D&D General Best Adventure Path (spanning 10+ levels) of all time?

[Frankie1969]

Large but straightforward question: what is the best collection of pre-made adventure content that follows a full story arc from small-time local heroes (preferably starting at level 1, no higher than 4) to world-hopping legends (preferably reaching 20, no lower than 14)?

Not just in 5E. Any edition, including 4E, PF, 13A, or any other system similar enough to translate.

YMMV, but my personal criteria for "best" are:

1. well-written plot with logical motivation & consequences,
2. well-written NPCs who merit emotional investment,
3. well-written scenarios, preferably organized like instructions not like a novella,
4. well-balanced & interesting challenges, and
5. not overly complex to DM (Zeitgeist gets dinged on this last point).

I don't know what my answer would be. I have fond memories of (TA)GDQ but I know it doesn't stand up well by modern standards.

 

[Frankie1969]

I mean, I still think ZEITGEIST is pretty solid by that criteria, though I'm the most biased person possible here.

I don't disagree. My group had a great time, including me, but wow it took a lot of prep hours.

My ratings, although I may be mis-remembering some.

Name	Info	Levels	Story	NPCs	Layout	Play	Ease
TGDQ	1E TSR	1-14	ok	poor	ok	ok	ok
Ravenloft	2E TSR	?-13	good	ok	poor	ok	?
Drow War	3E Mong.	1-30	ok	poor	ok	ok	ok
Chaos Scar	4E WotC	1-11	ok	ok	good	ok	good
Zeitgeist	P/4/5 EN	1-20+	good	good	ok	good	poor
Curse of Strahd	5E WotC	1-10	good	good	ok	ok	poor
Yawning Portal	5E WotC	1-15	poor	poor	ok	ok	ok
Mad Mage	5E WotC	5-20	poor	ok	ok	ok	ok

 

[wicked cool]

5e version of ravenloft?

 

[Zardnaar]

Probably Kingmaker or Savage Tide although I've heard the 3.x ones kinda fall apart.

Night Below. Starts out great devolves into a dungeon gack and takes to long for the basic premise to pay off.

5E. Has a lack of great adventures CoS maybe?

4E has 1-2 good adventures total none of which count as APs.

Pathfinder. Several contenders Runelords and Kingmaker.

1E lacks required adventures two that kinda qualify aren't very good.

2E. Night Below maybe.

3E Savage Tide or Age of Wyrms.

B/X lacks required criteria but you could probably build your own with the B and X series.

 

[toucanbuzz]

...pre-made adventure content that follows a full story arc from small-time local heroes (preferably starting at level 1, no higher than 4) to world-hopping legends (preferably reaching 20, no lower than 14)? Not just in 5E. Any edition, including 4E, PF, 13A, or any other system similar enough to translate.

1. well-written plot with logical motivation & consequences,
2. well-written NPCs who merit emotional investment,
3. well-written scenarios, preferably organized like instructions not like a novella,
4. well-balanced & interesting challenges, and
5. not overly complex to DM (Zeitgeist gets dinged on this last point).

In no particular order of stuff I've run, and I can't reconcile a level 1-20 style campaign with #5 (not overly complex to DM) as every one of these needs help and a lot of tweaks/fixes.

• Savage Tide (3E, Dungeon mag). Classic, epic high adventure feature the Isle of Dread and Demogorgon and an invasion into the heart of the Abyss. If done right and with a few tweaks, a totally despicable bad guy (early on and with tweaks later) and totally memorable NPCs that you spend time on a ship with. Tons of campaign journals on Paizo, ran using Pathfinder.
• Age of Worms (3E, Dungeon mag). Amazing starting adventure, fabulous dungeons. Needs tweaks on some adventures that drag and is dungeon-heavy, deadly if run with original lethality of monsters. Epic conclusion with a demigod. Tons of campaign journals on Paizo. Ran using Pathfinder.
• Kingmaker (Pathfinder). It's a coloring book with the most campaign aid from DMs in the history of anything I've ever seen. 10 years later I ran it in 5E and still found folks providing advice or asking for it. If filled in properly (as in a LOT of work), could be the most satisfying campaign you'll ever run, taking you to crazy feyworld. Having just finished it to completion, a 2 year campaign, yeah. But #5 criteria, nope. Hit level 15.
• Dragons of Despair, et all (AD&D). The original Dragonlance modules. Yeah, it's a railroad, but gamers are entering into this on purpose to play some epically high fantasy knowing they're staying on the rails. It violates the "start at 1" idea, but when converting to 5E, I worked around this and am currently running it. Epic encounters and scenery, imagery sticks with you, and nothing more epic than stopping the goddess of all evil. Should hit around level 14-15.
• Out of the Abyss (5E). Amazing start, totally fun NPCs like a gelatinous cube, and demon lords. Needs a TON of work up front and a TON of work around the seams, and a TON of work at the end-game when there's not enough going on to warrant going up levels, and some work to make eons-old Demon Lords scary combatants because as-written they suck. But at the end, totally worth it (if you run the "players control demon lords" battle option). Hits levels 12-14.

 

[humble minion]

Probably Kingmaker or Savage Tide although I've heard the 3.x ones kinda fall apart.

A lot of the 3.x/PF1 APs struggle a bit because they go into level ranges high enough where the ruleset is broken. Combats are first-big-spell-wins, the maths is a mess, and the enormous stat blocks of high-level NPCs or monsters takes up so much space in the page count that the actual story content suffers. This is especially the case for the APs published in Dragon, that all went up to 20th level whereas later PF APs (for 3.x or PF) capped out at around level 15 or so. Still difficult to write, but not QUITE as hard.

A few of the standard PF story beats irritated me a little as well, and dragged down some otherwise excellent APs. 'Start the campaign in a lovingly and intimately detailed location where your PC is encouraged to have deep roots and lots of connections, which you leave a few levels in and never return to' is one that you find in Rise of the Runelords, Savage Tide, Reign of Winter, Jade Regent. 'Higher-level extraplanar soujourn that doesn't really fit thematically with the rest of the campaign' is another one that shows up in Ironfang Invasion among others. And 'generic quasi-European fantasy PCs go to non-European-coded fantasy country and fix their problems for them' is one we get in Jade Regent, Mummy's Mask, and even Reign of Winter.

Savage Tide blew my socks off when i first read it. I ran it and loved it (the game broke down around 15th level for unrelated reasons), but it did have structural problems that made the modules as written often incompatible with what reasonable PCs would do. It blithely assumed PCs would be sailing their ship all over the place even long after getting access to Wind Walk and Teleport, for instance.

 

[CleverNickName]

The first "adventure path" I ever played is still my favorite by far:

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[CleverNickName]

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[Bill Zebub]

Darkening of Mirkwood.

 

[Mistwell]

Tomb of Annihilation for 5e is pretty darn awesome.

 

[Steel_Wind]

The correct answer is Rise of the Runelords. Why? Because these people wrote it, while being guided by James Jacobs, who is the best architect/developer of adventures in the RPG business:

James Jacobs, Richard Pett, Nicolas Logue, Wolfgang Baur, Stephen S. Greer, Greg A. Vaughan. You can maybe quibble about Stephen Greer in the HoF and replace him with Tim Hitchcock for your 6 Hall of Famers, but there are lots who will say "keep him in".

That's why RotRL is the best. You can run it in 3.5, PF1, or convert it to PF2 or 5e (it's pretty easy to convert this; really go try it!). It's still the best AP overall where the authors were each doing their DAMNDEST to save Paizo as a company -- what they thought of as "saving the spirit of Dungeon Magazine" at the time. They pulled out all the stops and it shows.

And save it they did, too. The thing about RotRL which sets it off from other APs so clearly is that "the back nine" is as strong "as the front nine" -- THAT is why it is the best.

Typically, APs tend to be really good in the first 3 volumes( or half), and tail off significantly in the second half. Kingmaker suffers from this. Kingmaker is spectacular in Vols 1-3, but the back nine... it tails off too much in quality and pacing; it often feels like a different adventure entirely. The BBEG in Vol 6, in particular, was not telegraphed properly and essentially comes out of nowhere. The re-written Kingmaker for PF2/5e addresses this - or tries to. The back nine is still perceptibly weak in Kingmaker though.

The inconsistency in the 2 Dungeon APs (Shackled City doesn't even count as a true AP as it was written with a very different method) is the reason neither qualifies as coming even close to the podium overall. They are all over the place in quality, and all have "disappointing back nines" in terms of quality. The main reason for this is that WotC interfered with Paizo's design decisions on the Dungeon APs and refused to let Paizo make significant story awards for XP points to escape the grind, such that each of these APs are grindy AF.

I do love The Whispering Cairn and think it is one of the best 3.5 module released considered on its own (Red Hand of Doom is almost as good and a far longer module though which maybe presents more of a challenge?) Still, by the time you get to Chapter 8? AoW goes off the rails and descends in to ceaseless hack and slash. ( I have run AoW twice - once under 3.5 and the other under PF1). I only ran Savage Tide once - that was more than enough, thanks.

Nothing for PF2 has stood out yet to the same degree. Vol 1 of Abomination Vaults, by James Jacobs of course, is outstanding and a call back to what our altered perception (distorted by nostalgia) likes to think 1st ed was at its best. (In truth, 1st ed dungeon crawls was never as good as AV1 is). The problem is that Vol 2 of this 3 volume AP is weak and needs work to make it a worthy sequel to the excellent Vol 1. It's fixable, but really, I shouldn't have to do that.

1st Ed - It's DragonLance DL1-14 and it's not even close. It was the first true AP, though some of the things it did we have decided to not do again. That doesn't change the fact that much of what it did changed adventures and adventure writing forever. There is a reason we keep talking about this damned module series, nearly 40 years later.
2nd Ed - Weak edition in the epic adventure department. I think people were still mainly running 1st ed modules at the time, tbh. Night Below and Rod of Seven Parts I guess would be the nominees but those are both .. iffy long format adventures, at best.
3rd - Rise of the Runelords
PF1 - Rise of the Runelords Anniv Ed. Curse of the Crimson Throne Anniv Ed comes close though -- Why? Once again, it also has a "strong back nine".
5e - Likely Curse of Strahd. You might go with Rime of the Frostmaiden, but both of these require far too much DM prep work and alteration to work properly out of the box. WotC can't be bothered to finish the adventure design job properly and release adventures where the DM plainly has to do WAY too much work to call it a finished product. Note: Paizo does not do this -- not even a little bit. It is a significant difference in the quality of the adventure products published by the two companies.
PF2 - Abomination Vaults or Kingmaker, until the inevitable RotRL Rev Ed for PF2 is released, that is. Or just play the unofficial PF2 conversion: GitHub - A-Series-of-Dice-Based-Events/RiseOfTheRunelords: A repository to hold tools for those wishing to run and convert RotR to Pathfinder 2E.)

Not yet mentioned -- but deserves to be? Chaosium's Masks of Nyarlothotep. It's a lot of fun, too. Still, it is very incomplete as initially released and thus the MON Companion is necessary to fix it and bring the whole thing together to present a more coherent whole.