No spoilers please, but which Adventure Path is best?

[Misterwhisper]

Ok here is the situation.

One of my players wants to run a campaign but he is very low on experience.

I will be in the game playing a bard and keeping everyone on track, so no spoilers.

Which Adventure Path is best for a new gm but lasts long to enough to be really worth it?

I have heard that Princes of the Apocalypse and Rise of Dragons both go to like 15th level.

[Deleted]

Ok here is the situation.

One of my players wants to run a campaign but he is very low on experience.

I will be in the game playing a bard and keeping everyone on track, so no spoilers.

Which Adventure Path is best for a new gm but lasts long to enough to be really worth it?

I have heard that Princes of the Apocalypse and Rise of Dragons both go to like 15th level.

None of them are worth buying. Not only are they painfully dull but teach new DMs to not be very creative.

You may as well go buy a cheaper DMs Guild/Drive thru RPG module or find one via Google. Some may have the same pitfalls but you won't be out but maybe 5 bucks.

For me it's a cost versus reward. I would recommend WotC stuff for new DMs if they werent so expensive.

[MrMcBobb]

I'm playing Curse of Strahd (ha, ha, ha) with some friends and it's the DM's first time DMing (we're all fairly inexperienced players having just started last year) and we're having a blast. There's enough room for improvisation that it's not the same more than once (according to my DM friend, I've not looked at the book for fear of spoilers) but it's also structured enough that he's not struggling too much running it. Also the world feels reasonably persistent in that it reacts to you and also allows you to come back to certain challenges later on.

It's a really fun campaign and the first session we played was on Halloween so it was suspenseful, tense and atmospheric. We had candles burning and the blinds closed so it was good and spoOOoooOOky.

It's quite brutal (we've had 3 deaths in as many sessions) so it lets new players practice character creation until they've really got it down and there's a Chris Perkins Youtube session where he runs Curse of Strahd (ha, ha, ha) for some players and he's usually really good (again I haven't seen it for fear of spoilers) plus he helped write the module so there are plenty ideas in the Youtube video that didn't quite make it into the book that your DM could hijack if he needed.

[DanyBallon]

For a new DM, the best would be to run the Starter Set first or wait for the release of Tale of the Yawning Portal and run Sunless Citadell and Forge of Fury back to back.

Princes of the Apocalypse is fun and can be started at 3rd or 5th level (perfect for those who continue from the Starter Set).
Storm King Thunder can start at 5th level as well, but is even more sandboxy than PotA, and can be challenging for a new DM.

Those would be my best bet for fun campaign that will reach into the mid teens. (Note that SKT officially ends around level 10-12, but you can continue to explore and defeat the other options you didn't follow to reach the end)

[Puh Laden]

I hear Lost Mines of Phandelver from the starter set good. But I would also recommend starting with a small module and then expanding from there. My first time running was with the Caves of Chaos from the Next playtest. Once the party cleared the caves, they started back for town and had more adventures that I had made on the way back.

The best part about running a short module for me is that once it's finished there's usually enough just from the backgrounds and personalities of the PCs for me to come up with hooks based off of the characters, and I don't have to try to force them into the module.

Edit: ^ Sunless Citadel can be pretty fun. That was my first experience with D&D. My DM was pretty nice and let us tame the- oh right, no spoilers. :smallbiggrin:

[Steampunkette]

I've run both Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder. I've played in Out of the Abyss and I'm about to run Tyranny of Dragons.

Strahd is super sandboxy, but it worked out as a great way to introduce a mixed group of long term gamers and newblets together. The newbies had enough freedom to try new things or go off the rails and the older players had the experience to follow the core thread of the story and bring things toward where the story flows.

Storm King's Thunder is also Sandboxy, but it has some great elements in it. I love how the Giants are presented, and the emphasis on their different roles in the ordning and how it shapes their perceptions of the world. It introduces a lot of comedic elements, surprising choices, and emphasizes how strange the Realms can get by having some really unique characters, like a Bartender who was in a circus sideshow because he's covered in fur. Nothing mechanical, there, just a neat bit of information.

Out of the Abyss has been pretty fun as a player. It's got strong themes without making every encounter feel Samey. There's plenty of variety but there's also some points where your players can wander off into some tunnels and forget their goals, or ignore the plot completely and head up to the surface to go on different, unrelated, adventures.

For a new DM I'd definitely suggest Tyranny of Dragons. It's a fairly "On the Rails" adventure that gives a great basic structure so that maintaining the core story isn't too terribly difficult. From there, I'd highly suggest going straight into Storm King's Thunder for the next game, that way your DM gets a strong sense of Freedom from the on-the-rails style.

That way you can ease them in with the easier to run adventure path, then show them a wider world.

[GlenSmash!]

My group started with the Lost Mines of Phandelver in the starter set and liked it a lot, As a DM I prefer the small Adventurers League adventures. There is usually an introductory Adventure for each season, They have them all on DMsGuild, but a few were released for free in Dragon+.

My favorite for an introductory adventure was Harried in Hillsfar. You can get this adventure for free on Wizards of the Coast's site here: http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/DDEX31_HarriedHillsfar.pdf

I'm very much Looking forward to Tales from the Yawning Portal, and I hope they continue to release books like it.

[Brendanicus]

It's not an actual adventure line, but the supplement Nerzugal's DM Toolkit can be found on DM's Guild. It has many pre-made modules and one-shots, all of whom contain good puzzles and exploration in addition to action Great way to spice up your games!

[Deleted]

It's not an actual adventure line, but the supplement Nerzugal's DM Toolkit can be found on DM's Guild. It has many pre-made modules and one-shots, all of whom contain good puzzles and exploration in addition to action Great way to spice up your games!

I totally forgot to mention this!

OP, I think that new DMs should focus on one shots and not an over arching story. Have the players use the same characters but have each one shot be their own chapter and eventually, once the DM is comfortable, bring it all in and make an overarching story line.