Which D&D adventures should you play? (2022) 

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.

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

Tales of the Yawning Portal Cons: - Just Dungeon Crawls - Uncompelling - Can be very Slow - Tomb of Horrors Pros: - Meepo the Kobold 10/10

Spencer seems so much more relaxed. But also, the pyramid in the background gives her a little party hat :)

I love how Spencer has gone from cute girlfriend in the videos to a badass wife who keeps this goof in check

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 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 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.

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 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

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’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.

For a split second I thought that pink triangle in the background was a party hat she was wearing.

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!

We all know Jacob and Spencer are going to give Tomb of Horrors a 10/10

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.

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)

i never thought Jacob would fall prey to the Multiple Mines Fallacy. 😔

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.

If you want to try Dragon Heist with all the villains, I highly recommend the Alexandrian's Dragon Heist Remix.

the triangle thing on the shelf made me think spencer was wearing a party hat for a second there

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.

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’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.

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.)

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.

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.

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. 🤙

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.

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.

We definitely need a whole video on Dragonheist vs Strahd.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I love the idea of Storm Kings Thunder because the story is cool, and giants are really cool.

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'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.

Was super happy to hear all the music from Travis Savoie, extremely talented guy

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'd highly recommend Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden. It has the perfect amount of sandbox without being too open ended.

I love Spencer's short haircut, it really suits their face!

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

“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 🤙

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 💪🏼🤓

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.

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

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.

Love the intro! always nice to see your vids

I still don't understand Jacob's hatred of the Death House lol I honestly had a blast running it and my players had a blast playing through it. All it takes is a couple minor tweaks to make it have some relevance to the story (I used some recommendations from the CoS reddit about the family basically running a cult worshipping Strahd, the curse created from killing the baby is what caused the house to become sentient/haunted, and its been luring in ppl getting transported to Barovia so the players defeating it actually ended up doing Strahd a favor and get themselves on his good side very early on along with a hint that he'd be inviting them later to give them a warmer welcome). I also replaced the OP (and honestly out-of-place) Shambling Mound boss with a Gibbering Mouther that was actually Walter (described how the loudest voice was a piercing baby cry from a small mouth in the center). I honestly thought it was a great introduction as it immediately kicks in the players' expectations with dead kids, human sacrifices, curses, ghosts, etc. rather than skipping it and just being in a dreary village. Like mentioned in the video, the campaign has a LOT of missing info, but that's also where it excels. If something doesn't really sound interesting or is lacking motivation, you can easily add it or rework it. The Bonegrinder windmill is a great example of that, since I think its location is perfect for making your players understand that there WILL be fights they just outright can't win yet (the PCs feeling powerless/hopeless is a huge deal in this campaign, imo). There's no need to kill the players there, nor do you even need to have all the sisters there at one time. Mine was that Morgantha was returning from selling pies and would be back in 6 rounds of combat, and the second sister would be upstairs manually turning the wheel (went with the idea of them turning Gertrude into a hag and using her for gruntwork) and show up in 2 rounds. Plenty of time for players to flee and/or get at least one of them to half hp and trigger the hags fleeing to the astral plane for later stalking shenanigans. If they all get downed, you can just have them be captured to trade to Strahd for favors. I also don't really agree with the whole "start it with Krezk" idea, especially given all the encounter balancing to rework, but to each their own. There's already a TON of travelling in the campaign, last thing I'd ever want is to make my players go from one side of the map to the other and then back again just for an escort quest. It just makes more sense to gradually make your way there with Ireena, either because they fucked up Vallaki and its not safe for her there, or through one of the plot threads directing the players to bring her there (ie- monument in Berez). Especially if you want the players to get attached to her, it just makes sense to allow her to join them early on as they survive their way to the west (I also made Ireena mostly ignorant of things past the west gate due to her "father" not letting her go very far out of the village so that she was learning with them). I left Ismark in the village, it just didn't make sense to me that the Burgomaster would up and leave with the ppl he's paying to escort her lol

First off, good reminder that I can't wait to get that book of low-level adventures that I kick-started.

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!

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

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.

Great coverage of all the adventure books. This is very helpful 😁

I’ve actually been thinking about playing a module for a bit. Very well timed.

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.

Great vid. Just what I was looking for! And congrats with the little one :D

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.

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.

Does anyone else think that Spencer looks like she is wearing a birthday hat because of the perfect placement of the pink pyramid thing in the background? Huzzah!

About Phandelver, your motivation is to save your friends who you should have figured out were kidnapped by the goblins. You see two dead horses in the trail, owned by the people who hired you and who are also your friends, who set out ahead of you on horse. So, if you somehow couldn't figure that out AND failed any investigation checks on the two dead horses, ya, you wouldn't have any reason to go on an adventure, so you might continue to Phandalin to get paid, where your employer and friend _who set out ahead of you on horse_ has not arrived yet. Some of the people in the town might even say to you, "you should go back to the two dead horses and investigate."

I honestly thought Spencer was wearing a party-hat!!

"And this is Pregnant Wife"... and I saw Spencer's reaction, as if to say , "Oh is that all I am? AM I NOT AN INDIVIDUAL, JACOB?!" And then you pulled out her name and saved yourself. Clutch timing.

The contrast between you both is fantastic, fun couple to watch!

I personally really enjoyed the Baldur's Gate part of the Descent Into Avernus book, but that's probably because the DM actually took a lot of liberties in making it more open, and my character was legit just a merchant who took all the loot from our defeated foes and the dungeons we were in and sold them as close to market value as they could persuade their merchant kin to buy them at in exchange for repeat business and even a bit of party protection here and there; real fun times honestly ^w^

*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!

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.

YAAYY!!! So glad y’all came back to this video list! I think perfect amount of time between too so chefs kiss to ya!

Great reviews on the books, also nice background music!

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

spencer looks like theyre wearing a party hat and i love it

I love Spencer’s party hat.

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

At first I thought the Pyramid above Spencer's head was a party hat....

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.

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!

I would've made a much better Dungeon of the Mad Mage if only those coast dwellers hadn't stolen the name...

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.

I have never been a player in a bought adventure. - I ran about 1/4 of Lost Mine of Phandelver two years ago to help familiarize us all with 5E, then a friend created a campaign based on an old one he ran a couple of decades ago in Rolemaster. - About 4 decades ago I ran about half of Keep on the Borderlands before that group fell apart, and a few years later about 1/3 of Temple of Elemental Evil until that group decided slow and steady was boring and went to the bottom, found the main boss, defeated them, and I ended up having them do a skill challenge to survive running out of a collapsing temple. - I ran about 1/4 of Lost Mines of Phandelver two years ago to help familiarize us all with 5E, then a friend created a campaign based on an old one he ran a couple of decades ago in Rolemaster.

Finally! Another video I can have in the background to listen to four times a week.

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'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.

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)!

Loved your video 😀 really wanted to here some sad piano during the end for some reason 🤣🤣

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 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)

Playing Out of the Abyss through Chapter 7 and exiting the Underdark at level 7 is a great transition point to just swap into a different campaign if the DM or party is not enjoying the theme.

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!

Here we go again

My counterpoint to Curse of Strahd's good motivation to want go out is that when we played the place sucked so we wanted to go to Strahd's castle and fight him but the DM cleary said there's no way to beat him at this point you are too weak. Without any clear path to getting out of Barovia it felt really demotivating to me. It seems the module expects you to help the unfriendly town folk to lvl up and be strong enough to defeat Strahd. So you basically have to be a super good character to have any motivation. That's at least how it turned out in our campaign but the DM was pretty shit and the group fell apart because of that anyway.

I made a few changes to LMOP. Gundren and Sildar were members of an adventuring party called The Protectors of The Coast, who fought Nezznar back in the day because he was trying to unleash Lolth on the surface world. The Protectors of The Coast thought he was killed in the final fight, but Lolth cursed him into becoming a drider, who now is trying to find the Forge of Spells so that he can reverse his curse (he uses disguise self to look like himself before the drider curse, but keeping the spell up causes him physical pain, which he wears on his face). Iarno Albrek was another member of The Protectors of The Coast, who considered Nezznar his nemesis. He went to Phandelver to investigate rumors of Nezznar's return from the dead, and upon Nezznar hearing of Albrek's return to Phandalin, he offered to turn over The Lost Mine to Albrek once he is done with it. Albrek at the time of the players reaching Phandalin has been contemplating the deal and leading The Red Cloaks (the locak militia detachment) from the shadows, under the guise of Glasstaff (a former enemy of The Protectors of The Coast). Sildar and Gundren have taken the return of Glasstaff and The Black Spider with speculation, but since theyre retired adventurers for the most part, they have offered to train the pcs to work together with the efficiency of a seasoned adventuring party (teaching the pcs homebrewed team feats). These changes I think adds momentum to the game, so that the main NPCs actually have some history and information to add to the story rather than having to go looking around for the next step. The players in my game have already saved Gundren 4 sessions in, and so now rather than Gundren being the macguffin, he is a character who has definitive goals and wants, and he also doesnt know who to trust because everyone has heard that he has information on The Lost Mine, and even though the party has saved him from Grohl and The Black Spider, he assumes the party saved him for their own personal gain, and will be making the players prove themselves to him before he shares information on the location of the mine.

Thanks for the content! I don't play DnD anymore but it's still nice to listen about it every once and awhile :)

Stealing my ideas again, I see

Bro Jacob, make a module with the main bad guy being the wizard, also I disagreed with 90% of the video :)

Idk why but I love rewatching this video so much

It is so nice to see you sharing this together, and because I am REALLY late: Congratulations on your first child!