>>43821269
I used to think they were a crutch for bad GMs. Now that I have a lot less time on my hands, they're great. You just have to be careful that your game doesn't start going on rails

>>43821269
I fucking hate 5e but blizzard are fairly good at making adventures so there probably not to bad if you insist on playing a shit system anyway.

>>43821269
They can be restrictive, but are quite good for DMs without the time to make their own adventures or NPCs. Like people with jobs, families, and hobbies other than roleplaying.

PotA is pretty good as a dungeon crawl. I mean, it has zillions of dungeons and a fairly decent plot to tie them all together. Depending on how much you and your players like elemental-themed stuff (elemental monsters, elemental cultists, elemental spells, elemental magic items, etc. ad nauseum) you may or may not get tired of all the fire/water/air/earth related stuff. It does get a little predictable and boring after a while.

But the dungeon locations are great, with all kinds of cool combos, scenarios and NPCs in them. Ending's a bit weak IMO but YMMV.

We played mines of pandelver for our first campaing, it was fun
and we managed to kill every single npc that was supposed to lead us inside the mines, so the DM had to bullshit and gave us an ending
>>43821723
blizzard?

The pre-made adventures vary in quality, but PotA is one of the good ones. The best way to praise it is comparing it to a shitty pre-made, namely the Tyranny of Dragons.

It's more open ended, doesn't rely on pushing the PC's down a very narrow predetermined path that would fall apart if you deviated even slightly.

The layout of information in the book is far better. Details on important NPC's is where you fucking need it instead of split amongst four or five paragraphs across 3 pages.

Actually allows for downtime and sidequests where Tyranny didn't.

Basically a solid adventure overall and would wholeheartedly recommend. It still takes preparation and you will probably want to change things here and there to better suit your group or playstyle. For instance I chose to condense fights a bit, folding smaller, trivial fights into ones with more depth.

Better Question: What makes a good pre-made adventure? I've known plenty of groups that kind of dislike the whole "SAVE THE WORLD LEVEL 3 ADVENTURERS!" kind of stories and that seems to be what D&D adventures are entirely made of.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen? Pretty shitty and it goes from pure rail road to open world questing all of a sudden. If it had been one way or the other, I would have liked it a lot better.

Prices of the Apocalypse? A good mixture. Enough free form stuff to get you interested and to provide fluff and flavor and a lot of well constructed dungeons too with a plot that makes the players want to move forward.

Out of the Abyss? Ho boy. This is not a good adventure for people who want to feel like heroes. It is mildly rail roady at first, but only to establish how utterly fucked you are and to establish how insane people in the Underdark are. You better be prepared to roleplay, and I mean, roleplay because it is not a good idea to fight anything at all for a long ass time.

I am digging it, but if you want to get a feel for bashing enemies over the head with a massive hammer and feeling like a bad ass on a quest, you need to go elsewhere.

>>43822816
You know I started Tyranny of Dragons with them once and got through one game, it wasn't great. That was like 5 months ago, I've convinced them to give it another go, hoping this time will be a bit more fun since we're all new to the game. I have no more experience than them, but nobody else wanted to DM and I organised the game so I became DM by default.

>>43823190
Yeah I was interested in Out of the Abyss, but then I took a look at a few things people said about it. Seemed generally positive but it seemed like it was aimed at groups with more experience than us.
I only had the money to buy one so I just went with PotA, books are expensive and I am broke.

>>43823094
Honestly, for me it's having enough material to work with, but not being too constrained.
Me and my group are in our 30es, we all have day jobs, I don't have the time to write up full campaigns like I used to. These days I usually run short campaigns (around 10-15 sessions total) by stringing together a couple of premade modules, adding in a bunch of my stuff to fill the gaps and involve the characters, and that's it.
What I want is to have as much as possible of the things I need - details on the opposition, maps for places, rough timelines - more than a linear plot that wants players to do X to proceed.
What I don't want is lengthy backstories for random mooks that have no function outside of two combat rounds (Paizo, I'm looking at you).

About 5e, I've only played Hoard, and I found it okay. Not great, quite a bit railroady, but it had its good moments. However, I had to work in a lot of stuff because some sections as presented were either super-thin or generally dislikable. I hope they get the guy who made up the names for the caravan NPCs and shoot him .

>>43823094
Generally I'd say the ability to be at least a little modular. As in, if it's an adventure book that you can take chunks from for your own game (or can substitute chunks of your own story) without everything going tits up it's at least competently constructed.

From there it'll come from writing/story quality and mechanical design.
And yeah, level 3's pretty early to be bringing out 'savior of the world' stuff.

>>43821269
Phandelver great
Hoard and Rise BAD
Princes good
Abyss good

>>43822816
Yeah, Tyranny felt like a fucking theme park ride. You never had time to leave the tracks and take int he setting. Each time we made it to a city, I was like "Oh, cool, I know this from video games, and now I get to explore it for real." And then the DM blew the fucking steam whistle because the train was coming into the station and we'd better get the fuck on board.

>>43824770
Iunno, when I ran it, I remember it having a bit of time to chill in the cities. In fact the three days spent fucking around with the downtime tables in Baldurs Gate might have been the high point of my run.

>>43824882
Maybe you just had a better DM. With us it was like, we were looking for a good shop and the DM was like "You know those guys you're following are leaving, like, now, right?"

>>43821269
I'm running HotDQ right now, about halfway through and while the balance is wonky the actual adventure isn't that bad. I'm adding subplots and my players seem to enjoy it.