D&D 5E Out of the Abyss or Curse of Strahd?

[ninjayeti]

I'm running OotA now, and I think it can be a great campaign, but requires a ton of effort by the DM to make it work. In fact it feels much more like a great campaign outline than fully fleshed out adventure path like RotRL. In particular there is not a lot of content in the second half (past level 7 or so) so either you are going to be giving players a "milestone" level every session (possibly multiple levels per session) or you are going to have to add in a bunch of additional content. If you are trying to level your party to 20, this is going to be even more problematic.

I have not picked up Curse yet, but if you are looking for a fun campaign that can be run pretty much out of the box then I would recommend taking a look at Princes of the Apocalypse.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I just pulled the trigger and ordered both CoS and OotA from Amazon.

My group is about to start PotA (transitioning from LMoP) now, so I won't be running either adventure for a while (and I'm a player in PotA), but I figure they should be an interesting read at least. Plus, by the point I think about running one of them, I can take advantage of all the little flaws (and ways to fix said flaws) that other games found.

 

[pontinyc]

Thanks for the input, Ninjayeti. Good to know re: OoTA, though that sort of sounds like fun to me as I'm trying to break my bad habit of railroading. I say that, though, knowing almost nothing about the adventure. Re: PoTA, I'll take a look, thanks, though I've read a decent number of complaints about it. Glad you had a good time with it.

Very possible that I'll do the same thing, Olaf the Stout. I imagine I'll be running both at some point, so why not?

 

[77IM]

I haven't played either adventure but I've read OotA and major portions of CoS. I have played all through HotDQ and am currently DMing PotA (group is about half-way through).

I'd say that if you want a campaign with a lot of room to add your own touches, go with OotA. The Underdark is vast and you can fill it with whatever weird stuff or crazed individuals you want to pad out the campaign. If you want a campaign that runs reasonably well right out of the box, try CoS.

I love OotA -- it's really creative and different. But, CoS is too (unless your group has played it already or done a lot of gothic horror). And both adventures involve colorful NPCs, which are a big draw for me as a DM. But CoS just seems radically more cohesive and so much better organized. Both adventures are non-linear, sandboxy in nature, but also railroady in parts; but I feel the railroading in CoS has a better in-game justification (the eponymous curse). I also really love the roleplaying advice for Strahd: he's more powerful than the characters, but he doesn't want to kill them, he just wants to mess with them, which can lead to some really fun interactions. In contrast, the demon lords in OotA are like Godzilla; the PCs can't really interact with them because if they get too close they'll get squished or go mad. This reduces the demon lords to a background element most of the time.

Tonally, OotA is a classic pulp "lost in an alien world" adventure; perhaps a bit darker than what we typically consider of pulp nowadays (although really there was some twisted and horrifying stuff printed on that cheap paper way back when). CoS aims for gothic horror, or just horror in general, which is kind of a difficult thing to pin down and really depends on your particular group as much as anything else. Also, OotA presumes a standard D&D world and then dials the weirdness up to 11. I think CoS kind of works better if you assume the PCs are from a low-magic, low-monster world, because then all the freaky stuff in Barovia seems scarier by contrast.

If I were picking one for my group, I'd definitely pick CoS.

 

[Motorskills]

OOTA is great, but it does need (mental) prep. That said you can prep a chapter or two ahead and be fine.

There's also a lot of guidance available for OOTA now, albeit you have to poke around for it.

Someone has done a chapter-by-chapter summary, and there is also one of those walkthrough cartoon maps that can help. I think both are linked from the collected DM wisdom thread.


One other factor is that OOTA is designed for levels 1-15, so is (nominally) 50% longer than COS, so that's something to consider.

 

[Daern]

Having DM'd the first 1/4 of Abyss I'd say its a difficult module to run and can feel pretty railroady in the sense that they are stuck in this long scary adventure location for a really long time. They don't really have an option to escape early.
Aside from organizational issues and travel/encounter prep, I think the real challenge with Abyss is pacing. You gotta keep it moving along quick or it will drag. I know this because my campaign petered out in the dwarf city... I should have shortened that and let them move along to the Fungus land or Gnome city.

 

[aramis erak]

My players opted to finish OOTA rather than move on to Ravenloft...

 

[Olaf the Stout]

OOTA is great, but it does need (mental) prep. That said you can prep a chapter or two ahead and be fine.

Although I'm sure you can prep just a little bit ahead of where the PCs are currently up to in the adventure and run it just fine, one of the downsides to this is missing out on foreshadowing opportunities.

One of the biggest learnings I had from running my Shackled City AP about 8 years ago now is that foreshadowing events that will happen later in the campaign make for some of the most awesome table moments.

For example, in the SCAP, there is a Beholder that, in the adventure as written, pops up in Chapter 1 then you don't see him again until right near the end. In my campaign I had the Beholder show up multiple times during the campaign, mostly when the PCs were in no position to try and fight it. What that meant though was when the PCs finally did fight and defeat the Beholder it meant so much more.

Similarly, there is a huge red dragon that shows up near the end of the campaign. I foreshadowed it during the whole campaign, from rumours about it having a lair nearby, eyewitness reports of dragon sightings, tales of the legendary dragon's ramapages from the past, etc. Sometimes I'd even just mention that the PCs thought they saw something big flying in the distance, but it was too far away to be sure. When the players finally did encounter the dragon I simply plopped the dragon mini on the table and watched their eyes go wide as they realised that they were about to go up against this creature of legend that they'd heard so much about.

Moments like those, which are still recounted in my group years later, only happended because of the foreshadowing that went on beforehand. Without it, it would have been just another beholder or dragon encounter.

I've also found that the longer the period of time (both in-game and out-of-game) between first foreshadowing the event or incident with the creature and the final encounter, the bigger the impact.

 

[Motorskills]

Having DM'd the first 1/4 of Abyss I'd say its a difficult module to run and can feel pretty railroady in the sense that they are stuck in this long scary adventure location for a really long time. They don't really have an option to escape early.
Aside from organizational issues and travel/encounter prep, I think the real challenge with Abyss is pacing. You gotta keep it moving along quick or it will drag. I know this because my campaign petered out in the dwarf city... I should have shortened that and let them move along to the Fungus land or Gnome city.

Someone else commented that OOTA thinks its a sandbox, but really it's a railroad. I think that's true, and Gracklstugh suffers from this disconnect. Having a core mission, with lots of possible side-missions, is really what is required. To be fair, that's essentially the intent, but the authors really make it hard.

It's a shame that your campaign petered out where it did, mine has just arrived at Neverlight, and the party are loving the place....sorta!

 

[Motorskills]

Having DM'd the first 1/4 of Abyss I'd say its a difficult module to run and can feel pretty railroady in the sense that they are stuck in this long scary adventure location for a really long time. They don't really have an option to escape early.
Aside from organizational issues and travel/encounter prep, I think the real challenge with Abyss is pacing. You gotta keep it moving along quick or it will drag. I know this because my campaign petered out in the dwarf city... I should have shortened that and let them move along to the Fungus land or Gnome city.

Someone else commented that OOTA thinks its a sandbox, but really it's a railroad. I think that's true, and Gracklstugh suffers from this disconnect. Having a core mission, with lots of possible side-missions, is really what is required. To be fair, that's essentially the intent, but the authors really make it hard.

It's a shame that your campaign petered out where it did, mine has just arrived at Neverlight, and the party are loving the place....sorta!