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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ccs" data-source="post: 7799254" data-attributes="member: 6803664">My rankings, best to worst.  with commentary.Lost Mines of Phandelvar - played this, good opening adventure.Tales From the Yawning Portal - Own it, read it, played some of it here in 5e, played all but 2 of the adventures in previous editions, & will certainly use parts of it as a DM.  It's a selection of great adventures from previous editions converted to 5e. It not a linked campaign, just multiple stand alone adventures sandwiched between one set of covers.Tomb of Annihilation - Great jungle based sandbox, fun dungeon crawl at the end inspired by the original Tomb of Horrors (found in Tales of the Yawning Portal above). Kind of stupid beginning though. Afterall, why would the NPC trust this quest to 1st lvs?Curse of Strahd - Well done.  Though you're entry into Barovia as 1st-3rd lv characters is a bit week.  I've put it 4th because:  It's mostly a walking tour of Barovia (the lands surrounding Castle Ravenloft) & its horrors when all you really ever want is to get to Castle Ravenloft and fight the vampire.... But as they have to walk you from lv1 - lv10 or so 1st in order to stretch this into a whole campaign instead of just being a lv.? one shot.... How's it compare to the original & other iterations?  About the same as the late 3.5 Expedition to Castle Ravenloft.  And IMO completely inferior to the original 1e module (I6 Ravenloft) & it's 2e version House of Strahd - because you've got to foot slog about &^* Barovia for ___ lvs 1st.  Wich really just wastes weeks - months of real life play time.Storm Kings Thunder - Better than the classic 1e G series that inspired it (they were mostly just dungeon hacks vs ever larger giants).  Stupid opening though.   And as written you won't be going through chapters dedicated to each of the giant types.  You'll have to pick one giant type to fight. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />Out of the Abyss -  I like the concept.  It's an Underdark sandbox inspired by the 1e Drow series & the 2e Night Below.  And it's got demon lords running about giving me a good excuse to use my Gale Force 9 Demogorgan model. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  The beginning of this one is pretty good too.  You've been captured by the Drow & have to escape.But after that?  My players don't seem at all interested in visiting Kuo-Toan town, Duergar city, or a Drow city.  They're perfectly fine with letting Demogorgan & pals eat all those factions.  And after exploring the Jungles of Chult in ToA for almost a year the underdark survival/hexcrawl exploration aspect is wearing thinner than I'd expected.  So I'm having to focus more on them helping the deep gnomes.  I have no idea how the 2nd 1/2 is actually going to play.Oh.  And the large scale map for this is atrocious.  It's a 1 page hex map with a color overlay of A) underdark locations, B) surface world terrain printed on it.  But the hex lines are so faint/obscured that they might as well not be there.  There's also places marked on the map that I've yet to find any entries/details for.  (but hey, I've got 2 pages of description for underdark fungi!).  Likewise for the color coded "depths".  No explanation given.  Just color blotting out the hex grid.   Very annoying.Hows's rate next to the 1e series & Night Below?  I think it breaks about even. Princes of the Apocalypse - Inspired by Temple of elemental Evil. Read it once but have yet to run it as we'd just finished the original about 6 months prior to it being announced. Overall I like it more than the original, but I'd need to run it for a different group.Dragon Heist - I like the idea.  I can see what they're aiming for. I was considering running this but it's got a terrible opening & is a bit of a mess. I'll revisit this one eventually.Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat - Played this one, read this one. Ugh.  And again with the tour of the setting.  The openings a bit rough at 1st lv.  But at least it's not stupid plot wise.  Start in Greenest, go to ___ for reasons, trail the cult all about the swordcoast....   Have high lv NPC foist tasks off to the players....  And it takes two volumes to do this.  Inspired by the 3.5 Red Hand of Doom.  Comparison?  Just go get yourself a copy of RHoD & plug in 5e stats for the monsters.Dungeon of the Mad Mage - Playing this one.  Hey?  You know what might be worse than Hoard/Tiamat?  An almost endless super dungeon crawl!  It's directly inspired (right down exact copies of the lv maps) of the Undermountain set(s) from 2e.  And it sucked then too.Goodman Games Keep on the Borderlands/In Search of Adventure & Isle of Dread.Excellent - they include both the original versions & 5e versions.  I've read them, but as I have (and can even quote) the originals I see no point in spending the $/eating up shelf space for these volumes.  Saltmarsh - own it, haven't read much of it yet.  Love the 1e U-series it's based on/inspired by though.  So....?Balders Gate Avernus - Don't know.  At a glance I'm not interested atm.  Also atm I don't have a need for another AP.  But in about a years time I might change my mind.  And I'll be adding it to my Amazon Wish list as my cousins always need a few Christmas ideas (and I refuse to give out mundane practical ideas) .Essentials set - don't know.   I'll likely skip it altogether as I don't need starter sets. *You'll maybe have noticed a theme here.  WoTC is often really bad at penning the beginnings of adventures.</blockquote>

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