killed it, but since it was a well-known entity in the Underdark city, and it seemed so much more frightening because of its reputation (both in game and out of game), the PCs didn't think for 1 second to try to fight it. That's golden.
Scrivener of Doom
Adventurer
This is the way my players have handled mind flayers in my games since 1984: it doesn't matter what level they are or what edition it is, they always try and negotiate.
It's funny what one or two bad 1E experiences will do to a group....
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