Ranking WOTC's D&D Published Campaign Adventures
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 มิ.ย. 2024
- Mike discusses and ranks nearly all the hardcover WOTC-published D&D adventures. Click "Show More" for useful links.
Video Contents
00:00 Beginning
03:52 Lost Mine of Phandelver
06:17 Dragon of Icespire Peak
08:47 Curse of Strahd
12:10 Ghosts of Saltmarsh
16:05 Tomb of Annihilation
22:23 Storm King's Thunder
26:15 Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat)
29:52 Waterdeep Dragon Heist
33:32 Out of the Abyss
36:07 Rime of the Frostmaiden
42:01 Princes of the Apocalypse
44:13 I've enjoyed ALL of these adventures
45:25 Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
48:04 Even rough adventures can be great fun
My Updated Ranked List:
D&D Starter Set: Lost Mine of Phandelver
D&D Essentials Kit: Dragon of Icespire Peak
Curse of Strahd
Ghosts of Saltmarsh
Tomb of Annihilation
Storm King's Thunder
Tyranny of Dragons: Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat
Princes of the Apocalypse
Waterdeep Dragon Heist
Out of the Abyss
Rime of the Frostmaiden
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
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Guide to Published D&D Adventures:
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Amazon Associate Links for these adventures...
D&D Starter Set: Lost Mine of Phandelver
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D&D Essentials Kit: Dragon of Icespire Peak
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Curse of Strahd
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Ghosts of Saltmarsh
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Tomb of Annihilation
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Storm King's Thunder
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Tyranny of Dragons
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Waterdeep Dragon Heist
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Out of the Abyss
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Rime of the Frostmaiden
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Princes of the Apocalypse
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Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus
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Fall of Elturel
www.dmsguild.com/product/2946... - บันเทิง
Really looking forward to running LMoP after Frostmaiden! Excellent overview of these books, Mike
Thank you, Bob!
LMoP was my first adventure as a DM and was easy to play and DM, and Tressendar manor can be even the new base of the group.
I like how the ranking gradually turned into: just let me be lazy and run the adventure RAW. Great content!
"How easy is it to run a satisfying campaign using this book" is an extremely useful metric.
I think Wizards has made a good-faith effort to have every campaign book do something unique and different. As you said, "Princes of Apocalypse" doesn't present its content very well, but it does some wonderful things that none of the later adventures try to replicate. I love that the villains stay active in the background; they're not sitting around and brooding on their thrones.
It appears the Essentials Kit (the hard copy box kit) NO LONGER has the coupons for the 3 free adventures. You CAN still get the 3 adventures but only if you buy the Essentials Kit on D&D Beyond, you can still get those 3 free follow up adventures, but obviously you don't get dice books etc. Still a decent bargain, of course.
Thanks for the videos. You are one of my favorites.
About Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. My party actually had the most fun during Chapters 2 and 4. Chapter 2 took a about a session and a half until we got the groove of the sandboxing, but once we did they have a great time with the city. Chapter 4, the chase, I felt worked very well. The sense of urgency was added a lot to that section and the players were dashing and having a blast. Different parties have different experiences I guess.
I love how you mentioned running Lost Mine / Icespire Peak as one single adventure because that is exactly what I did as a first time DM and it worked out amazingly well. I continued it with Rise of the Ice Dragons from Midnight Tower and that worked perfectly as well. The boxed sets are a must buy for new players looking to DM.
Been running Princes of the Apocalypse for four years now and my players won’t give it up. Squeezing every inch and storyarch and hook and extra adventure out of it, as well as I’ve decided that the party has to defeat all four princes. After almost five years of playing, it is important which adventure we choose next. We’re in our fourties and we’ve only got so many 5 x year blocks left in us. So this material will help me / us pick the next to play. Thx Sly. Love your channel.
No arguments here...Lost Mine of Phandelver, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Curse of Strahd / TOA are my top tier of the WoTC's official adventures.
I like the adventures in Ghosts of Saltmarsh, but was really disappointed with the maps and the editing. It didn't seem like much care was given.
"and you're like, 'that's a table of contents, not a flowchart'" I guffawed
As a newish DM,
I bought these books to train myself about the different terrain options.
If you think about it, I feel like the WotC leadership probably was like, give me a book about:
Dragons
Jungles
City
Ice
Hell
Fairies and Fey
I always try to look for books that will have new rules on that and give me some guidance on how to run in those new environments.
As I run Frostmaiden, my 1st Module, Im glad to know the others should require less work. I am HERE after all. Thanks!
They should. They often don't.
Thank you for ranking these. I agree with nearly everything (although I might have a couple additional nitpicks for each one of them). I’d love to see a follow-up video where you rank the 5th Edition sourcebooks *outside* of the PHB, DMG, and MM. You’ve used each one so much that you insights would be invaluable to both experienced and new DMs alike.
I disagree with your rankings, though I get different groups have different play styles and different tastes.
Rime of the Frostmaiden is my favorite adventure of the official stuff. Then Waterdeep and then out of the abyss.
Good to hear different people's thoughts, so I appreciate the long video.
- The Innkeeper
Thanks Sly, I've found the BG:DIA really is fundamentally broken, but your thoughts online have helped me turn it from a trainwreck into a wonderfully fun and complicated story. Thanks for your help mate!
My main frustration is that it feels like every chance for glory the players have is instead replaced by watching an NPC have all the fun in a cutscene. Having Lulu and Reya alongside the whole time just complicates play so much as well.
The whole "why do we care" thing is tough on this one. My fiance ran this for us, and he leaned into Lulu so much more. Lulu actually became the pet of our ranger beast master (doing that crazy trumpet thing and more), and she basically was telling us what was going on as she remembered more. Idk if that helps, but I really enjoyed Lulu as a guide into hell!
My 1st game in 5E was running a mash up of Ghosts of Dragonspear and Scourge of the Sword Coast from the Next material, then leading to Curse of Strahd. I am currently running one group through this with a twist where Ireena is Strahd. My second group started with Lost Mine then got deposited into the Plane of Water and running Isle of Dread reinvented with a mash up of the Savage Tide adventure Path.
Hey sir, I just want to tell you how much your videos have changed my DMing. I just finished running Saltmarsh last week, and it was the best campaign I've run so far. We had an epic time, and I homebrewed some mini adventures while skipping around doing some of them myself, while taking a lot of your advice. Watching your DM prep + Notion + running list of clues/secrets has been an absolute game changer. Thank you so much, you're the best!
Wish me luck on my homebrew Eberron campaign in the next month!
Thank you! I'm so glad you dig my work!
Hey, I have a question. So I could just connect all the Saltmarsh adventures to a full campaign right ( with not much effort) right ? And another question. It would be my first time to be a DM. Is Saltmarsh beginner friendly for first time DMs or is it hard to pilot for the first time ?
You can absolutely connect the Saltmarsh adventures into a campaign. The book gives you ideas of what you can use as the main villain. As for a first timer, it's hard to say. Saltmarsh was my third campaign, but I felt the most empowered while running it. I think you should go for it, it's the only way to improve and know!
When I ran TOA, I added a starting quest where the PC's acted as a guide for an archaeologist who had been to Chult 20 years earlier. He had a couple of artifacts from his earlier adventures in Chult that he showed the PC's. I had him send the PC's off at one point, they discovered some death cultists conducting a ritual to discover the source of the death curse. As they returned they saw a large red dragon take out the archaeologist. Riding the dragon was a slim figure that was stealing one of the items, a crystal skull. By the time they got back to camp the archaeologist was dead the crystal skull was missing, there was just a magical Ykwala. Shortly after an emissary arrived to collect the archaeologist because Syndra Silvane wanted him, the emissary instead asked them to come see Syndra Silvane. They had a diary from the Achaeologist to aid them in their travels in Chult, some clues about locations as well as flora and fauna notes. I excluded all the side plot NPC's except a few of the guides.
I totally agree with the RotFM analysis. I had to do quite a lot of work to make this module run in a streamlined and fun manner while keeping with the themes. I skipped the dragon and deurgrar in my run of it as they did not come up naturally. My party bested Auriel on the island so that was less of an issue. I finished the other chapters with Ythryn by making the Arcane Brotherhood the new enemy who attempted to use Netherese artefacts for their nefarious objectives. We enjoyed it and had fun with the module but it required more work to run then I expected.
I turned LMOP into a cosmic horror themed with corruption spreading across the land and the Black Spider as a Drow warlock opening a portal for an elder god in the Wave Echo Cave.
If you don't like the barebones aspect of Put of the Abyss, try Rise of the Drow instead. I bought both and gave away Out of the Abyss because Rise of the Drow was orders of magnitude better.
I've been waiting for something like this forever. You are one of the great ones. Thank you!
Thank you!
Mike, great commentary, always love the perspective, and really enjoy RotLDM & Fantastic Adventures. I'd put SKT a little higher, but I love the open games, letting players fall in love with a location, and then smashing it with a giant.
Thanks for another great video. I’ve had this on my “watch later“ list for a long time and finally just got back around to watching it. I’ve often wondered what some of the bigger adventures would like. After DM and now for about two years I am definitely not interested in having to reinvent the wheel on a big adventure. I’d rather just do a homebrew from the start. I like the idea that you can strip out the parts of one adventure and stick them in another so I will be referring back to this video for those modules.
Glad to have some kind of confirmation on the fact that Frostmaiden really doesn't give you much as a DM. I feel damn near exhausted with how much extra work I've been having to put into this map between somehow trying to fit together a bunch of vague puzzle piece plot hooks and making maps for somewhat important places where characters might spend a lot of time. I might as well have just gone with a homebrew campaign lol
Lost Mines is really good. What a great start for 5e! Immediately followed by a sequence of 3rd party contracted stuff (Tiamat, Princes, Abyss) that just wasn't the same quality. Although Abyss has its moments.
Blingdenstone, sailing the Darklake, the prison escape, and the Kuo Toa sacrifice are incredible setpieces and adventure locations. But I basically had to build adventures around each of these areas and provide connective tissue because the book doesn’t do a good job providing actionable adventure content or situations. The amount of important information that appears in one sidebar, or on one page in a wholly different chapter, was way too high.
I have soft spot for Out of Abyss , despite it's many flaws .Man your notes on it really help me run it.
I remember it fondly too but I never did run the second half.
Loved the breakdown! This is why I am still a huge fan of the original adventures from AD&D. I have run those and just used 5e rules. They are laid out better and work for my table. I really liked LMoP! Fixing to run DotMM but going to use the original maps found in Ruins of the Undermountain which is also laid out better. Keep making the videos. One last comment, I do not mind the extra work, that is what always drew me into wanting to be a DM.
The essentials kit also gets you the 3 higher tier adventures for free on beyond, which, with the starter kit gets you a tier 1-3 campaign that is written well to boot
Yep! It’s a fantastic deal
As a returning DM from 2e to 5e, running games for new players, this is so helpful. I want to stick to the good stuff until I get more comfortable with DMing again.
Glad you dig it!
Awesome video! Informative, inspiring and full of insightful suggestions. Just what I have come to associate with Sly Flourish. Gets me excited (and hopeful) about running all these campaigns. The suggested fixes are so simple and literally beg me to try them.
Thanks for helping us DMs to get our money's worth from the hardback adventures.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Hysterical... I ended Out of the Abyss at the same spot you did. I would note here as well that my group was not digging the survival aspect of the adventure in the underdark.
Can confirm with BG:DIA. I have been running homebrew campaigns for years, but this is the first 5e WotC official adventure I have ran... and it's a slog. I have had to essentially rewrite the entire first chapter to make it coherent and adjust the majority of the encounters to avoid TPKs. I like the overall story and the final chapter is super badass, but if I knew what I was getting into I would have ditched the first chapter and started at lvl 5 with the actual descent into Avernus.
yeah, it takes some work
In regards to tomb of annihilation, there is a starter adventure, I belive its a separate dlc book called the tortle package, which includes the tortle as a playable race, but also a mini adventure
Thank you for a great video and all of your content, much appriciated!
Thank you!
Your videos got me into DMing! thanks for making consistent content
I’m so glad!
I love your criterion: how much work is it. It's an important data point when trying to decide if a theme or location you'd like to run is worth it. Thanks for your insight.
I've ran a good amount of these, and far and away the best one has been Curse of Strahd, especially with MandyMod and Dragnacarta's modifications to it. A true adventure that tests and builds a party from a ragtag group of adventurers to a well oiled machine. It truly bonds the characters to each other and builds great RP moments and places to really let every character shine.
I'll also say it's the only adventure that I've run where the players were legitimately terrified of the main villain and really developed a hatred for him. I used the Real Devil Strahd stat block from dmsguild which makes him A CR27 creature with ways of reconsecrating the fanes to weaken him and I will tell you: when the players are in the crypts and finally struck down Strahd and Vampyr I watched players jump out of their seats and cheered.
I've now picked up the Legendary Edition from Beadle & Grimms and have started planning on my third run through of the campaign using the new stuff added in Van Richten's Guide and adding in the interactive Tome of Strahd from dmsguild as well.
I hope you do more of these. I'd like it if did it for adventures in the DM's Guild.
The hard part is that it has to be adventures I've *run* and I only have so much time to run them.
Highly recommend Out of the Abyss for all the reasons you mention. Loaded with whimsy and fantastic locations. As a DM, getting to play dozens of quirky NPCs was a big plus for me, but I'm probably in the minority. The second half is a bit of a sandbox; you can run it either as a fetch quest for the Dark Heart ritual components, or the PCs can just decide to hunt down the Demon Lords one by one.
I think Out of the Abyss is under-rated compared to the more recent adventures.
Really appreciate your synopsis and discussion of the type of adventure and how the type of campaign you and your group prefer affects your choices.
Admitting and understanding your group’s preferences and biases is so important to giving useful reviews.
Feigning objectivity is always so much less valuable for people looking for insight.
Glad you dig it!
Thanks for the rundown. I love reading these kind top lists, specially those regarding shorter modules (Adventure League & DMsGuild)
I don't think the books you highlighted excel because of their relation to old D&D projects, but because they share their versatility and cleaner focus.
I agree that a more direct discussions about how to run and troubleshoot the campaigns should be provided. Maybe they aproach it with this ambiguity as an miscalculated attempt to satisfy the "sandbox" style that press commentary and surveys suggest its the "correct" adventure design.
I'd run tomb of annihilation very differently. I'd cut out the ticking clock/soulmonger death curse, and revamp the random encounter tables so that there's a wide variety of enemy types they can stumble across in the jungle.
Honestly, I'd run tomb of annihilation as an Ixalan campaign. Take the planeshift Ixalan pdf and probably a few of the other planeshift articles as guides to fill out the jungle encounters. Take a bunch of the tables from ghost of saltmarsh for encounters with pirates along rivers and around smaller islands. Take all the dungeons from tales of the yawning portal and drop them in hexes throughout the jungle. And of course I'd take all the Orzhov aligned creatures and all the Boros/Selesnya aligned creatures in the Ravnica book and use them to represent the vampire conquistadors and the Aztec dinosaur riders at war throughout the islands.
Whatever guild or faction or group patron the party answers to needs them to find a long lost bauble hidden at the bottom of some ruins out in the jungle. It may take them years to find it, but along the way they'll raid a dozen smaller tombs, gain over a dozen levels, and at least 2 party members are going to raise a bunch of pet dinosaurs.
I guess I'd basically treat the jungle like a mega dungeon and revolve the campaign around the party alternating between time in the jungle and time in town with the dozens of other parties planning expeditions and safaris every other week.
Almost done with OOTA (almost 3 years campaign!), with two or three sessions left, and really *loved* DMing it. Players had fun. But it did take a lot of work -- and homebrewed in side stories, and made sure character arcs were completed. Elven Tower's Guide to OOTA -- and your own guide on your website -- were very useful (available online) to handle the NPCs and the 2nd part of the campaign.
Sounds like your group is much like my group: They want a clear cut adventure hook with a defined path. For that reason, I wound up handing out the quests in Rime instead of giving multiple options. They, the players, don't know about the duergar sons since they weren't part of what they ran into. Not yet anyway. :)
BTW - I love your Lazy DM book and supported the Fantastic Lairs KS.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you so much for your support!
Great video, loved your insights and summary.
Any chance you could make videos listing the adjustments you made for the lower ranked games? Could be extremely useful.
I have a bunch of articles on Sly Flourish with all of the modifications I made. I don't know if I'll get around to making videos for them. Thanks for the complement!
I’m running Ghosts of Saltmarsh as an Acquisitions Incorporated campaign for my kids and it’s working *great*.
That sounds awesome.
For Waterdeep Dragon Heist,
I wanted to add a couple of things.
In Chapter 2, you buy a house, which I thought was amazing and unique. And instead of going on quests, my party took a fair amount of time just going over the place and accessorizing it. We spent so much time just playing house that I didn't run too many quests. And I felt that was ok.
Also, I had never run a chase before, and there were at least three chase scenes in the adventure. And it taught me how to run a chase.
Also, in general, I found a couple of times where the party went off the rails and kind of lost the clues. Once that happened, I was stuck; the party didn't have anything else to try.
My fix for this was to make the villain (in this case, Manshoon) show up and personally attack the party at their house. I felt this was a great way to introduce the party to the villain.
Also, somehow, I don't know how? But the adventure had the ability for a party member to be abducted by a doppelganger. A doppelganger replaced a party member, and after they saved the vault. Once they figured that out, I had them storm the villain layer to save that member. So, that was like a bonus extra scene I added to the adventure after they were at 5th level.
Listening to this video really makes me realize that I am a lazy dungeon master too... some of the adventures sounds so awesome BUT I can also feel they require too much prep to work and I just don't have that. Great summary.
Man. I've run Waterdeep Dragon Heist, Curse of Strahd (we quit due to a total party wipe and some drama), tried running Princes of the Apocalypse (we stopped after 3 or so sessions due to me having to move away and I didnt know about roll 20 at the time), and I'm currently running Rime of the Frostmaiden, and I have played in a complete campaign of Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Tyranny of Dragons and completed Tomb of Annihilation.
Waterdeep Dragon Heist is probably my favorite adventure, and I've been enjoying RotFM. I do agree that these adventures due require some extra elbow grease to flow better, and there are several good resources out there to help with that. I didnt use the Alexandrian remix for Waterdeep, but I have been using the Eventyr guides for Frostmaiden. That has been a big help with connecting the dots and giving some ideas on how to handle certain issues with the module.
Playing Avernus right now with a Redemption Paladin.... not really enjoying it. Just a caution for others. The GM seems to struggle at times to try and make sense of it - definitely much work for them!
Helped the GM by giving them a reason my character was out and about and vague link to Hell, and they used it. That was great.
However, I am finding it a challenge to enjoy the setting. There really is no good reason my character would condone using soul coins and yet the other party members are joyfully driving around Hell. ( though no one particularly likes the fetch quests and again my Paladin is wondering why we are helping devils and demons?!).
As a Paladin, even a forgiving redemption one, it is a constant battle to try and find reasons to do the quests and as a Player - to enjoy this module.
*just a note - I realize it is partly class choice, but really from the name, it seemed to be a fun choice. On hindsight, running a Bard gathering stories would have been wayyyy more fun.
Yeah, soul coins can be a big problem. I have a video and solution for this: th-cam.com/video/gO3a8z2cOtA/w-d-xo.html
I actually did combine Phandelver and Icespire. Did some reskinning and a little home brew. Worked out great. My PCs are now in business with Venomfang…..
When I started my campaign I thought Ghosts of Saltmarsh looked like a lot of work so I went with Rime of the Frostmaiden... I should have read the whole book before jumping into it.
It's a great one.
50 minutes! :D getting great bank for my patreon bucks here!
This pinpointed exactly how I feel with frostmaiden. I’m watching and combining 3-4 content creators suggestions along with my groups whims and it’s really hard to have a meaningful throughline. Probably going to move Auril to Ythryn and have her avatar be on her island but time will tell
Hey Mike, You mention the need to retcon DiA. I would love ot if you did a video of either the art of a retcon or the specific instances that went wrong and how you fixed them.
I have a whole video series on fixing up Descent into Avernus: th-cam.com/play/PLb39x-29puarDID4UACeSsLjXf9ogvvCo.html
I'll be curious to get your thoughts on wild beyond on the witchlight
I am going to run session 1 of Descent into Avernus on Monday as a more or less first time DM. So thank you very much for your videos on that campaign and for pointing out The Alexandrian!
I really liked the last part of the book on Baldur's Gate, it is very inspiring to run another campaign set just in that city. But why the hell is it in the Avernus campaign book and why didn't they put a single encounter table for Avernus in the book or more than one encounter with a warlord? I have to agree with you, it is so messy and I will have to change a lot and already did. But still, I am super hyped to run it and it's gonna be great (I hope).
Good luck!
The first adventures in Descent into Avernus are brutal. My party almost TPK, 'd twice in the first two adventures, even with six players and rolled stats. Personally, I would cut to level five heading down to Avernus.
For storm Kings, the eye of the all father killllled me as a dm, you get your players to travel to this hard to reach distant location only for the Oracle to say, “hey come back when you have cool stuff for me” it’s very much your princess is in another castle
RE: Frostmaiden
Why do you think the towns are bad? They're not. They're doing this out of desperation, and the people of the towns are ok with it because they don't know what else to do. You're thinking of this from a current civilization point of view. These people believe and worship gods that frequently interact with the world. They are trying to appease a god. There is nothing evil or bad about this.
There are maybe 3 or 4 of the first 10 quests that will be difficult for first level characters. The rest are fine, and in running them they will be ready for the harder ones. I think this a case of not reading through the quests.
And I agree with your friend. It's a Sandbox. It's a great adventure and having fun running it.
Is there a article similar to the Alexanderian remix for Tomb or youtube playlist for a new dm for Tomb?
Very on point over all. I got to say that RotF drives me crazy. I’ll take Tomb over Strahd. I just find ToA to be a much deeper story, Both are excellent.
Tales off the Yawning Portal is #1 anyway. 😁
Chult works great when you just give the Death Curse to the players with a small tweak - make a death save each night or reduce max hp by 1. They are dying and need to cure themselves. Plot fixed. There are many ways to get the hit points back - potions, restoration, etc... so it isn't that bad.
Just a suggestion for Dragon Heist: The official Adventure's League episodes mesh perfectly with the 'gaps' in those chapters you mentioned, especially if you are playing with Jaraxle as your baddie - adds in a lot of investigation and running across the various factions. Doubly so with a Drow partymember.
@Loz Adorni They should still be on the DM's Guild! I believe the first is ' Once in Waterdeep'. They really favor the Xanathar or Jaraxle baddies, and turns it into much more an investigation following a red herring 'map'.
There is also a DM's guild product, cant for the life of me remember the name, that flesh's out the Asmodeus Noble villains with an alternate start to rescuing a certain noble , instead of the Kenku-filled warehouse.
Storm King's Thunder is the only one of these that I've run, and I have one complaint about it: too many single encounters, not enough big adventure locations with multiple encounters, meaning there is very little need to conserve resources, thereby favoring character builds with a lot of features that only come back on a long rest (such as wizards and paladins) over those that get a lot back on a short rest (fighters and warlocks) or those that have a lot of always-on abilities (rogues).
I agree. Too many small encounter areas and not enough bigger adventure locations.
If you're running Curse of Strahd I highly recommend that you check out r/curseofstrahd! They have an immense guide between multiple DMs who contributed to it. Also LunchBreakHeroes is *great* for both CoS and Lost Mine of Phandelver content to homebrew a little bit of content in for everyone's additional fun.
I'm amazed OotA is so low. I've loved DMing it. As with most other campaigns, there are a few things to change but overall I really like it. I do agree with the too many NPCs point.
Yeah, I think its underrated. I think the second half is pretty weak, though. I looked at it and had no intention of running it.
OotA has great bones to build an underdark campaign around. Solid start, good motivation, and cool set pieces.
So the 4 adventure books I have are in the bottom half and require the most work to prep. That tracks. Luckily I mainly use the books for inspiration for great locations and NPCs and not really for the adventure plot.
Perfect!
So my Sunday night party did end the endless night 🥳 so im treating the Fallen city as endgame content. Where they can go and do that or the rest of the world is now open to them.
Out of the experiences I've had with the main books, OOTA was my favorite. The 2nd half had some very interesting locations, and the big "battle royale" at the end was quite fun. It also "scaled up" the tension at a good pace, where you're just trying to escape, then discover some Demon Lords, then get called to help end it, which at that point you're already level 7-ish and could actually be realistically called upon for such a quest. BG:DIA was the worst, starting with the level range being totally wrong. It should've been like 10-20, letting the players take a more direct role in multiverse-altering events (Hell kinda loses its reputation if 5th level characters can survive there), and the Baldur's Gate stuff should've been dropped.
I don't know why some people doesn't like the Baldur's Gate part of Descent into Avernus, I think it's pretty cool and if you start straight in chapter 2 in hell, players dont have the backstory. Chapter 1 explains why things are happening, and you can argue that the dm can make an introduction explaining what's happening and how they got there, but then it loses all the fun I think for living that discovery themselves, that's the whole point of chapter 1. I don't know, I love Descent into Avernus the way they did. The only problem I have with it is actually the last chapter, because basically the author just gives some ending options and the dm has to build everything from the blood fortress to whatever ending players are going, and as a pre written campaign we don't want to have to write anything really if we don't want to, that's why we are playing a pre written campaign. First time I read chapter 5 I was like "ok they got the sword but... where is Zariel? how do players find her? if they want to find her flying fortress and she is there, how do they actually get in?" Nothing of this is written, pretty lazy of the authors imo.
I liked the BG section. I just didn’t think it gave the characters any motivation to go save Elturel. It was tacked on late in production and it shows.
@@SlyFlourish Yeah, I agree with that, but that's a problem some other adventures have too, why would your character put himself so much at risk to actually go to hell.. it's a valid concern. But maybe the possibility of Baldur's Gate getting doomed itself, a character can assume that soon enough that all Faerun can have the same fate if this is not stopped, and it can be overrun by devils, something like that.
I would never recommend the Basic Set after the release of the Essentials Kit.
Icespire Peak is an excellent set of adventures.
Curse of Strahd is an amazing book... but they really should have thought out the book layout. It was anticlimactic to read, since the castle comes so early. Also, I think that players should have entered at the west and had to work towards the Castle. Players want to run straight inside.
Ghosts of Saltmarsh has some really fun adventures, and I love the feel of the book. The book editing is terrible. The ship rules are shallow - not to mention there isn't much opportunity to sail in the main book. The last couple of adventures don't take place in the Saltmarsh region, and aren't on any of the maps. I loved the explanation of the area surrounding Saltmarsh, the different forests and swamps, and then they were never used. I am disappointed with this one.
- Funny story, I sent my kids into Sinister Saltmarsh and they died in room 2 to a spider swarm. My kids are still traumatized.
Tomb of Annihilation is one I would love to pick up next. It makes sense that the last dungeon is a ramp-up in intensity, since it seems to be based on the Tomb of Horrors.
I loved reading Storm Kings Thunder. But, it seems to be more of a Forgotten Realms/Giants, sourcebook.
Out of the Abyss is a good Underdark sourcebook.
The theme of Rime of the Frostmaiden is really well done, but the execution of the story is not. One chapter on starting towns which have no connection or direction (and an awful lot of sick and or drunk town leaders). Next chapter is... similar small adventures which again, seem not at all connected (but at least some of them point ahead). Its all about seeding ideas and seeing what sticks. By the time I read to chapter 4 I still had no idea what the goal was. It seems clear to me that the "job board" idea of Icespire Peak was the idea here... but the execution doesn't work because of lack of direction... or PLOT.
Princes of the Apocolypse was my first purchase after Icespire Peak, because it expanded the area near Phandalin. As an above ground sandbox it works if you flowchart it well enough (I love that kind of stuff). But below ground its a lot harder to keep players going in the right direction, and not into areas that kill them. In flowchart form its real clear about what passages to block off... or use as return tunnels rather than the way down. There are few surprises here. Overall, not bad.
In the end, the thing that really irks me is the amount of work we have to do to make any of these playable. but, I understand that these large campaigns take a lot to playtest and WOTC doesn't really like doing that. Nothing is worse for a player than finding a room with a chest, solving a puzzle to get a key, and disarming a trap to open the lid and finding out THERES NOTHING INSIDE. Hate that. I have to load them up, unless its a red herring that is being used for a reason.
Interessting .. I come from the german dark eye system to dnd .. in dsa you have strict rrailroads with npc over npc .. towns are often used for just one adventure. Adventures are not linked etc .. for me all the dnd content is super easy and less work ^^ different perspectives .. but yeah lost mines is the best I have seen through other systems etc ....
I was really annoyed by Rime of the Frostmaiden.
Maybe I don't know how to run a sandbox, but there was no way you could let your players wander around and get any quest. Not only you have to travel a lot, you could also get a TPK easily.
Some people say: "hey, you can just run away" (I've never seen a group do that). Also, imagine if the group spends a couple of sessions taking quests and realizing they were under-leveled for all of them. Also imagine the amount of work you need to do to have everything ready.
I felt like I paid $30 for a few monsters and spells.
What do you think about running Tome of Annihilation with the players not knowing their HP all of the time. That the DM keeps it all tracked and just narrates it.
why bother tracking? Why not just narrate it as it suits the story?
Just bought decent into avernus and now idk how to prep for it. Never ran a module, don't know what to do
You didn't mention the Acq Inc campaign, It is considered canon in the lore. Have you ran it before? It wasn't in the list you mentioned in your exclusions at the beginning.
It's not a campaign adventure. It's a larger sourcebook like Ravnica or Theros or Eberron. I also haven't played it.
@@SlyFlourish you should give it a try. The 1-6 campaign in the book has been amazingly fun for my group, but it seems to be one of the least reviewed/supported campaigns.
Man this would of been helpful a couple months ago during the DnDBeyond sale lol.
Slight correction, Mike. Chult isn't an island. It's a peninsula ;).
Wait, where is the Acq Inc Orrery of the Wanderer adventure in this list? It's just as long as Lost Mines of Phandelvar or Dragon of Icespire Peak. The book also contains lots of DM tools/options and PC options. Not to mention the adventure is pretty fun with tips for DM's in between each "episode" of the adventure. I would even go so far as to say it's easier to run for a DM than LMoP or DoIP because it's all laid out whereas the others are merely a collection of quests in a specific location with no real connectors.
I haven’t run it.
Regarding ToA, I think that low level adventurers are sent because most true heroic adventurers have been revived before and thus are affected by the curse, so the heroes of ages are all becoming sickly. I thought it was a clever mechanic with a built-in reason for having low level parties save the world.
Now I'm pretty scared. I ran LmoP and thought it was pretty weak. I didn't mind it as much because it was a "Starter" adventure. I thought it was sort of barebones and simple on purpose, just a taste of what a D&D adventure could be. If you rank it that high, I wonder how bad the rest actually is, specially for DMs. Phandelver leaves so much to be desired, for me, if you run it as a new DM, with the premade sheets it gives you: it doesn't give you important plot points (who betrayed the Thief?), no direction on how to roleplay the Green Dragon, no clear motivation for the Drow, etc. and you only really notice these flaws when you're running it and players start asking questions. I had to do a lot of extra work to make it more fun and hook my players into it (and also to not kill them outright).
Agreed. The dragon on the cover is a throwaway monster. Party never needs to meet him at all. Bait and switch if you ask me. I'm running thing for my first-time-playing nephew and there's no way I'm gonna let him finish without encountering the dragon -- what a let down that would be.
I really didn’t like Ghosts of Saltmarsh. I found it hard to string together and my group out grew one of the adventures in levels. On the other hand I have been really enjoying Frostmaiden, but your right you have to make up a lot.
I have a question about Curse of Strahd! I've never run it because both of my groups have players who have played it, but one told me he thought the Tarokka Deck mechanic would change things enough that it would be a wholly new experience if I ran it. I've always seen that more like picking a guide in Tomb of Annihilation - you may hit a few different locations on the road, but your final destination will always be the same. What's the replay-ability for players like in CoS?
Curse of Strahd can go lots of different ways. I run the Castle Ravenloft part of it every year for many of the same players.
@@SlyFlourish Is it still engaging for the repeat players? I made the mistake of letting a friend jump into our Tomb of Annihilation game at the end after he and I had played it once before and he wound up (I don't think intentionally) using that meta knowledge throughout the Tomb, so the players wound up getting a kind of guided tour. I know Castle Ravenloft is such a different kind of dungeon by design, but I worry about him either feeling bored or having too hard of a time avoiding metagaming!
Also, thank you for the reply! This video is very helpful and is making me consider taking another, more serious look at Phandelver as I try desperately to find a way to make Princes as good as its potential.
ToA is the best, you cant change my mind haha!
It's pretty great
@@SlyFlourish Though I will concede that the smaller starter adventures are great for both first time DMs and Players!
The Dark of Hot Spring Island is similar, yet better. Check it out.
ToA is trash. It doesn’t even hold a candle to hot springs island the other commenter mentioned.
@@yohahn12 but its not WotC haha. the community is always going to make better content then a small company!
Running RotFM and I hate it...
I agree with e writhing you said.
Edit to add its "oh reel" per pronunciation guide in book. We made the same mistake.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So far I've only bought Rime of the Frostmaiden, Candlekeep Mysteries, and Tales from the Yawning Portal -- RotFM was unbalanced at the starting level (what was WotC thinking of pitting a CR3 enemy with regeneration and does enough damage to take down a PC in a single round?); Candlekeep Mysteries is a very mix bag of short one-shots (I had to rewrite about Chris Perkins' Book of the Raven since it was incoherent why the PCs are doing what they're suppose to do and the adventure was filled with Chekhov's guns); and TftYP consists of classic adventures from past adventures so that they're more balanced and coherent.
Overall, like you mentioned in your video I'm very hesitant about WotC's published adventures that aren't updated adventures from past editions -- I rather go back to the well of past editions to well establish adventures and update them myself to 5E rules. That said, I'm going to pass up the upcoming The Wild Beyond the Witchlight if CM, RotFM, and Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (the lack of the Dark Lords' stats ("Hey, we're lazy so just use the regular monster but without any legendary abilities!") are of any indication of shoddy WotC's works have been this edition.
I really dig Van Richten’s Guide and am interested to see what they do with Witchlight
@@SlyFlourish So far I think the 5E campaign books are underwhelming in terms of lore compared to past editions, especially 2E and 3E. SCAG is criminally thin compared to 2E FR book.
I think WotC's philosophy is basically let the DMs fill/figure it out. I mean that's fine if it's someone like me who has decades of experience playing/DMing since Basic/AD&D but how would a new DM know what to do? It seems like they want players/DMs to rely more on fan-made wikis and 3rd party content on DMs Guild than official books -- perhaps they're going to opposite extreme from the book glut of 2E and 3E?
Who in the Nine Hells spends $50 on D&D 5E books? Most are from between $20-30 thru Amazon, even the more recent ones. Plus they have several "Get 3 for the price of 2" sales throughout the year.
Those of us who support local game shops.
Did WotC not playtest RotFM? The starting quest, Cold-Hearted Killer, has a CR3 monster that the party is suppose apprehend/kill and that's difficult as it is for a party of level 1 characters, but he's with a CR2 bandit captain and 4 CR 1/8 bandits. WTF were they thinking? I have the book but didn't DM it so I listened in on coworkers playing this and they almost got wiped out (the DM made Sephek have less HP and removed his regeneration ability to let him be knocked unconscious earlier).
Here's my 2 cents on that quest.
The problem people are having with that quest is just that it's so open and not explicit enough in it's directions. I don't consider that inherently bad, just not as convenient for the DM. But I will mention a few points you and Sly brought up:
It does say on page 24 "Torrga is interested only in profits... and tries to help him as best she can without endangering her own life", which means as written she would not join the fight against the players, just maybe take social action against them like mislead, bargain, threaten, or sabotage their search in some other way (and it does say what actions she takes if she knows they are responsible for his death). If your DM played it different, that's just what they went with.
If the players act patiently or play it smart, the module is even more explicit in suggesting he will be fighting alone, and gives other ways to make the fight easier. On the same page it says "The best way to deal with Sephek is to confront him while he's separated from Torrga and her other cronies. ... After Torrga retires for the night, Sephek is free to do as he pleases until the following morning." It then says "he uses this time to either stalks his next victim or spends the night drinking and carousing." I wish it were explicit here, but if he's drinking then the DM might treat him as intoxicated (poisoned condition), which in 5e is "A poisoned creature has disadvantage on Attack rolls and Ability Checks". The fight just got much easier.
Sly is right that it doesn't say he surrenders, but it very much puts it out there as a suggested outcome. "He considers surrendering only because it buys time for him to escape and commit more murders." So he might not want to fight at all and he definitely should not be fighting to zero hitpoints.
This combat IS arguably still too deadly if they do fight without any good prep, since I'm sure many combat-focused players' instincts with a known murderer is to attack before confronting verbally, or not "follow and wait until he is alone". I think the players are acting a recklessly in that scenario, but shouldn't be punished with insta-death if he gets lucky with a crit. If you want to "nerf" him in any way, that's the change I would recommend- just lower his damage somehow- which you can do by lowering his strength from 16 to 12 or 11.
As a player, having to complete the job board quest to move along made it feel video gamey to me. Still had a good time with my friends, just didn’t like the job board.
It's not for everyone.
OHO here comes the feels!
Why no mention of Eberron?
There is no hardback Eberron adventure book. The Oracle of War AL series is very strong, though.
It's not an adventure.
👍🏻
I have strong, mixed opinions on Dragon of Icespire Peak and am surprised to see it so high on the list. On one hand, I love it to pieces. On the other, it's horrifically designed for new DMs/players. There's so little writing about how a new DM could approach some of the stuff in there. Spoilers for the first set of quests below:
-The Excavation: If you were a new player how would you know to not throw multiple ochre jellies at a party of L1s who RAW are likely to split at least one of them? How about the greed gem with a DC15 and 4d10 damage at the end that you can only avoid by inaction? Could be instant killing the party in the first dungeon and rewarding players for NOT adventuring.
-The Windmill: In no way does it telegraph or indicate that you should avoid fighting the manticore. RAW a L1 party is going to get destroyed in that fight, likely without the DM even needing to use fly.
TL;DR: Awesome booklet for experienced DMs... terrible intro to D&D.
For us (first time DM and first time party), we wiped out the manticore because our bard used thunder wave while it was flying at us and the DM ruled that it fell and took fall damage, then we all just jumped on it and stabbed it until it was dead. I think it only got a couple rounds of attacks off before it died...
Did I miss dungeon of the mad mage?
I was about to ask the same thing
At the very beginning (1:20) he says he won't talk about dungeon of the mad mage, tales from the yawning portal and candlekeep mysteries because he hasn't run them
@@emirefli thank you!
Big reason I don't talk about DoMM is that I hadn't run it.
I'm really surprised that so many people love Lost Mine of Phandelver. There are SO many plot holes and problems in that adventure.
Please elaborate. I quite enjoyed it, and it is easy to reskin.
I think Phandelver is a great campaign but a terrible Starter Set. If a first time DM runs it straight out of the box he might instakill another first time player's character right in the first hour without him having too much interaction with it. Ohh boy that one is definitely going to keep playing D&D after the good time he had in his first session... More help for new DM's on how to balance certain things would have been a good thing in my opinion or even a more softcore approach straight out of the box. Experienced Masters can make something more challenging on their own without any problems while newcomers might run into stuff. As a campaign itself I still see it on the top of the list just as you do.
It's a bit depressing that Tyranny of Dragons, despite them being the first hardcover adventures, are also well above more recent adventures on this list. I do not think highly of either adventure. And I say this as someone who is currently running through Rise of Tiamat.
I joined a paid game of Rime of the Frost maiden and was pretty excited because hey Icewind dale is where Drizzt came from! But I decided to drop it after 4 games…I think I am not a sandbox player. I need more of a hook. It felt like a corrupt government and the people are cool with it…so what am I supposed to do exactly? Investigate something people aren’t going to pay or thank us much for?
Personally, I was disappointed in how thin the information on Waterdeep was in Tyranny of Dragons, and also how quickly the players were ushered out of the city.
These days it could be expanded with the Waterdeep section of Dragon Heist.
Right!? Especially after they worked so hard to get there! When I ran it, they had already lost the trail, so I had them spend some time in the Waterdeep to pick it back up. Specifically, I invented a Zhent casino named The Dhavian, and there they could make some bargains with the Zhents to figure out where to go next.