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D&D 5E What campaign order would you suggest?

ChubBBoy

First Post
Hi all,

My regular group is just about to finish the starter set and I'm keen to get them started on one of the published campaigns.

I have all three (so far) and have asked them if they would prefer a theme of Dragons, Elementals or Demons and their answer is "ALL OF THEM"!!!

What order would you suggest these campaigns be run and why?
 

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IMO, it depends on how long you expect to take to get through them, and also how much work you're willing to put in.

I would just skip "Tyranny of Dragons" entirely. It's just not very good IMO.

"Princes of the Apocalypse" is rather better. If you're looking for something to run more or less as-is, this is the one to go for.

"Out of the Abyss", on the other hand, is a bit of a mix. The first half is absolutely outstanding - far and away the best material to-date. However, the second half isn't of the same caliber - there are lots of really good ideas here, but IMO they needed much more fleshed out. (And the climax is terrible.)

So, if you're willing to put in the work to flesh out OotA's second half, I'd go with that one. If not, go with PotA.

Either way, I'd probably pick one of these and ignore the other two entirely - by the time you're done it's likely you'll have more options, and they do seem to be improving with each attempt. So with luck storyline 4 will be better still.
 

Caveat: I have not read or played Out of the Abyss. I'm going on some hearsay, but generally like what I've heard.

It depends. Do you like Forgotten Realms? If not, go for Princes of the Apocalypse; it's the only one that can be divorced from the setting w/o a ton of work. Tyranny of Dragons is heavily tied to the Sword Coast geography. I gave up on trying to fit it into Eberron. OotA has the Underdark, which might work well in Greyhawk, but nowhere else (AFAIK) has an Underdark heavy with drow (Eberron has Khyber, but the drow are in Xendrik). The map scale for PotA is a bit wonky, but easy enough to drop anywhere and the power groups are easy to file off and replace.

As I indicated, I tried to use ToD, but gave up on it. Aside from being hard to remove from the Realms, it's fairly railroad-y. If your players like to side-trek or push back on being yoked, it's not good for your group. Having read through the module multiple times, during my attempt at converting it, it really makes me dubious of any future work from Kobold Press. A lot of folks have spoken with great respect about the staff. I just don't like the adventure -- even cutting it a lot of slack for being tied to a setting I don't like and being based on a beta version of the rules.

OotA sounds interesting enough for me to be willing to use a setting I dislike (Forgotten Realms), taking place in a sub-setting I dislike even more strongly (the Underdark), with a reasonably heavy focus on a race I despise (the drow). I'm not sure whether the adventure could possibly live up to the hype, but it sounds fun. It also sounds even more difficult to vary than ToD. The play reports, to date, have been mixed, so it probably doesn't live up to the hype. By the time my group is done with PotA, the next adventure is likely to be out, so we'll see what I do.

We're a bit more than 1/3 of the way through PotA, and it's been fun. Yes, there are some issues with the module. Yeah, it's the third dip into the Elemental Evil mega-adventure well. The map scale is really weird. There are sites on the map without entries in the text. And the organizational structure leaves something to be desired (I'd kill for an index and/or cross-reference chart of plot hooks/seeds). Everyone is having fun, though. Life is good. Also, it's easy to go from the Starter Set (Lost Mines of Phandelver) to PotA, which is a plus. It has conversion notes for other settings; these are great for getting thoughts rolling, but clearly weren't written by anyone with a deep knowledge of the settings (at least Eberron). Still a nice warm fuzzy.

Short form: I think Princes of the Apocalypse is the strongest of the bunch. It can be dropped in any setting without much work. It's fun and appears to have the best internal quality, so far.
 

OotA has the Underdark, which might work well in Greyhawk, but nowhere else (AFAIK) has an Underdark heavy with drow (Eberron has Khyber, but the drow are in Xendrik).

Yeah, probably best not to even try to move OotA. It's not so much that it can't be moved, but a lot of the attraction of that adventure is the chance to hit all the iconic locations that have been detailed in the lore over decades. Move the adventure and you lose that, and lose an awful lot of the fun of the adventure in the process.
 

If you want to go totally bugf**k gonzo, you could say that all three of them are happening at the same time. Start them with Out of the Abyss, and have them keep getting hints that things are going really, really badly on the Sword Coast (because adventurers weren't around to stop the bad guys). Once they make it to the Sword Coast (about halfway through OotA), they have to choose how to deal with three simultaneous apocalyptic threats. You wouldn't so much be "running" the adventures as "pulling cool ideas out of them as you respond to what the players do". It would be memorable if nothing else. :)
 




My group is having insane amounts of fun with Tyranny of Dragons, but from what I hear, Princes of the Apocalypse has a better junction point with Lost Mine of Phandelver. It's probably the best choice if your players want to keep the same characters.

Whenever you do run Tyranny of Dragons, I humbly recommend checking out the "enhancing" threads. They have a wealth of suggestions and links to resources for those adventures.

Enhancing "Hoard of the Dragon Queen"
Enhancing "Rise of Tiamat"
 

My group is having insane amounts of fun with Tyranny of Dragons, but from what I hear, Princes of the Apocalypse has a better junction point with Lost Mine of Phandelver. It's probably the best choice if your players want to keep the same characters.
That being said, if you wanted to run Tyranny of Dragons with the PCs from Lost Mine, you could skip the first four chapters and have the PCs go into the story in Chapter 5, since that is set in the Mere of Dead Men, which is just down the road from Phandalin - and chapter 5 is also aimed at 5th level PCs. [In fact, it's been surmised that one of the reasons for the cult caravan road trip ending up there is so that PCs from Lost Mine can join in easily at that point.]

In case you're interested, here are my thoughts on Princes vs Tyranny. I wrote that a while ago, but I'd say it still holds true. My group is having a blast with Tyranny of Dragons, and I'm not sure I'd be able to say the same thing if we'd been playing PotA instead.
 

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