D&D 5E The Larger Failure of "Tyranny of Dragons"

[Zardnaar]

I've been playing since 1981 and I have never seen an adventure that can be run "out the box".

You like tweaking stuff, I'll do it if I want to I'm not a fan of doing it because I have to.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nope.
But it seems to me to be stating the obvious. No good DM would run an adventure out of the box without adapting it to the players. Every group is different, you can never just pull something off the peg and expect it to fit, and you would have to be a pretty poor DM not to know that.

Sometimes you just want to play asap.

Any DM can make something fun or fix a bad adventure. Still doesn't make the adventure good.

Doesn't help new DMs either.

 

[pukunui]

One option is, start with Phandelver and splice the campaign in after the caravan section. Insto presto, great intro followed by great follow up.

In fact, I’m fairly certain the reason the cultists go all the way to the Mere of Dead Men, with the PCs arriving there at 5th level, was so you could do just that.

 

[Anoth]

I've been playing since 1981 and I have never seen an adventure that can be run "out the box".

really I think that is too much to expect and leads to railroading. What happens if an important MPC gets killed. Or someone angers a potential ally. Module would be 100,000 pages or more if they tried to account for every possibility.

 

[hawkeyefan]

You have to also remember Amazon reviews are also those who bought the book so people would be inclined to rate it positively.

Yeah, who wants to listen to people who've bought the book.

I get the idea, start the campaign with a bang, and given the adventure path is supposed to be centered on dragons, have an early dragon encounter. But damn if that whole execution fails. A better path might be to not allow the party to interact with the dragon, and have them already in town. Run the dragon like in Game of Thrones, make it an environmental effect that is just destroying the buildings and people around the party. Make it more about avoiding the Dragon's attacks and fending off the raiders, and just have the Dragon leave once it feels it's task is done.

Well, the book isn’t “execution”. That happens at the table. The book gives lots of advice along the lines of what you suggest. So everyone’s execution should be tailored to their group.

The adventure’s not without flaws, but none are.

Personally, I don’t think it’s anywhere near as bad as many say. Nor do I think many of the modules from early editions are as great as many say. I mean, I love the G-D series, but they’re not these open sandboxes that many claim they are. The end of one part of that series literally teleports the party to the next one.

This is why the criticism....or at least the most vehement and hyperbolic...tends to come from self identified “old school” players. It seems the adventure is being held to a pretty nebulous standard.

 

[Eltab]

OP:
Have you looked through the "Enhancing Hoard of the Dragon Queen" thread?

 

[darjr]

Sometimes you just want to play asap.

then do not start with any of the hardcovers or really any large adventure, they’d have to be a complete railroad for that, and maybe not even then.

 

[Zardnaar]

then do not start with any of the hardcovers or really any large adventure, they’d have to be a complete railroad for that, and maybe not even then.

Shrugs.

The amount of hoops people are jumping through to defend this adventure kind of proves the idea it's bad.

Curse of Strahd for example is generally regarded as the best adventure but avoids the this is a crap adventure type threads.

 

[Anoth]

really I think that is too much to expect and leads to railroading. What happens if an important MPC gets killed. Or someone angers a potential ally. Module would be 100,000 pages or more if they tried to account for every possibility.

That was just two examples of many more possibilities. And some hyperbole.

 

[Parmandur]

Shrugs.

The amount of hoops people are jumping through to defend this adventure kind of proves the idea it's bad.

Curse of Strahd for example is generally regarded as the best adventure but avoids the this is a crap adventure type threads.

I doubt anyone would claim that HotDQ and RoT re anywhere near the best of the bunch, while CoS is probably the best in show. However, HotDQ is playable, and people are still playing it.