D&D 5E D&D 5e Adventure Reviews

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

So, D&D 5e has been out for almost 6 years, and there are a lot of prewritten adventures out so far. There have been ups and downs throughout the years. This thread is to discuss the adventures, their flaws and strengths, and to rank them. All of this is opinion based, there's obviously no right or wrong answer, but you're free to argue for or against other peoples' rankings or for your own. Here is my ranking, from best to worst (I am only ranking the adventures that are contained in an adventure book, not including box set adventures or setting books, though a lot of the adventures are very well written):

1. Curse of Strahd. Best adventure, a nice twist on Ravenloft, and it has a great plot while still being a sandbox adventure.
2. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Amazing adventure, great hooks and villains. There are some problems with it, but they're not huge.
3. Tomb of Annihilation. It's a perfect mix of survival, humor, monsters, sandboxing, and railroading. It has a railroaded plot while still taking in account player accountability.
4. Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Great compilation of older adventures, with a great link between all of them, while being open enough to be cut and pasted into nearly any adventure world.
5. Storm King's Thunder. Another great example of mixing sandbox and railroad adventures. The beginning of the adventure is very badly written, but otherwise it is a good adventure.
6. Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. A fairly well written adventure, certainly an epic-feeling adventure with a great story, but is very railroady, has a very badly written story hook, and basically no motivation to continue on the adventure. It is very linear, is not a sandbox at all, which is unfortunate, and is fairly disappointing.
7. Out of the Abyss. Very exotic adventure with an epic plot. It is railroady, and has nearly no motivation to do the adventure instead of let someone else handle it, but is a nice adventure with interesting NPCs and locations.
8. Princes of the Apocalypse. Very linear adventure with even less of an adventure hook than most others, but it does have some good side quests and stories. It is a lot of dungeon slogging, but is also fairly epic.
9. Tales from the Yawning Portal. Another great old adventure compilation, but not great as an adventure, as it has less link between the consecutive adventures than Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and they are just dungeons with barely any story.
10. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Barely any adventure hook, very long dungeon slog with many large battles between very similar creatures.
11. Hoard of the Dragon Queen: Very railroady adventure, poor descriptions of important parts of the story, and is overall a terribly written adventure. Any good DM with enough work can make this adventure function, but it can be difficult.
12. Rise of Tiamat. This is the same as Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but even worse.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and see your lists as well.

 

[BigZebra]

Great idea. Love the list.
Have some quick comments - and as you yourself points out it it's all opinions. So keep that in mind

First off, I don't agree with the prevalent presmise that railroad is bad and sandbox is good. It all depends on the table. Further I don't agree with the genereal consensus that HotDQ and RoT are so bad.

I agree that they have som issues, which could have been fixed in edit, and which I am a bit dissapointed weren't fixed in the re-release. But we're playing it currently and enjoy it immensely. And I would also suggest it's a mix of both some railroading and som sandboxing. I like that.

Agree though with Strahd as numero uno. Brilliant.

 

[BigZebra]

Whopps. Sorry.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think GoS and TftYP can't really be compared to actual APs. GoS is meant to be an open campaign, with various adventures plus adventure hooks for the DM to utilize as they see fit. TFtYP really just provides old adventures to be dropped into any existing campaign.

As far as the APs go, I agree but would drop SKT below BG:A.

 

[Lanefan]

There's not that many other official adventures for 5e - Lost Mine of Phandelver, Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, and...what else? Where would these fit in the list?

Princes of the Apocalypse can be linear or not, depending how you present it. For example you could run it as a series of disconnected adventures to begin with in whatever order you want, almost like a sandbox, and have the connections slowly emerge organically as play goes along. Only the last few parts would be in a chain, and by then it shouldn't matter.

 

[robus]

Really would like there to be a distinction between railroad and linear. Of course most published adventures are linear, they’re limited by the constraints of a book.

A railroad is when a DM will tolerate no deviation from the path.

As to the adventures, I’ve not had the pleasure of running CoS but my opinion of WotCs efforts has been declining with each one have run. I find them either too cute, or too confusing (with poor motivations for NPCs and nonsensical adventures.)

However, I’m not sure I’m smart enough to create my own.

 

[S'mon]

Princes of the Apocalypse. Very linear adventure with even less of an adventure hook than most others, but it does have some good side quests and stories. It is a lot of dungeon slogging, but is also fairly epic.

It's usually regarded as too much of a sandbox? Too easy for unwary PCs to wander in somewhere deadly & get TPK'd?
The hook was pretty obvious for me - "Go investigate cult activity in the Dessarin Hills".

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Really would like there to be a distinction between railroad and linear. Of course most published adventures are linear, they’re limited by the constraints of a book.

My personal distinction between railroading and linear are this:

1. Railroading is the DM taking away player agency, basically forcing them down a path in the adventure.
2. Linear is having a plot that has a clear goal that must be accomplished by doing a certain set of circumstances.

By my definition of these, Tomb of Annihilation is actually a very linear adventure, while it is also largely a sandbox. Princes of the Apocalypse is the same way. It's very linear, but also a sandbox in the sense that the players can go and do anything they want without being punished for it.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It's usually regarded as too much of a sandbox? Too easy for unwary PCs to wander in somewhere deadly & get TPK'd?
The hook was pretty obvious for me - "Go investigate cult activity in the Dessarin Hills".

The hook is clear, but the player integration into this plot is not very drawing for the players, IMHO.

 

[LordEntrails]

I suggest you lay out some criteria for ranking, even if it's only "unsupported opinion and I'm not going to tell you wy I like what."

Dragon Heist is, imo, really bad as an adventure. It is great as a setting. But without the Alexandrian Remix it is not something I would ever run as is. It has a bunch of content, but as an adventure it has inconsistencies, is sloppily written and poorly organized. As a collection of places, people and events it is inspiring and can form a great backbone of a campaign or setting.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage is, imo, a long the same lines. It tries to be a mega dungeon, but its not. It tries to have a story line but it doesn't. The reasons/quests are exceptionally weak. The gating is just sad. At least with previous incarnations of Undermountain, they never pretended to be complete and were just a starting skeleton on which to build. DoMM barely makes any attempt at allowing that and fails miserably all around.

LMoP is well written. It's good all around as a basis for experienced DMs or as a learning tool for new DMs.

Storm Lord's Wraith, Divine Contention, Sleeping Dragon's Wake are all solid. Still geared towards the new DM who is learning the craft. But solid enough to provide a good basis in location, story and people for an experienced DM.

PotA is middling. I find it a bit disorganized and in need of a relationship/plot graph. But, it's workable. I think new DMs can use it, but it won't help make them better DMs. Experienced DMs can use it, but their is limited value in expanding upon it unless you really go all in.