Reviewing Every Official Adventure for D&D 5e (Part 1)

TIME STAMPS
0:00 - Intro
1:48 - Criteria
4:22 - Lost Mine of Phandelver
7:13 - Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen & Rise of Tiamat)
12:15 - Princes of the Apocalypse
15:37 - Out of the Abyss
19:54 - Curse of Strahd
23:56 - Storm Kings Thunder
27:32 - Tales from the Yawning Portal
32:44 - Tomb of Annihilation
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[itribbits]

I ran Lost Mines but completely changed the location and monsters to a desert setting, including ancient Egyptian-style gods and 'sun sickness' mechanics, and my players loved it. Lost Mines is simple but solid and lends itself really well to fantastic reskins that add some wow-factor for new players, like Monty and Kelly said.

[jackkingsman]

Tyranny of the Dragons suffers from just saying: "Idunno do whatever you want" at several points. So if you as the DM put in the work to flesh said parts out they are lovely if you don't... they are still ok to pretty decent. Some parts are pretty good even. Gotta love me some Xonthal's Tower

[dtczyk]

You guys are so professional, I love the way you guys operationalize what you mean by “experienced” and other vague terms.

[Raggi]

The amount of work you guys put into this video. I see you.... And as a DM, your videos. In particular this one are appreciated. Thank you.

[DnDDeepDive]

Ooo… I’m looking forward to this series. As much as I love playing in Homebrew worlds, sometimes it’s fun to jump into the official WotC stuff, but we just don’t have time for both :).

[mrbean]

We did Lost Mines and transitioned into Storm King's Thunder, ending at level 11. Lost mines was fantastic, Storm Kings dragged on.

[Josh-edfd]

The yawning portal is a great home brew tool. I've pulled dungeons or parts of dungeons into my campaign several times. With just a little reflavoring they fit right in. I had a player who ran one of the dungeons as dm before and he didn't notice.

[maybevoldemort]

Prewritten adventures are really helpful. I know some people like (pure) homebrew, but I love using prewritten adventures. They provide such a good framework and take a lot of pressure off. I’m disabled, I have a young child, I don’t necessarily have time or energy to write. Being able to write around a prewritten module when I have time or just using the core content when I don’t had been a godsend.
It also provides a really good area for discussion. I love talking about this hobby and, while talking about character builds and homebrew worlds is fin, I also like talking about modules lots of people have run. There is just a huge resource out there that iterates on modules, you can do your own thing, get answers if you need support and also just have fun talking about it!

[rksbpro]

I've been running storm king's thunder for a long time and we barely do the main story lol. However, this is a good thing for us, because I focus more on the character's backstories and their personal story arcs, and it's nice to still have an overarching story in the background as well as a setting that I don't have to create all myself. It's like I just get a taste worldbuilding because I essentially have to come up with stuff for each town, but each area still has lore surrounding it that I can take or leave as I wish. So I quite like it, it's very chill while still not "running itself" so to speak. I get to be creative, but don't have to come up with everything myself.

[fatherdanner]

I can’t wait for part 2! I’m close to finishing Lost Mine of Phandelver with my group and this is helping me figure out what to present to them for our next module!

[InsightCheck]

There’s been a lot of talk about Pre Written adventures recently. I’m a huge fan, I love them. They create such an excellent framework and do so much of the heavy lifting!
I appreciate the systematic approach you guys are taking to this which is awesome.
I’ve been running Dungeon of the Mad Mage for a year and a half now. The campaign was largely written off by so many as a simple dungeon crawler. But honestly, I’ve found that this far in my game looks NOTHING like the actual campaign. It has so much room to develop your own stories, tie in backstories. It’s been super fun to run!

[davidhamer]

Thanks for the pointers. I ran phandelver and the players loved it. We transitioned to princes of the apocalypse and I've got to say if I didn't know how to run sand box games it would be a tough one to get right. Could easily be difficult for a new DM. I have used the lost portal games and they are great. One of my players is threatening to run decent and I'm so excited. Haven't got to play a character in 15 years. Forever DM can be tough.

[TheCubetree]

CoS was the first adventure I got to play in and I loved it. Our DM was roleplaying Strahd really good. We all hated and loved this villain at the same time, because he kept messing with us, but every appearance had this cool Strahd-factor to it. Once we finished the adventure and started into our DM's own homebrew campaign we never lost our paranoia of bats tho.. :D

[deckerjake]

Thank you! I haven’t played D&D yet but I’ve learned a lot from your channel and feel ready to join a group for a one shot.

[neiltobey]

I took a different approach to the Yawning portal where they are actually....portals! I am running a campaign where the Yawning Protals are portals to all the different adventures and there is a narrtive built on why they need to go through these portals. It has turned out well so far!

[Zachafinackus]

ToA is one of my all time favorite HCs. I had such a good time playing through that with the party I was with (even though my character died, in the permanent way).

[jaredlocke]

Currently running SKT for the second time. I love the story. It takes some DM work to streamline the story and cut out the fat. Once it's leaned out, it's sick.

I do actually regularly refer to SCAG while running SKT. I agree with the fixer upper assessment, but i love it

[ChadHensley]

The first campaign I ran as a DM just a few months after my first game of D&D was Tomb of Annihilation. We played for almost two years before life took too many players away and we ended before ever making it to the tomb. The group really had a good time and we only lost two PCs. One to the puzzle floor at Camp Righteous and one to Tzindelor through a random encounter that the characters caused when she flew over as they were on their way to Hrakhamar. In all reality, the should have died in the first session when they decided to hunt down the gladiator for K'lahu but the gladiator refused to kill them because he did not have a permit from the merchant princes. We still joke about the memorable stories from random encounters that I created on the fly that went really poorly or really well due to dice rolls. I loved this campaign and really hope to run it again one day. I made things a lot more difficult on myself because of my excitement, creating all sorts of printable options and taking a deep dive into DMs guild. Part of what caused the stall that eventually saw the group fall apart was extra content for Shilku Bay from the DMs guild after they accepted a mission for Liara Portyr at Fort Beluarian to go and explore the bay. The other campaign that I've run multiple times is Lost Mines of Phandelver. Each forray has gone quite differently. This was my introduction into D&D so it holds a special place in my heart. I'm getting ready to run a homebrew of sorts with Candlekeep Mysteries, though we may change it to The Sunless Citadel because of your review and I am also about to start a second campaign with some Pathfinder 1E players playing 5E for the first time with The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Appreciate all you guys do!

[vladimiregorov]

Question to Kelly and Monty: how would you rate your Dungeons of Drakkenheim book?

[superpheemy]

Langdedrosa Cyanwrath has become a fixture in my Forgotten Realms setting. He's got the Devil's own luck, having survived a growing list of player character groups. He's risen to become a particularly influential leader within the Cult of the Dragon.