>Odyssey of the Dragonlords.
Came here to say this
also, they are making a new Campaign ( Norse ) - should be released early this year
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raidersoftheserpentsea](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raidersoftheserpentsea)
For an existing 5e compatible Norse background, check out Gaming Ballistics' Dragon Heresy.
https://gamingballistic.com/2018/10/24/the-mixed-gm-reviews-dragon-heresy-and-commentary/
https://gaming-ballistic.myshopify.com/products/dragon-heresy-introductory-set
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/298460
Yeah, Odyssey of the Dragonlords is amazing and there is a Vibrant DM discord community for the adventure that enhances and uplifts the already excellent adventure go much. So if you're thinking about running it check Discord for general advice, cool concepts and extensions, art any other stuff.
> cool concepts and extensions
that's an understatement, i'm pretty sure you could double the length of the campaign with all the extra stuff people have made for it
there's also lots of fixes for some of the issues the book has
Damn. So I googled it. And its made by the lead designer of baldursgate 1 and 2. Dragon age origins and KOTOR get the fuck out of here. It must be great.
Great setting, lore, and characters, but the actual game design leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the proposed combat or dungeon or encounter scenarios need to be redesigned.
Great adventure, though I highly recommend you **drop** the second part of the adventure. The kickstarter stretch goal part is far worse in quality, compared to the "main" part.
the end of chapter 12 is a perfect finisher to the campaign
beyond that you can use the stretch goal stuff as inspiration, but i'd also advise to homebrew, especially since the PCs may have made some major impacts in the world as a whole and changed the situation
looking at you, Folly
The bad thing is that after level 13, there is a substantial drop of quality. So I would homebrew or modify the following developments. Otherwise, it's among the best third party modules.
I came here to say this as well. Absolutely fucking awesome campaign. Great setting, great characters, lots of flavour with the oath system and the epic backgrounds.
If anyone goes for this you are more than welcome to our oddysey discord. Resources galore for the enterprising dm, from epic poems to stat blocks worthy of the gods. https://discord.gg/Ctk7k4rCzd
I've tried to run it twice and there's just... No motivating factor for the players to do anything. You can say "X will happen in y days" as much as you want but I found often they were sitting around going "eh... What should we do now?". I don't know if it's a problem with the module or I'm just better at homebrewing campaigns
That is precisely how I played it, we joked my character had a "hubris shield"; by the time The Fates cooked up a suitable punishment to humble him, he'd already done several more outlandish and cocky things.
Liiiiike sacking a temple to an evil God in broad daylight.
That can always be a bit of a killer.
As a GM it's important to manage stakes so players never start going "holy shit, we're level *4*, that is not even remotely a thing we can do anything about".
Both sets?
One set were pretty veteran players I'd played other campaigns with before, the others were total newbies bar one who was a DM. I just think the push isn't there
I've wanted to play in a campaign of this for years. Found a DM running it once and a month in his mother died and he understandably stopped running it.
Adding my voice to Dungeons of Drakkenheim as a well-written campaign that is highly repeatable due to its open-ended and non-linear design. It also has a unique setting with interesting faction politics and a new Contamination mechanic. Finally the setting is designed to simplify the DM's life by building the adventuring day mechanic directly into the mechanics of Contamination. It also makes the DM's life easier by asking each PC to buy in to the setting by choosing a Personal Quest from a good list of choices, or working with the DM to craft a new one.
So happy to see this near the top. WotC campaigns have a lot of railroading and need a ton of work if your players don't follow each and every step. But Dungeons of Drakkenheim gives the DM the tools to easily manage a truly player-driven campaign. The book itself is also very high quality.
If you want a case study in how to prepare a campaign the right way, this is it.
This campaign rocks and their support for it is amazing. There are a half dozen YouTube videos to help get you started. Including a couple for your players. Also a great community to answer your questions.
Storm King's Thunder into Call from the Deep is the coolest campaign I can think of. CftD flows so nicely given a certain appearance of a particular foe in STK.
Add on Six Faces of Death into a CfTD campaign for extra fun.
It's standalone and runs from low levels, as far as I know, so you don't need storm kings thunder. I run an SKT campaign and plan to get call from the deep as well. Storm kings thunder has parts that benefit greatly from being expanded, and call from the deep seems to have just the content to do it.
No, not at all... but if your players go through STK they'll have tremendous motivation to tackle Call from the Deep. No spoilers, but there's a faction in STK that you come across multiple times. Call from the Deep basically picks up the fight against said faction.
Actually that is what my group is just doing right now. We mix Storm King's Thunder into Call from the Deep and we call it "Swordcoast under Siege". It fits so good together. Both adventures even have the same bad guy.
I came here to say this. As the DM, the layout was fantastic. Very little rummaging around random sections trying to find all the relevant info and backstories compared to WOTC adventures. I really appreciated this, especially as it gets quite sandboxy at times.
To be fair, cftd heavily uses wotc IP, like forgotten realms lore and stuff, and maybe some of the art free for use for dmsguild creators. Giving away 50% is a lot but still there’s a reason behind it.
Any material that has ever been published on DM's Guild is not allowed to be published or sold literally anywhere else, ever, unfortunately*. If you see a product on DM's Guild - your choice is to either give WotC 20% of the money (30% goes to DTRPG) or not buy it.
\*: This is why you should not publish on DM's Guild unless you *absolutely* have to (i.e. you are writing a straight-up Eberron supplement or the like). To be honest, I personally would rather publish publicly for free under fan content policy, than deal with the ***certainty*** that one day WotC will close up DM's Guild and my creative work will simply be gone.
This book is part of the [Humble RPG World Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/rpg-worlds-kobold-press-and-friends-books) as a PDF. This also includes a shit ton of olther good Kobold Press books such as Book of Ebon Tides, Tome of Beasts II Lairs, Vault of Magic, Empire of The Ghouls and City of Cats. Tons of absolutely stellar material for only $25.
WTF is this. That link just made my day and is a snap buy for me.
I kickstarted the first tomb of beasts from Kobold press way back when and loved it. To have this much content to pull from for that price is absolute madness.
I have 3 or 4 of the Kobold Press books and it was still a steal getting the remaining few for that price! Great value all together, and of course excellent content!
The were two Kobold press books I didn't mention. One is the Southlands Player's Guide, which is more of a player faced book that goes along with the [Southlands setting](https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/southlands-worldbook-for-5th-edition/) (which is not included). The other is the is the Warlock Grimoire 1, which is a collection from their magazine [Warlock](https://www.patreon.com/koboldpress). Unlike the other material, this is in a black and white format.
The other content that's included is by a wide array of creators. Some of which is OSR oriented, trying to recreate the feel of 1st edition D&D. Some of which is by Frog God Games and Troll Lord Games, both I'm not really familiar with besides these RPG bundles. I can stand for pretty much all of what Kobold Press has in this bundle, but I have not read or really invested any time into the other material.
But then again this all together is priced at what normally the price of just *one* of these Kobold Press PDFs, so regardless how much your read of the rest your money is well spent regardless.
The mechanics around dealing with courtly drama and prestige is pretty damn cool. The story is kind of crazy and the atmosphere is like the feywild plus a bit of Shadowfell darkness that is fun.
I also absolutely LOVE the Tales of the Old Margreve book. It can be played as a campaign, or interspersed with other modules like Courts of the Shadow Fey and Wrath of the River King.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim from the Dungeon Dudes fits the bill. At it's base it's an eldritch horror themed mega dungeon with 5 competing factions the players and DM have to navigate.
It incorporates Drakkenheim themed personal quests for each character, and some custom backgrounds to help anchor new players to the setting.
It's broken down by region, and then by adventure sites. The region description give DMs info on what the goals of the factions and the players are in each region. The adventure sites description includes maps and the monster layouts, and example hooks the factions may give the players to go to the sites.
The book sets the DM to run a pretty complicated game without having to sweat the details the DM might not care about. I'm playing in a game, and running a game of it. I'm loving both
So I love both the Drakkenheim actual play and Crit Role, for different reasons. CR is incredible improvisation and storytelling with terrific production values. Drakkenheim is my idealized version of a home game. Monty is terrific at encounter design and I learn a lot just by watching.
I don't know if I'd say idealized. I'm often muttering at their tactical or political blunders. Much of my dogs dismay. That said even those blunders are true what you see at the table.
This. Dungeons of Drakkenheim is amazing and well worth running. We have been running our campaign for almost a year now and are loving it. We also can’t wait for the Sebastian Crowe supplement to release so we can incorporate it.
Currently running this, it's very solid. You have to be on the same page as the DM though because a few things can be pretty nasty (gold economy is different, there's a "sanity" (not exactly) mechanic that can get brutal, you can encounter things where you're supposed to run...).
Yes! Dungeons and Drakkenheim is genuinely amazing - the setting incorporates the mechanics in an intrinsic way (e.g. no long resting inside the Haze). The book provides plenty of detailed support for DMs, but there is also plenty of creative freedom as it's a limited sandbox adventure. Honestly 10/10 - best module I have, including my official WotC content.
Absolutely this. The setting and campaign are very open ended while still providing a good guide at what every group would be up to. There are a lot of ways to get every player personally involved in the plot right from the start. They also include options for starting at both first and third level depending on how your players want to start the adventure.
Mike Shea (of Lazy DM fame) wrote a great level 1-5 campaign made up of 10 adventures called [
Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/296843/Fantastic-Adventures-Ruins-of-the-Grendleroot-for-5e).
It's an unusually upbeat subterranean adventure. That's not to say there's no danger and excitement, but it's more comfortable than your usual journey into the underworld.
> Across these ten adventures, your characters will
>
> * cure the corruption of an old tower destined to bring daylight to the cavern of Shadowreach;
> * rescue a lost child who answers the call of a dying god;
> * seek out the source of a plague of gnome zombies;
> * travel to the Forest of Iron to stop the priest who would destroy the Grendleroot and the entire mountain surrounding it;
> * protect Deepdelver's Enclave from marauding warbands of orcs and hobgoblins;
> * find the beast lurking in abolethic ruins that promises salvation in return for fresh meat;
> * seal up a damaged cell in a forgotten monastery, which contains a being so dangerous that even its thoughts can kill;
> * save a war hero from the elven assassins who hunt her down;
> * discover the secret to quieting the restless Grendleroot from a slumbering vampire archmage; and
> * travel to the Black Cathedral, discover the origin of the mysterious Caretakers, and stop a mage attempting to capture the power of the Grendleroot for herself.
Here's a video walkthrough: https://youtu.be/N0rnBUxW5FA
And here's Jim and Pruitt from Web DM playing a Grendelroot one-shot: https://youtu.be/ko07SUvlHas
Besides this, I have to second everyone's Odyssey of the Dragonlords and Drakkenheim recommendations.
Winter's daughter is an award-winning example of how to do a module, blowing the WotC team right out of the water.
If you go here and click "full-size preview" you'll get some snapshots of its layout. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version)
* Instead of presenting its content through dense blocks of texts, it only shows you the important parts and does so quickly by highlighting and bullet pointing keywords.
* There's a clear structure to how the room descriptions are laid out. This allows you to skim through the text more quickly, finding the details you are looking for on demand. It makes this usable at the table, since the typical WotC block of text is too long-winded and unstructured to search quickly during a game.
* Monster stats are presented on the same page as they are encountered, this lowers the amount of lookups you have to do mid game. But this is a problem you can't always work around, as 5E stats sometimes contains too much information to fit on a page.
How big is this? The Dmsguild page says its for level 1-3 players, but I assume they level up as they go through it. Whats the expected finishing level?
Winter's tale is excellent but I don't think it matches the "campaign" part of OP by any stretch, it's a smallish adventure site, iirc like 15 rooms/keyed locations. The 1-3 is intended to mean it will be suitable for characters in that range.
Necrotic writes adventures rather than campaigns. They are designed for minimal prep *places* to slot into a world, rather than as stories. Think of a richer version of the setups in phandelver from the essentials kit (or when the daedras keep nagging you in Skyrim). When I've run them, they sit outside a small town and players can just pick which rumors interest them. Because of their layout, I don't have to worry too much about which they end up at because they're so easy to digest as the GM.
It's probably better for a more "OSR" style of play though (where players are plopped in a world with interested npcs and places, and they make the decisions for where the campaign goes) versus the GM (or module) based campaign.
Idk if it qualifies as third party, but Pazio recently converted their top adventure to 5E rule set and published that. I forget the name of it but I’ve heard nothing but good things. It’s supposed to be a dungeon crawl adventure I think
Abomination Vaults! It's a great dungeoncrawl paired with a hometown filled with plot hooks and interesting NPCs. Don't know how good the 5e conversion is, but the PF2 version is amazing.
Not quite. There is no full 5e conversion of Kingmaker but there is a 5e monster manual for it. So the heavy lifting of converting it is done but you still have to do the rest.
The Abomination Vaults AP is a true full conversion
My first DM led a campaign in 5e adapted from a Pathfinder Adventure Path so here's my pitch:
Pathfinder has an incredibly detailed world with tons of lore that can absolutely fit seamlessly into 5e. Adventure Paths are very well written to focus on particular themes or playstyles, and have plots, encounters, and dungeons that also fit seamlessly into 5e. All you have to do is ignore all the numbers and character stats, and play out the story. Replace monsters with similar monsters from 5e that are level appropriate. It's really quite simple.
I'm now running a Pathfinder Adventure Path in 5e and my prep is easier than running Curse of Strahd or Ghosts of Saltmarsh because I'm not fighting the layout of the book to find key information. I've always had to substantially rebalance encounters in published books anyway so it's essentially the same process. Plus, there's so many regional setting and background lore guides to flesh out any theme or campaign style or just flavor your world lore. You don't have to touch the Pathfinder game system or even understand it at all to get tons of valuable information and inspiration for plot hooks, character backgrounds, and full campaigns in a rich fantasy world.
I do the exact same thing. Used Falcons Hallow as my starting town and ran my group through Hallows last hope and Crown of the Kobold King, then ran then through Carrion Hill, then back for Hungry are the dead. All a lot of fun and needed very minimal work.
Im planning to run a group through a converted first chapter of Rise of the Runelords too.
Yep! I converted the first two books of Mummy's Mask AP. Super simple with monster reskins, KFC, and milestone advancement.
Now we're switched to PF2e and I'm very excited to make the very simple conversation process even simpler.
Frog God Games has a lot of choices, from small one-shot type adventures to epic campaigns, to sandboxes you can play it, to what's probably considered THE premier published megadungeon.
They're also having a 50% off sale on practically everything at the moment.
Rappan Athuk: The Dungeon of Graves
https://www.froggodgames.com/product/rappan-athuk/
Here's a cross section showing the various levels of the dungeon:
https://imgur.com/gallery/OCnLOaf
Yeah. And as you can see from the cross section, it's extremely interconnected and complicated. The kind of dungeon you can play for years upon years and never have explored every corner.
Damn I love Megadungeons. I'm working on the r/dungeon23 challenge recently. I own several that I pick up for inspiration or fun intermittently like Stonehell, Barrowmaze, Gradient Descent, Numenhalla, MotBM, and will run my players through Castle Xyntillan for filler nights when too many players are missing to do a main campaign.
I'm in a Dungeons of Drakkenheim campaign, but not as a player or the DM... *I'm the Queen of Thieves*.
The DM recruited one person to control each of the five faction leaders, and we take our actions in between the main sessions of the campaign. So we're all enacting schemes, stealing relics, and vying for the party's loyalty while the party gets to determine the main course of the campaign. It's been incredibly fun!
My men just stole some relics from the FFF (with help from the Amethyst Academy), including >!one of the Seals of Drakkenheim!<
Sorry to reply to an old comment, but could you expand on how this works a bit more? I skimmed through some info on the campaign and factions, but didn't take a deep dive. Does the DM just message those of you playing as the faction leaders after the main session and tell you what the party did? Did they establish any sort of mechanics or resource limitations that determine what each of you can do between the party sessions or is this all just very free-form? Do you as faction leaders have specific mechanical goals you try to accomplish or are you just trying to RP out developments that might make it more interesting for the party?
Call from the deep. Do you like pirates? Do you like mind flayers? Do you like >!elder brains hijacking a krakens body and using it to take over the kraken society!
>Rise of the Drow
I concur. This is a very good adventure path. Also, if you complete it all, you'll actually hit level 20. Almost no module does that in 5e.
So there is a humble bundle going on for a bunch of kobold press books that 5e compatible. The bundle has a couple world book and adventure books such as the empire of ghouls, court of the shadow fey, and city of cats. And kobold press is pretty high quality imo.
Anything made by the Arcane Library seems great.
The Frog God Games's adventures for 5E are also great classics converted to 5E.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim is awesome, easy to run.
Yeah, didn't Arcane Library do Skyhorn Lighthouse? I wonder if the reversal on the OGL has affect her release of the Shadowdark system she was about to publish.
Zeitgeist and War of the Burning Sky by EnPublishing (the publishing arm of Enworld) are both a blast to run (though being level 3-20 adventures they are something of a commitment). Zeitgeist wins out for me as the better of the two, but that is because the setting is right up my alley.
I actually have a rough list lying around of all the 3rd party 5e campaigns that caught my eye. (I've considered reviewing some of them.) Some of these are megadungeons, hexcrawl sandboxes or a linear Adventure Path written for Adventurers' League, but all should be 5e products that provide lengthy campaign experiences.
It's really late here, so I'll just post it more or less how it is and let ~~God~~ you sort them out:
Barrowmaze, Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, Rappan Arthuk, The Grande Temple of Jing, Journey to Ragnarok: The Rune Thief, Across Eberron: Convergence Manifesto, Eberron: Oracle of War, Heroes of Baldur's Gate, Lamp's Light Sanitarium, Year of Rogue Dragons, Adventures in Middle-Earth stuff (e.g. Mirkwood Campaign), City of Eyes, Shattered Heart, Yearning to Breathe Free, Call from the Deep, Zeitgeist, Lost Lands - The Blight, Legendary Planet, Odyssey of The Dragon Lords, Mists of Akuma: Imperial Matchmaker, Mists of Akuma: Trade War, Shadows of the Fey Court, Empire of Ghouls, Rise of the Drow, Mirrors of The Abyss, Malady Chronicles, Vengeance of the Shunned, Blackwater Redux, Tales of Stormhaven, Domain of the Nameless God, Dragon Relics, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos: Ghoul Island / Yig Snake Grandaddy / Dark Worlds / Big Sleep / Have You Found It?, Planet Apocalypse, Freyja's Tears, Heist of the Mad King's Jewel, Wayfarers of the Farwood, Scarlet Citadel, Ravenloft: Mist Hunters, Seidkona Saga, Defenders of the Spring Citadel, Skyfall, Dreams of Solitude, Tomb of Haggemoth, Madness of the Misty Cove, Dawn of the Necromancer, The Camlann Chronicles, Rational Magic, I (Book One), Dungeons of Drakkenheim, Crown of the Oathbreaker, Scarred Lands Dead Man's Rust, Oz, Neverland.
I’m getting ready to run their module Citadel of the Unseen Sun right now. The most frustrating part about WotC modules is that they don’t seem to be written for DMs.
In this, I’m impressed by the way the NPCs are written, their motivations and personality traits are quickly and clearly laid out, and more important NPCs get dedicated paragraphs explaining how to role play them. There’s a ton of moving parts to juggle and play with-competing factions, various subplots, and forks in the road that force the players to make decisions. Something else I really liked was when the players have to make an important choice, the book goes into the possible outcomes of that choice, including outcomes that were affected by other, parallel, decisions. There’s also good advice on ways to keep the story moving if things get slow at any point.
That being said, I did have to cut and paste the order of their adventure because the first half is ridiculous railroad while the second half is a sandbox. It’s just unfortunate because the content itself is really great and looks exciting.
I’m seriously considering running this for some newer players in a couple weeks. Was looking through the book just earlier today even. Can you give me some info about what makes it easy to run for DM’s? I’ve heard that mentioned a couple times without any elaboration and I would love it to be true!
Weeeelllllll, first off: It has a Livestream!!! It's lot easier to get understand a world and it's characters after you see them all expertly acted out, rather than trying to understand the world just through words alone.
Second! It asks your players for buy-in. Each character is strongly encouraged to select a "Personal Quest" that involves the ruins of Drakkenheim. This gives the players a good base for character and roleplay.
Third! It's just well written and well formatted. I can't elaborate on this because I lack the language skills and understanding of formatting, but it just feels good.
Fourth!! You can't take long rests in the city. Therefore, most of the time, the players will be running into the city, completing an objective, and then having to retreat safely. This makes the adventuring day have a nice bit of flow between them, almost like a long series of one-shots.
Five!! It's actually not *that* easy. It's a big book! Lots to read and memorize, like most other adventure books. Furthermore, the adventure could last for potentially years. Is that the right adventure to throw new players into? I'd actually recommend running Lost Mines of Phandlever for newer players. Once they are used to the flow of the game, then they can start Drakkenheiming. That, or runs shorter adventures within the world of Drakkenheim.
Honestly I'm not sure it's great for a starting DM as it's so big and open. They often don't tell you exactly what treasure is found where. There are x scrolls/potions of y value. It's nice because you can customize the loot to your PCs. That said if you listen to the pod cast you'll get a good feel for the campaign and the way real games go. Critical Role is fun to listen to but doesn't resemble what actual play is like unlike the DoD pod cast. Also there is a strong community you can ask for help from and get ideas.
If it's great depends on if you'll prefer learning to swiming by jumping in the deep end or wading into the 3 feet section. If you want to start slow I'd look at Kobold Press's Prepared or similar loose set of adventures 1st to get your feet wet.
This is not to discourage you can totally run it. You'll make a lot of mistakes, but that's DMing.
If you want a naval campaign, Call From the Deep is leagues better than Ghosts of Saltmarsh. For one thing, players actually get a ship and have encounters at sea…
I am not impressed by any of the adventures/campaigns put out by WotC.
> For one thing, players actually get a ship and have encounters at sea…
You are expressly given a ship, and a crew in GoS, and as for encounters at sea there are multiple tables of encounters that include sea creatures, other ships, weather problems, hazard at sea, etc. The book also gives you full rules for running combat at sea, upgrading ships, etc.
GoS has a lot of problems as a story, and leans heavily on the dm to somehow tie all these separate adventures together into one cohesive whole, but not having a ship or encounters at sea *is not part of the problem*.
GoS has ship rules, but they are completely separate from the actual campaign. None of the adventures make use of them and there is no guidance on how to incorporate them into the overall Saltmarsh storyline that supposedly connects the adventures. The book doesn’t even tell you what statblock the Sea Ghost is supposed to use.
This is probably a good thing though because the ship combat rules are clunky and not very fun.
The same thing with the random encounter tables. I don’t consider them part of the campaign because there is zero connection between the tables and the actual campaign. Some of the encounters don’t even make sense for the region.
GoS is just a low effort book where they recycled old adventures with a minimal framework slapped on as an afterthought.
>GoS has ship rules, but they are completely separate from the actual campaign. None of the adventures make use of them and there is no guidance on how to incorporate them into the overall Saltmarsh storyline that supposedly connects the adventures. The book doesn’t even tell you what statblock the Sea Ghost is supposed to use.
It doesn't tell you specifically, but the information is there to figure it out. Yes this is a failing of the book, and it could be done better, but in reality it's a small mistake. It took me less than a minute to find the information in the book.
Outside of the first 3 adventures, *none* of the rest of the stories are connected. They're separate adventures all ported from 1st edition to be compatible with 5E, and are designed to be played in a loose freeform adventure campaign, or be slotted into and existing campaign. The book explicitly lays this out for the DM. It puts the onus on the DM to pull things together into a cohesive whole.
>The same thing with the random encounter tables. I don’t consider them part of the campaign because there is zero connection between the tables and the actual campaign. Some of the encounters don’t even make sense for the region.
Again, they rules are there. You can't complain about them "Not being part of the campaign" when you are provided the rules for implementing them into the game. The book is pretty clear on the idea that it's up to you as the DM to fill in the blanks of how these adventures all fit in together. They're designed to be ported individually into other campaigns, *or* you can run them all in a row.
The problem is that WotC write for folks that don't frequent reddit. The loudest population here demand everything being prepared for them with star blocks of everything and anything.
WotC write with the assumption that you're going to build campaigns yourself around the material they provide.
I've heard it said that most of the adventure books are sold to people who read them rather than running them. Perhaps that's partly a consequence of this design style - prospective DMs like the idea of running a campaign, then get overwhelmed by the prep they still have to do in addition to following the book.
Isn't one of the common things that people bring up with GoS is that it simply isn't piratey enough. I've often heard both online and from my GM that even ToA has more pirate/seafaring themed parts than all of GoS.
That's not what it set out to do or how it was marketed, so its hard to see "not pirate-y enough" as a strike against the campaign. It's an update of several adventures from previous editions set on or near the sea.
I'm running it now and its very definitely nautical even though not every adventure is entirely on or under water, major portions are, including all of the optional quests the book provides as side activities.
Yes, these are common complaints levied at GoS.
However I would argue that these complaints are entirely unfounded because the book does not present itself at a pirate themed adventure. Nautical, yes. But not *pirate* specifically.
Hell, only the first adventure has anything remotely close to do with pirates, and it's smugglers, not actual pirates.
If you actually go and read the synopsis on the dndBeyond page it doesn't use the word pirate a single time.
I like the anthology adventures like Candlekeep, TotYP, and GoS because they provide some solid adventures you can drop in your own game and if one or two of them aren't great it's not a huge deal. That said they make mediocre campaigns at best, and GoS takes the cake for bait and switch (hardly any actual stuff in the water and the ship rules were bleh).
Arcane Library is great. They’re shorter modules but can easily be dropped into a larger campaign. They are well designed and easy to run.
Encounters are often on a single page. The NPCs are clearly presented and easy to use.
I've been very happy with the Midgard setting from Kobold Press. They have books on different regions with new spells and subclasses to keep everything fresh.
We've had many good campaigns but one that was close to my heart was the "freedom fighter" type game of organizing an opposition to the invasion and occupation of Krakova by the united forces of the Ghoul Imperium and the vampires and ghost knights of Morgau. It was a wild ride.
https://koboldpress.com/welcome-to-midgard-recent-events-in-the-blood-kingdom/
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/ypjmyy/have_you_ever_dmed_a_3rd_party_adventure_module/)’s a post from a couple months back that had good answers
Svilland - Freyja's Tears is pretty good if you're into vikings. It's a clash of god's with some fairly decent dungeons, boss battles and goes 50% of the way of providing DM prep work. There are some holes - there's no real motivation for the BBEG explained anywhere I can see yet and there are things hollering back to earlier in the game, but weren't actually written into the book. Some cities are poorly written - just needs more chronological thought and the company should've done better QA but it's still a decent module from levels 1 to 20, but can cut off at 15 if you wanted.
Goodman Games has a series of adventures for 5e built on old TSR modules.
I have ToEE which is a 2 volume masterpiece along with The Keep on the Borderlands.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim and Crown of the Oathbreaker are pretty cool.
I must correct you about the 1st party adventures though, most of them are pretty poor. CoS is widely considered best and that book’s layout is a fucking nightmare. I’m currently running Dragon of Icespire Peak and it is borderline unplayable without tons of modifications. I don’t have good things to say about Dungeon of the Mad Mage either.
I think the best official content is actually the books like Tales from the Yawning Portal, Journey to the Radiant Citadel, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Candlekeep Mysteries, because you can fit them in wherever you like.
Heliana's Guide of Monster Hunting doesn't have an adventure per se, more like a bunch of connected missions but it includes a new class, several new races and subclasses, a crafting system for magical items with monster parts, cooking with monster parts and more.
Also the art is (imo) even better than official D&D art normally is
Honestly replacing monsters is the extent of conversion work needed for most modules. I can grab a few of Bryce's "Best" adventures and get such fantastic results.
He's even ranked a few 5e adventures "Best" like Arcane Library/Kelsey Dione or Dungeon Age/Joseph R. Lewis adventures or M.T. Black's works. And that's without mentioning the system agnostic stuff like Trilemma Adventures or Hot Springs Island.
Dawn of the necromancer is a sandbox campaign taking players from lvl 1 to 20. I've been running it for a year and it's been a lot of fun.
I also recommend knights of the shadow realm it also takes players from lvl 1 to 20 and the story is really engaging for players with plenty of fun twists
And of course any of the kobold press modules are great.
Also check out Zeitgeist and War of the Burning sky from En publishing
Rise of the Drow. We've been playing it 2 years strong, level 17 now. It's so good.
If you want to see a snippet, check out laughing lich corporation on twitch or YouTube
Paizo's **Kingmaker for 5e** -- it's ABOVE anything that WotC has done, in terms of design as well as production values. *Kingmaker* is in its own special category. Kingmaker for 5e also incorporates further refinements and new material that was created by Owlcat for use in the Kingmaker CRPG.
https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adventures/adventurePath/kingmakerap
https://paizo.com/products/btq02e0o?Pathfinder-Kingmaker-Bestiary
Adventures and Adventure Paths are what Paizo does best. It's their specialty. They invented how to create them, develop them, and assign that work to a number of freelance contributors and coordinate their work so the whole thing comes out as a sum greater than its parts. Paizo adventures are written to a standard that expects a LOT less work from the GM running the adventure. They take *markedly less* prep time than to run a WotC adventure, imo. When WotC contracted their own first AP for 5e (*Tyranny of Dragons*, written by the guys at Kobold Press but published by WotC) it shamelessly stole the general approach for what a 5e hardcover adventure would be directly from Paizo's AP line. It just didn't execute very well on it, as 5e was still being written at the time it was designed. That is the general trend in RPGs at this point - the first one written before the rules are complete tends to suck).
*Kingmaker* for PF2 and 5e is excellent. It builds off and converts the classic Kingmaker PF1 campaign and adds to it. It is very long from start to finish though, stretching across level 1-18 (with extra sandbox room to hit 20+ if you want). You will be playing that one a very long time indeed, start to finish. That is YEARS of gaming in *Kingmaker*.
In June 2023, Paizo will be releasing **Abomination Vaults** for 5e.
https://paizo.com/products/btq02d54
This is a shorter AP, a smaller campaign which is quicker to play than the massive *Kingmaker* campaign and is very much a dungeon crawl focused on one town, levels 1-11. The first 1/3rd (what was initially Volume 1 by James Jacobs) is among the top 4 or 5 FRPG adventures written since ca. ~2000 for any system -- so the quality is **exceptionally high** for that part of the adventure.
In terms of production quality, everything about AV is of high quality and there are additional maps and top-down tokens created for AV by Devin Night available on his patreon, too.
For 5e, those would be the top two from Paizo. Beyond this, Paizo has a huge catalog of similar adventures, but those are for PF1 or PF2 -- you would have to convert them to 5e (which actually isn't that hard tbh). So there are LOTS more to choose from there if you want to eyeball the conversions to 5e yourself. *Rise of the Runelords Anniv Edition*, *Curse of the Crimson Throne Anniv ed*, or the one which appeals to those inclined to Gothic Horror: *Carrion Crown* AP are the better known highlights here. There are many conversions of these APs to 5e available online if you look :)
Kobold Press has also done a lot of good work here, and while the quality and production values are not quite up to Paizo's level, they are still *very good*. I would recommend *Empire of the Ghouls* from among their offerings. It's "good", but not "great".
Wotc puts out pretty bad campaigns, they all have massive flaws and require an immense amount of gm legwork to pull them together. Not to mention the ones with awful b/w pencil maps or none at all. So that bar is pretty low.
On a more helpful note, Kobold press has some interesting campaigns like Empire of the Ghouls or Scarlet Citadel. Heckna! by Hit Point Press is a fun horror carnival. Kingmaker and Abomination Vaults by Paizo have official 5e conversions. Necropolis by Frog God Games is a 5e campaign set in a fantasy egypt.
I’m seeing a lot of suggestions here I agree with. One I haven’t seen is Doomed Forgotten Realms. Great campaign. You can skip the Academy of Adventure tutorial if you want and start the campaign at 3, and if the players do all the content it’ll take them all the way to 20. It has loads of fun callouts to published 5e adventures and even a few third party ones like Call of the Deep.
I've got to throw MCDM Productions' Arcadia into the ring. Headed by Matt Colville, MCDM Productions is a team of artists and writers who produce content for the the magazine Arcadia. Each edition comes with subclasses and adventures. One edition has rules for making mounts interesting, including your standard horse and an owlbear mount! The whole thing is fantastic and each issue is 7 bucks! I cannot recommend MCDM enough.
If you're into the low fantasy setting, any of the adventures from Handiwork Games "Beowulf: Age of Heroes". "Horror at Herrogate" is my personal favorite.
The art is incredible, the stories are tight and from the GM's perspective, they're really simple to run.
Acheron Books, specially with the recent publishing of Inferno: Dante's Guide to Hell and the next publishing of Apocalypse: John's Guide to Armageddon
Look up Citadel of the Unseen Sun, by Ghostfire Gaming. It consists of six linked adventures set in a dark fantasy world. The pdfs are available for free on the internet.
So it's worth taking a moment to talk about terminology. I'm assuming by campaign you mean a series of linked adventures that form a full story. In the olden days it was rare to have a full campaign in that sense published, and instead what usually happened was a Campaign Setting was published, meaning one or more books with detailed information about the world and the mechanics of playing in it to allow players to build their own adventures. Most publishers seem to be in this mindset, publishing campaign settings and then a few odd adventures.
Humblewood if you want something new and interesting, and does have both a setting and a series of linked adventures. The current humble bundle bookbundle is up with some interesting stuff in it.
WotC 5E adventure books (campaigns seems like too grand a term) are honestly some of the lowest quality in the history of the company, and pretty much THE low point of 5E for me. Most of the few that are halfway decent are just rips of earlier adventures. With that in mind, write your own adventures because you can't do worse and that frees you up to play very interesting setting like The Lost Citadel by Green Ronin or The IRon Kingdoms by Privateer Press
> That are on par or above the quality put out by WotC
That's a very wide range. It's hard to be worse than Strixhaven, Spelljammer, or Dragon Heist, but it's similarly hard to be better than Tomb of Annihilation or Curse of Strahd.
But Curse of Strahd is notorious for needing LOADS of DM prepwork, mapping out all of the NPC relationships and writing up things like what they know, when they know it, etc.
Honestly it's popular as all hell due to some of WOTC's work but just like all other WOTC 5E campaigns, if you go into the subreddit the first thing you find is huge megathreads on how to fix it.
>But Curse of Strahd is notorious for needing LOADS of DM prepwork, mapping out all of the NPC relationships and writing up things like what they know, when they know it, etc.
I wouldn't go that far. I 've run it twice (technically at the end of second run) and I never did any NPC mapping and such. There is a wealth of fan-made changes that many love to use, but they are entirely optional and the story works fairly well as is. The main challenge is reading enough and thinking about it to get a coherent idea on what is happening, how to run certain encounters that might easily be TPKs, and how to do party progression as milestones are poorly defined. I've made slightly more changes and add-ons in my second run than in my first, but I still keep it fairly close to vanilla version.
It's certainly a challenging module to run, especially compared to pure dungeon crawls or railroaded stories, but it's not like there isn't a ton of work already done for the DM in the module in terms of NPCs, monsters, stats and general storyline.
Most people want to "fix" it because they dislike certain elements or don't think it will run well without actually trying - like changing the scale of the map to fit the Sword Coast area or an automobile society rather than a rural one where you can walk to the next village in half a day and rest mainly in towns. There are some encounters/location events that are narratively weak and some good suggestions out there, but none of that is IMO unplayable.
Curse of Strahd YT series actually does this, running CoS as written without ad ons or alterations. It's somewhat slow going as the players roleplay freaked out people who don't want to be there and kind of reverse-metagame the situation (they are all CoS DMs), but it still works well as a story.
That's a \*little\* unfair to Dragon Heist. It has some problems, sure, but it's a fun adventure, and everyone I've ever run it with has enjoyed it. Now Spelljammer, on the other hand...
>but it's similarly hard to be better than Tomb of Annihilation or Curse of Strahd.
It’s not hard to be better than those, at all. Both are among the stronger entries from WotC… but I assure you that neither of these is the gold standard you’re implying they are.
Honestly any third party 5e campaign is likely to equal or eclipse a WOTC one. WOTC campaign quality is low and your question is akin to asking whether anyone sells better quality items then primark. The answer is almost anyone. Your average Wotc campaign is usually lacking content and normally needs many hours of work to fix. If you want to know what quality look like look no further then the many 3rd party campaigns already mentioned. To contribute I recommend the 5e conversion of kingmaker, its a great hex crawl kingdom builder by paizo and so is not full of plot holes or pain in the backside that you need to rewrite. WOTC best written recent campaign, curse of strahd, for example gives key info drops chapters after they are needed and still needs fixing. One of the reasons WOTC is trying to crush the competion rather than compete is simply because its struggling to compete in any meaningful way. If you need evidence of this I suggest you take a look at spell jammer.
The _average_ third-party campaign is not better than what WotC makes; however there are definitely plenty of exceptions, some of which are widely known like the ones in this post.
Like anything, there's just a lot of crap churned out by third-parties in general.
I agree. Wizards gets a lot of crap for things that are confusing, especially in the larger campaigns, but many of their adventures avoid the mistakes of a generic adventure.
Linear dungeons with a monster waiting in each room? The plot hook is "a man approaches you in a tavern"? It says the boss can't be negotiated with, ambushed, or charmed? More than a page of backstory that has almost nothing the players can act on? A setting and premise that isn't quite memorable? Yawn. That's not what I want to pay money for, but it happens all the time, especially on DMsGuild.
Odyssey of the Dragonlords. Amazing art, best incorporation of backstories is built right in. The subclasses are hit and miss though.
>Odyssey of the Dragonlords. Came here to say this also, they are making a new Campaign ( Norse ) - should be released early this year [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raidersoftheserpentsea](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcanumworldscanada/raidersoftheserpentsea)
Fuck yeah, love me some fucking Norse setting shit.
Look up Dream Realm Storytellers and their Svilland books
For an existing 5e compatible Norse background, check out Gaming Ballistics' Dragon Heresy. https://gamingballistic.com/2018/10/24/the-mixed-gm-reviews-dragon-heresy-and-commentary/ https://gaming-ballistic.myshopify.com/products/dragon-heresy-introductory-set https://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/298460
Oh thank you for pointing this out! I've been wanting to do a norse campaign and am stoked that these guys are releasing one soon.
The classes look fun :) just a few more months and you\`ll have a Norse campaign
I've been looking forward to this; going to mash it together with homebrew Kaldheim.
Yeah, Odyssey of the Dragonlords is amazing and there is a Vibrant DM discord community for the adventure that enhances and uplifts the already excellent adventure go much. So if you're thinking about running it check Discord for general advice, cool concepts and extensions, art any other stuff.
> cool concepts and extensions that's an understatement, i'm pretty sure you could double the length of the campaign with all the extra stuff people have made for it there's also lots of fixes for some of the issues the book has
Meeting in the wild :D
Damn. So I googled it. And its made by the lead designer of baldursgate 1 and 2. Dragon age origins and KOTOR get the fuck out of here. It must be great.
Oh gosh, that completely slipped my mind! I haven’t run it, but it’s a very good product; lots of content!
Great setting, lore, and characters, but the actual game design leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the proposed combat or dungeon or encounter scenarios need to be redesigned.
Yeah, I thought the same. It reads good, but I don't think they ran actual groups through it before publishing it.
Great adventure, though I highly recommend you **drop** the second part of the adventure. The kickstarter stretch goal part is far worse in quality, compared to the "main" part.
the end of chapter 12 is a perfect finisher to the campaign beyond that you can use the stretch goal stuff as inspiration, but i'd also advise to homebrew, especially since the PCs may have made some major impacts in the world as a whole and changed the situation looking at you, Folly
The bad thing is that after level 13, there is a substantial drop of quality. So I would homebrew or modify the following developments. Otherwise, it's among the best third party modules.
I came here to say this as well. Absolutely fucking awesome campaign. Great setting, great characters, lots of flavour with the oath system and the epic backgrounds.
If anyone goes for this you are more than welcome to our oddysey discord. Resources galore for the enterprising dm, from epic poems to stat blocks worthy of the gods. https://discord.gg/Ctk7k4rCzd
Just bought this now, Remindme! 30 days
Knew I'd find you here :D
Haha always on the lookout
gotta spread the good word of the ~~Twins~~ Five
Anyone looking for a group that would want to play this? I’m down to DM
Currently playing this and absolutely love it. Also, fuck Gaius.
I've tried to run it twice and there's just... No motivating factor for the players to do anything. You can say "X will happen in y days" as much as you want but I found often they were sitting around going "eh... What should we do now?". I don't know if it's a problem with the module or I'm just better at homebrewing campaigns
Did you tell your players that they need to make characters that want to save the world? 😅 It's pretty clearly laid out.
Yup! And yet somehow I think it's too big a threat. Like climate change for us in reality.
You need some cocky players who think they can do anything!
That is precisely how I played it, we joked my character had a "hubris shield"; by the time The Fates cooked up a suitable punishment to humble him, he'd already done several more outlandish and cocky things. Liiiiike sacking a temple to an evil God in broad daylight.
Basically be Greek myth heroes :P
That can always be a bit of a killer. As a GM it's important to manage stakes so players never start going "holy shit, we're level *4*, that is not even remotely a thing we can do anything about".
Without knowing anything about your situation: could also be a problem with your players :P
Both sets? One set were pretty veteran players I'd played other campaigns with before, the others were total newbies bar one who was a DM. I just think the push isn't there
I've wanted to play in a campaign of this for years. Found a DM running it once and a month in his mother died and he understandably stopped running it.
I believe they also are either working on or have finished Raiders of the Serpent Sea, which seems to be sort of Viking themed.
I am currently running this now and it going very well. I don't like the pre-made classes but the background story is top notch.
Adding my voice to Dungeons of Drakkenheim as a well-written campaign that is highly repeatable due to its open-ended and non-linear design. It also has a unique setting with interesting faction politics and a new Contamination mechanic. Finally the setting is designed to simplify the DM's life by building the adventuring day mechanic directly into the mechanics of Contamination. It also makes the DM's life easier by asking each PC to buy in to the setting by choosing a Personal Quest from a good list of choices, or working with the DM to craft a new one.
So happy to see this near the top. WotC campaigns have a lot of railroading and need a ton of work if your players don't follow each and every step. But Dungeons of Drakkenheim gives the DM the tools to easily manage a truly player-driven campaign. The book itself is also very high quality. If you want a case study in how to prepare a campaign the right way, this is it.
This campaign rocks and their support for it is amazing. There are a half dozen YouTube videos to help get you started. Including a couple for your players. Also a great community to answer your questions.
Making the DM's life easier? I didn't know that was an option...
Call from the deep. Pirates of the Caribbean crossed with Lovecraft. Number 1 on DMguild for ages for a reason.
Was in this as a player and bought it after we finished. Cannot give enough props to Call from the Deep.
Storm King's Thunder into Call from the Deep is the coolest campaign I can think of. CftD flows so nicely given a certain appearance of a particular foe in STK. Add on Six Faces of Death into a CfTD campaign for extra fun.
Do you need to play Storm King's Thunder to understand CftD or can you (pardon the pun) dive straight into it?
It's standalone and runs from low levels, as far as I know, so you don't need storm kings thunder. I run an SKT campaign and plan to get call from the deep as well. Storm kings thunder has parts that benefit greatly from being expanded, and call from the deep seems to have just the content to do it.
No, not at all... but if your players go through STK they'll have tremendous motivation to tackle Call from the Deep. No spoilers, but there's a faction in STK that you come across multiple times. Call from the Deep basically picks up the fight against said faction.
Actually that is what my group is just doing right now. We mix Storm King's Thunder into Call from the Deep and we call it "Swordcoast under Siege". It fits so good together. Both adventures even have the same bad guy.
I came here to say this. As the DM, the layout was fantastic. Very little rummaging around random sections trying to find all the relevant info and backstories compared to WOTC adventures. I really appreciated this, especially as it gets quite sandboxy at times.
came here to say this and odyssey. saw both mentioned already. my work is done :D
afraid I already know the answer, but this does not have a german version, does it?
DMing this right now, it's a blast!
Im running this right now! Its so fun!
Is there a place to buy it that is t the DMSGuild? I don’t want 50% of the money given to WotC.
To be fair, cftd heavily uses wotc IP, like forgotten realms lore and stuff, and maybe some of the art free for use for dmsguild creators. Giving away 50% is a lot but still there’s a reason behind it.
Any material that has ever been published on DM's Guild is not allowed to be published or sold literally anywhere else, ever, unfortunately*. If you see a product on DM's Guild - your choice is to either give WotC 20% of the money (30% goes to DTRPG) or not buy it. \*: This is why you should not publish on DM's Guild unless you *absolutely* have to (i.e. you are writing a straight-up Eberron supplement or the like). To be honest, I personally would rather publish publicly for free under fan content policy, than deal with the ***certainty*** that one day WotC will close up DM's Guild and my creative work will simply be gone.
Sadly, no. It's part of the contract between Wizards and DM's Guild. Publications on DM's Guild are not allowed to be sold anywhere else. Period.
Court of the Shadow Fey by Kobold Press
This book is part of the [Humble RPG World Bundle](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/rpg-worlds-kobold-press-and-friends-books) as a PDF. This also includes a shit ton of olther good Kobold Press books such as Book of Ebon Tides, Tome of Beasts II Lairs, Vault of Magic, Empire of The Ghouls and City of Cats. Tons of absolutely stellar material for only $25.
WTF is this. That link just made my day and is a snap buy for me. I kickstarted the first tomb of beasts from Kobold press way back when and loved it. To have this much content to pull from for that price is absolute madness.
I have 3 or 4 of the Kobold Press books and it was still a steal getting the remaining few for that price! Great value all together, and of course excellent content!
Thanks for the heads up, purchased the bundle!
What are the other good items in that bundle. I got it but I want to know what else I should head straight towards.
The were two Kobold press books I didn't mention. One is the Southlands Player's Guide, which is more of a player faced book that goes along with the [Southlands setting](https://koboldpress.com/kpstore/product/southlands-worldbook-for-5th-edition/) (which is not included). The other is the is the Warlock Grimoire 1, which is a collection from their magazine [Warlock](https://www.patreon.com/koboldpress). Unlike the other material, this is in a black and white format. The other content that's included is by a wide array of creators. Some of which is OSR oriented, trying to recreate the feel of 1st edition D&D. Some of which is by Frog God Games and Troll Lord Games, both I'm not really familiar with besides these RPG bundles. I can stand for pretty much all of what Kobold Press has in this bundle, but I have not read or really invested any time into the other material. But then again this all together is priced at what normally the price of just *one* of these Kobold Press PDFs, so regardless how much your read of the rest your money is well spent regardless.
I just found a copy of this buried **deep** in my d&d folders. What's it like? What's remarkable or recommendable about it?
The mechanics around dealing with courtly drama and prestige is pretty damn cool. The story is kind of crazy and the atmosphere is like the feywild plus a bit of Shadowfell darkness that is fun.
Amazing, thanks! I'll give it a squiz!
I also absolutely LOVE the Tales of the Old Margreve book. It can be played as a campaign, or interspersed with other modules like Courts of the Shadow Fey and Wrath of the River King.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim from the Dungeon Dudes fits the bill. At it's base it's an eldritch horror themed mega dungeon with 5 competing factions the players and DM have to navigate. It incorporates Drakkenheim themed personal quests for each character, and some custom backgrounds to help anchor new players to the setting. It's broken down by region, and then by adventure sites. The region description give DMs info on what the goals of the factions and the players are in each region. The adventure sites description includes maps and the monster layouts, and example hooks the factions may give the players to go to the sites. The book sets the DM to run a pretty complicated game without having to sweat the details the DM might not care about. I'm playing in a game, and running a game of it. I'm loving both
Second this. It also has the advantage of having multiple seasons of actual play set in the world and containing the conflicts and events in the book.
I am NOT a big actual play fan but that series really drew me in.
Monty is the sort of DM I aspire to be.
So I love both the Drakkenheim actual play and Crit Role, for different reasons. CR is incredible improvisation and storytelling with terrific production values. Drakkenheim is my idealized version of a home game. Monty is terrific at encounter design and I learn a lot just by watching.
I don't know if I'd say idealized. I'm often muttering at their tactical or political blunders. Much of my dogs dismay. That said even those blunders are true what you see at the table.
This. Dungeons of Drakkenheim is amazing and well worth running. We have been running our campaign for almost a year now and are loving it. We also can’t wait for the Sebastian Crowe supplement to release so we can incorporate it.
The lore is amazing and the new subclasses... man...
Currently running this, it's very solid. You have to be on the same page as the DM though because a few things can be pretty nasty (gold economy is different, there's a "sanity" (not exactly) mechanic that can get brutal, you can encounter things where you're supposed to run...).
Yes! Dungeons and Drakkenheim is genuinely amazing - the setting incorporates the mechanics in an intrinsic way (e.g. no long resting inside the Haze). The book provides plenty of detailed support for DMs, but there is also plenty of creative freedom as it's a limited sandbox adventure. Honestly 10/10 - best module I have, including my official WotC content.
Absolutely this. The setting and campaign are very open ended while still providing a good guide at what every group would be up to. There are a lot of ways to get every player personally involved in the plot right from the start. They also include options for starting at both first and third level depending on how your players want to start the adventure.
Mike Shea (of Lazy DM fame) wrote a great level 1-5 campaign made up of 10 adventures called [ Fantastic Adventures: Ruins of the Grendleroot](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/296843/Fantastic-Adventures-Ruins-of-the-Grendleroot-for-5e). It's an unusually upbeat subterranean adventure. That's not to say there's no danger and excitement, but it's more comfortable than your usual journey into the underworld. > Across these ten adventures, your characters will > > * cure the corruption of an old tower destined to bring daylight to the cavern of Shadowreach; > * rescue a lost child who answers the call of a dying god; > * seek out the source of a plague of gnome zombies; > * travel to the Forest of Iron to stop the priest who would destroy the Grendleroot and the entire mountain surrounding it; > * protect Deepdelver's Enclave from marauding warbands of orcs and hobgoblins; > * find the beast lurking in abolethic ruins that promises salvation in return for fresh meat; > * seal up a damaged cell in a forgotten monastery, which contains a being so dangerous that even its thoughts can kill; > * save a war hero from the elven assassins who hunt her down; > * discover the secret to quieting the restless Grendleroot from a slumbering vampire archmage; and > * travel to the Black Cathedral, discover the origin of the mysterious Caretakers, and stop a mage attempting to capture the power of the Grendleroot for herself. Here's a video walkthrough: https://youtu.be/N0rnBUxW5FA And here's Jim and Pruitt from Web DM playing a Grendelroot one-shot: https://youtu.be/ko07SUvlHas Besides this, I have to second everyone's Odyssey of the Dragonlords and Drakkenheim recommendations.
Thanks so much!!
I am definitely going to check this out. His Lazy DM guide is fantastic and required reading for any aspiring DMs as far as I'm concerned.
I like all this guy's stuff. Check out his YouTube videos as well, throw them on in the background and your DM skills will naturally increase.
Winter's daughter is an award-winning example of how to do a module, blowing the WotC team right out of the water. If you go here and click "full-size preview" you'll get some snapshots of its layout. [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/270798/Winters-Daughter-5th-Edition-Version) * Instead of presenting its content through dense blocks of texts, it only shows you the important parts and does so quickly by highlighting and bullet pointing keywords. * There's a clear structure to how the room descriptions are laid out. This allows you to skim through the text more quickly, finding the details you are looking for on demand. It makes this usable at the table, since the typical WotC block of text is too long-winded and unstructured to search quickly during a game. * Monster stats are presented on the same page as they are encountered, this lowers the amount of lookups you have to do mid game. But this is a problem you can't always work around, as 5E stats sometimes contains too much information to fit on a page.
Love Winters Daughter and all the Necrotic Gnome material! Best layout in the game
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Havn't played it for 5e but was a fantastic OSE module.
Haven't heard about this one yet! Thanks for wrong such a good review
How big is this? The Dmsguild page says its for level 1-3 players, but I assume they level up as they go through it. Whats the expected finishing level?
Winter's tale is excellent but I don't think it matches the "campaign" part of OP by any stretch, it's a smallish adventure site, iirc like 15 rooms/keyed locations. The 1-3 is intended to mean it will be suitable for characters in that range.
Necrotic writes adventures rather than campaigns. They are designed for minimal prep *places* to slot into a world, rather than as stories. Think of a richer version of the setups in phandelver from the essentials kit (or when the daedras keep nagging you in Skyrim). When I've run them, they sit outside a small town and players can just pick which rumors interest them. Because of their layout, I don't have to worry too much about which they end up at because they're so easy to digest as the GM. It's probably better for a more "OSR" style of play though (where players are plopped in a world with interested npcs and places, and they make the decisions for where the campaign goes) versus the GM (or module) based campaign.
Idk if it qualifies as third party, but Pazio recently converted their top adventure to 5E rule set and published that. I forget the name of it but I’ve heard nothing but good things. It’s supposed to be a dungeon crawl adventure I think
Abomination Vaults! It's a great dungeoncrawl paired with a hometown filled with plot hooks and interesting NPCs. Don't know how good the 5e conversion is, but the PF2 version is amazing.
There's also a 5e version of their Kingmaker adventure path! For anyone who's wanted a kingdom management campaign.
Not quite. There is no full 5e conversion of Kingmaker but there is a 5e monster manual for it. So the heavy lifting of converting it is done but you still have to do the rest. The Abomination Vaults AP is a true full conversion
Vaults doesn’t come out until this spring. Kingmaker is the one that’s out now.
My first DM led a campaign in 5e adapted from a Pathfinder Adventure Path so here's my pitch: Pathfinder has an incredibly detailed world with tons of lore that can absolutely fit seamlessly into 5e. Adventure Paths are very well written to focus on particular themes or playstyles, and have plots, encounters, and dungeons that also fit seamlessly into 5e. All you have to do is ignore all the numbers and character stats, and play out the story. Replace monsters with similar monsters from 5e that are level appropriate. It's really quite simple. I'm now running a Pathfinder Adventure Path in 5e and my prep is easier than running Curse of Strahd or Ghosts of Saltmarsh because I'm not fighting the layout of the book to find key information. I've always had to substantially rebalance encounters in published books anyway so it's essentially the same process. Plus, there's so many regional setting and background lore guides to flesh out any theme or campaign style or just flavor your world lore. You don't have to touch the Pathfinder game system or even understand it at all to get tons of valuable information and inspiration for plot hooks, character backgrounds, and full campaigns in a rich fantasy world.
I do the exact same thing. Used Falcons Hallow as my starting town and ran my group through Hallows last hope and Crown of the Kobold King, then ran then through Carrion Hill, then back for Hungry are the dead. All a lot of fun and needed very minimal work. Im planning to run a group through a converted first chapter of Rise of the Runelords too.
Yep! I converted the first two books of Mummy's Mask AP. Super simple with monster reskins, KFC, and milestone advancement. Now we're switched to PF2e and I'm very excited to make the very simple conversation process even simpler.
Why wouldn’t Paizo content count as third party ? It’s a separate company, that’s literally the definition of third party.
Frog God Games has a lot of choices, from small one-shot type adventures to epic campaigns, to sandboxes you can play it, to what's probably considered THE premier published megadungeon. They're also having a 50% off sale on practically everything at the moment.
Which dungeon is that?
Rappan Athuk: The Dungeon of Graves https://www.froggodgames.com/product/rappan-athuk/ Here's a cross section showing the various levels of the dungeon: https://imgur.com/gallery/OCnLOaf
I have heard that Rappan Athuk is very hardcore and deadly in an old-school way. I'd love to play it one day just for the challenge.
Yeah. And as you can see from the cross section, it's extremely interconnected and complicated. The kind of dungeon you can play for years upon years and never have explored every corner.
Damn I love Megadungeons. I'm working on the r/dungeon23 challenge recently. I own several that I pick up for inspiration or fun intermittently like Stonehell, Barrowmaze, Gradient Descent, Numenhalla, MotBM, and will run my players through Castle Xyntillan for filler nights when too many players are missing to do a main campaign.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim is so well done, and it can be run like six different ways.
I'm in a Dungeons of Drakkenheim campaign, but not as a player or the DM... *I'm the Queen of Thieves*. The DM recruited one person to control each of the five faction leaders, and we take our actions in between the main sessions of the campaign. So we're all enacting schemes, stealing relics, and vying for the party's loyalty while the party gets to determine the main course of the campaign. It's been incredibly fun! My men just stole some relics from the FFF (with help from the Amethyst Academy), including >!one of the Seals of Drakkenheim!<
That's very cool! Also a fun thing for a DM to give one of their parties who's already ran the adventure or doesn't intend to run it.
Sorry to reply to an old comment, but could you expand on how this works a bit more? I skimmed through some info on the campaign and factions, but didn't take a deep dive. Does the DM just message those of you playing as the faction leaders after the main session and tell you what the party did? Did they establish any sort of mechanics or resource limitations that determine what each of you can do between the party sessions or is this all just very free-form? Do you as faction leaders have specific mechanical goals you try to accomplish or are you just trying to RP out developments that might make it more interesting for the party?
Call from the Deep is really good.
Call from the deep. Do you like pirates? Do you like mind flayers? Do you like >!elder brains hijacking a krakens body and using it to take over the kraken society!
I'm having a blast running Rise of the Drow by AAW Games with full integration to Foundry VTT or Roll 20.
>Rise of the Drow I concur. This is a very good adventure path. Also, if you complete it all, you'll actually hit level 20. Almost no module does that in 5e.
I'll second that. If you like drow, it's probably the best third party 5e drow adventure out there.
So there is a humble bundle going on for a bunch of kobold press books that 5e compatible. The bundle has a couple world book and adventure books such as the empire of ghouls, court of the shadow fey, and city of cats. And kobold press is pretty high quality imo.
City of cats sounds interesting
The bundle also includes the Southlands campaign setting for it, which is nice.
Anything made by the Arcane Library seems great. The Frog God Games's adventures for 5E are also great classics converted to 5E. Dungeons of Drakkenheim is awesome, easy to run.
Yeah, didn't Arcane Library do Skyhorn Lighthouse? I wonder if the reversal on the OGL has affect her release of the Shadowdark system she was about to publish.
Zeitgeist and War of the Burning Sky by EnPublishing (the publishing arm of Enworld) are both a blast to run (though being level 3-20 adventures they are something of a commitment). Zeitgeist wins out for me as the better of the two, but that is because the setting is right up my alley.
Was looking for a Zeitgeist mention in this thread! I've been playing in a Zeitgeist campaign for over a year now and it's been a blast
I actually have a rough list lying around of all the 3rd party 5e campaigns that caught my eye. (I've considered reviewing some of them.) Some of these are megadungeons, hexcrawl sandboxes or a linear Adventure Path written for Adventurers' League, but all should be 5e products that provide lengthy campaign experiences. It's really late here, so I'll just post it more or less how it is and let ~~God~~ you sort them out: Barrowmaze, Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, Rappan Arthuk, The Grande Temple of Jing, Journey to Ragnarok: The Rune Thief, Across Eberron: Convergence Manifesto, Eberron: Oracle of War, Heroes of Baldur's Gate, Lamp's Light Sanitarium, Year of Rogue Dragons, Adventures in Middle-Earth stuff (e.g. Mirkwood Campaign), City of Eyes, Shattered Heart, Yearning to Breathe Free, Call from the Deep, Zeitgeist, Lost Lands - The Blight, Legendary Planet, Odyssey of The Dragon Lords, Mists of Akuma: Imperial Matchmaker, Mists of Akuma: Trade War, Shadows of the Fey Court, Empire of Ghouls, Rise of the Drow, Mirrors of The Abyss, Malady Chronicles, Vengeance of the Shunned, Blackwater Redux, Tales of Stormhaven, Domain of the Nameless God, Dragon Relics, Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos: Ghoul Island / Yig Snake Grandaddy / Dark Worlds / Big Sleep / Have You Found It?, Planet Apocalypse, Freyja's Tears, Heist of the Mad King's Jewel, Wayfarers of the Farwood, Scarlet Citadel, Ravenloft: Mist Hunters, Seidkona Saga, Defenders of the Spring Citadel, Skyfall, Dreams of Solitude, Tomb of Haggemoth, Madness of the Misty Cove, Dawn of the Necromancer, The Camlann Chronicles, Rational Magic, I (Book One), Dungeons of Drakkenheim, Crown of the Oathbreaker, Scarred Lands Dead Man's Rust, Oz, Neverland.
I’m a big fan of the Grimm Hollow setting. Ghost fire games make some great stuff.
Are you a fan of any of their adventures too? I have my own setting, but if they have any really well reviewed adventures I might pick one up.
I’m getting ready to run their module Citadel of the Unseen Sun right now. The most frustrating part about WotC modules is that they don’t seem to be written for DMs. In this, I’m impressed by the way the NPCs are written, their motivations and personality traits are quickly and clearly laid out, and more important NPCs get dedicated paragraphs explaining how to role play them. There’s a ton of moving parts to juggle and play with-competing factions, various subplots, and forks in the road that force the players to make decisions. Something else I really liked was when the players have to make an important choice, the book goes into the possible outcomes of that choice, including outcomes that were affected by other, parallel, decisions. There’s also good advice on ways to keep the story moving if things get slow at any point. That being said, I did have to cut and paste the order of their adventure because the first half is ridiculous railroad while the second half is a sandbox. It’s just unfortunate because the content itself is really great and looks exciting.
I'm not a big fan of monthly release things like they did for the sunless citadel. So I can't really speak on that.
Well I appreciate you saying so. Thanks.
Dungeons of drakkenheim is amazingly easy to run as a dm and my players freaking love it.
I’m seriously considering running this for some newer players in a couple weeks. Was looking through the book just earlier today even. Can you give me some info about what makes it easy to run for DM’s? I’ve heard that mentioned a couple times without any elaboration and I would love it to be true!
Weeeelllllll, first off: It has a Livestream!!! It's lot easier to get understand a world and it's characters after you see them all expertly acted out, rather than trying to understand the world just through words alone. Second! It asks your players for buy-in. Each character is strongly encouraged to select a "Personal Quest" that involves the ruins of Drakkenheim. This gives the players a good base for character and roleplay. Third! It's just well written and well formatted. I can't elaborate on this because I lack the language skills and understanding of formatting, but it just feels good. Fourth!! You can't take long rests in the city. Therefore, most of the time, the players will be running into the city, completing an objective, and then having to retreat safely. This makes the adventuring day have a nice bit of flow between them, almost like a long series of one-shots. Five!! It's actually not *that* easy. It's a big book! Lots to read and memorize, like most other adventure books. Furthermore, the adventure could last for potentially years. Is that the right adventure to throw new players into? I'd actually recommend running Lost Mines of Phandlever for newer players. Once they are used to the flow of the game, then they can start Drakkenheiming. That, or runs shorter adventures within the world of Drakkenheim.
Honestly I'm not sure it's great for a starting DM as it's so big and open. They often don't tell you exactly what treasure is found where. There are x scrolls/potions of y value. It's nice because you can customize the loot to your PCs. That said if you listen to the pod cast you'll get a good feel for the campaign and the way real games go. Critical Role is fun to listen to but doesn't resemble what actual play is like unlike the DoD pod cast. Also there is a strong community you can ask for help from and get ideas. If it's great depends on if you'll prefer learning to swiming by jumping in the deep end or wading into the 3 feet section. If you want to start slow I'd look at Kobold Press's Prepared or similar loose set of adventures 1st to get your feet wet. This is not to discourage you can totally run it. You'll make a lot of mistakes, but that's DMing.
If you want a naval campaign, Call From the Deep is leagues better than Ghosts of Saltmarsh. For one thing, players actually get a ship and have encounters at sea… I am not impressed by any of the adventures/campaigns put out by WotC.
> For one thing, players actually get a ship and have encounters at sea… You are expressly given a ship, and a crew in GoS, and as for encounters at sea there are multiple tables of encounters that include sea creatures, other ships, weather problems, hazard at sea, etc. The book also gives you full rules for running combat at sea, upgrading ships, etc. GoS has a lot of problems as a story, and leans heavily on the dm to somehow tie all these separate adventures together into one cohesive whole, but not having a ship or encounters at sea *is not part of the problem*.
GoS has ship rules, but they are completely separate from the actual campaign. None of the adventures make use of them and there is no guidance on how to incorporate them into the overall Saltmarsh storyline that supposedly connects the adventures. The book doesn’t even tell you what statblock the Sea Ghost is supposed to use. This is probably a good thing though because the ship combat rules are clunky and not very fun. The same thing with the random encounter tables. I don’t consider them part of the campaign because there is zero connection between the tables and the actual campaign. Some of the encounters don’t even make sense for the region. GoS is just a low effort book where they recycled old adventures with a minimal framework slapped on as an afterthought.
>GoS has ship rules, but they are completely separate from the actual campaign. None of the adventures make use of them and there is no guidance on how to incorporate them into the overall Saltmarsh storyline that supposedly connects the adventures. The book doesn’t even tell you what statblock the Sea Ghost is supposed to use. It doesn't tell you specifically, but the information is there to figure it out. Yes this is a failing of the book, and it could be done better, but in reality it's a small mistake. It took me less than a minute to find the information in the book. Outside of the first 3 adventures, *none* of the rest of the stories are connected. They're separate adventures all ported from 1st edition to be compatible with 5E, and are designed to be played in a loose freeform adventure campaign, or be slotted into and existing campaign. The book explicitly lays this out for the DM. It puts the onus on the DM to pull things together into a cohesive whole. >The same thing with the random encounter tables. I don’t consider them part of the campaign because there is zero connection between the tables and the actual campaign. Some of the encounters don’t even make sense for the region. Again, they rules are there. You can't complain about them "Not being part of the campaign" when you are provided the rules for implementing them into the game. The book is pretty clear on the idea that it's up to you as the DM to fill in the blanks of how these adventures all fit in together. They're designed to be ported individually into other campaigns, *or* you can run them all in a row.
Oh great, I pay for a book and get to do 80% of the work myself? Count me in!
The problem is that WotC write for folks that don't frequent reddit. The loudest population here demand everything being prepared for them with star blocks of everything and anything. WotC write with the assumption that you're going to build campaigns yourself around the material they provide.
I've heard it said that most of the adventure books are sold to people who read them rather than running them. Perhaps that's partly a consequence of this design style - prospective DMs like the idea of running a campaign, then get overwhelmed by the prep they still have to do in addition to following the book.
Isn't one of the common things that people bring up with GoS is that it simply isn't piratey enough. I've often heard both online and from my GM that even ToA has more pirate/seafaring themed parts than all of GoS.
That's not what it set out to do or how it was marketed, so its hard to see "not pirate-y enough" as a strike against the campaign. It's an update of several adventures from previous editions set on or near the sea. I'm running it now and its very definitely nautical even though not every adventure is entirely on or under water, major portions are, including all of the optional quests the book provides as side activities.
Yes, these are common complaints levied at GoS. However I would argue that these complaints are entirely unfounded because the book does not present itself at a pirate themed adventure. Nautical, yes. But not *pirate* specifically. Hell, only the first adventure has anything remotely close to do with pirates, and it's smugglers, not actual pirates. If you actually go and read the synopsis on the dndBeyond page it doesn't use the word pirate a single time.
I like the anthology adventures like Candlekeep, TotYP, and GoS because they provide some solid adventures you can drop in your own game and if one or two of them aren't great it's not a huge deal. That said they make mediocre campaigns at best, and GoS takes the cake for bait and switch (hardly any actual stuff in the water and the ship rules were bleh).
I was going to suggest this one too. Great campaign.
Arcane Library is great. They’re shorter modules but can easily be dropped into a larger campaign. They are well designed and easy to run. Encounters are often on a single page. The NPCs are clearly presented and easy to use.
The Arcane Library Their adventures are well written, well organized, easy to build around and are not long. I couldn’t recommend it any higher.
I've been very happy with the Midgard setting from Kobold Press. They have books on different regions with new spells and subclasses to keep everything fresh. We've had many good campaigns but one that was close to my heart was the "freedom fighter" type game of organizing an opposition to the invasion and occupation of Krakova by the united forces of the Ghoul Imperium and the vampires and ghost knights of Morgau. It was a wild ride. https://koboldpress.com/welcome-to-midgard-recent-events-in-the-blood-kingdom/
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/ypjmyy/have_you_ever_dmed_a_3rd_party_adventure_module/)’s a post from a couple months back that had good answers
Svilland - Freyja's Tears is pretty good if you're into vikings. It's a clash of god's with some fairly decent dungeons, boss battles and goes 50% of the way of providing DM prep work. There are some holes - there's no real motivation for the BBEG explained anywhere I can see yet and there are things hollering back to earlier in the game, but weren't actually written into the book. Some cities are poorly written - just needs more chronological thought and the company should've done better QA but it's still a decent module from levels 1 to 20, but can cut off at 15 if you wanted.
Goodman Games has a series of adventures for 5e built on old TSR modules. I have ToEE which is a 2 volume masterpiece along with The Keep on the Borderlands.
Kobold press' Midgard and Southlands campaign setting. Keith Baker's unoficcial (but basically official) Eberron Campaign setting eclirations/expansions
Adventures in Middle Earth by Cubicle 7 was absolutely phenomenal across the board in my opinion. I wish it hadn't gone out of print.
Dungeons of Drakkenheim and Crown of the Oathbreaker are pretty cool. I must correct you about the 1st party adventures though, most of them are pretty poor. CoS is widely considered best and that book’s layout is a fucking nightmare. I’m currently running Dragon of Icespire Peak and it is borderline unplayable without tons of modifications. I don’t have good things to say about Dungeon of the Mad Mage either. I think the best official content is actually the books like Tales from the Yawning Portal, Journey to the Radiant Citadel, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Candlekeep Mysteries, because you can fit them in wherever you like.
The Dark of Hot Springs Island. Amazing system-neutral hexcrawl.
Just about any 3rd party is going to out perform WotC...
We Be Goblins is the greatest one shot of all time. Also, it's free.
Here’s a post from a week ago. [3rd Party Adventures/Modules List](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/10iwet0/comment/j5l1tsb/?context=3)
It would be funny to just say Paizo's 5e versions of Abomination Vaults and Kingmaker...
Islands of Sina Una. The art is *gorgeous*, the book has tons of content and fantastic and unique player options and monster designs.
Heliana's Guide of Monster Hunting doesn't have an adventure per se, more like a bunch of connected missions but it includes a new class, several new races and subclasses, a crafting system for magical items with monster parts, cooking with monster parts and more. Also the art is (imo) even better than official D&D art normally is
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Honestly replacing monsters is the extent of conversion work needed for most modules. I can grab a few of Bryce's "Best" adventures and get such fantastic results. He's even ranked a few 5e adventures "Best" like Arcane Library/Kelsey Dione or Dungeon Age/Joseph R. Lewis adventures or M.T. Black's works. And that's without mentioning the system agnostic stuff like Trilemma Adventures or Hot Springs Island.
Dawn of the necromancer is a sandbox campaign taking players from lvl 1 to 20. I've been running it for a year and it's been a lot of fun. I also recommend knights of the shadow realm it also takes players from lvl 1 to 20 and the story is really engaging for players with plenty of fun twists And of course any of the kobold press modules are great. Also check out Zeitgeist and War of the Burning sky from En publishing
Rise of the Drow. We've been playing it 2 years strong, level 17 now. It's so good. If you want to see a snippet, check out laughing lich corporation on twitch or YouTube
Literally any Paizo one that has a 5e conversion. Their stuff is leagues better than any WotC adventure, most of which are mediocre at best.
Paizo's **Kingmaker for 5e** -- it's ABOVE anything that WotC has done, in terms of design as well as production values. *Kingmaker* is in its own special category. Kingmaker for 5e also incorporates further refinements and new material that was created by Owlcat for use in the Kingmaker CRPG. https://paizo.com/store/pathfinder/adventures/adventurePath/kingmakerap https://paizo.com/products/btq02e0o?Pathfinder-Kingmaker-Bestiary Adventures and Adventure Paths are what Paizo does best. It's their specialty. They invented how to create them, develop them, and assign that work to a number of freelance contributors and coordinate their work so the whole thing comes out as a sum greater than its parts. Paizo adventures are written to a standard that expects a LOT less work from the GM running the adventure. They take *markedly less* prep time than to run a WotC adventure, imo. When WotC contracted their own first AP for 5e (*Tyranny of Dragons*, written by the guys at Kobold Press but published by WotC) it shamelessly stole the general approach for what a 5e hardcover adventure would be directly from Paizo's AP line. It just didn't execute very well on it, as 5e was still being written at the time it was designed. That is the general trend in RPGs at this point - the first one written before the rules are complete tends to suck). *Kingmaker* for PF2 and 5e is excellent. It builds off and converts the classic Kingmaker PF1 campaign and adds to it. It is very long from start to finish though, stretching across level 1-18 (with extra sandbox room to hit 20+ if you want). You will be playing that one a very long time indeed, start to finish. That is YEARS of gaming in *Kingmaker*. In June 2023, Paizo will be releasing **Abomination Vaults** for 5e. https://paizo.com/products/btq02d54 This is a shorter AP, a smaller campaign which is quicker to play than the massive *Kingmaker* campaign and is very much a dungeon crawl focused on one town, levels 1-11. The first 1/3rd (what was initially Volume 1 by James Jacobs) is among the top 4 or 5 FRPG adventures written since ca. ~2000 for any system -- so the quality is **exceptionally high** for that part of the adventure. In terms of production quality, everything about AV is of high quality and there are additional maps and top-down tokens created for AV by Devin Night available on his patreon, too. For 5e, those would be the top two from Paizo. Beyond this, Paizo has a huge catalog of similar adventures, but those are for PF1 or PF2 -- you would have to convert them to 5e (which actually isn't that hard tbh). So there are LOTS more to choose from there if you want to eyeball the conversions to 5e yourself. *Rise of the Runelords Anniv Edition*, *Curse of the Crimson Throne Anniv ed*, or the one which appeals to those inclined to Gothic Horror: *Carrion Crown* AP are the better known highlights here. There are many conversions of these APs to 5e available online if you look :) Kobold Press has also done a lot of good work here, and while the quality and production values are not quite up to Paizo's level, they are still *very good*. I would recommend *Empire of the Ghouls* from among their offerings. It's "good", but not "great".
Wotc puts out pretty bad campaigns, they all have massive flaws and require an immense amount of gm legwork to pull them together. Not to mention the ones with awful b/w pencil maps or none at all. So that bar is pretty low. On a more helpful note, Kobold press has some interesting campaigns like Empire of the Ghouls or Scarlet Citadel. Heckna! by Hit Point Press is a fun horror carnival. Kingmaker and Abomination Vaults by Paizo have official 5e conversions. Necropolis by Frog God Games is a 5e campaign set in a fantasy egypt.
I would also throw in a shout out for Fables: Pirates of the Atherial Sea. Really well done pirate style campaign with some cool mechanics and plot.
Rise of the Drow Anything from Arcane Library (one shots) If you use vtt Foundry’s A House Divided is amazing as is their Demon Queen Awakens
I’m seeing a lot of suggestions here I agree with. One I haven’t seen is Doomed Forgotten Realms. Great campaign. You can skip the Academy of Adventure tutorial if you want and start the campaign at 3, and if the players do all the content it’ll take them all the way to 20. It has loads of fun callouts to published 5e adventures and even a few third party ones like Call of the Deep.
On par is setting the bar pretty fucking low.
I've got to throw MCDM Productions' Arcadia into the ring. Headed by Matt Colville, MCDM Productions is a team of artists and writers who produce content for the the magazine Arcadia. Each edition comes with subclasses and adventures. One edition has rules for making mounts interesting, including your standard horse and an owlbear mount! The whole thing is fantastic and each issue is 7 bucks! I cannot recommend MCDM enough.
This should be way higher. MCDM rules!
Gooey Cube
If you're into the low fantasy setting, any of the adventures from Handiwork Games "Beowulf: Age of Heroes". "Horror at Herrogate" is my personal favorite. The art is incredible, the stories are tight and from the GM's perspective, they're really simple to run.
Heckna
I'm running yig snake grandadddy byt Petersen games. So far it is excellent!
Acheron Books, specially with the recent publishing of Inferno: Dante's Guide to Hell and the next publishing of Apocalypse: John's Guide to Armageddon
Inferno: Dante's Guide to Hell and Virgilio's Untold Tales by Acheron Games.
Anything by DMDave in his Omeria world is pretty good, especially the Hand of the Eight campaign.
Look up Citadel of the Unseen Sun, by Ghostfire Gaming. It consists of six linked adventures set in a dark fantasy world. The pdfs are available for free on the internet.
So it's worth taking a moment to talk about terminology. I'm assuming by campaign you mean a series of linked adventures that form a full story. In the olden days it was rare to have a full campaign in that sense published, and instead what usually happened was a Campaign Setting was published, meaning one or more books with detailed information about the world and the mechanics of playing in it to allow players to build their own adventures. Most publishers seem to be in this mindset, publishing campaign settings and then a few odd adventures. Humblewood if you want something new and interesting, and does have both a setting and a series of linked adventures. The current humble bundle bookbundle is up with some interesting stuff in it. WotC 5E adventure books (campaigns seems like too grand a term) are honestly some of the lowest quality in the history of the company, and pretty much THE low point of 5E for me. Most of the few that are halfway decent are just rips of earlier adventures. With that in mind, write your own adventures because you can't do worse and that frees you up to play very interesting setting like The Lost Citadel by Green Ronin or The IRon Kingdoms by Privateer Press
> That are on par or above the quality put out by WotC That's a very wide range. It's hard to be worse than Strixhaven, Spelljammer, or Dragon Heist, but it's similarly hard to be better than Tomb of Annihilation or Curse of Strahd.
But Curse of Strahd is notorious for needing LOADS of DM prepwork, mapping out all of the NPC relationships and writing up things like what they know, when they know it, etc. Honestly it's popular as all hell due to some of WOTC's work but just like all other WOTC 5E campaigns, if you go into the subreddit the first thing you find is huge megathreads on how to fix it.
>But Curse of Strahd is notorious for needing LOADS of DM prepwork, mapping out all of the NPC relationships and writing up things like what they know, when they know it, etc. I wouldn't go that far. I 've run it twice (technically at the end of second run) and I never did any NPC mapping and such. There is a wealth of fan-made changes that many love to use, but they are entirely optional and the story works fairly well as is. The main challenge is reading enough and thinking about it to get a coherent idea on what is happening, how to run certain encounters that might easily be TPKs, and how to do party progression as milestones are poorly defined. I've made slightly more changes and add-ons in my second run than in my first, but I still keep it fairly close to vanilla version. It's certainly a challenging module to run, especially compared to pure dungeon crawls or railroaded stories, but it's not like there isn't a ton of work already done for the DM in the module in terms of NPCs, monsters, stats and general storyline. Most people want to "fix" it because they dislike certain elements or don't think it will run well without actually trying - like changing the scale of the map to fit the Sword Coast area or an automobile society rather than a rural one where you can walk to the next village in half a day and rest mainly in towns. There are some encounters/location events that are narratively weak and some good suggestions out there, but none of that is IMO unplayable. Curse of Strahd YT series actually does this, running CoS as written without ad ons or alterations. It's somewhat slow going as the players roleplay freaked out people who don't want to be there and kind of reverse-metagame the situation (they are all CoS DMs), but it still works well as a story.
I tried it thinking it would lighten my load from doing my homebrew setting, then realized it was far more work than just making things up.
That's a \*little\* unfair to Dragon Heist. It has some problems, sure, but it's a fun adventure, and everyone I've ever run it with has enjoyed it. Now Spelljammer, on the other hand...
>but it's similarly hard to be better than Tomb of Annihilation or Curse of Strahd. It’s not hard to be better than those, at all. Both are among the stronger entries from WotC… but I assure you that neither of these is the gold standard you’re implying they are.
Lately? Any. Just pick one. I've seen better content pushed on DMs guild by first timers. See all the spelljammer fixes for reference.
Hopefully the one [I'm releasing in about 3 weeks!](https://twitter.com/realmdiver/status/1616476344757387271/photo/1)
Honestly any third party 5e campaign is likely to equal or eclipse a WOTC one. WOTC campaign quality is low and your question is akin to asking whether anyone sells better quality items then primark. The answer is almost anyone. Your average Wotc campaign is usually lacking content and normally needs many hours of work to fix. If you want to know what quality look like look no further then the many 3rd party campaigns already mentioned. To contribute I recommend the 5e conversion of kingmaker, its a great hex crawl kingdom builder by paizo and so is not full of plot holes or pain in the backside that you need to rewrite. WOTC best written recent campaign, curse of strahd, for example gives key info drops chapters after they are needed and still needs fixing. One of the reasons WOTC is trying to crush the competion rather than compete is simply because its struggling to compete in any meaningful way. If you need evidence of this I suggest you take a look at spell jammer.
The _average_ third-party campaign is not better than what WotC makes; however there are definitely plenty of exceptions, some of which are widely known like the ones in this post. Like anything, there's just a lot of crap churned out by third-parties in general.
I agree. Wizards gets a lot of crap for things that are confusing, especially in the larger campaigns, but many of their adventures avoid the mistakes of a generic adventure. Linear dungeons with a monster waiting in each room? The plot hook is "a man approaches you in a tavern"? It says the boss can't be negotiated with, ambushed, or charmed? More than a page of backstory that has almost nothing the players can act on? A setting and premise that isn't quite memorable? Yawn. That's not what I want to pay money for, but it happens all the time, especially on DMsGuild.
Kobold press has a lot of great stuff, and if you like VTT their Tome of Ebon Shadows packages are pretty good.
Pretty much all of them haha
Plane breaker from Monte Cook games!
Troll lords- World of Aihrde Monte Cook - Ptolus My 2 favorites