Need advice from 5e enthusiasts

[RPG Dinosaur]

Hey everybody, Happy Holidays. My brother Brian is a middle school teacher (grades 6-8) who in the past has run a D&D Club at his school, and has been the Dungeon Master. Some of his second year students are asking him to do it again this year. He is reluctant to do it again right now because of his other after school activity commitments, but later down the road is considering running a campaign lasting about a month, with once or twice a week sessions. Brian switched to 5e last year.
Do you have any suggestions for 5E commercial adventures that he describes as being appropriate for his kids (more combat heavy than complex themes and role playing). He doesn't have much extra time to come with something on his own, so for Christmas I'm thinking about buying him a module, if there is something that would be right for this situation. I can look around myself, but since I haven't played 5e I would sure appreciate any input.

[Meph]

I cannot recommend Lost MInes of Phandelver enough from the Starter Set. It's a great adventure with a great mix of play styles in it. It's really geared towards teaching new players (and DMs) but it doesn't hold your hand. It's a lot of fun. Here is my campaign thread from when I ran it.

http://www.padnd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=3607

[JadedDM]

I, too, would vote for Phandelver, although to be fair, it's the only 5E module I've run so far, so I can't really offer any other suggestions.

[Lyrwik]

I would also suggest Phandelver. However if you're looking for something longer (ie one of the campaign books), I'd say to steer clear of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. It is not well written. I haven't played the other campaign books, but I know a lot of people who enjoyed Curse of Strahd and Storm King's Thunder (although I believe Storm King is a bit more open world, so not as much of the pick-up-and-play style of book). Tales from the Yawning Portal is a bunch of shorter adventures which could be suitable if it's not going to always be the same group playing through as a single campaign.

[Meph]

My group has repeatedly told me that they have had more fun with Waterdeep Dragonheist than any campaign they have ever been in, but I have a hard time recommending it to any group that isn't really into roleplaying. The adventure could also be run as written but I think it would be really fast and somewhat flat. I added a LOT to it but that translates to a lot of work on your part also.

About Curse of Strahd and Storm Kings Thunder, they can both be run after Lost Mines of Phandelver. Both of them have "intro" adventures in them meant to get the players to the right level for the main adventure. Curse of Strahd has death house meant to get players to level 3 or more before starting and the intro to SKT is meant to get the players to level 5 before beginning. You can run Lost Mine of Phandelver which will get your players to level 5 and then decide where you want to go. LMOP transitions nice into SKT and CoS can transitions easily with the mists.

[TigerStripedDog]

Lost Mines of Phandelver is the best starting point, and is fun with multiple run throughs.

If you're looking to get him an actual adventure - Storm King's Thunder is the best. I cannot recall off hand anything that isn't appropriate for children in that age range - it offers some great Role Playing opportunities, but can also easily be run as a hack and slash. Its also old enough that we have some pretty great guides/youtube commentaries to peruse.

Good luck!

Tiger

[RPG Dinosaur]

Thanks for the input guys, really. I'm looking at both Lost Mines of Phandelver and Storm Kings Thunder.

[Meph]

I own most of the 5E adventures but honestly I dont know if I will ever get around to running them. The large scale adventures don't interest me too much. If you wanted smaller scale adventures to go into a homebrew world you should look at Kobold Press. Prepared and Prepared2 are both filled with encounters of all levels. Then you have the Book of Lairs, Eldritch Lairs, and Creature Codex Lairs. All of those are loaded with lairs & encounters of all level ranges. That kind of stuff is easy to drop into any campaign.