D&D 5E Have I Already Reached the "End" of 5e Product Support?

[Morrus]

Let me colour-code these for you.

---
Lost Mines of Phandelver - ran and played it more times than should be allowed by law.
Horde of the Dragon Queen - ran it. it was awful. the end.
Rise of Tiamat - Horde was awful. Never gonna run it.
Princes of the Apocalypse - ran it. twice. it was okay.
Storm King's Thunder - ran it. it was bad.
Out of the Abyss - ran it. twice. it was okay.
Curse of Strahd - ran and played it more times than should be allowed by law.
Tomb of Annihilation - ran it. twice. pretty good.
Tales of the Yawning Portal - we played it back in previous editions
Ghosts of Saltmarsh - we played it back in previous editions
Dungeon of the Mad Mage - my group won't do dungeon crawls
Dragon Heist - not big on levels 1-5 or city adventures; just doesn't seem fun to me.
Descent into Avernus - nothing about it has grabbed me yet.
--

So, there's a clear trend there. You only liked two. You thought three were OK. You hated three. And the last five you didn't even try.

So they’re going downhill for you; but I would suggest giving one of those last five a try. It’s a lot of material. You might surprise yourself!

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

There's some great third-party stuff you could try. I understand not wanting to let your players use third-party material to create their characters, as it could end up unbalanced when compared to official stuff, but missing on a great module just because it was not published by WotC is a mistake, in my opinion.

 

[robus]

So, there's a clear trend there. You only liked two. You thought three were OK. You hated three. And the last five you didn't even try.

I think ToA should be green. Just because Retreater didn’t break the law running it doesn’t mean they didn’t like it... twice!

 

[Morrus]

I think ToA should be green.

Yeah, my mistake! Fixing it!

 

[MockingBird]

I'm impressed, I started ToA back in February and we are just now in Omu. That's about halfway in to those not familiar. I agree with Morrus though, you should give the others a try.

 

[robus]

I'm impressed, I started ToA back in February and we are just now in Omu. That's about halfway in to those not familiar.

The rate of completion and redoes does seem superhuman. My group was weekly for the first three years and we’ve managed to cover varying amounts of LMoP, ToA, SKT and OotA. We switched to bi-weekly a year ago and it’s been slow going ever since. Just reached level 20 and the end is in sight.

 

[Zardnaar]

The rate of completion and redoes does seem superhuman. My group was weekly for the first three years and we’ve managed to cover varying amounts of LMoP, ToA, SKT and OotA. We switched to bi-weekly a year ago and it’s been slow going ever since. Just reached level 20 and the end is in sight.

Aren't the newer APs aimed at lower levels?

There's also various ways to power through stuff faster. LMoP I think could be done in 15-30 hours really time or even longer.

 

[Retreater]

I have written a lot of my own material. However, as you might be able to imagine, my DMing schedule keeps me pretty busy, which impacts the time I have to write original content. Other players do not seem to want to DM - so if there's a game, I'm in charge of providing it.
Concerning the speed of completion... Running each group on a biweekly basis means we have to make the most of the sessions we have. So I don't run role-playing scenes of shopping for generic equipment. I don't do long scenes of flirting with bar wenches. I get to the point. I run fast combats and stay organized. There are a lot of side quests in the published adventures that have nothing to do with the story, so there's no reason for the characters to explore these areas. (Tomb of Annihilation, though I liked that one a lot, was really bad about giving characters motivation to explore the region as the world was ending around them.)
When you think about it, the Wizards adventures are pretty scant in actual content designed for campaign play. In something like Storm King's Thunder, you use about 25% of the book because you don't go after all of the giant tribes. Similar thing with Princes of the Apocalypse. Cut down random encounters on top of that and you're left with a pretty short experience.
Of the official adventures, Descent into Avernus might be an option. The characters are already too high level for Dragon Heist, and I would have a mutiny if I tried to run a dungeon crawl like Mad Mage (not to mention, I'd get bored with it ). The other stuff I've already run them through. They're going to remember too many plot details from Saltmarsh (for example).
Checking for third party stuff is a needle in a haystack, though I can take a look into some of the recommended titles.
I have a lot of 3.x material I can use, but have no idea how to convert it. The HP, AC, treasure, etc., are all so completely different that you're basically taking maps, story ideas, and proper names, and trying to make it play like 5e, rebuilding every encounter to try to fit.

 

[vpuigdoller]

It t

You and your crew must just be blasting through these if you've run all those in the few years since 5e came out.

Hell, I could get two or three years out of Princes of the Apocalypse by itself.

As for advice, all I can suggest is pulling out some modules from previous editions and-or Pathfinder and converting them over.

it took my group a year and a half just to get thru Tomb of Annihilation lol.

 

[Parmandur]

I have written a lot of my own material. However, as you might be able to imagine, my DMing schedule keeps me pretty busy, which impacts the time I have to write original content. Other players do not seem to want to DM - so if there's a game, I'm in charge of providing it.
Concerning the speed of completion... Running each group on a biweekly basis means we have to make the most of the sessions we have. So I don't run role-playing scenes of shopping for generic equipment. I don't do long scenes of flirting with bar wenches. I get to the point. I run fast combats and stay organized. There are a lot of side quests in the published adventures that have nothing to do with the story, so there's no reason for the characters to explore these areas. (Tomb of Annihilation, though I liked that one a lot, was really bad about giving characters motivation to explore the region as the world was ending around them.)
When you think about it, the Wizards adventures are pretty scant in actual content designed for campaign play. In something like Storm King's Thunder, you use about 25% of the book because you don't go after all of the giant tribes. Similar thing with Princes of the Apocalypse. Cut down random encounters on top of that and you're left with a pretty short experience.
Of the official adventures, Descent into Avernus might be an option. The characters are already too high level for Dragon Heist, and I would have a mutiny if I tried to run a dungeon crawl like Mad Mage (not to mention, I'd get bored with it ). The other stuff I've already run them through. They're going to remember too many plot details from Saltmarsh (for example).
Checking for third party stuff is a needle in a haystack, though I can take a look into some of the recommended titles.
I have a lot of 3.x material I can use, but have no idea how to convert it. The HP, AC, treasure, etc., are all so completely different that you're basically taking maps, story ideas, and proper names, and trying to make it play like 5e, rebuilding every encounter to try to fit.

It's pretty straightforward, WotC put out a four page document that outlines conversion from older editions of D&D:

http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/DnD_Conversions_1.0.pdf

Your players may have done the U series Adventures, but did they play all the Dungeon magazine material in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, too? The seafaring adventure material might help as well.


You do you, but that approach to the Adventures seems awfully rushed. The people I play with tend to detail entire sessions into investigating side details.