Adventure titles are hard. What are some of your favorite titles from pre-published adventures?
A lot of the official 5E ones read like marketing copy soup to me. I'm gonna disqualify anything with a colon in the title as being hopeless. Rime of the Frostmaiden, Dragon Heist, and Dungeon of the Mad Mage would be okay titles minus the colon and the city/region part.
I legit like "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight" as a title.
I am not sure if I really like "Curse of Strahd" as a title or if I just feel positively towards it because I like the adventure a lot. If they published it today they would absolutely call it "Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd", which is worse.
I enjoy "Tomb of Annihilation" because of the unapologetic 70s dark-light high-school poster-ness of it as a title. Kinda like "Princes of the Apocalypse" for similar reasons. Both would be acceptible as album titles for Iron Maiden.
Most of the compilation ones would be better without the "Journeys Through" and "Keys From" of it all. Just "The Radiant Citadel" or "The Golden Vault" are better, although they do sound like they might be slang for genitalia.
In terms of classic adventures, most are hopeless but some are so over-the-top bad that they come out the other side and wind up awesome, like "Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" (which I know id a computer game, but you get the point).
The classic Planescape adventures often sound like Neil Gaiman books ("Dead Gods") and of course they are of a piece with the Sandman comics of that era, but they do feel a bit dated and self-serious now (for the same reasons that Sandman does).
The Gygax titles tend to be jaw-droppingly bad ("Steading of the Hill Giant Chief") but again he does hit over-the-top pulp gold on occasion ("Queen of the Demonweb Pits").
What are the good ones. and why? Not asking about the quality of the adventure, just the title.
A lot of the official 5E ones read like marketing copy soup to me. I'm gonna disqualify anything with a colon in the title as being hopeless. Rime of the Frostmaiden, Dragon Heist, and Dungeon of the Mad Mage would be okay titles minus the colon and the city/region part.
I legit like "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight" as a title.
I am not sure if I really like "Curse of Strahd" as a title or if I just feel positively towards it because I like the adventure a lot. If they published it today they would absolutely call it "Ravenloft: Curse of Strahd", which is worse.
I enjoy "Tomb of Annihilation" because of the unapologetic 70s dark-light high-school poster-ness of it as a title. Kinda like "Princes of the Apocalypse" for similar reasons. Both would be acceptible as album titles for Iron Maiden.
Most of the compilation ones would be better without the "Journeys Through" and "Keys From" of it all. Just "The Radiant Citadel" or "The Golden Vault" are better, although they do sound like they might be slang for genitalia.
In terms of classic adventures, most are hopeless but some are so over-the-top bad that they come out the other side and wind up awesome, like "Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" (which I know id a computer game, but you get the point).
The classic Planescape adventures often sound like Neil Gaiman books ("Dead Gods") and of course they are of a piece with the Sandman comics of that era, but they do feel a bit dated and self-serious now (for the same reasons that Sandman does).
The Gygax titles tend to be jaw-droppingly bad ("Steading of the Hill Giant Chief") but again he does hit over-the-top pulp gold on occasion ("Queen of the Demonweb Pits").
What are the good ones. and why? Not asking about the quality of the adventure, just the title.
