Quote from: RPGPundit;973723Is Goodman doing 5e stuff?  I hadn't paid any attention, and assumed they were all-in for DCC.

They do 5e modules.

Quote from: RPGPundit;973723Is Goodman doing 5e stuff?  I hadn't paid any attention, and assumed they were all-in for DCC.

I bought one of their 5e modules. It was utter garbage IMO, worse than most of their 3e-era DCCs.

I was just venting to my Sunday 5e group today about Tales From The Yawning Portal - the adventures per se are good, but the 'conversion' appears to add absolutely nothing to the two I'm running (Sunless Citadel & Forge of Fury) - I might as well use the 3e original. In fact most of the maps are so shrunken that I *have to* use the original 3e maps just to see where the bloody doors are!

Certainly doesn't make me want to buy any other 5e WotC adventures.

I generally find with 5e that converting 0e-3e and OSR stuff is the way to go.

I've really liked the AiME books so far, so much so that I prefer it over vanilla D&D. My biggest hope now is that it someday delivers on a solid version of the High Elves. While I really like TOR and think it does an excellent job of nailing Tolkien's stuff, that's the one area where I feel TOR failed utterly. C7 tried so hard to balance the Rangers and High Elves with the "regular" cultures that they ended up making them the weakest options. Given how unhappy a lot of people were, I'm hopeful that we'll see better versions in the future and that's why the High Elves weren't included in the AiME player's book even while some of the newer TOR cultures were. They did a good job of making the Dunedain "better" in AiME in some ways but still balanced.

Quote from: S'mon;974160I was just venting to my Sunday 5e group today about Tales From The Yawning Portal - the adventures per se are good, but the 'conversion' appears to add absolutely nothing to the two I'm running (Sunless Citadel & Forge of Fury) - I might as well use the 3e original. In fact most of the maps are so shrunken that I *have to* use the original 3e maps just to see where the bloody doors are!

Certainly doesn't make me want to buy any other 5e WotC adventures.

The whole point of Tales of the Yawning Portal is to introduce those adventures to newer players and save some time for those experienced GMs too lazy to do the conversions themselves.

Not sure why you would expect them to 'add' anything. It was made quite clear these were to be faithful adaptations of the originals. Seems to me you have no one to blame except yourself for buying it without even a cursory review of what it was you were springing for.

Quote from: Voros;974183The whole point of Tales of the Yawning Portal is to introduce those adventures to newer players and save some time for those experienced GMs too lazy to do the conversions themselves.

Not sure why you would expect them to 'add' anything. It was made quite clear these were to be faithful adaptations of the originals. Seems to me you have no one to blame except yourself for buying it without even a cursory review of what it was you were springing for.

Well I got hardcopies of Sunless Citadel & Dead in Thay which I didn't have before.
Like I said, I'd have expected the new presentation of maps etc at least as good as the originals, not worse.
Reasonable 5e stat blocks would have been nice, too. As it is I'm still having to do the same sort of stat work I'd do converting the modules myself. There are some (I think) new stat blocks at the back, but none have come up yet, it's all been "this enormous bloated giant rat has 16 hp, CR 0.5 and attacks at +5" (when normal rats have 7 hp, CR 1/4 & attack at +4). I still had to do most of the statting for that rat in-play; decide on a reasonable DEX for a bloated rat (10), set damage (d6+3, being medium size with a +5 to hit I'm thinking STR 16) etc. Kept AC at 12 but based off blubber not speed. Not hard, but I could have done that off the 3e stats just as well as what they gave me.

I did look at it before buying BTW. I wasn't looking for brand new adventures. It wasn't initially obvious how inadequate the conversion is (IMO).

The starter set is the best part of 5e imo. Feels like a little starter sandbox.

But then I havent bought any of the hardback adventure paths, because, well they're adventure paths. I understand from some reviews that some are a bit more sandboxy however (referred to already in this thread)

Best thing from WotC, Basic and the Starter Set.  Phandelver suffered from being too tied in to the artificial Living Campaign structure with the same Political Factions everywhere, but it was still a good starter module provided you gave it a makeover.

Best thing from 3rd Party Publishers - Cubicle 7 just destroyed the competition with Adventures in Middle Earth.  
Scarred Lands is serviceable, but some of the setting elements didn't port over very well, especially the different Corean orders, etc.

Anyone take a look at Mithgarthr: A Dark World of Treacherous Adventure?

Looks interesting. They're obviously giving a shout out to Warhammer with the subtitle.  Kind of looks a little like the setting of Shadows of the Demon Lord if the Demon Lord was Orcus and the world was a quasi-nordic dark fantasy fighting the forces of Chaos.

Quote from: S'mon;974188I did look at it before buying BTW. I wasn't looking for brand new adventures. It wasn't initially obvious how inadequate the conversion is (IMO).

I see what you mean then. I got it more for the older adventures as I want to run Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Tomb of Horrors in particular for my group of D&D newbies. I haven't noticed such sloppy conversions but haven't had a chance to run them yet.

Quote from: Voros;974249I see what you mean then. I got it more for the older adventures as I want to run Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan and Tomb of Horrors in particular for my group of D&D newbies. I haven't noticed such sloppy conversions but haven't had a chance to run them yet.

It does make me think I should pull out some more of my 3e-era stack of modules and run those in 5e. This is the second time I've run The Forge of Fury - first time was using 4e rules - and certainly running in 5e is a breeze, even though I'm using very different levels than the recommended ones (3rd level PCs in Sunless Citadel, 8th-19th(!) in Forge of Fury) and still challenging them just fine. I've noticed that with Paizo stuff too, I'm currently running Seven Swords of Sin, written for 7th level 3e PCs, with a 12th-14th level 5e group who have been finding it pretty tough.

Best so far. Starter Set and Lost Mines of Phandelver. Why is it good. It's a simple (but not simplistic) sandbox adventure with plenty of opportunities for fun roleplaying and exploration. It captures what D&D is to me, and my players loved it.

Not so good. Everything that followed afterwards. 200+ pages of borefest "campaign" adventures. If you are not Masks of Nyarlathotep or GPC please don't do that. Keep it short and sweet.

Quote from: John Scott;974279Best so far. Starter Set and Lost Mines of Phandelver. Why is it good. It's a simple (but not simplistic) sandbox adventure with plenty of opportunities for fun roleplaying and exploration. It captures what D&D is to me, and my players loved it.

I think I'm the only person who didn't like the Starter Set!
I think my problem is with Phandalin - it's both a "starter town" and adventuring location, yet it's undetailed except as a quest hub. The NPCs only exist as videogame-style quest givers. No personalities, no stats. When I tried to run it I found there was nothing to bring to life, not even anything to spark off of. Even 4e-era WoTC did better; eg Loudwater in the the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has several NPCs with a fair bit of personality, and the presentation is much less cramped. Hell, even Keep on the Shadowfell does better! Paizo's Sandpoint is a work of genius by comparison.

Quote from: S'mon;974280I think I'm the only person who didn't like the Starter Set!
I think my problem is with Phandalin - it's both a "starter town" and adventuring location, yet it's undetailed except as a quest hub. The NPCs only exist as videogame-style quest givers. No personalities, no stats. When I tried to run it I found there was nothing to bring to life, not even anything to spark off of. Even 4e-era WoTC did better; eg Loudwater in the the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has several NPCs with a fair bit of personality, and the presentation is much less cramped. Hell, even Keep on the Shadowfell does better! Paizo's Sandpoint is a work of genius by comparison.

My group had plenty of roleplaying with the npc's. There are plenty of hooks in the adventure. The interaction with the red hoods, a doppelgänger NPC who wanted to join the party and spy on them, the shady mayor, the cultists at the ruins etc.

I played the adventure with 2 different groups and each time the interactions between PC and NPC where entirely different and with different outcomes.

I only need a small paragraph for each npc and a hook, the rest I leave it to my imagination and more importantly to my players.

Quote from: S'mon;974280I think I'm the only person who didn't like the Starter Set!
I think my problem is with Phandalin - it's both a "starter town" and adventuring location, yet it's undetailed except as a quest hub. The NPCs only exist as videogame-style quest givers. No personalities, no stats. When I tried to run it I found there was nothing to bring to life, not even anything to spark off of. Even 4e-era WoTC did better; eg Loudwater in the the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting has several NPCs with a fair bit of personality, and the presentation is much less cramped. Hell, even Keep on the Shadowfell does better! Paizo's Sandpoint is a work of genius by comparison.

I suspect the reason is that WotC didn't want to overwhelm noobs with too much information that isn't needed to learn the game. It would be interesting for them to create a Phandalin supplement with that information added for more advanced adventures.

Quote from: John Scott;974279Not so good. Everything that followed afterwards. 200+ pages of borefest "campaign" adventures. If you are not Masks of Nyarlathotep or GPC please don't do that. Keep it short and sweet.

I don't have 5E, so I may be incorrect, but I think the problem with those adventures is both being that long and being story path campaigns. The story path model can be effective in something that lasts a session, but a campaign long story path is a long time to keep the players on a railroad. Some players do like that kind of structure, but others are going to feel trapped in it after a while.

By contrast, Masks is an investigative sandbox that that can followed up in any way the players choose and resolved in a number of ways. It also has number of loosely connected side adventures the players can pursue or ignore. The Great Pendragon Campaign does have a more linear structure, but that linear structure is dealing with larger events. The players own lives and family dealings provide them with a lot of freedom. The secret to a good campaign mega-supplement is to give the players a lot of room to move inside it.

Quote from: Marleycat;974025I wonder if including half casters as an option would ruin it? As is I'm not particularly interested in it because unless you're an angel there's no real option to use straightforward magic of any kind. Then again I'm not a big LotR fan. I would prefer an option to allow in the Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales and History of Middle Earth but it will never happen because of the utter bastard in control of the Tolkien estate. To me LotR is just a tiny part and/or particular story taking place inside the actual setting. It has the same issue Dragonlance does in that it's makes a particular story about a specific group and era into an entire setting. It's doesn't work for me and ridiculously limited. At least Dragonlance could be played in different eras and was completely updated in 3e and can be easily updated in any direction preferred in 5e by WotC. Then again LotR is low magic which is something I rarely like and never like in a fantasy setting though the movies were awesome but not a setting I'm particularly interested to play in just not the target audience obviously.

The book, production values and setting? Top notch because C7 always does stellar stuff like Goodman Games. C7 does the books(and setting such as it is)pure justice.

I think Middle-earth is broad enough as is to run a 1st or 2nd age campaign with AiME. I usually run Middle-earth games in the 4th Age. There is enough going on and enough details in the books that I don't think it's that hard to adapt and because Middle-earth is low-magic it's easy to get into and not have the campaign run away from you.