D&D 5E Looking for an adventure (dungeoncrawl) for my 5E campaign

[Mercurius]

After several months hiatus my schedule is opening up so I can resume DMing duties - which I'm very excited about. We played several sessions which saw various plot threads woven together, which will probably be tied together in the next session, although with a larger back-drop and underlying meta-plot that can be explored later. So far the campaign has had a bit of wilderness and quite a bit of small town, but I'd like to throw in a dungeon crawl and am looking around for ideas. I'm hoping to take a pre-published dungeoncrawl and adapt it to my campaign setting. Some basic qualities I'm looking for:

*The PCs will be 3rd level when they get to the dungeon; I'd like it to start in the low range and gradually go up as it goes deeper
*Diverse and interesting! Nothing more tedious than "You enter the next room and there's some orcs. They attack." I want a diversity of rooms, chambers, caverns, traps, monsters, etc etc.
*A sense of mystery and wonder! I want there to be plenty of lore and back-story, although more something that I can riff off of and adapt to my world than something that is tied to a particular setting.
*Easy to adapt to 5E. Simple enough.
*Potentially big. I'd like something that could be returned to, that goes on - even connects to the Underdark.

I have quite a few large dungeons that I'm considering: Old stuff like Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and Tomb of Horrors (would love a ToH-esque dungeon that was less deadly and more playable at low levels) and Ruins of Undermountain; OGL era stuff like Castle Whiterock, Tomb of Abysthor, Vault of Larin Karr, and Lost City of Barakus - all of which I own but have never run. Also, Pathfinder's Emerald Spire Megadungeon.

Any recommendations? Which of those listed do you think best fits my criteria? Any other suggestions?

 

[Morrus]

Sadly, it's not big, but Don't Wake Dretchlor is a nice little dungeon... err... mansion crawl. It's on EN5ider.

It's a one-session thing, though, not a big one.

 

[Jake Johnson]

Doesn't Princes of the Apocalypse meet your criteria pretty well? It starts at 3rd level. I suppose diverse and interesting is subjective, but it seems to have quite a bit going on. It's got lore and back story, with some good ideas about how to integrate it into various settings. It's already a 5E adventure, so you don't have to adapt it. There is even a way into the Underdark. In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't fully read the adventure. I started to, and listened to a Podcast review, but then realized I might be playing rather than DMing, so I stopped looking at it.

It sounds like you're planning a great campaign for your group. Good luck!

 

[Shiroiken]

Temple of Elemental Evil or the Return adventure from 3E. It's best started at 3rd level anyway, and it's HUGE. It has all the requirements you're looking for, but might draw away from the original purpose of the campaign.

 

[Lancelot]

B4 - The Lost City. It's a 10-level pyramid crawl with connected underground cavern/city. It's old-school, but there are four basic factions, plenty of tricks and traps, some surprising new monsters (for the age). For additional back-story, the 3e supplement Elder Evils has a lot more on the main bad guy in B4 (Zargon). Also, there was a Dungeon module from the 3e era which provided a brief introduction to the Lost City (e.g. levels 1-3 starter module, set outside the pyramid itself).

Alternatively, the classic A1/2/3/4 - Slavers series. I'd consider running it in an unusual order, though. Start the players off in A4, without their gear. This prevents one of the common complaints about the series (the players lose their precious toys in the last module), and also reflects the modern take on magic (in 5e, most spellcasters don't really care about losing their gear, because they can spam cantrip attacks; this is less of a "problem" at low levels, because cantrip damage output is only 1 dice). Once the PCs escape the caverns, move into A1/2/3 in that order. I find the Slavers series much more interesting and varied than the original Temple of Elemental Evil, or the 3e Return to the ToEE.

And, of course, Princes of the Apocalypse. I'm running PotA at the moment, and my group is loving it. I would never recommend the original ToEE or RttToEE to anyone over PotA. It's simply a more interesting and sand-boxy super-module, with less grinding repetition in fights.

 

[SigmaOne]

I just noticed Goodman Games "Glitterdoom" starts at 3rd level. I know nothing else about it, though. I think it's only about 16 pages. MerricB has a review up:
http://merricb.com/2014/08/22/adventure-review-glitterdoom/

 

[Jester David]

Princes of the Apocalypse starts at 3rd level and is a series of dungeon crawls throughout thirteen or so large dungeons.

Other than that Emerald Spire shouldn't be *too* hard to convert if you're willing to handwave a few monsters or make some up (there might already be a conversion online). And has the advantage that there is a flip-mat set with maps for the entire dungeon.

 

[iserith]

Any recommendations? Which of those listed do you think best fits my criteria? Any other suggestions?

Check out a little dungeon I posted a while back: Barrow of the Evensong. It's not big, but it's certainly something that is not the same-old same-old and is easy to add onto. It already has a lot of hooks already built in to future adventures.

 

[ninjayeti]

You might also want to consider the 3.5 module The Shattered Gates of Slaughterguarde. It is technically three separate dungeons, but they share a common origin/theme that works pretty well to tie everything together. The adventure as written starts at level 1, but if you are converting it to 5E it should be easy enough to bump up the difficulty a bit as well. The material covers about 5-6 character levels, so it is pretty big without needing to be the focus of the whole campaign. It would also be fairly easy to expand or or cut sections depending on your group.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/54405/The-Shattered-Gates-of-Slaughtergarde-35

 

[meomwt]

I have quite a few large dungeons that I'm considering: Old stuff like Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and Tomb of Horrors (would love a ToH-esque dungeon that was less deadly and more playable at low levels) and Ruins of Undermountain; OGL era stuff like Castle Whiterock, Tomb of Abysthor, Vault of Larin Karr, and Lost City of Barakus - all of which I own but have never run. Also, Pathfinder's Emerald Spire Megadungeon.

Any recommendations? Which of those listed do you think best fits my criteria? Any other suggestions?

Personally, I'd run The Vault of Larin Karr - haven't run it myself, but skim-read bits of it. It's like a dungeon crawl without bogging players down inside the dungeon - although they can roam the local Underdark, getting out into the light isn't so difficult (compare with some other big dungeons). It also means that they can keep tabs on the meta-plot and any loose ends from the upper works.

Caverns of Thracia might also be intersting: Necromancer Games did a 3E conversion in the OGL era, but I'd be inclined to look for a Judge's Guild version: 5E feels more akin to the older editions, and numbers of bad guys seem about right (I'm running Temple of Elemental Evil converted to 5E at the moment, and the number of nasties seems to scale nicely to the number of PC's I have).

Word of warning: I haven't Caverns of Thracia myself, just heard good things about it. Many rave about the map design being a thing of beauty.