D&D 5E (2014) The Larger Failure of "Tyranny of Dragons"

[Weiley31]

Literally my first experience with Hoard...
First text box in the book: “Players [1st level], you approach a city that has an adult blue dragon attacking.”
PCs: “Nope.”
DM: “Um, okay, then the campaign is over.”

You forgot to make the PC going into the town where the dragon is attacking a cutscene that brings them into the thick of things.

 

[generic]

You forgot to make the PC going into the town where the dragon is attacking a cutscene that brings them into the thick of things.

It really is an awful adventure, isn't it? I played in it as a PC, and my response was "well, um, okay, so...". And then, the party is just told to go kill some Kobolds.

 

[Weiley31]

I keep hearing that Tyranny of Dragons is made alot better by combining elements from the Storm King's Thunder adventure.

Concept/idea wise(and title), Tyranny of Dragons is great.

 

[Weiley31]

It really is an awful adventure, isn't it? I played in it as a PC, and my response was "well, um, okay, so...". And then, the party is just told to go kill some Kobolds.

Id make the Kobolds into servants of said dragon attacking.

 

[hawkeyefan]

To me, there’s a couple ways of looking at it.

For a new DM, I think it does an okay job. Hard for me to say for sure since I’m not a new DM, but if we go back to the Amazon rankings as being indicative of a more general audience, it seems people tend to like it. It’s linear, which probably helps a new DM get their footing and learn the ropes. That likely helps new players as well. It’s divided up into a decent variety of sections, combat, investigation and infiltration, social and exploration, more combat. It gets right to the action, although the way in which it does this could be challenging for a new DM.

But honestly, I think the start is more challenging for older DMs. They carry their preconceptions with them, and that may clash with what’s presented in the book.

From the perspective of a long time DM, the opening scene and series of encounters may seem like too much. But, you can run as much or as little of it as you want. Sure, the PCs may not have any reason to actually rush into Greenest to try and save the day, the adventure assumes they will. But shouldn't a long time DM know how to invest the PCs in the world? If they’re pure murder-hobos then there could always be that problem regardless of the adventure presented. A few connections to the world and the problem’s pretty much solved. When my group played it, my PC was a ward of Escobert, one of the NPCs in Greenest, another PC had a sister that was in the town. Pretty easy motivators for the characters to get involved.

So although it would seem to me like the adventure would be more difficult for new DMs, based on what we can see, it looks like the ones who complain about it are long time DMs. It’s kind of an odd phenomenon.

 

[plisnithus8]

You forgot to make the PC going into the town where the dragon is attacking a cutscene that brings them into the thick of things.

I didn’t forget to take away player agency.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I posted because of the frustration I'm having trying to find an adventure to run for a group that wants a "classic Dnd" experience, which would seem to be Tyranny of Dragons, but because it's awful I have to update something from a previous edition.
But more importantly, if you're tired of discussing the topic, why are you posting in the thread?

It's no more or less a "classic D&D experience" than any other 5e book - apart from TftYP and GoS which actually update classic adventures.

I would say the "classic" experience is a campaign the DM creates themselves. These whole-campaign-in-one-book affairs where not around in ye olden days of D&D.

But I did think you might actually have some new point that you didn't explain clearly enough in your OP - otherwise why not post in an existing thread if you just wanted to have a grumble about some old adventure published years ago which is generally well known to be not so good?

 

[Vael]

I've stated my opinions on the adventure path, and yes, I didn't like it and I found running the adventure a frustrating task. But I own the two books, so let's see about extricating some value from them. If we ignore the overarching plot, how useful are some of the chapters, has anyone found value in any of the pieces of the adventure path?

For example, I think chapter 6, Castle Naerytar can be pulled out and used in other campaigns or as the end piece to a larger adventure. A big castle, with an uneasy alliance between Cultists, Bullywugs and Lizardfolk, there's potential here. But this is also where I stalled out while running the campaign, so what sections of the adventure path did work well and might be useful in isolation?

 

[Parmandur]

I posted because of the frustration I'm having trying to find an adventure to run for a group that wants a "classic Dnd" experience, which would seem to be Tyranny of Dragons, but because it's awful I have to update something from a previous edition.
But more importantly, if you're tired of discussing the topic, why are you posting in the thread?

Tyranny of Dragons is quite playable, there are oodles of threads in the forum full of advice from people running it.

Not really old school, though: Ghosts of Saltmarsh may be worth a gander for that purpose.

 

[Parmandur]

I've stated my opinions on the adventure path, and yes, I didn't like it and I found running the adventure a frustrating task. But I own the two books, so let's see about extricating some value from them. If we ignore the overarching plot, how useful are some of the chapters, has anyone found value in any of the pieces of the adventure path?

For example, I think chapter 6, Castle Naerytar can be pulled out and used in other campaigns or as the end piece to a larger adventure. A big castle, with an uneasy alliance between Cultists, Bullywugs and Lizardfolk, there's potential here. But this is also where I stalled out while running the campaign, so what sections of the adventure path did work well and might be useful in isolation?

Now, it's funny that you ask, because from Chapter 6 on, just about every chapter is a pretty dynamite stand alone module. The earlier chapters are the bumpy part, particularly with motivation and timing.

Chris Perkins called out the second chapter of RoT, the Sea of Moving Ice, as one he personally has used as a stand-alone frequently over the past five years.