Dungeons & Dragons Princes of the Apocalypse

What a great story line. I have played a lot of Pathfinder with our friends but have not ventured into D&D yet. I really wanted to try 5e and this story sounded like a lot of fun. I GM one of my pathfinder sessions and play regularly on another. I asked if my pathfinder session that I GM would like to switch to 5e and give it a go. Everyone agreed because we wanted something more into roleplay and not so much number crunching. The switch so far has been awesome! I honestly prefer 5e so much more than pathfinder. The battles flow much nicer and there is less time per player turn. Instead of adding "well I'm flanking so thats +2, then the bard has inspiration so another +2, then first attack is BAB of 11 while second is 3 and on an on and on" you just simply have your modifier to attack and disadvantage or advantage. So much easier. Now for the campaign, princes of the Apocalypse. We are about half way done so I will update once we finish but so far it has been amazing. I love the openness to this campaign. There are so many different paths the adventures can take that you can actually run the campaign with different people and have totally different experiences. That to me makes it so fun to DM because the group gets to decide how the story plays out, I am just here to facilitate. My favorite experience thus far, spoiler free, was the group commandeered a boat at a keep, saved the civilians by hiding in the druids spell, and bolted with some stolen books. It was really fun and all played out by them. The story is not quite all laid out I found, and I have to embellish a little bit to give it a little more flavor, but the bones are all there. The dungeons are well laid out, the new classes and spells are fun, the enemies from each group feel different in play styles and RP wise. I'm very excited to see this play out.

I DM Encounters and Expeditions at my local gaming store. This season, expeditions is starting this adventure. I decided to buy the full adventure and work my way through it during Encounters as the provided material doesn't extend through the whole season. This adventure is excellent and provides a mostly open world for exploration and adventure. It isn't a "railroaded" experience as some adventures have been in the past and a source book with adventures that span from level 1 to 18 is excellent, not just for the current season, but as a source book for future campaigns. It is chapter driven, but each chapter provides a large span of adventures and multiple ways of dealing with the emerging elemental cults. There are some cons here. First, you have to have access to a Monster Manual as only the specialized creatures and NPCs are in this guide. Also, you need to download for free or purchase the Player Guide for Elemental Evil. You can find the download on the Wizards of the Coast site.In that guide, you get new races, spells, and mechanics for this adventure. (BTW, the site also has "unofficial" downloads for other worlds and realms if you desire them.) Also, this book looks like it is going to suffer from the same bad binding issues the Players Guide and DM Manual have all faced. I have been lucky so far with those two books, but this one looks to be headed down a bad path. If you buy this, watch for pages coming loose and then contact Wizard's or the seller as this is a known defect in some printings. Overall a good adventure and sourcebook, even if the book itself may have issues.

Very well written adventure with plenty of room for personal adjustment for the DM. The adventure is for players 3-15, and it has some side quests to get players from 1-3 if you want to start from 1. These adventure paths are great for DMs that just don't have the time to create an entire narrative or are burnt out creatively. The adventure is very flexible, and you can play it as railroady as you like. Having an overall story to follow, but filling in with your own inventions and side stories works just as well as following the story more like a video game from point a to b to c etc. The adventure could be done over the course of a few months, or stretched to last much longer and still serve the DM and players just as well. The addition of the playable races and spells is also very nice, although that is available from the D&D website for free in a player's companion. One warning for newer groups or players: many of the encounters are built with the very real possibility of killing off the players. If this is not something you want in your campaign, make sure to adjust them to the difficulty you want.

Fair warning: this campaign is definitely not made to run linearly or directly out of the box. You're going to need to do quite a bit of note-taking, tweaking and customization, and I strongly recommend at least skimming the whole book before you get started. Bookmarks or stick-on tabs are also a necessity as there's no index, and related persons, locations and story threads are scattered throughout the book. You'll be spending a lot of time flipping through pages trying to find the name, profession and relationships of such-and-such if you don't plan ahead and mark out relevant information prior to each session. In a lot of ways it's more like a "Guide to the Dessarin Valley and the unusual people, places, and events therein" than it is a canned adventure. It's definitely not a good choice for a novice or first-time DM, but in experienced hands there's a lot to work with in here and tons of opportunity to make it your own. It lends itself well to non-linear play, so if your players are fond of chasing rabbit trails or coming up with novel solutions to problems they'll have a ton of fun. At least until you get into the central conflict in the valley, at which point you'll be doing a bunch of straightforward dungeon crawls with elemental themes (as advertised). There are a wealth of optional side-treks if you need a breather from the dungeons, and enough space to bring in your own original work or one-off adventures available from other supplements, though you'll have to be careful about pacing and keeping the pressure on in order to remind players that the cults of Elemental Evil aren't idly awaiting their demise in their lairs. If you want to get straight to the meat of the thing I'd recommend skipping all the optional content and giving a 3rd-4th level party a strong reason to head straight for the Haunted Keeps, but you'll miss out on some foreshadowing and local flavor.

I am enjoying 5e and I think for the most part the books are good quality. Monsters in the back are not sorted alphabetically but by cult which actually is rather nice. Some spoilers ahead for players. I ran this through to completion with my group and I'd say it ran fairly well and we all enjoyed it. It's a sandbox so you have some frustrating jumping back and forth in the book for references but overall it is not terrible. The dungeons are fun and have some interesting encounters. However I found that some of the encounters required the cults to be unreasonably naive especially near the end of the campaign which required a little bit of adjustment, As with any sandbox you need to either adjust dungeons to meet a party's level or forewarn them to run away or avoid things that are too strong for them. This does lead to interesting dungeon runs if your players are particularly stubborn though. The first fire temple dungeon will forever be known as hamburger hill in my heart. One beef I have with the setting is that you can play through the entire campaign to level 15 which is not an insignificant time investment and you only fight 1 of the princes. Personally I leveled everyone up to 20 after they killed their prince and them had them fight it out in a battle royale against all 4 of the princes at the same time. Naturally the party got some cool magic items to help them out. My last criticism is that the dungeon crawl can get a bit much. All the dungeons are interconnected so once you get underground there's really no driving reason to leave the dungeons especially if you are using the flag system. We decided to have a side quest day to switch it up a bit but really once you are in the dungeons it is just a huge dungeon filled with monsters without much to pull them out. I recommend this campaign for people who prefer a good sandbox and dungeon crawl. I do not recommend this adventure to groups that want a ton of social interaction with NPCs in towns in between dungeons, or always want to fight level appropriate monsters. Naturally a good DM can fix any of those issues it just requires a bit more work.

Great game! Arrived in perfect condition.

Great adventure based off the old Temple of Elemental Evil. Good sandbox location, plenty of options and player choices that matter. Wonderful layout, beautiful art, and a very good story. Organization of information could have been better, but even though you have to search through the book for info, everything you need to run the adventure is in here, with the exception of the free supplement material offered by WotC. Definitely worth the money, and much better designed than Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Rise of Tiamat.

Excited to play this campaign and then DM it. Going through it, it has tons of encounters, a lot of locations and Npc's and a great storyline. Should provide a few months of play according to the Forward written at the beginning of the book. The art is beautiful and the book came in perfect condition. Happy with my purchase.

Very happy customer

Excelente campanha para d&d 5e. Material de qualidade com impressão de alto padrão. Vale a pena.

Not an easy to read book, as it is very in depth, and the information contained within it does not always read A, to Z. You have to search for information a lot of the time, and reminds me so much of the good `old school` days of gaming back in the 1980`s 1st Edition era of Dungeons and Dragons. The Dungeon Master is e-x-p-e-c-t-e-d to put some effort into running this game.. so its not really an open book - read once - and start play, sort of a deal. The Dungeon Master is expected to study this book in depth, probably many times over ( I`d advice making copious personal notes), comprehend what you have read, and THEN.... you will have one of the best role playing adventures seen in many years of gaming. Princes of the Apocalypse, for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons is a classic adventure. I predict it will one day go down as one of the truly great iconic books in gaming history. I truly cannot urge 5th Edition Dungeon Masters strongly enough to go buy it for themselves. Incidentally, the title does not make it blindingly clear, but Princes of the Apocalypse is in fact a complete re-write of the classic Adventure Module “Temple of Elemental Evil”.... only its actually better written than the classic original. The artwork is astounding, the maps are VERY well drawn and detailed, the NPC characters are interesting and enticing, and the adventure itself is amazing. The book even contains a host of early level (1 to 3) "Side Quests” providing the Dungeon Master with multiple choices how and where he can start his own campaign. Princes of the Apocalypse is a blindingly good adventure, but it is far more even than the sum of its parts. This book provides the Dungeon Master with an entire campaign far larger than just the material contained within. It is a sandbox with endless appeal and game repeat value.

While it stands as part of the fairly daunting "Elemental Evil" campaign setting, "Princes" still comes complete with all the essentials required for it to serve as a meatier alternative to any starting one-shot or the Fifth Edition's own starter campaign, the Lost Mines of Phandelver. There's a short introductory adventure designed for beginner players or reasoned veterans starting with lowbies, its endpoint transitioning into "Princes" proper. There's enough on offer for a long and richly detailed set of gaming sessions - I'm six games in as the DM and it feels like my players are barely scratching the surface. Of course, that's dependent on your own group's preferred tone or speed. As could be expected, the sourcebook packs all the needed variables that allow you to alter the pacing or style of the overall narrative. "Princes" can be as atmospheric or as combat-focused as you'd like, with the provided encounter tables and dungeon maps allowing most DMs to focus on gameplay, rather than preparation. If anything, I'd suggest keeping this aside for groups that manifest a clear interest in a longform campaign. There's a lot of meat to this and it does offer support to new players, but there's no real potential here as an introductory one-shot. If that's what you're looking for, pick up the Starter Set's Mines of Phandelver.

Great book!