D&D 5E Thoughts on the D&D Starter Set (Spoilers!)

[ExploderWizard]

I am running one group through the adventure currently. It has been pretty good overall. The party has taken out the redbrands, collected the quests in town, and went to Craigmaw castle.

At Craigmaw they skirmished with some goblins then pulled back. The druid turned into a spider and did a crawl-through scouting everything out. The party waited too long and the "drow" slipped out during the night with the map undetected. Poor Gundren was gutted and eaten for breakfast (the party found his remains over the fire in the dining hall). They finished cleaning out the castle then decided to track the drow.

They followed the tracks out of the forest, where strangely, the tracks changed! Where once there were small elven footprints, there were now heavier prints. The party followed the tracks back to Phandalin and asked around about anyone just getting into town. They learned that the only one seen coming to town was old Gus, a local miner who was over fond of drink. They found Gus in the inn, drinking ale and decided to scope him out. They kept an eye on him and the druid even spied on him after he went up to his room for the night.

Not sure of what to do the next morning, the druid approached old Gus the next morning and began questioning him. The druid then began assaulting the fellow right in the common room. It was a tense battle with some of the party looking on, not sure if they should get involved. At one point when it looked like old Gus was getting really whalloped, the cleric HEALED him! On what fun!

The mage (attempting to interfere quietly) used mage hand to try and unbuckle Gus's belt. Imagine his surprise when he discovered it was all one piece! At that point everyone smelled villain and the dogpile began. "Gus" was killed right in the inn, reverted to his doppleganger form, and the party won the map of Wave Echo cave.

It was awesome! We continue the adventure next week.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Running with a group of school kids at recess and lunch times. There are 9 players/PCs. Yep. 9. I rarely change much from the adventure as written as the players are young and inexperienced and, well, 9 can't all be on the front line a lot of the time anyway.

I have found it a breeze to GM. Very important, as I spend little time in prep. Given we get little done each week, I need things to be short and sharp.

My players dealt with the goblins in the caves. Travelled to Phandalin and immediately cottoned on to the Redbrands being a gang that is menacing the town. With young bravado they marched straight to the dwarven tap house where they drank and a good old fashion bar-room brawl errupted. When the proprietor complained of losing her money, the PCs spent a LOT there to make her happy.

They then heard from the little halfling and took off to their hide out. They cleaned that out okay.

They went chasing orcs, and met and 'befriended' the red wizard, though they ignored the banshee quest. They defeated the orcs. (I believe they freed their 9th player's PC there. So we actually started with 8). I think I added a captive owlbear to the orcs too?

Back to town. Heard about the druid that might help. Went to Thundertree. Whilst battling the twig blights the party also met the druid. After revealing there was a dragon the PCs simply got the info re Cragmaw Castle and left, ignoring most of Thundertree. (I am actually pleased when players don't take up every hook 'just b/c', and I was surprised by the single-mindedness of these players to push on to the main prize - finding Gundren - who is the cousin of the dwarven cleric.)

Currently in Cragmaw Castle battling the big bads (who themselves ended up fighting each other over the map). We have just lost 3 PCs in the castle, but others on verge of victory.

I have loved the sandbox mini-setting, allowing the players to choose. I have greatly enjoyed running it. I was so glad there was not too much info on NPCs in town. And the lack of maps for town was fine. Wasted space. Grab one of the internet IF needed for a battle, or make up. Many towns have too much info to keep track of. Having assigned quests is a great idea.

Players have so far been very happy with the game. AS they are basically 9 'starters' in the hobby, I would say this starter set has been VERY successful.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

Some of the best RP we've had so far (nearly finished with a bunch of bad guys who got away...) was a simple barter exchange in town. I had to make up a stable as they went to buy horses and after an acrobatics check as they tested their new steeds, of the two buying animals, one rolled a 20 (he's a natural! The whole town came to watch his dressage) and the other rolled a 1 (he subsequently named his horse Missed...of course it's pronounced Mist so no-one will ever know -except the whole town who came to watch his mate...).
Also, Agatha! Scared them witless!

 

[Louis Brenton]

I loved LMoP. I thought it was an excellent introductory adventure. My group got a dozen session out of it. All my players but one were first-timers. I'd definitely run it again if I ever had opportunity.

I was surprised at how into the town & environment the players got. They decided very early on that they loved Phandalin & they went about its clearing & defense as if it were an adopted home. They even wound up putting roots down & buying into a local business. It's now their home base for our ongoing adventures.

 

[Mhyr]

I was surprised at how into the town & environment the players got. They decided very early on that they loved Phandalin & they went about its clearing & defense as if it were an adopted home. They even wound up putting roots down & buying into a local business. It's now their home base for our ongoing adventures.

This sounds great! To make Phandalin the base was also my plan, but to be honest I somehow had to tie my players to the town by making one of them Sheriff, and another one (the dwarven cleric) was approached by the dwarves who rushed back to town when it was known that WEC was discovered, to provide a place to worship. He decided against the Dumathoin temple in WEC and founded a Moradin temple in Phandalin. At the moment he invested only 50 gp, but we will see...

 

[Barantor]

I'm wrapping up WEC with my 3rd DMing of the module and it has been pretty solid. My only concerns with it mirror some of the others.....

NPCs in Phandalin are a little light on details.

WEC itself is fight after fight, which some people like but I think degrades from the 'bosses' of the dungeon.

I think that it is a good module and it is the only official one I've bought from WotC since the others are a bit more substantially based in the Forgotten Realms setting. I think as far as value it still holds up and when combined with all the free content that WotC has put out through their website it is more than enough to get several dozen play sessions at least.

 

[Mark CMG]

Which is really challenging as there's a HUGE difference between first and second level characters. You know that extra die worth of hit points? It really matters!

Indeed! It's a huge difference. The goblin caves help a lot in making the town more manageable.

I'm yet to actually run the Green Dragon encounter.

I cut out the entire dragon/twiggy location. It felt too shoehorned to me anyway. I also truncated Wave Echo Cave to streamline the last section of the Starter Set.

So, have you played the Lost Mine of Phandelver? Have you played it several times? How do you find it, and how do you think it's holding up, 14 months in?

Good stuff, the Starter Set along with the Basic Rules download. I grabbed those, separated the rules proper from the spells and made an extra spell book so the cleric and wizard would each have one to flip through while playing. Further, I blew up the maps for almost everywhere to have "dungeon tiles" and made a poster map of the town for the wall where we play at Lake Geneva Games (though I had to pick up the Starter Set the day it first came out down at my old FLGS in Mount Prospect). I've given a lot more detail and have tons of pictures in a series of blog posts on my site here -

http://www.creativemountaingames.com/2014/07/the-friday-grab-bag-my-d-5e-starter-set.html

 

[Croesus]

I'm very impressed with this module. As others have mentioned, it has some weaknesses, but the sandbox aspect was well done, the town was fleshed out enough to get things going, and there were enough quirks to create some great RP moments.

My players settled into the town - they bought Tresendar Manor (by paying the back taxes owed), befriended the Nothic (whom they keep well fed and mostly hidden), bought one of the taverns, ran for mayor (bribing their way to victory in the election), hired Droop and another goblin as servants, and generally just had fun turning the little town into their own place.

If I were to re-run it, I'd tweak a few things:
- The initial fight in with Klarg is very, very tough for 1st level characters, especially for new players.
- I didn't use factions, but I would try to use them or something similar to tie the characters more fully to the NPCs.
- Do more to provide a build up for the Black Spider. My players ended up hating Iarno, but the Black Spider was mostly "meh".
- Make Wave Echo Cave more dynamic by separating most of the monsters into factions fighting one another, so the PCs have an opportunity to choose sides, play them all off against each other, or something else.

 

[guachi]

Love the adventure. I've run it twice. It helps a lot if you as DM spice up the NPCs or add things as necessary. I've enjoyed seeing some of the changes in this thread.

I had a showdown in the streets with the Redbrands complete with tumbleweeds, hand crossbows, and the theme music from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly playing in the background. Total Western town feel.

The adventure is always quite easy to adapt to different campaign settings.

 

[EditorBFG]

Thanks. I guess if the Phandalin key had been 16 pages instead of 2 pages, if there had been floorplans of the key locations (taverns, above-ground manor, shrine etc) along with stat blocks & short paragraphs on the key NPCs there, it could have been good. As it was, I found running a dynamic conflict with the Redbrands extremely painful, whenever the PCs didn't do exactly what the adventure expected I had zero support.

Ironically Loudwater, the 4e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting starter town, seemed far better
done.

You and I want totally different things from a town in an adventure. I have a zillion town descriptions with maps and everything. I'd rather they spend that word/page count on the Dungeon and other encounter locations I know the PCs will engage with, rather than town info I may or may not use. I loved the village of Hommlet, but I can pull stuff from it out and change some names whenever I want. Just my opinion.