D&D General Your thoughts on Dragons of Stormwreck Isle

[MerricB]

I recently mentioned how much reading Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (the adventure in the new D&D starter) bored me. I would get as far as the description of the settlement, and find my mind drifting off to things that were more entertaining. This is a big, big difference to my experiences with Lost Mine of Phandelver, which hooked me very early on. And, indeed, most of the Wizards adventures.

Now, this is a personal take, and it's not like all adventures appeal to everyone, but I was wondering what your own thoughts were on the adventure.

There's also the fact that some adventures run a lot better than they read (and some read well and play horribly), so play experience is a different matter to reading experience. And being a player with a good DM leads to a different experience than being a player with a bad DM... or what a DM sees and has to work around.

But when an adventure doesn't inspire me to run it, that's a problem. I'm not going to discover if it's good. (See linked post above).

Back to the actual topic: What do you think of the adventure? Is its theme a good one for the Starter Set? Are you answering as a player or a DM?

Cheers,
Merric

 

[aco175]

I just finished running the box set and are running a few follow-on adventures right now. I find that it is a better intro adventure and not geared to seasoned players and DMs. I ended up modifying a lot of it and expanding several areas to make it better for my group.

I started with the village and made several buildings and NPCs other than the kobolds and had the village not seen any ships for several months since the ships were crashing due to the 'curse'. The start of the campaign had the PCs shipwreck and wash ashore on the island fighting the zombies. The Seagrow Caves chapter flowed a bit different than normal and I added some areas to leave open future exploration into the underground of the island. Compass Rose chapter was about the same but the PCs had some extra firepower from magic items I introduced.

The PCs were 4th level when they met the final chapter and I changed around the whole encounter with some advice from online videos about just having the cool encounter and not have the first one with the dragon sleeping. My group would have had a n even easier time if it was sleeping than they did with it more powerful than in the book.

Overall it is a fine box set. I liked the other two better with Phandalin as the backdrop. Perhasps this is why I modified it so much.

 

[Zardnaar]

3/5 to read just an adventure.

Essentials and starter set were better Imho.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It depends what you like - I think Lost Mines is as dull as ditchwater. But Even the dullest adventure is fun with good players.

 

[MerricB]

It's fascinating the reaction to this adventure - which, for a lot of people is - "I didn't know it existed!"

The Lost Mine of Phandelver was so dominant for so long - and it is also one of the best adventures designed - so certainly Dragons of Stormwreck Isle will pale in comparison. But, if you have both, which are you likely to choose to introduce new players to the game?

And, at this stage, do you even have new players to introduce? For most of us here, I presume we're pretty settled and got our longterm groups.

The poll I set up on twitter is interesting:

Cheers,
Merric