D&D 5E Which was the most recent Wizards adventure you consider a classic?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Tomb of Annihilation has a deeply flawed concept - you should not combine an urgent "everyone in the world who has ever died will die again in a few weeks" hook with a "picaresque, let's hex-crawl explore this large area" setting. They just do not go together. A group will either end up ignoring 80% of the adventure from their sense of haste, or they'll just give up and let all those NPC's die.

I don't mean to be that guy, but the Forgotten Realms is top heavy with powerful NPCs who have been resurrected a lot. I think the world would almost certainly be better off without various power players who've been around for centuries and whose fingerprints are all over the big disasters that continually befall Faerun.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I guess I could stick the Pirate Borg ship rules in there.

Limithron actually produced 5E nautical rules before creating Pirate Borg.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I don't mean to be that guy, but the Forgotten Realms is top heavy with powerful NPCs who have been resurrected a lot.

I know nada about DotMM, but that seems like it should be less about the dungeon and more the various factions either trying to eliminate the resurrecteds or save them.

You could have pro/con factions on each side, possibly resulting in demons & harpers working together to oppose paladins & devils.

 

[MerricB]

Huh. I loved ToA up until the Tomb, which I found tedious both as a player and as a DM. I'm just not that big a fan of Dungeons, I guess. Because I also don't understand the love on display here for DoMM, which I got bored of very quickly.

Different strokes and all that. I clearly prefer wilderness adventures to dungeons and when I do like dungeons, I like them to be small and done and move on to the next one. The last thing I'd ever be interested in doing is leaving a dungeon and returning to find it respawned, as reasonable as that sounds (story-wise).

I'd love to play in a game DMed by someone who considers themselves 'very good' at running dungeons to see what the appeal is. Maybe it's just not for me, IDK.

I think Tomb is a bit too long for the adventure - lots of good material, but it goes on too long without NPCs to interact with.

But also, I was playing it in 2-hour chunks... so the pacing was a bit off anyway.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

I know this is useless, but I FEEL like Witchlight will be a classic. It's an adventure for a different group of our community than the earlier ones.

It is certainly one that intrigues me. As it came out during lockdown, I didn't get to see the community reaction to it (as I would have previously running it in-store).

 

[Zardnaar]

It is certainly one that intrigues me. As it came out during lockdown, I didn't get to see the community reaction to it (as I would have previously running it in-store).

Witchlights one of those niche products.

You either buy into it and love it or it's not your thing and leaves you cold. For me it's the latter. I got my copy for free and cant fairly rate it.

Interesting thought today. Hoard of the Dragon Queen might count. It's a poor adventure really but sone okder adventures also fit that.

It's got dragons, came early sold well. Sone people love it.

There's older good adventures I would rate well but wouldn't count as classics as they're to obscure (late 1E adventures. B10-12, Dungeon Magazine.). Some late 2E adventures as well probably.

Pathfinder and 4E adventures also fairly obscure now.

 

[MerricB]

Witchlights one of those niche products.

You either buy into it and love it or it's not your thing and leaves you cold. For ne it's the mlatter. I got my copy for free and cant fairly rate it.

Interesting thought today. Hoard of the Dragon Queen might count. It's a poor adventure really but sone okder adventures also fit that.

It's got dragons, came early sold well. Sone people love it.

There's older good adventures I would rate well but wouldn't count as classics as they're to obscure (late 1E adventures. B10-12, Dungeon Magazine.).

I'm someone who loves Tyranny of Dragons. It's in my Top 5 adventures.

It saddens me that most DMs don't connect with it. (But it certainly has a following - it's not just me!)

Part of what I like about Tyranny is the ambition. It keeps ramping up, and it properly treats the high-level adventurers as important people, who even the Council of Waterdeep listen to. But still, it's got holes, especially with how to finish the entire saga.

After that, Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss are big, ambitious adventures as well. They're not thinking small. They have problems, and probably require some reworking by the DM, but all the bones are there. These first three adventures are also doing stuff you don't often see in RPG adventures. I've run Tyranny three times, and I'd love to go back to Princes or Abyss again to see what happens now I'm even more experienced as a DM!

In contrast, I don't find The Shattered Obelisk ambitious at all. Or rather, the ambition of the concept is not matched by the execution at all. Vecna is ambitious, but there's such a mismatch between the Vecna storyline and the Rod storyline that causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. People love the idea of doing a quest for the rod parts, but so many of my contacts have thrown out the individual sections of the adventure since they can invent something better.

Descent into Avernus is the nadir of Wizards' horde of freelancers strategy, and from what I've heard, was a very, very troubled production. It's got a great concept, but while the conclusion reads as if the players have a lot of freedom in the middle act, it plays as some linear stories without the deal-making you'd expect where you could go between factions and play them against each other. I can see some groups connect with it, but for me it's just not working.

Cheers!

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm someone who loves Tyranny of Dragons. It's in my Top 5 adventures.

It saddens me that most DMs don't connect with it. (But it certainly has a following - it's not just me!)

Part of what I like about Tyranny is the ambition. It keeps ramping up, and it properly treats the high-level adventurers as important people, who even the Council of Waterdeep listen to. But still, it's got holes, especially with how to finish the entire saga.

After that, Princes of the Apocalypse and Out of the Abyss are big, ambitious adventures as well. They're not thinking small. They have problems, and probably require some reworking by the DM, but all the bones are there. These first three adventures are also doing stuff you don't often see in RPG adventures. I've run Tyranny three times, and I'd love to go back to Princes or Abyss again to see what happens now I'm even more experienced as a DM!

In contrast, I don't find The Shattered Obelisk ambitious at all. Or rather, the ambition of the concept is not matched by the execution at all. Vecna is ambitious, but there's such a mismatch between the Vecna storyline and the Rod storyline that causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. People love the idea of doing a quest for the rod parts, but so many of my contacts have thrown out the individual sections of the adventure since they can invent something better.

Descent into Avernus is the nadir of Wizards' horde of freelancers strategy, and from what I've heard, was a very, very troubled production. It's got a great concept, but while the conclusion reads as if the players have a lot of freedom in the middle act, it plays as some linear stories without the deal-making you'd expect where you could go between factions and play them against each other. I can see some groups connect with it, but for me it's just not working.

Cheers!

HotDQ is very flawed but there's enough there to salvage.

I'm not a big fan of wander around a good chunk of the continent type adventures. You're generally leaving behind the NPCs and not in one place long enough to care about it.

 

[MerricB]

I'm not a big fan of wander around a good chunk of the continent type adventures. You're generally leaving behind the NPCs and not in one place long enough to care about it.

This is what I'm finding in Empire of the Ghouls!

It doesn't bother me so much with HotDQ much because you've got a strong goal throughout (follow the Hoard!) and each section has clear action, and very distinct from each other (also, some sections have a lot of player freedom about how to achieve them).

And then with Rise of Tiamat, you have those recurring NPCs in the Council - and that can be played up a LOT.

Cheers!

 

[ECMO3]

I love published adventures. I really do. But I don't love every adventure, and the last few (several?) Wizards adventures have been disappointing to me.

But I don't demand perfection from adventures either. Most of the adventures we consider classic have flaws. But they have enough in them to really speak to a lot of DMs, and for those DMs to overcome whatever flaws they have, and to get really, really excited about running them.

So, here's my question to you: What's the most recent official D&D adventure that really speaks to you, that you'd be prepared to put on the "Classic" roster?

Covid disrupted my play of the adventures, so there's this gap in my play of them (Rime, Witchlight being the big two in the gap). But for me, the most recent that is "Yeah, this is worthy of our time" is Tomb of Annihilation. Which, given that's 2017, is a LOT of years earlier. (I have problems with it, but it's an adventure that I really enjoy as well).

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen just misses out. Its version of Dragonlance lore irritates me greatly, though I mostly like the adventure content.

So, what's your pick?

Cheers!

In terms of games I played I would say Rime of the Frostmaiden is the most recent. Other 5e products I would rate as classic include Tomb of Annhilation and Tyranny of Dragons.

I think a desert-centric Amn adventure would be an instant classic if they did it, as would an adventure based in the Halruua Mageigarchy.

I think BGDIA became a classic because of how close the ties are between it and Baldur's Gate 3.