D&D 5E (2014) Rank the Official 5e Adventures (Updated)

[Burnside]

YMMV, of course, but most adventures are go to location X and kill stuff. I'd guess the vast majority of every quest is that in DnD history.

The gnome area is great for role play. You have to convince a dude to leave an area, even after you clear it out in another quest. Falcon's lodge? Umbrage hill, where you need to talk to someone after possibly scaring something off? The ratio seems about right to me, plus I'd guess most DMs have some roleplay in town, but maybe that's just me and my friends?

Plus, and this is key, most of the areas are playable in a session or two, and easily stolen (and, frankly, easy to modify if you want).

I agree on exploration, but there are almost NO good examples of that pillar in any adventure from WotC. Huge weakness, imo.

Gnomengard is very good, but it's an exception - there's nothing else like that in the book.

Umbrage Hill is an outrageously bad first encounter for new players, and it's absolutely the one they're likely to do first.

Falcon's lodge meh. They could have taken half a page and tied Falcon in to an old adventuring party that included the wizard that owned the Woodland Lodge and the lady buried in Dragon Mound and done some kind of cool redemption or tragic mystery story there, but instead it's just a generic Aragorn clone who lives in the woods and you can give him a bottle of wine.

I agree that the fact that the missions are bite-sized and can be completed in a session or two is a plus. But they could still be a lot more thoughtful and interesting and varied than they are.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

good best-selling CRPGs from 20 years ago.

Just as a side note: Icewind Dale: the CRPG makes an awesome campaign for tabletop. The general goal of the campaign is pretty basic, there's some mystery behind the BBEG but not to much and different locations are awesome. I did it 2 times, and though we never made it to the end, there's some gems in there.

I swear there's money to be made to make the classic CRPG into tabletop campaign.
Who wouldnt buy the 1-20 campaign based off Baldur's Gate/Shadow of Amn/Throne of Baal?!
I personally ran it as a campaign before COVID and my players had a good time exploring Candlekeep and the Friendly Arms Inn, meeting Jaheira and Khalid, and fighting the Ogre with the belt fetish and an infestation of spiders!

 

[Burnside]

Just as a side note: Icewind Dale: the CRPG makes an awesome campaign for tabletop. The general goal of the campaign is pretty basic, there's some mystery behind the BBEG but not to much and different locations are awesome. I did it 2 times, and though we never made it to the end, there's some gems in there.

I swear there's money to be made to make the classic CRPG into tabletop campaign.
Who wouldnt buy the 1-20 campaign based off Baldur's Gate/Shadow of Amn/Throne of Baal?!
I personally ran it as a campaign before COVID and my players had a good time exploring Candlekeep and the Friendly Arms Inn, meeting Jaheira and Khalid, and fighting the Ogre with the belt fetish and an infestation of spiders!

You might enjoy this product, in case you're not familiar with it:

Heroes of Baldur's Gate (5e) - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

5E adventure by James Ohlin, lead designer of BG 1 & 2, set in BG and featuring many characters and locations from the games.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

You might enjoy this product, in case you're not familiar with it:

Heroes of Baldur's Gate (5e) - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

5E adventure by James Ohlin, lead designer of BG 1 & 2, set in BG and featuring many characters and locations from the games.

Oh you can be sure I already have it. I indeed used their map for my games. The NPC are too high level, but I changed them to lower level Sidekicks (the UA ones).

 

[TheSword]

Yeah, the quality of the published adventures has been really poor overall this edition. Which is kind of wild to me given that the playtest modules were really great! Murder in Baldur’s Gate, Legacy of the Crystal Shard, Scorge of the Sword Coast, and Dead in Thay were all fantastic! I didn’t read Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, but I heard good things about it. The Blingdenstone adventure in the playtest packets (can’t remember the name) was really good too, and of course Keep on the Borderlands and Isle of Dread are classics. It seemed like they had really stepped up their adventure design coming off of 4e, so I was really thrilled for Horde of the Dragon Queen… and then was very disappointed to find it was like… the opposite of everything I liked about the playtest modules.

I’m amazed. The quality, detail and versatility of 5e adventures are particularly good. I’d set the best of them against any previous campaigns and the rest are still better than most of 3e and a great deal of 2e.

3e in particular has about half a dozen decent modules the rest are kak. The Eberron adventures for instance were atrocious. City of the Spider Queen was a linear dungeon crawl but ok, Red Hand of Doom was pretty good but a bit repetitive. Cormyr was okay but again very linear. Shadowdale was probably the best actual campaign book. Sunken citadel and Forge of Fury were essentially just small dungeon crawls.

Even fondness for a lot of the 2e stuff is just nostalgia and rose tinted spectacles.

They’re not perfect but taken as a set, are far beyond what came before.

 

[Charlaquin]

I’m amazed. The quality, detail and versatility of 5e adventures are particularly good. I’d set the best of them against any previous campaigns and the rest are still better than most of 3e and a great deal of 2e.

3e in particular has about half a dozen decent modules the rest are kak. The Eberron adventures for instance were atrocious. City of the Spider Queen was a linear dungeon crawl but ok, Red Hand of Doom was pretty good but a bit repetitive. Cormyr was okay but again very linear. Shadowdale was probably the best actual campaign book. Sunken citadel and Forge of Fury were essentially just small dungeon crawls.

Even fondness for a lot of the 2e stuff is just nostalgia and rose tinted spectacles.

They’re not perfect but taken as a set, are far beyond what came before.

I haven’t really played any modules from before 4e, so 4e was my main point of comparison. And I do think 5e’s modules are generally better quality than 4e’s from what I remember. But both are far lower than the quality seen during the playtest, in my opinion.

 

[Stormonu]

Just as a side note: Icewind Dale: the CRPG makes an awesome campaign for tabletop. The general goal of the campaign is pretty basic, there's some mystery behind the BBEG but not to much and different locations are awesome. I did it 2 times, and though we never made it to the end, there's some gems in there.

I swear there's money to be made to make the classic CRPG into tabletop campaign.
Who wouldnt buy the 1-20 campaign based off Baldur's Gate/Shadow of Amn/Throne of Baal?!
I personally ran it as a campaign before COVID and my players had a good time exploring Candlekeep and the Friendly Arms Inn, meeting Jaheira and Khalid, and fighting the Ogre with the belt fetish and an infestation of spiders!

I mean, they did Curse of the Azure Bonds back in the day for the gold boxes…

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I mean, they did Curse of the Azure Bonds back in the day for the gold boxes…

Was that a videogame based on the adventure or the opposite, I cant remember?

 

[TheSword]

I haven’t really played any modules from before 4e, so 4e was my main point of comparison. And I do think 5e’s modules are generally better quality than 4e’s from what I remember. But both are far lower than the quality seen during the playtest, in my opinion.

It much easier to write something to cover a couple of levels than a full campaign book. I’m struggling to see what you see in them to be honest.

 

[TheSword]

Was that a videogame based on the adventure or the opposite, I cant remember?

It was based on the book… barely. So atrocious.