D&D 5E Why is Hoard of the Dragon Queen such a bad adventure?

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Yeah, the party should have started in town, and I should have figured that out from reading the module. But in my game for example the first encounter they hit was like 6-7 kobalds, and it was nearly a TPK. They rolled bad and had no idea about the kobald pack tactics, which was cool. So we get a PC death and the rest pretty beat up. So suppose since they are on the edge of town they pull out and hide while they recuperate and they then miss all the encounters in E1 and go back into town to see what is up after the huge dragon and army leave? So now they start episode 2 but are still L1 characters. Really now to keep them on the expected power curve I need to give them a free level. "hey we level for being wailed on in one fight in this edition, we will be L20 by the end of the week!"

What I did was just keep having them find caches of healing potions which was majorly lame and made me feel dirty to be honest. I may as well just fudge every attack roll against them. By the time they got to the keep they were all pretty messed up and had spent their HD on the short rest in an already ransacked house...that had a bunch of healing potions that were somehow missed by the ransackers. So once they got into the keep and were asked to go out into town they were like "are you f'ing crazy?" So I had to give them more healing potions, then more for the next mission, etc, so they would earn enough XP to level for E2. Then when they skipped most of the infiltration stuff from E2 they were behind and E3 was a slaughter. It says its not vital that they are L3 for that episode but I disagree.

This should have been through more editing and a stand alone adventure put in as the intro module. Let players go at their own pace without a beat the clock to save the world type deal. But WotC wants to get the Paizo AP stuff going.

 

[Cybit]

You might be misunderstanding my point.

If the Paladin no longer has his Whizbang power, how does that change the module in any way?

If Kobolds suddenly have pack tactics instead of having multiple spear throws, how does that change the module in any way?

Yes, if all monsters are slightly stronger after playtesting determines that they are all wimps and Greenest is filled with wimpy monsters to begin with, yes the designers have to go off and lower each encounter by a monster or yank some encounters in Greenest or add some more healing potions. Some adjustments would have to be made. We all understand that.


But, D&D has been around for 40 years. Experienced DMs know the difference between good module design and bad, even if there are some disagreements with DMs as to whether this module is bad or not. It's like a Marvel movie on Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone is expecting at least an 85%. HotDQ is getting a 50% (or whatever) on Rotten Tomatoes where a significant percentage like it and a significant percentage do not.

HotDQ is like the first Marvel movie and everyone was expecting this wonderful flagship of an adventure and it fell on its face quite a bit. Perception type abilities and stealth like abilities have been around for decades. If they changed a little bit from playtest, it shouldn't suddenly make the adventure go from good to bad.

What made the adventure bad was stuff that was built in. Like going to a town when a dragon is attacking it. Super heroic self sacrificing PCs might do that, but many PCs have different motivations and that's like asking them to jump off a cliff without a parachute.

Although there are people who disagree with me, the Half Dragon encounter is a terrible encounter and the very definition of railroady. Yes, three things can happen: a local can die, a PC can take a dirt nap (unless the DM doesn't really pull the trigger), or all of the PCs can fight and some or all of them can take a dirt nap (again,unless the DM doesn't really pull the trigger), but all of those choices suck and I don't play the game to be given sucky choices. I don't play the game for the game designers to teach me lessons. I play the game to have fun. It's a game.

For this to be the flagship adventure, it should definitely been much better designed and sorry, but the things that I do not like about the module have nothing to do with game mechanics. To me, that an excuse.

Ahh. On that front, I can see your reasoning. I do wonder if the idea of the three pillars was being modified during playtest - because the earlier versions of the module are different on even thematic and basic levels. The "fight" with the dragon, for instance, is pretty different from the first copy we received versus the later copies, at least in terms of execution. Some episodes that were more grind-y end up being changed to being more freeform, etc.

So, on that second to last paragraph, there's an interesting comment that I think is worth delving into. "I don't play the game for the game designers to teach me lessons, I play the game to have fun." I think HotDQ's problem might also be tied to trying to be an intro adventure for new players who've never played D&D as well as veteran gamers. My playtest group had a couple of die-hards, a couple of moderate players, and a couple of flat-out newbies who I sweet-talked into playing. Those "lessons" that we know from playing RPGs for a while aren't things new players know - and if you're dealing with people who play lots of other games, especially video games, the idea of unwinnable fights is something that is much more prevalent in TTRPG than other games. One of my newbie players was the one who "fought" the half-dragon; and it worked really well for him. He didn't (and most of the party didn't) think that the module would throw a "safe" unwinnable fight so early on. After that, they became far more cautious about engagement. This actually led to episode 7 being far more fun, as they were far more aware of using non-combat solutions to get their way into the castle (I think it's episode 7 that is the castle).

Now for a group of experienced gamers who know all the tropes and are inherently looking at it from a meta-aspect even if not meta-gaming; that kind of "lesson" is annoying as heck.

I would tell folks to check out Rise of Tiamat if you want a better idea of what KP can do; as well as the latter two episodes of HotDQ. Definitely had a blast doing those.

 

[Sailor Moon]

The problem with APs like these and the reason they are so "railroady", is the fact that no matter what you do during the module, the ending is the same result.

All this is , is an introduction into Tiamat making a big entrance that you can't stop.

A friend of mine gave me his copy and I sat down and read it. It's very poorly put together and it feels like you are playing someone else's part.

 

[KarinsDad]

Yeah, the party should have started in town, and I should have figured that out from reading the module. But in my game for example the first encounter they hit was like 6-7 kobalds, and it was nearly a TPK. They rolled bad and had no idea about the kobald pack tactics, which was cool. So we get a PC death and the rest pretty beat up. So suppose since they are on the edge of town they pull out and hide while they recuperate and they then miss all the encounters in E1 and go back into town to see what is up after the huge dragon and army leave? So now they start episode 2 but are still L1 characters. Really now to keep them on the expected power curve I need to give them a free level. "hey we level for being wailed on in one fight in this edition, we will be L20 by the end of the week!"

What I did was just keep having them find caches of healing potions which was majorly lame and made me feel dirty to be honest. I may as well just fudge every attack roll against them. By the time they got to the keep they were all pretty messed up and had spent their HD on the short rest in an already ransacked house...that had a bunch of healing potions that were somehow missed by the ransackers. So once they got into the keep and were asked to go out into town they were like "are you f'ing crazy?" So I had to give them more healing potions, then more for the next mission, etc, so they would earn enough XP to level for E2. Then when they skipped most of the infiltration stuff from E2 they were behind and E3 was a slaughter. It says its not vital that they are L3 for that episode but I disagree.

There are two issues here.

1) The module expects PCs of certain levels at certain points. Therefore, as DM, you need to make that happen with external encounters / mini-adventures and get off the railroad tracks a bit. Our DM didn't like part of the adventure, so our group has gone off and done quite a bit of other stuff, just to get us to where she thinks we need to be for the next section of the module.

2) The module expects PCs to level after each Section (Chapter, whatever they call them). This is all fine and well, but part of good tactics in gaming is knowing your PCs. There seems to be a bit of a rush to level up in this module that doesn't jive with the leveling guidelines in the DMG. This means that with some groups, players will not be as well versed in their PC's abilities as they should be and they might make tactical errors that make encounters more difficult or alternatively, use up resources and not be prepared to latter encounters as much. It's not just knowing your own PC's abilities, but also knowing what works for a given group based on the PCs. Experienced players will probably not have a big issue with this, but newbies or less experienced players might. It does seem as if the 55 or so encounters of PCs that normally gets one to level 8 by the end of this module is being compressed down into fewer encounters. Greenest had quite a few encounters, but after that, they seemed to have dried up a bit.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

The problem with APs like these and the reason they are so "railroady", is the fact that no matter what you do during the module, the ending is the same result.

All this is , is an introduction into Tiamat making a big entrance that you can't stop.

A friend of mine gave me his copy and I sat down and read it. It's very poorly put together and it feels like you are playing someone else's part.

Which is what some want and that's cool. Some gamers want to feel like they are part of one of those FR novels with some world shaking events even if they have little choice or impact on a lot of situations crucial to the story. I just think that is a poor style for the intro adventure but then again it seems that is the style of play that WotC is going to push.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

There are two issues here.

1) The module expects PCs of certain levels at certain points. Therefore, as DM, you need to make that happen with external encounters / mini-adventures and get off the railroad tracks a bit. Our DM didn't like part of the adventure, so our group has gone off and done quite a bit of other stuff, just to get us to where she thinks we need to be for the next section of the module.

2) The module expects PCs to level after each Section (Chapter, whatever they call them). This is all fine and well, but part of good tactics in gaming is knowing your PCs. There seems to be a bit of a rush to level up in this module that doesn't jive with the leveling guidelines in the DMG. This means that with some groups, players will not be as well versed in their PC's abilities as they should be and they might make tactical errors that make encounters more difficult or alternatively, use up resources and not be prepared to latter encounters as much. It's not just knowing your own PC's abilities, but also knowing what works for a given group based on the PCs. Experienced players will probably not have a big issue with this, but newbies or less experienced players might. It does seem as if the 55 or so encounters of PCs that normally gets one to level 8 by the end of this module is being compressed down into fewer encounters. Greenest had quite a few encounters, but after that, they seemed to have dried up a bit.

True, but I run published stuff to avoid too much rework, especially right now in my life. Despite it all we are still having some fun at the table. Tonight may be the finale of this campaign though, looking like a TPK. Then again I've told them this is just a test the system game.

 

[KarinsDad]

I would tell folks to check out Rise of Tiamat if you want a better idea of what KP can do; as well as the latter two episodes of HotDQ. Definitely had a blast doing those.

I'm kind of glad to hear that. My daughter is our DM and she is heading off to college in the fall, so I will be taking over as DM. Current estimates put that around level 8, so I will probably be running Rise of Tiamat for the group (assuming that it gets better overall reviews than HotDQ did).

 

[KarinsDad]

True, but I run published stuff to avoid too much rework

No doubt. I haven't created a full blown campaign from scratch in at least a decade. It just takes up too much time which I would rather be spending with family and friends. All of my recent campaigns have been cobbling together a series of published material with some minor tweaks to make it all (at least on the surface) appear to flow. I too expect published material to just work. I'm paying good money for what I expect to be quality product. Even so, when your group avoids 8 encounters or so, you as DM have to go do something about it. Yes, the published material gave your players an out that they took, but you as DM have to react to that. Keeping your group on the same train tracks with them being too low of level does not seem like a good way to handle it.

 

[Sailor Moon]

Which is what some want and that's cool. Some gamers want to feel like they are part of one of those FR novels with some world shaking events even if they have little choice or impact on a lot of situations crucial to the story. I just think that is a poor style for the intro adventure but then again it seems that is the style of play that WotC is going to push.

I would argue that the player base is not that large to be honest.

The problem too many RSE's is you end up with a very unstable world and Forgotten Realms has had too many of these events to the point where a lot of gamers are looking to the old stuff which doesn't put much money into the pockets of WoTc. They are still under some illusion there is a vast population of new Realms fans that are dying for a new Realms and that just isn't true. They say they are bringing the old feeling of the a Realms back and yet we get RSE after RSE in the early stages of the game. They continue to push the old 4th edition philosophy of "we're all heroes" style of play and that's not what a lot of people want.

Good APs are ones that have little to no impact on the world at large no matter the outcome.

 

[Cybit]

No doubt. I haven't created a full blown campaign from scratch in at least a decade. It just takes up too much time which I would rather be spending with family and friends. All of my recent campaigns have been cobbling together a series of published material with some minor tweaks to make it all (at least on the surface) appear to flow. I too expect published material to just work. I'm paying good money for what I expect to be quality product. Even so, when your group avoids 8 encounters or so, you as DM have to go do something about it. Yes, the published material gave your players an out that they took, but you as DM have to react to that. Keeping your group on the same train tracks with them being too low of level does not seem like a good way to handle it.

Also, avoiding encounters by bypassing them is a solution - and XP is intended to be given as a solution. If, instead of fighting the castle, the players come up with a way to sink the castle into the swamp - then I'd give XP equivalent.

FWIW, the leveling guideline we were told is 1-2 sessions for each level between 1 and 3, and then slowing down more once you get past 3.