How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Curse of Strahd

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Curse of Strahd

Summary

Curse of Strahd was released in March 2016 as an official adventure for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and is designed for player characters of levels 1-10. This critically acclaimed campaign takes adventurers through a thrilling, horror-inspired journey across the mysterious land of Barovia, where they face numerous challenges and ultimately confront the formidable vampire Count Strahd von Zarovich. It is a reimagining of the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons adventure I6 Castle Ravenloft by Tracy and Laura Hickman.

My Experience

I ran a Curse of Strahd campaign for my co-workers. It stalled for a couple years due to the pandemic, but I finally finished it last year in a halloween Strahd Must Die Tonight that resulted in Strahd living and all the players dying. Before the pause we had played through everything except the Amber Temple, so I have ran 90% of the adventure. I've also ran the aforementioned Strahd Must Die Tonight for the last three years at Halloween for a combination of players from different groups. 

Why You Should Run It

• Its the best 5e adventure, and I don't think it is close. I think that is also the a common opinion in the dnd community at large. 
• Why is it the best? Its a big sandbox that is just constrained enough to give the players incredible agency and freedom, and features an incredible villain who has reason to show up regularly and torment the players without killing them.  
• The randomization element of the adventure hides clues and tools the characters can use around the setting, and makes it both replayable and dynamic. 
• Castle Ravenloft is a great dungeon. The heart, the interesting NPCs, the catacombs, the deep story...its a lot of fun to run.  

Why You Should Skip It

• It can be brutal to the players. Death House, the opening adventure, has the potential to kill a few PCs, and at least one encounter with a decent chance for a TPK. And because of the sandbox nature, the PCs can wander into some very difficult encounters. If your players don't like a relatively high risk of character death for a 5e adventure, CoS isn't for you.  
• It is hard to run. Because it is a sandbox, the characters have a lot of freedom to go in different directions at all times. The size of the sandbox is just big enough that it is hard to keep all of it in your head as a DM to be able to serve up the connections that make the campaign sing. I read the adventure several times, watched Dice, Camera, Action, and used Sean McGovern's Guide to a Curse of Strahd, and still struggled to keep everything straight. 
• If you are a new DM, I would not make this my first campaign due to the bullet directly above. It's too challenging to run while also learning how to DM. 
• The isometric Castle Ravenloft map can be challenging, but there are plenty of non-isometric versions on DM's Guild.

What You Should Repurpose From It

I mentioned Strahd Must Die Tonight earlier - I think everyone who plays dnd regularly should try to run it when they want a one shot around Halloween. I've greatly enjoyed it every time I have ran it, and it feels different every time. Everything else feels of a piece with the adventure, and isn't incredibly portable to adventures outside Ravenloft, though its all high enough quality that you could steal any piece you like. 

How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Tyranny of Dragons

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. 

Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of Tiamat

Summary

The Cult of the Dragon is trying to summon Tiamat to the Realms. The adventure starts with an attack on Greenest, then the characters shadowing cultists in a caravan before arriving in a cloud castle. After defeating the cultists (and a white dragon) in the castle, the characters work with the Council of Waterdeep to thwart the cultists' plans. The adventure culminates with the characters trying to prevent Tiamat's summoning at the Well of Worlds. 

My Experience

I started DMing this adventure as soon as it came out at the start of 5e, and ran it to conclusion over the course of a couple years. I have not read the updated version of this adventure. 

Why You Should Run It

• It is the first fifth edition adventure, and it hits some of the best tropes of fantasy role playing, like dragons, cloud giant castles, and war councils, with a dramatic finale. 
• The caravan chapter has a lot of fun NPCs and encounters. I've stolen it to use for travel after we finished Dragon of Icespire Peak in another campaign. 
• The finale is cool, though you will want to beef it up with some dragons to make it challenging. 
• The updated revision has likely evened out some of the early fifth edition warts, particular the early dangerous combats. 

Why You Should Skip It

• If you aren't interested in a pretty standard fantasy campaign, it probably isn't for you. 
• Rise of Tiamat gets a bit repetitive. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of dragon combats. 
• Hoard of the Dragon Queen is pretty linear. Rise of Tiamat is a little better, but if you want a sandbox adventure, I'd look elsewhere. 
• Its an early edition adventure developed at the same time as 5e, so it has some warts, some of which are supposedly fixed by the reprints. Things like early encounter balance are easy to fix, but adventure design has evolved over seven years and newer products tend to be more polished. 

What You Should Repurpose From It

The caravan chapter. The characters are trailing cultists in a caravan. There are a bunch of interesting NPCs to meet, encounters to have, and a mystery to solve. If you are doing travel in the Sword Coast from level 3-7, you should still this chapter, and the setting descriptions in Storm King's Thunder, to create an exciting and interesting journey. 

How to Choose Your Next 5e Dungeons and Dragons Campaign: Dragon of Icespire Keep From D&D Essientials

I've been DMing, playing, and reading fifth edition adventures since the launch of the edition. I decided to write some guides that DMs can use to can use to choose their next adventure. I'll post one at a time, then tackle them as a whole at the end. The next post will be about Tyranny of Dragons. 

Dragon of Icespire Keep

Summary

Dragon of Icespire Keep is a starter adventure that takes players on a journey through the Sword Coast. Published as part of the Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Kit in June 2019, this adventure gives the players an introduction into adventure in the Sword Coast. Designed for characters of levels 1-6, Dragon of Icespire Keep tasks players with defending the small town of Phandalin from a young white dragon and other threats. Along the way, adventurers will explore mysterious locations, uncover hidden secrets, and forge lasting bonds as they strive to bring peace to the region. Further adventures that continue the story were published on dndbeyond, but they are beyond the scope of this blog post. 

My Experience With the Adventure

I ran Dragon of Icespire Peak for a newly formed online group at the beginning of the pandemic. About half the group was new to RPGs. I chose Icespire Peak because I thought it would be easy to run and a good onboarding adventure for a relatively new group. I was right and wrong...it was a new adventure, but it still required plenty of prep, at least for me, to run. I realized my notes would be useful to others, and inspired by other dm's guild products like Sean McGovern's A Guide to Storm King's Thunder, I decided to write my own DM's Guide to the Dragon of Icespire Peak. Its by far the most popular thing I have posted to DM's Guild, and is a Gold best seller. I get a lot of satisfaction knowing I wrote a guide to a starter adventure that hopefully helps new players get into the game. 

Why You Should Run It

• Its a very straightforward adventure for new DMs. There are some moving pieces to keep track of, but its designed to provide clear choices to new adventurers. It gives the players some choice without making new DMs try to manage a giant sandbox like Curse of Strahd. It is fantastic as an introduction to the game.
• The adventure does a good job exposing new players to the pillars of dnd: exploration, combat, and social. You get a little of everything in the adventure, and a reasonable dragon combat at the end.
• There are some flaws in the adventure, but they are easy to correct. An experienced DM will handily address them, and a new DM can use the advice in my guide. 
• Anytime someone new asks me about trying DND I point them to this adventure and email them a copy of the guide. Its cheap, and a great way to onboard new players and DMs. 

Why You Should Skip It

• Its a very standard fantasy campaign. If you have been playing fantasy RPGs for a long time, you probably won't be very impressed with this adventure. The quality of the adventure has a very high floor, but its all things experienced players have seen before. I'd recommend most of the other published adventures set in the Sword Coast above this one for experienced groups. 

What You Should Repurpose From It

• I actually think you could steal pretty much any individual quest from this adventure if you needed a quick adventure on short notice. I think you could grab any one quest and have it prepped in 30 minutes to have a game ready quickly.  
• The three quests my group had the most fun with were Butterskull Ranch (orcs take over a farmhouse), Logger's Camp (Ankhegs attack a logger camp), and Falcon's Hunting Lodge (a cool ranger NPC to interact with). 

Spelljammer Academy Review: DnD Meets Star Trek

Summary

Spelljammer Academy is an adventure released on dndbeyond to coincide with the physical release of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. It was available as a promotion for a limited time, and it appears if you did not claim it in that time, there is currently no way to get access to it. So its probably not the best product to do a review of, but at least this can help folks who got the promo and haven't played it yet. 

Spelljammer Academy is broken up into four mini adventures that can be played in under two hours. After each mini adventure, your character gains a level. Once they finish the adventure, the characters will be fifth level, the starting level for Light of Xaryxis (LoX), the adventure found in Spelljammer: Adventures in Space.  The main goal is provide an on ramp to that adventure, and to provide Spelljammer content for Adventurer's League, Wizards of the Coast's organized play program. 

I played the first two mini adventurers as part of a Virtual Play Weekend. I then DMed the adventure twice, once in person and once online, with my two regular groups. 

The Good

• I love the speed and simplicity of the adventures. Each adventure can easily be played in under two hours. With one group, I played all 4 adventures in seven hours in one day in person. 
• The whole set up of an academy to train Spelljammers is silly in the best possible way, and the adventure leans into it. It feels very Star Trek inspired. 
• Orientation has a great strong start with combat starting en media res on the holo deck. 

The Bad

• The spelljammer ship battles were tedious, and the rules are not as fleshed out as they should be. I completely misran one on the first try. Its both hard to grok the best way to run it, and not as fun as it should be. 
• The clockwork horrors in Realmsspace Sortie! are pretty nasty CR 2 creatures that put one of my less optimized groups at real risk of a TPK.
• Spelljammer Academy doesn't lead into LoX very well. The main villain stays offscreen all adventure, then shows up as NPC you have to curry favor with in LoX. I'll probably write a post about how I will better tie the two adventures together later. 

The OK

• While the adventure offers an exciting trip to H'Catha, only having characters run into spectators and gazers is a little disappointing. I threw in a beholder zombie encounter to give the characters a little bit more of a scare. 
• The adventure is railroaded by design, which may not appeal to players who prefer a more open-ended experience.
• I'd cut "Journey Interrupted" from Behold H'Catha in favor of the beholder zombie encounter. The characters can spot (and try to attack) a ship that's supposed to show up in the final encounter. Its just not worth the hassle to have an encounter that will either easily be resolved with dialogue, or devolve into a "The monster is going to fight you no matter what you do." kind of encounter. 

Final Thoughts

Spelljammer Academy is a delightful introduction to the world of Spelljammer, offering players a chance to quickly advance their characters and familiarize themselves with the setting. While it has some shortcomings, it's an enjoyable and accessible way to prepare for the Light of Xaryxis adventure. If you were lucky enough to claim the promotional adventure during its limited release, it's well worth a playthrough with your group.