My gaming group wants to play some 5e. We're all old school players who started with B/X or AD&D back in the 1980's. We had played some D&D 5e one-shots around the time 5e first came out, but lately we've been playing more OSR games. But now a few of my players want to play some high fantasy 5e over the next few months, mainly as a break from all the deadly OSR dungeon crawls we've been running.
I own several of the WotC 5e hardback adventures, but never ran any of them. I've heard that the early 5e adventures such as Tyranny of Dragons and Princes of Apocalypse are notoriously user-UNfriendly to run. I'm considering Dragon of Icespire Peak from the Essentials Kit, but while it seems much easier to run, it also seems very simplistic and bare bones, so I would probably want to add more content to it. Which is fine, but I was hoping to find a 5e adventure or two that is complete and ready to run right out of the box. We also want to start PCs at level 1.
Non-WotC suggestions are welcome. Besides Dragon of Icespire Peak, I'm also considering the Fifth Edition Fantasy line of adventures that Goodman Games started putting out in the early days of 5e. I've come across a few of these recently, and they look pretty decent. They're short and seem to be meant for one or two sessions, but it seems like it would be easy to string several of these adventures together to form a small campaign. And they also seem non-woke, which is nice.
So, in 2024, what published 5e adventures out there are worthwhile? What 5e adventures has everyone here enjoyed playing?
Phandelver for something easy to run.
Curse of Strahd and Tomb of Annihilation are cool but messy.
Avernus looks cool but very linear, haven't played it.
Fifth Edition Fantasy is a bit vanilla but can work for something simpler, usually a session or two.
One important thing to remember is that all 5e modules have extensive fan-made tools that are extremely useful. For example:
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2020/09/curse-of-strahd-guide-part-iii-minimum.html
Thanks for the reply Eric. I forgot to mention, my players have already played Lost Mine of Phandelver. They've only played a small handful of 5e adventures, but the orginal Phandelver was one of them.
Curse of Strahd looks good, and seems to get the best reviews of the 5e offerings, but we want something more traditionally high fantasy. We had alot of grim/dark/death experiences playing various OSR adventures over the years. So we're looking for something a bit less grim and gothy this time. We're passing on playing Shadowdark for now because of this, though we intend to play it sometime down the road.
"Swashbucklingly heroic high-concept high-fantasy" is the mood we're looking for. I know that some people knock on 5e for being more of a superhero game, but that's kind of what we want to experience, at least for a few sessions.
Fifth Edition Fantasy could work, then!
ToA has some classic trappings (hexcrawl, traps, undead, elves, dwarves, dungeons, dragons, the tomb itself) but also a jungle/dinosaur setting that I am not sure you're looking for.
Icewind Dale could work...
I haven't tried the earlier adventures, since I heard they are badly written, but they are probably closer to traditional D&D.
My general recommendation is to run old school (pre 2e, preferably) adventures and just use the 5e monster stats. ;D
Dragon of Icespire Peak is the only 5e adventure by WoTC I've run that actually played decently (Lost Mine of Phandelver has now crashed and burned three times, I think it's cursed!). You'll need to flesh out the town NPCs of course; far be it from WoTC to actually provide a functional starter town. Forge of Fury in Tales of the Yawning Portal is good, but unless you can buy the 5e version separately (eg on Roll20) I'd say get the original 3e version in PDF & swap out the stat blocks. The 3e version has much better drawn maps, and is cheaper.
Odyssey of the Dragonlords is good if you're committing to a multi-year Greek fantasy epic. It's VERY "Swashbucklingly heroic high-concept high-fantasy". My favourite generic fantasy 5e adventure book is 12 Peculiar Towers from Kobold Press. Like Dragon of Icespire Peak, they consistently run very well in play.
I have read many favorable reviews, of Tomb of Annihilation.
I'd say Tales from the Yawning Portal. You get a variety of different adventures to consider, for different Character Levels.
Buy used, and don't give WOTC your money.
Run the Red Hand of Doom. Full campaign from 3.0, you end up watching the town you protect get destroyed, travel to towns, fight a desperate last ditch fight to protect the vale from the Red Hand of Doom and ultimately have to square off against Tiamat. A lot of people like it.
One I'd recommend is The Undying War, published by Troll Lord Games. This is a 5E conversion of a campaign originally created for Castles & Crusades.
https://trolllord.com/product/5th-edition-role-playing-a0-a12-the-undying-war/
Another is Empire of the Ghouls by Kobold Press. I haven't run or played this one, but one of my groups did before I joined and they seemed to have a blast with it.
https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/empire-of-the-ghouls-for-5th-edition/
I DMed and played through Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat and it was alot of fun. But the players went very off Kobold Press' script both times.
Curse of Strahd is actually not bad if you ignore some of the stupid wedged in there.
Tomb of Annihilation is ok. It meanders a little and it is the first module I got that had the now notorious wotc incompleteness to little things.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is really good. But it has rampant incompleteness. Most in the carnival section. Otherwise it is a low combat romp great for new players and players who want more interaction.
I have Descent into Avernus and it is my least liked of all so far. Ha;f the book is a sourcebook on Baldurs Gate and the module itself can be really railroady in unpleasant ways. It is also another module where wotc lied about the contents and the much touted Mad Max style hellrides are not even actively used other than maybe one maybe encounter.
One of my DMs got Phandelver and Below and hated it. A: It repeats the Starter Lost Mines module. And once it wraps that up the quality nosedives. It feels like it was written by an AI. Its that nonsense a tale. It is also horribly presented once past the Starter adventure.
If Swashbuckling High Adventure is what you want, then check out Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Adapted from AD&D's "U" series. It starts out with Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, which has the players exploring an abandoed "haunted" house and ends with them fighting pirates and possibly getting a ship.
The books then you several nautical adventures of increasing difficulty but does not force you to railroad them into doing the "adventure path". There's even a section for generating nautical encounters and creating mysterious islands. There is also a sizeable chapter on running sea travel, providing several ships (with deck plans) and some fantasy upgrades for ships.
If you aren't happy with the campaign you could have the players sail to Chult to do Tomb of Annihilation. Or there's the adapted Isle of Dread book from Goddamn Games (if you can still find it) and don't forget to have a look at The Tortle Package which gives you an island adventure along with an optional playable race: Tortles.
Tomb of Annihilation is a Hexcrawl through the Jungles of Chult, which is infested with Dinosaus, undead, and even undead dinosaurs. As well as some old AD&D favorites. The areas in the wilderness are sites that the players can explore. There is a ticking time clock but you can ignore that part if you just want to romp through the wilderness. The finalé is a lost city, snake people, and a multi-level dungeon filled with tricks and traps, then a fight with the undead fetus of a god, and a lich with a Sphere of Annihilation. Fun times!
Quote from: S'mon on February 16, 2024, 12:35:31 PM
Odyssey of the Dragonlords is good if you're committing to a multi-year Greek fantasy epic. It's VERY "Swashbucklingly heroic high-concept high-fantasy". My favourite generic fantasy 5e adventure book is 12 Peculiar Towers from Kobold Press. Like Dragon of Icespire Peak, they consistently run very well in play.
Where Odyssey of the Dragonlords might rub the OSR purists wrong is that the characters start out as the heroes of prophecy, and are given a god-in-nominal-disguise as an extra DMPC to guide the characters along the course of prophecy and save them if they get into trouble.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on February 16, 2024, 08:28:03 PM
Run the Red Hand of Doom. Full campaign from 3.0, you end up watching the town you protect get destroyed, travel to towns, fight a desperate last ditch fight to protect the vale from the Red Hand of Doom and ultimately have to square off against Tiamat. A lot of people like it.
Yeah I ran that in 5e. Excellent campaign up through the final city defense. In retrospect I'd end it there, the temple assault epilogue is a huge anticlimax by comparison. The great thing about RHoD is that the PCs are the underdogs, on the defensive, for the whole campaign until the end of the city battle. It feels like you're in Lord of the Rings or Dragonlance. After that battle they're now the overdogs, on the offensive like in any normal campaign, the mood shifts, and player interest wanes.
Quote from: Naburimannu on February 17, 2024, 06:03:48 AM
Where Odyssey of the Dragonlords might rub the OSR purists wrong is that the characters start out as the heroes of prophecy, and are given a god-in-nominal-disguise as an extra DMPC to guide the characters along the course of prophecy and save them if they get into trouble.
Yes - and I started my group at Level 3 since the campaign theme is 'Hero To Demigod To God', not Zero to Hero.
Quote from: S'mon on February 17, 2024, 07:38:20 AM
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on February 16, 2024, 08:28:03 PM
Run the Red Hand of Doom. Full campaign from 3.0, you end up watching the town you protect get destroyed, travel to towns, fight a desperate last ditch fight to protect the vale from the Red Hand of Doom and ultimately have to square off against Tiamat. A lot of people like it.
Yeah I ran that in 5e. Excellent campaign up through the final city defense. In retrospect I'd end it there, the temple assault epilogue is a huge anticlimax by comparison. The great thing about RHoD is that the PCs are the underdogs, on the defensive, for the whole campaign until the end of the city battle. It feels like you're in Lord of the Rings or Dragonlance. After that battle they're now the overdogs, on the offensive like in any normal campaign, the mood shifts, and player interest wanes.
I put the devils immediately into the game leading the hobgoblins and dragons. And I had an NPC discuss about shutting down the gates of hell to stop this for goods to keep the anti-climactic part down. When the citizens of Drellis Ferry attack the city as zombies, it kinda lets the party know this isn't going to end there.
Quote from: S'mon on February 16, 2024, 12:35:31 PMMy favourite generic fantasy 5e adventure book is 12 Peculiar Towers from Kobold Press.
Thanks, I hadn't heard of this one before. What did you like about it?
Quote from: Crusader X on February 17, 2024, 06:06:31 PM
Quote from: S'mon on February 16, 2024, 12:35:31 PMMy favourite generic fantasy 5e adventure book is 12 Peculiar Towers from Kobold Press.
Thanks, I hadn't heard of this one before. What did you like about it?
They're just really well done! Good maps (worked great both at table and on VTT), interesting opposition, just the right level of detail. Some Kobold Press stuff gets bogged down in Midgard setting cruft, these stayed nicely generic. Super easy to drop into my Damara FR campaign. Tone varies a bit, but they're pretty solidly in an heroic fantasy vibe.