I am DMing two groups on alternating Mondays, one group I am DMing Curse of Strahd and the other I was going to DM Descent into Avernus, but I have read through the adventure and just don't get the same excitement I do for running CoS.
I would run CoS for both groups but two players are in both groups.
I'd love some feedback/opinions from DM's who've run the pre written adventures to help me decide what one to run.
I've run CoS and Tomb of Annihilation to completion, so I can recommend those. I ran about half of Princes of the Apocalypse before I ended the group but it wasn't that much fun. I'm running Descent Into Avernus now and enjoying it.
ToA has a little bit of everything: hex crawl exploration, undead, many many side events/quests, puzzles, big ol dungeon, deathtraps, and a lich fight.
Tomb of Annihilation is good. I've played it all the way through. The main issue is that most of the content is spread around the edges of the continent which means that you can't actually play most of it and stay on the limited time line imposed by the death curse effects on your patron. Jungle travel is slow, locations are fairly far apart in the jungle and encounters during travel are mostly random. Some of the random encounters are very good but after a while they are less interesting. On the other hand, the hex grid travel into unexplored territory is part of the fun of the module.
ToA can also be supplemented with Guild Adept content by adding in modules like Return of the Lizard KIng, The Ruins of Matolo and others. These add some interesting adventures plus supplement the extremely scarce magic items in ToA. My character was a rogue/warlock and I was very grateful for the improved pact weapon invocation since it was the ONLY way I was ever going to find a magic bow in ToA. Magic weapons of any kind (not to mention any other magic items) are very scarce if you play it straight up.
Finally, the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan from Tales from the Yawning Portal is another module that can be seamlessly added to ToA.
ToA does take a long time to play and the tomb at the end is dangerous and time consuming by itself as the characters will typically get very cautious.
You really want to ask that question! I'm setting up to run this and a "low resurrection world", if it means what I think it does, would solve what I think is the biggest problem with the adventure. There is this huge cool sandbox to play with, but the constant ticking clock of the curse will drive the PCs to power thru and miss most of it.
As an aside, it's interesting to look at the published adventures and see how each one addresses the flaws of the previous. I like how ToA is organized, but having just started reading Descent, I think it may be even easier to read and run.
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Hi Guys and Gals,
I am DMing two groups on alternating Mondays, one group I am DMing Curse of Strahd and the other I was going to DM Descent into Avernus, but I have read through the adventure and just don't get the same excitement I do for running CoS.
I would run CoS for both groups but two players are in both groups.
I'd love some feedback/opinions from DM's who've run the pre written adventures to help me decide what one to run.
If an adventure doesn't interest you, I don't recommend running it. I can't directly help much with this, but there are prior threads on this topic.
Pick a different module. Or take the one you don’t like and add hot sauce to it. Meaning spice it up and customize it to you
I've run CoS and Tomb of Annihilation to completion, so I can recommend those. I ran about half of Princes of the Apocalypse before I ended the group but it wasn't that much fun. I'm running Descent Into Avernus now and enjoying it.
ToA has a little bit of everything: hex crawl exploration, undead, many many side events/quests, puzzles, big ol dungeon, deathtraps, and a lich fight.
Tomb of Annihilation is good. I've played it all the way through. The main issue is that most of the content is spread around the edges of the continent which means that you can't actually play most of it and stay on the limited time line imposed by the death curse effects on your patron. Jungle travel is slow, locations are fairly far apart in the jungle and encounters during travel are mostly random. Some of the random encounters are very good but after a while they are less interesting. On the other hand, the hex grid travel into unexplored territory is part of the fun of the module.
ToA can also be supplemented with Guild Adept content by adding in modules like Return of the Lizard KIng, The Ruins of Matolo and others. These add some interesting adventures plus supplement the extremely scarce magic items in ToA. My character was a rogue/warlock and I was very grateful for the improved pact weapon invocation since it was the ONLY way I was ever going to find a magic bow in ToA. Magic weapons of any kind (not to mention any other magic items) are very scarce if you play it straight up.
Finally, the Hidden Shrine of Tamochan from Tales from the Yawning Portal is another module that can be seamlessly added to ToA.
ToA does take a long time to play and the tomb at the end is dangerous and time consuming by itself as the characters will typically get very cautious.
I am currently running a game combining LMoP and DoIP which is incredibly fun.
Red Hand of Doom might be the best adventure ever made, in my opinion.
edit: Red Hand of Doom would take a bunch of converting to 5e, but there are guides for it out there.
Is it possible to adapt ToA to a low-resurrection world?
You really want to ask that question! I'm setting up to run this and a "low resurrection world", if it means what I think it does, would solve what I think is the biggest problem with the adventure. There is this huge cool sandbox to play with, but the constant ticking clock of the curse will drive the PCs to power thru and miss most of it.
As an aside, it's interesting to look at the published adventures and see how each one addresses the flaws of the previous. I like how ToA is organized, but having just started reading Descent, I think it may be even easier to read and run.