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

SHIT.... this autoplayed. 5E is for soy-saturated choads. FIRST EDITION IS THE ONLY EDITION. Tits, ass, satanism, greed, and straight up butchering, bullying, racist violence. It's the only way to fly, girls.

Such a helpful video. I'm a new DM running Lost Mines of Phandelver with brand new players. Looking to see what to do next. Curse of Strahd sounds great but want to do a few more campaigns first.

Just ran lost mines of phandalin as a first time DM and added some demons into it now looking for something more challenging that keeps incorporating said demons

First thing i ever ran was Storm Kings thunder. I was shocked how open ended and kinda useless the book was. It was a trial by fire but i loved it and learned how to homebrew a lot and really liked it.

I'm not a fan of DMs that like to kill off characters. It's a red flag to join a different group because it's disrespectful to player's time and creative work. These are the kind of DMs that don't read a word of a character's background or back story, and just want to control their own little kingdom.

DM workload is probably the most important thing I consider when choosing which module to run. Like I’m perfectly capable of making my own adventures (which I have) but if I wanted to spend that much effort, I wouldn’t be dropping 40-50 dollars for somebody else to write it for me.

That’s like when University made me pay them to tell me to do research.

I would recommend you grap a pen and write in page numbers to cross reference the quests in any of these campaigns. I am currently running Storm King's Thunder.

I really like this review format

Man wow, what an incredible video. Very good idea. thank you so much for the work you put into this.

I have to soft disagree on Tyranny, if only that the first half starts strong but then sags into formlessness really badly. The long journey up the Sword Coast is disorganized and feels like you’re supposed to be writing material to make it interesting

My group we are running Strahd, my character was on death saves, i had 2 successes and 2 failures. I got back up on with a nat 20. First time i have ever had a character almost die. 10/10 would run again.

Into the abyss, The Princess module, rime of the frost maiden, and curse of strahd is the ones I want. Besides the core rules.

Helpful thanks

Would love to see you guys review the Goodman games and dark wizards stuff.

Phandelver is the best module of 5E. I enjoy ghosts of Saltmarsh

As someone who wanted to give my DM a break and a chance to play but not having the same creative ability to be able to build a world my DM can do, your guys videos has helped me pick where to start with adventure books so thank you guys ❤
Question, do you need any other books like the monster manual or DM guide or do the adventure books carry all the information required ?

I am a new DM, currently running my second campaign with a mix of new and experienced players. I chose a modified version of Lost Mine of Phandelver. One of the experienced players came up with a really good backstory which has become the core of the story arc for the entire campaign, though he doesn’t know that yet. I really like LMoP because it provides enough framework, maps, side quests, and plot hooks while still being flexible enough to adapt as needed. I have changed lots of the monsters to fit the plot, as well as much of the geography, but still kept it cohesive using the original content. And nods to you both after watching one of your game sessions, I added a gelatinous cube (with a minimal walk speed) to the hallway with the pit trap in the ruffian hideout in town. It made an otherwise boring and easily avoidable trap a suspenseful and dangerous encounter with all 5 PCs scrambling to flee, fight, or save a teammate. It was the highlight of the whole evening.

Ty guys, really helpful video!

This is by far the best review video ive seen. Im glad you put in "DM Level" It helps a lot with these types of books. <3

My group is making me run Tomb of Annihilation as my first DM campaign.

Talk about jumping into the deep end.

I come here as a new player, literally 4 sessions into my first ever DnD experiances.... jumped into a game with 2 other players, one brand new like me, the other a long time player, DM had us create characters essentially blind no idea what we were going to face and dropped us in on session 1 ... teleported to Chult .... the only way I know it is Tomb of Annihilation is that its the only module set in Chult!
We lost the first player character on session 1, although you could call it darwinism, we new players vastly underestimated how weak lvl1 characters are!
I will definatly agree with what the dudes said here, the beginning of the campaign is very lacking in hooks... we spent 3 sessions wandering the town kinda waiting for something to give us a lead... something to point us at ... here this is what you need to be doing.... it never happened... so now for our next session we have decided damn it all we are just going to wander out into the jungle ... with no destination in mind .... whats the worst that can happen? :)

Been thinking about either buying either descent into Avernus Strixhaven or out of the abyss.

Descent into avernus anyone? Please comment for feedback

If you want to have fun, don't run the Tomb of Horrors. Unless everyone involved knows it's a death trap and has 5+ spare characters they want to sacrifice, people will hate it and you won't have a lot of fun either. Unless your idea of fun is killing the PCs or watch them try to open a fake door for 30 minutes.

Have you guys done a review on the ebberon campaign?

"Strahd is greatest villain of all time!"

"Vecna would like a word with Monty."

I started as a DM running dragon of icespire peak then did tyranny of dragons. Both were really great, and I am thinking of doing descent into avernus next

Currently running lost mine as a first time DM and my players are really enjoying it so far

I think in hindsight I like Ghosts of Saltmarsh most:
- it provides a region guide into an otherwise ignored but beloved campaign setting
- it has a variety of medium length adventures.
- it has better rules for ships than Spelljammer.
- it has an interesting city/village, with plenty of hooks for surroundings.

Been running through Out of the Abyss. Absolutely correct on high DM workload. Very frustrating layout, for example my players recently encountered Droki in Chapter 4, who is divided between his statblock in the appendix, his equipment on another page, and his motivations split in several places. Lots of factions to keep track of. And lots of convincing the PCs to run away before they are one-shotted. And you really need players to be self-motivated to "return" to the surface world.
All that said, we've had some fun times in the adventure, it's just been a lot more work.

Thanks a lot for this video, i really needed it !

I would warn new dms that getting a strong hook and sense meaning to princes of the apocalypse is pretty challenging. Im running it right now as my first full campaign and its okay, but I constantly have to think about what would motivate the party to explore this and that. Imo, the book fails to clearly depict how your pcs would even know whos behind each cult. Awesome work on this video as always. My group is near the end and it was exciting to think about what could be next

Are there any good source books for the party building their own village/city/country from the ground up? Like resource gathering, defense, army building, and territory take overs?

The first time I ran Tyranny of Dragons I added in several homebrewed dungeons and side quests to help the players get with some experience, and ran it after LMoP because I had read through Hoard of the dragon queen and there were plenty of areas especially in the beginning where it was quite brutal for really low levels, and also there were several parts where the party was traveling and I wanted the travel to be much more interesting than me making about 40 some odd random encounter checks.

Our group uses XP rather than milestone (although when a module is really counting on milestone I might fudge the numbers and give the party extra XP), and I have an optional rule where you can spend gold and downtime for training to grant additional XP (more accurately electrum, this is the only way aside from the deck of many things to have characters at different levels since I award full XP to absent players as well). This is not a houserule I necessarily recommend for most groups but it works well for our group. All of this to say when we got to the sea of moving ice the party was a couple levels higher than they otherwise would be, and this happened.

Cleric: I would like to make an insight check
Me: against what exactly?
Cleric: you said it was odd that the ice hunters are so hostile, I would like to examine their body language, are they fearful, are they suspicious, does it seem to me that they may be acting this way because outsiders have wronged them or because they're scared of something else? anything that might give me a clue for their motivations
Me: (impressed that they're using insight for something other than lie detection), yeah, go ahead and roll, and since you are being so specific roll with advantage
Cleric: 23
Me: they're definitely scared, but not of you
Cleric: (to wizard, who has tongues active) they're scared of something, let's offer to help
Wizard: can I make a persuasion check and offer help?
Me: this is going to be a little more complicated than just a roll, you have to convince me that it warrants a check. By that I mean say what you will to the ice hunters, then I'll decide if it warrants a check
Wizard: I say, "allow us into your village, we will help you and keep you safe" and I cast mass suggestion on the leader the champion the druid and the 9 toughest looking warriors
Me: okay *rolls saving throws and fails*... Let's take a 5 minute snack break while I figure out how I want to run the rest of this chapter because that definitely wasn't covered in the books.

Is it just me or do these two look like Wil Wheaton and Daniel Radcliffe; just with a little more to love? 🤔

This was extremely helpful as a new DM with some new players Thanks!

Tomb of Annihilation was my first campaign. It was also the DM's first time DMing. It took 2 years. Everyone went through at least 4 characters and we used the optional 15 death save rule. We were not an adventurers league group. It was still one of the most fun experiences I've had. Especially considering our warlock defeating the BBEG by knocking them into lava with a bead of force.

Totally agree about Storm King's Thunder too. The middle section is so baggy that the next time I run it I'm going to segue directly from the attack on Triboar (or one of the other towns but we started with Lost Mine of Phandelver) to the Eye of the All Father. It's a shame that in the standard mode there isn't that many giant encounters and soooo much wandering around in the wilderness with the party wondering what is important and what wasn't; even if travel is sped up.

As a brand new GM trying to start a big campaign for my also very green family, I really appreciate this content! Thanks a million!

Where do you find these "extras content" found?

I am just in 15 min, but I can already said that I am missing some kind of rating at the end of each part, when you rate how much each of you like the adventure.

Thanks for the content.

Curse of Strahd was the very first Adventure Module I ran and I loved it :D!!!!! Though I disagree with Monty's Assessment with it being a Masterpiece. Far from it actually. I found Curse of Strahd to sometimes be very repetitive (Especially the Strahd encounters, I limit it to just two encounters tops. Otherwise the final clash loses the tension and suspense). A real masterpiece is Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden, which did what Curse of Strahd does and made it superior in pretty much all regards.



I do however say Lost Mine of Phandelver is superior to Curse of Strahd and even Waterdeep Dragon Heist. Curse of Strahd to me is a case of a "Over hyped and Overrated" story that has basically a Vampire who torments the adventurers that is set in a Gothic Horror Setting...... That's really it.




Again, Curse of Strahd was entertaining, but not a masterpiece.

I've never been thru a module. Never. Best part of playing dnd is being taken somewhere by a dm and believing you got you there. All time best module ... player handbook dm guide. Game on

I think for tomb of annihilation I might decide, should I run this one, to just invent an item, that’s only usable to the players themselves, that prevents the death curse thing from affecting them. They can still die, but they can be raised from the dead with the correct spell too. I’ll have to make it so only the item can work for a set character and can only be attuned to another person should they pc die. That’s my thought process as to making the stakes, for the players, a tad lower. But, I need to fully go through this module in detail before I decide that. I think the general story and aesthetic would appeal to my future brother-in-law though and he has begged me to run a game for him as a dm. I just worry because he is new, brand new, to dnd and I’m more concerned with finding a storyline that would appeal to him and allowing him to work through the mechanics, than finding the easiest on me. Of course, I also have the issue of making sure I can pull a group together to even play. I don’t want to run a dmpc to just fill out the party. That feels disingenuous. But I don’t have enough family members with aligning schedules to run a session either. Ah well. This is a very good guide. Thanks for doing this. It’s made it much easier to browse through and have a decent idea of what I’m getting into with each module. I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not running a homebrew campaign is about all. I might have to opt for the dungeon crawl of yawning portal, least some of the early ones.

For Tales from the Yawning Portal, I was surprised by how much there was in "The Sunless Citadel" when we were going through it. It was my first DM campaign and the narrative I was planning worked really well with this dungeon. We did the "An Ogre and His Cake" for our session zero and then time skipped to older characters and kicked off with this, wrapping up level 5 with a False Hydra back at the village. I actually wrote up what we did and submitted it to "All Things DND" and they did put it in a video, "The Orphan Village".

Wow, this is a great way to break down the modules! Thank you!

We finished Phandelver, today, we ended up stealing the appearance of the main brother, slaying another one while also creating a soup & ale restaurant that sells to Goblins...oh, and that one alcohol-poisoned patron that I made a bet with.

New Dm here, running Starter kit for my boys (8 & 11) and two of their friends. I'm going Essentials next. Then Dragons Heist!