D&D 5E How easy do you find first party adventure and setting books to use?

[Guest 7034872]

My assumption here is that someone using a first-adventure module is also a first-time DM, in which case I'd say the pre-built modules for this are fine. Are they railroad-y, as Charlaquin notes? Sure. Is that a problem? Not when it's your first time looking at a d20, I think, no. I actually playtested Keep on the Borderlands with a bunch of quick-draw characters when I bought my first books back in '81 or '82, and I did everything straight by the rails just so I could figure out what all this weird stuff was. I had never played a character before; I had never DMed before; everything was strange and new.

I don't see anything wrong with railroads when you're just getting started on RPGs; baby steps and all that, you know?

 

[delericho]

I found that "Lost Mine of Phandelver" basically worked without modification, but "Storm King's Thunder" needed a great deal. I haven't made much use of the other 5e adventures.

I'm happy to use their latest Eberron as-is, but wouldn't consider using Ravenloft without an almost total rewrite - for a horror setting it's remarkably lacking in bite.

Edited to add: Honestly, if I'm having to put in a lot of work to run an adventure/setting, then it is of no value to me. Had I known what was involved with SKT, I wouldn't have bothered - if I'm doing the work anyway, I find homebrewing more satisfying.

 

[Lanefan]

I could legitimately vote for all four of the options listed, thus did not vote.

There's also the difference between a module needing editing etc. due to being badly thought-out or written (I've certainly seen enough examples of this to know they exist), or just that I want to edit it to make it fit into my campaign/setting/vision (i.e. all of them); and my assumption is that the poll is asking about the former of these rather than the latter.

I don't use published settings thus can't really comment on those.