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

[Bolares]

The Eberron adventures for instance were atrocious

Shadows of the last war was dope

 

[akr71]

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.

I bought it and was disappointed. It was great to see all my favorite characters with 5e stat blocks, but the villains' motivations seemed forced and hokey. Faldorn as an eco-terrorist was great, but Edwin, Monty & Xzar all fell flat. However, I did use Viconia as a hook to get the party the party to go to the underdark where I'm running a heavily edited OotA.

 

[TheSword]

Shadows of the last war was dope

The principles were good, but it was just so sparse. The thought of exploring an ancient giant weapon complex is amazing but the end result, the maps, the artwork, the page count was like something I’d find in Dungeon Magazine. Even this was ranked one of the ten best adventures in D&D 3e.

The Eberron adventures always seemed to me like great ideas but not given the resource, page count and effort they deserved to be great.

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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Has anyone played the Lost Laboratory of Kwalish? I ran it, and it's both very good and very bad...

We played the 1st half. The party chose not to pursue the second half at the time, other tasks being more urgent. Although it now features in one of the character's backstory.

 

[Retreater]

I think the issue with many of the WotC mega-adventures is that they are written by teams. They are designed to appeal to wide audiences, truly pleasing no one. They are sketched out with multi-format marketing campaigns (video games, novels, audio books, miniature lines, etc.) to tick all the boxes.
A shorter adventure could be a passion project of a focused writer (or a very small, coherent team). Instead we are getting the equivalent of adventures that resemble the worse traits of Hollywood blockbusters - overlong, passionless, soulless sequels and reboots.
People on here are claiming that 5e is a golden age of quality adventures. I don't think so. Compared to some of the classics from B/X, 1e, and even 3e (not to mention some of the interesting 3PP stuff), I'd say the 5e stuff is worse.
Why are 5e not as good in my opinion: they are too long. They dilute content, they don't tie together plots, they let good ideas stretch on to the point of nausea.

 

[Parmandur]

Agreed that you can make them all work and have a good time, but I don't think they're all playable as written. I think even the weakest ones have good content. But they require a lot of work from the DM.

I ran HotDQ straight from the book, with improv based on player actions, no major work. It went well.

 

[Bolares]

The principles were good, but it was just so sparse. The thought of exploring an ancient giant weapon complex is amazing but the end result, the maps, the artwork, the page count was like something I’d find in Dungeon Magazine. Even this was ranked one of the ten best adventures in D&D 3e.

I don't know, I've run it multiple times, as is and the players always loved it. I love whitehearth with all my heart. that dungeon is so cool!

Incidentally, if you want an amazing Eberron adventure convert Rise of the Runelords to Eberron. It works so well.

Nerver heard of this Adventure, gonna check it out!

 

[Enrico Poli1]

Regarding Tomb of Annihilation's appeal...

It's a jungle hexcrawl, then a delve in a deadly dungeon, with a time limit - that's a challenge.
The hexcrawl has an Indiana-Jones vibe, with a lot of funny moments, and with interesting NPCs and locations.
The Tomb actually manages to recreate the spirit of the original Tomb of Horrors: the players have to think to overcome the deadly traps
Moreover, there is a strong nostalgia factor (the Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Artus Cimber, Dragonbait...)

 

[Bolares]

Regarding Tomb of Annihilation's appeal...

It's a jungle hexcrawl, then a delve in a deadly dungeon, with a time limit - that's a challenge.
The hexcrawl has an Indiana-Jones vibe, with a lot of funny moments, and with interesting NPCs and locations.
The Tomb actually manages to recreate the spirit of the original Tomb of Horrors: the players have to think to overcome the deadly traps
Moreover, there is a strong nostalgia factor (the Tomb of Horrors, Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Artus Cimber, Dragonbait...)

I like that even though the adventure is very sandboxy, there are subtle ways the book puts the players on a path. There are specific guides that are viable from the start, and those will direct the party in directions that will give them clues on how to advance the story. So the players will feel like they are making all the choices, but the book is lightly guiding them through....

 

[Burnside]

I ran HotDQ straight from the book, with improv based on player actions, no major work. It went well.

While HotDQ isn't my cup of tea as an adventure, I do agree that you can run it as written.

When I say that there are some that are flat-out not playable unless the DM fixes stuff, the ones I'm thinking of specifically are Storm King's Thunder and especially Waterdeep: Dragon Heist - and at the same time, I would still say that there is good to great content in both of those.

Trying to run Waterdeep: Dragon Heist straight from the book is like trying to play the beta release of a complicated CRPG. You keep encountering game-breaking bugs and your character can wander into areas that were never finished. And there are other parts of it that are really great and make you think "I can't wait until they finish the rest of this game so it will all be like this part." But they never DO finish it. And then some third party working alone releases a free patch on Steam that fixes the bugs, finishes the missing areas, and makes it playable for you.