My fiancee and I have been talking a lot about D&D and campaign design during our quarantine. Her intro to a longterm campaign was 5E's "Curse of Strahd," and while I've been gaming since the 1980s (and played/DMed many iterations of Ravenloft), I've only recently started running "CoS."
So I am collecting my thoughts about why this particular adventure is regularly voted the best of 5e so far, with my theories coming from a place of what DMs can learn from the structure. There will be some spoilers below for "CoS" and other 5e adventures.
1) The plot centers around a great villain.
Strahd has a storied past of decades in D&D, but bigger than that, his literary/pop culture equivalent of Dracula is instantly recognizable. Even for people who don't know D&D lore, you don't really have to explain what a vampire is. In the adventure he has personal stakes and motives. He is connected to the adventurers and singles them out as a threat to his goals. He appears relatively early and lets the party know what the stakes are.
I'm going to contrast him a bit with Acererack from "Tomb of Annihilation" (which I also think is a pretty good adventure, probably the 2nd best of 5e). First off, Acererack is a lich, an evil undead wizard. This is a bit of a stretch for people outside of D&D, but it can be explained pretty easily. He has a storied history of decades in D&D, but he has no personal connection with the characters. He does not make an appearance until the last chapter of the adventure. He does not even have a cult that harasses the group. His name is not mentioned. In fact, the groups I have run through "ToA" are more likely to think that Ras Nsi and the yuan-ti are the main villains. (And honestly, a better story could've been written around them.)
Halaster from "Dungeon of the Mad Mage" is a passive villain, just waiting for the group to go through his fun house. Whoever the villain from "Storm King's Thunder" (I ran it and don't even remember what it was - a shapeshifting dragon that has zero connection to the group?) is even worse.
2) The stakes are clear.
"You want to get out of Barovia? You've got to defeat Strahd."
Compare this to the imprisonment that occurs at the beginning of "Out of the Abyss." Both feature groups coming together imprisoned and banding together against common enemies. However, once the party escapes the drow who imprisoned them in "OotA," there is little motivation to continue facing them. Hell, they aren't even the main antagonists of the campaign. I've run this campaign for several groups. Not a single group has stayed with the adventure after escaping the Underdark. Putting the main plot's resolution at the midpoint of the adventure nearly guarantees no one is going to play the next half.
"SKT" you're putting out fires of giant raids. But what you're doing isn't even connected to the plot of the Ordning conspiracy until the last third of the adventure.
3) The setting is contained, detailed, and thematic.
Most 5e adventures I can think of span hundreds of miles of unconnected wilderness sites, most of which have little or nothing to do with the actual plotline. In Curse of Strahd, every location can contain allies or quest items to defeat the villain or groups connected to the evil of Strahd. This is not the case in "Princes of the Apocalypse," for example, which details numerous adventure sites with nothing to do with the Elemental Cults. The scopes are too big, the presentation watered down, the theme off track, and thus filled with unmemorable adventures so divorced from the main story they can't even be called side quests.
In "Hoard of the Dragon Queen," you travel hundreds of miles in a literal railroad of a site-seeing montage of Faerun, with no connection to the plot.
The setting of Barovia, by contrast, can be crossed by foot in less than 2 days. This space facilitates connection between sites. People in different towns can have relationships. A villain operating in one town can have a base of operation a half day away, which can be explored and defeated. It's all connected. And if this is unrealistic to the DM, you can easily break that connection (which is easier to do than to try to seed connections in a game sessions in advance).
The point of all this is for me to see what works in adventure design. What do you think? Did I miss the mark? All DMs are adventure designers at some time, even if we're running published adventures.
So I am collecting my thoughts about why this particular adventure is regularly voted the best of 5e so far, with my theories coming from a place of what DMs can learn from the structure. There will be some spoilers below for "CoS" and other 5e adventures.
1) The plot centers around a great villain.
Strahd has a storied past of decades in D&D, but bigger than that, his literary/pop culture equivalent of Dracula is instantly recognizable. Even for people who don't know D&D lore, you don't really have to explain what a vampire is. In the adventure he has personal stakes and motives. He is connected to the adventurers and singles them out as a threat to his goals. He appears relatively early and lets the party know what the stakes are.
I'm going to contrast him a bit with Acererack from "Tomb of Annihilation" (which I also think is a pretty good adventure, probably the 2nd best of 5e). First off, Acererack is a lich, an evil undead wizard. This is a bit of a stretch for people outside of D&D, but it can be explained pretty easily. He has a storied history of decades in D&D, but he has no personal connection with the characters. He does not make an appearance until the last chapter of the adventure. He does not even have a cult that harasses the group. His name is not mentioned. In fact, the groups I have run through "ToA" are more likely to think that Ras Nsi and the yuan-ti are the main villains. (And honestly, a better story could've been written around them.)
Halaster from "Dungeon of the Mad Mage" is a passive villain, just waiting for the group to go through his fun house. Whoever the villain from "Storm King's Thunder" (I ran it and don't even remember what it was - a shapeshifting dragon that has zero connection to the group?) is even worse.
2) The stakes are clear.
"You want to get out of Barovia? You've got to defeat Strahd."
Compare this to the imprisonment that occurs at the beginning of "Out of the Abyss." Both feature groups coming together imprisoned and banding together against common enemies. However, once the party escapes the drow who imprisoned them in "OotA," there is little motivation to continue facing them. Hell, they aren't even the main antagonists of the campaign. I've run this campaign for several groups. Not a single group has stayed with the adventure after escaping the Underdark. Putting the main plot's resolution at the midpoint of the adventure nearly guarantees no one is going to play the next half.
"SKT" you're putting out fires of giant raids. But what you're doing isn't even connected to the plot of the Ordning conspiracy until the last third of the adventure.
3) The setting is contained, detailed, and thematic.
Most 5e adventures I can think of span hundreds of miles of unconnected wilderness sites, most of which have little or nothing to do with the actual plotline. In Curse of Strahd, every location can contain allies or quest items to defeat the villain or groups connected to the evil of Strahd. This is not the case in "Princes of the Apocalypse," for example, which details numerous adventure sites with nothing to do with the Elemental Cults. The scopes are too big, the presentation watered down, the theme off track, and thus filled with unmemorable adventures so divorced from the main story they can't even be called side quests.
In "Hoard of the Dragon Queen," you travel hundreds of miles in a literal railroad of a site-seeing montage of Faerun, with no connection to the plot.
The setting of Barovia, by contrast, can be crossed by foot in less than 2 days. This space facilitates connection between sites. People in different towns can have relationships. A villain operating in one town can have a base of operation a half day away, which can be explored and defeated. It's all connected. And if this is unrealistic to the DM, you can easily break that connection (which is easier to do than to try to seed connections in a game sessions in advance).
The point of all this is for me to see what works in adventure design. What do you think? Did I miss the mark? All DMs are adventure designers at some time, even if we're running published adventures.
