Looking For Good Modules

[JNAProductions]

I'm looking for some good modules.

That's... That's about it. I'd prefer them to be on the cheaper side, with free being best, but any recommendations are appreciated!

[Emongnome777]

dmsguild can have some cheap ones. Consider reprints from older editions and just convert. I’m doing that with a 1st Ed adventure, pretty easy for the most part.

Also search for one page dungeons, those are free (but short as expected).

[SiCK_Boy]

Both the Starter Set and the Essential Kit come with great modules for a relatively cheap price (especially compared with the hardcover modules like Rime of the Frost Maiden).

If you provide more clues about what exactly you are looking for, besides something inexpensive, people can make better suggestions. You could tell us about things like the level range of play you are looking for, the kind of story or monsters you want to see developed, the level of agency your players seek (do they need to be guided by the story, or will they just come up with their own ideas to make things move forward), the expected length of your campaign, etc.

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/ has a lot of review of adventure modules from multiple systems, including 5e. You can also google up some top 10 or 20 of the best module ever; as pointed out above, some of these old modules could be easily converted if you felt like it.

[Chugger]

A lot of modules from the first season (adventurer's league modules) are free or cheap.

If you search "shadows over the moonsea pdf", for example, you'll find it and it's free. It has an amazing backstory...which the players never learn, if you don't modify it. I modify it heavily.

SPOILER ALERT



The problem with running it as it is - first act you endlessly "investigate" in Phlan rumors of a ghost ship and undead attacks on villages out on the shore, coming towards Phlan - but you're told everything you will learn up front - and you ask people, and learn nothing new - you ask more people - you learn nothing new - you ask more people - you learn nothing new. This is not good role playing - this is tedium.

So having finally figured out that some sort of threat is heading to Phlan, you're given horses and sent out along the coast to find a ferry that will take you to a strange, isolated fishing village on an island - likely the next attack of the ghost ship. Choo choo! Yes, you're railroaded out there. On the way you need a merchant with a broken wagon, and there's almost no point to this encounter at all. Or you fight a single dire wolf - ahem - yeah - not much of a fight.

Then you get to the island, and now at least you finally get to role play. But there's no combat, and if run as advised the party learns almost nothing, which sucks. And then suddenly at the end all hell breaks loose - party finally learns about some curse - and suddenly the ghost ship (it's kobolds in ghost costumes) attacks - but - it is attacked by a real ghost ship except it's not a ghost ship, it's the crew of the Black Pearl or w/e this pirate ship is called returned from hell and bent on revenge … say WHAT?! Yes, there is this big dump of stuff happening, boom, at the end - and two or three fights you have no idea why are happening - and it's over.

Party should be _steadily_ learning details of what's going on - the way it is - it's really bad story telling. Here's what it feels like as it is - suppose you watch Star Wars, only Luke never gets off the desert planet...never gets off...maybe something is going on somewhere, but not much is happening here, and more nothing happens, and yes, he's still stuck on this stupid planet - and then WHAM last ten minutes of the movie Darth Vader shows up and the Death Star appears and omg what??? Movies are paced. DnD modules should be paced.

So if you want to run this, you're going to need to fix it. To fix it, I shorten the investigation in Phlan. They talk to Yip and learn of the "ghost ship" and attacks on villages by undead - and there they meet an old dying sailor who claims it's not a ghost ship they should worry about. He tells them how many years ago he and his gang of pirates took over an odd island and basically enslaved the inbred, weird natives - and all was great - until the sky turned red and devils descended upon them, wrapped them in chains, and took them off to hell - but he prayed to Lathander and was somehow saved. He warns them he's been having nightmares of his old crew and captain, sailing a sea of boiling blood in hell, and they tell him in these dreams they're coming back in x days - and they will wreak havoc on the moon sea. They look transformed, like they've become devils.

So the head cleric sends the party out to the island to find out which story is true - is it a ghost ship? Or is it devil pirates? And can anything be done to stop them?

Instead of the useless merchant broken wagon encounter, have the party meet refugees fleeing from ghost ship attacks - and get various and contradicting stories (some say the skeletons that attacked were quite small but terrifying, for example - others say they were zombies or even a dracolich). The refugees give the party some human bones they found after an attack, and these bones have a substance on them - if they succeed in identifying it, it's glue.

Party gets to island - have the girl befriend them and show them around - speed this up - let them catch the man renting her house and interrogate him - if they break him, he will say he's working for Ixis, a dragon cultist - and somehow the ghost ship is his - he doesn't know about the undead or how Ixis summons them to attack - and he's looking for an artifact. He was sent to the island to spy, to find a book that tells where the artifact is - he thinks it's in a cave but he can't find where the cave is.

The girl Elisand whispers to the party she knows where the cave is. They sneak to it, and it takes longer than they thought to get there. Have the cave guarded by spined devils or something challenging to fight (not one Lemure). In the cave they see a mural and a table with gold bars and a scroll - the mural can animate and show the real story of what happened on the island many years ago. The pirates were there as the dying sailor told them, mistreating the islanders - who worship Tiamat. So they came to this cave and made a pact with her - they offered this gold and their souls - and she sent devils to whisk the crew off to hell. But when the party touches the scroll or gold, it breaks the pact - and that moment the sky goes blood red and it's now dark outside. There is thunder and red lightning bolts. The pirates have returned!

The party runs back to the village and sees not the pirate ship but the _ghost ship_ anchored off the beach, and several boats full of undead row in - the villagers run about in a panic. The "undead" attack but are actually kobolds disguised as skeletons with bones glued on their onesies. On round x of this combat the ocean glows red and the pirate ship emerges from the water - it's on fire - and rams the ghost ship. Those kobolds still alive flee. The party needs to take their life boats and row out to the ship battle.

The final combat is kind of cool. The cultists Ixis and his kobolds are fighting hybrid pirate-devils and the captain on a burning ship. The party arrives, and have Ixis beg them to help him - he's losing the battle. The kobolds should be mostly dead at this point. Have Ixis fighting two pirate devils while the captain and the rest of the pirates turn on the characters. They should win, and Ixis surrenders to them - they find a dracolich statue he uses to hypnotize people to tell him where the book is that says where the dragonmask is. The pirates are sent back to hell as they die.

The party takes Ixis to Phlan and turn him over to the law. They are thanked for stopping the menace and solving the mystery of what was going on.

[JNAProductions]

Both the Starter Set and the Essential Kit come with great modules for a relatively cheap price (especially compared with the hardcover modules like Rime of the Frost Maiden).

If you provide more clues about what exactly you are looking for, besides something inexpensive, people can make better suggestions. You could tell us about things like the level range of play you are looking for, the kind of story or monsters you want to see developed, the level of agency your players seek (do they need to be guided by the story, or will they just come up with their own ideas to make things move forward), the expected length of your campaign, etc.

https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/ has a lot of review of adventure modules from multiple systems, including 5e. You can also google up some top 10 or 20 of the best module ever; as pointed out above, some of these old modules could be easily converted if you felt like it.

I'm looking for anything and everything. A big campaign module would be good, as would a short adventure, though I'd err on the side of longer rather than shorter, especially if it costs money.

Level range... I'm good going up to 20, but I'd rather avoid anything that ends before level 5, or expects you to spend a lot of time in levels 1-4. My RL players aren't a fan of low levels anymore.

And, for me to outright USE a module, it'd certainly need to give players a decent amount of agency, I'm happy to crib content from more railroady ones.

Also, thank you everyone for offering advice and suggestions!

[Chugger]

The hardcover Avernus moves pretty fast through the low levels.

Tomb of Annihilation was great but probably spends more time in the lower levels than Avernus, but it's challenging and different - I enjoyed it.

[Dark.Revenant]

If you're up for a very complicated module and are adept at catching some of the 5e conversion mistakes, I recommend Zeitgeist. It's a very excellent 13-book mystery-epic adventure spanning levels 3–20, and since you technically only need to subscribe to the EN5ider patreon long enough to download it, I'd say it's probably the cheapest option as well. ~5 bucks for something like 800-900 pages of content.

[x3n0n]

I'm looking for anything and everything. A big campaign module would be good, as would a short adventure, though I'd err on the side of longer rather than shorter, especially if it costs money.

Level range... I'm good going up to 20, but I'd rather avoid anything that ends before level 5, or expects you to spend a lot of time in levels 1-4. My RL players aren't a fan of low levels anymore.

And, for me to outright USE a module, it'd certainly need to give players a decent amount of agency, I'm happy to crib content from more railroady ones.

Also, thank you everyone for offering advice and suggestions!

The essentials kit (mentioned by others above) comes with a printed adventure (Dragon of Icespire Peak) that uses milestone leveling based on "missions" selected by players and runs 1-6 by default. In the box is a code for dndbeyond access to 3 more adventures that cover 7-13 (along with 50% off the PHB at dndbeyond). The later adventures look a bit more linear to me, and they connect to make a bigger campaign.

You could easily start DoIP at level 3 without losing much.

[king_steve]

I guess it would be helpful if you could list any modules you own and have run 5e?

I've enjoyed DMing Curse of Strahd, Waterdeep Dragon Heist and Salts of Ghosts of Saltmarsh.

For Waterdeep Dragon Height the party then moved on to Waterdeep Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which I feel mixed about. It has a lot of content, but it's kind of lacking in structure and flow.

[Emongnome777]

A couple more ideas:

Death House (https://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/Curse%20of%20Strahd%20Introductory%20Adventure.pdf )
It's meant to get characters from 1st to 3rd. Never played it, heard good things about it. I'm sure you can ramp up challenges for a 4th level party, for instance.

Looks like lots of AL adventures are free on DMs Guild here (https://www.dmsguild.com/browse.php?filters=45470_0_45393_0_0_45462_0_0&pfrom=0&pto=0&src=fid45470).
I think they set lots of prices at $0 during the early parts of the COVID shutdowns and I think some just stayed that way. Worth a look I guess.

[JNAProductions]

I only own Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, which are... Lackluster, to say the least.

[Tawmis]

Several folks on this very forum created modules at varying costs - at the aforementioned - dmsguild.
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?581519-Member-Produced-Commercial-Content

[sithlordnergal]

Here are some of my favorite modules:

Those that Came Before and Windows to the Past: These are extremely fun, high tier adventures. You can technically run them in T3 or T4, but I highly suggest doing both in T4 since it can be pretty deadly/fun. The plot involves Kyuss, and I personally had a blast playing both.


A Dragon's Breath: This one is technically for levels 1-4, but I always have a blast running it, and players have a blast playing it. This is because its a bit different from most low level adventures. It starts out with each of the characters solo fighting a Skeleton, then they get hired by a Gold Dragon. Plenty of chances for RP, and there are fun ways to get around combat through RP. If you want something a bit out of the ordinary, I do suggest this one.

The Broken Chains Series: This is a series of adventures for Tier 4 that starts with Streams of Crimson and ends with Turn Back the Endless Night. Here you're basically stopping the Thayans from ending the world, and my goodness is it good. You want crazy encounters, this is the route to go with. Though you'll want to buff the final boss fight of Endless Night depending on party composition.

DDEP00-01-Red War: You'll be able to find a pdf online for this one for free. This can be done for characters of any level, but be warned, this is the deadliest of all the modules I'm going to suggest. T4 is especially dangerous...just...read through it and you'll see why.

Drums of the Dead: Another Epic module, this one is really fun for tiers 2 to 4. I've played it three times now, and its probably my favorite epic, outside of Chaos in Waterdeep. It can provide a pretty nice variety of challenges for any tier.

The Breath of Life: This module is meant for T3 characters, and is different from most other modules. Instead of fighting, the entire module is based around RPing. You only get into combat if you fail. The summary is that the characters are attempting a heist in the middle of a party that an archdemon is throwing. They have to successfully pull off the heist without alerting anyone.

Moving Day: This is a pretty dangerous one with a slight twist for T4 characters. You're going through a super deadly zone to deal with a problem with the Weave itself.

DDIA-MORD Rrakkma: This one is just crazy. You technically play pre-generated characters for this one, and they're T3 characters at that. It also takes place in the Far Realm, so crazy chaos fun. And because it uses pre-gens the makers made the final encounter brutal.