D&D 5e Tyranny of Dragons

[Minister of Silly Walks]

If someone played it before, how is the adventure overall? I am planning to DM it in a short while, but my experience as a DM is infinitesimal, so any advises would be welcome.

Also, out of sheer curiosity, how many D&D fans are there among the diplomats?

[foodcoats]

I do like me some old school D&D! I tried to learn 5E but the idea of rolling opposed Stealth vs. Passive Perception for all combatants to determine surprise, rather than a d6 for each side with 1 or 2 indicating surprise, was too much for my old man brain...

[foodcoats]

Side note, I'm reading Playing at the World at the moment, a history of early D&D, and apparently Gygax was a big fan of Diplomacy and all sorts of variants!

[Minister of Silly Walks]

rolling opposed Stealth vs. Passive Perception for all combatants to determine surprise, rather than a d6 for each side with 1 or 2 indicating surprise

I don't even remember that part, in our group the DM instead rules whether or not either side is sufficiently unprepared for a battle, without any dice rolls.

Stealth vs. passive Perception makes sense to me, but perhaps some sort of house rule to reduce the number of dice rolls would be useful in that case (maybe similar to how you roll initiative just once for all the enemies with the same stat block)

[Claesar]

I play 3.5 with some colleagues.

[Minister of Silly Walks]

I play 3.5 with some colleagues.

I joined the hobby quite recently, so I started with the fifth edition. I know that 3.5 is considered the golden age of the game, so it would be interested to hear an opinion about the differences of the two.

[brainbomb]

I just wrapped up hoard of the dragon queen and we started rise of tiamat. yea its good stuff.

[Minister of Silly Walks]

I just wrapped up hoard of the dragon queen and we started rise of tiamat. yea its good stuff.

Any advises? I started reading through HDQ, and we are gonna start playing sometime next week.

[MerryBBuck]

HDQ is well organized for new DMs. Each chapter maps to one session, and it channels the characters through a linear story line. But read the whole chapter before each session, so you know what can happen for each encounter. For each important NPC, highlight or write down at least one memorable characteristic (like the way he talks, a tic, or something he carries); that will help you bring the NPC to life.

[Minister of Silly Walks]

HDQ is well organized for new DMs. Each chapter maps to one session, and it channels the characters through a linear story line. But read the whole chapter before each session, so you know what can happen for each encounter. For each important NPC, highlight or write down at least one memorable characteristic (like the way he talks, a tic, or something he carries); that will help you bring the NPC to life.

Thanks! I deduced most of it already, but I didn't remember the tip about NPCs.

[brainbomb]

I just wrapped up hoard of the dragon queen and we started rise of tiamat. yea its good stuff.

Any advises? I started reading through HDQ, and we are gonna start playing sometime next week.

be willing to let the characters go off source material and find ways to create within faerun if they wanna really waste more time.

[Minister of Silly Walks]

be willing to let the characters go off source material and find ways to create within faerun if they wanna really waste more time.

But the adventure is made for characters of specific levels, isn't it? Earning several extra levels on side quests would unbalance the adventure itself.
Also, knowing my players, I would assume that if they do want to go off rails, they will rather join the Dragon Cult in destroying the world than go searching for a different quest altogether.

[Squigs44]

be willing to let the characters go off source material and find ways to create within faerun if they wanna really waste more time.

But the adventure is made for characters of specific levels, isn't it? Earning several extra levels on side quests would unbalance the adventure itself.
Also, knowing my players, I would assume that if they do want to go off rails, they will rather join the Dragon Cult in destroying the world than go searching for a different quest altogether.

If thats how they are going to have the most fun, then let them do that. As a DM, you have the difficult task of taking the players crazy unstructured goals and actions and fitting them within the structure of your campaign. That's what sets DnD apart from other games; its ability to shape itself to the players desires.

[Minister of Silly Walks]

If thats how they are going to have the most fun, then let them do that. As a DM, you have the difficult task of taking the players crazy unstructured goals and actions and fitting them within the structure of your campaign. That's what sets DnD apart from other games; its ability to shape itself to the players desires.

This would be interesting even for myself, it could be a mafia-style campaign or something.

There are three players in the group, of whom two always choose CE unless the character is pre-generated (even when I said that for drow, CE means "a normal part of drow civilization" and not "an omnicidal maniac"), and they always have the upper hand when it comes to voting on party's decisions. The remaining one, however, always chooses a good alignment of some sort, and given his character's backstory there must be either covert resistance to other party members or an elaborate Faustian justification for switching to evil (fitting for a warlock).

This time, though, one of the players delegated the task of creating a character to me, and because he only specified race and class I used the race's default alignment for his character, so for the first time there are two Lawful Goods in a party, and hopefully he will roleplay the character and not himself