10 best Dungeons & Dragons 5E RPG campaigns

by Charlie

---

Posted on 17-02-2021 10:00 PM

---

---

Strategic depth: medium publisher: wizards of the coast as a dungeon master, crafting a story from scratch on the regular can prove punishing. Step in, the official dungeons & dragons 5e campaign books. These beautifully illustrated tomes contain all the crucial narrative points, monsters and maps you’ll need to create an amazing long-form adventure - no homebrew required!.

Article by malindy hetfeld , contributor 17 march 2019 this article includes spoilers for the tomb of horrors d&d module. The first thing you'll likely hear of tomb of horrors, a dungeons and dragons module devised by the game's creator gary gygax, is how it absolutely lives up to its name. Designed to be almost impossible to beat, tomb of horrors has sparked hot debates among players and dungeon masters for over 40 years since its inception, gaining the reputation of being a "meatgrinder" among other, much more unflattering things.

This adventure module should be in every dungeons and dragons collection. This module was created by the legendary gary gygax and was converted into a great pc game in 2003. The adventure is based in the small town of hommlet – in the greyhawk setting. Close to hommlet is the enormous temple of elemental evil. It is up to the party to enter the temple and stop the forces of evil from releasing the demon queen of fungi known as zuggtmoy. The campaign is for 1st level characters, but by the end the characters find themselves facing off against a foe that rivals a lesser deity in power.

Partner content by roll20 one of the most rewarding ways to connect, communicate, and share stories with our friends is through roleplaying games like dungeons & dragons, pathfinder, or numenera. Stepping into this space to become the game master (gm) or dungeon master (dm) and run your own game may initially seem intimidating, overwhelming, or even expensive. With the right tools though, this needn’t be the case, and roll20. Net shows that gming can instead be a straightforward, empowering, and free experience that can be done remotely in a shared online space.

As an added resource for gamers, the d&d team is pleased to offer the following material as free adventures and resources for use in your games—whether you’re playing in a kitchen table campaign, you're an active participant in the d&d adventurers league, or are simply interested in learning more about dungeons & dragons and trying it out for yourself.

This website and content does not in any way represent wizards of the coast. This content is free and fan-made. Dungeons and dragons and d&d are copyright of wizards of the coast. Link for all-pdfs. Zip.

Dungeons & dragons will be revisiting several classic campaign settings over the next few years. During the closing panel of d&d celebration 2020 yesterday, wizard of the coast's ray winninger confirmed that d&d's upcoming slate of publications will include several classic settings highly requested by fans. "i can tell you that there are three of the old settings that we're working on right now that you'll be seeing in the next year or two, including some that the fans have been asking for a very long time " winninger said during the "inside the d&d studio panel. " some of the more highly requested settings from fans include greyhawk, spelljammer, planescape, and dragonlance, all of which were seminal and influential settings for past (and current) generations of players. Notably, dungeons & dragons released a survey earlier this year asking fans which settings they'd like to see revisited in upcoming products.

List of Dungeons & Dragons adventures

By mike shea on 14 august 2017 this article was last updated 21 may 2020. This article provides a guide to the official fifth edition dungeons & dragons hardback adventures published by wizards of the coast. Descriptions of these large campaign adventures are ordered in my own order of preference, from top to bottom. Use this guide to decide which campaign adventures may work best for your group. Each adventure description includes some dm tips and further references for each adventure.

Serving as the dungeon master, or dm, for the first time in a dungeons & dragons campaign can feel overwhelming. There's a lot of pressure to show players a good time, all while trying to memorize important enemies, locations, and lore - not to mention all the prep work that needs to be finished beforehand. Thankfully, there are some official d&d campaigns that are perfect for new dms, since they either guide prospective dungeon masters through the necessary mechanics or provide shorter adventures with learning curves.

Writing your own campaign in dungeons and dragons is an incredibly rewarding experience, but it can also be very difficult. Luckily, wizards of the west coast regularly publishes their own adventures, which can take a lot of the load off the shoulders of dms that don't have a ton of time or would rather just tell a pre-written story.

At the core of every great dungeons & dragons campaign, there is a party of eager and thrill-seeking players, a creative dungeon master, and exciting adventures to play through. Adventures, in this case, are guides that dms use to help plan out the activities their players can take on. Related: 13 awesome subclasses from xanathar’s guide to everything (d&d expansion).

From the publisher's website each of these revised classic's and never-before-published d&d adventures offers hours fun. User comments wizards of the coast offered several unique adventures for dungeons and dragons 3. 0 and 3. 5 as free pdf downloads. The adventures ranged from 1st-level all the way to 20th-level. In addition a pair of classic adventures were revisited and updated as free downloads, tomb of horrors and white plume mountain.

Though forgotten realms is easily the most popular dungeons & dragons setting, and was created by ed greenwood as a child way back in 1967, for much of d&d’s history, the game was more closely connected with greyhawk. Greyhawk wasn’t the first campaign setting—that would be dave arneson’s blackmoor—but it was the world created and used by arneson’s revered d&d co-creator, gary gygax. Unlike many later campaign settings, which were developed as a whole, greyhawk was more or less built out of necessity, as a place to house dungeons & dragons adventures as the game was created and continued to evolve under gygax’s guidance.

8 Tyranny Of Dragons

About blog the dungeons & dragons youtube channel offers an assortment of digital and tabletop game videos, from the popular acquisitions incorporated pax live games to tutorials on how to play d&d and our other product offerings. Enjoy weekly vod content directly from wizards of the coast's livestreams and produced video content like our popular rage of demons and tyranny of dragons trailers. Frequency 4 posts / week blog youtube. Com/user/dndwizards/.

View on amazon together with the hoard of the dragon queen, this module makes the tyranny of dragons storyline. Since it was written shortly after the first part, this tends to share some of its issues. Stopping the dragon cultists in carrying out their sinister plot to revive the leader of the chromatic dragons, tiamat, surely sounds epic.

The rise of tiamat is the direct sequel to hoard of the dragon queen. Together they make up the tyranny of dragons story. In this module, your party continues its fight against the cult of the dragon as they try to bring back tiamat, the goddess of chromatic dragons. This time though things become a bit more complicated, you now have to gain allies and handle.

Not really suitable for new dms failure consequences are not spelled out for some missions overall, the rise of tiamat improves on the story and format presented in the hoard of the dragon queen and takes the story through to its conclusion. The scenarios and sessions built out of this book require a bit more dm involvement than a standard module, but provide great structure for seasoned dms to work with. The rise of tiamat is a fantastic continuation and conclusion to the tyranny of dragons campaign setting.

10 Great PC Games That Are Like Demon's Souls

This article was co-written with the help of patrick wilson. No, not the actor, but he’s similarly handsome. After the release ofâ zero charisma ,â nerdist’s first feature film which we released with tribeca films, i found myself with an insatiable craving, a tabletop wanderlust that just couldn’t be satsified. I wanted to play someâ dungeons & dragons , and i wanted to play it bad. Being that my usual cohort in dungeoneering had moved across the country from l. A. To massachusetts and the fact that playingâ d&d can take hours and hours that i don’t seem to have lately, i settled for a walk down memory lane instead. So, i put out the clarion call to action to my dear friend and dm-for-lifeâ patrick wilson to to run down the top 10â dungeons & dragonsâ modules. Sure, everyone and their mother has played a mindblowing homebrew campaign, but you’ve got to give it up for these legendary adventures that helped turn this game into a certified phenomenon. 10) s3 – expedition to the barrier peakspatrick:â this much-beloved module is near and dear to many dungeon delvers, but it loses big points in my book for throwing blatant sci-fi into a fantasy game. Am i the only one around here who cares about consistent adherence to an internally sound pseudo-medieval simulacrum?â barrier peaks is about a crashed spaceship filled with laser guns and robots, and i would probably drive aâ +1 ranseur of genre enforcementâ through the eye of any dm who brought that disbelief-shattering hot mess to the gaming table. Dan:â the fact that the cover art looks like a venusaur had sex with a sarlacc and that you’re hired to go on this adventure by the grand duke of geoff aside, barrier peaksâ is a landmark module precisely because it introduced sci-fi trappings into a largely fantasy world. If anything, it probably helped to introduce the roman debeerses of the world to the joys of a largely fantasy-based game. Plus, it’s one of stephen colbert’s favorite adventures , for whatever that’s worth. 9) dl1 – dragons of despairpatrick:â the authors of the ever-popular dragonlance novels were originally hired at tsr to write d&d products. Those first books are a novelization of the original gaming group that braved the dragonlance line of adventures, using such legendary player characters as tanis, raistlin, sturm, tasslehoff, and the rest, and these adventures let you can walk the world of krynn in theirâ boots of elvenkind. Facing down the raging black dragon khisanth in the ruins of xak tsaroth is a life-affirming experience. 8) i6 – ravenloftâ dan:â as a child, i was scared to death of vampires mainly because i couldn’t stand the sight of blood. But, i also had a deep and abiding love of puns, especially ones as lame as ravenloft‘s tagline: “the master of ravenloft is having guests for dinner — and you are invited. ” get it? we’re the dinner. Ah, tracy and laura hickman, you slay me. Combining gothic horror with the high fantasy of d&d,â ravenloftâ was such a well received adventure that it inspired an entire campaign setting. Âset in the foggy, eerily lateveria-esque nation of borovia, which is obviously surrounded by evil magical fog, the player characters are tasked with investigating a series of nighttime attacks leading back to the spooky castle ravenloft, home to the country’s tyrannical rulerâ count strahd von zarovich. Oh, and strahd is a vampire, in case that wasn’t screamingly obvious. All jokes aside, the adventure’s randomization mechanics, clever writing, and built in replay value make this the stuff of tabletop legend. 7) lich-queen’s beloveddan:â while one-off adventures and random battles are all well and good, it’s the promise of a big bad, a persistent, recurring villain for you and your party members to hate with every fiber of your being, that transforms a campaign from something you do every week to something immersive, living and breathing. Whenâ dragonâ #100 dropped, featuring a gnarly looking female githyanki that looked like something straight out of h. P. Lovecraft on the cover, it was a game changer. In the adventureâ lich-queen’s beloved, players were introuced to vlaakith, a one-time githyanki ruler who came back from the dead as a lich with delusions of grandeur and aspirations of becoming a deity of death, and the baddest bitch this side of lolth. With her crown of corruption, she transforms all those who oppose her into brainless undead servants and by siphoning the power of a dead god in order to ascend to godhood herself. Clearly, she’s a type-a. Anway, what makes this adventure so damn memorable is not just the hunt for vlaakith’s physical manifestation and her phylactery, both of which need to be destroyed because them’s the lich rules, but just what a striking villain she makes. Whether or not the assassination attempt is successful, the game’s epilogue notes that there are rumors she survived, a plot hook almost too juicy to pass up. 6) s2 – white plume mountainpatrick:â the grandfather of all fetch quests. Travel into the heart of an active volcano to do battle with an insane wizard and reclaim three badass magic weapons. Let the druids and lesser fighting men squabble over the trident of fish commanding and the warhammer that detects gems and also goblins. You’re here for blackrazor, the +3 intelligent chaotic neutral greatsword that eats souls and drops panties. Elric, eat your heart out. This adventure also included a map that makes the first-ever mention of an undead dragon’s lair. How did it take this long for the game to include an undead dragon? 5) dead godspatrick:â the mid 90s were a time of change for d&d. Angry mothers had almost completely driven the pagan deities, topless priestesses, and ram-headed demons from the pages of roleplaying games. When the pendulum swung back, dead gods raised the art of universe-ending evil to new heights. You don’t just stop an evil plot; you fight to save the entire universe from horrific destruction. You don’t just battle horrors of the abyss; you square off with orcus, demon prince of the undead, whose death back in 1988 turns out to have been much less permanent that previously reported. You don’t just visit mind-bending planescape locations; you journey to pandemoniom, a hellish, neverending cavern where howling gales drive men mad. And then, just when you think you’ve saved the day, you have to return to where it all went down to stop a civil war from breaking out. All in a day’s work. 4) red hand of doompatrick:â red hand of doom was a ton of fun, no matter what the grumpy old guard of 1st edition says. It was from the latter half of the 3rd edition era, and it was a mega-adventure in which the adventuring party has to fend off an army of marauding monsters using guerilla tactics, espionage, and good old-fashioned mass combat. It shows how far adventure writing has come since the days of uncle gary. Much less railroady than the old stuff, it’s an example of d&d satisfying a craving that years of fantasy movies have given us, rather than the other way around. 3) queen of the spiderspatrick:â is it cheating to consider this “super-adventure” a single module, when it includes the entire against the giants series, the drow series of adventures within the subterranean underdark realm, and the big one: q1 – queen of the demonweb pits? less an adventure and more an entire campaign, what begins as a couple of raids against aimlessly misbehaving giants quickly escalates into a battle for the fate of the world. As you work your way through the hit list of classic d&d villains to slay, from nameless slave lords to king snurre of the fire giants to lolth herself, demon queen of spiders, you’ll doubtlessly agree that any adventure that introduces d&d‘s favorite race of evil elves deserves a place of honor in rpg history. 2) the temple of elemental evildan:â â arguably the most famousâ d&d module,â the temple of elemental evilâ was a landmark adventure for a number of reasons: 1) it is widely considered the grandfather of huge dungeon crawls; 2) in a pre-adventure box era, this was the first true super-module (the average scenario module ran 24-32 pages); 3) it was a mammoth-sized adventure set in co-writer gary gygax’s home campaign setting ofâ greyhawk. Taking place a decade after gygax lead his players through the battle of emridy meadows, better known as the first routing of the horde of elemental evil, an event central to greyhawkâ lore,â temple of elemental evil blends deep dungeon crawling with deception and intrigue to take players out of the frying pan and throw them into the elemental fire. Âa follow up to 1978’sâ t1 – the village of hommlet,â this adventure is recommended for first-level players who areâ “weary, weak, and practically void of money. ”â little do they know, after building up their levels and confidence in hommlet and doing raids in the nearby temple, they must go toe to toe with zuggtmoy, the demon queen of fungi, and her agents, who loose the demoness on the unsuspecting party. And, really, isn’t a battle with a demon queen of fungi what we want out of all of our adventures? 1) s1 – the tomb of horrorspatrick: this is the undisputed king of d&d modules. Written by e. Gary gygax himself, this adventure is the very essence of dungeon crawling. It is such a classic adventure that, since 1978, it has been updated to two newer editions so that successive generations of fighter/mages can risk their appendages to the infamous sphere of annihilation. Âwhen nerds dream their cheeto-stained dreams of d&d, they are imagining standing at the threshold to a dark crypt filled with traps, illogical monster placements, and a demilich waiting at the end. It’s an absolutely lethal gauntlet of death traps, even for a world of heroes who regularly brave gauntlets of death traps, and surviving it is significant as much for bragging rights as for treasure. Completely sadistic, the tomb of horrors brings your gaming group together like no other adventure, by griefing them with impossible puzzles and murdering their cherished characters. It’s no coincidence that the tomb of horrors is prominently featured — ruby-toothed acererak and all — in ready player one, the recent novelization of everything nerds love, with a movie adaptation in the works. —what is your favoriteâ d&d module? let us know in the comments below! or just tell us your favorite campaign story! or tell us on twitter !.

What Dungeons & Dragons Campaigns Are Best For New DMs

Our canon section is still growing, and we want to collect information about all the races, creatures, spells and more that have been published over the years. This section is everything you'd expect from a traditional wiki, with encyclopedic articles and citations about the game. Our homebrew section is author centric, built around aggressive quality control, and focused on providing content for many different styles of play. We want to help you find material from our collection that you can use in your campaigns without balance concerns. To that end we list the author of the material on each page and attempt to tag the article with a balance point that indicates what sort of games it would be most appropriate in. Please see dungeons and dragons wiki:balance points for a more complete explanation of our balance points.

The dungeon master (dm for short) refers to the player who acts as narrator, antagonist, and guide to the rest of the players in d&d. (in non-d&d games they’re called the game master/gm. ) according to wizards of the coast brand director nathan stewart, rule number one for aspiring dms is “you don’t have to know all the rules. ” in fact, he shared a quote from the creator of dungeons and dragons, gary gygax.

High level campaigns in gifts for dungeons and dragons players dungeons and dragons mug ideas dungeons and dragons gifts for him are a rarity. The dynamics of keeping a group of players together tends to limit this phenomenon to a few select groups. Groups of players of this fine game come apart for various reasons: changes in work schedules, changes in marital status, real life deaths of members of the group and more. But every player looks at the player’s handbook, for whatever edition they are playing, and imagines what their character could look like at 15th, 20th, 25th or even higher levels. In 1st edition it was theoretically possible, if unlikely, for a character to reach the 30th level in some classes.

Anyone who is a fan of fantasy will have likely interacted with dungeons and dragons in some form. Dungeons and dragons , also known as d&d, has been around for decades now. In more recent years, shows like harmon quest and critical role have been produced, and podcasts like the adventure zone and the glass cannon podcast have further popularized the game. Video games also owe a huge debt to d&d, and this debt is visible in games like dragon age , knights of pen and paper , baldur’s gate , and even star wars: knights of the old republic. Some of these games are practically d&d campaigns in their own right.

Before the publication of dungeons & dragons, its co-author, dave arneson, was already a wargamer involved with his group of friends in running wargames campaigns. He and came up with a wargames campaign for his friends that was a full-blown medieval fantasy wargames campaign that came to be called blackmoor. Arneson had already encouraged his players to look at their relationship to the wargame in a different way. Inspired by things like diplomacy, and by baunstein and other such campaigns before, arneson encouraged wargames-style role-playing as a significant aspect of the birth of dungeons and dragons.

The assassin class has long been a controversial part of advanced dungeons and dragons 1st edition. This specific assassin class does not exist in best gifts for dungeons and dragons players dungeons and dragons mug ideas dungeons and dragons gifts for him gifts dungeons and dragons dice mug best dungeons and dragons gifts dungeons and dragons dice mug dungeons and dragons birthday gifts birthday gifts 5th edition. But one can select the assassin arch type for a rogue. The assassin was controversial in ad&d for a couple of reasons. For one. He had to be evil. Many dungeon masters did not want evil characters in their campaigns. Good aligned characters would not want to associate with such lawless characters. And the assassin seemed to be built with an instant kill button called “assassination. ”.

Easiest Dungeons & Dragons Adventures For New DMs

Advertising dungeons & dragons is, first and foremost, all about creativity and adventure. New players and new dms will find many of the wizards of the coast modules allow anyone to jump right into the game and begin enjoying themselves. These modules range between short adventures with little consequences to threats against the world itself, with each appealing to one of the many different playstyles that d&d lends itself to.

Dungeons & Dragons: The 13 Best Adventures For Low-Level Parties

By richard baker lost mine appearing at the top of this list should come as no surprise to d&d veterans. More than simply one of the best adventures for new dungeon masters, it’s one of the best adventures fifth edition dungeons & dragons has to offer, period. In addition to a lengthy introductory adventure, the d&d starter set also includes pregenerated characters to get new players right into the action without undertaking the challenge of creating a character, a set of dice, and an abbreviated rulebook for players that don’t own a player’s handbook. If played from start to finish, your characters will start at 1st level and finish the adventure at 5th level.

Before Dungeons & Dragons [ edit | edit source ]

Dragonsfoot is the home of 1st edition advanced dungeons & dragons. Use the modules as they are, modify them for newer editions or use them for inspiration. Where the fallen jarls sleep (lvl 3-5) by john a. Turcotte her dark majesty trilogy, part i – a moon ago, the six most powerful clans each sent their champion to discover the source of blight. The six never returned, nor has any trace been found. Who can say what evil lurks amid the towering peaks and shadowed fjords?.

Welcome to the home of 1st edition ad&d! welcome to dragonsfoot, the home of first edition advanced dungeons & dragons! here at dragonsfoot you will find more free, quality and original first edition ad&d resources than anywhere else on the net. Available here are new adventure modules,.

Dungeons & dragons players spend a lot of time underground. That’s understandable; it’s related to the first word in the title of the game. Over the years this as evolved in interesting ways such as mega dungeons where adventurers can spend years looking into every nook and cranny or even underground civilizations like the city of the drow or the understand. Kobold press recently released empire of the ghouls as a three book campaign expansion for 5th edition as a massive underground resource for dungeon masters who want to add some darkness to their d&d.

There are many dungeon and dragons purists who—even in the digital age—still rely on using old-fashioned tools from earlier decades. However, there are now a ton of digital resources that can enhance d&d greatly, both for players and dungeon masters alike. Related: download the dungeons & dragons 5th edition basic rules set for free.

Welcome to D&D Adventure!

This was the first official campaign released for dungeons & dragons, which means it has some problems. Its descriptions are at times confusing, its progression is concerning, and the story itself is questionable, but this adventure is the one that taught me how to dm on the fly. In this campaign, you have to improvise as a dm, because while the broad strokes are presented, almost all the details are muddled. Think of the campaign as a test of a dm’s skills.

At 3rd level, you gain a beast companion that accompanies you on your adventures and is trained to fight alongside you. Choose a beast that is no larger than medium and that has a challenge rating of 1/4 or lower (appendix d presents statistics for the hawk, mastiff, and panther as examples). Add your proficiency bonus to the beast’s ac, attack rolls, and damage rolls, as well as to any saving throws and skills it is proficient in. Its hit point maximum equals its normal maximum or four times your ranger level, whichever is higher. Like any creature, the beast can spend hit dice during a short rest.

It is damp and muddy. Light breaks through the darkness and floods the cavern from an opening above. A rope sways to a stop as the final adventurer makes his descent into the chamber. Ahead is a stone statue of a dwarf. It stands alone in a room and has clearly been broken and reassembled. One adventurer kicks a small dagger; it makes no noise as it bounces across the ground and comes to rest at the statue’s feet. Four friends, along with their trusty zombie dog, daisy, listen carefully. One mutters a few words of warning — someone is approaching.

In january 2013, wizards of the coast announced their return to pdf sales, with the launch of dungeons & dragons classics in partnership with onebookshelf. When the site launched on 22nd january 2013 it contained 81 out-of-print d&d titles in pdf format, stretching from the 1981 basic rulebook (edited by tom moldvay) right through to a selection of 4th edition titles. Since then, between four and six new titles have been added most weeks. Some of the preview adventures for 5th edition d&d has also been released exclusively via the dnd classics site.

This adventure will take players from levels 1-11. As many good stories do, it opens in the middle of some action. Immediately thrusting the players into a desolate town that's only remaining inhabitants are a pesky tribe of goblins. The rest of the adventure is very loosely structured. The antithesis of the rise of tiamat, storm king's thunder does no railroading in telling players where to go next. Instead, it peppers in hooks and leads to multiple locations, persons, and mysteries throughout the more self-contained adventures. As a result, many dnd enthusiasts feel that the plot is paper-thin. Requiring a lot of work and creativity on the dungeon master's behalf in order to string the chain of events together. However, this does provide a level of customization many dms will appreciate.

This module has all of the hallmarks of a classic d&d adventure , plus the added challenge of cold-weather survival and an equally chilling horror theme. In rime of the frostmaiden, your party opens a crack in a glacier that leads to the dungeon known as the caves of hunger. Part of the adventure is discovering what's been hidden here, but you can bet some nice loot is waiting at the end of this frosty, haunted labyrinth. Beyond the dungeon, you can explore the whole region of ten towns and the secrets that lie beneath the snow.

Info: player difficulty: n/a about: tales of the yawning portal isn’t exactly an adventure, but considering its contents, it was included in this article. This book contains the framework of seven dungeons: the sunless citadel (levels 1-3) the forge of fury (levels 3-5) the hidden shrine of tamoachan (levels 5-7) white plume mountain (level 8) dead in thay (levels 9-11).

Dungeons and dragons campaigns generally deal with a small scale. You’re solving problems that might end up endangering the world, to be sure, but things can generally get solved with a party of three to five adventurers. While there is a grand scale to some adventures, most of the big stuff happens in the background. One module that ditched that common conceit is cm – test of the warlords.

Since its release in 2014, the 5th edition of dungeons & dragons has proved to be incredible popular. Now entering its seventh year, there are a lot of campaigns for players to choose from. However, some of these d&d adventures are just better than others. Campaigns in dungeons & dragons can run for days, weeks, months, and even years. While some players may stick with their own campaign for decades, like the longest d&d campaign on record , most official adventure modules aren't meant to last that long. Some, like the lost mine of phandelver, are meant to last very briefly, while longer campaign books like waterdeep: dungeon of the mad mage can take a long time to thoroughly complete.

---