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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AtomicPope" data-source="post: 6721814" data-attributes="member: 64790">Owning all three and playing in two of the three, I would say go for Princes of the Apocalypse (PotA).  Here's why:1) Meant to be a follow up: PotA is meant to be your 2nd adventure and carry the group through to a full campaign.  It's assumed you start the adventure as an experienced group.  This requires no prep work on your part.  The other adventures assume the opposite - everyone's a noob.  If you start off playing Horde of the Dragon Queen (HotDQ) at 4th Level you'll steamroll through the initial plot that is supposed to hook the players in.  If you start Out of the Abyss (OotA) at higher level you'll break out of slavery rather easily, fraying the connection to the plot hook.2) Sandbox or Not: Yes there's a lot of room to wiggle but you don't have to.  There are dungeon crawls in PotA but it's DnD.  Anything else would be false advertisement.  Hordes is one big railroad.  I've played it and from the get go the players are being put in situation after situation without any moment to back out or say "no."  Out of the Abyss is even more railroad *SPOILER*  The players start off as slaves, along with a great many NPCs.  Those NPCs lead you through the Underdark where you try to escape.  The DM's job is to railroad the players into the plot, almost like Gilligan's Island, where they're constantly delayed from returning home until the campaign is finished.  With OotA you MUST sandbox your players with "random" encounters otherwise they will not have enough experience to advance to the next level.  The sandbox of PotA is less concerned with building encounters for exp and more for retooling the module to fit your campaign.3) Well conceived in crunch and fluff: My biggest gripe with both OotA and HotDQ is the DM is REQUIRED to hold monsters back and play them as plot devices.  *SPOILER* in both campaign modules the players start off at 1st level and face CR8+ monsters.  Just to illustrate how bad OotA really is... the slave master is a Drow Priestess who has the player's gear (weapons, armor, etc).  It actually recommends she cast Insect Plague.  That spell does 4D10 piercing damage in a Fireball sized AOE that sticks around for 1min.  That could easily TPK a 2nd or 3rd level group in a single round.  The average damage on a failed save is 22 hit points.  HotDQ doesn't impress me at all, but OotA actually has good roleplaying opportunities, especially for inexperienced players.</blockquote>

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