Tyranny of Dragons Postmortem

[@yoshistarhunter]

I started playing this campaign. Month 1, we end up going down 7 times in total, both the bard, druid and cleric used all their good spells and long rest uses in session 1 and didn't get them back till session 5, no long rest till session 5 fighting about 96 enemies including an instant kill attack with a high dc for a chance to survive, we committed way too many war crimes, ended running away from most fights and generally I was slamming the desk out of frustration......and the GM admitted he watered it all down and needed a lot of it...... who thought this was a good idea?

[@DungeonMasterMike]

Wow. That is rough. I can't believe the amount of enemies you all took on. That is insane! I hear your frustration yo...it can be a very teeth-gnashing campaign, if it isn't balanced, and adjusted...even right from the start. My campaign didn't start out as intense in Chapter 1 of HOTDQ, but it does have the potential to be near impossible if not trimmed and curated properly. I think the game designers intentions were good, but it is a complicated, difficult and overwhelming start to the saga. I honestly think, if played by the book....it would be impossible. I'm sorry about your experience, and I hope you get to play it again....perhaps on better terms ;)

[@evvee345]

I'll add a little comment from my experience. It IS a lot of work....the first time. Now, that work has been done, and if you are lucky, there's more players around you than one table could handle. The adventure takes so much work to run, but once you've done it, the prep time for going again with a new group is easy. It is also super easy to take the work you did, and see ways to tie in Tyranny of Dragons into other adventures. This is a World-Ending (Or world-changing) campaign, Tiamat returning is bad news for the world. But even stopping her return takes a truly heroic feat. I recently have been preparing my own Icespire Peak dungeon, my party is going to leave at either level 6 or 7. I believe I can take them through the entire plot relevant portions of Hoard of the Dragon Queen (Greenest (replaced with Phandaelin), Hatchery, Castle Naestar, Cloud Castle) in 2 levels, and without HUGE changes to the dungeons. OR, I may just start them looking into the Rise of Tiamat directly, with the amount of work I did, I could drop them at literally any point of the adventure, and I think it would work. That Tiamat fight, though, as written, is ENTIRELY too long. Back in college, this adventure was brand new, and we went for 11 hours and took only one break, and I skipped an entire phase of Tiamat's return to do it. The room is massive, the players have lots of resources, the enemy has lots of options, it's a nightmare! As written, I estimate it would have taken my party of 7 18 hours to run the Tiamat fight alone. In my modern gaming setup, that's 6 sessions, 12 weeks (I run once every 2 weeks), to complete ONE fight. For fighting a Dragon God, that makes some sense, but from a real world perspective, I'm not entirely sure it would work anymore.

[@DungeonMasterMike]

I agree, the 2nd run is going to be an incredibly smoother experience, compared to the bumpy first ride. I definitely want to run the adventure one more time, at the very least, since I have a stronger foundation, and can see all the mistakes and missed opportunities. And yes, that final encounter...wow..what a doozie. I had laid out a plan to make it short, sweet and to the point, but alas, I was never able to see it come to fruition. One of the reasons why I would like to run it at least one more time to see the final "ending". But you made some good points, and I appreciate the comments and breakdown. I'm sure this will help others make a decision on whether or not they wan to take on the task of running this adventure. There is fun to be had...but man it takes some work :)

[@PatRiot-le7rd]

If I counted correctly, there are 118 enemies in the final encounter location before Tiamat makes her appearance. It's totally unwieldy.

[@dreamingforward]

Here's the context that I've come up with for the RoT: Inter-planer interference has upset the whole balance of the realms. The Wizards of Thay are some of its cause, though the book won't tell you that for whatever reason (is the book itself influenced by them? maybe -- we're talking about a 100 levels of power here). And that's the other thing... the book presents the scenario as a LVL 30 encounter, but I don't think so. That's where I chalk up RoT, like OotA, as a "pulling force" to get people to tease out the story more. As such, the whole campaign is a bit meta-magical in nature, where the forces of the Forgotten Realms are calling on the forces of OUR realm to help. In my book, this question of interference, held by the white head of the dragon, has been answered and the call for help has been "turned down". I figure the multi-headed dragon to be no less than LVL100. It's not easy to DM high-level creatures. But if you want help in a particular scenario with Tiamat, or how one might have responded better, I'd give it a go.... :)

[@aristidesiliopoulos7041]

You arent wrong. Theres a lot to manage from a story perspective. Your managing a sea of npcs and factions and major world events.

[@DungeonMasterMike]

Yes. It's an amazing amount of NPC's and factions from book to book. Something I forgot to mention in the video. And it can easily, just on that front alone, be overwhelming. I've seen many people frustrated trying to keep up with all the councils and major players. Definitely can be exhausting.

[@theanimaster]

Other reviews give the impression that the adventure was an “on-rails” adventure that was more appropriate to new dm’s. So this is interesting.

[@DungeonMasterMike]

It is definitely an "on rails" adventure; yet at the same time missing key components that make it a frustrating experience. So, think of it as a roller coaster...that happens to be missing parts of the track without warning. Perhaps a seasoned DM will have a better time of it, but a brand new DM whose never played D&D before, I would steer clear of this module until I'd ran a few more light hearted, and shorter, adventures. And like I mentioned, if things go south...Rise of Tiamat's conclusion could have world shattering consequences, that would be quite the ordeal for a new DM to handle if he were to continue with the storyline afterwards. Just my thoughts. Thanks for watching and commenting, it is appreciated!