One thing I've found works really well for Once 'Round the Realms adventures like HotDQ is the ability to plug and play other modules and sandboxes into the game to layer multiple B plots over the adventure and make it feel significantly less railroaded.
As HotQ wanders long road and river journeys from Greenfields, Elturel, Baldur's Gate, Dragonspear Castle, Daggerford, Waterdeep, and the Mere of Dead Men (itself very close Phandalin & Phandelver, as well as the setting of the Essentials Kit sandbox).
5E has a bunch of core WotC-published adventures that line up with this journey, and the DM's Guild (and AL and Guild Adepts program) have a lot of smaller adventures that plug into the various adventure seasons.
It is my favoutite 5e AP and is the cornerstone of my table's campaign (but I have incorporated many of other 5e APs and modules within the same time frame).
HOWEVER it requires work, but if it's your passion to tinker and flesh out APs then it's all joy. The internet has a treasure trove of helpful and inspirational material and ideas.
If you don't have the time or inclination then ToD is not for you.
One thing I've found works really well for Once 'Round the Realms adventures like HotDQ is the ability to plug and play other modules and sandboxes into the game to layer multiple B plots over the adventure and make it feel significantly less railroaded.
As HotQ wanders long road and river journeys from Greenfields, Elturel, Baldur's Gate, Dragonspear Castle, Daggerford, Waterdeep, and the Mere of Dead Men (itself very close Phandalin & Phandelver, as well as the setting of the Essentials Kit sandbox).
5E has a bunch of core WotC-published adventures that line up with this journey, and the DM's Guild (and AL and Guild Adepts program) have a lot of smaller adventures that plug into the various adventure seasons.
I find its harder to get PCs to care about the locals and location if youre moving around a lot.
Smaller sandbox Barovia,Phandelver, Waterdeep, the Dales etc tend to work better imho. As always ymmv. I've kinda switched after BG3 and using Kingmaker, Dragon of Icespire Mountain and CoS as templates.
Wouldn't mind seeing some mid level official adventures so I can see how WotC. Theres a few in AoF but theyre really short.
It has been a while since we have had a campaign. I think almost 2 years since Vecna, and that one started at level 10 and was relatively short. We have had a ton of new rules books in that time.
When are they going to get back to epic adventures like Tomb of Annihilation or Princes of the Apocolypse?
I ran Tyranny of Dragons before it got revised and re-released as one book. My players and I had a blast with it. There are also numerous points during the railroady section that you can flesh out with more content.
@Reynard No, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people say it is. I would say it's miles better than Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, for instance. I mean, yeah, that adventure has a lot of customizability to it, but it also has some of the worst examples of railroading I've seen in a modern adventure. For instance, it involves a sentient macguffin that comes with these explicit instructions for the DM:
"If the characters obtain the stone earlier than expected, it proves uncooperative and tries to separate itself from the party as quickly as possible, refusing to share any knowledge with characters in the meantime. The stone tries to take control of anyone who attunes to it, triggering a conflict ... If the stone succeeds in taking control of its owner, it orders that character to deliver it to whichever location sets into motion the sequence of encounters discussed in this chapter ... Once the stone divests itself of its current owner, it tries to erase all knowledge of itself from that character’s mind ... Once the characters have earned the Stone of Golorr, it no longer tries to take control of them."
As @Marandahir mentioned above, there are lots of spots in ToD where you can insert other adventures. There's a big gap between the opening sequence and the RP section set in Elturel. I had my PCs travel from Greenest to Elturel via Berdusk and Scornubel, adding some content of my own along the way. When the PCs got to Baldur's Gate, I also calculated that they'd arrived before the cultists, so they had some time to kill. I ran a few DDAL Season 1 adventures as filler.
If you're interested, here's a thread of mine detailing the changes I made to the first half of the adventure (HotDQ). Looks like I never got around to adding my notes about RoT. D&D 5E (2014) - My Tyranny of Dragons
I ran Tyranny of Dragons before it got revised and re-released as one book. My players and I had a blast with it. There are also numerous points during the railroady section that you can flesh out with more content.
@Reynard No, I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people say it is. I would say it's miles better than Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, for instance. I mean, yeah, that adventure has a lot of customizability to it, but it also has some of the worst examples of railroading I've seen in a modern adventure. For instance, it involves a sentient macguffin that comes with these explicit instructions for the DM:
"If the characters obtain the stone earlier than expected, it proves uncooperative and tries to separate itself from the party as quickly as possible, refusing to share any knowledge with characters in the meantime. The stone tries to take control of anyone who attunes to it, triggering a conflict ... If the stone succeeds in taking control of its owner, it orders that character to deliver it to whichever location sets into motion the sequence of encounters discussed in this chapter ... Once the stone divests itself of its current owner, it tries to erase all knowledge of itself from that character’s mind ... Once the characters have earned the Stone of Golorr, it no longer tries to take control of them."
As @Marandahir mentioned above, there are lots of spots in ToD where you can insert other adventures. There's a big gap between the opening sequence and the RP section set in Elturel. I had my PCs travel from Greenest to Elturel via Berdusk and Scornubel, adding some content of my own along the way. When the PCs got to Baldur's Gate, I also calculated that they'd arrived before the cultists, so they had some time to kill. I ran a few DDAL Season 1 adventures as filler.
If you're interested, here's a thread of mine detailing the changes I made to the first half of the adventure (HotDQ). Looks like I never got around to adding my notes about RoT. D&D 5E (2014) - My Tyranny of Dragons
