D&D 5E (2014) Companion Thread to 5E Survivor - Adventures

[RealAlHazred]

Discussion relevant to the Adventures Survivor thread should go here!

 

[RealAlHazred]

I feel the Playtest adventures at the tail end of the D&D Encounters program are too often forgotten. They're not on the Wikipedia list of D&D adventures, for instance, under either 4E or 5E. A lot of people have never seen them. And that's a shame, because the Murder in Baldur's Gate module was EXCELLENT. The Dungeon's Master review of the Season can be found here (link goes to the Preview page; I highly recommend you avoid the spoilers in the rest of the posts unless you intend to run.) In rereading it, I'm highly amused about the comment that the materials provided are lacking: you only got a DM's screen and two staple-bound books on glossy paper (a 32-page adventure book & a 64-page setting book) for your $35. It's a let down at ¢36 a page! Of course, now people pay $60 for a hardcover book of 200 pages, a value of ¢30 a page without a screen, a real value!

The scenario is really well done, and I say that as someone who didn't play the original Baldur's Gate computer games (there are a ton of Easter eggs in here for them) and doesn't really care for the Forgotten Realms. But it's just that good.

 

[Scribe]

As I noted before, I feel Spelljammer gets a bad rap.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I CAN'T BELIEVE I MISSED LOST MINE OF PHANDELVER! Well, this was a waste of time... I apologize, everyone.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I didn't even know this thread existed! Huh-to-the-zah!

It's where I can talk about why oh why is Strahd not at the top? And... Yawning Portal is number one (currently)? I'm just flabbergasted...

I'll start voting once a couple more have been picked off...

 

[Vraal]

Nice to see my beloved Ghosts of Saltmarsh doing so well; an incredible collection of cherry-picked adventures, each individually great but easily strung together for a campaign.

Can't stand Curse of Strahd, personally. I know it's very popular (perhaps because for a long time it was the only official adventure with a non-high fantasy flavour?) but I think it's the worst-organised adventure book I've ever read.

(I have a greater complaint that the sort of horror that Strahd and co. ought to inspire is incompatible with the genre that the 5e ruleset creates, but that's beyond the scope of this)

I hope Wild Beyond the Witchlight hangs around, there's some real verve and inventiveness in that book that's missing from a lot of the others.

 

[Scribe]

I hope Wild Beyond the Witchlight hangs around, there's some real verve and inventiveness in that book that's missing from a lot of the others.

This was in my short list for downvote, maybe I'll read it and reconsider. Radiant lost the coin flip and had to go.

 

[RealAlHazred]

I've run a bunch of the hardcover adventures, when I was still running my FLGS' organized play campaign. There were a bunch that I found "meh" at the table. Some were fairly bad for various reasons (Princes of the Apocalypse I really wanted to like, but had logic issues throughout). The ones that were big hits at my table were Murder in Baldur's Gate (though the players didn't pay a lot of attention and several still didn't know what was going on at the end), Out of the Abyss (I treated it like the megadungeon dungeon-crawl that it was), Tomb of Annihilation (dinosaurs and tombs, can't go wrong), and Ghosts of Saltmarsh (though I heavily modified it from the book). Curse of Strahd would have worked better, I think, if it wasn't run in a hobby shop with heavy through-traffic for 2 hours every Wednesday; they really liked Death House.

 

[JoeyD473]

Hoping Stahd wins. I lovedevery version of it since House on Griffion Hill.

 

[Scribe]

Hoping Stahd wins. I lovedevery version of it since House on Griffion Hill.

Its going to be a steep hill I think at this point.