D&D 5E Next campaign choice

[Mistborn]

I would like to run one of the campaigns up to 5e and can't decide which one. I know most of the ones released by the end of 2019 and I'm not thrilled. I've tentatively chosen 3. One from earlier and 2 from recent years that I'm not familiar with. Please help me with my choice.

Some background information on my preferences. Favourite campaigns are Enemy Within for WFRP, Throne of Thorns for Symbaroum and Horror on the Orient Express for Call of Cthulhu. Favourite adventures for D&D are Hellbound, Dead Gods, Harbinger House. I'd most like to run an interesting story with a medium amount of combat (or an adventure that doesn't lose much if I give up a lot of encounters), room for role playing, difficult choices, surprising plot twists. I'm not keen on dungeons.

Below are 3 campaigns I'm thinking about.

1) Curse of Strahd - I ran Ravenloft and House of Strahd years ago. That's why I never thought of running Curse. Is the new version a more interesting story or just a lot more locations around where you have to kill legions of enemies?

2) Sahadow of the Dark Queen - it doesn't matter to me if it's a good or poor introduction to Dragonlance. All that matters is the adventure. Again, more than hundreds of battles I care about an interesting story to tell. Of course, I know that this is an adventure from the War of the Lance, so a lot of clashes are to be expected....

3) Icewind Dale - all in all, I would like the same as from the others. First and foremost, an interesting storyline.

Thank you in advance for your help,
M

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Below are 3 campaigns I'm thinking about.

1) Curse of Strahd - I ran Ravenloft and House of Strahd years ago. That's why I never thought of running Curse. Is the new version a more interesting story or just a lot more locations around where you have to kill legions of enemies?

Can't speak to it, as every player in my gaming groups has either already played it or run it. So the most I can say is it is quite popular.

2) Sahadow of the Dark Queen - it doesn't matter to me if it's a good or poor introduction to Dragonlance. All that matters is the adventure. Again, more than hundreds of battles I care about an interesting story to tell. Of course, I know that this is an adventure from the War of the Lance, so a lot of clashes are to be expected....

I really like the module. It certainly feels quite Dragonlance-y to me. The story is good. But I am finding in the later parts of the campaign that it's very combat heavy and tough, in danger of feeling a bit grindy.

3) Icewind Dale - all in all, I would like the same as from the others. First and foremost, an interesting storyline.

Icewind Dale is probably my favorite 5e campaign I've run. It does a great job at balancing the sandbox elements with the narrative driving it forward. It's filled with great setpieces and interesting NPCs. The story of ordinary folk being driven to extremes in order to survive the unending winter really worked for me.

 

[Burnside]

I have run Curse of Strahd and Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden twice each, and highly recommend both.

Curse of Strahd works better "out of the box" and has no real plot holes. Frostmaiden's overarching plot is a bit of a mess but it has so many great locations, characters, and ideas and it's really not hard to fix the problems.

Frostmaiden has better dungeons and better classic D&D stuff in it. Strahd is going to feel more epic and dramatic.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen (note: not "Dark Queen") I have read but not run, but I totally would run it. I think it needs more work than the other two, but it's solid. Chapters 1-4 are quite rail-road-y (not just linear, they are a railroad) and will bother some groups.

 

[LesserThan]

I can not understand what you are asking for. What do you want to get out of your next campaign?

 

[Quickleaf]

I would like to run one of the campaigns up to 5e and can't decide which one. I know most of the ones released by the end of 2019 and I'm not thrilled. I've tentatively chosen 3. One from earlier and 2 from recent years that I'm not familiar with. Please help me with my choice.

Some background information on my preferences. Favourite campaigns are Enemy Within for WFRP, Throne of Thorns for Symbaroum and Horror on the Orient Express for Call of Cthulhu. Favourite adventures for D&D are Hellbound, Dead Gods, Harbinger House. I'd most like to run an interesting story with a medium amount of combat (or an adventure that doesn't lose much if I give up a lot of encounters), room for role playing, difficult choices, surprising plot twists. I'm not keen on dungeons.

Below are 3 campaigns I'm thinking about.

1) Curse of Strahd - I ran Ravenloft and House of Strahd years ago. That's why I never thought of running Curse. Is the new version a more interesting story or just a lot more locations around where you have to kill legions of enemies?

2) Sahadow of the Dark Queen - it doesn't matter to me if it's a good or poor introduction to Dragonlance. All that matters is the adventure. Again, more than hundreds of battles I care about an interesting story to tell. Of course, I know that this is an adventure from the War of the Lance, so a lot of clashes are to be expected....

3) Icewind Dale - all in all, I would like the same as from the others. First and foremost, an interesting storyline.

Thank you in advance for your help,
M

Harbinger House is great, ran it back in my AD&D Planescape days. Totally underrated adventure.

I'm running RotFM (Icewind Dale) via PbP and it's a glorious mess. I really like the ideas. There's a lot of overland exploration / site crawling, with mini-dungeons/locations, but the ending is a biiiiiig dungeon (actually two back to back) - so bear that in mind given you're not keen on dungeons. It definitely has some nice horror adjacent themes like some of your favorite past campaigns. Also, like most of WotC's hardcovers it needs some work tying the three plot lines in the adventure together better. But the underlying ideas, themes, NPCs, locations – most of it is great, feels like "classic D&D", but also has a freshness to the ideas that's hard to put into words.

 

[Mistborn]

"Classic dnd feel" is not what I am looking for. I value many adventures to Planescape mainly because they presented a different approach to playing D&D. And that's exactly what I want. The first 5-6 adventures to 5e that I know of are totally not my cup of tea. Regardless of genre, setting, whether they were more railoading or sandbox. Perhaps the closest to my expectations would have been The Wild beyond the Witchlight, if not for the faerie theme and Alice in Wonderland vibe. I'm looking for a story whose main strength is the idea, the intrigue, the emotions, the twists of the story, with combat playing a secondary role (it is about different proportions of the main components of the story). And this is basically where the question comes in: will I find this in any of the original adventures for D&D that were written after 2019?

 

[Burnside]

"Classic dnd feel" is not what I am looking for. I value many adventures to Planescape mainly because they presented a different approach to playing D&D. And that's exactly what I want. The first 5-6 adventures to 5e that I know of are totally not my cup of tea. Regardless of genre, setting, whether they were more railoading or sandbox. Perhaps the closest to my expectations would have been The Wild beyond the Witchlight, if not for the faerie theme and Alice in Wonderland vibe. I'm looking for a story whose main strength is the idea, the intrigue, the emotions, the twists of the story, with combat playing a secondary role (it is about different proportions of the main components of the story). And this is basically where the question comes in: will I find this in any of the original adventures for D&D that were written after 2019?

Of the three you mentioned, Curse of Strahd is far and away the one that most fits this description, and it’s an improvement over the original adventure in every way.

 

[DEFCON 1]

One advantage you would get if you decided on running Curse of Strahd is that there was a large number of us who were enhancing and remixing and expanding the campaign when it was released... so if you are a DM who enjoys tinkering with adventures and finding ways to broaden their scope... there are many threads here on the boards that go over so many different ways to do so. The main thread in particular where all kinds of additional ways to run or add to the book was this one:

Enhancing Curse of Strahd (and DDAL Adventures)

You also have an advantage in that this has been one of the two campaign setting books that got "revised" after the fact, cleaning a few things up, adding a few things, and so forth. Curse of Strahd Revamped. Granted, it's more expensive than the standard book, but it gives you a few more things in the box that you otherwise would have to buy separately-- DM screen, Tarroka deck, full poster map of the castle, etc.

I can't comment on Rime of the Frostmaiden as I've never run it... but running Curse of Strahd has been my favorite and most successful campaign I've run in the 5E era.

 

[Retreater]

Judging from your previous campaigns you enjoyed, I'll suggest Curse of Strahd over Icewind Dale (I have not DMed the Dragon Queen adventure).
You have themes much closer to Cthulhu and Warhammer - even corrupt noble houses vying for power. The theme is also much more unified in Strahd. In fact, Icewind Dale seems like a bunch of hobbled together plot threads that don't really go into the climactic theme at all.
But ... if you really want my suggestion, I'd point you towards the Historica Arcanum series by Metis Creative. Rooted in real history, conspiracies and great mysteries, low on dungeon exploration, and independently (and beautifully) produced by a team based in Turkey. One adventure involves a plague and undead spreading through Istanbul (The City of Crescent) while the Herald of Rain is a journey down the Silk Road to deal with the king of a cult of assassins.

 

[MNblockhead]

I'll just add to the chorus. Based on what you've written about your preferences, I think Curse of Strahd is the way to go.

I really is a great adventure and as others have said, there are some excellent enhancements that people have published in DMs Guild. Some that I recommend from personal experience:

A Structured Milestone System for Curse of Strahd: Milestones Made Easy by R. Padron (DMs Guild). It is a great way to manage leveling in a way the encourages exploration. Regular milestone leveling by DM fiat just isn't very satisfying in CoS in my opinion. Also, traditional XP can be lackluster and can create incentives that work against the theme of the adventure. Your mileage will vary of course, but I do recommend checking out R. Padron's system. It worked very well for me.

Darker Gifts: Curse of Strahd Expansion by Flying Ape takes the Dark Gifts rules introduced by Adventurers League for CoS and expands the number of dark gifts from 4 to 20. Low level characters (under 5th level) are automatically brought back to life by the Dark Powers in Adventures League. But it comes at a cost. Adventurers League also published an expanded list of Dark Gifts in DDAL04, available on DMs Guild.

Elven Tower's DMs Guide for Curse of Strahd is a nice Cliff's Notes style summary of the adventure with some extra encounters. It also gives a CR17 (CR18 in his Castle) statblock version of Strahd.