I'm wondering what are the most popular 5e campaigns that people actually play. I'm not looking for a listicle or most sales. I'm talking what are the campaigns that players want to play and DMs want to run?

icewind Dale: rime of the frostmaiden 

btw 5e 2014 is good but use 5e 2024 it's mostly the same thing but better. :)

Curse of Strahd is meant to be good. I'm getting ready to run it, so I can't say personally.

Just finishing Rime of the Frostmaiden, and I can't recommend it. It has an identity problem, with a third open world, a third narrative and a third dungeon crawling. No matter what your taste is... you're spending two thirds of your campaign playing something else. I loved the open world part, but the rest has been a slog because it's something that no one's really enjoyed.

It's Curse of Strahd and it's not close!

I like 2024 because they fixed a lot of problems.  like you kizzoap 

I agree. rime of the frostmaiden isn't the best. It is hard to run, it has confusing aspects to it (like the fact that the frostmaiden who is a goddess has a CR 6 or smt). Very boring and frustrating. especially for the DMs. 

What is your reasoning for Strahd's popularity? I'm familiar with the history and how it's always been popular. Is it the Ravenloft setting? Is it the subject matter and tone? Is it how Strahd interacts with the players? Is it just... because it's a vampire game?

I'm asking because, I'm trying to go full time as a GM and it's been hard to find players. I'm wondering if my games I'm offering aren't the right ones and I'm trying to figure out what's *actually* popular and being played.

try exploring beyond official DND content. Fools gold into the bellowing wild is a YouTube series by dingo doodles. You can buy the campaign on their website. curse of strahd is popular as well as lost mines of phandelver, tomb of annihilation, wild beyond the whitchlight, and dragons of stormwreck isle.

Quote from venpal >>

What is your reasoning for Strahd's popularity? I'm familiar with the history and how it's always been popular. Is it the Ravenloft setting? Is it the subject matter and tone? Is it how Strahd interacts with the players? Is it just... because it's a vampire game?

I'm asking because, I'm trying to go full time as a GM and it's been hard to find players. I'm wondering if my games I'm offering aren't the right ones and I'm trying to figure out what's *actually* popular and being played.

 I think the style resonated well. It seems to have been written differently - rather than as a strict story which players are guided through, it seems to be more building up areas and letting the DM react to the players.

So, like, with most adventures, you'll have a scene. Then the players react, things will happen, then the adventure will direct the players to go to a different location, where something else happens. Once that's happened, the players are directed to a third location, and so forth. Sometimes it'll be branching etc, which provides greater agency, but ultimately, there's an arc that's followed and players are following a railroad. A branching one with twist and turns and junctions, but a preset arc.

Strahd seems to follow more the setup of TOR, another TTRPG. It builds up a bunch of locations, it tells you who is at those locations, their history, their traits and attitudes. It gives you some hooks to use with players and some possible quests for them to follow. Then it plonks the players in Barovia, and says knock yourself out. The players guide the story instead. 

It's harder on the DM because they've got to come up with interesting response to player decisions, they can't rely on the book to tell them what to do or how to react. On the other hand...that railroading doesn't exist (at least...not because of the book). That freedom is sensed by the players and appreciated.

Again, I haven't played it yet and I've only given it a brief look over...but that seems to be the mentality behind it, and it's not really present in the other adventures that I've read (except for one third of RotFM).

TOR= The One Ring?

Thank you! That's very interesting. I'm working on Princes of the Apocalypse rn (I know, infamously poorly designed game) and it's set up similarly to how you describe CoS: locations laid out with a map and who's where in almost a sandbox style. In CoS, are those location balanced to a certain level? That's my conceptual issue I'm having with PotA, learning how keep from guiding my players to where they are balanced for.