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I had a lot of fun with Out of the Abyss. It was a design that inspired me to adjust it to my own ends, which is what I enjoy. (The biggest thing to watch out for is the NPCs accompanying the party - most DMs I know try to get rid of them or ignore them as much as possible, as a group of 10+...

Tomb of Annihilation I primarily love for Omu. I think Omu and the Tomb itself is where it's working brilliantly. The prologue (all that mucking around in the jungle) has a lot of "we trust the DM to make it work" energy. And I've known a lot of DMs who take the bare outline and do amazing...

The test of time is already here for a lot of those adventures! It's over 10 years since Tyranny of Dragons, for instance!

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...

There was one fewer Magic set released in that year. There are complaints about Magic all the time, but I don't think it's driven off a cliff yet - it's still a VERY good game with stuff people like being released.

Your classic D&D games (OD&D, AD&D, B/X, etc.) have tremendously simple monsters but they also have a "simple" system to work out the threat level of them - what in 3E and later got termed "Challenge Rating" or "Challenge". So, in OD&D and AD&D you were meant to only get full XP when fighting...

It's the unexpected things that get me. The snake thing really surprised me - wasn't something I was expecting. The monsters changed a LOT, and that will cause a few things you don't expect. (Even the appearance of the marilith changing can have effects when an adventure describes her one way...

It's one of many interactions that doesn't work like you expect it to. Get a duergar encounter that talks about them changing size... and that doesn't work with their stats in 2024. You can use 2014 and 2024 together - absolutely - but it's not like a computer system where a backwards...

Play a 2014 Sorcerer using Quickened Spell with the 2024 rules. Cheers!

My term for it is "mathematical compatibility". Mechanically, it may or may not work, but the underlying mathematics is pretty consistent. I've just written an article showing one of the unexpected incompatibilities I've encountered using a 2014 adventure with the 2024 core rulebooks. There's...

Pity that they can no longer enlarge themselves!

Yeah. That really great table in the 2014 DMG with all the humanoid species and what traits they'd add to NPCs... all gone. No such thing as a duergar in 2024, either. No stats at all...

Custom backgrounds are in the 2024 DMG. In that blink-and-you'll-miss-it way, that the 2024 DMG takes to a lot of its "help the DM come up with their own material". Chapter 3 - direct link if you have the D&D Beyond rules...

Mearls' example was wanting to play a dwarven smith wielding a warhammer. And that there are several mechanics that 2024/5E inserts that get in the way of that fantasy. Want to play a smith? Well, you should play a farmer instead, because they get a better origin feat Hit someone with a...

Mearls is likely to say it's a flaw of 5E as well. You end up making playing the barbarian more about the player's maths skills than the fantasy of being a barbarian. (He has certainly been candid about the flaws with the 2014 MM & CR design). Cheers!

I've occasionally run a "Weekend Adventurers" campaign where each session is a dungeon delve, and then there's a week of downtime after each session. I really enjoy that style of play. I need to do more of it. The Cubicle 7 5E books were doing a lot of work expanding the downtime system; I...

I do tend to use them in greater numbers - since I know how vulnerable lone monsters are to those sorts of spells. Cheers!

One of the things I don't know: How good groups playing these adventures actually are. You've got us forum-dwellers, who know a lot about the game and how to play it well. And then you have your more casual gamer. Are these encounters actually balanced for them?

One of the interesting things about giants is even though they top out at those CRs, in groups they are still a formidable challenge for the players. Having a good ranged attack (rock) and good attack bonuses does an awful lot of heavy lifting. I think there is a greater range than just...

For a few groups... they'd still take several months.