Imagine running Dragon Heist with two separate groups who don't know about each other and bringing them together for a surprise finale.

Part 3…..👀?

I always found the idea of running Candlekeep Mysteries with the players playing as novice scholars in training to be pretty cute. Probably couldn't extend that "campaign" beyond the book but it'd be a quaint framing device for a "mystery of the week" type series of adventures. Hell, maybe it could even be combined with Strixhaven somehow.

Running my personal Ghosts of Saltmarsh game for the past year now, I keep thinking "have I gone too far with new stuff trying to tie it all together?" and the way you guys described it really validated my experience with the adventure as a DM. I added in an ancient kraken as the BBEG, and he cursed the players with an eldritch curse where he comes to claim their body (and the surrounding settlement if they are in town), when they die. I turned the Scarlet Brotherhood into a secretive cult trying to overturn the world order and resurrect their lost ancient empire. I added in a lot of scenarios that really drive home the fact that these events are bigger than the characters, and that they can't save everyone. Eldritch horror, indeed.

I've been a DM for almost 30 years. I'm not some prodigy but I am experienced. I still love running the two Phandalin adventures. Their structure is quite brilliant, in that they are simple enough for a new DM to run out of the box, and in that their simplicity offers lots of "white space" for experienced DMs to fill with their own flavor. The real genius is that, somehow, the "white space" makes room for the old DM without making "plot holes" that might trip up the new DM.

As a note on Saltmarsh, Sly Flourish did an interesting set of articles on how to structure it as a campaign.

My group and I are playing Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and we really enjoy it! It's my first time DM'ing, but I've been a player for many years. Very happy to have this RP-heavy adventure!

I did exactly that. Ran dragon heist into dungeon of the mad mage as my first ever campaigns... It worked out pretty good. I will admit that my players were experienced, superb and very patient with me. I should add that they did all die at the end but we all had fun

Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus was actually the first campaign I have run! Our group went 60 sessions deep on this bad boy and man was it a *LOT* of work for me but at the end it was 100% worth it. I'll tell you what I did with the adventure and then offer my own review at the end: ACT 1- I turned the Baldur's Gate section into a 20 session intrigue conspiracy plot and I really had to build up and expand the plot with local politics, Guild kingpins, and a deep conspiracy with an Elder Brain controlling Duke Bellyne Stelmane trying to take over the city with a coup. I really wanted to explore this famous city and, as written, chapter 1 has very little to do with the rest of the campaign and is really just a reason to get your party to level 5 and send them packing. Which is a shame, because I ran an entire 20 session conspiracy plot based on the material in the Gazetteer. The material is literally in the book, they just didn't USE any of it. ACT 2- Then, I turned the Elturel section into a 20 session arc to save civilians, introduce the Blood War, and help turn the tides of the invasion of the city back in the favor of the defenders. "Hellturel" is a great resource for this section. As written, the party just crosses the city and maybe goes to save Ulder Ravengard. I wrote up an entire war campaign between the demons, devils, surviving hellriders, and even a Nemesis-like villain that was an Adult Red Dragon named Balthurax that dogged the party. I wrote up an entire subplot for Reya Mantlemorn to be a descendent of the "Unknown Heroine" that fought off a great red dragon when the city was young. The Unknown Heroine's statue is referenced in the crypt of the High Hall, and I used that as a vehicle to build a plot about the party helping Reya realize that she has to become a leader for her people and help her find her ancestor's dragonslaying sword so the party could take out the dragon for good. Everyone likes a plan to take on a big red dragon. The book doesn't really give you a reason to care about the people of Elturel, so I really built upon getting to know these NPCs and the party becoming invested with them and their story. ACT 3- Lastly, I reformed the locations and events in Avernus entirely into more of a 20 session expedition across the hell blasted planes of Avernus as the party gained allies, survived intense exploration hazards, and slowly put together a vision of Zariel's empire and how to bring it down if they so wished. The book does a decent job of introducing devil deals and representing the various factions vying for control, so I spent some time writing ways to really challenge the morality of the party with tough decisions for both survival and campaign success. No one came out the other side without scars. The biggest change was that I brought on a dragonborn player that was interested in Arkhan the Cruel and ran a subplot where the players take out Arkhan's generals one by one in an effort to depose Arkhan the Cruel and become the next Chosen of Tiamat with the goal of reforming her dragon armies to defeat Zariel and make Tiamat the next Archdevil of Avernus. It was a smashing success that ended in a massive Lord of the Rings style climactic war and the players redeemed Zariel and returned the city to the Forgotten Realms before the dragonborn player turned against the party in a surprise twist and moved to kill her while she was weak (so everyone more or less got what they wanted to achieve). It was an adventure that I will never forget. My Review: Avernus is a wonderful setting with interesting hell tech and a Mad Max vibe to play with and we even ran a Redline type of deathmatch race. If you are willing to put in the work as a DM, Descent Into Avernus has all the material you need to run one of the most epic campaigns your players will ever take part in with countless ways to end it and endless player choice. It really should be considered a SETTING book with lots of suggested play material and only the spine of an adventure path and a catalogue of NPCs for ready use. To run this adventure as I did, you need to have a total mastery of the book and then when each chapter ends you really need to consider rewriting/reorganizing each chapter around what your party wants to accomplish and how best to do that. All said and done, my campaign was about 40% as written and 60% homebrew.. I think my group spent 180 hours at the table and my Roll20 said I had about 500 hours of time spent on site. Some of that is just having the webpage up but I think I could fairly conclude that I averaged about 2 hours of prep for each hour of play. What that actually looked like was 40 hour planning sessions between each chapter and about 1-2 hours planning each individual session. Granted, I run a high production value game and rewrote/reorganized most of the book. It is feasible to run the campaign out of the book but as many others have said, it will still be a slog to manage. What I did was a part time job. I agree with the Dungeon Dudes, this is an Expert level book and a total Fixer Upper. One thing the Dudes said which caught my attention: "The players have to save Elturel to stop the refugee crisis." That is decidedly not really the plot of the adventure, but illustrates exactly the shortcoming of this book. As written, players throughout Chapter 1 almost never understood WHAT they are doing or WHY. For this reason alone I found myself needing to make significant rewrites and really straining to find ways to better tell the story. Its quite clear that the reason the party SHOULD be saving Elturel is because they fear that Baldur's Gate will be the next city to be claimed, (e.g. you are next!). But the book fails miserably to clearly impress this and it is why many party's don't make it very far in this adventure, they are just lost as hell and are working for the Flaming Fist "OR ELSE". At several points throughout Chapter 1, the plot is carried along by a number of arbitrary or illogical leaps that require a lot of work on behalf of the DM to get their party through it all in a sensible manner. But that's a lot of words to say simply this: Chapter 1 is the worst offender, the rest of the book gets way better if your players can stick it out. And that's a real shame, because Baldur's Gate is a legendary location in D&D and this adventure just does not do it justice. It really does feel like the Baldur's Gate section was ham-fisted in at the last minute when they found out that Larian would be making a Baldur's Gate 3 video game. My Recommendation: If you intend to run this adventure from the beginning at Baldur's Gate, be prepared to spend a lot of time considering how best to present the content, the agendas of the NPCs, and how to advance the plot in a way that is organic and makes sense so that the players have clear understandable motivations and achievable goals. Absolutely do not start the adventure with "you now work for the Flaming Fist, "OR ELSE". Or just skip the city entirely and have your players in Elturel when it descends and save yourself tons of headache and work. Having said all that, I learned so much about writing, game design, and DMing with this as my first book that literally any other module now looks like a cakewalk in comparison and absolutely makes me realize how far I have evolved as a DM. To the Player's out there: If your DM runs this and does a good job then you know that they are S class and you should never let them go. I should have charged, lol.

I've been running Dragon Heist for almost a year now with 3 of the 4 villians; my players have really sunk their teeth into spending a ton of time with the factions. It reminds me of Skyrim; the main plot is super short and kinda meh, but all the OTHER stuff is where the real fun is.

This series was so well done! I appreciate that you didn’t attempt to rank them against each other, as that’s not productive when they’re all so different, but gave objective analysis of who the target DM/group is for each.

As DM I made Dragon of Icespire peak my starting point for Dm'ing, we ran the core story 1-6 as a One on One and honestly one of the best D&D experiences I have ever had. was able to get though what would take a 4 player party a full 4-5hr session in under 2, scheduling was almost a nonfactor and way more freedom to let a player really feel like a hero since the spotlight isn't shared.

My DM used the end part of Decent into Avernus when we went to hell to retrieve a soul that our Rogue had sent there when we were meant to collect it for our Warlock who has a contract with the Raven Queen... it was so much fun to fight demons and devils as part of essentially a side quest that our Rogue forced us into

Loved this 2-parter guys, really good info for DM's new and old. AND no major spoilers!

I absolutely love and appreciate what you both do for us fellow DMs, thank you so much

Please do a series on your favorite 3rd party adventure modules and/or one-shots! especially for a novice DM. Love this video series. ive DM'd very little and i hope to run a full adventure, so i've been looking for Novice/Beginner level adventures to consider.

I run Dragon Hiest with a limited number of sessions with a single villian and it worked very well. If you need a short campaign between larger ones the single villian approach is great.

These two videos are extremely helpful for me as a DM, so thanks!

Also, vis-a-vis Avernus, highly recommend Justin Alexander's epic remix. Makes it a LOT easier to run.

Wild beyond the witchlight is really close to Something wicked this way comes, from the carnival to the fey but way more whimsy

As a player going through Avernus felt like getting the Biggoron Sword in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Go here, get a thing, that you need to get another thing, that you need to get another thing.... The setting was cool and there were some great moments sprinkled throughout, but only the flimsiest connections taking us from point A to point B.

Dudes, I really would like to commend you for the approach you chose to review these modules. This is super useful, especially your keen eye for the tone and inspiration for each of the adventures, that is exactly what I want to know before running an adventure, and your comments are spot on. For example, I own the Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventure and I really like it, but it is true that it leans more "Misty coastal mystery with Lovecraft vibes' than 'Pirates of the Caribbean', and lacks opportunities for naval combat. I really appreciated your advice on how to use the material in the books and what to look out for. This series is one of your best made videos since I follow the channel!

Absolutely agree about the WDH assessment. I would say, though you are definitely better if you are higher experienced as a DM. I used it as an Eberron adventure set in Sharn and used the Alexandrian conversion, which made it more of a heist and fun.

I did your "lego" analogy for "Waterdeep Dragon Heist" and sent my players through the whole thing. It was very good, an amazingly well prepared scenario. Good video, thanks.

yay - thank you for guiding through all of these adventure modules! i especially like how you assessed the workload amount of input, investment, and modifications by a DM . sure, you could manage a module as written, but you could do so much more if you add your own ideas. even more fun = you can develop opportunities that interface with the PCs

Would love to see a video ranking/reviewing each Candlekeep one shot!

Hope you make a part 3 with the moduls that arrived since Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Because you guys(dudes) Rock at this stuff:)

Nice! I hope to hear what you guys have to say about the Strixhaven adventure too!

My favorite game is watching whomever is not talking. You guys are so fun to watch haha!

DoIP goes from 1 - 7, with the Beyond Icespire Peak "trilogy" ending at 13th but they're really one three part adventure. Super easy to run LMoP simultaneously totally RAW but can be very fun to twist it a bit. My fav is to kill the townmaster and have a Black Spider doppel take his place "hiding from the dragon" while giving the party quests far the f away from the Black Spider. The only quest you get from Harbin in LMoP is Wyvern Tor iirc, miles away and unrelated to anything Black Spider. When LMoP is done and doppel out of a job he just leaves and can run an election in the town with someone like Sildar taking over writing jobs for the board.

Thank you for these videos! Very helpful for selecting my first adventure to DM!😀

Thank you for your unbiased insight on these adventures as well as Strixhaven. I really do appreciate this format on evaluation.

Right now I'm running Candlekeep Mysteries for two diffrent groups at the same time. One group definitely loves it most for the episodic nature of the story, they recently said that it's similarly satisfying to their brains as watching TikTok videos: they are easily digestible chunks of self-contained stories that give them a nice opportunity to relax in the breaks of our long-form campaign. The other group is more invested in making this a long-format campaign as well and tying up the loose ends between adventures. For both groups, we are going with the same team to every adventure, and sometimes the explanation of why they go there is a little convoluted, but overall it works fine imo. I usually pick one character to claim a certain adventure as their own, and I tie the motivations to their backstories. Also, we just really enjoy the giant library as a setting as the bunch of bibliophile nerds we are. I'm planning on bookending the story after Chapter 17 with a homebrew chapter that focuses on Candlekeep itself and the lore of the library. (Although I have to acknowledge that I do not exclusively work from the book, I let them choose 2 adventures for each level from my growing collection of one-shots. But, for the majority of the time so far, they chose the Candlekeep Mysteries chapter as one of them.)

Over the years, I've Dmed or played in most of the official published adventures. Oftentimes, I find that they can be splitted in two without it affecting the plot in any way. It is as if the beginning and the end are note related at all. Some examples: - Out of the Abyss could end when the PC get out of the Underdark or begin when they are summoned to Gauntlgrym - In Avernus you could begin the adventure when the character arrive in Elturiel without them missing any informations or have they begin as usual but never send them to Hell and have them deal with local politics and factions. - Against the Giant first 5 lvl are badly written and can be completely skipped, making them useless to the plot. I understand it is not easy to create an adventure, but it would be great to have one published adventure going from Lvl 1 to 20 with a good story that holds up for the whole book. Sure, Mad Mage technically goes up to lvl 20, but it is more a dungeon crawl than anything else.

great work guys, thanks for the heads up on these modules

I was just thinking about what module to run thanks for the helpful insights on each of these 👍🏻

You both are amazing DMs and I love this!

As the party face in a Mad Mage campaign, I can assure you that you can definitely get your mileage out of being infiltrator/political types that make allegiances with factions in the dungeon, and in fact the fifth floor by itself practically makes this approach mandatory. By level 5, even a diplomatic party should be competent enough combatants to survive random encounters, but you can definitely talk your way through certain encounters as well to gather allies and informants that can give you more info on the dungeon and what if any changes have occurred. That said, it's definitely DM-intensive to keep track of everyone that the party has come across and kept alive, on top of the various NPC schedules, questlines, and factions. Not even mentioning the hallways that exist solely for a DM to slot in their own encounters, as well as the many shortcuts throughout the dungeon that can completely make or break a session's planning because the players decided to skip THREE WHOLE FLOORS instead of taking the stairs like normal people. Floors repopulate at the whims of Halaster, and sometimes you get desperate players like me that will ally the party with the Drow to save their skin and accidentally threaten the entire module. Relatively basic floors are occupied by organizations and creatures that are way above the party's weight class, which can really snowball if the DM decides to act on these groups organizing to confront the party.

Our DM ran our group through "Rime of The Frostmailing" prior to IDROTFM, mostly because the full module hadn't been released at the time he started the campaign. (He actually got the very last copy of the deluxe edition!) As a result, we spent a long time at level 4... but the tradeoff was that our characters already knew each other from our prior courier jobs.

Excellent reviews in both parts. Thank you.

Getting ready to run The Wild Beyond the Witchlight myself, so good to know that I'll to read the book cover to cover before we start instead of jumping into it.

You guys are great. Thanks for the awesome content!

Amazing series! Thanks you guys.

That caveat about Witchlight is so on point. I'm midway through running it, and just knowing what happens at the end has changed the kind of things I emphasize in the sub realms.

Dragon of icespire peaks is one of my favorites. And there are 3 additional adventures on DnD beyond that adds to it. Three Awesome adventures, by the way..

Thank you Dudes! My last completed campaign was Curse of Strahd. 2 of my players moved away afterwards. So I used the breaking down of Barovia’s barriers to cause a huge flux in the time continuum. While my remaining players are starting in Waterdeep, characters from previous campaigns (from back in our AD&D 2nd edition days!) are going to join the battle!

Thanks for letting me know about Justin Alexander! Their version of Dragon Heist is great

Yay! Part 2 is here!

Dungeon of the Mad Mage provided rules for Spelljammer Helms - what you need to bring Spelljamming in a basic sense to your game. For that alone this is a tremendous book. Plus, Halaster's actual flying saucer!

Dragon of Icespire Peak was my first adventure as a DM and my players first adventure. It went great and I even expanded it up to 10th level by using the Orcs and a little bit of homebrew. It was perfect and I only hope that other adventures I run go as smoothly.

I recently started DMing with a brand with my friend group. None of us played DND before. I just chose the first campaign I saw, which was Dungeon of The Mad Mage. It is so fun, but so much work. Really worth it so far, we just reached level 2!

You guys just inspired me to run Dungeon of the Mad Mage!

I am DMing Wild Beyond the Witchlight right now (DDAL). When it was first introduced by D&D, their selling point was "hey, maybe you DON'T want combat!", and that was a big turn off to me. A whole hardcover with no combat? No thank you. But it looked like my game store that I play at was going to be running it, so I tried to withhold contempt prior to investigation. Then, I played the "Lost Things" adventure during the D&D Celebration weekend and...I had fun. Then I ran "Lost Things" adventure at the game store and...I had fun. Now I'm running Witchlight for the past couple months and I can say that it's a really good hardcover adventure. (A little light on magic items) So many nods to pop culture and lil' easter eggs. And there is PLENTY of combat, or, as much as you want. Most of the combat can be done without battle maps. One thing I like as a DM is that there is boxed text for almost every room or area. This is great for me because describing a scene is not my strong suit. And there are no plot holes (almost)! Everything in the story is connected and there's a good flow to it. Very well done.

Thanks, I really appreciate this series

Enjoying this series. As a homebrew DM, I'm always looking for inspiration.

Started a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign but had to stop when 2 players moved. I've purchased 11 of the 14 adventures. Currently using Tales and a couple other modules to craft a campaign from. I'll probably add at least one Candlekeep adventure to mix up the dungeon crawls and wilderness adventures we've been through. Great video.

It's always a treat when I find a DD video I missed seeing the first time around. I did run WBTW and I will say it was pretty easy to run and roleplay, but the final scenario was more frustrating with how much filler the castle contains.

Great stuff, looking forward to the reviews of the companion world building books.

I dont do a lot of modules, but I did do the ghost of saltmarsh for 5e. I had a lot of fun as a DM tinkering with the various aspect and links to the story and incorporating the location to one of my worlds

Thanks for this. Nice help on what to run

I have been running dragon heist for about a year and a half, my characters are now level 15. It has been a lot of work, but the adventure is awesome! The analogy of Lego blocks is dead on. With Mad Mage as an additional source book, you really can make the campaign sing

I ran Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus with my two regular RPG players and had a blast! It was a big campaign - spread over two years of playtime for the main content. I didn't realize how much work this required but for me as the DM I approached the module differently - Instead of creating big storylines around the NPCs I built ties to the Player Characters. What I found really helped was having a player that really leaned into the "Saving the helpless" concept, so his Character was eager to pick up on story threads and dive into fights. My other player was relatively new to playing in a big campaign and designed a flexible druid that wanted to explore the city and experience a journey where everything is new. I introduced a DM-run character which provided interesting role-playing experiences for the players to build a "we're in this together" vibe. Knowing what the players wanted (Save-the-day combat and exploration of the locations) really helped deliver the adventure. I was very lenient on character design rules, let each of the characters gain items and ability well past normal means. I let the characters help direct me (as the DM) in what they wanted to do. When I found gaps in the story, I introduced simple D&D trope scenarios such as "Save the civilians being beaten" and "Rescue your fallen comrade" to drive up the stakes in the adventure while keeping it interesting. Having the DM-character that died more than once, transformed race more than once during this story (*directly caused by the players events) really cemented to my players a big adventuring hook and opportunity for them to explore as a team and keep each other alive. That quickly also reflected back on the NPCs as the party sometimes decide to take alternative paths rather than "kill every bad guy we find." As a DM I occasionally dropped hints to foreshadow NPCs they may meet in the future so they could each build their own opinion of them - which made the NPCs come to life. It was a lot of reading and a lot of work to put together. I did the work as I went for the most-part, not all in one shot before-hand. Some custom rules and scenes took hours of work each. Having a lot of improv skills really can help the early and middle game story when the majority of events are not directly tied together in a follow-the-ball story for the party. In this story I let the characters explore and complete a few challenges along the way, granting them funds that they could spend building equipment they thought they would need for the fights ahead. Roleplaying out the "shopping" scenarios really added to Baldur's Gate being a living city. We still play the adventure with those characters after the events of the story from time to time. I prepared a "afterwards" scenario that allows the players to co-build what happens next. They have revisited past NPCs, righting past wrongs. They tracked down other evil elements and put them to rest. The party have ownership of things that are important to them. The now powerful Characters can make substantial change and are ready for a bigger, realm-sized challenge. Those characters have become our most memorable ones - even for myself as the DM.

I would like you to do more content like this but about unofficial campaigns, considering you guys have participated in that space I think it would be cool to know which other works you enjoy that aren't published the WotC team, plus I feel that since your content primarily centers on official material up until now (And it's great content) it would be a great way to introduce people that aren't as familiar with the homebrew scene to some of the absolutely fantastic stuff that is out there.

This is the first positive review I hear of Candlekeep Mysteries.

I think these are really good synopsis about the game, and is really informative about how hard the game is to run, prepare, and difficulty for the players. Outside of that though I would like to know what people recommend, if I am to start by recommending I would say curse of strahd hands down. I have run it twice and its always been the most fun module I have ran and has had some of the best roleplaying moments amongst anyone I have played with, this is said even though players lost the campaign both times because they split the party and got picked off one by one, and is still their favorite game.

I'm a brand new dm and really havnt played 5e ive had the rulebooks and the starter kit but i just got the essentials not long ago I'm planning on running that module your video has made me more confident in running it as my first campaign

Candlekeep is a really good secondary adventure. We did it as a group of forever DMs and it was great to stretch our player legs while giving great inspiration for our other games. Not too intense workload and the type of thing you can step away for for a few months and jump back in easily.

I am that first time DM running Rime with a bunch of first time players. It's certainly a ride so far with a lot of room to homebrew a lot of connective tissue. Of the reviews I've read / watched you Dudes are more fair? on Rime. Several posts seem to say it's awful for a first time DM, but I'm surviving, and learning :D Appreciate all your videos - they've been great resources over the last year!

When i stared DMing i used the Essentials and lost mine together. I just moved the mine into the mountain and had it fall to the dragon instead. Moved some clues around and added some different enemies. Made for a fun 1 to about 7 campaign that was as straight or open as my players wanted.

Since I tend to overbuy books, I found a way in-game to float all of the campaign hooks that were available to my group at level one. I let them know we'd be running LMoP first, then moving on to another longer adventure. They voted overwhelmingly to head to Waterdeep to investigate the guild war, so I'll be running them through Dragon Heist at like level 4 or 5 and bumping all of the encounters. Thanks for sharing the tools for DH! I def want to tie in more of the villains and their lairs since my party will be higher level. I might nerf the Cassalanters a bit and write them to be initial protagonists while the conflict with the more powerful foes simmers, we'll see. I'm just hoping everyone will rise to the occasion when it comes time for roleplay and the intrigue!

When my group and I played Descent into Avernus, we accidentally broke Zariel's sword, so our DM pulled out his old AD&D books and sent us off to Mount Celestia to fix the sword. It was off the beaten path, and it was kinda fun.

Wow! I love the idea of a Jumanji-Esque campaign for Candlekeep!

Guessing this was written/recorded before Strixhaven dropped. Either way, another fantastic video you guys. I'd really be curious to see a similar treatment for some of the adventures from DM's Guild. See what stands out to you guys and what you'd be excited to talk about. I'm also curious, regarding your difficulty/workload assessments where you feel your own Dungeons of Drakkenheim book would fall (beginner to experienced player groups, perhaps versus what you originally intended).

I’m running Icewind Dale: RotFM now, and to deal with the issue of the parts of the book not cleanly fitting together, I inserted a different overarching plot line which tied things together. The party came to the Dale pursuing a completely different antagonist, who is searching for the Crystal Shard (from the Salvatore novels) and they are trying to beat the villain to it. Half the party started out in Revel’s End, the Lord’s Alliance prison (which otherwise goes underutilized in the book), framed by the antagonist for his own crimes, but they are in possession of a clue which is needed to learn more about the Crystal Shard. The other half of the party comes to the prison in hopes of getting them out (either through offical channels or though assisting with a prison break) in hopes of gaining this information, due to their own grievances with the villain. (Minor Spoilers: you can also have Sephek Kaltro and other potential villains, including Vaelish Gant, escape at the same time the party do, if they stage a breakout, to give the party some history with those characters). Once they are out of the prison, they have reason to head to Ten Towns to avoid needlessly camping in the harsh wastes (Spoilers: so you can run the Black Cabin - an interesting set piece and good intro to the themes of the adventure), then Lonelywood (which is one of the more interesting starting towns imo), and finally to whichever interesting adventure location you gave them hooks to checkout for their main quest. You can have them encounter the problems of the Ten Towns along the way, gradually learning about the everlasting winter, the sacrifices, etc., as they are passing through on their own quest. This will let players drink in the setting while still feeling like they have clear direction (and tying the Crystal Shard more directly into the story gives you even more to work with for worldbuilding, with surprisingly little additional effort needed). It could be a very linear adventure if that’s what your players want, but they’ll have plenty of opportunities to organically branch off on side quests as they come to sympathize with the plights of the Ten Towners. (Spoilers: For those of you who have read the book, I put Dzaan’s shield guardian amulet on the summit of Kelvin’s Cairn, and had at least one party member know its location. The amulet can lead the party to Karkolohk following the signal of the broken guardian, then the reactivated guardian leads the party to Dzaan just as he’s being burned at the stake in Easthaven, and ultimately to the sunken Netherese Spire, where they will learn more about the Crystal Shard, that its pieces are scattered around the Dale, that someone (the Duergar) is gathering pieces of it. This gives the party reason to try to track down large concentrations of the Shard’s pieces around the Dale (which can make things more non-linear for a time as they have reason to explore more of the Dale), before they are ultimately led back to Easthaven and then Sunblight. After the dragon encounter, which you can hint was playing into the villain’s plans to weaken Ten Towns, either the villain themselves or the Arcane Brotherhood can drop hints that the Crystal Shard may lie in the buried netherese city, along with a way to fix the winter issue, so these both become intertwined. They’ll have reason to stop Auril but also the Arcane Brotherhood members and the villain.) I let the players decide as they went who exactly the villain was, what past history they had with him, how they came to know the secrets they did, etc. All I had to do was use their feedback to create the villain (and really, it could just be a character already in the book if you want, like one of the Arcane Brotherhood members), and figure out what the villain’s goals and gameplan were. (Spoilers: in my game, the villain was a death knight already being manipulated by the Crystal Shard to help it reach Ythryn so it could increase its own power by absorbing/merging with the magical artifacts hidden there. The Shard wants the party to pass Auril’s trials and open the glacier for them to reach Ythryn, while letting the Duergar and winter weaken Ten Towns in the meantime so they can easily use the power hidden underground - by returning the city to the air, for starters - to conquer what’s left and turn the survivors into an undead or chardalyn slave army for further conquest, or to defend the city as the Shard finds a way to use the city's artifacts to go back in time and achieve pre-spell-plague levels of magical power so that it can attempt to ascend to godhood. It might also take the floating city over the ocean, use its weather control systems to create a storm or fog around itself for miles to remain hidden, transitioning into a sea-faring campaign.) Move 1 item, tied into the characters’ hooks, to a different location, and drop a few extra rumors here or there, and you're pretty well set. Overall, this approach I think will help me get the most out of the module for minimal effort, and I’m excited about it.

This was very helpful, I was considering running the heist book for my players but they prefer a bit more of the hack and slash nature of the game. However now I am Definity more likely to pick up candle keep.

My group is running through Descent into Avernus right now and our DM had a more interesting hook to start off the whole adventure. Namely; we started off in Elturel being hired by the Order of the Gauntlet to investigate some cult activity (our introduction to the Dead Three and one agent of Zariel's cult) and on our way back to town we saw the disaster unfold in Elturel first hand.

As a beginner DM, the Alexandrian Remix for Waterdeep has made it much more fun and easier to plan out sessions. Takes all the best parts of the module and fleshes them out for the players while also drastically improving the story.

My players have been working through DiA lately. They started with WDH, and at the end, I gave them a plot hook through one of their faction contacts that would get them to Baldur's Gate. We played the trek as the Road To Avernus collection of adventures that were published on D&D Beyond a while back, and I had them witness the disaster in Elturel along the way, allowing them to skip most of the spaghetti intrigue of the first chapter of DiA, arriving in Hell as a level 6 party. I felt it was a MUCH more smooth setup than what was presented in the book.

I decided to run Descent into Avernus a little different. I had an old unfinished campaign. So on a whim one night when we had some player not show up, I had two of the players find their characters waking up at level 10 to find another one of their old party making a deal with Asmodeus himself for their lives. The woke up naked, scared and with only the sparse equipment of their companion. The next three months were their quest to escape hell, save Elturel, and return to their original quest in Faerun and and save the world. It was freaking epic having them fighting scrounging to survive with no clothes, no food, no weapons and only their wits. Fantastic!!!! I think Avernus is a great playground for a DM wanting to incorporate hell into an ongoing campaign.

Descent into Avernus luckily has an Alexandrian edition written where a lot of the issues are remedied. With this tool, I’d knock the difficulty run to intermediate, with the main issue being that you have to read the module and then the big ass revision doc. I’ve been reading it to run my own campaign of it and like a lot of the suggestions. He even adds in free maps with his revised changes to the dungeons you can access. He also offers several alternatives if you don’t like his take on one area. Also, it is HIGHLY recommended that you run the One-Shot, the Fall of Elturel beforehand. It’s also free and downloaded with the maps used.

I did Dragon of Ice Spire as a first time DM and loved it. I grabbed some tips from Matt Colville on overlanding and it made even that a lot of fun. It was very easy to run...but I also had a great group of veteran players who also DM.

I love that you talk about level of DM prep. I think there is a prevailing opinion in DnD circles that modules are easier to run than homebrew campaigns. I think that this is only sometimes true, different DMs prepare differently. For me the one module I've ever run was loads more work than my multiple homebrew games, probably going to try running one at some point, probably Strahd because it's a stone cold classic. And taking a module and assuming you can run it by skimming the book for 5 mins before the game session is a recipe for a shit time.

Thank you for doing this!

im planning a descent into avernus game for a group of friends and found the challenge of fixing this game up to be fairly challenging. as mentioned, the beginning questline seems extremely linear and railroad-y and the idea that the dm is threatning the players to join a mercenary group with death seems so limiting. however, i do plan to incorporate elements of candlekeep mysteries into the campaign when the players get to that point. so while it is a lot of work, im excited to get it started!

I ran both Waterdeep campaigns back to back and it worked well. By the time they were done with the heavy roleplay and intrigue of the Heist, they loved going down with now second-tier characters and just kicking butt. I will admit I have to do a lot of modifications to the interaction to keep it from just being a murder fest but it works and is fun. I also appreciate it is set up to take a campaign all the way to level 20, which we haven't done yet.

Hi again! I am currently playing Saltmarsh and Rime of the Frostmaiden, and then I'm running Wild Beyond the Witchlight (yep, I'm pretty busy, D&D-wise right now!). The former two campaigns are the reasons I cannot watch Drakkenheim on Tuesdays anymore. Anyway, Saltmarsh does a great job of instilling that seaside flavor, and either nautical or swamp challenges. Definitely agree that there's little to no nautical combat, as you'd expect from a pirate-y theme. Almost all the action is based on land/swamp/underground, and water is just the avenue that links encounter locations. But it's so flavor-filled. Again, I played the frist couple of original modules (products of the UK) back in my AD&D days. Rime of the Frostmaiden is also very flavor-filled, but in the arctic-wilderness kind of way. Both Saltmarsh and RotFM need a strong DM to tie things together and spur on the players, but both provide excellent ways for the DM to sink their teeth into creating a mood. I LOVE Wild Beyond the Witchlight as a DM, since it affords the opportunity to do a ton of roleplaying (I think it was Jeremy Crawford who called it a "roleplay sandbox"), and motivating your players to solve challenges without combat. In other words, it is the best adventure path to get the plaeyrs to be creative, to dive into the world, and to use their brains/investigative and interactive skills and not their weapons. I did have to warn this particular group of players about that dynamic, as they tend to just kill kill kill. But it's proven to be such a multi-dimensional campaign...the richest experience yet that I've either ran or played. I kind of disagree a bit with a comment by Kelly (which I think Monty tried to reel back a bit) in that this could be a good campaign for beginner or low-experience DMs. I think the opposite, since this requires someone to step away from the mechanics and focus on building an experience through roleplay, NPC interaction, and such (which I think is a bit more advanced for DMing). But the structure is well defined, so in that way most DMs can run it fairly easily.

Great video!

Hoooo leeee sheeets I'm up for this series!

I like to take sections of the compilation books and incorporate them into other campaigns. We had a lot of fun exploring the hidden shrine of Tamoachan in Chult while exploring Tomb of annihilation. I just reflavored as the temple of light and the creatures in there were prisoners from before the spellplague that had been forgotten to time.

Currently running The Wild Beyond the Witch Light and my players love it. The fey adventure is quite different than anything else I've run before. Highly recommend giving it a read.

I've been planning on revamping hoard of the Dragon queen for a few months; my players and I are still pretty green although we have ran a few games. Do you have any advice on how to adjust the descriptions from dm's notes to something with a bit more flavor?

I just finished playing DIA, & it was a blast! Yes, my DM did do A LOT of work on it to make it a somewhat more understanding playthrough as far steps for players to take. Even so, the sandbox portion is still quite daunting figuring out where to & what to do. I agree that player difficulty is hard because fiends have magic resistance on top of other really powerful abilities. So this module is not friendly spellcasters especially early levels when your Save DC is quite low. Devils & demons definitely pack a punch, so potential character death is always an ever present danger! So if you are a group that really likes challenging combat, this is a great module for you cause you can get your ass handed to you!

I've been running Mad Mage for about a year and a half, second adventure I've ever run after Lost Mines, and honestly while I have a lot of gripes about its structure I think overall it's improved me as a DM by a lot. It's great if you want something you can use as a skeleton of a campaign, but that is easy to modify and twist into whatever you want. When I was first reading through some of the levels, I was confused and frustrated about what exactly the point of the level was supposed to be. I was so used to Lost Mines giving me step by step instructions explaining exactly how everything was supposed to work, and the idea of adding or changing things honestly didn't even occur to me. Now when I look at those levels I see countless opportunities, I can run them however I want. But yeah, if you're looking for a book that just says "do this" and you don't want a campaign you have to put work into, Mad Mage is one to avoid. Personally it's made me way more comfortable with the idea of creating my own adventures, while taking a lot of work away for making maps, deciding what to populate those maps with, etc.

Rime was the first campaign I played and the first campaign I DM'd. I will say the nice thing about the opening chapters of the module is that if you're running it for new players the adventures in ten towns are easily railroaded together until your players are more experienced and less squishy. This makes them more confident to continue exploring in ten towns before leaving. Spending a lot of time in ten towns and building the players reputation makes the consequences of those later chapters more real since by this point the players are very emotionally invested in the ten towns.

I’d love if you could do some summary in text of this video and the previous one so we could have at hand. Great videos guys.

Recently discovered the very title "ghosts of saltmarsh" is very likely a Lovecraft quote in the first place, so it makes a sort of sense that's more the tone they went with

Would be interested to hear their thoughts on Mythic Odyssey of theros, I know its not really got a campaign just a bit of a starter thing but the deitys and bonus's u get from them has always intrigued me. Of course this is from someone whos first 5e campaign was ToA with a first time dungeon master so u know dont always do what they suggest 😅

I have used Candlekeep Mysteries in my home games. I have a current game set in Wildemount region and the various libraries of the Cobalt Soul align themselves very well to using these type of one-shot type of adventures where the players who either work for the Cobalt Soul or just need some information need to do a favor or something like that.

Thanks for the content.

Dragon Heist: Forgotten Tales on the Dm's Guild builds up Jarlaxle and the Cassalnter's instead of Xanathar and the Zhents. I really enjoyed it and you could very much use the two parts to mix and match any combinations. And if you want to run Dungeon of the Mad Mage afterwards, grab the Adventure League stuff. It adds plot threads and intrigue that can follow from Chapter 2 on Dragon Heist deep into Skull Port.