D&D 5E Out of the Abyss versus Descent into Avernus - Which One to Run?

[jayoungr]

Do people have any comments on whether Descent into Avernus is highly political/requires a lot of interaction with NPCs? I gather I overdid the NPC intrigue in Curse of Strahd for my players' tastes, so I'm trying to watch that in future. (Some of my players also tend to respond to that kind of thing by being smartasses, and that can be hard to salvage a credible story from.)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I like both adventures, though they both have caveats. Out of Abyss is a bit more freeform, but requires more work to tie it together (and indeed, I found (using XP rather than milestones) that I needed to create a bunch of additional content to get the PCs to the levels required for it. Descent into Avernus is more on-rails (though certainly not as railroading as Hoard of the Dragon Queen) and (for my party) started off with some absolutely brutal early battles, but has some jawdropping moments that really pay off.