D&D 5E D&D 5e Adventure Reviews

[Parmandur]

Really?

First, I'm not sure that's actually better - if a chart says the adventure should go a certain way - and then the adventure doesn't have any relation to the chart, how is that a good thing?

Second, This adventure ABSOLUTELY requires things be done in a certain, very specific order - basically start to finish. Sure there are some "explore the neighborhood" stuff that order doesn't matter - but for the most part, it really, really does.

Heck

Spoiler

the adventure McGuffin will literally wipe the PCs memories of finding it if it thinks the players have found it prematurely

how much more railrodey than THAT can you get!?! Not to mention a true recipe for angry players!

Note, I don't necessarily think a linear adventure is bad - heck often I prefer it. BUT, I dislike an adventure that's linear, refuses to admit it, and makes it hard for the DM to connect the parts for the players.

I agree, the criticism of the metaframework as presented is valid. But looking at the book for what it is, a large grabbag of independent scenarios with an iffy suggested thorough line, it is pretty nifty.

 

[One Horse town]

I'm going to come at this from a different angle - bang for my buck. I rarely, if ever, run something straight from the book, but use bits and pieces from several sources and use them to flesh out my own games. With that in mind here's my list of the adventures that I have.

1. Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Easily the best bang for my buck. There's half a dozen campaigns worth of dungeons in here and most of them are pretty well written with opportunity for role-play and faction interaction.

2. Tales From the Yawning Portal. Classic dungeons. Yay! Against the giants is going to get rolled out soon. Interesting from the academic standpoint to see how they were converted to 5e and a diverse level range to drop in where I fancy.

3. Princes of the Apocalypse. Quirky baddies and lots more adventure sites. A bit of cut and pasting and another lot of stuff that can be spread over 4 or so campaigns.

4, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There's a pattern here isn't there? See number 2. This is lower because underwater stuff is harder to squeeze in too much.

5. Storm Kings Thunder. A good gazateer of the Sword Coast. The adventure is poor IMO - or maybe can be pepped up with Against the Giants from Portal? Yep.

6. Dragon Heist. I was stoked when I saw this was in the works. Shame I can not really use much of it at all.

Two 3rd party books that are excellent - City of Brass and Odyssey of the Dragonlords. I'd put Brass at number 2 and Dragonlords at 4 in the above list.

 

[Mort]

I agree, the criticism of the metaframework as presented is valid. But looking at the book for what it is, a large grabbag of independent scenarios with an iffy suggested thorough line, it is pretty nifty.

I agree many IDEAS in the adventure are great. Some of the individual scenarios are quite good to very good. Which actually serves my needs fine - I love stealing great ideas/scenarios etc.

But the adventure REALLY fails in providing good connecting tissue between scenes (Particularly shocking in that they had some good people working on this adventure. Matt Mercer was a consultant on it and he connects scenes incredibly well).

Anyone who bought this module thinking they could run it out of the box with not too much prep (or god forbid bought it because they were getting a heist adventure)? They're in for a lot of frustration and disappointment!

 

[Mort]

I'm going to come at this from a different angle - bang for my buck. I rarely, if ever, run something straight from the book, but use bits and pieces from several sources and use them to flesh out my own games. With that in mind here's my list of the adventures that I have.

1. Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Easily the best bang for my buck. There's half a dozen campaigns worth of dungeons in here and most of them are pretty well written with opportunity for role-play and faction interaction.

2. Tales From the Yawning Portal. Classic dungeons. Yay! Against the giants is going to get rolled out soon. Interesting from the academic standpoint to see how they were converted to 5e and a diverse level range to drop in where I fancy.

3. Princes of the Apocalypse. Quirky baddies and lots more adventure sites. A bit of cut and pasting and another lot of stuff that can be spread over 4 or so campaigns.

4, Ghosts of Saltmarsh. There's a pattern here isn't there? See number 2. This is lower because underwater stuff is harder to squeeze in too much.

5. Storm Kings Thunder. A good gazateer of the Sword Coast. The adventure is poor IMO - or maybe can be pepped up with Against the Giants from Portal? Yep.

6. Dragon Heist. I was stoked when I saw this was in the works. Shame I can not really use much of it at all.

Two 3rd party books that are excellent - City of Brass and Odyssey of the Dragonlords. I'd put Brass at number 2 and Dragonlords at 4 in the above list.

Can you elaborate on City of Brass? took a quick look at it online but haven't sprung for it yet ($50 seems like a lot for just a PDF).

Is it a good source for DMs who want players to pop in and out of the local (say to get items they need relevant to another adventure)?

 

[delericho]

Forge of Fury is a great dungeon set piece, but I agree it need better context for why the players are there.

Yeah. I ran half of this one in 3e days, and just before the particularly infamous encounter my group suddenly asked "why are we doing this?" Lacking a good answer, they bugged out at that point.

 

[One Horse town]

Can you elaborate on City of Brass? took a quick look at it online but haven't sprung for it yet ($50 seems like a lot for just a PDF).

Is it a good source for DMs who want players to pop in and out of the local (say to get items they need relevant to another adventure)?

Yeah, I got lucky, it was $16 when I bought it on drivethru. GMs day, I think. The 2 third party adventures are actually the only ones of that lot that i'd consider running a whole campaign from (which doesn't mean I wouldn't put my own stuff in, just that the 'path' if you like is pretty organic).

On to your question, undoubtedly. The City of Brass is mapped out in detail with many interesting locales replete with NPCs, plot hooks etc. It also has a massive bestiary at the back (sadly without any art whatsoever) with which to amaze and scare your players. You could use the material in the second half of the book to either run a campaign that has nothing to do with the adventure itself, or to do a 'dip and run' if that's your aim.

What I like is that you build up to the visit. So, you foil a mundane plot, which leads to a cult, who are funded overseas, beyond an island chain (which you of course can investigate), in an arabian type land that is being fiddled with by the Sultan of the City of Brass. So your characters slowly unveil the plot and then visit an environment that is very WTF? Even the Plane is detailed with encounter areas etc. Recommended for the right price certainly.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Tier 1
(Top of the list, great to use and fun)
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Curse of Strahd
Tomb of Annihilation
Tales from the Yawning Portal


Tier 2
(Good, but have issues that require reworking or otherwise keep it from being a great AP)
Descent into Avernus
Storm King's Thunder
Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Out of the Abyss


Tier 3
(Either meh, or good ideas and parts ... but also really bad parts)
Dragon Heist
Dragon Queen/Tiamat
Princes of the Apocalypse


This is my opinion only. I would say that overall, the quality is improving as they get deeper into the product. I may rank Yawning Portal a little high, but I think that they did a credible job with the conversion, and that having modules as opposed to APs was a wonderful thing.

Then again, maybe it's not the best thing that 75% of the Tier 1 products, IMO, are at least partially recycled.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Can only review the one's I've read, but here goes;

1. Curse of Strahd
2. Tomb of Annihilation
3. Ghosts of Saltmarsh
4. Dragon Heist
5. Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Lost Mines of Phandelver would be 3a.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

How so? Are adventures not largely comprised of the same basic components, the most common and fundamental being the combat encounter?

No? I mean honestly no. They really aren't. Someone else's random ideas about what makes a good combat encounter in the context of a specific adventure are not something I've found much value in stealing in any edition, having played and nicked stuff from adventures since 1989.

What I tended to steal was three things:

1) Maps. So many stolen maps.

2) Ideas/characters/concepts. Sometimes an adventure is based around some tremendous idea but the actual execution is lousy, sometimes there's a wonderful character who would work better elsewhere.

3) Treasures, puzzles, and traps. Specific magic items, and specific traps, can be very steal-able. D&D consistently provides really well for monsters, and building encounters in every edition except 3.XE has been pretty easy, so they're not a problem. But a good trap? An interesting trap? That's gold. So is an actually-good puzzle, though they are vanishingly rare even in published adventures.

Still, a good craftsman doesn't limit themselves by what they have on hand. The "right tool" might make a job easier in an instance. But it is the person who exhibits ingenuity, and innovates despite the inconvenience of greater effort, that improves their skill set. The ability to weave disjointed and otherwise unconnected components into a seamless and enjoyable narrative is a skill best learned through practice. No one ever said GMing was easy or effortless.

Thanks for teaching this grandma to suck eggs, dude!

My point is, the less appropriate material there is, the less reason you want to spend a lot of money buying a big complicated adventure from WotC or whoever. I usually write homebrew adventures so I don't typically need pre-gen ones. But if I want a pre-gen on, I want I don't have to spend just as much effort reading and then fixing as I would have on writing a pre-gen.

And this is the key problem I've seen over and over. When you get a pre-gen, to run it well you need to:

1) Read it through.

2) Understand it - which often requires taking quite a lot of notes, because a lot of pre-gens are really badly written, and really badly organised. Vital description or information that gives a scene its entire context can be a dozen pages away (often later!) in a text box, or worse, in the middle of a paragraph about something else!

3) Make any changes to make to make it "not suck". Hopefully there is no 3. A lot of smaller adventures, there is no 3. They're just solid little adventures, and you do little or nothing to make them work (maybe change a town name or something, or otherwise recontextualize them). With big adventures? There's almost never not a 3, and sometimes 1+2+3 here is significantly more than writing your adventure, often for a lesser outcome.

Does that make sense?

 

[GlassJaw]

Tier 1
(Top of the list, great to use and fun)
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Curse of Strahd
Tomb of Annihilation
Tales from the Yawning Portal


Tier 2
(Good, but have issues that require reworking or otherwise keep it from being a great AP)
Descent into Avernus
Storm King's Thunder
Dungeon of the Mad Mage
Out of the Abyss


Tier 3
(Either meh, or good ideas and parts ... but also really bad parts)
Dragon Heist
Dragon Queen/Tiamat
Princes of the Apocalypse


This is my opinion only. I would say that overall, the quality is improving as they get deeper into the product. I may rank Yawning Portal a little high, but I think that they did a credible job with the conversion, and that having modules as opposed to APs was a wonderful thing.

Then again, maybe it's not the best thing that 75% of the Tier 1 products, IMO, are at least partially recycled.

This is pretty much my ranking as well. Tiered list is more "accurate"; it's tough to straight rank them in numeric order. Too many variables.

I might drop Saltmarsh Yawning down a bit...or at least break the list into 4 tiers instead of 3. GoS and TFtYP are both great but highly inconsistent. The good adventures are really good but the bad is really bad.

For example, Dead in Thay takes up a big portion of YP. But it's a hot mess and the maps are borderline unusable. I'm also disappointed that U2 and U3 from Saltmarsh didn't get a modern refresh. They are written as massive dungeon crawls but ideally, the players shouldn't never see them. Saltmarsh is such a great setting though that I give it a high rating.