was 'Horde of the Dragon Queen' really that bad?

Now that 5e is approaching almost a decade of in existence, I thought it would be fun to go back and take a look at the first module that was produced for the system back in 2014, "Hoard of the Dragon Queen" part of the Tyranny of Dragons series, which I think was intended to have been three books, but which for some reason ended up being just the two.

Last year when I was trying to complete my collection of published 5e adventures, I really wanted to get my hands on this and its continuation "The Rise of Tiamat" purely for the nostalgia factor.

I remember vividly playing with my 4th edition group in Texas, in the waning days of that system, and seeing this volume on the shelves of my local game store. I didn't pick it up then because we were still having fun playing the older system, but I knew eventually I wanted to check out these printed 5e modules.

This module didn't get (and to this day) does not get good reviews from DMs and gamers in general, so I am going to do a chapter by chapter read and see if it's as bad as advertised, or if the criticism is warranted.

I should probably start out by noting that I never play tested or ran this module with a group. I am a fairly n00b DM. In fact, that is my brand! Currently I am running an ongoing campaign with a group that has been going on for about 9 months now, which is the longest campaign I have run to date, but it is a mashup of the starter set adventures (Lost Mines, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle and Dragon of Icepire Peak) with Storm King's Thunder for good measure, but all with a spin I've put on the whole thing because I don't like running modules straight from the book. Many others do not like that style either. To each his/her own.

Strengths: What I feel are the strengths of this one

The setting of the story is the Forgotten Realms, really the first time Faerun and its familiar surroundings make their presence in the 5e system, a smart move by WOTC. Go with something people are familiar with and also it is a setting that easily ties into the Starter set adventures and the Sword Coast, which was of course no accident.

The artwork is really good and I like the paper, the pages have this matte print which seems to provide a better ease of readability than glossy pages. Maybe it is just me, but I prefer this to the glossy in other books. 

Weaknesses: Yes, it is not a perfect product or story. Then again is anything really perfect? Just from re-reading chapter one "Greenest in Flames" I can say that the NPCs are not really that memorable, they are serviceable for what they are, but few of them stand out as written. 

There is also an attempt to tie in the characters' backstories to the Tyranny of Dragons campaign by using hooks found in the book's Appendix A. Except this template's hooks aren't all that memorable or original. I think that the players could come up with better hooks, or at the very least modify some of the better ones found in the appendix to make them feel less shoehorned. 

I don't like the map of Greenest they provide in chapter one on page 10. Actually, it's a very poor map, it looks generic with very little detail. I do feel that the map in the starter set is better, detailing the town of Phandalin and an overhead map for the entire sword coast. The map should have been more detailed and easier to use, representing the key spots in the action. 

Another irritating thing about this chapter is that the formatting of the NPCs is not consistent. The convention in most of these 5e modules is that they used bold text to reference creature in the Monster Manual, so the DM can go look up their stats, but in this chapter some NPCs' names are in bold with no stat block or reference in the monster appendix (which is an odd mix of both monsters and NPCs), while others are just named without the bold formatting. It;s a bit confusing. 

One of the key events in this chapter is the adult blue dragon attacking. Except that this is all window dressing, it's all for show as the characters don't fight the dragon and hardly interact with it. The reason given for this is that the characters are first level and so the dragon just makes an appearance to attack or threaten NPCs, with the DM advised that its breath weapon could kill a 1st level character. Indeed, the Monster Manual gives an adult blue dragon a CR of 16 with multiple attacks and legendary actions.

 There is actually a lot of action in this introductory chapter, but the pacing seems off, a little clunky in some parts. The best bit is the raiders trying to set fire to the town's mill and the PCs asked to save it.

In the end though, it all devolves into melee combat with some mildly interesting NPCs and creatures. 

Next: Chapter 2 "Raiders Camp" Another bad map.