What would you run?

[lunaticfringe]

Need a break from coming up with adventures & junk so I'm going run a premade I think. Out of:

Storm King's Thunder
Princes of the Apocalypse
Curse of Strand

Which would you run? Or was the most fun? (I played in Tiamat/Group's done it)

[Axorfett12]

I am running both Princes and Curse right now. I have no experience with storm kings thunder, so I won't comment on that one.

Given the choice between PotA and CoS, the question is how much prep time do you have? If you only have a little bit of time or don't want a prep a lot, Princes is the way to go. It's very simple. Four cults, four castles, four temples, four nodes, four princes, four prophets, etc. It's also very classic fantasy, and offers all the fun of dungeon crawls with a little intrigue mixed in.

Curse is more complex but more rewarding. It requires you to more fully understand the lay of the land and how everything interacts. Castle Raven loft itself takes up almost half the book. The prep pays off though with a dark, foreboding setting and terrifying monsters. Perfect for those players who can appreciate a good horror story.

[Aembrosia]

Steer away from STK

Chapter One and Two are well designed and straightforward; with forgivable flaws we need not get into. Chapter Three is where things fall apart. You open up the adventure to the entire sword coast with a couple prewritten plotlines but mostly headers with short descriptions that will require you to figure out what goes there. Your party could want to wander around chapter three for a month/months going places that would demand content creation on your part. At the very least you are put upon to find a way to reign them in to the plot.

Whereas Curse of Strahd so so nearly has videogame-esque invisible walls. Sorry, you've run into 'not the plot' turn around or die.

[Temperjoke]

Curse of Strahd is pretty independent of any of storylines. I'd recommend new characters for it, though, it's a pretty deadly campaign if you're not careful.

EDIT: SKT comes after Rise of Tiamat, and as a result of that adventure though, so some of the background would make sense to the players if they've done that one.

[Sabeta]

Princes is really open-ended in a lot of places, but at the same time your players could wander in literally any direction and hit a plot thread. Even being super obvious about their efforts to stop the cult will attract their attention and end up with plot threads being delivered to them.

[lunaticfringe]

Curse it is I think. I got prep time. Thank you all for your input!