Meh, he needs to get angry every once in a while. We all need to let off some steam at times. Dragon Queen just sounds like it has some substantial flaws... I've seen stuff like that and I've been to that boiling point where I just needed to Davvy my Chapps and yell but I hope it doesn't get to him. I can't stand seeing when people think their natural expression of emotion or passion is a negative just because they made "too many criticisms..." They start feeling like, "I was being too negative..." (Which isn't true, but now you are by nitpicking about how critical you were...) Yeah, don't be too critical, but don't be too critical of yourself when you make a video.
As a DM currently running the Tyranny of Dragons, I 100% agree with your review. My players are having a blast (doesn't hurt that most of them are pretty passive and are happy staying on the tchoo tchoo), but any time they decide to do any action that's not THE linear path, I have to move mountains to make it work. It makes me sad because it's possibly the most traditional "explore the world and kill dragons" campaign in 5e, and if it were not so linear and better balanced, it would truly be iconic. Also, fuck chapter 4.
You may have already done this, but I wish I had written an outline for the module the first time I DM'd it. WotC seemed to have pushed it out way too quickly, and there are some serious plot holes as you've seen already. A skeletal outline would have helped me seem like a more organized DM that was running a more thought-out module. Good luck on your game!
I totally agree, I'm running this campaign at the moment. But heavily amended to suit my players free roaming style, I've added extra locations and npcs. Plus they've had a week or so in Baldur's gate chasing bad guys around, extra work for me but worth the effort. I'm missing chapter 4 completely total waste of time imho.
@@GalvatronRodimus Baldur's Gate. Oh I forgot, Waterdeep too, but I'm not sure for the other two. They both get extremely little screen time and almost no description. Thankfully though, both have adventures dedicated to them nowadays. I haven't played Avernus but Dragon Heist is excellent at fleshing out Waterdeep, and actually better at that than its scenario, which honestly felt like a bait and switch because if you play it by the book, there isn't a fucking heist.
@cak01vej i feel like with the Wizard he was more "annoyed at blatant favoritism" than "angry" the Ranger one felt like he was upset at how "meh" a newbie bait class is especially since fixing it doesn't seem that hard all things considered
Please do a DM counterpart with how you prefer to fix the downsides! Now that is off my chest, I would love to hear your opinion on the Adventure in the 5e Starting Box. I have been having troubles running that one each time I try and end up doing off the rails to liven up the adventure.
Dear sir davvius cap, second of second of your name, king of the unearthed arcana reviews, Lord of the dance, and Super gay boy supreme ..... Yes I would love a video on the DM side of the book, please and thank you
@@ChrundleKelly Right here. A reworked opening chapter and they included all the errata. dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/tyranny-dragons
Hoard of the dragon queen was the module that me and my friends used for our first try at d&d. We all did have fun and went on to try other modules (especially Curse of Strahd) and looking back it really wasn't that good. For starters, one of our party members died in Greeenest, the beast master ranger I made really didn't do much aside from being our devoted archer, and the shit ton of travel time really didn't lead to anywhere. In fact looking back, the best moments we had were due to a combination of our dm tweaking things for us, and character moments. One of the highlights for us was when my character Laura accidentally found herself pressed into working as a poledancer for a day in baulder's gate because she was brought in by a big guy, was told she would make some cash, and figured they would need it due to our bard Sigfield's drinking problem. The rest of the party found her being a fan favorite at the strip club, her wolf Fenrir (who Sigfield constantly called "Loki spawn") was outside depressed, the rest of the party was completely caught off guard, and the phrase "elven flexibility" was introduced. But that shows how we had to make our own fun, because it was an event even our gm didn't see playing out the way it did. Edit: Another big moment was when my character (a human who was raised by wood elves) was introduced to a drow sigfield had feelings for, and she nearly pissed herself at the sight of her.
Yup as a lvl 4 paladin with 29 hit points left i got knocked to 1 hp a d we got tpked. Our dm planned for it though and had an awesome post death demonic intervention
Playing this campaign was my first time both playing D&D at all and DMing, and every single player was new too. The railroading and simplicity was thus pretty nice, since none of us were really ready for the more complex stuff. I still wouldn't call it good or anything, even as a new DM I think some of my alterations were pretty good decisions.
I bet any of your alterations were great in comparison to what was originally written (or not written). I think every DM that runs HotDQ had to learn the hard way to start pencil whipping plot points.
Can we get a video, quick or lengthy, dealer’s choice, where you rank the premade adventures? I like the deep dives as well (this was very helpful) but I would also like to know which premade I should dive into
Im gonna run either CoS or LMoP for my first time dming. Any tips or recommendations? First time dming (played dnd before) and first time players for my party
@@Thiccyg Strahd everywhere. Have him show up to taunt, congratulate, and/or test the party. And remember, he probably has more spells in his spell book than in his stat block, so feel free to pull out a spell he doesn't officially know. And one suggestion I was given is, if the players are invited to dinner with Strahd, perhaps Strahd has taken players family/friends/background characters and invited them as guests. These guests could be obviously in danger, blissfully unaware, or even turned into vampire spawn. There is so much you can do with Strahd alone Also, it apparently has it's own subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/
How to Prepare to DM HotDQ: Step 1: Find a red pen. Step 2: Cross out 60-70% of the content. Step 3: Write in whatever you need to make the story cohesive. Step 4: Throw it away and run CoS or OotA or ToA or GoSM or anything else.
I read the first chapter. It seems like the players should be at least level 3 before dealing with all of... that. Also, there is nothing stop a group of smart reasonable PC's just going "Fuck this" and leaving therby ending the main plot hook. immediately.
Had my first ever tpk with this module, for a little bit after I honestly thought I messed up while running it despite following the module best I could. Glad to see I’m not the only one
This was so deeply accurate to my experience of running this adventure. Vindication. Feel free to do a review of Rise of Tiamat as well. Also I'd really enjoy a thorough breakdown of your changes. I'm nearing the end of Tyranny of Dragons now, but I'd still love to try it again in the future.
@@2MeterLP perhaps, but unless you are walking aimlessly through the jungle, you can ff to the next location. Also, the random encounter table is really great.
*my first reaction:* "Wait what? HDQ is sucky?" *Midway through video:* "Holy S***! HDQ does suck." *Davvy askes if he should tell us how to fix it* "YES!" *immediately grabs davvys hands and puts them on the cashcow's udders* "DO THE THING!!! NOW!!!"
Nail on the fricken head Davvy. I've always felt that most of the credit to the quality of 5th edition lands on the DMs, and let me be clear, it shouldn't be that way. If I play your game with the base mechanics and instructions and it isn't engaging and dynamic, something is askew. I think they've made marked improvements, but all my favorite parts of the game have been DMs ripping their souls apart to make a good time. It shouldn't be like that.
Just out of curiosity, is there an edition you feel does do that? (Black sheep idea, but I personally think 4th edition did that to a small degree, at least with just how much happened or could happen in combat, but the story being fun was 100% the DM's problem for sure, though I don't know how you could get away from that.)
@@ArcNeoMasato 4th edition brought some cool ideas but in my experience it missed the mark because it is strictly a dungeon crawler when most players want more role playing than pure combat
I'll have to look into that system, thanks! And it missed the mark for sure in some ways. From my experience, most D&D editions do in some way. I've actually had the most fun taking 4th and 5th editions rulesets and mashing them together into a sort of 4.5 edition, but I also switch to other systems from time to time just because. lol
More of these, please and thank you! I've run mostly homebrew and self-made campaigns for decades. My improv and creativity are on point, but free/prep time is lacking these busy adult-type days. I recently turned to Yawning Portal's Sunless Citadel to help catch my breath and it went over really well, but also illuminated to me how weak my module-fu really is. The insight of a seasoned runner into which modules are worth my limited time and how best to run them is and would continue to be invaluable.
I played one session of this module, there were only three of us and the DM gave us no guidance on character creation. So a bard, a monk, and a wizard were sent into a town being attacked by a dragon and there army. When our characters remained as neutral as possible so as not to die(we were hit twice nearly killing us each time) we were chastised for not single handedly saving the town. My dad who at the time had never played DnD watched the session and he could see it wasn't going well.
i love this. Not many (if any) makes videos about modules that is under 1 hour and is spoiler free. i always fear to be spoiled if i look for reviews, which would take the fun out of it if i were a player. i hope you make more of these videos of the other modules.
Honestly i love how you did this. Video! I would like to see a more involved review going over more plot points in later videos as maybe a spoilers be ahead section. As always great work my dude
Thank you so much for this video!! I’ve been looking for a series that reviewed the prewritten modules from a player perspective and wasn’t super spoilery. Would love to see more videos like this one! 😁
My DM decided that this would be her first adventure. We did do the whole storyline. Beginning was incredibly rough because she was new at the time and she was playing the book completely straight off the pages. Thankfully she learned fast that wasn't working and really worked on fixing the module. Rise things got a lot smoother and when we finished the adventure she told us she really had to gut a lot of the module to make it work. I still had a blast with the group because we made the best of what we had but I totally see why Hoard especially is always on the bottom of 5e adventure lists.
A lot of modules have the issue of a known City that the party isn't meant really be spending time in being on the map. Even Lost Mine of Phandelvar had the City of Neverwinter within a day's travel of its key locations, but when the players inevitably head back there, the module has no information on it.
So this might be my fave video you have done. Please please do more like this!! Getting insight from a professional DM on how this play, would def help to give confidence in my experience running a game. Knowing that others have issues with certain parts would be super awesome
I did the starter set then had the players delve into their backstory for 2 levels before bringing them to the hunting lodge. one quick interaction with Leosin filled them in on the storyline.
I don't know much about this game, but it sounds like it would be less work to completely homebrew a world than try to fill in all the details that this book leaves out.
This video is already a lot of help (even without a DM's guide), because it explains part of why my players are struggling through it. It plays off several of my personal weaknesses, such as what to do when the players don't want to follow the plot.
Based on how you describe it, it feels like a lot of Hoard was them going "Hey, old fans! Remember old thing?? Old thing back! Old thing good! Okay let's go see other old thing now!" But 5e brought in a lot of new players who have no attachment to Old Thing, and want to see New Thing. Also like many others have said yes GM-focused reviews and more module reviews are hot requests. PLEASE do Storm King's Thunder, I love it and I've been studying it and it's my DREAM to run it.
My table just finished up this module at our Adventure League nights (I know, I know, 'Ew, AL!') and you nailed it near the end: A good DM or a good party can make fun out of almost anything, but even to a party that is over half total-newbies to D&D, it was obvious this book was... not great. We had great moments! ...but we made those ourselves. We EARNED them. Also, we're running Storm King's Thunder next, so I"m excited for more of these from ya, Davvy!
As a DM of this, I think we had a good time. Of course I rebuilt the whole goddamn thing; fleshed out the places, the NPC's and their relation to each other in the wider story while approaching individual player side missions and a "ritual killer" subplot in CH.4, but yeah. It's been good. I think if they had been more honest about being linear in design, with some side hooks sprinkled in, it would have made more sense than trying to create a "cohesive" module. I just "remixed" it, and used the pieces I liked thematically to hold it all together.
Yes that thing they find in a cave that the book says the players leave or destroy, one play took them. All of them. And thus the another side plot was made.
Im running this campaign for the first time for my regular group and I modified it to fit in to my Homebrew world do to a characters background. So far they are still on Chapter 3 and have nearly died 4 times but the rise and fall of all of it keeps my players in constant planning on how to progress. Honestly, Im kind of a brutal DM. Consequences are a big part of my gig and I allow the characters to roam and wander as they please. Recently they took the wrong route in the Chapter 3 cave and we had fight with 9 lvl 3 players and 5 Berserkers, Cyanwrath, and Frulam. Nearly half the group was downed and the other half struggled. They got upset with me because I had them fight them but then understood that I had them do nothing. They falled Frulam, Failed stealth checks, and started the fight. I can't wait to see where they take this next!
That's why our game of HOTDQ is pretty much all homebrew story and character wise. We still use the dungeons because as you said they are pretty neat in the later chapters, but we have been off book for about 12 sessions. I've been reading up on each town they go to to make plot hooks and I couldn't be happier about it. We skipped the majority of the long haul north
on the bright side in a couple weeks Tyranny of Dragons (the storyline Hoard of the Dragon Queen comes from) is getting a remake, the two books become one and apparently Wizards are fixing some of the story trouble that Hoard had thanks to player feedback so yeah there is hope
I'm running this module right now. And we just got into chapter 4. The only reason one of my players is tagging along is he found a love interest in the greenests blacksmith I made. And now he's out to earn gold so they can afford a blacksmiths shop in waterdeep. It was heartbreaking for him to leave her and their adoptive kobold son. And I feel so bad for him that he won't see them for in game months when their relationship just started blossoming.
You could probably make mini campaigns with all those places in the book that would be more interesting and diverse than the actual storyline of the book
It could be very interesting. Having to fight a guerilla war using cunning against an overwhelming force sounds like something I like to play. But it's easy to overdo it, and the 2 weeks without long rest I heard of makes things far worse than they could be.
Hey! I like that you're trying to keep it spoiler free, but maybe put some clips in talking about some of the modifications you've made. I love hearing about changes to hardcovers. Great vid!
Am roughly 20 sessions in and so far removed from the books that its basically a homebrew campaign. Moved the dragon nest from the bandit cave north of elturel and have the players find allies there to make an large scale attack on the cult.
I'm currently just on the beginning of chapter 4, thankfully I'm yoinking materials from other modules to boost it a little... still cant believe nothing is even spoken of about thr DAMN COMPANION FLOATING OVER THE SKY OF THE SECOND CITY YOU GO TO
I’m DMing this right now and 100% agree. I use the book as such a base line that if any of my players played this module with a different DM they would have a hard time identifying it as the same module. I have created plots and NPCs for each town and basically told chapter 4 to fuck off by giving like one random encounter between towns then sort of speeding them through the travel.
I honestly didn't mind your rant because everything said was solid and also emotional. As long as ranting doesn't become your Thing, I wouldn't mind more.
Ideas for the long travel section: give the party a temporary traveling companion. A loveable scamp who, through events more or less out of his control, keeps getting in trouble. Second idea: cultists. Keep sending cultists after the party. Either a constant stream of lower-level cannon fodder, or mini-boss characters with fun gimmicks and at least enough personality to be distinguishable from one another.
This is completely off topic, inspired by how angry Davvy got in this video... The next character that Davvy should try is a Joker based bard. I mean come on Davvy is hella crazy ( In a good way) freaking brilliant, hilarious as fudge, and twisted as a ball of snakes trying to get it on... Davvy I beg you play a Joker like bard you'd be brilliant at it.
Chapter 4 man... I am currently running HotDQ and this chapter man. My group FINALLY got to the halfway point after MONTHS (biweekly sessions due to switching between games run by me and another person) and one of the things my players decide to do is go into Dragonspear Castle. A literal demon invested hellhole. I tried everything I could to detour them. One of them being people constantly telling them that adventurers that go inside will die. Like, every NPC they came across who hears them talk about the castle mentions that it is a death trap. They completely ignore it. They buy equipment, they beat up a thug to find the black market so to buy a map of the castle, and verbally destroyed several shady dealers who over charged their goods. They were frick'n going and they won't let me stop them. So now I have to basically invent a whole adventure inside their actual adventure. They are given three in-game days to explore and raid this castle for what it's worth. They are going to be facing the most unfair battles I can conceive so that I don't undermine my NPCs' warnings. It is going to be the most grueling and dangerous thing they had to ever face. And there will be mimics. So many mimics. I am going to make them regret trying to go into a castle that was suppose to be flavor text! Muwhawhahaha!!
I think a series of video on each adventure book is cool especially if it's two per book, one like this, the player perspective, and one like you said at the end, the GM perspective
My friends and I were doing a sort of round-robin DM thing, where everyone got to run a game. Our main game was _Pathfinder_ , but I had been wanting to get into 5e. We actually decided we wanted to try converting _Fire Emblem_ to a tabletop system, and everyone pretty much unanimously voted that I'd be the DM for that. I wanted to try running a pre-established module of an existing ruleset to get used to DMing before the FE thing, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to try to get into 5e. And what better module to start with than the first one ever released, right? ...Yeah. Anyway, I more or less figured I had all I needed, but...we were used to playing on a grid, which wasn't provided for the first chapter. The closest we had was a map of Greenest. Which I tried drawing on a dry erase map. Which took so long we decided not to play. Which, looking back, was probably for the best if we were going to play _Hoard of the Dragon Queen_ .
Davvy Ranty... Lol Naw you good boi, I know how some things can just be infuriating when you just want to love it. Dis a good video Chappy! Don't beat yourself up over how negative it might have made you feel, sometimes that's just what we gotta do. If you are still feeling bad about it watch some of your other recent videos and listen to just how fun and happy you've been. Maybe not the unearthed arcana... Bad example...
I made the mistake of trying to run this campaign a while back, and while I got about halfway through with my players saying they REALLY enjoyed it, it got to a certain part where things were sooo specific on how it all needed to go that it just wasn't possible unless I took a whole chapter and went "CUTSCENE!" to everyone, and I refused to do such. I still have both halves of this adventure, but mostly just for info on the cult so I can use them in my own world instead of trying to follow this disaster.
Dragon Heist is kinda the same way. "Oh hey, here's one of the biggest and most important cities in Waterdeep. What's that? You want it to be more fleshed out? I mean, there's all the companion books from AD&D to 4th Ed. Do we really need to rehash all that out when you might be able to find them on eBay or online PDFs? Or better yet, use your imagination!" And they give you so much, and yet so little of it is actually used for anything more than a single cutscene. It has rules for a chase, and kinda counts on it happening, then one of my players with his storm cleric said "get over here!" and used his domain ability to blow the guy back to him so he couldn't escape and completely killed the chase right away. And then they got guns that I immediately had to super-nerf because they're pretty OP. Good for a mini-boss, terrifying in the hands of players. On top of that, I've run this module about three different times with three different groups and had either a TPK or close to it every single first session. "You should start with level ones and - TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOL!" "What's that? Five kenku? What a bunch of punka - OH MY GOD, THE HUMANITY!"
I am running a home brew campaign and a friend said it sounded similar to this campaign so I’m just taking some parts from this and we will see how it ends up
My group ended the campaign several chapters early because our usual dm decided to be a player and correctly predicted that the final boss was in a certain cart. We ambushed it and killed it before it could take an action.
Ive just finished all that travelling, and yeah the riding shotgun next to cult the whole time lead to a lot of " wait while we're doing all this, what are the cult doing?" Dm: nothing much *coooool cool cool cool
I love these reviews of modules. I enjoyed ride of Tiamat so I’m excited to hear your thoughts. I’d also like to hear your thoughts on Storm King’s Thunder, it’s my personal favourite module
I definitely agree that this module is very linear and has an unnecessary amount of filler. As you said, a good DM can make this a more enjoyable experience. If I’m ever running Tyranny of Dragons, then I usually grant a bonus feat and give them an extra level boost at certain points to give a more heroic feel. It is interesting to watch a party go full out hard mode and attempt this module with rangers only and no DM gifts (especially early in Hoard of the Dragon Queen). Your players have to be okay with the idea of death and absolute frustration if they want to do this. This group of mine just wanted to raw dog the adventure with as little advantage as possible and made it through Hoard and a little pass the halfway mark in the Rise of Tiamat before life happened and the group had to split ways. The other modules are phenomenal, but I had some great memories with Hoard. Great review 👍
I’ve run this module. I proceeded to have my players do Episode 3 while doing Episode 2.... by splitting the party. Only reason I didn’t kill the 2 glass cannons who were doing Ep 3 was because I purposefully under powered it since the end of Ep 2 has them keeping a very small number of enemies in the location of Ep 3 because the party finds them.
Another thing I'd probably add is making the first encounter something unrelated to the main plot, y'know get character dynamics down. and then your first encounter related to the cult should be something like "We recently suffred a Kobold attack, while not uncommon... this time they came en mass and behaved strangely, we sent people ahead to clear the den but no-one has returned" creating a fun little dungeon crawl where most of the traps that Kobolds are infamous for have already been set off, do some sneaking around, maybe find a war room where the kobold tribe leader is talking through a crystal to one of the dragon generals.
My DM introduced an NPC named Underwood, who gave us a gold dragon egg and 3000 gold for the things that were found and supposed to destroy in the cave
So Im running this campaign right now. I started everyone at lv 3 which helped balance things out. But then they went to free prisoners at the bandit camp and decoded to explore the cave beyond WHILE THEY STILL HAD THEIR PRISONERS AND EVERYONE WAS STILL THERE!
![[Live สด] การออกรางวัลสลากกินแบ่งรัฐบาล งวดวันที่ 16 พฤศจิกายน 2567](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/wPd7VFfWHIA/mqdefault.jpg)
![ร้อยพ่อพันแม่ - WanMai [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XY2pNYASEbg/mqdefault.jpg)
I think this is the most angry davvy has ever been in a video
Angry davvy is like angry Terry from Brooklyn 99
Meh, he needs to get angry every once in a while. We all need to let off some steam at times. Dragon Queen just sounds like it has some substantial flaws... I've seen stuff like that and I've been to that boiling point where I just needed to Davvy my Chapps and yell but I hope it doesn't get to him. I can't stand seeing when people think their natural expression of emotion or passion is a negative just because they made "too many criticisms..." They start feeling like, "I was being too negative..." (Which isn't true, but now you are by nitpicking about how critical you were...) Yeah, don't be too critical, but don't be too critical of yourself when you make a video.
So skulls that movie in the 90s secret society film
It seemed less angry and more frustrated and disappointed. The sound if his voice was like when he talked about the ranger.
Played this as level 3 still got 1 shot by the end of ep1, and then the rail road was set 👌
As a DM currently running the Tyranny of Dragons, I 100% agree with your review. My players are having a blast (doesn't hurt that most of them are pretty passive and are happy staying on the tchoo tchoo), but any time they decide to do any action that's not THE linear path, I have to move mountains to make it work. It makes me sad because it's possibly the most traditional "explore the world and kill dragons" campaign in 5e, and if it were not so linear and better balanced, it would truly be iconic.
Also, fuck chapter 4.
You may have already done this, but I wish I had written an outline for the module the first time I DM'd it. WotC seemed to have pushed it out way too quickly, and there are some serious plot holes as you've seen already. A skeletal outline would have helped me seem like a more organized DM that was running a more thought-out module. Good luck on your game!
I totally agree, I'm running this campaign at the moment. But heavily amended to suit my players free roaming style, I've added extra locations and npcs. Plus they've had a week or so in Baldur's gate chasing bad guys around, extra work for me but worth the effort. I'm missing chapter 4 completely total waste of time imho.
What iconic locations are supposed to be visited in chapter 4? Davvy's anti-spoiler policy made it hard to understand that bit.
@@GalvatronRodimus Baldur's Gate. Oh I forgot, Waterdeep too, but I'm not sure for the other two. They both get extremely little screen time and almost no description. Thankfully though, both have adventures dedicated to them nowadays. I haven't played Avernus but Dragon Heist is excellent at fleshing out Waterdeep, and actually better at that than its scenario, which honestly felt like a bait and switch because if you play it by the book, there isn't a fucking heist.
*Player Having To Deal With Continuous Chapter Four BS:*
"I DIDN'T SKIP WORK TODAY JUST TO PLAY WALKING SIMULATOR THE BOARD GAME!!"
Amen!
Wow Davvy hasn't been this mad since the ranger
Especially the Wizard!
@cak01vej i feel like with the Wizard he was more "annoyed at blatant favoritism" than "angry" the Ranger one felt like he was upset at how "meh" a newbie bait class is especially since fixing it doesn't seem that hard all things considered
Please do a DM counterpart with how you prefer to fix the downsides! Now that is off my chest, I would love to hear your opinion on the Adventure in the 5e Starting Box. I have been having troubles running that one each time I try and end up doing off the rails to liven up the adventure.
I get the feeling Davvy doesn't like this module
Really?
Didint notice it
defenseive kobra I mean it might just be my hyperactive imagination
@@hazmatter0634 yeah probably.
Maybe you should go see an doctor?
defenseive kobra yeah that's probably a good idea
@@hazmatter0634 well if you are part of the cult you get healthcare so you might be able to afford it.
Dear sir davvius cap,
second of second of your name, king of the unearthed arcana reviews,
Lord of the dance, and
Super gay boy supreme
.....
Yes I would love a video on the DM side of the book, please and thank you
Are you going to run the revamped version of the adventure when it is released? They've said they're going release an updated version some time later.
I would like to see if they fix most of this if he'll revisit it again.
Where did you see they were revamping HotDQ? Because all the things that I saw was it's going to be re-released as it was but with updated art.
@@ChrundleKelly Right here. A reworked opening chapter and they included all the errata.
dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/tyranny-dragons
@@clarkside4493 Nice! I honestly thought people were gona fall for it again. Very good news.
But they won't fix beastmaster ranger.
Hoard of the dragon queen was the module that me and my friends used for our first try at d&d. We all did have fun and went on to try other modules (especially Curse of Strahd) and looking back it really wasn't that good. For starters, one of our party members died in Greeenest, the beast master ranger I made really didn't do much aside from being our devoted archer, and the shit ton of travel time really didn't lead to anywhere. In fact looking back, the best moments we had were due to a combination of our dm tweaking things for us, and character moments. One of the highlights for us was when my character Laura accidentally found herself pressed into working as a poledancer for a day in baulder's gate because she was brought in by a big guy, was told she would make some cash, and figured they would need it due to our bard Sigfield's drinking problem. The rest of the party found her being a fan favorite at the strip club, her wolf Fenrir (who Sigfield constantly called "Loki spawn") was outside depressed, the rest of the party was completely caught off guard, and the phrase "elven flexibility" was introduced. But that shows how we had to make our own fun, because it was an event even our gm didn't see playing out the way it did.
Edit: Another big moment was when my character (a human who was raised by wood elves) was introduced to a drow sigfield had feelings for, and she nearly pissed herself at the sight of her.
6:02 Our fighter got instantly incinerated by a half-dragon's lightning breath weapon which suddenly changed to "non-lethal damage"
Yup as a lvl 4 paladin with 29 hit points left i got knocked to 1 hp a d we got tpked. Our dm planned for it though and had an awesome post death demonic intervention
Playing this campaign was my first time both playing D&D at all and DMing, and every single player was new too. The railroading and simplicity was thus pretty nice, since none of us were really ready for the more complex stuff. I still wouldn't call it good or anything, even as a new DM I think some of my alterations were pretty good decisions.
I bet any of your alterations were great in comparison to what was originally written (or not written). I think every DM that runs HotDQ had to learn the hard way to start pencil whipping plot points.
Can we get a video, quick or lengthy, dealer’s choice, where you rank the premade adventures? I like the deep dives as well (this was very helpful) but I would also like to know which premade I should dive into
My first ever time dm'ing, I ran Curse of Strahd. It's dark with lots of fun lore and a very fun antagonist
Im gonna run either CoS or LMoP for my first time dming. Any tips or recommendations? First time dming (played dnd before) and first time players for my party
@@Thiccyg Strahd everywhere. Have him show up to taunt, congratulate, and/or test the party. And remember, he probably has more spells in his spell book than in his stat block, so feel free to pull out a spell he doesn't officially know. And one suggestion I was given is, if the players are invited to dinner with Strahd, perhaps Strahd has taken players family/friends/background characters and invited them as guests. These guests could be obviously in danger, blissfully unaware, or even turned into vampire spawn. There is so much you can do with Strahd alone
Also, it apparently has it's own subreddit: www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/
@@zoesequeira5388 oh that is just too good. Thank you!! Im going to have a loooooot of fun with this
How to Prepare to DM HotDQ:
Step 1: Find a red pen.
Step 2: Cross out 60-70% of the content.
Step 3: Write in whatever you need to make the story cohesive.
Step 4: Throw it away and run CoS or OotA or ToA or GoSM or anything else.
pleeeeeeeease do more module reviews. this was one of your best videos so far
3:24 "shades of grey with zero consequence to the story that may as well not be there"
*shows a pic of boruto*
well played, well played
kori228 Sarada best girl still
Davvy's hair gets better with each video
I don't want to go to Ohio. Please don't force me Daddy chappy.
Its the first campaign i DM’ed. My party got TPK’ed in the first episode. If you played this campaign, you know why...
I read the first chapter. It seems like the players should be at least level 3 before dealing with all of... that. Also, there is nothing stop a group of smart reasonable PC's just going "Fuck this" and leaving therby ending the main plot hook. immediately.
Yeah the first time we’re they are all 1stLv and they fight a adult dragon with no long rests I have been trying to fix this but I just can’t
Yup, my party all died at least once each (successful death saves, thankfully)
Had my first ever tpk with this module, for a little bit after I honestly thought I messed up while running it despite following the module best I could. Glad to see I’m not the only one
When we played this, we managed to talk the dragon into leaving. The DM said he was glad about that because fuck fighting the dragon
This was so deeply accurate to my experience of running this adventure. Vindication.
Feel free to do a review of Rise of Tiamat as well. Also I'd really enjoy a thorough breakdown of your changes. I'm nearing the end of Tyranny of Dragons now, but I'd still love to try it again in the future.
what major changes did you use?
I've got Hotdq/Rise of Tiamat as my 3rd tier campaign story. So I'd like to hear what alterations you went with.
Try with Tomb of annihilation. It's a blast for the DM and the characters will recive more than one blast :D
ToA can be a bit of a walking simulator, though. My favorite module by far is Curse of Strahd.
@@2MeterLP perhaps, but unless you are walking aimlessly through the jungle, you can ff to the next location. Also, the random encounter table is really great.
*my first reaction:* "Wait what? HDQ is sucky?"
*Midway through video:* "Holy S***! HDQ does suck."
*Davvy askes if he should tell us how to fix it* "YES!" *immediately grabs davvys hands and puts them on the cashcow's udders* "DO THE THING!!! NOW!!!"
Nail on the fricken head Davvy. I've always felt that most of the credit to the quality of 5th edition lands on the DMs, and let me be clear, it shouldn't be that way. If I play your game with the base mechanics and instructions and it isn't engaging and dynamic, something is askew. I think they've made marked improvements, but all my favorite parts of the game have been DMs ripping their souls apart to make a good time. It shouldn't be like that.
Just out of curiosity, is there an edition you feel does do that? (Black sheep idea, but I personally think 4th edition did that to a small degree, at least with just how much happened or could happen in combat, but the story being fun was 100% the DM's problem for sure, though I don't know how you could get away from that.)
@@ArcNeoMasato I don't think I've seen it with D&D but other games like burning wheel has done a better job IMO.
@@ArcNeoMasato 4th edition brought some cool ideas but in my experience it missed the mark because it is strictly a dungeon crawler when most players want more role playing than pure combat
I'll have to look into that system, thanks! And it missed the mark for sure in some ways. From my experience, most D&D editions do in some way. I've actually had the most fun taking 4th and 5th editions rulesets and mashing them together into a sort of 4.5 edition, but I also switch to other systems from time to time just because. lol
@@ArcNeoMasato haha, I ended up modding 5e and 3.5 so much that it barely resembles it in my group.
I really hope you keep this series up, no one seems to really review the modules and its hard to see from the outside which are great or crap.
More of these, please and thank you! I've run mostly homebrew and self-made campaigns for decades. My improv and creativity are on point, but free/prep time is lacking these busy adult-type days. I recently turned to Yawning Portal's Sunless Citadel to help catch my breath and it went over really well, but also illuminated to me how weak my module-fu really is. The insight of a seasoned runner into which modules are worth my limited time and how best to run them is and would continue to be invaluable.
I played one session of this module, there were only three of us and the DM gave us no guidance on character creation. So a bard, a monk, and a wizard were sent into a town being attacked by a dragon and there army. When our characters remained as neutral as possible so as not to die(we were hit twice nearly killing us each time) we were chastised for not single handedly saving the town. My dad who at the time had never played DnD watched the session and he could see it wasn't going well.
i love this. Not many (if any) makes videos about modules that is under 1 hour and is spoiler free. i always fear to be spoiled if i look for reviews, which would take the fun out of it if i were a player. i hope you make more of these videos of the other modules.
Man you gotta do more of this.
The editing in this video gives me vertigo. It's like he's making us experience the pain of this module with him XD
This is great. We need more of these reviews.
Honestly i love how you did this. Video! I would like to see a more involved review going over more plot points in later videos as maybe a spoilers be ahead section. As always great work my dude
Thank you so much for this video!! I’ve been looking for a series that reviewed the prewritten modules from a player perspective and wasn’t super spoilery. Would love to see more videos like this one! 😁
My DM decided that this would be her first adventure. We did do the whole storyline. Beginning was incredibly rough because she was new at the time and she was playing the book completely straight off the pages. Thankfully she learned fast that wasn't working and really worked on fixing the module. Rise things got a lot smoother and when we finished the adventure she told us she really had to gut a lot of the module to make it work. I still had a blast with the group because we made the best of what we had but I totally see why Hoard especially is always on the bottom of 5e adventure lists.
A lot of modules have the issue of a known City that the party isn't meant really be spending time in being on the map. Even Lost Mine of Phandelvar had the City of Neverwinter within a day's travel of its key locations, but when the players inevitably head back there, the module has no information on it.
So this might be my fave video you have done. Please please do more like this!! Getting insight from a professional DM on how this play, would def help to give confidence in my experience running a game. Knowing that others have issues with certain parts would be super awesome
I did the starter set then had the players delve into their backstory for 2 levels before bringing them to the hunting lodge. one quick interaction with Leosin filled them in on the storyline.
That legit sounds like the smartest way to go about playing HotDQ. You, Sir, are a genius.
I don't know much about this game, but it sounds like it would be less work to completely homebrew a world than try to fill in all the details that this book leaves out.
I might be running this soon and I NEED your wisdom Mr Chapster
This video is already a lot of help (even without a DM's guide), because it explains part of why my players are struggling through it. It plays off several of my personal weaknesses, such as what to do when the players don't want to follow the plot.
Can't wait to see davvy get hyped af at Ebarron: rising from the last war
Oh, yeah. A series i can get behind. I'm running a lot of modules lately to help me with the prep work, so i wanna know more.
11:12 "all of the other pretty great modules that 5th edition has to offer"
*Shows image of planeshift-Zendikar
Me: Yes
Based on how you describe it, it feels like a lot of Hoard was them going "Hey, old fans! Remember old thing?? Old thing back! Old thing good! Okay let's go see other old thing now!" But 5e brought in a lot of new players who have no attachment to Old Thing, and want to see New Thing.
Also like many others have said yes GM-focused reviews and more module reviews are hot requests. PLEASE do Storm King's Thunder, I love it and I've been studying it and it's my DREAM to run it.
Running it, we're but an encounter away to end the cursed 4th chapter.
Do cures of Stroud next
That would make for a great spell...
My table just finished up this module at our Adventure League nights (I know, I know, 'Ew, AL!') and you nailed it near the end: A good DM or a good party can make fun out of almost anything, but even to a party that is over half total-newbies to D&D, it was obvious this book was... not great. We had great moments!
...but we made those ourselves. We EARNED them. Also, we're running Storm King's Thunder next, so I"m excited for more of these from ya, Davvy!
Is this what Puffin Forrest was DMing in his "An Absurd Adventure"?
As a DM of this, I think we had a good time. Of course I rebuilt the whole goddamn thing; fleshed out the places, the NPC's and their relation to each other in the wider story while approaching individual player side missions and a "ritual killer" subplot in CH.4, but yeah. It's been good. I think if they had been more honest about being linear in design, with some side hooks sprinkled in, it would have made more sense than trying to create a "cohesive" module. I just "remixed" it, and used the pieces I liked thematically to hold it all together.
My youngest sister (18) (played as a stereotypical Dwarven barbarian, and played it well) was super addicted to Spelunky for a few years.
Yes that thing they find in a cave that the book says the players leave or destroy, one play took them. All of them. And thus the another side plot was made.
Im running this campaign for the first time for my regular group and I modified it to fit in to my Homebrew world do to a characters background. So far they are still on Chapter 3 and have nearly died 4 times but the rise and fall of all of it keeps my players in constant planning on how to progress. Honestly, Im kind of a brutal DM. Consequences are a big part of my gig and I allow the characters to roam and wander as they please. Recently they took the wrong route in the Chapter 3 cave and we had fight with 9 lvl 3 players and 5 Berserkers, Cyanwrath, and Frulam. Nearly half the group was downed and the other half struggled. They got upset with me because I had them fight them but then understood that I had them do nothing. They falled Frulam, Failed stealth checks, and started the fight. I can't wait to see where they take this next!
You had to wait until I finished the module before you talked about it. I literally finished it last week 😭
Rejoice! You can only go up from here now. The bad is mostly in the past.
@@Csrumk major facts
I would like more of this, please.
Module review? Don't mind if I do.
These are fantastic my guy!
That's why our game of HOTDQ is pretty much all homebrew story and character wise. We still use the dungeons because as you said they are pretty neat in the later chapters, but we have been off book for about 12 sessions. I've been reading up on each town they go to to make plot hooks and I couldn't be happier about it. We skipped the majority of the long haul north
You should do this more often, I would love to see your opinion on mechanics and magic items that appear in latter books.
on the bright side in a couple weeks Tyranny of Dragons (the storyline Hoard of the Dragon Queen comes from) is getting a remake, the two books become one and apparently Wizards are fixing some of the story trouble that Hoard had thanks to player feedback so yeah there is hope
I'm running this module right now. And we just got into chapter 4. The only reason one of my players is tagging along is he found a love interest in the greenests blacksmith I made. And now he's out to earn gold so they can afford a blacksmiths shop in waterdeep. It was heartbreaking for him to leave her and their adoptive kobold son. And I feel so bad for him that he won't see them for in game months when their relationship just started blossoming.
You could probably make mini campaigns with all those places in the book that would be more interesting and diverse than the actual storyline of the book
I remember Puffin Forest did a video on this campaign. Yeah, that first encounter is bullcrap
It could be very interesting. Having to fight a guerilla war using cunning against an overwhelming force sounds like something I like to play. But it's easy to overdo it, and the 2 weeks without long rest I heard of makes things far worse than they could be.
Great video! Do more of these, like out of the abyss!
Hey! I like that you're trying to keep it spoiler free, but maybe put some clips in talking about some of the modifications you've made. I love hearing about changes to hardcovers. Great vid!
Am roughly 20 sessions in and so far removed from the books that its basically a homebrew campaign. Moved the dragon nest from the bandit cave north of elturel and have the players find allies there to make an large scale attack on the cult.
I'm currently just on the beginning of chapter 4, thankfully I'm yoinking materials from other modules to boost it a little... still cant believe nothing is even spoken of about thr DAMN COMPANION FLOATING OVER THE SKY OF THE SECOND CITY YOU GO TO
To be honest, my group quit this Mod half way through.
Your group sounds smart.
I’m DMing this right now and 100% agree. I use the book as such a base line that if any of my players played this module with a different DM they would have a hard time identifying it as the same module. I have created plots and NPCs for each town and basically told chapter 4 to fuck off by giving like one random encounter between towns then sort of speeding them through the travel.
I honestly didn't mind your rant because everything said was solid and also emotional. As long as ranting doesn't become your Thing, I wouldn't mind more.
*The Writers made this campaign for Mystics*
Ideas for the long travel section: give the party a temporary traveling companion. A loveable scamp who, through events more or less out of his control, keeps getting in trouble.
Second idea: cultists. Keep sending cultists after the party. Either a constant stream of lower-level cannon fodder, or mini-boss characters with fun gimmicks and at least enough personality to be distinguishable from one another.
This is completely off topic, inspired by how angry Davvy got in this video... The next character that Davvy should try is a Joker based bard. I mean come on Davvy is hella crazy ( In a good way) freaking brilliant, hilarious as fudge, and twisted as a ball of snakes trying to get it on... Davvy I beg you play a Joker like bard you'd be brilliant at it.
Chapter 4 man... I am currently running HotDQ and this chapter man. My group FINALLY got to the halfway point after MONTHS (biweekly sessions due to switching between games run by me and another person) and one of the things my players decide to do is go into Dragonspear Castle. A literal demon invested hellhole. I tried everything I could to detour them. One of them being people constantly telling them that adventurers that go inside will die. Like, every NPC they came across who hears them talk about the castle mentions that it is a death trap. They completely ignore it. They buy equipment, they beat up a thug to find the black market so to buy a map of the castle, and verbally destroyed several shady dealers who over charged their goods. They were frick'n going and they won't let me stop them.
So now I have to basically invent a whole adventure inside their actual adventure. They are given three in-game days to explore and raid this castle for what it's worth. They are going to be facing the most unfair battles I can conceive so that I don't undermine my NPCs' warnings. It is going to be the most grueling and dangerous thing they had to ever face. And there will be mimics. So many mimics. I am going to make them regret trying to go into a castle that was suppose to be flavor text! Muwhawhahaha!!
I think a series of video on each adventure book is cool especially if it's two per book, one like this, the player perspective, and one like you said at the end, the GM perspective
Have you taken a look at the 5e remakes of Red Hand of Doom?
My friends and I were doing a sort of round-robin DM thing, where everyone got to run a game. Our main game was _Pathfinder_ , but I had been wanting to get into 5e. We actually decided we wanted to try converting _Fire Emblem_ to a tabletop system, and everyone pretty much unanimously voted that I'd be the DM for that. I wanted to try running a pre-established module of an existing ruleset to get used to DMing before the FE thing, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to try to get into 5e. And what better module to start with than the first one ever released, right? ...Yeah. Anyway, I more or less figured I had all I needed, but...we were used to playing on a grid, which wasn't provided for the first chapter. The closest we had was a map of Greenest. Which I tried drawing on a dry erase map. Which took so long we decided not to play. Which, looking back, was probably for the best if we were going to play _Hoard of the Dragon Queen_ .
Davvy Ranty... Lol
Naw you good boi, I know how some things can just be infuriating when you just want to love it.
Dis a good video Chappy! Don't beat yourself up over how negative it might have made you feel, sometimes that's just what we gotta do. If you are still feeling bad about it watch some of your other recent videos and listen to just how fun and happy you've been. Maybe not the unearthed arcana... Bad example...
I made the mistake of trying to run this campaign a while back, and while I got about halfway through with my players saying they REALLY enjoyed it, it got to a certain part where things were sooo specific on how it all needed to go that it just wasn't possible unless I took a whole chapter and went "CUTSCENE!" to everyone, and I refused to do such. I still have both halves of this adventure, but mostly just for info on the cult so I can use them in my own world instead of trying to follow this disaster.
Yeah, the 'thing you *should* destroy in the cave... we didn't. That thing became a good part of the group.
Dragon Heist is kinda the same way. "Oh hey, here's one of the biggest and most important cities in Waterdeep. What's that? You want it to be more fleshed out? I mean, there's all the companion books from AD&D to 4th Ed. Do we really need to rehash all that out when you might be able to find them on eBay or online PDFs? Or better yet, use your imagination!"
And they give you so much, and yet so little of it is actually used for anything more than a single cutscene. It has rules for a chase, and kinda counts on it happening, then one of my players with his storm cleric said "get over here!" and used his domain ability to blow the guy back to him so he couldn't escape and completely killed the chase right away. And then they got guns that I immediately had to super-nerf because they're pretty OP. Good for a mini-boss, terrifying in the hands of players.
On top of that, I've run this module about three different times with three different groups and had either a TPK or close to it every single first session. "You should start with level ones and - TROLLOLOLOLOLOLOL!" "What's that? Five kenku? What a bunch of punka - OH MY GOD, THE HUMANITY!"
I'm running this now. Make more HoTDQ videos
*first encounter is a potential tpk?*
Laughs in LMOP
We tried running it when it came out, first session we had a %300 fatality rate. We then started again with level 2, and it felt more reasonable.
How do you end up with a 300% fatality rate what
I am running a home brew campaign and a friend said it sounded similar to this campaign so I’m just taking some parts from this and we will see how it ends up
Dude you have to do these for all of them. I can't wait for the DM video!
My group ended the campaign several chapters early because our usual dm decided to be a player and correctly predicted that the final boss was in a certain cart. We ambushed it and killed it before it could take an action.
“The best edition of d&d that has appeared in years”... so you mean it’s better than 4e. Just say that then
"The best edition of D&D that has appeared in exactly 42 years"
@@DavvyChappy
Ah, the famous double down. Glad to see you fighting on that hill.
@@WandererInSpirit I took the dodge action.
@@DavvyChappy Rules-wise, I'd agree. In terms of cultural importance, I'd place it in third behind AD&D1 and D&D3e.
@@DavvyChappy ah, but your enemies are flanking you from all sides, so they attack without disadvantage.
Ive just finished all that travelling, and yeah the riding shotgun next to cult the whole time lead to a lot of " wait while we're doing all this, what are the cult doing?"
Dm: nothing much
*coooool cool cool cool
I love these reviews of modules. I enjoyed ride of Tiamat so I’m excited to hear your thoughts.
I’d also like to hear your thoughts on Storm King’s Thunder, it’s my personal favourite module
Please review more modules. I loved this video.
I definitely agree that this module is very linear and has an unnecessary amount of filler. As you said, a good DM can make this a more enjoyable experience. If I’m ever running Tyranny of Dragons, then I usually grant a bonus feat and give them an extra level boost at certain points to give a more heroic feel.
It is interesting to watch a party go full out hard mode and attempt this module with rangers only and no DM gifts (especially early in Hoard of the Dragon Queen). Your players have to be okay with the idea of death and absolute frustration if they want to do this. This group of mine just wanted to raw dog the adventure with as little advantage as possible and made it through Hoard and a little pass the halfway mark in the Rise of Tiamat before life happened and the group had to split ways.
The other modules are phenomenal, but I had some great memories with Hoard. Great review 👍
I’ve run this module. I proceeded to have my players do Episode 3 while doing Episode 2.... by splitting the party. Only reason I didn’t kill the 2 glass cannons who were doing Ep 3 was because I purposefully under powered it since the end of Ep 2 has them keeping a very small number of enemies in the location of Ep 3 because the party finds them.
The real problem in chapter four that you needed to add another 10 days of traveling to make it perfect
"I hate how much work this campaign makes me do as a DM"
Runs it four times
this was cool I hope you do one on curse of strahd
and the dm vid to fix it would be awesome
Davvy chappy are you the sand guardian, guardian of the sand?
Another thing I'd probably add is making the first encounter something unrelated to the main plot, y'know get character dynamics down. and then your first encounter related to the cult should be something like "We recently suffred a Kobold attack, while not uncommon... this time they came en mass and behaved strangely, we sent people ahead to clear the den but no-one has returned" creating a fun little dungeon crawl where most of the traps that Kobolds are infamous for have already been set off, do some sneaking around, maybe find a war room where the kobold tribe leader is talking through a crystal to one of the dragon generals.
Oh God I was planning to take my group thru this after we complete Phandelver. I wonder if there's a revised PDF of HotDQ I can get online.
My DM introduced an NPC named Underwood, who gave us a gold dragon egg and 3000 gold for the things that were found and supposed to destroy in the cave
can't wait for the other modules
I hope they revise this eventually because it sounds like it could be a good module
So Im running this campaign right now. I started everyone at lv 3 which helped balance things out. But then they went to free prisoners at the bandit camp and decoded to explore the cave beyond WHILE THEY STILL HAD THEIR PRISONERS AND EVERYONE WAS STILL THERE!