D&D 5E Hoard of the Dragon Queen: As it Turns out, it's Pretty Good (so far)

[sgtscott658]

The initial chapter's main goal is to get the players into the module with no in depth background on why the players are there, why the players went to Hommlet (Greenist for the FR types) although in Appendix A HotDQ does give a backround and snippets of idea's none of which I particularly cared for. So I do agree that the initial chapter does need, at least to me, a little bit of work to make the players feel appart of the world and adventure and not feel like they are getting railroaded into something they might not like or feel compelled to deal with.

Scott

As I've been reading on in later chapter of HotDQ the adventures do seem to improve. Yes the first episode is written poorly, but the later chapters do seem better and seem to be on par with what I've seen with Paizo's AP offerings.

 

[Tony Semana]

Well, ok. So that's that then. *nods*

I think the issue arises due to the timing requirements that a whole shopping list of encounters be completed without the benefit of a long rest or leveling, as Mad Zagyg noted in his post here:

My main gripe with Hoard of the Dragon Queen is that it seems VERY obvious to me that it was written specifically for D&D Encounters and/or Adventurer's League play. After all, the first three episodes of the adventure are pretty much verbatim as they appear in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen Encounters PDF. Why is this obvious? Well, if you run the adventure as written, and your players are trying to complete all the missions that the adventure throws at them in Episode 1, it seems extremely likely that they will fail, and probably TPK (as my group did). When you play D&D Encounters at your FLGS, characters come fully refreshed to every session, as tables can change from week to week.

His identification of the underlying "refresh" of PC resources that happens due to player changes during Encounters sessions every week seemed spot on to me and explains the problem.

That's the design issue that appears to lead to an unplayable TPK when the adventure is run as written for Home play. That should have been caught in development and the text of the hardcover changed or a sidebar written to explain it.

I guess I'm having difficulty seeing how this episode is so specifically poorly written.

With regards to the emphasized quotes; There are 7 in-game hours, there are 7 items in the 'shopping list' of encounters. The adventure states that, if the characters take a short rest, they will not be able to complete a 'mission' (encounter) for that hour.. For a group of 4, the PC's are likely to accumulate enough XP after 2 (definitely 3) missions to level up. It's explicitly written that the DM can present the characters "with as many encounters as you want, in any order" but nowhere does the adventure enforce or imply that they need to complete the entire set or something bad happens, it's the DM's decision.

On a first thorough reading, I was (and still am) really pumped to run this episode. And saw a lot of opportunity to give the characters a chance to be heroic, intelligent and strategic in the face of the odds. By the end the party will just barely scrape by, that's the best they can hope for - that's the point of this episode. If they play it poorly, then one, many or all will give their souls to the Dragon Queen's cause.

 

[Tony Semana]

The initial chapter's main goal is to get the players into the module with no in depth background on why the players are there, why the players went to Hommlet (Greenist for the FR types) although in Appendix A HotDQ does give a backround and snippets of idea's none of which I particularly cared for. So I do agree that the initial chapter does need, at least to me, a little bit of work to make the players feel appart of the world and adventure and not feel like they are getting railroaded into something they might not like or feel compelled to deal with.

Scott

? Lost Mines of Phandelver provides the same mechanic to give the pregen characters a link to that setting. If the examples provided in Appendix A are not suitable to your setting/style, it's easy to use it as a template to create ones you do like / is appropriate. It doesn't mean they didn't provide the way to do it.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

For a group of 4, the PC's are likely to accumulate enough XP after 2 (definitely 3) missions to level up. It's explicitly written that the DM can present the characters "with as many encounters as you want, in any order" but nowhere does the adventure enforce or imply that they need to complete the entire set or something bad happens, it's the DM's decision.

A DM can choose to let the party level at some point throughout the night if he chooses, but the final paragraph of the episode states that if you are using the milestone experience rule, characters reach 2nd level at the end of this episode. That pretty clearly (and incorrectly) implies that the party should be able to defeat this first episode without leveling. The 7 hour time limit explicitly implies that they should also be able to complete it without a long rest.

The point of my OP was not to say that the adventure was "poorly written." The writing seems fine, even though this is not my preferred style of adventure. My post was to warn people interested in running it for their campaign-style home games that if you run the adventure as written you will almost certainly smoke your party. As all follow-up posts in defense of the adventure point out, DMs can easily tweak the mod to help the players survive in a variety of ways. The point is, you HAVE to.

If you run this adventure for your Wednesday Night D&D Encounters this won't be an issue at all because the group returns "refreshed" each week. This solves the problem at the expense of verisimilitude, and underlines the reason why I believe it was written specifically for D&D Encounters. I will note that I have become increasingly aware that a desire for verisimilitude is not a quality required in a huge number of gaming groups I see in person and online. Video-game style leveling mid-encounter is something that will never happen at my home game table. I don't intend that as a criticism of people who don't care about that sort of thing. Whatever works for you and your gaming group is cool with me. For me, the idea that just after finishing a fight my wizard sits down and realizes that he suddenly knows two or three new spells is just silly to me. I recognize that this issue isn't a hang-up for everyone and that's fine. The game rewards us all in very different ways.

To clarify, my OP is a warning to DMs that while at first brush the first episode might look like 7 encounters, but it's really more like 15 combats (some of which are fairly difficult). That's way too much for a 1st level party to handle without rest and recuperation. DMs running this for their home games can and should make appropriate changes to the adventure as written to present a more reasonable challenge.

 

[fjw70]

That first chapter is really a sandboxish chapter. The DM can decide which missions to give them and the players can decide which missions to take on. So I don't see this as a problem.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

That first chapter is really a sandboxish chapter. The DM can decide which missions to give them and the players can decide which missions to take on. So I don't see this as a problem.

It's only a problem if a DM doesn't recognize this before he runs it.

 

[fjw70]

It's only a problem if a DM doesn't recognize this before he runs it.

Since each mission is a discrete event it is really easy to adjust on the fly. For example, if the PCs are pretty low on resources after 2 missions then the DM could very easily wait an hour before introducing another one.


Sorry but sending the group on a critical mission when they need a rest is the DM's fault and not the adventure itself. All DMs make mistakes from time to time. No biggie, just move on and learn from it.

 

[Mad Zagyg]

Since each mission is a discrete event it is really easy to adjust on the fly. For example, if the PCs are pretty low on resources after 2 missions then the DM could very easily wait an hour before introducing another one.

Short rests are not enough. The group I ran for took two. Clearly, the group can choose not to partake in the fifth, sixth, or seventh mission if they feel like they can't accomplish it. ("Sorry Governor, we understand that the townsfolk in the Church of Chauntea are about to be murdered by kobolds and cultists but we just can't help you anymore.")

Sorry but sending the group on a critical mission when they need a rest is the DM's fault and not the adventure itself. All DMs make mistakes from time to time. No biggie, just move on and learn from it.

I totally disagree. It is strictly a problem with the adventure itself if you only have 7 hours to complete critical missions and CANNOT take a long rest in order to face those challenges.

As you say, a DM can realize that the players just don't have the stamina and resources to continue the fight and can change the written adventure to ensure that they don't get TPK'd. That is exactly my point.

When I play tested this adventure for my veteran group of players at Gencon it was clear to me that they would not be able to survive another session and complete the remaining missions if I did not change the adventure, omit certain missions, or supply them with help that the adventure does not offer. Since we were play testing, I offered this information to my players who decided that they would like to see just how tough it would be "as written." They TPK'd in the second encounter of the second session (it was part one of the Sally Gate Mission).

 

[Tony Semana]

Short rests are not enough. The group I ran for took two. Clearly, the group can choose not to partake in the fifth, sixth, or seventh mission if they feel like they can't accomplish it. ("Sorry Governor, we understand that the townsfolk in the Church of Chauntea are about to be murdered by kobolds and cultists but we just can't help you anymore.")

I totally disagree. It is strictly a problem with the adventure itself if you only have 7 hours to complete critical missions and CANNOT take a long rest in order to face those challenges.
When I play tested this adventure for my veteran group of players at Gencon it was clear to me that they would not be able to survive another session and complete the remaining missions if I did not change the adventure, omit certain missions,

I had a much longer reply but it boils down to this. You are mixing up the fact that there are 7 provided missions by thinking there are 7 critical missions. I'm sorry but it seems you are ignoring or misread the part where you are not required to put your players through all missions. Just because they're there doesn't mean they're mandatory, required, or critical. AT ALL. If the party took 2 short rests then they would have 2 less missions to take on, 5 total and not 7, remove 2 from the remain roster of potential events. If they took a 3rd rest that would be 4 total and not 7, choose which one is left. You are expected to allow this, you're not 'correcting' the adventure by doing this. You're expected to run the number of missions as appropriate to your table. Saying "sorry, that's what it says in the adventure" is not valid. Especially when the text explicitly assigns the responsibility to you, the DM, and instructs you on how to treat the number of mission and rests within that timeframe.

From a story-telling stand point, the characters don't know what carnage is happening out there, and it hasn't happened yet. They don't know what they're missing by resting (until you tell them). It's up to you to 'write' your fiction and decide which (if any) of the missions the party missed actually happened. Either way is legitimate.

... or supply them with help that the adventure does not offer. Since we were play testing, I offered this information to my players who decided that they would like to see just how tough it would be "as written." They TPK'd in the second encounter of the second session (it was part one of the Sally Gate Mission).

If you presented your players with their predicament and they chose to 'cowboy up' then that's an out-of-character decision by players wanting not to miss any part of the adventure options and your decision to run them through it. Which is a perfectly legitimate exercise, but it's not actually the adventure "as written".

I think if reading the adventure that wasn't clear in the first place, it would be useful to listen to Kobold's intention behind the adventure design (specifically from min 26 where they address exactly this episode and this question).

 

[Steel_Wind]

I had a much longer reply but it boils down to this. You are mixing up the fact that there are 7 provided missions by thinking there are 7 critical missions. I'm sorry but it seems you are ignoring or misread the part where you are not required to put your players through all missions. Just because they're there doesn't mean they're mandatory, required, or critical. AT ALL.

I now have a conflict in the dates and times Azmyth will be running his HotDQ campaign so I cannot play in it. While a little disappointing, this conflict in our schedules frees me from any moral quandaries I might have in reading the actual adventure text.

I have picked up the hardcover version of HotDQ this morning and I have the .PDF made available to those in the Adventurers League as well. I have briefly (though not thoroughly) compared the text of the two products.

The introductory portion of the .PDF that is Encounters specific in pages 2-6 of the document are not present in the hardcover. Those pages reveal that character levels 1-4 are legal for Encounters play, so that can effect the overall challenge presented by the encounters. Table size varies from 3-7 players, so that can effect challenge level as well. Advice is provided for scaling or changing the encounter strength -- though it suggests doing so in accordance with the DMG - which is of course a book none of us presently have,

In terms of the adventure text itself, while Merric is correct in that the documents appear to be the same in terms of the adventure text, there is a sidebar in the .PDF that is not present in the hardcover at page 10 that provides specific advice to those running the missions as part of the D&D Adv League Encounters DMs. I'd have to do a scan OCR and blackline comparison of the two texts to provide a more exacting evaluation than that. The sidebar appears to be the only notable change on first blush.

The short strokes would appear to be that there is no necessity for completing any of the seven missions and the DM is not directed to make the players do so. While Mad Zagyg's comments on the lethality of approaching the first section of HotDQ are valid -- in the sense that you should NOT have your players do this, there is no contrary requirement that they should do so that is presented in the adventure text. The PCs can and should refuse -- and the DM may ease off as well if they are not able to do so. In that regard, I think Tony's comments are correct, (though perhaps a little more forceful that was needed in terms of their advocacy!)

Given the treatment of the missions and the details which are present in the balance of that part of the adventure, my favorable impression of the product remains; indeed, I would say it has increased after skimming (and I do mean skimming) over part 1.

End Result: It's all good folks.