After Mines of phandelver

[daimonionen]

So, we're about to finish up Mines of phandelver, and I'm looking for a new adventure. I'm really new to this, so the more complex campaigns are probably not for me just yet.
What do you recommend?

[SilverStud]

Well, it is pretty easy to tie in some of the other modules. I know, for instance, that Tyranny of Dragons has a section or two to help tie it together. Out of the Abyss is an easy link because it just starts with them getting captured by drow. Not so sure about Princes of the Apocalypse though.

Some notes to guide you, since you said you're new. Tyranny of Dragons, which is actually two modules (Horde of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat), is a linear adventure. It isn't as well written as Phandelver, from a DM standpoint. Some parts of it can be downright difficult to run effectively (HotDQ... RoT is mostly fine), but as long as you tweak it liberally you will be fine and have loads of fun. Just don't restrict yourself to what's written. Maybe look up what other DMs have done online. I read through a "Running Tyranny of Dragons" guide once, but I can't remember where it was.

Out of the Abyss and Princes of the Apocalypse are very sandboxy. Players are free to wander and get TPK'd by large monsters if they want. Starting out with their 5th level characters from Phandelver will help with that, of course.

Those are the ones I know about, if you're talking modules. I mostly DM homebrew campaigns, and cannibalize from the modules.

[Drackolus]

I hear Storm King's Thunder is written to be after it.

[Sigreid]

I think you should look at the DMG and design a few small adventures of your own. Bandits attack the town the party is in, were wolf terrorizing a village, whatever. Start getting used to building the campaign your group wants and putting hooks to the next few possible directions for adventure littered about.

[daimonionen]

So, tyranny of dragons, huh? The best for newbies?

[BeefGood]

I consider myself a newbie and my players are definitely newbies. We will finish LMoP soon and transition to SKT. I'm looking forward to it, I'm looking forward to the particular transition point that I'm going to use, but I do want to say that it required more than a few re-readings of SKT for me to begin feeling comfortable with it. Compared to my memories of prewritten adventures (they were called "modules" back then), SKT is much grander in scope. That may be true for other contemporary adventures; I don't know about them.
Also--once again I'm going by memory, and it's been a long time--I think that the modules were more turnkey. You opened the book for the first time and just started. Whereas with SKT, even with the large amount of material contained in the book, maybe because of the large amount of material contained in the book, I think a good amount of DM prep is needed. Even for LMoP, a contemporary adventure that is much smaller than SKT, I wish I had put in more prep time.

[Armored Walrus]

Princes of the apocalypse takes place only about a day's travel north of Phandalin. I'm not sure if the module itself has suggestions about how to tie it in to LMoP but I know it's been done by folks. A quick search on this forum will probably turn up a thread about exactly that.

@Beefgood - I think there are still "modules" but stuff like STK, POA, Strahd, etc. are more one book campaigns than they are single adventures. At least that's my impression. I don't own and haven't run any of them, but i've seen a few of them on streams, and I'm in a PoA pbp game right now. It's definitely more wide open than a typical module.

[Beleriphon]

To put the new adventures that WotC has produced (Rise of Tiamat, Storm King's Thunder, etc.) versus older modules (White Plume Mountain or The Sunless Citadel) into perspective I'll compare them to a novel.

The new adventures are more like The Hobbit as a whole. They cover and entire campaign. The older style adventures are more like Bilbo's adventure in Mirkwood, they cover a specific place and series of events over a limited time frame. They are meant to be part of a larger story you're telling together, rather that providing the structure for the entire story in full.

In more D&D terms the new adventure paths are basically doing what the original individual adventures G1 to G3 (Against the Giants collectively) and D1 to D3 (the Drow part) and Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits did.

[agnos]

I'd recommend Out of the Abyss. You can use the map to dungeon/treasure as Dawnbringer's rest in the tomb of Khaem (or whatever it is). From there go to a major city (Gracklstugh or the gnome city). That plus travel to the surface should get everyone to 8 for part 2 and the book gives opportunity to give missed story at various points in part 2.

[King539]

My group went into Storm King's Thunder.

[SillyPopeNachos]

Ask your DM how much experience they have running. If it's a lot (say, going back to 2e or so), Curse of Strahd. If it's less, likely Storm King's Thunder.

[Draco4472]

The great thing about lost mines is that it can easily transfer into any of the other campaign books. For Tyranny of Dragons, they might be escorting a merchant caravan from Phandalin to Greenest, or to Red Larch in the case of Princes of the Apocalypse. Rage of Demons begins with them captured by Drow, perhaps ones working with the Black Spider, Curse of Strahd with them camping in a forest and the party waking in the domain of Dread, and Storm King's Thunder, which is a particularly good choice as the campaign truly begins at level 5, which a party having done lost mines should be at, you could have a merchant caravan be escorted to Nightstone, or whatever city you want to send them.

It should be stated that all of the campaigns, save Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, are very open-world and sandbox-like, and the party can encounter things they are meant to run screaming from and not fight.