D&D 5E Which campaign to run?

[Blaarfengar]

I'm DMing a new campaign and don't have time for homebrew. I've got access to the Tiamat books and the Princes of the Apocalypse book. I can't run the new Abyss campaign because some of my players are already using it in another group.

This group will have two brand new DnD players and three veterans.

To those who've run any of the campaigns for 5e so far, which one would you say was the most fun?

Thanks, in advance!

 

[pukunui]

My group is having a blast with the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. It's heavy on plot - and you'll no doubt get a bunch of posters decrying it as awful and railroaded and such, but I reckon it's merely misunderstood - but quite epic in scope. There's also a lot of variety in terms of locations and monsters and the like.

Princes of the Apocalypse, on the other hand, is quite light on plot and heavy on repetition. There are four different cults involved in the campaign, but they're all fairly similar - as are their dungeons - and you end up doing the same thing four times (tackling a cult's surface lair, taking on their dungeon temple level, and then potentially going into their elemental node). And while the adventure sells itself as something of a sandbox, each section of cult dungeon is optimized for a particular level range. The PCs can easily get in over their heads quickly if they're not careful.

 

[ad_hoc]

My group is having a blast with the Tyranny of Dragons campaign. It's heavy on plot - and you'll no doubt get a bunch of posters decrying it as awful and railroaded and such, but I reckon it's merely misunderstood - but quite epic in scope. There's also a lot of variety in terms of locations and monsters and the like.

I had a great time with Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Encountering multiple factions of enemies and finding ways to turn them against each other is a recurring theme.

It focuses a lot on the social pillar as well as the exploration pillar.

The adventure is likely very hard if the players just want to kill everything in sight. Characters need to be sneaky and bargain with their enemies, find out their motivations and utilize them to prevail. That can be frustrating to the players who just want to smite the evil doers and be the hero and rewarding to others.

 

[Blaarfengar]

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like Tiamat is the better choice. Dungeon crawls bore me and while my group does have a tendency to kick down doors, some opportunity for alternatives sounds like a good fun element to have.

 

[Wik]

Well, that was easy.

Honestly, I found Tiamat railroady, but without doing what Paizo adventure paths do - namely, providing the full package. For Tiamat to work, you need to add treasure to it. And tweak plot hooks. And so on. Honestly, though, if you're going to do that... why not go for a less railroady game?

It IS a pretty epic storyline, though. I'll give it that.

PotA runs a bit more sandboxy, which is true. It has some nice moments to it, but I think for it to really shine it needs a lot of GM changes and the like.

 

[Rabbitbait]

I can't talk about HoTDQ as I haven't played it or DMed it. I read it, but it just didn't inspire me so I passed it on.

However I'm having a blast DMing PoTA. The poster above is correct in that you need to make it your own to really make it work, and accept that the players may (very easily) get in over their heads. But that's fun. There's nothing like a party realising that they are in over their heads and fleeing, losing party members along the way, to set a good level of tension for the rest of the campaign.

Here's my adventure log if you want to see how its gone for us. PoTA starts on 24 May, we were playing Dragonspear Castle before that. https://deathgrind.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log

I go quite a lot off script at some points, and we do it in a totally different order than seems to be expected, but the beauty of this module is you can go a long way off script without wrecking it.

 

[pukunui]

Thanks for the feedback! Sounds like Tiamat is the better choice. Dungeon crawls bore me and while my group does have a tendency to kick down doors, some opportunity for alternatives sounds like a good fun element to have.

There are a few dungeons in Tyranny of Dragons, but they're all pretty small, whereas Princes of the Apocalypse revolves around one pretty massive dungeon.

Here's my thread on the changes/additions I've been making: My Tyranny of Dragons.

Honestly, I found Tiamat railroady, but without doing what Paizo adventure paths do - namely, providing the full package. For Tiamat to work, you need to add treasure to it. And tweak plot hooks. And so on. Honestly, though, if you're going to do that... why not go for a less railroady game?

Tyranny of Dragons is only railroady if the players don't buy into the story. Or if the DM refuses to take into account anything the PCs do. The first adventure is pretty linear, yes, but again - if the players know that going in, then there shouldn't be any issues.

PotA runs a bit more sandboxy, which is true. It has some nice moments to it, but I think for it to really shine it needs a lot of GM changes and the like.

So far, it's looking like all the big 5e campaigns need a lot of work by the DM. Only Lost Mine of Phandelver can be run with very little prep.

 

[delericho]

There was another thread on a similar topic very recently, so I'll just repost what I said there. I appreciate that it doesn't marry up exactly with the OP's question, since he's already eliminated "Rage of Demons", but:

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.

 

[Cody C. Lewis]

I have not ran or played Elemental Evil. I played in a very experienced group running Hoard with the intention of playing through the entire ToD line.

We got a little over halfway through Hoard, and honestly, we we're a little bored by it. It's not even that it was too linear. It's, I don't know, not really gripping. In our opinion it was like... ok we get it. Kobolds and stuff ransacking several places and no significant force is doing anything at the moment. We just thought everything we(characters) learned was stuff that we(players) could have guessed was coming next. The story felt like it was trying too hard to be epic.

*****The above is only an opinion and not meant to be taken as fact.

 

[Creamsteak]

I have not played or read Tiamat's, but what I've gathered from this topic when it has cropped up many times before is that it is a product that is meant to be applicable for people just coming into the game and edition that don't necessarily know what they want to do. It's more story focused, and it pulls you through the steps of the adventure in a way some people consider a railroad, and that can be a good thing for many groups and many environments.

Princes of the Apocalypse on the other hand barely strings together a story. It's more like a sandbox adventure with a bunch of site-based encounters and something like a three-act structure. It's a better book if what you are looking for is more of a tool kit to let players figure out their own motivations and adventures. It also gets really heavy on the dungeon crawls in the later chapters which is good for some and bad for others. I can see a lot of groups that find Act I (exploration and mystery) really interesting getting bored by the time they hit Act III (hey look, four more themed dungeons after the ~4 to ~9 before it).

At the end of the day, I think the question can be answered with either option, but you first need to evaluate what you and your group want out of the game. They are two completely different ways to structure a campaign. It is also possible that for some people both will work, for some neither will work.