D&D General Best "out of the box" ready to run adventures/modules?

[jayoungr]

What adventures/modules did you find to be the best/easiest to run straight of the box? As in least prep time, easiest to just pick up and run modules/adventures?

Official WotC-published ones only, or are you including third-party adventures in your question?

 

[GlassJaw]

anyone made barovia a neighboring country in their campaign world? Made it a country next to the starting box set area?

Why would you want to do that?! The whole point of Ravenloft is that the players are trapped! Muah ha ha!

Even better if you whisk them away without any warning and don't tell them what happened!

 

[Mort]

Official WotC-published ones only, or are you including third-party adventures in your question?

Any publisher. Heck, any edition really.

 

[BenTheFerg]

We are probably half through Glitterhame. I put a big albino lizard in the large cavern and beefed up its hit points so it could live long enough to do something, and it did. Swallowed the rogue, nearly killed him until his allies carved him out of the thing's stomach.

FoF is a nice dungeon bash. I mashed it together with Halls of the Dwarven Kings for an Adventures in Middle Earth setting The Greydelve in the Darkening of Mirkwood. But it works very well out of the can.

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan..... running that now. There is another thread of TftYP, and this is the lowdown on the HSoT: 5E - Problems with Tales from the Yawning Portal

And I have to say I agree wholeheartedly with James. It is a fantastic 1e module that has not been ported over into 5e well.

Too many encounters with rubbish builds. Solo creatures against 4 pcs get shafted fast IMHO. Trap heavy and some are crazy like you go to sleep for 3000 years... too many unique magic items. And at 5th level an arcane spell caster may have Tiny Hut. Which the bard does in my game - pure chance - which nerfs the poison gas/ sense of urgency.

Loved running CoS. But that did involve me working hard for 2 weeks to prep it using Reddit forums for help. But there is some great help out there. Worth the investment of time.

Out of the Abyss. Read it. Read reviews. 1st half great but it is badly organised and will be a b*tch to run without lots of work. But doable. But not for a newb DM. Ditto CoS.

Dragon Heist. Is a mare as far as I can tell. Alexandrian has a fix. But that is not straightforward IMHO.

Ditto Justin is fixing BG: DiA. Watch that space.

Played the Lost Mines of Pantsdelver (as it is called my way). Great adventure. Solid. Nice little sandbox.

Across Eberron and the Adventurers League modules for Eberron are very good. Have been using them out of the can/ small changes in my Sharn urban sandbox. Highly recommended.

Currently: reading Empire of Ghouls from Kobold Press by Richard Green and so far it is a great read and looks like a brilliant campaign! If you want to pad it out, you can use Streets of Zobeck 5e as well as other KP anthologies such as Prepared. Or their Lair books. But as far as I can see you can use EoG straight out of the tin! HoodiHoo!

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Deep Carbon Observatory for any Old School type game.

But for WotC stuff, I guess I'll just repeat the rest and say Lost Mines. I'm running it for the 2nd time for my high school buddies (what happened to your hair man?!?), and it just is easy to pick up and go. But I'll be highlighting the BBEG earlier, so that the confrontation at the end has more drama...

 

[teitan]

Sunless Citadel. EOS.

 

[Burnside]

Any publisher. Heck, any edition really.

In that case, there's plenty of stuff on DMsGuild or DriveThruRPG that qualifies. First things I thought of:

Complete Adventures of M.T. Black, Vol 1
Most adventures by Arcane Library/Kelsey Dionne
Most adventures by Dan Coleman

The best-selling of my own adventures is Secrets of the Blind Palace. As you can see from the reviews, people find it easy to prep and run.

 

[sim-h]

Princes of the Apocalypse.

Backstory? Largely irrelevant. Plot? None. Investigation? Negligible. NPCs? Minor.
All you need to do is read what's going on in each adjacent room of the dungeon.

You've got to be kidding me!! This is the one that requires the most pre-prep out of all of the adventures I've bought! That is, if you want the players and DM to enjoy it, I guess.

 

[Mistwell]

Sunless Citadel. It truly needs very little prep at all, and is a blast as an adventure.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

You've got to be kidding me!! This is the one that requires the most pre-prep out of all of the adventures I've bought! That is, if you want the players and DM to enjoy it, I guess.

Wasn't part of the original post's requirements (My game group and I have decided we want to spend 4 hours online once a week to be bored out of our skulls. Most of the time, the DM spends looking up what's actually happening in the room, the rest of the time we argue about how far back we need to retcon in order for any of this to make sense. It's great. No really. I'm just conflicted because my brother asked me to come over to help him watch paint dry, and I don't want to let my game group down.)