For those interested, here are my tier rankings of the official D&D 5E campaign adventures. Some may be a little generous, but sort of match how happy I am to run them.
For those unaware of tier rankings, “S-tier” is the top, followed by A, B, C, D, and finally F.
S-Tier:
Lost Mine of Phandelver (original starter set)
Curse of Strahd
A-Tier:
Hoard of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat
Storm King’s Thunder
Tomb of Annihilation
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight (but haven’t run it)
B-Tier:
Princes of the Apocalypse
Out of the Abyss
Dragon Heist
Dragon of Icespire Peak (Essentials Kit)
Shadow of the Dragon Queen (I rate it a F as a representation of Dragonlance lore)
C-Tier
Dungeon of the Mad Mage (but I haven’t run it)
Rime of the Frostmaiden (but I haven’t run it)
Dragons of Stormwreck Isle (new Starter set; haven’t run it)
D-Tier
Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk
F-Tier
Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus
It’s worth noting that I’m an experienced DM, with many, many campaigns behind me. Some of these adventures speak to my strengths (especially the Tyranny of Dragons duology). I’ve run Tyranny, Lost Mine, Curse of Strahd, and Storm King’s Thunder each three times in full. Possibly four for Lost Mine.
I have a suspicion I’d actually do really well with Rime of the Frostmaiden. Meanwhile, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle bores me to tears as I read it. (But Mike Shea really likes it, so obviously my tastes aren’t universal!) And since Mike wrote one of the best set of adventures I’ve used (Sly Flourish’s Fantastic Adventures), I shouldn’t dismiss his opinion out of hand.
Not every adventure works out of the box. Most require the DM to do some tinkering. Some require DMing techniques you might not have mastered. I’m very good at pacing and adventure structure, so when a section of the adventure is dragging for my players, I speed it up. (See the Long Road in Hoard of the Dragon Queen). Or I extend sections they’re really vibing with. (Also see the Long Road in Hoard of the Dragon Queen). Yes, same example for both – because different groups like different things.
Dragon Heist is a really good example of an absolute mess of an adventure – great ideas, horrible execution. But it has enough great material in it that I can put it together into a memorable adventure. Oh wait, I’ve run that three times as well, each time changing more than the last and making it more my own.
It’s not easy ranking adventures like Princes of the Apocalypse. So many of them are mixed, and depend a lot on the group and DM making them work. But I do know I’d far rather run Princes again that Descent into Avernus.
From what I heard, Dungeon of the Mad Mage is a sleeper hit.
It’s amazing as a resource for pulling dungeons from or for adventurers to visit from time to time. It’s not super great to run straight through.
I appreciate how you rated Shadow of the Dragon Queen. I’ve been running it, and my table loves it. And yet the ways it fails to live up to the most basic standards of Dragonlance lore just kills me. I was so excited to run a game in the lead up to the War of the Lance but oy.
I’m running Wild Beyond the Witchlight right now and will never run it again. It has potential but just fell way short of my expectations. Probably a C-Tier in my mind. Disappointed to see Rime of the Frost Maiden so low but it agrees with what I’ve heard. Actually preordered the alternate cover in hopes that it would be my go to campaign. At this point that honor remains with Tomb of Annihilation.
That’s a shame! Rime may yet move up, but I need to see how easy it is to fix in play.
I mostly agree with these rankings. I’d probably swap Wild Beyond the Witchlight and Princes of the Apocalypse. I’d like Out of the Abyss more if it had an introductory chapter like all the others that laid out the full story for you. And I find the storyline in the mess that is Descent into Avernus so compelling and so full of cool ideas that I’d much rather run it and have to do the work to fix it than run the equally terrible Phandelver & Below which isn’t cool enough to me, personally, to warrant putting up with how broken it is.
Also yeah, Dragons of Stormwreck Isle reads like an immense bore. I think I’d only run it for children.
I take it that since Ghosts of Saltmarch is not included, you have not had the opportunity to familiarise yourself with this campaign?
It isn’t a campaign adventure, but a collection of shorter adventures. (You can make a campaign out of it, but it’s not the original design).