First-time DMs can do amazing things. I've seen them make wonders from published adventures that other more experienced DMs have trouble running!
D&D 5E Which was the most recent Wizards adventure you consider a classic?
- Thread starter MerricB
- Start date
Chaltab
Legend
That's one of the reasons I hate the Planescapey urge to make the Outer Planes infinite. How do you map infinity?
Especially when they can canonically consume parts of other planes that match their alignment too strongly; just say they get bigger over time as needed.
Dragon Heist is a weird one. It's one of the ones where I feel the authors bit off FAR more than they could achieve. Some of it is stunningly ambitious, and some actually works (I still think the first chapter is one of the best level 1 sections seen in a Wizards book), but then you've got the bare-bones dealing with the factions (Harpers, Zhents, etc.) and whatever that chase sequence is...
Last time I ran it, I built out the factions a lot (those brief notes do have good material to use as a basis!), and it took a long time before we returned to the main adventure!
(Plus, being a long-time FR fan, I just like using Manshoon as the villain).
Cheers!
I'd argue that one of the problems with Princes is precisely that it is thinking small. The early part, where you're going around investigating the kidnapped dignitaries, is pretty neat – the issue is that it then just turns into a dungeoncrawl. And the big threats the cults are supposed to have, the orbs of devastation? They're kind of underwhelming. They can cause some annoyance to a village somewhere, or maybe even a town, but they're pretty limited in scope.
It also spends a lot of pages on side treks, that are supposed to break up the monotony. The problem is that pretty much the whole adventure is in the same place, so there's little incentive to explore and find new and exciting things outside the main plot. As a better example of how to use side treks, look at the 2e Dark Sun adventure Dragon's Crown, where PCs travel back and forth across the Tablelands. This makes it much more reasonable for them to run across things either wholly unrelated or only tangentially related to the main plot.
I think it would have been much better if the Temples part had been geographically split in thematically appropriate locations – a swamp or an island for Crashing Wave, a mountaintop for Howling Hatred, somewhere deep underground for Black Earth, and either somewhere in Anauroch or a volcano for Eternal Flame. This would provide opportunities for having adventures while traveling from one place to another, plus you could have various challenges you need to deal with before getting access. Conquering these would provide some sort of keys that would allow access to the elemental nodes. You could then have Tyar-Besil primarily actually being ruins, and more of an underground wilderness zone (instead of a dungeon that's actually smaller than Red Larch), where you'd have to locate either the nodes directly, or a passage to the Fane of the Eye (mostly as in the book) and then proceed from there.
Yeah, I think you're right about the execution. The threat is big. But you don't have the interest from the factions that you should have.
In Tyranny of Dragons, everyone gets involved.
In Princes of the Apocalypse, no-one does. I think it does wonderful things regarding to the cult having actions apart from "wait in the dungeon for the characters", and the finale has some great moments. But it does get trapped in the dungeon a bit too much.
(It was actually pretty fun seeing what the D&D Adventurers League did during the Princes of the Apocalypse days, transporting some of the cult action to the Moonsea).
One thing I'll say - some of the adventures we consider "classic" today aren't really that well executed. Both Isle of Dread and Temple of Elemental Evil are in that camp for me. I love the concepts behind each one, and I had fun running one and playing the other, but both have significant problems as adventures.
I think they are still classics - it's not always about the execution. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Likewise, I think we can tell pretty early on whether an adventure will be added to the pantheon of all-time greats. About everyone knew instantly that Lost Mine of Phandelver was of that calibre. Likewise Curse of Strahd. Does anyone think that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be dismissed as a bad computer game a few years hence?
I think they are still classics - it's not always about the execution. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Likewise, I think we can tell pretty early on whether an adventure will be added to the pantheon of all-time greats. About everyone knew instantly that Lost Mine of Phandelver was of that calibre. Likewise Curse of Strahd. Does anyone think that Baldur's Gate 3 is going to be dismissed as a bad computer game a few years hence?
Hussar
Legend
You do make a good point, @MerricB. It's easier to be a "classic" when the field is so small. Keep on the Borderlands is considered a classic module. So much so that it's once again going into the starter set (albeit presumably considerably changed). To me, something like The Lost City is a far, far better module. But, it's never going to hold the same place in people's hearts as KotB or Isle of Dread.
Let's not forget that for a lot of us, running those old classic modules, we were doing it at a time when we were very young and those formed a lot of people's formative experiences in the game so hold a special place in people's hearts.
I played Descent into Avernus and it's interesting to see behind the screen as it were from other DM's because, reading the criticisms here, yup, I can see exactly why I didn't love that campaign. Totally makes sense now. To be honest, I didn't really love Horde of the Dragon Queen either, simply because it dragged on endlessly in so many places. So that by the time we got to Waterdeep after the caravan section, I was so entirely checked out that I just no longer cared about the factions and different groups. Could not have cared less by that point. Which really soured my whole experience.
One lesson I have learned from those modules though that I hope to apply to my Out of the Abyss campaign is STOP FAFFING ABOUT. Get to the point. Doesn't matter what the point is, just get to it. And, rolling this back around to the notion of "classic" adventures, I wonder if that doesn't play a lot into it. Curse of Strahd is great - at no point are you just sort of wandering around pointlessly waiting for the next thing to happen. The NPC's actually matter. You actually go back to locations multiple times (or you can anyway), meaning that you meet and interact with NPC's repeatedly.
Sorry for the ramble, but, IMO, that's one of the big weaknesses of the Adventure Path campaigns. In Horde, for example, you start in Greenest, spend, what, a level or two doing that bit. Then you head to Waterdeep and there's a bunch of NPC's that, once you get to Waterdeep, you never see again. Each step of the way, you go to new location, interact with the NPC's in that location, and then never (or almost never) see them again.
My players (and my fellow players) always tease me because I can never remember proper nouns from adventures. But, that's because we meet all these NPC's once, interact with them, and then never see them again. So, no, I never bother learning their names. I just can't make myself care.
When I look at the adventures that people consider classics - Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, Curse of Strahd, Lost Mines of Phandelver - what strikes me is that these are all centered on a manageably small location where you actually invest in that location. To me, that's why Shattered Obelisk fails. There's no central location - you don't really interact with Phandelver at all through the whole module and none of the NPC's from the first half of the module have anything really to do with the second half. Taken in isolation, some of the dungeon crawls in Obelisk are fantastic - the Crypt of Talhunderand (sp) is fantastic. It's a great dungeon crawl. But, since it's only one of the seventeen thousand dungeon crawls that you have to do before the end of hte module, it gets lost in the noise.
IMO, and TL&DR, what makes a module a classic is a central location that the PC's will interact with multiple times over the course of the campaign. Adventures that lack that, particularly the Tour Des Realms type adventures where you simply constantly move from location to location and never go back, suffer because they don't engage the players in the same way.
Let's not forget that for a lot of us, running those old classic modules, we were doing it at a time when we were very young and those formed a lot of people's formative experiences in the game so hold a special place in people's hearts.
I played Descent into Avernus and it's interesting to see behind the screen as it were from other DM's because, reading the criticisms here, yup, I can see exactly why I didn't love that campaign. Totally makes sense now. To be honest, I didn't really love Horde of the Dragon Queen either, simply because it dragged on endlessly in so many places. So that by the time we got to Waterdeep after the caravan section, I was so entirely checked out that I just no longer cared about the factions and different groups. Could not have cared less by that point. Which really soured my whole experience.
One lesson I have learned from those modules though that I hope to apply to my Out of the Abyss campaign is STOP FAFFING ABOUT. Get to the point. Doesn't matter what the point is, just get to it. And, rolling this back around to the notion of "classic" adventures, I wonder if that doesn't play a lot into it. Curse of Strahd is great - at no point are you just sort of wandering around pointlessly waiting for the next thing to happen. The NPC's actually matter. You actually go back to locations multiple times (or you can anyway), meaning that you meet and interact with NPC's repeatedly.
Sorry for the ramble, but, IMO, that's one of the big weaknesses of the Adventure Path campaigns. In Horde, for example, you start in Greenest, spend, what, a level or two doing that bit. Then you head to Waterdeep and there's a bunch of NPC's that, once you get to Waterdeep, you never see again. Each step of the way, you go to new location, interact with the NPC's in that location, and then never (or almost never) see them again.
My players (and my fellow players) always tease me because I can never remember proper nouns from adventures. But, that's because we meet all these NPC's once, interact with them, and then never see them again. So, no, I never bother learning their names. I just can't make myself care.
When I look at the adventures that people consider classics - Keep on the Borderlands, Isle of Dread, Curse of Strahd, Lost Mines of Phandelver - what strikes me is that these are all centered on a manageably small location where you actually invest in that location. To me, that's why Shattered Obelisk fails. There's no central location - you don't really interact with Phandelver at all through the whole module and none of the NPC's from the first half of the module have anything really to do with the second half. Taken in isolation, some of the dungeon crawls in Obelisk are fantastic - the Crypt of Talhunderand (sp) is fantastic. It's a great dungeon crawl. But, since it's only one of the seventeen thousand dungeon crawls that you have to do before the end of hte module, it gets lost in the noise.
IMO, and TL&DR, what makes a module a classic is a central location that the PC's will interact with multiple times over the course of the campaign. Adventures that lack that, particularly the Tour Des Realms type adventures where you simply constantly move from location to location and never go back, suffer because they don't engage the players in the same way.
Great point - I have a very inflated opinion of ToEE based on it being on of the first campaigns I played in as a kid, but reviewing it later has been eye-opening.
I agree, though it has more to do with NPCs than actual locations. For example, I've seen many people in this thread mention Sunless Citadel. The original Sunless Citadel does have a lot to recommend it, such as the conflict between the goblins and kobolds, and showing off some of the new 3e rules such as monsters with class levels, as well as opponents using combat maneuvers (though perhaps Sunder wasn't the best one to push and show off...). But I don't think those make it a classic. You know what does, though?
Meepo. PCs love him. They'll adopt him if they can. He even got a reference in d20 Modern:
I have no clue who the leaders of the two competing tribes were. They've been wiped from my memory with age (TBH, they probably didn't need that much age). But Meepo? Oh, I remember him 25 years on.
In addition to singing the praises of the Best Kobold, I'd add one more thing to what you're saying. You say "Adventures that lack that, particularly the Tour Des Realms type adventures where you simply constantly move from location to location and never go back, suffer because they don't engage the players in the same way." I think there is one way to avoid that, and that is to let the PCs have a mobile home base. The easiest way of doing this would of course be a ship, but you could get a similar result with a caravan or something.
mamba
Legend
Agreed, to me the classics mostly are called that because they did something first / there was not much else, not because they were so great
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