D&D General Tangent from Vecna - How Many Actually Good Adventures Are There?

[Zardnaar]

Mist of the ones I have run have been good but I can filter bad ones out before I even play I suppose.

For 5E

CoS
ToA
LMoP
Various Quests of Doom Eg Bad Moon Rising (twice), Perils of Ghostwind Pass (currently running).
Various adaptions of older material
Forge of Fury
Evils of Haranshire
Parts of Ice Spire Peak

 

[Malmuria]

Shorter adventures are easier to write, and easier to run. Give me a town, a small area, 1-3 dungeons and 1-3 factions/interests and that's pretty easy to manage and pull off. When you get into the big epic adventure paths a lot of things can go wrong both in writing and in running

 

[Mark Hope]

These are adventures I have run where the structure, content, and approach of the published material contributed significantly to it being a freaking great time for me and my group - without me needing to hack or change large parts of it. Those with a star were particularly excellent.

B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
B4 The Lost City*
C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
D3 Vault of the Drow*
FRC1 Ruins of Adventure
FRC2 Curse of the Azure Bonds*
G1-3 Against the Giants
I2 Tomb of the Lizard King*
I3 Pharaoh
I4 Oasis of the White Palm
I5 Lost Tomb of Martek*
I6 Ravenloft*
I12 Egg of the Phoenix*
RA1 Feast of Goblyns*
S1 Tomb of Horrors
S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth
SJA1 Wildspace*
U1 The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh*
WGA4 Vecna Lives*
WGR1 Greyhawk Ruins
X1 The Isle of Dread
X2 Castle Amber*
The Night Below*
Return to the Tomb of Horrors
Tomb of Abysthor
Rappan Athuk*
Empire of the Ghouls
Irilian*
Slumbering Tsar*

 

[Hussar]

I guess I'm kinda alone here. I didn't realize so many people try to run adventures straight from the book. It's just not something that's ever really occured to me. To me, reading a module is the starting point, not the ending. I use modules because it gives me a nice framework, and a lot of the heavy lifting - stat blocks, maps, that sort of thing - has been done for me. Particularly useful in VTT play where things like Line of Sight is already done for me. Always nice.

But, the idea of opening up, say, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, a module I ran as part of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh (never ran it back in the day) and just running it never occured to me. I added all sorts of scenes, side treks, and whatnots. Same with DragonHeist - my entire Chapter 2 is rewritten.

 

[Maialideth]

Return to the Tomb of Horrors is excellent.
Night Below - after the first book, though I don't remember if it was actually good, but we enjoyed it back in the day.
House of Strahd - I loved the suggestions for how Strahd could mess with the characters in several locations in the castle.
Curse of Strahd
Lost Mines of Phandelver
Dead Gods
Night of the Walking Dead - the first published adventure I owned and ran.
From the Shadows and Roots of Evil

 

[Mark Hope]

I guess I'm kinda alone here. I didn't realize so many people try to run adventures straight from the book. It's just not something that's ever really occured to me. To me, reading a module is the starting point, not the ending. I use modules because it gives me a nice framework, and a lot of the heavy lifting - stat blocks, maps, that sort of thing - has been done for me. Particularly useful in VTT play where things like Line of Sight is already done for me. Always nice.

But, the idea of opening up, say, Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, a module I ran as part of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh (never ran it back in the day) and just running it never occured to me. I added all sorts of scenes, side treks, and whatnots. Same with DragonHeist - my entire Chapter 2 is rewritten.

Speaking just for myself, I do both. Sometimes I run them more or less from the book (I might change names or locations or motivations to make them fit my gameworld - like, my Castle Greyhawk is called Castle Blackstorm and is in the middle a chaos-waste, not near a city or whatever but otherwise the content is the same) and sometimes I hack them to pieces (like only using the pyramid from Pharaoh or Orcus' citadel from Throne of Bloodstone or making Snurre's hall a level in Undermountain) and having everything else about the adventure be different. Usually it's somewhere in between. But those listed above I was absolutely able to run as-is at least once and have them be a blast

 

[thullgrim]

The Paizo APs in the PF1 era were mostly fantastic. A few duds, most are great with, of course, a few adjustments and an enthused GM.

Curse of the crimson throne
Kingmaker
Carrion Crown
Jade Regent
Iron Gods
Mummy’s mask
War for the crown

Not recommended,
Second darkness
Serpent skull (First module excellent tho)

I would add Rise of the Runelords to this list.

For my money Forge of Fury is the best dungeon crawl I’ve ever run. It’s a fantastic adventure.

Not D&D but I ran the Zalozhniy Quartet for Nights Black Agents last year by the book and it was a great time.

 

[eyeheartawk]

I don't think there are many D&D adventures that I think are great for me without significant modification. Adventures that I think are close to pitch perfect are ones that do what the game says you can do and shows you how and also have the right atmosphere and tone ( this is part of D&D's adventure problem since its remit is so vast this can be hard to nail from table to table).

For me WFRP gets this right more than most:

Oldenhaller Contract - Best intro adventure to any game ever, probably. Everything you need to know about WFRP is in like, eight pages.

The Enemy Within - Probably the best fantasy AP ever. Especially now that the 4th edition revision/director's cut is out so you don't have to take the weird left turn into Kislev at the end.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

So far my favourite adventures have been Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage and Witchlight and some of the Radiant Citadel stuff.I like Dragonheist mostly for the Waterdeep setting material for use with mad mage. Liked most of Descent into Avernus, but felt like two very seperate aventures forced together and I don't like using soul coins for fuel for the Infernal War Machines, ruined that part of the adventuee.

Heard good things about Tales of the Yawning Portal, Frostmaiden, and Storm Kings Thunder and Curse of Strahd but don't own those.

I have high hopes for Quests From The Infinite Staircase.

Took a look at Vecna in Indigo and I like the Pandomium part, but by and large found the whole thing unsatisifying.

Liked a couple of the adventures in Candlekeep Mysteries, but not most of them.

The rest I never really bothered with.

 

[TiQuinn]

I guess I'm kinda alone here. I didn't realize so many people try to run adventures straight from the book. It's just not something that's ever really occured to me. To me, reading a module is the starting point, not the ending.

You’re not alone - there are very few modules where I didn’t add anything but that’s because of my own imagination running wild and I see the opportunity to add in something that’s thematically cool that makes a small 32 page adventure into something even larger. But I’m trying to answer this as strictly as possible.