Which D&D adventures should you play? (2022)
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- čas přidán 26. 06. 2024
- wow thats a lot of adventures, which ones your favorite?
FABLES: ghostfiregaming.com/XPtoLevel...
A bunch of the music I used in this video is by Travis Savoie! Go check him out! / rpgmusicmaker
TIMESTAMPS:
Introduction: 0:00
Lost Mine of Phandelver: 3:06
Tyranny of Dragons: 5:12
Princes of the Apocalypse: 6:35
Out of the Abyss: 6:50
Curse of Strahd: 10:08
Storm Kings Thunder: 14:32
Tales from the Yawning Portal: 16:41
Tomb of Annihilation: 18:16
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: 22:08
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage: 27:18
Ghosts of Saltmarsh: 28:36
Dragon of Icespire Peak: 31:34
Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus: 32:48
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden: 35:05
Candlekeep Mysteries: 39:05
Wild Beyond the Witchlight: 40:46
Strixhaven: 40:53
Call of the Netherdeep: 42:22
Final Rankings: 42:55 - Hry
Tales of the Yawning Portal
Cons:
- Just Dungeon Crawls
- Uncompelling
- Can be very Slow
- Tomb of Horrors
Pros:
- Meepo the Kobold
10/10
Honestly yeah a lot of the other dungeons look like they can be a slog but the Sunless Citadel was so fun when I ran it in my game.
My group that I am a player in ran sunless citadel and then did the rest homebrew and Meepo is currently our traveling companion
Our group had Meepo die in a raid against the goblins :(
My group saw Meepo and instantly killed him, crit Eldritch blast.
damn that’s true
The motivation makes sense for Lost Mine. You see your employer's dead horse at the goblin ambush, you know your employer is missing, you wanna get paid, go find your employer. That's a very clear goal for beginners.
In the book I’m pretty sure it says you still get paid if you deliver the goods to the store. Also I think you’re only getting paid 10 gold. I mean both of those things can work if done right but just how the book is it doesn’t make sense
@@totalcrane3370 Maybe your players want to actually be heroes though.
Yeah, and I think some of the pre-written characters are also family/friends with the employer. I've never had any problems with character motivation running it
@@totalcrane3370 Make a very slight alteration: you won't get paid unless your employer arrives. Boom. Your life for 10 gp, LET'S F*CKING GOOO
Also all the pregens characters have backstory motivations to be in and around the area
I feel that all the adventures that have the “Dont you wanna solve X?” Such as tyranny and Descent are solved with proper communication and a good session zero to set the mood of the adventure. I always share some synopsis of adventures and what Im more or less looking for in characters, but in non specific wording “I need trouble makers.” “I need hearts of gold.”
I agree. Though I'm playing Tyranny rn, and we're up to Rise, and while I know "yeah Tiamat will probably destroy the world I live in, I should try to stop that from happening" I also don't feel very invested in my character or the world particularly. That does come down to how I play, how others play, how the dm runs it and all of that, but I feel like only the general connection to the plot of "in one of the idiots who lives in the world, I don't want it destroyed" is still quite loose
Yeah, to my groups, it feels a strange objection. When we've turned up to play a pre-written campaign we've all already agreed to buy into the premise/hook of the campaign. Pre-written always means less free choice than homebrew if you want to get the most out of these campaigns.
I used to stress out about motivating the characters as a DM.
But now I believe that it’s the players’ job to come up with a motivation for their characters and to buy in on the adventure. DnD characters should generally be heroic people who want to do good.
Yeh, when I run specific adventures, it's "make any character you want that WOULD BE INTERESTED in resolving these issues that this adventures presents". I also quite like the anthology books. My group/s aren't super heavy RPers or super deep into DnD, so having shorter plots that require less long-term commitment or being deep into character are ideal.
While I agree with OP and the other replies here, there are better ways to motivate players than the very common premise of "Something bad is happening, maybe you can stop it". Players should definitely be buying into whatever the plot hook is, otherwise there is no adventure, but the people writing the adventures could put in a little more effort to present things that are more personal to motivate characters, or start with small things that eventually pull the characters in to the larger story.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist for example, starts with Volo approaching the players seeking help finding his missing friend, with a reward of some gold. After they accomplish the task and return for their reward, they are given a rundown manor. They get some time to work on repairing the place and some more small quests to earn some more coin and reputation with various factions, then the fireball hits right outside their newly repaired manor. Now its personal, since their property was just threatened by what happened, so they have motivation to look into it. That's when they learn of the reward that awaits them at the end of the adventure, which is then the motivating factor for the remainder of the adventure.
Lost Mine of Phandelver starts with the party being hired to escort a caravan of mining supplies to Phandalin. They happen upon some dead horses in the road, which they recognize as belonging to the person that hired them, and are then ambushed by goblins. They can reasonably assume their financier was attacked by those same goblins, but there is no body, so they have reason to go looking for him. Otherwise, they might not get paid, and they can probably demand some additional reward for rescuing him. After rescuing the captured person, they find out more about what is really going on and are easily pulled in with the promise of even greater rewards for helping. Dragon of Icespire Peak uses a similar opening premise - the characters are just taking small jobs to go warn people in the surrounding area about the dragon and are getting paid to do it. Over the course of these adventures, they become more experienced and are eventually able to confront the dragon directly and claim its horde for themselves.
But starting your adventure with "demons are attacking the city, maybe you should do something about that" is going to prompt some players to just say, "nah, I'm good. Someone else can deal with that. Let's go somewhere else instead." unless the players have a vested interest in protecting the city, such as the manor in Waterdeep, which is why replacing the beginning of Descent Into Avernus with a modified version of Dragon Heist's opening is a good way to motivate the players to get involved.
Spencer seems so much more relaxed.
But also, the pyramid in the background gives her a little party hat :)
@@icarus2112 same
Woohoo! Sith Party Hat!
is it just me or is spencer like a thousand times more comfortable infront of the camera now than the first D&D adventure ranking video
not just you lol
She's avoiding eye contact with the camera but yes. Still more comfortable than the last time.
Confidence and comfort would naturally develop over time she has made much improvement good for her
Spencer has been upgraded from young boy wife to pregnant wife and the new title has boosted confidence
It"s because she has a party cone on I bet.
I feel like a lot of the cons that revolve around motivation and "expecting the characters to do X and Y" can be solved by having a session 0. Sly Flourish always makes these guidelines that basically say "be sure to make a character that has the motivation to save Icewind Dale because that's the whole point of playing this module". If you want to play a character that doesn't want to go kill monsters, well then... that's gonna be rough for everyone
I love this idea, thanks for sharing
Yes but you can homebrew any fixes to an adventure. It should still be there regardless. If combat sucks, NPCs suck etc the DM can fix it. Still not good its not there
I was lucky for tyranny of dragons our dm decided we do lost mines first and he had it the opening of tyranny was that phandelan got attacked couple of months after lost mines was completed. Seeing the town and people there get destroyed by the cuilt was a huge motivator for our party to put a stop to them.
The Tyranny of Dragons subreddit has a lot of info on making that story better, including what your dm did. I’m planning on doing the same thing.
thats exactly what i did in my campaign but it was the lich from Tomb of Annihilation
There is a dm guild module to connect both LmoP and ToD
@seitagosha you have a link to that? I'm about to run lost mine this weekend and would love to have that for the next year.
For Lost Mine, I ran it as if Gundren was a close friend to the group who asked for their services, and the reason they went and investigated was because the goblins mentioned the Dwarf while attacking. So to them, it was like their friend was in a mining expedition and they uncovered some big conspiracy to keep the mine a secret.
I love how Spencer has gone from cute girlfriend in the videos to a badass wife who keeps this goof in check
It's a natural feat progression.
It's that mom enegry developing in her too
Also she has a little triangular hat! :D
She's getting him back for the book and staff hits.
@@Minilena lmao
6:30 For those interested in *Princes of the Apocalypse,* I've been running it for about 8 months as a DM and here's a brief overview - This book as it's written is a fixer-upper and many DMs will tell you, but at the same time the game itself is really good in my opinion. The main issue comes from it being adapted though multiple editions where the main objective was just a big dungeon crawl and the developers of 5th edition decided to add an overworld and it sometimes expect the players to leave the dungeon to leave one place to completely different area.
Another problem is that the formatting of the book can be confusing cause it seem to overfocus on some parts and underfocus on other. *However* it has some really great and underrated lore behind it, a lot of diverse interaction whether it's combat, social, mystery, siege. You have plenty plot hooks included, you can easily run it as follow up to LMoP, DoISP, or even WDH like me. And if you're a DM that habitually tinkers with pre-written campaigns, this one is perfect for this. You can even seamlessly include stuff from other campaigns like SKT or Sleeping Dragons Wake.
Overall, despite it being one of my favorite campaigns, my honest opinion is *RAW DMs - 4* or *Tinkerer DMs - 7,5*
I've ran it before and my advice is to have the cults interact with each other. eg, earth cult sends an assassin to help the players attack the air cult, or desperate cults work together to defeat players.
I appreciate that you mention Sleeping Dragon's Wake! I got DoISP and the follow-up adventures, and I'm a little curious about Princes of Apocalypse. I'm still only really starting to DM, so I'm nowhere close to tinkering with pre-written adventures, but it might be worth keeping in mind.
I've also pulled out bits of the dungeon and run them separately in my own campaign (e.g. transplanting the Cult of the Eternal Fire) and that works quite well too.
@@ilanwallace2220 That is actually in the book. It gives the general relation between each cult and their leaders. I had my team save a water priestess from the fire cult, as well as few other interactions where one cult either gave hints or bargains to cripple or undermine the other. It's a great campaign for DMs that like expand on what can happen in such environment outside of Battle X many member of Y cult. I even made the relatively small duergar and orc involvement to escalate into something much more epic while still adhering to the original story.
@@PhantomRoxas If you're a relatively new DM, this might be a bit tough for you, especially since it's easy to either unintentionally railroad the players early on or give them too much info. The module is very open and while certain areas are designed for certain level, the module allows you can go out of order and adjust the difficulty, which is something for a more experienced DM.
I still recommend looking into it because I really grew to love the lore as well as the potential for all the diverse stories. Maybe you can do a bit of a mash up of DoISP and PotA.
This could not have been timed better. I'm new to DMing and I have been looking at some of the published adventures over the past few days, trying to pick one to run for my friends. This is so helpful!
Oh, it could have been timed a LOT better. He uploaded this on April 1st. Who knows what is true today?
In my personal opinion rime of the frostmaiden is perfect for new dms, it starts off very flexible and comprehensible with handles quests and exploration. Then after a decent amount of sessions it branches out to even more interesting locations
I HIGHLY suggest the Essentials kit for new DM's. Its a fun adventure that is super great to run as a new DM. First game iv ever run was with it and it was awesome!
Same actually
If you're new to DM'ing, I'd recommend a different game called Blades in the Dark. It's not D&D, so fair enough if no interest, but it asks the GM to keep track of much less, and help build a cinematic story with your players, rather than for them. Just have a look and see what you think, but I will say it was specifically designed to allow players to pull off slick heists in a city of crime thats a lot like Dishonored's setting. And it was designed to require 15 mins of prep for GMs sooooooo
Having run it all the way through several times, I really feel like you're sleeping on Lost Mine of Phandelver. Sure, it's not the most unique plot out there, but it pulls off its interconnected story threads and character connections really well, and uncovering the mysteries of the region was satisfying with each group I ran it for. The opening does suffer from lack of player character motivation, but I've found that adding a small scene playing out the moment where Gundren Rockseeker hires the group worked wonders for getting my players to care about finding and helping him. Once you get past that, the rest of the adventure is incredibly well written and extremely enjoyable (far more so than the Essentials Kit, in my opinion)
100% you have to set up the party's connection to both Sildar and Gundren and then things come together. You can either do it right at the top of the game (if you have an RP-heavy party) or after the first Goblin Ambush (as a flashback. "You stare at the horses. You saw these horses two days earlier, outside the tavern... your mind drifts back and you remember...") If the characters care about these NPCs, the plot works. And yeah, it's what someone who has never played D&D thinks D&D is. Goblins, Orcs, Undead, dungeons, and a dragon.
The book specifically recommends setting up PC ties to Gundren and of course the DM should be working with them to build a connected backstory, but I think it also still works just fine if the characters just care about getting paid as that's the primary hook. Their employer was captured by the goblins. Once they track that down, they don't find their employer but they do find Sildar and then he offers payment for rescue once they get to town. If they don't care about Gundren and don't care about getting paid, then they're not making any effort as a player and that's a bigger problem. I never really see it as the adventure's job to provide motivation to the character. To me it's always up to each player, working with the DM, to determine why their character is interested in the adventure that they, as a player, have decided to play.
There's no direct motivation to clear out the rest of the cave after that if they find Sildar before Klarg, but he should be asking them to clear it out to help stop the raids, or suggest coming back afterward as that is a goal of Sildar's. It isn't written in but given that he offers rewards for many other things, he could offer one for that as well. He also immediately introduces the other major plot threads of Iarno, Wave Echo Cave, and Cragmaw Castle and then, once in Phandalin, offers rewards for following up on these things. If they decide to go to Phandalin first, Barthen makes an appeal to the party to help find Gundren and also talks more about the goblin raids and points them to Linene, who is missing goods of her own that she will pay to receive, sending the party looking for the goblin cave. I think a less good but more selfish could still have good motivation even without any characters ties.
For a split second I thought that pink triangle in the background was a party hat she was wearing.
I can’t unsee it
I saw a photo of Putin recently with the same thing! There was an orange triangle on the wall behind him, and I thought he was wearing a party hat.
It's a Sith Holocron from Galaxy's Edge
Since they talked about 5 years here, I was like oooh they dressed up! Good I was not the only one.
Same
I think lost mine of phandelver is really simple and it has literally every type of villain. I think is good as a starting adventure, and in general, butt i think i am byass because i had this as my first game ever of dnd
I think I see what you did there
Black Spider needs a bit more depth and he should use the drow mage stat block.
@@thebaron2277 I made it use the Drow mage stat block and it worked fine
In this instance, your bias doesn't make you wrong.
I agree. With a bit of plot massage, the Black Spider can be a very motivating bad guy. Just leave bread crumbs that connect all of the bad things that happen to him.
I’m running Mad Mage (currently 17th level). I created an artifact for the party to find on level 1. It lets the party use the gates through the levels to teleport back to the surface. Each level has a purple gem they need to find to add it to their artifact to activate the gates of that level. Then there is a secret gate beneath the yawning portal that Durnan only gives use to trusting adventurers. Having the option to go back to the surface and back down at their own pace significantly improved their enjoyment of the game. Highly recommend this homebrew.
If you want to try Dragon Heist with all the villains, I highly recommend the Alexandrian's Dragon Heist Remix.
We all know Jacob and Spencer are going to give Tomb of Horrors a 10/10
My group has been enjoying dungeon of the mad mage, part of it is just managing how each level changes after you leave it. They were getting used to using the second level as a sort of hub for all the gates, but due to the faction they sided with, a group of high power criminal agents have set up shop and they may be having some more trouble getting in and out going forward
I've nearly written a book about Descent Into Avernus. Short version:
-An adventure as written 4/10 railroady and nonsensical.
-AS A SETTING GUIDE 10/10 the stuff of legends.
A setting guide on Baldur's Gate, I might add. The stuff on Avernus is rather subpar in my opinion.
As a DM, what I think Curse of Strahd really shines through is that once you're off the initial rail-road to get to Vallaki the setting is large enough that the players can do what they want and you as a DM can be prepared for that without being overwhelmed. Besides Vallaki all the other zones only have 2-3 NPCs which is easy on the DM yet they're unique and developed to a degree the party can get really attached to them or feel huge joy to finally off them. And Strahd is by far the best BBEG of any published work so far.
One day Spencer's going to be running the channel and introduce Jacob as her husband and father to her child and we'll come round full circle.
I will say, the modules' quality is pretty largely based on what the DM wants to do with them. I finished Out of the Abyss recently and had an absolute blast because my DM enjoyed the module and added a bunch of homebrew to it. It was the first module we went through, and I'm excited to play Strahd next. 🤙
Props to her for doing that as a first module. I'm DM'ing Phandelver as my first module and I'm even struggling! To be honest, making the game fun and run smooth is quite ok: the hardest part is remembering the grand storyline because you don't want to make NPC's say things that break the story.
Little tip for anyone running Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
We had a bit of a rough session 1 going down into the dungeon after having an incredible time in Dragon Heist.
Next session I brought some graph paper and started mapping out the dungeon as we went and it completely changed the campaign. Took out the tedious bits and just made everything really fun again. Especially whenever we would learn about the general direction of something we were after, then we had a map and could actually make informed decisions.
I honestly dont think it's runnable without either doing that or giving them the player map (which as a player did not interest me at all, would take out the fun of exploring and could have ruined some of our great rp moments had we known the general layout.)
That's a very old school way to run it, and actually makes the exploration fun.
I’m currently running Ghosts of Saltmarsh right now and I honestly think it’s one of my favorites. The way the book is set up and the information given can set up a lot of intrigue in politics and motives. It is open ended but connected just enough to tie everything together leaving a ton of room for improv and homebrew. The info you get is enough to create an idea on what an area is supposed to be but leaves some things open on purpose. For example there is a wizard tower close to Saltmarsh which was mysteriously engulfed in green flames one day and the wizard just disappears, and you get to choose why and how that happened. But just my opinion and I personally love the setting.
the triangle thing on the shelf made me think spencer was wearing a party hat for a second there
i never thought Jacob would fall prey to the Multiple Mines Fallacy. 😔
What is that?
@@mrdrprofsteve4455 The Starter Set adventure is called 'Lost Mine of Phandelver', but it is exceedingly common for people to somehow make it 'Lost Mines' in plural.
I love Storm King's Thunder. I ran it for a relatively proactive party. They love to follow up every little hook and poke at the setting a lot. This is a great campaign for that kind of group. You get to be big damn heroes and killing giants is rad. The Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide is very useful for a GM who wants to fill in gaps. Not necessary though.
To summarize the #1 criticism, I think Jacob wants much stronger starts from the campaigns. He seems to really need strong hooks and motivations. Honestly, this is the #1 job of a session zero. This is not really the campaign's job, because it doesn't know who the characters are.
This is why Jacob loves Rime of the Frostmaiden and Dragon Heist but doesn't like Storm King's Thunder. RotF provides more starting material.
To fix the Curse of Strahd "old bone grinder" tpk issue you can just say that the witches aren't there when the players go to visit if they're under leveled .
There's not much to be gained for them there anyways and if your party decides like mine that the windmill's gotta go and they set fire to it , they've just created a powerful antagonistic force that's gonna result in additional random encounters.
We definitely need a whole video on Dragonheist vs Strahd.
Was super happy to hear all the music from Travis Savoie, extremely talented guy
For those wanting to run Descent Into Avernus, I HIGHLY recommend checking out the Alexandrian Remix.
It helps patch up the Baldur’s Gate segments by turning them into a mystery that slowly reveals Elturell’s fate.
I also recommend running The Fall of Elturell as a first session. You can also run Escape from Elturgard as a session for the players moving towards Baldur’s Gate.
Last note, buy the DM’s Bundle if you’re planning on running it online. For the love of God, do not buy the Roll20 module if you already own it physically. It’s only $10, and the maps are colored and are much better quality than the book
So are you saying that I'd be better off buying the DM's bundle of the book for $15 and then implementing it all into Roll20 if I want to run it? I'm thinking of eventually running this campaign on Roll20 and am curious
@@michaelstoecker9761 yes yes, and YES!
The maps are of a much higher quality than the module’s. I was running those until my party TPK’d.
You also get a few supplements to upgrade your experience; like the enhanced fiends pdfs and a one shot that starts off in Hell. You also bet detailed noted
And this is all for $15, versus the module whoch is another $50
Old Bonegrinder is supposed to be a TPK trap in order to set the tone of the campaign early on.
It doesn't need to end with everybody dying, tho: I used it to make some fiendish deals with the Party and it was definitely worth it.
My players went there and all almost died. They now understand they can't just go anywhere and be fine. It made Strahd scarier to them as well because they assume he's many times stronger than the old ladies they almost wiped to(and didn't even kill). Great placement and great tone setter!
When our group played the game completely blind, we left the windmill alone until we were much higher level, just went the other way. We were very weary of what we thought were either powerful witches, or hags.
Eventually we came back and ambushed the lone hag selling pastries (which we bought some when we first encountered her) in one of the towns and killed her in the surprise round.
Then we planned and executed a SWAT-styled raid of the windmill and ended both the other hags, having lost most of their power by not having all three of the coven together.
It is definitely a trap if you don't know what you are dealing with.
I kind of feel like that’s a bit of a cop-out considering 95% of the time you have to go through death house first. Meaning CoS give you *two* “haha it’s supposed to be a tpk because spooky setting” in a row not to mention the big vamp himself showing up just to style on the players and being basically untouchable. Don’t get me wrong, from what I’ve seen and heard CoS is really good but I feel it falls back way to much on “no no this encounter is supposed to be insanely one sided because horror.” And I feel there are better ways to go about it….or maybe I’m just salty cause my werewolf blood hunter was somehow ambushed by 5 Werewolfs, spotted one and not the other 4 and died because of it.
Lol, we had a group go in there and straight up MURDER those hags. Big group, tactical play, and I was an ilithid, so I got to eat hag brains.
10/10.
My players have literally walked passed it three times . Yet they go to yester hill and climb over the rocks and light the statue on fire but they ignore a windmill XD
Hell yeah! Been wanting to hear your updated opinions on the campaign settings!
Gotta love that both Jacob and Spencer haven't changed at all in terms of Waterdeep vs Strahd haha
i'll admit, my favorite thing that i did so far in Icewind regarding the Chardalyn dragon is when my Aberrant Mind sorc utilized Sending and her sapphire dragon mentor's scrying and sending to inform the tentowns about the dragon and the routes it was going to take once we found the map. we were level 7 when we ended up doing this, and so i ended up using most of my high level slots and was carefully utilizing my sorcery points and slots as we treked through, meanwhile the dragon was distracted by a hunting party and the rest of the tentowns evacuated.
cuz of this stunt, a lot of the towns were able to anticipate the dragon's arrival, evacuate folk, and minimize casualties, but in exchange i wasnt as useful through the dungeon itself. it was an incredibly fun and tense series of sessions as we went down in the fortress with very minimal high-level blasting, before we eventually caught up with the dragon and had a final standoff with it in Byrn Shandaar.
I as the DM approve this message :P (except for the spelling of Bryn Shander :P)
@@msteerie spelling was NEVER my strong suit :P
I'm watching this acting like I know exactly what they're talking about when I really don't 🤣
DnD and similar games like warhammer 4k are so interesting to hear about.
I wanna get into it eventually so these videos help a lot
D&D is also like pathfinder 2e but it’s kinda different but 99% the same game rules and mechanics but when you learn to homebrew your games everything is d&d
I was the same for sooo long. But then over covid lockdown I DM'd Icespire Peak and Dragon heist for some friends over discord. I'm now a player in a Curse of Strahd campaign. So if you want to get into it, my advice is go for it! Look online for groups, if you are struggling locally.
>warhammer 4k
lmao
@@packmore9561 In the bleak dusk of the somewhat far future, there's probably pretty much war.
I was pleasently surprised, when i heard "call to adventure" from the waterdeep soundtrack from Travis 😁😁👍🏻 i also used it in my campaign
Greetings from germany !
U two Rock 💪🏼🤓
Love the intro! always nice to see your vids
My take on your current rankings: I’ve been playing d&d since the early 90s, and it seems the adventures you like the least or take the most issue with are the ones that feel most like “old school d&d”. Ive run OotA, DotMM, and SKT along with some of the newer ones (currently doing WBtW for a group of newer players) and me and my groups had a blast! I will say that I am a huge FR lore nerd, so the open world aspect of SKT was fine for me. I recognize it requires a lot of the DM to keep it from being stale (much like the copious NPCs or slog of travel from OotA) but for me that’s the bit I enjoy and had years of experience with. For DotMM, I think it’s all about party and player expectations. I purposely built a player group that is composed of very strategic thinking, tend to be min-max capable players who enjoy a challenge as much if not more than RP. I made sure they knew from the outset that this was a massive dungeon crawl, and had the potential to be extremely deadly. DotMM DOES require a lot from the DM in crafting a plot, as written its more like a campaign setting than an actual adventure with hooks and a plot…but again thats just peachy in my book.
If you are going to run OotA or DotMM I would suggest trying to find players that enjoy the more strategy and resource management side of D&D and who enjoy difficult challenges and needing to make more optimal decisions in game. I would also suggest as a DM running a completely different campaign concurrently so you the DM don’t get bored. For me I ran OotA and SKT at the same time (OotA with my strategy group, SKT with my RPers) and currently running DotMM and WBtW concurrently with different groups. It works well to prevent burnout behind the screen.
finished waterdeep dragon heist a few months ago and it was so good, my dm changed it as well to include all of the villains, but mainly focusing especially on the Cassalanters, and got rid off the three things that u had to collect. certainly my favourite dnd campaign I’ve played so far and I hope to be able to run it too
The contrast between you both is fantastic, fun couple to watch!
“What’s my motivation to do (blank)” always feels so entitled. You’re a hero. You chose to play D&D. You want to fight monsters and stop bad stuff from happening. That’s your motivation. It’s not my job to make you care, it’s my job to do EVERYTHING ELSE lol
Edit: That’s just my opinion. I really liked the video 🤙
Lost Mine of Phandelver is like the first level of a video game. Nothing too complicated, but it gets you on the right foot for better things up ahead.
Great coverage of all the adventure books. This is very helpful 😁
First off, good reminder that I can't wait to get that book of low-level adventures that I kick-started.
I’ve actually been thinking about playing a module for a bit. Very well timed.
I'd highly recommend Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden. It has the perfect amount of sandbox without being too open ended.
YAAYY!!! So glad y’all came back to this video list! I think perfect amount of time between too so chefs kiss to ya!
I like these types of videos, I always refer back to them whenever I'm thinking about running or playing in a new game. Great content!
Moving the Old Bonegrinder to Krezk is a decent concept, since it could introduce a dilemma for the players if Krezk runs out of food and the old ladies become the only source of food for the village. However, anyone reading comments should know that just about everybody on the Curse of Strahd subreddit and discord for DMs thinks that starting your party off in Krezk is a terrible idea and shouldn't be done unless your party is replaying the campaign.
I am a new Dm, and Im running my players through Dragon Heist, they will get to chapter 3 in a couple of sessions (we just played 10th session). I plan to run all 4 villains. Im using the Alexandrian version. Its more complex than the book, but soooo much deeper. And its not just a stone, its 4 parts.
Great idea to use Travis' soundtracks. The IWD tracks are some of my favorite themes ever.
Finally! Another video I can have in the background to listen to four times a week.
I am just starting decent into Avernus with one group (today is session 1) I run and I am finishing up beyond the witchlight with another that we started with tyranny of dragons but my players weren't really feeling it. Then we switched to which light but honestly got bored with it. Hoping for the best on Avernus. I am taking your advice and skipping chapter one and doing my own thing that will take them down to hell.
Oh yea I also ran curse of strahd but sadly that group fell apart. Was a great campaign though. Got 10 sessions in and only one character died.
How to get the players to go to hell:
Session 0: FUCK YOU BALTIMORE-
Look up the revised version of Anernus. Such a better version from the book. I'm in a campaign now and really enjoying the city part so far. Just my five cents on that module.
Maybe try a different system, if you’re having trouble finding a D&D thing that sticks? Like Dungeon World, or WoD if they like da spooky
Regardless hope that new campaign goes well!!!! 🤗
Yeah, we tried out Descent into Avernus about six months ago. Our DM hadn't looked too much into what the module throws at you in the first chapter beforehand, so we just saw his eyes go wide as he sat there and saw what we were forced to deal with from the start. He had to nerf a lot of the early encounters, so we didn't get picked apart immediately
@@ChuggaFan95 yea I am trying to avoid that. I have 4 players and 3 our brand new. I'm not going to put them through that chaos haha. Baldurs gate is pretty pointless I rather they be able to actually explore it. So I came up with a different setting I will then tweek into Avernus.
I'm in a party running Tyranny of Dragons and our DM basically gave our characters some backstory involving the Cult, meaning we actually had a reason from session 1 to fight against them, which i think its a good way to solve the issue of the party not caring about the threat.
I’m playing tomb of annihilation now. 5th session in and I’m loving this adventure. Port Nyanzaru is super exploration based and we’re doing a lot of side quests. I’m so excited to see where the story goes.
Yo, XP to level 3! It's my birthday today and I just received my order from twisted taverns! You guys really made my day with your product you have no idea how happy I am right now!
Thank you so much for this! I took the second highest donation level btw. The modular tavern is great!
Special thanks from me in Paris, especially after the crap school day I had.
Man I've been DMing for 24 years and I ALWAYS. WANTED. THIS VIDEO. Seriously every edition has like a hundred adventures and half of them are a solid "mid" so thank you for doing the leg work!
For me, Storm Kings Thunder provides more of a setting than an actual planned story. I think of the giants like the dragons from Skyrim, they turn up now and again while you run your own adventure throughout the north. The party can decide to the tackle to giant problem on their own terms so they can “complete the main quest” of SKT that way. It’s definitely more of a world resource with a bonus storyline, in my mind
That's one of the best "What are you talking about?" I ever heard. Love final minutes, feels like hearth-warming sitcom. Love u both!
Great reviews on the books, also nice background music!
Death House gets a bad rep even though my DM made it one of my favorite dungeons ever, lol. The insane difficulty made it incredibly compelling and kept our attention the whole way through.
I love the idea of Storm Kings Thunder because the story is cool, and giants are really cool.
Fully agree
If you're not well-versed in the whole Sword Coast, it's a real pain to run. It's definitely an adventure that's best if you plan on homebrewing in more content. As a new DM, the writing was bad and confusing, the amount of research I had to do to properly describe places was crazy, and the pace was all over place. I'll be happy to never touch it again.
I have run it for two groups despite not having a huge grounding in the Sword Coast. It was cool. I had a good time. There are some substantial story issues: 1) The DM needs to provide motivation (although there are plenty of groups who would want the giant attacks to stop)
2) The main antagonist has almost no interaction with the party. There is nothing to encourage the DM to foreshadow their presence. But without it, the final fight is just... random.
My fixes would be for the DM to introduce sight of the antagonist at various points, for the DM to make a point of making one of the organisations pay the party to investigate and for the major NPC (Harshnag) through the second act show up as soon as the party starts to lose momentum.
@@richardkirke For Harshnag, instead of it being arbitrary, make it the point of their quest. Instead of « find a solution to giant’s attacks » they could quickly hear about him and the quest becomes « Find the giant that has a plan to stop the attacks »
Great vid. Just what I was looking for! And congrats with the little one :D
I love Spencer's haircut!
Congrats on the kiddo, y'all!
As someone who has run about a third of Wild Beyond the Witchlight as a DM, I can give a general feeling to it.
As a foray into the Feywild, it feels like the refrain to Strahd in many ways. Its start is very much whimsical and has the feeling of the Feywild in the very start. A very cheerful and great start and my players loved its start with the carnival. What does and does not occur in the Carnival leads into the next 3 sections of Witchlight heavily. I'd say it's not too easy for mechanics-based players or people who want to do combat constantly, or players that are averse to roleplay. WotC played this as a campaign where you could never do combat and there are signs of this though it would be hard to do it in some places. The three main villains are really crazy and I had fun thinking up how to roleplay them. There is so much fun in store for this campaign and if your party loves roleplay it's great! I can see the campaign hitting a slow point at the second major section of Prismeer but immediately hit a high note in the final dungeon. It's entirely built as well to take place in ANY setting including your own!
Pros:
Fun roleplay based campaign
A unique adventure that doesn't feel like any of the other ones
Great recommended hooks to get players into the plot
You can run it in many ways that are freeform and really fun and wild
The main story is really simple but it's very good for it!
Cons:
Can be rather difficult if you are battle-hungry, especially if you choose to start at Level 1 instead of 3.
Very roleplay heavy and a decent amount of work for the DM. I would not recommend it if you are a new DM.
I'm currently running WBtW, my first as a baby DM, in the second "chapter" of the adventure. I told my players in sessions zero that this was a combat optional campaign, but all of the players who had played DnD before neglected to recall this information, its only the brand new to DnD player that remembers. Seems my vet players just want to fight everything out of habit.
I'm half tempted to get a Candlefoot tattoo tbh. The Carnival is that good as a first chapter - minus Ellywick.
The first DnD game I ever played as the Dm with newbie players is Out of The Abyss AND I STRUUGLED. I had no idea what to do, neither did my players. I remember how I tried to run a combat encounter with like 30 npcs and I struggled so much I just skipped it. We still had fun but that was due to the fact that my players had fun roleplaying with each other. I'm still traumatized
Out of the Abyss is just NPC overload taken to the extreme. To future DMs of this adventure, take the opportunity to remove from the adventure or kill the NPCs you don't like early. Eldeth and Topsy/Turvy are good options, and so is Ront.
Yeah, you have to kill off some of the less interesting NPCs during the escape. My advice? Pick the NPCs that you find the most compelling, try and pick plot armor for the ones you want to explore more, and pen with the demon attack on the slave prison, kill the others, unless your players grow really attached to one you don’t really care for. Do your best to endear the ones you like to the party. I know that’s cruel, but it sets the tone well.
Congrats y’all glad y’all have this channel.
My dm used Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak to lead into Tyranny of Dragons (two of the four party members started in Lost Mine, and then we played toss away characters during Icespire to get our two other players up to level for Tyranny) and it really helped establish the motivation when the cult and dragon attacked Phandalin instead of just a keep. Definitely interested in Waterdeep Dragon Heist and Tomb of Annihilation.
*Dragon of Icespire Peak* is my favorite D&D purchase solely for the physical hand-out cards describing conditions.
REALLY helps out new players to understand what different conditions do!
Same
I ran Waterdeep: Dragonheist for some players, and I have to agree with Spencer about the Fireball sequence being awfully confusing. My players were genuinely about to go back inside and ignore the plot hook entirely, before I stopped the game and told them that this was the start of the murder mystery portion of the game. They also struggled to pick up what they were supposed to do after the encounter chain portion, but that may have been on me for confusing them a little with the roleplay. In the end, it did feel kind of like a bumpy road, but hey. It was kind of funny when a player accidentally boned Jarlaxle (hat of disguise will do that to ‘ya). They also loved the Doom Raiders, more so Davil and Yagra, but there were fun memories all around.
'Accidentally' uh huh suuuuure. Like any of us would pass up the opportunity to do the dirty with that smooth mo' fukka. just sayin
@@J2982able Nah, I mean it. He was under his Zardoz Zord disguise and the player genuinely didn't know. We had a good laugh over it later, though.
@@lisaradtke5669 Lol aight aight, but I'd still pass that insight check and go "Jarwhoo? Welp, to bed we go!" 🤣
Wow. I never knew how much I wanted a sequal to this video!
that end of the video XD love it
I honestly thought Spencer was wearing a party-hat!!
Me to
She is wearing a Britney Spears mic though
Can you do a video kinda like this but for the source books? Like which ones had actually good stuff in them vs stuff you didn't like, which ones implement well into campaigns and world building, I think that would be neat
Loved your video 😀 really wanted to here some sad piano during the end for some reason 🤣🤣
Idk why but I love rewatching this video so much
I was glad to hear that you guys are enjoying Icewind Dale! I'll have to check that livestream out. It's a super underrated book in my opinion, I just recently made a video examining its opening sandbox and what new DMs can learn from that, which was quite fun to do!
Descent into avernus is easily my favorite campaign I've run for my players out of the adventure books. Like they said, the baldur's gate bit is awful, but everything past that is amazing. The characters have a ton of depth even before players are considered, Zariel is an incredibly compelling villain. You have choices on choices as a player and they all matter, not to mention the crazy encounters and vehicle combat. Even though lulu is basically just a story device/party companion they actually wrote her pretty well. For me avernus is easily a 9/10 I'm writing a whole continuation because my players loved it so much
Thanks for the content! I don't play DnD anymore but it's still nice to listen about it every once and awhile :)
It's interesting to hear your stance on Lost Mine of Phandelver. It was the first adventure I ever ran as a DM, for a group of players that were also all new to D&D. Six years later the campaign is still ongoing, and Phandalin is a place the party goes back to visit from time to time. They own Tresendar Manor and have renovated it to be a pretty nice place. The NPC's they originally met there often are recurring characters (including one who has grown into a main rival/villain role over time), and it's just overall a comfortable place both myself and the players love returning to.
The overarching module I continued with past that book was Storm King's Thunder, which I also have immensely enjoyed. However, as I've gotten more comfortable DM'ing, I've splashed in plenty of homebrew and other adventures into the mix; Yawning Portal, Candlekeep, etc, so that probably helps too.
Great video though, love the discussion (and possible motivations for which books to get next)!
Having played Wild Beyond the Witchlight myself in AL, I have to say that it's quite enjoyable. The fact that you can complete the entire module without having to enter combat is great because it promotes creative thinking. Personally, I'd recommend a Wild Magic Barbarian, a Circle of Dreams Druid, a Wild Magic Sorcerer, or a Archfey Warlock if you really want to theme your character to have a stronger connection to the Feywild.
One of my favorite moments from this adventure was when my enlarged Fairy spiked a Tiny Hag into the ground from 100 feet in the air, only for a dollhouse to then follow suit and fall on top of the Hag as well. Totally Wizard of Ozed her.
My experiences with these games very I've only really DM'ed two of these which is Lost Mines of Phandelver, and that eventually led into Curse of Strahd but both of them turned into a world that I home-brewed, didn't have a great experience it seems like my group is just cursed when it comes to curse of strahd a friend of mine tried to DM it oh, and I have tried to DM it twice all the time spending pretty much in failure I still like the module though and hope to run it properly one day. Out of the Abyss, I've only played in a campaign once where the DM ran this adventure it wasn't in my normal friend group and ultimately first session my Profane Soul Blood Hunter died, and then I played a Twilight domain cleric who also didn't end well because the DM was running every game he DM'ed for like a meat grinder he even brought in another player from a campaign to try and kill the party and it worked the last time the pudding King was already killed spoilers and replaced by a DMPC who the party encountered prior we were literally all Lambs to the slaughter because the DM didn't want to DM Out of the Abyss anymore and instead really just gave us a bad experience. Waterdeep Dragon Heist I've played a consecutive two times I played a ranger in the first place through which abruptly ended because the DM didn't want to DM anymore, and the second time was with the DM from the Out of the Abyss game in which I played a Mutant Blood Hunter who I put a lot of effort into making a character the DM did not give a shit he ran it like he did Out of the Abyss he ran it like a meat grinder, I eventually left the campaign due to work restraints but left as style doing one of the most memorable moments I will remember forever as a player, and really those are my only experiences with the games oh, I really want to run ghosts of saltmarsh when I have the time but as of now I'm currently dming a tal'dorei game and the players seem to be having fun.
Thanks for the insightful commentaries. It helps me to have other viewpoints to consider strengths and weaknesses I might have missed. One request... When you put up the text summaries, let them stay up long enough to read! :) A good place to start is 5 seconds, longer if there are more than 4-5 lines of text. Thanks!! (I do video a lot for various organizations, and this seems to work best in my experience...) That summary page...15 seconds, definitely!
Loved the lost mine. Nice start
Storm kings- go conquer or side with each giant faction. Then go to the end
Mad mage- on level 4. Great so far!
i got bought DOTMM as a gift and now i'm thinking :
what if i ran both at the same time (have each player make 2PC's and have events trigger in the dungeon that affect the current story of Dragon Heist)
At first I thought the Pyramid above Spencer's head was a party hat....
This is almost like a guide for which adventure to buy, and I love it. Personally had to choose between Tomb of Annihilation and Decend into Avernus and I chose Acererak cause he is kinda an OG villain and it sounded a lot like the tomb of horrors(I love dungeon crawls) so I went with it. Not what I expected but still great! And this video really made me consider buying Decend into Avernus. But tbh I will probably get the Spelljammer set when it comes out(should be 16 August) it’s my second favorite setting to Faerun and me and my players need something different.
My friend ran a campaign inspired by Arthurian lore, and he managed to fit Descent Into Avernus perfectly into his campaign. Our party adored Lulu, and we even managed to split the party in two, alternating sessions for each half of the party. That does mean I can't really judge the opening Baldur's Gate section, but I think my DM showed how the Avernus story can be added to your own campaign.
I've been running a weekly game linking all of the Candlekeep Mysteries modules together as a long campaign and have had a great experience with my players over the last 6-8 months. Love the mystery and intrigue that can be found within the book. Though not as connected itself as they are designed to be run as one-shots making Candlekeep a main hub where the players gain prestige and rank makes an overarching story quite compelling.
I'd rank it myself around an 8.5/10.
Doing the same thing and it's rad.
I’ve been running Princes of the Apocalypse weekly for nearly 2 years. My biggest complaint is also the thing I like best about it: it’s written like a series of dungeon crawls. There’s little connective tissue establishing the major thematic elements. Basically what that means is that if you want an RP heavy narrative campaign with lots of intrigue then there’s a large onus on the DM to fill in a lot of gaps. If you want dungeon after dungeon with lots of combat encounters then it’s good for that.
Second biggest complaint is that because the campaign is very non-linear and dungeons aren’t run in a fixed order, it’s easy for encounters to start feeling one-sided very quickly as PC’s out-level the dungeons. A good DM would think ahead and rebalance encounters before each session. I’m not a good DM, so I just fudge the enemies hit point totals and have them begin fleeing when they loose their normal hit point total because it keeps it more interesting and memorable. On one occasion, an unimportant named NPC that only had two sentences of backstory and was 5 levels below the party ended up creating quite the spectacle just because I gave him 20 extra hit points and an extra spell slot in order to try to get away. When he tried fleeing by using stoneshape to make a wall to get away with his life, the party counterspelled him. When he counterspelled the counterspell, the party counterspelled his counterspell. At that point I just had to let them have at him and release their inner murder hobos.
I am also currently running Princes (they are about to finish their 3rd of 4 dungeon in Chapter 4, which was not done in book order). My biggest complaint is the main adventure hook of the "Lost Delegation" should be referred to as the "Lost Storyline" as characters spend most of the lower level dungeons asking, "HEY HAVE YOU SEEN THIS DELEGATION... THAT I THINK WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE LOOKING FOR?!?!?" And then, later they're super upset with the cults so they're off to save the world and by the time they find enough of the delegates they're like, "Oh yeah... you guys. Uhh... run to the nearest town or something. We've got bigger problems now." I'd just try to find a better, more thematic way to capture the PCs interest.
Other than that, I have had fun running it. It was only my second module ever (I cut my teeth on Phandelver and DM from time to time in a West Marches game I created with 2 other DMs), but I appreciate that this game has really challenged my DM skills. I've put a lot of prep work into deciding which side quests to run and which to cut out (like all of the level 1-3 stuff was cut, except the moving stones and lance rock, which I felt were good for story purposes and they were scaled up). I had to fudge encounters. I created barriers and Mcguffins to prevent my players from walking into dungeons which would TPK them. And I took a loosely threaded plot and tied it together. (At one point, at the end of Chapter 3, the goodly knight Sir Exposition had to show up and call them back to Red Larch so Sister Garalae, whom was escorted with the party from Phandelver could share her research on the Desserin Valley to provide some context, but we've made it work.) All in all, I think the module gets more hate than what it deserves as there's some great combat encounters in here and the end of the campaign gets insane.
@@New2DM2 the delegation hasn’t really been a driver for the story in mine. It’s come up 3-ish times and the players have never remembered it was a hook. What got my players on the line is that the unofficial group leader is an earth genasi playing as an earth sorcerer, and the opening chapter kind of set the party strongly against the earth cultists. I’ve thrown a couple side plots in involving a demon who turns children into ghouls and the party warlock’s patron having the warlock turn on the party (they were bored of their character and it was incidental that I had machinations planned with their patron already).
The levels of confidence from starting way back when is amazing. Stand your ground, good job.
There are loads of great pieces out there, many in downloadable pdf, from old publishers like Dragon Mag and Judges Guild and a few others. No knock on the new stuff, not one bit. But Tegel Manor for instance is the greatest over-the-top funhouse style adventure, not to mention possibly the best map ever created, Judges Guild did some of the best maps ever. You can even take bits and pieces of various adventures come up with some awesome hybrids. Under the Storm Gian's Castle, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Sword of Hope, all have great stuff, and truly, re-statting baddies to 5e is not that hard. Good stuff as always Jacob, see ya at a Con maybe sometime!
I would've made a much better Dungeon of the Mad Mage if only those coast dwellers hadn't stolen the name...
Fireball traps everywhere
Here we go again
I hope the ones who understand find this one, NOT THE 2 GOLD COINS!
Currently reskinning Lost Mine to work in the Theros setting. It is now, “The Lost Forge of Purphoros” and I did have to find ways to write in motivations for the party to want to participate in the different quests by tying them to the main villain more. I also took elements of “No Silent Secret” from the Theros book, and cut anything I thought was boring or too unrelated to their quest. I think the adventure is cool bc it is really easy to change and flavor for whatever campaign you are running.
Wow I literally was watching the old video yesterday and left a comment and was hoping for an updated version and today I see this.
The one consistent thing I hear about Curse of Strahd is "It's a very awesome adventure, but the fight with Strahd was a total pushover."
I hate this mentality so much. If a DM knows how to run strahd, he's one of the deadliest bosses in 5e. Those lair and legendary actions along with a smart strahd make him extremely strong. Strahd is not a punching bag, he should be very very mobile.
@@humant3206 Yeah, I ran three groups against Strahd. Using his Lair Actions, especially, he essentially can't be hit while he picks off players. I have no idea what these other DMs are doing, but my guess is they run him like a bag of HP, and he really, really isn't.
@@humant3206 my dm used a beefed up version of him since we were a 6 player party. All but 2 of us died and we killed him
@@joshuafurtado2299 I mean it's not that hard to upscale a caster boss' stats, or just play smart with their lair actions
Stealing my ideas again, I see
Just finished running Waterdeep Dragon Heist and we're continuing in the setting with cannabalized bits from the other seasons. I ran as much from as many of the villains simultaneously as I could, love the adventure and the resource for Waterdeep as a city.
i love Spencer’s little party hat haha