I just finished running Lost Mine of Phandelver and I really, really dislike this adventure. Bad information design, boring encounters, poorly motivated and the worst random encounter tables I've seen. Why is this adventure so beloved? I went into this excited and quickly just wanted it to be over. - ThreadSky

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abekin.bsky.social • 102 days ago

I just finished running Lost Mine of Phandelver and I really, really dislike this adventure. Bad information design, boring encounters, poorly motivated and the worst random encounter tables I've seen. Why is this adventure so beloved? I went into this excited and quickly just wanted it to be over.

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abekin.bsky.social•102 days ago

My players had fun, thankfully. I did not. I was constantly struggling against the adventure. It's not an adventure that is easy to use at the table. There's a dramatis personae but it's truncated and doesn't actually tell you these character's hooks or quests. No fodder for roleplaying.

abekin.bsky.social•102 days ago

One of the initial frustrations is my players wanted to pursue the goblin quest: they were captured by the Cragmaw goblins and wanted to root them out. They were invested and the adventure as written was quashing this.

abekin.bsky.social•102 days ago

Phandelver is written in such a way that the information for finding Cragmaw Castle is unavailable to them, probably to stop a TPK. As a counterpoint, they can go to Thundertree, another TPK waiting to happen (and in fact, the second TPK in my run of Phandelver).

abekin.bsky.social•102 days ago

Not to mention the villain of this module gets no build up throughout. It's just a drow that my party slew without a thought. They didn't even know he was the villain because how would they?

abekin.bsky.social•102 days ago

What hell is this villain doing? Just chilling in the cave? Waiting for the PCs? There's no clues on how to advance his plot what so ever. Yes, I could do all this heavy lifting, but I bought this adventure to give me those things.

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