D&D 5E The Larger Failure of "Tyranny of Dragons"

[Zardnaar]

I agree. It's simply not possible to write something that can be run out-the-box without heavy railroading, for exactly that reason.

Having an expectation that a published adventure should be runnable out of the box is simply not realistic.

Complete and utter rubbish. I've run plenty of of adventures as is. Even if you want to modify why not modify something better than HotDQ?

Spend effort to make a meh adventure good or spend the time to make a good adventure great?

 

[Sadras]

Spend effort to make a meh adventure good or spend the time to make a good adventure great?

This assumes that:
1 hour spent to make a meh adventure good = 1 hour spent to make a good adventure great.

That is a false equivalence IMO.

 

[werecorpse]

Complete and utter rubbish. I've run plenty of of adventures as is. Even if you want to modify why not modify something better than HotDQ?

Spend effort to make a meh adventure good or spend the time to make a good adventure great?

What adventures have you run as is? (Any edition except 4e I didn’t play that)

I think you mentioned Curse of Strahd but I don’t know that very well.

I ask not to be facetious but because I almost never manage to run an adventure As is - mostly because of me as GM but even when I’m satisfied with it I find the players do something unplanned for. I am interested in which ones you have found that worked as is. I have managed to run some puzzle dungeons as is and dungeon crawls with minimal change but once the party gets out of the box it’s a whole different thing.

To the OP Imo ToD is not a great As is adventure, but it has some decent bits. I find converting earlier edition adventures very easy for 5e so if you want to expose your players to a module like Red Hand of Doom just run it and convert it. There is a 5e conversion on DMs guild and I reckon you could find a half dozen free ones online.

 

[Zardnaar]

What adventures have you run as is? (Any edition except 4e I didn’t play that)

I think you mentioned Curse of Strahd but I don’t know that very well.

I ask not to be facetious but because I almost never manage to run an adventure As is - mostly because of me as GM but even when I’m satisfied with it I find the players do something unplanned for. I am interested in which ones you have found that worked as is. I have managed to run some puzzle dungeons as is and dungeon crawls with minimal change but once the party gets out of the box it’s a whole different thing.

To the OP Imo ToD is not a great As is adventure, but it has some decent bits. I find converting earlier edition adventures very easy for 5e so if you want to expose your players to a module like Red Hand of Doom just run it and convert it. There is a 5e conversion on DMs guild and I reckon you could find a half dozen free ones online.

LMoP, PotA, various quests of doom, various EN5ider adventures, Tomb of Tiberish off the top of my head. Plenty in previous editions.

I've cut chunks out of the HotDQ, and various other 5E books.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

LMoP

What if the players aren't interested in working as caravan guards?

What if they don't want to stick around town doing odd jobs?

various EN5ider adventures

I assume you read them first? That's preparation. It's a lot easier to run individual short adventures than a book long campaign. You put the players at the dungeon entrance and let them get on with it. Opportunities for players to wander off the rails are distinctly limited.

I've cut chunks out of the HotDQ, and various other 5E books.

Cutting chunks out and fitting them in elsewhere is preparation. It's not using them out-the-box.

 

[Zardnaar]

What if the players aren't interested in working as caravan guards?


I assume you read them first? That's preparation. It's a lot easier to run individual short adventures than a book long campaign. You put the players at the dungeon entrance and let them get on with it. Opportunities for players to wander off the rails are distinctly limited.


Cutting chunks out and fitting them in elsewhere is preparation. It's not using them out-the-box.

Yes obviously I read first. Sometimes I've done the old roll up PCs while I prep a game. That's my prep time so I grap an adventure I've already read and wing it.

Or wing it from the get go.

If the players don't want to do whatever send them home and do something else. Every time though it's spontaneous. More applicable in previous editions when I was younger.

Might play PlayStation mates turn up oh lets play D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If the players don't want to do whatever send them home and do something else.

In which case there is nothing wrong with "You see a dragon attacking a town" as an opening. If they turn around and run the other way they are clearly not cut out to be adventurers, so send them home.

Not what I would do though. If I thought the players might cut and run I would give them friends and family in the town under attack (tied into their character's backstory), and I would have something interesting for them to run into in the opposite direction.

A published adventure should just be slotted into a larger world, and if players choose not to pursue it then that's up to them, and the DM's job is to come up with something else.

 

[Zardnaar]

In which case there is nothing wrong with "You see a dragon attacking a town" as an opening. If they turn around and run the other way they are clearly not cut out to be adventures, so send them home.

Not what I would do though. If I thought the players might cut and run I would give them friends and family in the town under attack (tied into their character's backstory), and I would have something interesting for them to run into in the opposite direction.

A published adventure should just be slotted into a larger world, and if players choose not to pursue it then that's up to them, and the DMs job is to come up with something else.

It's just a bad intro IMHO. And the encounters are also stupid/tpk in chapter 1.

It's not much fun later either when you're literally on the road effectively a railroad.

Most of the time I've under prepped it's probably more due to one more turn or one more hour on some strategy game the night before.

Final game tomorrow night for the year all I've done so far is print a map come to think of it.

 

[Jd Smith1]

In which case there is nothing wrong with "You see a dragon attacking a town" as an opening. If they turn around and run the other way they are clearly not cut out to be adventures, so send them home.

Not what I would do though. If I thought the players might cut and run I would give them friends and family in the town under attack (tied into their character's backstory), and I would have something interesting for them to run into in the opposite direction.

Why don't you just have an opening appropriate to 1st levels?

If they don't cut and run, then they see you as the kind of GM that won't kill them, and you've already damaged your campaign by removing any tension for your players.

Interestingly, this is the same opening as used by Tiny Tina in the DLC to Borderlands 2.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It's just a bad intro IMHO. And the encounters are also stupid/tpk in chapter 1.

It's not much fun later either when you're literally on the road effectively a railroad.

They don't have to stay on the railroad. Let them wander off. As mentioned, if a published adventure allowed for anything the players might want to do it would need an infinite number of pages. The authors just have to assume the players will want to follow the main plot, and the DM will fill in anything else, because they don't have the pages to do otherwise.

My approach is to put hooks for various adventures in the path of the players, and let them pursue whichever they prefer.