Okay, I've run a few of the hardcovers now and I'm not impressed in terms of the quality of the stories. They present themselves as ready to play resources, but as ready to play resources they tend to be very mediocre.

Don't get me wrong. I think there is a lot of good bones in there, but I have to spend a lot of time rewriting the content to make it actually good? Or at least I find it so. I'm currently running Dragonheist and it's taken a few sessions to actually make the setting and adventure compelling. There are just so many gaps in the adventure in terms of making this world come alive-- I feel like there could have been more attention to the gaps and the idea that it's really a foundation, with a few set pieces.

Without getting too into it, but it took me a little bit to realise that the gang war is the most interesting part of the first half of the adventure. Which is lightly touched on, and absolutely not dealt with in the severity that it should be. I mean, there are people killing each other in the streets, but we never meet any NPCs who are being affected by this. Like, this should raise some really big questions about the efficacy of the guards in Waterdeep to protect the underclasses. Instead of pursuing the faction sidequests (Like the first one for the Force Grey is... really weird if you aren't playing Winter), I realised that "chapter 2" should be spent actually making the players care that the city is embroiled in a civil war for control of the underbelly and this is happening because there are one million gp floating around. Hell, it's a great time to introduce some interesting character moments. I'm stealing the plot from some of the sidequests from Yakuza 0.

Likewise, LMoP had some really curious plot holes. The less said about Out of the Abyss, probably, the better. I've read/glanced a number of other hardcovers and I'm starting to see them better as loose guides with general premises than actually prepared adventures that you can run by just following the text as written (I don't mean just literally reading the text aloud. I mean following the structure of the adventures and details of the world as presented.) I'm used to putting interesting spins on NPCs to make them my own, but I find myself designing a lot more content to fill out the adventures than I would expect to.

What are your opinions? Are you having a similar time with Hardcovers to what I'm dealing with?

Some are better than others and some are just plain bad. By far the worst is, IMO, Storm King's Thunder. Nothing in it makes a lick of sense. All the hooks go nowhere and you're forced as the DM to basically railroad the players to actually experience any of the locations in anything approaching (but not meeting) a logical order. And there are so many dead ends. Like not even red herrings, just randomly inserted nonsense that is presented as being important but literally has nothing to do with the (so-called) plot. IMO it's the worst designed adventure WotC/TSR has ever published and I include Castle Greyhawk in that because at least that wasn't meant to be serious. Princes of the Apocalypse being a distant third.

As a Savage North setting book, however, it's excellent. If only it hadn't had what was very obviously a last minute, haphazard, ham-handed attempt at shoe-horning an adventure into it, then it'd be a great source book.

But I don't think they're all like that. Curse of Strahd is—aside from the bizarre motivation of the primary antagonist to not MDK the PC's at 1st-level before they become a legitimate threat—fairly solid. Not sure why you didn't like Out of the Abyss as that felt decent while I ran it, even if a little too 'Points of Light' for my liking. Tomb of Annihilation is pretty good, although the journey is better than the destination, IMO. Also not sure why you think Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is so bad, aside from the fact that the PC's aren't actually the ones planning a heist. The adventure can't provide 100% of possibilities so as long as the core elements are sound, i.e. this event happens and the clues logically lead to the next event and or inspire the players to figure it out and lead the narrative, then the adventure is sound IMO. And W:DH is mostly sound in that respect. Also not seeing the issue with LMoP. It was pretty straightforward with a mostly logical progression.

First off, there is no such thing as a "ready to play" pre-written adventure.  It's like getting a free puppy.  You still have to walk it, interact with it, train it, feed it, water it, etc.  A pre-written adventure takes the hardest challenges facing a DM and lays all the groundwork.  You are STILL expected to read ahead, know whats coming and fill in the gaps the story leaves for you, as the DM, to fill in and make compelling for your individual group of players.  

For instance, the module will tell you what NPCs know, what their motives are, etc.  But, it's entirely up to the DM to role-play that character as the module will give no information on HOW to relay that information to the players.  Thats for you to figure out and decide.  And, if you haven't done your homework for session, you're going to fail as a DM.  So, I can see how someone unfamiliar and new to D&D can get frustrated by this, but as someone that has home-brewed before...I honestly like having the groundwork laid out for me as it is much easier for me with limited time to embellish upon a pre-written story as opposed to having to build an entire interwoven world that is my own.  

I really like LMOP, although they did forget to warn the DMs to read the pre-gen back stories and to provide some advice about dealing with one of said backstories.  Otherwise I felt like it gave a good mix of player agency and plot.

I’ve run most of TOA, and there are things I’ve like and things I’ve not.  Another time, I think I wouldn’t start with the “countdown clock”/the world endangering issue, and just let them explore, then see if something let them to the BBEG.  I also liked that one could expand TOA through DMsGuild.

My son is really excited about some of the Ghosts of Saltmarsh adventures.  I’ve pointedly not read them because I may eventually be a player in a Saltmarsh campaign he DMs.  

I have Hoard of the Dragon Queen, but haven’t run it.  It’s problems have been well documented.

The rest I’m not directly familiar with.  (Although I have read through the 1st chapter of Storm King’s Thunder, and found the beginning part interesting, but I’ve read enough to know that the plot doesn’t hold together very well.

Quote from Verenti >>

 

Without getting too into it, but it took me a little bit to realise that the gang war is the most interesting part of the first half of the adventure. Which is lightly touched on, and absolutely not dealt with in the severity that it should be.

I'd agree that this is a problem with all the hardcovers, but I think it's unavoidable.  5 DMs are going to want to make 5 different movie adaptations from the same novel.  Some people are going to want to make Ocean's 11 and some will want to make Goodfellas, and some will want to make The Dark Knight.

So, yeah, I also tend to see the hardcovers as loose guides and springboards.  But from what you're describing, that doesn't mean that one couldn't run it straight out of the box, just that you as a DM feel compelled to engage with the text and make it your own.  I personally think that's an entirely appropriate response. While it adds on to my prep time, I don't think it's possible for someone to write a pre-made adventure that I wouldn't instinctively do that to.  I think you just have to embrace that.

I’ve only ran LMoP and DoIP, but I love them both.  Also, they are super easy to mix together for a bigger and better campaign.  After this I plan on running Ghosts of Saltmarsh or Curse if Strahd, so it’ll be interesting to experiment e the difference.

I also don’t think the adventures are made to be run word for word.  If you aren’t tweaking things and making changes and integrating your players’ stories, what is the point of being a DM?

I think they are hit and miss.

Princes of the Apocalypse was... well, apocalyptic when I tried to run it, since there is no real, coherent story going on. It's basically "We have a big dungeon, go and kill stuff" which is a bit boring.

Bakdur's Gate on the other hand has a nice story and an epic setting, but can quickly feel railroady if you don't tweak some things and add a few homebrewed side quests.

Curse of Strahd so far seems like a nice mix of story and sandbox, so it might be the best adventure.

But what is really off-putting to me are the NPCs..

Their names are just hard to remember for me... like "Haeleeya Hanadroum" (owns a bath house in Red Larch), "Maegla Tarnlar" (clothier in Red Larch), "Bildrath Cantemir" (merchant in Barovia). And unfortunately the official adventures tend to drop those NPC's names somewhere into scenes without further explanation and you have to go look through the previous chapters who the heck "Sorvia" was, what she was doing here and why the adventurer's should have met her.

A simple "dramatis personae" would be really helpful here. Or at least a short reminder in parentheses behind the name.

I guess it depends on how you run them in all honesty.  If you take them word for word verbatim then they're not great.  Take Hoard of the Dragon Queen for example.  That opening scenario as presented is pretty terrible but then I'd say as a GM the onus is on yourself to take the bones of what is there and build / expand on that to make it your own.  The possibilities are limitless depending on what you want to do with it.  When taken as a sourcebook that you can tweak to make your own they're all excellent.  Don't take them as-is though, and in all fairness I don't think that was ever the intention.

To clarify, it's not that I don't like LMoP or even Dragonheist. Out of the Abyss was an ... aimless slog? But the other two are good in many ways, but I feel like if I need to do a re-write to make all of the explicitly written content fit together cohesively, then the writing team of writers who wrote the book maybe aren't doing their job?

I haven't touched CoS, but it does look really cool. Likewise ToA, I haven't read into that one, but Overland Journey: the Adventure doesn't sound like my cup of tea. That's fine. I'm not saying the content is universally awful, but rather as prepackaged adventures or campaigns they don't really come up to snuff. There are some principle failings that make them bad at what they are designed to do.

I was once at a speech given by Monte Cooke and he said that his job as an adventure-author is to write an adventure that players could not write for themselves. I think that's a good justification for pre-written adventures. If I have to write or rewrite large sections of the characters and their motivations or the scenario because the content doesn't work... am I still buying something that I couldn't do myself?

I'm not suggesting every adventure should be tailored to me. For example, Renear Neverember, I found, is a tedious 2D character. That's not what I'm talking about; that's fine because that's style, not substance. If I dislike a character that's not the character's fault. If I don't understand why the character is there and they effectively disappear from the story following that after adding nothing then there is a problem.  LMoP is an adventure I actually really like running. HOWEVER, the last time I ran it, I kept getting asked really good questions by my players about why it was logically defensible for certain things to be put in there: like there are aspects that are written just because they were cool ideas. However, they didn't necessarily fit into the narrative, so is that good writing? Yes, we all prepare our campaigns in advance, familiarising ourselves with the plot, the characters, etc. However, that doesn't really mean, I am assuming, most of us, memorise every detail. Hell, when a book is X hundred pages long, you can't afford to.

I’m running Ghosts right now, and it’s my first time as a DM running a whole campaign, and I’m changing it to make it mine and fit the PCs into the city by using their back stories. If I run it again in a couple of years it will be a different adventure, even though the bones will be the same, because I’ll have different PCs with different back stories and goals. 

No, but...I always prefer to run my own game. One of my players straight-up insists that I don't run prewritten adventures (and as a result, I never have!). My group just likes games to feel personal—it helps that we've all been friends well before we started D&D.

That said, if I'm playing with people I either don't trust to DM or don't know, I prefer that they run published content, primarily because everyone, myself included, writes some very bad adventures early on (I personally never had the gods swoop in to save 1st-level characters and steal all the glory, but I've played with people who have) and some never grow out of it. Honestly, I probably should have started with published content, because I was quite a poor DM at first. If the players don't know or can't trust the DM, they should go with a module, simply because it guarantees the game won't be overpowered, underpowered, or off-the-rails silly anime stuff. It also helps balance expectations for groups who don't already know each other, since it avoids both all-combat and all-roleplay games.

I voted NO - But..

Simply because I find many pre-made adventures to be plug and play where they seem to have a list of room descriptions.  My personal angst is I have a hard time getting into a pre-made adventure because I don't know it as well as one I created from sharpening a pencil.  Well I actually make mine now with a GIS Mapping program and a word processor. 

I do have a collections of modules that I have purchased over the years, mostly have used them for story and plot ideas.  One of the few I have ran is The Temple of Elemental Evil.  It is a vast deadly module and I have yet to get a party to the third level.  In fact I am going to work on Wednesday nights adventure in a few minutes.

I have found it helpful for me, to write a long drawn out story about my campaign.  I must admit, with all humility, that my current campaign is an epic. We started in late August and meet every week with the exception of 4 Wednesdays and my party is only about 1/3 of the way through my vision. 

Quote from Naresea >>

A simple "dramatis personae" would be really helpful here. Or at least a short reminder in parentheses behind the name.

They do have this on the newer adventures. But to your other point, this is a big reason why we desperately need, and have needed for a long damn time now, a specific 'search within source' capability. A little search bar within each book that only searches things in that book. Or at the very bloody least, some boolean in the main search bar.

I've played LMoP and enjoyed it, am playing Dragon Heist and enjoying it, and DMing Lost Laboratory of Kwalish and my players seem to be having fun, so I'll go with no.

I voted no but... some probably are. Really, I've only run LMoP and want to again. I read ToA in anticipation of running it but life happened. I'm starting a new group and one has already done it, so we're going to run SKT. I'm looking forward to running this big, expansive world. Do I have to mod it? Yep, but that's part of the joy (I mean that seriously) of being a DM. 

I've said "No, but..."

From the ones I've run (LMoP and some of TftYP) they've generally been ok. Sure there's some stuff that players will want to ask about/do that's not there, but with a little nudging it's possible to adapt or include those bits as you see fit. Other adventures may feel a bit lacklustre in parts, but that's bound to happen and they often have other redeeming features which are good to incorporate into Homebrew stuff as well.

Playing in CoS and the Waterdeep ones has been ok as well, although we lucked out with the placement of some stuff in CoS and ended up a bit overpowered quite quickly. That's currently on hiatus but we'll see how it goes once we're back and the DM has time to adjust the encounters a bit.

No, unless you expect...

...to be able to pick the thing up and run it without reading it in detail first

...to have every eventuality covered off and not have to improvise that much

Some are better than others and some are just plain bad. By far the worst is, IMO, Storm King's Thunder. Nothing in it makes a lick of sense. All the hooks go nowhere and you're forced as the DM to basically railroad the players to actually experience any of the locations in anything approaching (but not meeting) a logical order.

When I read through the book, I had much the same impression. I didn't "get" the book until I realized that

 And though I do feel Curse of Strahd is better overall than Storm King's Thunder, STK is a better sandbox. In Curse of Strahd, each location has a level you're supposed be before you visit it, unless you want a TPK, whereas in STK, that's only really an issue for the boss locations, which are kinda hard to just stumble upon. My DM also loved STK because it was easy to throw random dungeons in (he's a fan of adventure of the week type campaigns), whereas having the Count breathing down your neck at all times means that doesn't work very well in Strahd.

Again, Strahd is better than STK overall, and is far more memorable, but you can't really compare them because they are fundamentally different campaigns.

I will say no, but.... 

If you run a book 100% straight out of the book, you may as well put on a conductor's hat and yell out "all aboard". The party will certainly feel railroaded.  You also run the risk of someone who has read through or played it at another game already.  They'll be at best bored, or at worst spoil the game for others.  

As DM, much like the rules, you have final say of the story.   Sadly some of the stories come across as engaging as a space wizard discussing his disdain for sand. Luckily you can alter and change parts, encounters, treasures, towns, to make the story feel better to tell.  You also have to allow the players to shape the story as well, and when DM and Player work together in this way, even some of the more drab hardcover adventures can be fantastic. 

If you want to run your own game, in your own world, having the hardcover adventures are still great resources to pluck ideas or dungeons out of.   The last 2 campaigns I have run have take stories out of the yawning portal book with some re-flavoring. Can't wait for them to stumble upon the tomb of horrors. 

 In the end, treat them more of a rough guideline than a definitive map, and you can make them all fun.

Quote from Aescleal >>

No, unless you expect...

...to be able to pick the thing up and run it without reading it in detail first

...to have every eventuality covered off and not have to improvise that much

 

 The problem with that is: those are the main points why you'd buy an adventure in the first place. To save on preparation time.

If I have to read through the entire book first, adjusting every single encounter in it to have it remotely balanced for the party and only get a single railroad that doesn't even propose sone of the more common problems, why buy the book at all?

Maybe I am just spoiled from other systems, but a good adventure module imho contains an easy to follow summary, ideally with a flow-chart that gives you the most important events and NPCs on 1-2 pages and you can then proceed by only reading the one or two chapters your players will likely manage through the evening.

The chapters themselves then contain hints to common points where players might go off the book and how to deal with those situations and some funny or interesting side quests you can optionally add.

Most of the published adventures for D&D I read so far don't have a summary. Or tips on how to get the story along if the players decide to do something not intended by the book. Or even just usable Battle Maps or printable assets... so, judging the D&D adventures against those I know from other systems, the D&D ones are just plain bad as adventure modules.

They are nice to get some inspiration for homebrew adventures, though and can give you a feeling for their respective setting if you read them. They are great DM resources,  just horrible adventure modules.

WotC really improved in Baldur's Gate, but they imho are still not quite at the point where the books would be worth the money they charge for them.