D&D 5E Against the Slave Lords/Dungeons of dread books...or another module/campaign?

[Actoba]

I'm DM'ing for a small and completely new to DnD group (including myself). We started with the Next playtest several months ago and none of us have any experience with previous versions whatsoever. I have a couple of friends from outside the group that have access to lots of material/experience from various DnD versions and other systems too and they've been helpful in getting us started with a conversion of Keep on the Borderlands as our first taster module (picked purely because it was the starter adventure for 4th edition and we had easy access to it) before we moved on to Dragonspear castle (thanks to a friend who went to Gencon) and both have been pretty well received and we're having a lot of fun and of course learning from our various successes and failures.

We're around 3/4 of the way through Dragonspear castle atm and it' likely my small group will grow a little from 2-4 players to 4-6 ish after the new year and they've been asking about starting a new campaign to bring the new guys in. Again these new players are likely to have no or very little experience with dnd (or any other system) at all.

I was wondering if people had any suggestions for campaigns they would recommend for a relatively inexperienced group? I'm not quite ready to roll my own campaign quite yet so i'd prefer something a little more "off the shelf" just to get some more experience under my belt (and for my players too), though i'm comfortable converting a few monsters/items/etc.. from older versions if need be and i have a few people that can offer some help with that too if need be.

The group at the moment is still pretty heavily combat/loot/progression focused and a little light on the RP elements but they're slowly beginning to participate and enjoy the non-stabby bits of the adventures now too. Ideally i'd like something that would help us continue that trend a little whilst still giving them plenty of stuff to stab/nuke/bash. As I mentioned both the players and me are learning together as we get a little more experience so it'd be good to continue "pushing" us a little bit.

I've been possibly looking at the recently re-released Against the Slave Lords/Dungeons of Dread books as possible options since the playtest packet also has bestiaries for them but if anyone has any other suggestions or recommendations i'd appreciate them. I've also been handed the Red Hand of Doom adventure book from a friend outside the group and he suggested I give that a go. I havent had time to read it yet but do do any of you more experienced guys have an opinion on it?

 

[Celebrim]

First, as one DM to another, congratulations and welcome to the team. I love hearing stories like this.

I feel Red Hand of Doom might be more interesting to a more experienced group. I'm not sure I would run it for a new group, though it does have some really nice elements. (On the other hand, it's complex and I think highlights some of the problems 3.X developed.)

I'd avoid Dungeons of Dread as a 'campaign'. Tomb of Horrors is a must play for any group eventually, but it isn't not very newbie friendly and will kill far too many characters to form the basis of a compaign with the sorts of character development and on going stories that make the campaign format so fun. If anything, 'White Plume Mountain' will kill even more.

I'm not a big fan of 'Against the Slavers', though I know many that are.

My advice for using published modules to build a campaign around would be Desert of Desolation, which also gives you plenty of opportunity to exercise your new DMing muscles by adding to the environment and story (if you wanted, it runs fine naked). If you want help on running it, I'll do what I can. If you need help on conversion, I've written extensive 3.0 conversion notes for the first section - Pyramid - and I'm sure you'd find someone that would find doing a D&DN conversion an interesting challenge.

 

[Actoba]

Thanks i'll try and read up a bit more on the desert of desolation adventures and see if i can get my hands on them

I kinda like the idea of trying something with a bit more wilderness exploration in it as well as it's something i havent quite got a feel for how to do properly i dont think. That and I guess something a little more sandbox-y rather than so much on rails might be useful too. Though i'm happy that our first adventures have been more on rails as i think there would have been times where we all might have struggled a bit!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was wondering if people had any suggestions for campaigns they would recommend for a relatively inexperienced group? I'm not quite ready to roll my own campaign quite yet so i'd prefer something a little more "off the shelf" just to get some more experience under my belt (and for my players too), though i'm comfortable converting a few monsters/items/etc.. from older versions if need be and i have a few people that can offer some help with that too if need be.

The group at the moment is still pretty heavily combat/loot/progression focused and a little light on the RP elements but they're slowly beginning to participate and enjoy the non-stabby bits of the adventures now too. Ideally i'd like something that would help us continue that trend a little whilst still giving them plenty of stuff to stab/nuke/bash. As I mentioned both the players and me are learning together as we get a little more experience so it'd be good to continue "pushing" us a little bit.

I've been possibly looking at the recently re-released Against the Slave Lords/Dungeons of Dread books as possible options since the playtest packet also has bestiaries for them but if anyone has any other suggestions or recommendations i'd appreciate them. I've also been handed the Red Hand of Doom adventure book from a friend outside the group and he suggested I give that a go. I havent had time to read it yet but do do any of you more experienced guys have an opinion on it?

The Dungeons of Dread are all meatgrinders and if your characters survive them (other than maybe S1), they're going to be dripping with loot that will make the rest of the campaign very hard for you, especially if you use all of them together. (No group needs both Blackrazor and laser pistols.)

I like the idea of using classic adventures, though (I started in '79, so that's my D&D bias). I'd check out RPGNow.com and download some from there.

Depending on the level of your characters, I'd recommend Keep on the Borderlands, The Lost City, The Isle of Dread, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Against the Cult of the Reptile God, The Village of Hommlet or the Saltmarsh series, beginning with The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

 

[Actoba]

Thanks Whizbang. I'm not too bothered about what level we start/continue from as i'm pretty sure we'll be starting with a full group of new characters especially if we pickup a new player or three. Assuming they survive dragonspear castle i always assumed we'd revisit that later on as more sundering content comes out anyway.

I am keen on the idea that we do something thats a bit more iconic/memorable/classic though. As the DM for the group (and the one with the most general gaming experience...tho very much still a noob compared to most!) i've read/played/watched a fair bit the last few months stealing ideas/techniques/experience and so on from others to try and make our games a bit better. My players are somewhat less engaged with the history/background of the game so it would be nice to introduce them to something that might draw them in a little more and give them their classic "I remember when we first started playing in 2013/2014 and we ran through XXXX adventure/module/campaign...." to tell others about in years to come I will say that our first adventure (Keep on the Borderlands) ended in dramatic failure as they all got chomped on by a ghoul 2 rooms from the end of the module thanks to a succession of horrific save throw rolls by the players. Their reactions (and no doubt memories) were priceless!

I'm totally on board with the idea of avoiding anything thats remotely meatgrinder like. I had read a little about the cult of the reptile god before and thought that might be a good starting point for something....also read good things about Hommlet too. Just looked up Saltmarsh too and i think i vaguely recall one of my other friends mentioning he had that series stashed away somewhere so will have to quiz him about that too. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I had read a little about the cult of the reptile god before and thought that might be a good starting point for something....also read good things about Hommlet too. Just looked up Saltmarsh too and i think i vaguely recall one of my other friends mentioning he had that series stashed away somewhere so will have to quiz him about that too. Thanks for the suggestions!

All three of those are fantastic starts to campaigns.

 

[Stormonu]

The Saltmarsh series is a lot of fun, played that one myself. The Lenore Isles series is fun as well (Secret of Bone Hill, Assasin's Knot, Deep Dwarven Delve).

I've tried running/playing Temple, but got bored with Hommlet and never got much past that part)

 

[Celebrim]

Thanks i'll try and read up a bit more on the desert of desolation adventures and see if i can get my hands on them

I kinda like the idea of trying something with a bit more wilderness exploration in it as well as it's something i havent quite got a feel for how to do properly i dont think.

Desert of Desolation has minimal wilderness exploration, but considering how much time that the module spends describing wilderness exploration, providing wandering encounter tables, considering the problem of desert survival, and so forth one of my complaints against it is that it doesn't provide enough space to really make it relevant or interesting. Everything is basically a days journey from everything else.

It would be possible to convert Desert of Desolation to a sand boxy environment - there are plenty of factions, plenty of room for adding your own ruins, NPCs, lost tombs, etc. But while there would be some advantages to this in having the plot evolve more naturally from its initial railroad hook and without the need to resource to Schrodinger's map, this would be a tremendous amount of work. Fun and good exercise though. But make sure you know what you are getting into when you say you want a sand box. By definition, to run a sandbox you have to be willing to prepare more material - much more material - than you ever intend to use.

As for the Saltmarsh trilogy, the first module is pretty decent although the haunted house execution involves just a wee bit more poison opportunities than I think is necessary or helpful at this level of play. But the second and third modules pretty much fall apart in my opinion because they make huge assumptions about party behavior that I think aren't much warranted, don't offer much game play at all if those assumptions fall through, and the finale is pretty ante-climatic IMO. There is the core idea of a really cool campaign in here, but I think it would be a tremendous amount of work to mine it out of the material.

Isle of Dread is one of D&D's iconic sandbox modules, but its really really thin by modern standards and requires a huge amount of effort to realize the full potential of the setting. Get back to me on this one in a year or two and I may be willing to share my notes.

 

[Actoba]

Fair enough, i just assumed desert = some wilderness/survival time...and to be honest maybe sandbox was the wrong word to choose....what i meant was just something that provided some options for the players on how to proceed rather than it being a single option to move things along. I guess though part of that is on me a little to present the illusion of choice a little bit...certainly i havent had any complaints from my players so maybes it's just my view from behind the DM screen that feels a little "on-rails".

Anyway it looks like the main part of my question has been answered so thats stopped me from buying those re-released books quite yet as it certainly sounds like those might be better options (in part at least) a bit further down the line. I'll be exploring some of the other suggestions over the xmas/new year holidays. Thanks again

 

[3catcircus]

Desert of Desolation has minimal wilderness exploration...

How so? The DM's map for this super-module has more empty hexes full of sand, blasted hills, mountains, and shifting sands than it does "occupied" hexes with specific encounter locations. Of course, it would suck to be "lost" in Raurin, but there is plenty of "white space" for a DM to fill in whatever wilderness exploration details he or she wants to, especially since it was the center of the Imaskar Empire.