There are numerous reasons to play or run premade Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. Some DMs run them for the solid concepts and mechanical ideas within. Others run them to make their preparation easier. One common reason is a baseline assumption of quality that can be missing from a homebrew campaign.
For the most part, published campaigns deliver on that minimum standard of quality in D&D Fifth Edition, with very few campaigns considered poor. However, even the best can have quests that fall short. Whether they're too difficult, poorly designed, or even boring, some quests don't feel worth the players' time.
10 The Dungeon Of The Dead Three Is Railroaded & Difficult
Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus is a divisive module overall, but its earliest section in Baldur's Gate is considered its weakest. Apart from anything else, the beginning is highly railroaded, with the players coerced into doing jobs for NPCs with the threat of death for any dissent. One of those jobs stands out for its low quality: investigating the Dungeon of the Dead Three.
One of the most difficult dungeons in all of D&D 5e, it doesn't come across as fair and intelligent, but simply unbalanced. Second level player characters are sent up against casters that can use Fireball and creatures with near-perfect stats. It's a notoriously questionable start to a campaign.
9 Bluto & Lake Zarovich Don't Have Much To Them
The quests in Curse of Strahd are few in number, but they span over the entire campaign. Finding the three artifacts can take dozens of sessions, as can repeated trips into Castle Ravenloft, and helping the towns of Vallaki and Krezk with their problems. There is only one quest that stands out for its short length and lack of content.
If players go to the Vistani camp near Vallaki, they learn that the chieftain's daughter, Arabelle, has gone missing. She's been kidnapped by a fisherman named Bluto, who wants to drown her as a sacrifice. That's the entire quest. Bluto is a simple fisherman, not a match for even a first-level character, and nothing happens whether or not the sacrifice goes ahead. It feels like simple padding.
8 The Sunblight Fortress Distraction Is A Cruel Double-Cross
Sunblight Fortress in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is one of D&D 5e's more entertaining dungeons. It tasks players with assaulting a guarded fortress with only one entrance or exit, encouraging them to think of a way around the defenses rather than just bounce off the exterior. However, it's contained within a quest that's a cruel double-cross.
When players go to attack Sunblight, they only get halfway before an artificial dragon is set loose on Tentowns. Through no fault of their own, the players are absent when their base of operations is heavily damaged — potentially destroyed. Players are given few ways to intervene short of simply running back and hoping they can spare some of Tentowns.
7 Keeping The Council Of Waterdeep Friendly Is A Guessing Game
After spending much of Hoard of the Dragon Queen as an autonomous adventuring group, players spend much of the sequel campaign Rise of Tiamat working alongside and for the Council of Waterdeep. Maintaining allies on the council is harder than simply progressing in the campaign, however, as there are 10 competing factions on the council, all with different criteria for siding with the party.
Not only are many of these criteria mutually-exclusive, but plenty are flat-out counterintuitive, rendering the entire thing basically a guessing game. While keeping the council on-side is a major part of the campaign, much of the advice for running it suggests overhauling the entire system.
6 The Allegedly Harmless Manticore In Icespire Peak Is Punishing
The Dragon of Icespire Peak is a campaign that comes with the 5e Essentials Kit, designed as an alternative starter set. As material designed for newer players, the initial quests are simple, with one being to travel to the house of an old woman who lives outside Phandelver and convince her to come to the town's safety.
When there, however, players must face a manticore. This is a very challenging fight for first-level characters — one that can easily see characters die. The book claims that the player characters are meant to talk to the manticore, but nothing suggests this as an option, and it's unlikely to occur to new players. Consequently, it simply feels like a punishing fight as an introduction.
5 The Night Hags In The Bonegrinder Are Infamous
One of the most infamous parts of Curse of Strahd is the windmill known as Old Bonegrinder, and the quest associated with it. Living in the Bonegrinder are hags who sell hallucinogenic pastries to the people of Barovia, and who use the bones of children to make these. Naturally, players can become involved in stopping them.
However, players become aware of the Bonegrinder as early as the third level, and the foes are a trio of Night Hags. Even just two of them is a severe threat for a party of that level, and the three as a coven are capable of wiping out much higher-level parties. Even the module's author has run the adventure using a much easier type of hag instead.
4 Fighting Through Greenest Is A Crushing Gauntlet
The very first adventure in Hoard of the Dragon Queen sees the player characters tasked with liberating the town of Greenest, which had come under the occupation of a blue dragon and his army. Such a battle would be daunting for higher-level characters, but the module expects starting characters to do it.
Few parts of the quest — except the notorious boss fights — are that hard on their own. However, Greenest is so full of roving kobolds and cultists that the players are likely to be ground down through sheer attrition. With so few resources, the endless fights just create a very long and tedious death spiral.
3 The Journey To Blingdenstone Is A Survival Challenge
Exploration and survival are theoretically key parts of D&D 5e, but they're often skipped by many DMs and players. The campaign Out of the Abyss, however, tests players' skills to the max, forcing players to survive and navigate the twisted nightmarescape of the Underdark.
The journey to reach Blingdenstone, a key step in the player's journey, is a long one. Particularly, using the Gritty Realism rules that make abilities recharge slower, it's a long slog focused on survival over flashy heroics. While some players may enjoy it, it can feel overly punishing and tedious.
2 The Tests Of The Frostmaiden Are Railroaded Pacing-Killers
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is a well-liked campaign, considered to have good pacing and well-crafted problems to solve. What falls flat for many players, however, is the gauntlet known as the Tests of the Frostmaiden. Done to test that the players embody Auril's key tenets, they all transport the players elsewhere to run through challenges.
However, these challenges are uninteractive and railroaded, forcing players to simply try and roll high on their dice or to do cruel things to NPCs with no alternatives. They kill the pacing of one of the campaign's key areas — which is completely unnecessary, as NPCs solve the problem for the players if they dawdle too long.
1 Arriving In Elturel Throws Too Much At The Players
At its core, the challenge in D&D 5e comes from resource conservation. Players have to be careful when using their attacks, spell slots, and other abilities to ensure they don't run short in subsequent encounters. However, the DM also has to be careful not to overload them with things to spend their resources on.
This is flat-out ignored in the earliest sections of Eltural in Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus. There are too many enemies, too many bosses, and too many people needing help for the players to keep up with any of it. To some extent, this could sell the hopelessness of Avernus, but the module goes overboard and just turns into a resource-deprived slog.