D&D 5E I played Rise of Tiamat in 24 hours straight...

[koga305]

... and I wrote a blog post about it! Curious to see what you all think. (RoT Spoilers, obviously)

For those uninterested in navigating to another site, a few tidbits to discuss:

• By the end of the adventure, fighting dragons was downright boring. Their abilities were similar enough that we developed a specific set of tactics to beat them (my Barbarian got enlarged, grappled and pinned the dragon, then the rest of the party whaled on it). Then again, the fight where every member of the party was flying was pretty awesome...
• The Counsel of Good Dragons was FANTASTIC. Definitely gave every character a chance to define their role in the world and feel like they made a difference in the war.
• The hedge maze in Xonthal's tower was super frustrating. I actually don't remember the rest of that episode as I half-slept through it, but the puzzle aspects did not go over well at 2 in the morning.
• We steamrolled everything up until the final fight with the Red Wizards, where the confusion spell neutralized half our party for most of the fight. Tiamat got summoned, but at that point we were so tired and frusturated (and the 24 hours were up) that we actually walked away without fighting her.
• Overall verdict? Despite the woes mentioned above, it was pretty awesome and epic. We definitely skipped through a lot of the grindy bits, and the parts requiring finesse from the DM or players sometimes got butchered due to our tired state. Definitely something we'll remember for a while.

 

[Daern]

Huzzah! This gives me an idea to try to do an epic abbreviated version of Tiamat as well!

 

[MerricB]

It took us about 24 hours to play through the entire thing - though with a lot more breaks between sessions than you had! Your analysis is really good. (I trust you slept before writing it? )

Cheers!

 

[koga305]

It took us about 24 hours to play through the entire thing - though with a lot more breaks between sessions than you had! Your analysis is really good. (I trust you slept before writing it? )

Cheers!

Thank you!

I guess you could say I slept before writing it, since we played last April. Looks like we may be trying out Princes of the Apocalypse in a month or two...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I really like your point about fighting dragons in the air.

 

[delericho]

Right now...

cultists are trying to free Tiamat from her prison in the abyss. My wife and daughter have been captured. And people that I work with may be involved in both. I'm koga305, and this is the longest day of my life.

 

[wedgeski]

I've done a couple of 24-hour marathons, often with hilarious results (like the time I fell asleep on the toilet and everyone was too tired to even notice). I really enjoyed your blog.