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. 

The problem with Storm King's Thunder and 5e modules overall

"Lear the Giant King" from Dungeon Magazine No. 78 (2000)

I have been incorporating elements of premade 5e modules into my D&D homebrew which I have been running twice a month at the local library. 

With 5e being eight years old now, there is a lot of material that WotC has put out during the years, including a plethora of what we used to refer to as "prefabs," or pre-written campaign modules for DMs to run if they are short on time or to draw inspiration from. After collecting all the source books for DM (except for a few of the campaign settings that I am not that keen on, I am looking at you "Acquisitions Incorporated") I have invested in "Storm King's Thunder", although it is not the latest adventure book I purchased, that would be "Candlekeep Mysteries." which as some of you know, is just a series of one-shots you can drop into your ongoing campaigns.

But even though this book has been out for quite a while (first print 2016 if I am not mistaken) I chose it to represent some of the problems a DM will experience trying to run the adventure as written, and as an example of what Wizards gets right in their pre-written adventure books and why they are sometimes problematic. I won't get too deep into what is wrong with the book, since it has been out a number of years, there is plenty out in the interwebs if you want to read a review or if you are on the fence about picking it up or whether or not to run it.

Instead, I will discuss what attracted me to it and what my plans are with the adventure now that I own it in hopes that others will benefit from such information. Now, first off: Upon careful examination of the story, it was fun to discover that the game designers drew inspiration from many old D&D books, adventures and sources and that it is influenced by the old Shakespeare play "King Lear."

Maybe that is why the adventure starts off with a Dramatis Personae with the main members of the adventure's cast of characters listed in alphabetical order for easy reference. There are a lot of NPCs in this book and the index lists all of them, over 60! Of course, it will be up to the DM and players whether they interact or use them all.  

 The adventure centers on King Hekaton, the most powerful of the giants, and his daughters and what happens in the aftermath of the shattering of the ordning, a caste system imposed upon Giant society by their gods. The adventure can be ran with the initial chapter in the book which takes PCs from levels 1 to 4 or with other published adventures that accomplish the same thing. Personally, one thing that I find Wizards got right is setting up a lot of their pre-written stories in the Forgotten Realms, so that DMs can theoretically flow players from one to the other seamlessly. At least that was the goal, but of course, this doesn't always work out in practice.

The book does have a nifty handy flowchart which details this and notes that chapter 2 is intended for characters that are level 5 where the PCs can then explore three areas with multiple encounters. This happens again two chapters later where PCs are given the choice between five different areas to explore and again after Chapter 10 where there is a choice of two ways to conclude the adventure.

Michael Selinker's adaptation of the Shakespeare play which was published in the magazine came during that nebulous time in D&D history when the game was transitioning from AD&D 2nd edition into the radical revamp WotC made which eventually led to 3rd edition, but the adaptation still follows 2e rules as evidenced by creatures and NPC stat blocks which still make mention of older game mechanics like THACO. Just like Lear, the protagonist of SKT, King Hekaton has gone missing and part of the adventure hook is for the PCs to go searching for him. Unfortunately, even though the book is rife with tensions and political intrigue concerning the king's court and the turmoil which engulfs it after the king goes missing, and following the events of chapter 2, the largest chunck of the book, Chapter 3 "The Savage Frontier" is dedicated to locations in the Sword Coast that the PCs can explore.

Many critics have pointed out, and I concur, this is where SKT starts to break down as the pages and pages of locations detailed in the book, while interesting, could have been presented as a separate supplement or as part of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. 

So here's the bottom line: I don't regret investing in SKT, I remember walking into the hobby shop and going through all the printed adventures looking for a good one to engage my players who are currently embroiled in a combination of a homebrew with elements of the original starter set adventure with portions of the "Essentials Kit" module just to keep things interesting. I remember being excited over the prospect of having a big epic adventure involving the giants as part of our ongoing 5e campaign, but the best way to run this, upon careful study, is to take bits and parts of it and use them separately. This is how a lot of DMs approach 5e prefabs and SKT is no exception.

Chapter 3 does have a useful section and tables for random wilderness encounters, as well as suggested encounters for the many locations of the North such as Amphail, the Grandfather Tree, Beorunna's Well, Icewind Dale and Waterdeep. I have not done a deep study of how interconnected these encounters are in relation to the overall main narrative, but I have seen reviews which suggest that they are not.

In conclusion, it takes a bit of work to incorporate pre-written adventures into existing or homebrews for 5e, but with a little bit of work, a DM can draw inspiration from their story hooks or even lift whole sections without having to run them as written, grabbing encounter and interesting story elements and tweaking them for their own purposes. It is clear to me now that this was the intended consequence of making the Forgotten Realms the default setting for 5e, although of course, there are many other settings including some that are unique to this system including the "Magic the Gathering" inspired setting like Ravnica and Strixhaven. 

Storm King's Thunder by Wizards of the Coast (2016)