D&D 5E Rank the Official 5e Adventures (Updated)

[Bolares]

My experience suggests that Perkins has prioritized emergent play in a very effective manner, which isn't necessarily obvious from reading alone.

Couldn't agree more. If you pay attention the trail is there, but it's really well hidden to make the players feel like they had all the agency in the story. Making some guides guive a quest instead of their payment is a really smart way of guiding the players to places you want them to visit.

 

[TheSword]

The best way to run Tomb of Annihilation is to ignore the Death Curse until later in the adventure (like when the party gets in the vicinity of the Tomb.)
In hindsight, I would've ignored/downplayed the Frostmaiden's curse in Rime of the Frostmaiden until the party was closer to dealing with it.
Having a party adventure for levels 1-8 with an earth-shattering calamity in the background seems silly when the bulk of the adventure content is devoted to exploring side quests in a large open world.

So in ToA, I would probably add a mid-boss warlord in the jungle for the party to find, or ramp up the importance of Ras Nsi. In RotFM, pick a faction early and focus on them (maybe the duergar) and have the party seek out Sunblight - and then have the winter curse happen.

Breaking them up into 3 or 5 level "mini-arcs" is probably the way to do it.

I'm curious about how I'm going to salvage RotFM at this point. I likely will just have the party end the winter curse and then move on to another storyline.

One option for the Death Curse is to modify it to affect life extending Magic’s rather than those previously resurrected. Anyone who has extended their life beyond their normal means starts to age rapidly. Plus anyone resurrected or raised gets sucked into the soul monger instead. give patrons with a desire to get it resolved without the time delay. I’ve also found the lost city of Omu and it’s fabulous treasures can be it’s own reward.

 

[Burnside]

I played in a two-and-a-half-year Tomb of Annihilation campaign and it always seemed like we were making progress and we never lost sight of our goal - we accepted that "find Oralunga" or "find Omu" was a goal and that exploration was the means to reach it. And the places we found while exploring were, generally speaking, amazing.

I think the Death Curse can and should be there from the start. My objection to the Death Curse is that it spotlights the awkward "resurrection for the rich and famous" status quo in Faerun, which has such bizarre implications when closely considered - and makes the whole notion of death so radically different from the way we view it in real life- that it's generally better NOT to closely consider it. But once you get past that I'm fine with it.

The ONLY area I wasn't crazy about was Port Nyanzaru which just had too much going on - I felt like we couldn't walk a block without three side quests landing in our laps (and sometimes not particularly interesting ones, though). I think the DM should be careful not to inundate players here, as it can feel paralyzing to be pulled in so many directions at once. The low-level AL adventures for that season arguably offer a better level 1-4 experience than the hardcover does, and can be used with the hardcover.

 

[ECMO3]

My ranking is based on how much fun the adventure was for me to run/read/play in - aggregated where I’ve done more than one of those things. I don’t care how easy it is to read or play. I’m not really interested in easy. I don’t pick a module off the shelf and expect it to play at the table word for word as written. Just fun. I also consider if and how long we played the campaign for to be a good indicator of fun.

I always find it much more fun to play in than to DM in and with that in mind HODQ, DIA and TOA have been my favorites so far. I have never DMed any of these which probably makes me think they are better than they are. With TOA I will point out that is was miserable until I took a level in Ranger so we were not lost all the time (thank goodness we rolled stats and my fighter had a 13 wisdom).

That I have HODQ so high, and it is universally despised means my DM for that game must have been pretty darn good.

I will say lost mines is the 5E introduction for many and it is one heck of a wakeup call for people coming from earlier editions where fights were easier. The first Goblin encounter in lost mines will TPK most parties of newbies if the DM knows what he is doing. It takes expert-level play or lucky rolls by a party of 4 1st level players to survive this fight without one or more going down.

 

[jdrakeh]

Of those I've played...

Top Tier
1. Lost Mine of Phandelver
2. Curse of Strahd
3. Tomb of Annihilation

Mid Tier
4. Storm King's Thunder
5. Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Lower Tier
6. Princes of the Apocalypse

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Incidentally, if you want an amazing Eberron adventure convert Rise of the Runelords to Eberron. It works so well. I’ve been running it for about a year now and the party are currently exploring a demon-powered giant-built dam in the mountains of Xen’drik.

Yeah, what happended to that amazing thread you had about that campaign?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My experience suggests that Perkins has prioritized emergent play in a very effective manner, which isn't necessarily obvious from reading alone.

With Perkins, I find I have to do a fair bit of reading between the lines. It might have been helpful if he put in some sort of commentary to explain why he set things up the way he did.

I guess the trouble is, once something is written down, people feel they have to play it that way.

 

[TheSword]

Yeah, what happended to that amazing thread you had about that campaign?

To be honest the campaign is still running but because it wasn’t getting much response I stopped writing the session by session account of the conversion. I could do an overview. The party are near the end of their fourth APs and are up to level 9.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

To be honest the campaign is still running but because it wasn’t getting much response I stopped writing the session by session account of the conversion. I could do an overview. The party are near the end of their fourth APs and are up to level 9.

I'm most interested in hearing about how the merging of the APs are turning out