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Thanks DragnaCarta for the great analysis!

I ran Hoard of the Dragon's Queen for 40 sessions.

I think that with a few important changes to negate the major pitfalls, this becomes a stellar module.

Here are the most important changes I recommend.

1. The players start at the Greenest inn, not outside. This removes the metagamy aspect of "the DM wants us to get in although no sensible 1st level adventurer would" and instead "holy cow, how can we survive this?" and "damn, we are heroes". When played smartly by DM and players, this is the most memorable act in the entire module.

2. Careful secrets reveal: This is a mystery story, and should be treated as such. Through investigation and chase, the heroes reveal more and more of the horrific plot, with major rewarding "Aha" moments as the story unfolds.

3. Cut the silly caravan: Instead of 60 days of travel, cut this to 3 days with a few well planned encounters to highlight the chase and tension.

4. Pacing: After the excellent 3 chapters, the pacing, action and drama of the module falls flat, before reaching the excellent end chapters. This must be fixed, sadly by introducing your own content. First some tension - The heroes are chased by the cult, then they are chased by Undead and saved at Elturel; Switching to roleplay by adding a festival in Elturel; Then high action with a river rapids challenge - followed by a brutal combat with an Ogre on the river bridge. In Baldur's gate I also gave a sneak peak of the Curse of Strahd by sending the heroes to a haunted house to reveal a critical lore piece (The Death House) - a sorely needed dungeon crawl after many sessions of chase.

5. Cut irrelevant items: Remove the Hunting Lodge, the irrelevant 20 NPCs in the caravan trip and its meaningless encounters, remove the one-time NPCs like Jemma, the vampire (WTF) and the second red wizard. Focus on the core, main, important NPCs, their motivations and story.

I wrote a comprehensive 18-page guide, if anyone is interested with more details. https://liquidanalog.com/hoard-of-the-dragon-queen-dm-guide-to-hotdq/

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Good stuff, and thanks for sharing! Interesting ideas here for sure - good thoughts about the importance of revelations, pacing, and a focused story with a hard-hitting intro. Glad you enjoyed the review! :)

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