This might be... ambitious... but I'd like something like that for third party books. Not everything of course, but maybe for popular books of the most popular third parties like Kobold Press.

An in-depth look at dungeons from prewrittens throughout dnds history would be great. Xp to level 3 made a fantastic vid on the tomb of horrors that I'd love more of. Unfortunately he stopped😮

I gotta say, I picked Dragons of Stormwreck Isle over Dragon of Icespire Peak because I found it a much better way to introduce my players to D&D. It has a variety of tasks that introduce a number of fun thing about D&D. Lawful Good Kobolds, a lost Owlbear, MYCONIDS IN TROUBLE! and a dragon fight at 3rd level instead of: Go somewhere and warn them about the dragon; collect 50gp Go somewhere else and warn them about the dragon; collect 50gp Go somewhere and warn them about the dragon; collect 25gp Go somewhere and warn a (maybe) dead guy about the dragon and find his cow. Plus there's an entrance to the Underdark to follow up with, and the library at Dragons Rest is a great away to work in some of the stuff from Candlekeep Mysteries. So I got that goin for me, which is nice. Thanks for making the list.

Thank you! That was helpful. I'm currently DMing Dragon of Icespire Peak for 2 different groups and I love it so far!

As someone who owns almost all of these books, I will say dragon heist is my favorite and I also love yawning portal! If you buy only one book, buy the players handbook! If you buy 2, get the monsters manual! I only use the magic item tables out of the DMG, that’s a terrible book, but it’s hard to run a campaign without it for reference. I generally think getting an adventure book is more important than a campaign setting. Xanathar and Tasha’s are THE BEST books for advanced players and add a lot of good color for the DM, but they aren’t required. Having run curse of sthrad , I wouldn’t purchase that for your first campaign…. It’s awesome, it just takes some experience to run well. I would never recommend ravnica, it’s too specific and not generally useful. I would really focus on the one shots and compendiums if I was starting out…. If you get a really good group that can get schedules to line up, I would run out of the abyss, tomb of annihilation, dragon heist, or something with a theme everyone is into. Then I would pick up curse…. You will really appreciate it more after running a campaign to level 12+. I think campaign setting books, monster additions, and similar books are a waste of money unless you are a dm that has an active campaign that would benefit from the book. Our group shares books all the time, better on the pocketbook! Finally, so many books on this list I want to like, but they aren’t good. Look at the book from a friend, see if there is a gem in there then buy it if your players are into it or it helps you in your current campaign!

The DMGs advice was the main inspiration for my first homebrew campaign, but I agree its very difficult to find what you are looking for in it.

Spectacular video. Many thanks!

Love the refreshing positive posiive attitude :) Keep up the great work !

FYI, Lost Mine of Phandelver is no longer free on D&D Beyond. If you claimed it while it was free, you still have it, but if you didn't, it is no longer available... for free. They want you to spend the money on Phandelver and Below instead.

Fizban could have been S tier but we dont have s greatwyrm patron warlock 😢

Wow,I really liked this video! Your teir rankings were pretty good. I hope you have a lot of success!

I like the idea behind 3 book sets, but they should be softcover so they can use more pages and less cardboard.

Tomb of Annihilation is one of the very best. You should get to that asap.

I gotta argue with some of these. Lost Mines is B tier at the very minimum, its far and away one of the better, most self consistent sets we've had and is excellent for new players, I say B tier because I do agree with the Essentials Kit being S tier but Lost Mines is nowhere near D, come on, lets be fair and rational now. Waterdeep Dragon Heist is A tier, anything lower is monumentally stupid. Out of the Abyss is E, if not F tier. I'd actually rank it lower than the DMG its that bad. Princes of the Apocalypse is D tier minimum, I'd honestly argue Strixhaven is B tier, Eberron is A tier, Glory of the Giants is D tier, Keys from the Golden Vault is B tier at best, the Book of Many Things is C tier.

Great ranking. I'd put Storm King's Thunder higher, but I understand your point.

This tier list unfortunately isn’t that helpful because the reviewer hasn’t used most of these books. The point of these books is for you to use them - either for scraps/parts or running them. Reading a book doesn’t mean you’ve used it, so reviewing it would be weird.

Thanks for this!

I really like the 3-book box set. I hope campaign settings are all like that. One book for lore, one book as a bestiary, and one book as a pre-written adventure module. That’s what I think we should have for every campaign setting. It’s just really sad to not have any pre-written modules for other settings.

I couldnt agree more with your general opinion of 'i wanted to like it nore than i do" I feel that for so many of these books

Im not crazy about Lost Mines either. I don't know if I'd rank it quite as low but I'm glad I'm not alone. It was my first adventure i had run. As written it felt like the players couldn't wait around and explore because they needed to save Gundren, and then the town is overrun with redbrands so every NPC is pointing the characters towards them when they chat. I'm sure a good DM can do better but as a brand new DM i bumped into those issues

Some of your comments make no sense. For example "I barely skimmed this and for that reason, it's middle of C tier". Or "I'm going to put this at the top of D tier. It's good". "Here's a lengthy explanation for why this thing is terrible so it's going in E tier". "Here's a short explanation that's basically 'I played/ran it' and so it's A tier". Also, you want to talk about "exhausting" - looking at a tier list that goes to F for seemingly no reason is stupid. The most tiers you should have is D, and even that's a stretch. F was just so you could have a place for the DMG, apparently. But why have E and D tier? Those 2 could have been 1 tier.

With Princes of the Apocalypse all of the different parts - and there are lots of them - are very good. Dungeons are varied and interesting, the Dessarin Valley is pretty well fleshed out, and there's more than just dungeons. But the problem is the way they are tied together makes no sense whatsoever. As a DM you're going to have to come up with your own way of making sense of this mess, if you can do that you'll have a really great adevnture. Storm King's Thunder is similar, same problem but not as bad. And a lot of campaign setting info, which is great as there hasn't been a standalone FR campaign book in 5E (unless you count Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide - which I don't!) Also for a DM with some experience starting off a campaign with new players, Lost Mine of Phandelver fleshed out with Dragon of Icespire Peak is absolutely fantastic. A really great mix of everything you want new players to experience, plus the option to extend with the later follow-on adventures.

Hey, you're not Baron De Ropp! Jk, you have great videos and some great insight. I enjoy your content.

Yessss Tier list content

Always a bad sign when you someone describe Spelljammer as 'having racist issues' instead of the truth, which is 'people pretending their was a racist issue so they could be offended'.

Thanks for the gift

I agree with most of your picks, main one I would personally differ with (and this is probably mostly personal bias) would be to put Descent into Avernus lot lower in the list. I played through a lot of that as a player, and I don't know if it was issue with the DM or the module (although I have asked some other people who have ran/played through it and they told me similar experiences so I assume it's the module), but it just felt so incredibly railroady to me, there was basically no meaninful decisions the player characters had to do at any point, you just went from point a to point b in a neverending chain of fetch quests, which was just boring.

As a new DM and someone who hasn't yet watched your other videos, I wish you had stated more specific examples or reasons of what you liked and disliked about each book. I know you were trying to quickly rank a lot of books but for a lot of them the only reason for the rank was "Yea I didn't like it" which wasn't helpful for newbies like me.

Witchlight below Icewind Dale is a CRIME. Witchlight is arguably the only good adventure module they’ve released in the last three years. Way better than Icewind Dale. Even Descent into Avernus is in B Tier, that book is B A D. You want a Baator adventure? Get Chains of Asmodeus.

why only 500 likes amazing vid

Agree on Tasha’s being S Tier, great video!

What do you dislike about Lost Mine of Phandelver? It definitely has its flaws, don’t get me wrong, but D-tier feels harsh. I’d love to know what your hang-ups are!

Saving my cash for the DC20 kickstarter. Love the D&D team at wotc, but they need to move on from that horrible company with no real future. Hasbro killed our future of our beloved game.

This is a Support 3rd Party Post: OK you did a good job justifying your books. Seems like you read almost every dang book (borderline amazing!) so now I have to ask more of you... Yes, MORE! Did you do any of the Kickstarter and 3rd Party stuff this year (particularly because of corporate behavior?) Right, So here's my question: Monster Books: What was your list for that? So many Kobold Press Monster books, the new Flee Mortals from MCDM, Compared to the Volos/Mordenkainens books or the Muliverse book? Level Up 5e Monster Menagerie? One Shots: Rolled and Told, Loot, Lore, Lairs and Legends, One Shot Wonders, Comparing these to the Anthologies you mentioned? DM Supplements: Lazy Series of books, the Game Master's Book of Series, Most of Nord Games Catalog of random tables (Dangerous Destinations), Campaign Builder: Cities and Towns (Kobold), Kingdoms & Warfare and Strongholds & Followers (Politics books for MCDM), WorldBooks: Tal'Dorei, compared with Eberron, Theros, Ravnica, Midgard, Southlands, Ptolus (if you read that one- you are a superhero!), Venture Maidens Campaign Guide, Path of the Plane Breaker (compared to Planescape).

Personally the 3 books besides the main boxset I think are essential are Ravnica, Eberron & Aquistions Incorporated. There's stuff related to guilds, patrons and running your OWN adventure guild that is great for custom adventures and world building. To me it's not just the settings in the book that should be judged, but the information held within and these three books give you different ways to involve your players into the game instead of just running a game for murder hobos.... like actually give them their own goals and things they want to have in the adventure. Setting books, supplement books & adventures should really get rated separately and on the material contained within them. Tashas did have new stuff in it, but a huge chunk was just bits from various setting books for people who just didn't buy them due to no interest in them. If you own all the other books Tashas isn't really an essential book unless you desperately want the custom linages & the companions (which isn't really essential unless you want to play the new races they couldn't be remotely bothered to give stats for)

Dungeon Master guide gave you what kind of flash backs?

I Wont stand for this dungeon master guides slander its a really usefull book for both new and Old dms alike

Totally agree about DMG- horrible layout

I really wish I could get into the idea of Curse of Strahd. Everyone says you don't need to be into gothic horror to like it, but for real, scooby doo is about as deep into horror as I enjoy so I've just avoided it.

I bought Curse of Strahd because it sounded like a good idea building on the original...It was not.. Thoroughly useless book. The original module is way, way better.

1:09 or to put it another way, ‘No such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism’.

Closed the video immideately after ranking tyranny of dragons above lost mine. Tyranny is a piece of shit and lost mine is very good.

9:33 I agree 100%. A lot of the mordenkainens lore was super interesting, and it was dissapointing that this book was supposed to contain basically all the content but they stripped out the lore.

Anyone ever watch me myself and Irene?

By your defiintion of a "book" though you misseed two IMHO - Dungeons and Dragons VS Rick and Morty Box Set and Dungeons & Dragons Stranger Things Starter Set.

👍

I actively Dislike gothic horror themed, adventures and Vampires. I know I'm in the minority but I'd have to put CoS at the bottom, doesn't mean it couldn't be a great book, its just Not for me

I don't think anyone likes the DMG. It's too disorganized to be readable.

Radiant Citadel is hot garbage. D tier at best.

Completely disagree with all of your choices clearly you couldn't tell a good story from a bad one if I pointed out for your first hand 🤪

You put spelljammer waaaaay too high. I own almost every book and spelljammer is the only one id recommend nobody buy. Its the book that's the least worth it imo because it contains almost no info.

Personally, anything that's not a campaign setting or adventure belongs in F(orget about it) tier: don't buy, a new edition is coming, and if you're moving to it, there's no point in using the old stuff. ..hm? What's that? Backwards compatibility? You don't HAVE to move? Get outta here; I am moving, and I'm not gonna play the old stuff.

I'm sure I'm not alone but WOTC is and has not been D&D for years. I will nor fund corrupt Woke companies anymore. D&D is to me MK Games and known as D100 Dungeon. Far better ttrpg system and books. Another good ones are Scarlet Heroes and 4Against Darkness. I'll not put Shadowdark as a good book until I actually receive it.

Of course they are not all where I'd rank them, but every ranking will be different and it's all good. 2 Things of note: 1 - I'm not going to spoil it for you but the eponymous dungeon at the end of Tomb of Annihilation is an absolute rock star of a dungeon. Forget the hex crawl, that dungeon is the best feature of this campaign. 2 - While I hardly ever reach for the DM's Guide when wanting a casual read, I will say that when I do crack it open I still find some really interesting stuff in there. I feel the issue is that it spends so much time explaining how to run D&D games that us old-timers who already know the ropes find that material to be skippable. Not much can be done about that. Cheers!