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I am running it as well, and I think it would be useful but maybe not $50 useful. Maybe for the Amazon price. There is a detailed town, a small regional gazetteer, the main adventure path (the water and earth keeps are solid locations and would stand alone very well), a lot of mini-adventures as...

Yeah, I think the issue will be the same whether you are starting with Trouble in Red Larch or Rumors of Evil. A bullet list per NPC of where they frequent, who their friends are, and a random detail or two (X and Y will be playing cards together, Z will often hold court on her front porch...

Gary had a sand table in his basement, and players who had no problem with terrain. His generation of wargamers weren't doing foam settings.

Thanks! I found that the initial adventures remind me of the old module T1 The Village of Hommlet, where they are only loosely connected to the bigger plot. The Necromancer's Cave was a solid little dungeon, and the symbol of the Eye at the end was a really cool bit of foreshadowing to later...

Historically, while Gygax didn't use minis in his RPGs, Arneson did. So this goes back all the way, and it has always been a question of personal preference. My group uses TOTM, and it got a little bit stretched yesterday because there was an encounter where one opponent was 10' away and a...

I ran my first session of Princes of the Apocalypse starting at level 1 in Red Larch yesterday. We used new PCs: initially a half-orc barbarian, half-orc monk, Earth Genasi Druid, dwarf Druid, human bard, and human ranger. The Druids and barbarian are Emerald Enclave, and the ranger is secretly...

Between Red Larch and Rivergard Keep, I think that there's plenty of Hommlet-inspired material in Princes of the Apocalypse. It's why I think "start at level 1" is the better option for PotA. Obviously Red Larch isn't Hommlet but the feel is still very cool, and I think there's a bit of the...

There's a whole chapter full of side quests that is there for just this reason. The side treks are designed such that you could literally alternate between them and the main dungeon areas, if you wanted to, for levels 3 through 11.

I really don't understand this criticism. Princes has, if anything, a very heavy amount of what's going on being "tied to the same source" (i.e., the machinations of the elemental cults tied in to the Elder Elemental Eye). Even the majority of the side treks are linked back to the central plot...

It's an answer to the speculation above it about a monster PDF, which wouldn't be useful unless it also contained the spells that aren't in Basic. I don't see that happening, and I wouldn't count on running PotA without the PHB/DMG/MM.

What 200 knights, at which point in the adventure? Literally the engine of the module is of an escalating visible threat. Initially it looks like some weird bandit and minor cult activity, and while the PCs find plenty to fight, nothing happens that would call for a "Let's send a force of 200...

In the case of PotA, "Why doesn't someone else do it?" is a question that wouldn't even come up until the PCs are already in the thick of things. I mean, imagine if you actually went up to the current open Lord of Waterdeep to tell them about how there are a nest of cultists in the hinterlands a...

I'm not sure what you mean by MMO-style; I actually like how a lot of the enemies in the dungeon areas could be in different places depending on other circumstances, and there are several that are set up for a really good narrative "bang" like the ghouls in Rivergard Keep. Which encounters are...

Unless the PDF they are putting together has a lot of spells, the cultists and monsters have a lot of magic that's not in the Basic PDFs. The book explicitly says that it is for use with the PHB, DMG and MM.

It's worth going back and re-reading the adventure setup in the introductory chapters again. The gist of the adventure is straightforward, as are its stakes; I don't mean to be offensive here, but I think if you miss that section some big ideas can get lost. First, note that the Dessarin Valley...

The Elder Elemental Eye is meant to be the catalyst of everything that happens in the campaign. It's the reason the elemental cults exist at all. I don't see how you can call it vague or unimportant, when it is literally the reason that things in the adventure are happening. I think the Eye's...

I have Princes of the Apocalypse and I'm really, really happy with the book. I'm so enthused with the way that the module uses factions and the Realms setting (and with its adventure design)that I'm going to start running it next week, with fresh characters in Red Larch, playing through "trouble...

I got my copy after work yesterday and so far have read chapters 1 and 2, plus the adventures in Red Larch. I'm enjoying it quite a lot so far. The T1-4 influence is clearly there in Red Larch, which is clearly inspired by, but quite different from, Hommlet. It's good work as a wide-open town...

The single thing that made the biggest impression on me when I was getting into the 5e books was the way that so many parts of the "crunch" in the game allow it to be re-configured and tweaked. It immediately made me realize that 5e is a great platform for defining a setting, because there are a...

OD&D is a game about exploring dungeons and wilderness, and that is what the exploration rules focus on. Complaining that these aren't about broader forms of exploration seems to me to rather miss the point, and doesn't somehow prove that the game was really about combat. As far as the castles...