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One thing that's bugged me a bit was the "hooks / quests", especially all the scattered references to "the Weevil" (dwarf criminal), so I never put those in. Some Quests, I weave in as potential Plot Hooks, a lot I delete. For example when the PC's defended Triboar, there are no rewards on...

Most of the truly old-school i.e. pre-2E days, adventures had so little plot detail, that they could indeed be run "out of the box" with minimal if any prep... as long as the DM was prepared to ad-lib as necessary. Descriptions of everything were very small, little if any read-aloud text, and...

I ran it, and my players (all quite experienced, but all quite different in play style) pretty much completed it all in a single 3.5 hour session, with 4 PC's starting at 1st level. They succeeded mainly because they were thinking players, and avoided all the classic tropes that get PC's...

Do you have access to Volo's Guide? If so, I'd think you can find something in MM or VG that's close enough for pretty much everything - building custom monsters are really not worth the trouble, much better to spend a few minutes finding something existing, that's in the right ball-park as far...

I think you have some great advice here. In addition, I'd just say: 1) be prepared to have some options that never come into play - it's totally fine for the dwarves to be bribeable, and for your players to never realise; same for the animated objects. i.e. don't force the "cool stuff" upon...

If you have Volo's Guide,I'd recommend you read the piece on Frost Giants for inspiration. Basically, Frost Giants are all about Strength, not Industry nor Magic. So I'd say the level of preparations they would employ, would be mostly limited to making sure they are alert, and prepared to...

Portent gets an 11 for me. It's 100% in the player's control, and while it might not come into play every single day, it's very close and the results can be spectacular. It just needs the player to be onto it, and find the most appropriate times to use the numbers. Most importantly the...

I wholeheartedly agree. As a DM, I think it's great to occasionally throw something grey at the players, and leave it to them to work out what's best - it's often where the best role-play and character development comes to the fore. Some players will relish the opportunity more than others, so...

The Castle in Curse of Strahd is almost 100% the same as the original module, so you won't find anything in the original that's not in the 5e update (just a couple of minor additions / changes in 5e). I think a "castle only" approach would be fine, it's still pretty big and interesting to...

Indeed, what is done is done, so onwards and upwards. My best advice is that SKT does actually require some work in preparation and thinking, every session, especially in the initial chapters. Unfortunately, as you've found out, trying to just wing it as you go along, reading as you go along...

Indeed. And so the moral of the story is probably "do not attempt a big adventure-path style of game with these types of players". Sounds like they need more of an "adventure of the week" style of game, ala The X-Files.

As an EK 'blade singer', you are first and foremost a Fighter; you will, most of the time, be hitting stuff with your sword(s) and risking your life up close and personal with the enemies. The spells are, even towards higher levels, very much secondary, low level and few in number, for those...

At the risk of suggesting the obvious... maybe have a read of it, then you'll get more of an idea on what the adventure includes, what it doesn't and just how important the Death Curse might be to your campaign if and when you actually run it. Personally I skimmed the playtest version nearly a...

Agreed, and they actually have loads of options to make them different - they can be excellent at 'sword and board', two-handed melee, dual-wielder, crossbow expert, longbow expert, then each of these can be mixed with the actual sub-classes (all 3 in PBH are great and can apply well to any...

Yeah, "low level PC's save the world", I too have a problem with that over-used theme. That said, I'm interested to see, and hoping (but not betting on it), that they have taken the many many months that have passed since it was first written, to give it a good overhaul of the adventure and not...

That's exactly my memory of having played it in the 3.5 days - the beginning and end were most memorable because they were the most challenging. One of our players really hated that last encounter, because he struggled to deal with a setup which his PC wasn't really prepared/built for and...

Why are you doing that? Provide some context, you'll get better answers. For example, are you a player trying to judge best 'bang for buck', or a DM trying to <???>

For me, the basic adjustment is pretty simple - don't adjust the CR level or anything, but dial up the damage output of the monsters. For example, give them +1 to hit and to their spell DC's, per 'tier', is a baseline for the bare minimum adjustment required for a group with PC's that have...

I've played in a 'pure sandbox' that was pure DM homebrew, and it was a disaster - he put in heaps of time prepping heaps of stuff, and annoyed us so much with all his house-rules, restrictions, extra rules and so on, that after one session we all quit. We were all experienced players and/or...

I ran it, as my one and only campaign with 4e rules. We played the whole thing, plus a little bit of home-brew, so from 1st to 30th level (4e), so obviously we all quite enjoyed it (I've also run Age of Worms twice using 3.5 and 5e, and played a bit of their first ever AP in 3.5). I actually...