Quote from: Nerzenjäger;1047004Suboptimal goblin tactics are now the reason the whole of Mines of Phandelver sucks? K, fam.

Naw it keeps on sucking after that - but having such a bad encounter as the first thing many new GMs will ever run is a bug one.

Phandalin is also really bad, with the quest hub npcs devoid of any personality.

Quote from: Azraele;1047022I went to your blog in hopes your full review delved deeper

It didn't. This is the entire review

One would think, as we're D&D players, that we'd explore our dungeons a little deeper

My blog sucks too - but I don't charge money for it!

Quote from: Haffrung;1047031Phandelver isn't awful, but it isn't nearly as good as many 5E fans would have us believe. It presents a few mini-dungeons and a very basic, vanilla plot. The challenges ramp up. They take place in varied environments. It's hard to screw up the adventure.

On the minus side, it's generic Forgotten Realms pablum. When the PCs get to town, they're confronted with a gang of ruffians and one solution to the problem - hack them all dead. The villain does nothing villainous; he's the villain because he's the villain (and Glassstaff? Really? Even by the dire standards of FR, that's bad). A bunch of vanilla NPCs are introduced but they can be pretty much ignored. The town is and its inhabitants are far less interesting than Hommlet. The dungeons are generic complexes. It's all safe and boring and accessible and uninspired.

Really, it's a testament to how modest our expectations are for low-level published adventures that Phandelver gets so much praise.

Yes I had the same feeling about Phandalin. I played then GM'd it but both times the games died after the fights with tge brigands, boredom being a major factor. WotC have done much better intro material, eg the 4e Forgotten Realms guide Loudwater adventures covered similar ground but much beter done, some npcs even had personalities!

LMoP is popular because humanity is starved for sandbox style play even if they don't know it, and this is one of the closer approximations of a sandbox module to come from WoC. It might not be great, but at least you can mostly ignore the plot and wander around exploring a bit while still using the booklet.

I understand exactly what you are saying. However, would it be better to have a group of 12 goblins (outnumbering the Pcs so goblin fear is irrelevant) who attack the party and wipe them out? It's a "realistic" encounter, but is it one you want to run your initial party through? Will that make a better encounter?
There is a limit to how much "truth" I want in my game.

I liked the adventure I consider it very well made for D&D. It starts with a linear escort quest but it quickly expands to a sandbox wilderness and dungeon exploration mini campaign with many memorable locations and encounters. Pretty good stuff if only the later adventures where that good..

Phandelver was the first 5e game I ran, though I did it a little differently and set it in Karameikos.

Here's the map

Most of the early enthusiasm for Phandelver, the first 5e adventure, was it so greatly exceeded expectations compared to the first 4e adventure.

That said, "this adventure for total noobs sucks because it's set up for total noobs to play" is pretty lame. Geez, you can easily rp a little here, and just assume the goblins were wildly overconfident, or that none of the goblins can count (and one that said he did lied, and told the rest they had the numerical advantage).

If you're playing with all hard core min-maxers, and you're l33t DM-dude, why are you wasting time with Phandelver? That's...stupid.

On the other hand, having a very simple controlled fight so everyone can learn the mechanics (and one or two lucky hits can easily bring down a small party), is smart.

Next up, someone complains that on a hot day, the ice cream seems extra cold...

In a city-state ruled by the Invincible Overlord.

It's like I'm ten all over again.

My detailed account of what happened to my group while running the Lost Mines

So it start off with a near party kill.
The party goes to Phandelvers, recpurates and starts the search for Gundren Rockseer.
Note: Shows that despite its presentation the intro isn't as much of a railroad as it first appears.
The Goblin Cave is assaulted
The Redbrands are dealt with and their lair is invaded.
The fight with the Redbrands continues, the death of a character, and the pa.
The groups tries to run down Glasstaff, deals with an ogre doing his business, and finds out in 5th edition z
The party deal with some orcs

This phase of the campaign wraps up with the Party going to Wind Echo Cavern and finally deals with the person behind what going on.

Again I think Phandelver is fantastic. To me the point of a great intro module isn't to get fancy for the novice. Fr a experienced referee like myself a good intro module makes it easy for me to extrapolate the added detail by hinting at the life of the setting which the adventure does. I think it stands up there with adventures like Keep on the Borderlands and some of the other classics.

Quote from: John Scott;1047188I liked the adventure I consider it very well made for D&D. It starts with a linear escort quest but it quickly expands to a sandbox wilderness and dungeon exploration mini campaign with many memorable locations and encounters. Pretty good stuff if only the later adventures where that good..

Yeah I thought it was a pretty good sandboxy adventure site. With the ruffians even the town is pretty interesting. Good art. Overall I rate it pretty highly. I like it better than all the 1-20 adventure paths (er, not that i've read them, except for parts of ToA; I just dont like pre-plotted APs on anti-railroad principles, #HooksNotPlots and all that).

LMOP is great and if it wasn't for it I and about 20 other players with me wouldn't have gotten into tabletop.

Quote from: spon;1047181I understand exactly what you are saying. However, would it be better to have a group of 12 goblins (outnumbering the Pcs so goblin fear is irrelevant) who attack the party and wipe them out? It's a "realistic" encounter, but is it one you want to run your initial party through? Will that make a better encounter?
There is a limit to how much "truth" I want in my game.

Maybe 2 drunken goblins on the wagon while 2 more lurk in the bushes would work. Or just a couple stragglers looting the wagon.

This is precisely my objection, that a realistic ambush would wipe out 1st level PCs. It is the first encounter and as designed it trains GM & players to see the world as set up for their convenience, enemies using tactics designed to give the PCs a winnable encounter. The lair design with enemies - a unified group - carefully set out in small beatable groups is similar, at least the noisy waterfall helps with justification.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1047177LMoP is popular because humanity is starved for sandbox style play even if they don't know it, and this is one of the closer approximations of a sandbox module to come from WoC. It might not be great, but at least you can mostly ignore the plot and wander around exploring a bit while still using the booklet.

A properly detailed Phandalin and starting the PCs in town with several rumours could have been much better to create a sandbox ethos.

Quote from: Doom;1047194On the other hand, having a very simple controlled fight so everyone can learn the mechanics (and one or two lucky hits can easily bring down a small party), is smart.

Sure, I agree strongly with this. It's just what they came up with is really bad for that purpose - on the one hand 4 goblins should be wary of what might be a powerful party (they don't know the PCs are level 1), OTOH if the GM accidentally runs the goblins according to their stat blocks so they shoot/move/hide in the woods instead of charging in, he will likely TPK the party.

I would definitely save an ambush scenario for level 2 or 3 (& use a plausible number of ambushers using plausible tactics), unless the PCs were really stupid and created the get-ambushed situation through their own actions. For level 1 I would use weaker opposition (the Redbrands too are very tough too & only survivable if the PCs clear the goblin caves first), and play them smarter.

Speaking of the Redbrands, the logical thing to do would be to rally the townsfolk against them - this needs stat blocks. I think I hated Phandalin even more; the presentation makes it incredibly hard to run as an interesting living place. It desperately needed a 'Keep on the Borderlands' type keying. I'm running Morgansfort* from basicfantasy.org right now, and the difference is striking - most NPCs only get a line of characterisation but it's full of snippets to inspire me playing them, and they clearly have their own non-PC-centric lives, they don't just exist as quest giving slot machines.

*Also aimed at newbs. The home base is much better done and I'm liking the dungeons too, though the numbers of foes in a room is often excessive - 28 kobolds, 14 orcs etc. I don't normally adjust scenarios but I ran the third adventure for a solo PC Ftr-2 (w Clr-1 NPC) on Monday & I did cut the number of orcs a bit; with some bad luck the party still narrowly lost and ended up in Necromancer's prison cell. Ftr currently attempting an escape, unarmed & on 2 hp...