D&D 5E Are the 5E playtest adventures worth buying?

[wedgeski]

Hi all. I'm looking for standalone 5E adventures for one of my groups, and I'm wondering if the PDF playtest adventures (Dead in Thay) etc. are worth purchasing?

Quick feedback on how out-of-date the rules and stat blocks might be, and some opinions on whether they are well-made adventures would be much appreciated.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Running a mash up right now of Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and Scourge of the Sword Coast. My group is having a blast and enjoying them and they are good adventures all around. Stats from DragonSpear Castle are slightly outdated but I'm using them as is with no difference. Stats for Scourge are spot on with only very minor differences that again I'm just running as is. I have Dead in Thay and I don't care for it at all. It's a giant crawl with a strange story. I won't be running that one.

 

[Tormyr]

Our group had grown tired of the always start at level 1 of encounters after Legacy of the Crystal Shard, buy we had a blast with that and Murder in Baldur's Gate. You will need to rebuild the encounters using the 5e MM. Some skill checks that are called for might be off, but everything else should be fairly straightforward.

 

[jrowland]

Short Answer: Yes, they are worth it.

Long Answer: All have their plus and minus, minus being some minor mods to stats to fit final rules, but if you are good at winging it you should be fine as written. Dead in Thay is more Combat heavy, so I would really adjust the short rests down to 5 min as er the playtest, or be generous in healing pots available, 1 hour rest time "safe spots" etc.

Murder in Baldur's Gate is mostly political intrigue and such and is probably the easiest to run straight

 

[Rhenny]

I've been running Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle for 5e, and it has given me a good base for a campaign. We are getting excellent mileage out of it. It is a bit railroady, but it is easy to add in some side-treks or modifications to give it more organic life. Here's my blog with session summaries if you want to read game summaries.

http://community.wizards.com/user/1497701/blog

I'm finding that the adventures in Ghosts should be played 1 level lower than what they suggest. For example, my players are at 5th level now and they are going into the portion rated for 6th or 7th level.

I also bought Scourge of the Coast, but haven't played run it or used it yet.

 

[Tormyr]

You could also break up the Dead in Thay mega dungeon into their separate zones and have a bunch of themed mini dungeons.

 

[wedgeski]

Excellent, thanks for all your replies.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I cannot say enough good things about Murder in Baldur's Gate. I've run every Encounters module since season 4, and MiBG was hand's down the most fun for my players. Plus, I think it really sets things up for an epic campaign to take place. Plus, the way it's written is extremely open-ended so you can pad it out or tighten it up to suit your group.

Against the Cult of Chaos is also pretty good. It's got slightly railroady sections, but players can choose which facet of the mystery to investigate. Plus, it has nostalgia references galore, being a mashup of Keep on the Borderland, Village of Hommlet, and Against the Cult of the Reptile God.

Similarly, Legacy of the Crystal Shard is pretty good. It's designed so that players will have to choose what to fail at, something you rarely see in modules -- there's literally too much going on for the group to be everywhere they need to be at the right time. The scenes for the boss fights are classically picturesque. I also thought the villains were nicely fleshed-out, similar to MiBG. There's several tie-ins if any of your players are fans of R. A. Salvatore; not having read any of the novels did not hamper me as DM.

 

[Fion]

I've run Murder at Baldur's Gate (with my own pre-adventure that got the party to level 2) and we enjoyed it all around. It's a great example that even at low level, dungeon crawling isn't 'necessary'. I then ran the first chapter from Hoard of the Dragon Queen and let my party decide if they wanted to pursue that or continue along the Sundering path. They've chosen the Sundering path and we're a short way into Legacy of the Crystal Shard, which we are enjoying. Obviously I've had to alter some stuff to make it more level appropriate but there's a surprising amount of stuff on the web for that, like higher level monster stats.

I understand that Dead in Thay is the poorest of the pre-release modules so I plan on breaking it into pieces to take out what I don't like and - if necessary - modify what I do.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I understand that Dead in Thay is the poorest of the pre-release modules so I plan on breaking it into pieces to take out what I don't like and - if necessary - modify what I do.

While I would agree that Dead in Thay was the least favorite of the playtest modules among my Encounters group, I wouldn't go and say it's "poor."

What DiT tried to do was put a cap on the playtest experience by giving the players some stuff they'd been clamoring for on the message boards:

1. An homage to old-school modules (the links to Tomb of Horrors are obvious and plentiful).
2. The ability to play higher-level characters. Encounters play generally tops out at 4; a lot of the really cool stuff comes with higher levels. DiT allowed players to play a huge variety of high-level PCs, but they had to constrain the module as a result -- there's so many options for an 8th-level wizard, having a wider playing field than a single dungeon could have caused unforeseen mountains of work for the volunteer DMs who run this stuff for the stores.
3. It gave the DMs leeway to work outside the box, which is a skill I think 4E's set-piece encounter method caused to atrophy (in Encounters -- in my home games, it was never an issue). I think the idea was that the store DMs were still adjusting to the fact that the modules no longer came with specific set-piece combat encounters, and had "NPC interaction" and "exploration" elements; in the 4E Encounters modules, these elements were minimized due to the 2-hour slot window.

I think it's a great dungeon crawl, with some seriously deadly encounters. I let my players know ahead of time, there was one encounter which, if they triggered, would cause me to kill every PC in the party. I know one DM on the DiT boards who ran three groups of PCs against that one threat before they were able to neutralize it. It took that many groups to wear down his resources.