D&D General Freeport Trilogy vs Lost City of Barakus

[earthsea_wizard]

Pulled these off the shelf as potential things to run for my group, which has had to move online since I left the country. Looking for general opinions on the two- I would prefer something with a bit more social interaction than hack n slash, we love hack n slash but in our short experiment with playing online find that it is important to have strong reasons to engage with eachother via a screen as it takes out a lot of the social element.

Perhaps neither of these are good choice. I have begun reading through Freeport. We use 3.5e if that matters, but figured it could be in D&D general as we all know adventures can be run setting agnostic.

 

[sevenbastard]

I humble suggest the Vault of Larin Karr.

It takes some work to prep and run but it's a real sandbox.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

I humble suggest the Vault of Larin Karr.

It takes some work to prep and run but it's a real sandbox.

Could be good but we're starting at lvl 1! Also sounds like a lot of dungeon crawling which we enjoy in person but want to lessen in person.

 

[sevenbastard]

Could be good but we're starting at lvl 1! Also sounds like a lot of dungeon crawling which we enjoy in person but want to lessen in person.

It's got a lot of wilderness exploration and social interactions between the dungeon crawl parts, but if you want level 1 then it doesn't fit that bill.

 

[Retreater]

I've run both. Barakus is mostly a dungeon crawl (but it's a good one). There's a lot more opportunities for social scenes in Freeport.

 

[smetzger]

Pulled these off the shelf as potential things to run for my group, which has had to move online since I left the country. Looking for general opinions on the two- I would prefer something with a bit more social interaction than hack n slash, we love hack n slash but in our short experiment with playing online find that it is important to have strong reasons to engage with eachother via a screen as it takes out a lot of the social element.

Perhaps neither of these are good choice. I have begun reading through Freeport. We use 3.5e if that matters, but figured it could be in D&D general as we all know adventures can be run setting agnostic.

I have run the Freeport trilogy a couple of times and I like it a lot. Not familiar with Lost City of Barakus.

One of my players had maxed out gather information. What I did is gave them several different contacts throughout the city and then would apply a modifier (unknown to the player) based on the information sought, and what I perceived the person would know.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I ran the Freeport trilogy. There's plenty of intrigue and running around the city and talking to NPCs, with a nice epic finale. There are also supplemental adventures and sequels that Green Ronin put out that I also added into the mix.

I think it's a good series, although you probably want to have the systemless Freeport city book to go with it (it takes place after the trilogy, but it's less jokey than the 3E gazetteer).

 

[Voadam]

Freeport is a D&D Cthulhu investigation. There is even a party scene with political bigwigs where it is all social interaction.

There is still D&D combat but it is very suited to your stated goals imo.

 

[Dax Doomslayer2]

Funny, I'm just about to run Barakus in 5E with my group. I liked Barakus a bit better than Freeport (I have both). However, they are a bit different. Barakus is a bit better as a sandbox but going by your parameters, Freeport would probably work better as there's a bit more social interaction required (as said above) and a lot of information gathering and it is a bit less 'dungeony'.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Freeport is a D&D Cthulhu investigation. There is even a party scene with political bigwigs where it is all social interaction.

I ran this in the same world as Ptolus, in an off-shoot of my main campaign, and retrofitted the Galchutt to replace most of the mythos stuff (although the Galchutt are obviously pretty mythos-inspired to begin with) and it went great.