D&D 5E Rank the Official 5e Adventures

Retreater

Legend
Online, I've seen several rankings of the official Wizards of the Coast 5th edition adventures. But I don't recall having seen one on these forums, at least not recently. I've seen votes of the favorite (usually Curse of Strahd), but not a ranking of all of them - or a top 5.

I'll post my ranking in the thread below. Feel free to offer explanations. For consistency's sake, let's number 1 - ? with #1 being your favorite adventure.
 

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Top Tier – only minor issues (if any)
1. Curse of Strahd
2. Tomb of Annihilation
3. Lost Mines of Phandelver
Mid Tier- can be good with some work; or just “ho-hum” in delivery
4. Princes of the Apocalypse
5. Out of the Abyss
6. Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Lower Tier – needs some polish to come together as a campaign; or glaring issues that need to be addressed
7. Storm King’s Thunder
8. Descent into Avernus
9. Ghosts of Saltmarsh
10. Tales from the Yawning Portal
Failure Tier – unusable
11. Horde of the Dragon Queen
The other adventures I do not own and do not plan to own or read.
 

Top Tier:
1. Descent into Avernus
2. Tomb of Annihilation
3. Curse of Strahd
4. Lost Mines of Phandelver
Mid Tier:
5. Dragon Heist
6. Dungeon of the Mad Mage
7. Ghosts of Saltmarsh
8. Tales of the Yawning Portal
Low Tier:
9. Storm King's Thunder
10. Out of the Abyss
11. Tyranny of Dragons
12. Princes of the Apocalypse
 


Adopting your format, and only for the one's I've played or read:

Top Tier
Curse of Strahd. Above top tier if the DM makes Strahd more than a large bag of hit points and a jerk. He's soooo much more complex. Read "I, Strahd," turn this great adventure into classic epic. Otherwise, about as good in design and form as one could ever want: open map, great encounters and NPCs, decently friendly navigation, and one of the most wonderful maps (albeit why make a great map if the players can't really look at it...)

Lost Mines of Phandelver. They hit a home run on this one.

Tales of the Yawning Portal. These are the classic adventures that people talk about decades later. There's a reason. While I'll only run "Tomb of Horrors" as nearly identical to AD&D form as possible, it's all good.

Mid Tier

Out of the Abyss. It's good and it's bad. The first half is great with all the NPCs and simply surviving. At some point, it becomes a slog to scavenge daily, then to find a compelling reason, if run as-is, to venture back. And, there's about 10% of the necessary XP, if run as-is, in the 2nd half. Still, it's pretty epic. Just need some touch up.

Storm King's Thunder. Reminds one of Out of the Abyss. Epic premise, needs a lot of touch up. The more work I have to do to make it work, the lower it goes on the list.

Failure Tier – unusable

Horde of the Dragon Queen. I consider myself a handyman DM, able to buy houses cheap and flip them. Not happening on this one. It's terrible and to make something good, I shouldn't exceed the 50% "my work, your work" standard.
 

Top Tier

Murder in Baldur’s Gate. Yeah, it’s not technically 5e, but it’s just plain great.

Legacy of the Crystal Shard. Same deal.

Dreams of the Red Wizards. I think someone was well aware that 5e was going to live or die by the quality of the Sundering adventures.

High Tier
Lost Mine of Phandelver. Between the Sundering adventures and this, I was very optimistic about 5e adventure quality. Unfortunately it took a sharp nosedive with Dragon Queen and has yet to fully recover. Falls short of top tier because I feel the villain was a bit under-utilized and Wave Echo Cave was kind of anticlimactic. Both easily fixable problems though.

Curse of Strahd. Best hardcover adventure by far, and best adaptation of Ravenloft (the adventure, not necessarily the setting) to date, in my opinion. Falls short of top tier because its indecision its own structure hurts the overall experience. It presents itself as open but it’s actually designed as a hybrid linear/branching structure, and in practice it’s not very branching. But, again, this is a very fixable problem.

Mid tier

Tales from the Yawning Portal. All of the dungeons in here are fantastic. Falls short of high tier because of the lack of connective tissue between the dungeons.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Pretty much the same as above. Slightly better connective tissue, but the adventures themselves aren’t as good, and overall I like TftYP a little better.

Tomb of Annihilation. Pretty decent.

Princes of the Apocalypse. Better than I think most people give it credit for. Still not the best.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage. As megadungeons go, this is one of them.

Low tier

Dragon Heist. Great premise, poor execution. Escapes bottom tier because with work it can make a very good adventure.

Storm King’s Thunder I really don’t like this adventure, but it escapes bottom tier because it’s at least playable.

Bottom tier

Out of the Abyss. I actually dislike this adventure more than the Tyranny of Dragons adventures. I rank it higher only because the book is reasonably useful as an Underdark sourcebook.

Rise of Tiamat. Bad adventure is bad. Not as bad as it’s predecessor, but still bad.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Surprising no one.

Haven’t read, but am very interested in

Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle. I loved all of the other Next adventures, so I’m optimistic about this one.

Dragon of Icespire Peak. Phandelver is my favorite official adventure written for the final 5e rules, so I’d love to see how this ties in with it.

Haven’t read, but am skeptical of

Descent Into Avernus. What I’ve heard about this adventure raises red flags for me. I’ll get around to it eventually, but I have a feeling it won’t be my cup of tea.

Haven’t read, and am not particularly interested in reading

Hunt for the Thessalhydra. Eh. I get it, Stranger Things is cool, the characters play D&D in it, so it’s an obvious tie-in. I just... Don’t really feel like running a marketing ploy disguised as an adventure?

The Lost Dungeon of Rickedness. I like Rick and Morty, but I don’t want it in my D&D. Complete tonal mismatch for me. Plus the same marketing ickiness as the Stranger Things one.
 
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Top Tier
Curse of Strahd. Above top tier if the DM makes Strahd more than a large bag of hit points and a jerk. He's soooo much more complex. Read "I, Strahd," turn this great adventure into classic epic. Otherwise, about as good in design and form as one could ever want: open map, great encounters and NPCs, decently friendly navigation, and one of the most wonderful maps (albeit why make a great map if the players can't really look at it...)

I've seen this suggestion a few places, and so I did read I, Strahd (and I'm almost finished with the sequel "The War with Azalin"). And I have to agree. It makes me see Strahd in a much different way. In the adventure he is presented as a monster with simple goals that just terrorizes his realm and loves doing it. But he is much more complex. He has a sense of honor and enforces laws, and he sees himself as the protector of Barovia. He knows he is a monster, but he still sees himself as noble and heroic. And his relationship with Tatyana is so much more tragic than what the adventure hints at.

This is the only published adventure I've attempted to run (only about a 3rd of the way through) but I've briefly read the others. I would certainly rank this one as the best, followed by Descent into Avernus.
 

Top Tier
Curse of Strahd -- Definitely #1 for me as well, both as a player and a DM.

Storm King's Thunder -- Could be #2 for me, again both as a player and a DM.

Tomb of Annihilation -- Had a lot of fun DMing this one. Wouldn't mind running it again but without the death curse (at least at first) so more of the side quest locations can be explored.

Scourge of the Sword Coast (one of the D&D Next Sundering adventures) -- Although the story itself is a bit pedestrian, it has some of the best adventure locations I've ever seen / used. I've run this adventure twice. My only complaint is that its climactic ending ended up being the tacked-on beginning of its sequel, Dead in Thay. (That part was also sadly left out of the updated version that appears in Tales from the Yawning Portal.)

Lost Mine of Phandelver -- I suppose I'd better include this up here too. It's not perfect, but it is definitely a solid starting adventure. I've only run it once but would happily run it again.

Middle Tier
Tyranny of Dragons -- Yes, it has problems, but I had a helluva lot of fun running it, and my players had a helluva lot of fun playing it. Maybe you just need the right DM / group?

Princes of the Apocalypse -- I've never run it as a campaign, but I've poached a good chunk of the adventure locations for other campaigns, and I've used the "Trouble in Red Larch" beginning adventure to start two campaigns so far. I'd say I like that segment as much as, if not even more so than, Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Tales from the Yawning Portal -- I've run some of the adventures from this book, and they were fun, although I think they could have done with less of a literal translation. Some have too much treasure, others just feel a bit dated, and the giants are too big to fit in their own lairs going by the map scales.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh -- I've only run two adventures from this book, but it looks like a lot of fun, and I like what they've done with the town of Saltmarsh and with the "build your own nautical adventures" section at the back.

Legacy of the Crystal Shard / Murder in Baldur's Gate -- I love these for the gazetteers. The adventures are pretty good, too, although I feel both should have been for higher level PCs, and both could have done with more descriptions / maps for the various encounters. They can be a bit bare bones at times.

Lower Tier
Out of the Abyss -- While I've used a few set pieces (like "Neverlight Grove" and "Gravenhollow") to good effect in other campaigns, I think overall it's a bit messy and disjoined as a campaign. Possibly too depressing as well.

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist -- Utter trash. Worst 5e adventure by far. (I've gone into plenty of detail elsewhere, so I shan't repeat myself here.)

Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage -- Not that interested in running a megadungeon campaign, and most of the levels just aren't interesting enough to me to want to use them as standalone dungeons. Also, Skullport feels like a waste of space given how empty it is.


Unranked
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus -- Haven't read it yet, though I've read that it has some issues (like not having enough content in the second half).

"Orrery of the Wanderer" -- The adventure from the Acquisitions Inc book looks like a lot of fun. In fact, I would say it even looks like it's better written than many of the adventures named above. However, I have not yet had a chance to test it out in play (and may not get a chance for some time).

Dragon of Icespire Peak -- I bought the Essentials Kit but haven't had a chance to do much more than glance through it. I'd be keen to run this in combination with LMoP sometime, though.
 

Top Tier
Curse of Strahd
Tales of the Yawning Portal

Mid tier
Storm King's Thunder

Low Tier
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Tomb of Annihilation

Junk
Lost Mines of Phandelver
Descent into Avernus
Dragon Heist
Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Out of the Abyss
Tyranny of Dragons
Princes of the Apocalypse
Murder in BG


Not really impressed with most of the new content. Most are just dungeons thrown together with the thinnest of connecting plot. Too much emphasis on following the rails, too much cut-scene, too little social and investigative opportunities for the players. Also far too little thought to player motivation. I was a player in the Dragon Heist campaign, and grew bored very quickly because the adventure as written demanded that my PC do things that had little or no obvious benefit to my own interests.
 

Perhaps I can throw in my hat here. I've never been an adventure path guy. I've never been an official setting guy either. All my games as a player (save 2) have been in imagined worlds by the GM, and all the games I've run (save 1) have been in settings of my own design.

Generally, the reason for this has been that the first adventure I was in was in 3.5 near the end of my interest in DnD (I switched to Rogue Trader, d6 Star Wars, etc until re-entering the world of DnD in 5e.) Don't recall the name of it, but it was a straight dungeon crawl, no NPCs that didn't just mutter threats and swing weapons.

I have only played in one official 5e adventure - Lost Mines of Phandelver. I'd give it a solid 4/5. I love the structure, freedom and variety. Could use more connection to the main story - The Black Spider and Gundren quickly get overshadowed by more immediate rewards.

I ran Horde of the Dragon Queen for my cousins for a whopping 4 sessions before we bailed. I'd give it 2/5. It's got a lot of great ideas in it. I've mined the beginning in Greenest for ideas already. But it's very unpolished. I hope the new printing has fixed quite a few things.

I think there's something to be said, though, that 5e got me interested enough with their premade stuff to get me to use it after nearly a decade of me not even considering that as an option.
 

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