D&D 5E D&D 5E: Ranking every published adventure, using Amazon reviews

[Parmandur]

Hmm. Not terribly useful. I see 11/14 entries sitting at a 4.8 rating, with the outliers of that group within %5 points of each other. That doesn't help me narrow a choice down. At the best, and pretending Amazon reviews are all accurate & truthful, that just tells me WoTC produces a very consistent level of content.

Well, I think the bolded section about sums it up.

 

[Mistwell]

What does that mean? That it was reviewbombed or something?

I don't know. This site is new to me as well. I'd have to compare it to the other adventure reports I guess. Most of them have that "failed" tag so whatever happened I am not sure it's out of line with most of the other adventures?

 

[teitan]

OTOH, there are people who only want Official Books and prize that highly, even turning up their noses at unofficial Keith Baker Eberron books*, which suggests that the WotC special sauce is what they care the most about. Maybe that special sauce is worth a minimum of four stars with them.

* If you're one of these people, I would love to hear the rationale. I feel like Baker on Eberron or Greenwood on Forgotten Realms ought to trump WotC official trade dress, but I guess not everyone feels that way.

That’s been an issue going back to the D20 days when people turned their noses at otherwise amazing content. They always assumed the WOTC stuff was “better playtested” and “official” usually meant legal for Living Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms and then AL. So all that stuff was not “legal” or “unofficial”. But it’s odd because now people even get huffy if you say “no” to UA options. In general you say no and people get mad and call you a crap DM.

 

[cmad1977]

Hard for me to take adventure reviews too seriously. Each experience is so unique that one groups run through an adventure has no bearing on another’s.

Also I don’t believe many DMs(particularly the forum going, review writing crowd) have a healthy sense of self reflection. “I didn’t mess that up it’s the adventure la fault!”.
As an example: HoTDQ is often considered pretty bad. And FWIW it lacks in certain conceptual areas IMO and doesn’t do a good job of introducing players/DMs to the game. But what made my experience BAD(and it was, it’s sucked) was my IMPLEMENTATION of the adventure. In retrospect I wish I had made the caravan more of a “hub” because the most memorable stuff for the PCs revolves around the potential cultists and the caravan leader and the super optimistic porcelain dealer who was constantly breaking his own things.
I have no problem believing,despite my bad experience, that other have had amazing times with HoTDQ because… maybe it isn’t the adventure?

PS: there were a LOT of issue with my Implemtatio. Of HoTDQ. First time DMing after years hiatus(this encompasses a whole host of issues), too many players(!!), some of whome had no interest in playing.
I guess I’m just saying, when it comes to an adventure review I’m looking more for a review of layout and organization.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Hard for me to take adventure reviews too seriously. Each experience is so unique that one groups run through an adventure has no bearing on another’s.

I do largely agree with this, however I do think reviews in aggregate can be valuable. If there are more negative reviews on average compared to another adventure, that seems indicative of quality.

It is very difficult for me to take any individual review very seriously however.

 

[MerricB]

I suspect that 99% of the reviews on Amazon would be based on reading the adventures, not playing them. I have no idea what that percentage actually is!

Having run most of the hardcover adventures released, my own idiosyncratic ratings put the top three as Rise of Tiamat, Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder, with all other adventures being competent with the exception of Dragon Heist and Descent into Avernus. Dragon Heist is salvageable - and, indeed, I have run it three times - but Descent into Avernus is the only adventure Wizards has released that I think is a massive disaster.

(Why do I rate Rise of Tiamat and Hoard of the Dragon Queen so highly? Partly due to ambition and scope - there isn't another series that treats the PCs as important in the world with the rulers of nations listening to them. Neither are 'complete' adventures as both require a lot of input from the DM, and they have other flaws beside - but I love them dearly).

Cheers!

 

[teitan]

Here is some data for Candlekeep: 21% of potentially unnatural reviews removed. 21% Unverified Purchases (unusually high). We see the following 2 participation groups with a statistically significant greater concentration than what we'd expect to see: Reviewers with 1-5 Reviews: 29.2%; Reviewers with 6-15 Reviews: 41.7 %. In total, we found that 51 reviewers (or 71%) are within an overrepresented participation group. This is an excessively high number of reviewers in overrepresented participation groups.

So what I get is that the reviews are actually better than indicated from actual readers/reviewers? I posted a review about a year ago for something unrelated and in spite of being an Amazon employee aaaand a confirmed account they deleted the review because someone reported it as "fake" because I gave a positive review to a book they didn't like because it didn't talk about them for more than a footnote and they have an overinflated sense of self importance. How do I know who reported it? He bragged on social media that he got my review removed by having a bunch of his "students" report the review as fake.

 

[cmad1977]

I suspect that 99% of the reviews on Amazon would be based on reading the adventures, not playing them. I have no idea what that percentage actually is!

Having run most of the hardcover adventures released, my own idiosyncratic ratings put the top three as Rise of Tiamat, Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder, with all other adventures being competent with the exception of Dragon Heist and Descent into Avernus. Dragon Heist is salvageable - and, indeed, I have run it three times - but Descent into Avernus is the only adventure Wizards has released that I think is a massive disaster.

(Why do I rate Rise of Tiamat and Hoard of the Dragon Queen so highly? Partly due to ambition and scope - there isn't another series that treats the PCs as important in the world with the rulers of nations listening to them. Neither are 'complete' adventures as both require a lot of input from the DM, and they have other flaws beside - but I love them dearly).

Cheers!

Our Rise of Tiamat part of the campaign was amazing and ended epically. I learned a lot from running HoTDQ so poorly.

 

[Zardnaar]

Rise of Tiamat is a better adventure than HotDQ.

 

[Reynard]

I bounced off SKT hard, but it was a) my first time running a published adventure in a long time, and b) my first time running an adventure on Fantasy grounds. Sometimes I think I should give it another try, but the first taste was so bad I don't think I can.

Dragon heist, on the other hand, was just bad. I ran it in person, and after I was used to running modules again. Don't get me wrong -- there is a lot of useful material in Dragon Heist with which to build you own adventure, but as written that adventure is TERRIBLE.