Zardnaar
Legend
So when it comes to the official 5E adventures the vast majority are meh with a few stand outs. Those are Curse of Strahd, ToA, LMoP, and a few of the shorter ones in the anthologies. Ghosts of Saltmarsh is probably the best one.
However there's a much larger diversity of opinion around the others. How can one be an A tier adventure but someone else's D tier?
Mostly it's up to the individual DM I think and if you finish the adventure. On the plus side not to many of the 5E adventures are outright terrible so it's probably not to hard for an experienced DM to elevate a mediocre adventure to something fun.
For me I can do a bit with adventures such as Dragon of Icespire Peak, Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm Kings Thunder, ToA.
See this thread.
www.enworld.org
I can't do that much with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Icewind Dale, Out of the Abyss or Dungeon of the Mad Mage. They just don't interest me.
I'm never going to run an adventure 100% as written but I like minor tweaks. Changing the monsters in an encounter, adding a plot or tweaking a name. I'm not interested in major rewrites. A good hook also helps and if it's not my jam it's a big turn off eg Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
A "bad" adventure like 2014 HotDQ is still useful for mining. Princes of the Apocalypse was great for this as well. Icewind Dale not so much.
Note I got around half of mine essentially for free. I own Wild Beyond the Witchlight for example I wouldn't spend real money on getting it. Haven't bought anything new since then (not getting the books for "free") .
A bad adventure for me is crap hook, not fun to read, don't want to run it and not that useful to mine. Within reason I can make most things work to some extent.
However there's a much larger diversity of opinion around the others. How can one be an A tier adventure but someone else's D tier?
Mostly it's up to the individual DM I think and if you finish the adventure. On the plus side not to many of the 5E adventures are outright terrible so it's probably not to hard for an experienced DM to elevate a mediocre adventure to something fun.
For me I can do a bit with adventures such as Dragon of Icespire Peak, Princes of the Apocalypse, Storm Kings Thunder, ToA.
See this thread.

D&D General - Exploration How I Do It
Over the years I have been a sponge when it comes to absorbing obscure D&D nuggets of information And I often reread older material for enjoyment and looking to mine it. Helps having 400-500 D&D items and a pile of PDFs. It seems I may make heavier use of the exploration pillar than a lot of...

I can't do that much with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Icewind Dale, Out of the Abyss or Dungeon of the Mad Mage. They just don't interest me.
I'm never going to run an adventure 100% as written but I like minor tweaks. Changing the monsters in an encounter, adding a plot or tweaking a name. I'm not interested in major rewrites. A good hook also helps and if it's not my jam it's a big turn off eg Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
A "bad" adventure like 2014 HotDQ is still useful for mining. Princes of the Apocalypse was great for this as well. Icewind Dale not so much.
Note I got around half of mine essentially for free. I own Wild Beyond the Witchlight for example I wouldn't spend real money on getting it. Haven't bought anything new since then (not getting the books for "free") .
A bad adventure for me is crap hook, not fun to read, don't want to run it and not that useful to mine. Within reason I can make most things work to some extent.