Player Feedback, and a little experiment...

It's a tricky job being a DM.  You need to know the rules of the game to a decent level, you need to know the adventure material in details, you need to be able to think on your feet, and improvise and adapt when the players do things that are wholly unexpected, while hiding the fact that you are desperately calculating possible outcomes in your head, sometimes panicking inside.  Above all though, you need to keep the players happy while also enjoying the game yourself.  And players are strange animals, they come in all shapes and sizes, with differing wants and needs.

So, in an effort to better understand my group, and to give me yet another opportunity to waffle on here about my favourite subject of modules, I asked each of the 4 players in my group to rank the modules we have played thus far in order.  This has a tangible benefit for me in that I can see where I did stuff right, where I possibly screwed up, but most importantly it gives me insight into the type of game that they want to play.

I gave them each a list of the 12 modules we have played as a group:

L2  - The Assassins Knot - we played this as part of a 5E campaign.  I butchered the setting, and dropped the NPCs into a city applicable to the game were running, while keeping the plot and motives consistent with the original module.

X2 - Castle Amber - The 2nd of my 5E conversions, played almost identically to the original, with lovingly converted monsters and NPCs - that was hard work!

X4/X5 - Master of the Desert Nomads/Temple of Death - 2 more 5E conversions, though I adjusted parts of these to tie them into the backstories of a couple of the party PCs.  The campaign was effectively ended with an epic battle in the Temple itself in which all bar one of the PCs died.

UK5 - The Eye of the Serpent - the opening adventure of our 1st edition AD&D campaign, which I've followed up with:

T1 - The Village of Hommlet

UK2 - The Sentinel

UK4 - When A Star Falls

UK3 - The Gauntlet

UK1 - Beyond the Crystal Cave

I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City

C1 - Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan

RESULTS AND FEEDBACK

What should be borne in mind first and foremost is that none of the adventures yet played are bad ones, I have only chosen modules that have some considerable merit, be that in terms of their scope, their plot and/or atmosphere, or maybe just ambition.  TSR produced a lot of duff adventures, mostly in the mid-late 1980s - I have avoided those - yeah I'm looking squarely at you The Forest Oracle, and as for you Dragonlance saga, you can shove your heavy handed railroad squarely where the sun don't shine.  So if the adventure is placed low here, it's akin to a sports-car poll in which a Fiesta ST comes 10th of 10, as it is pitted up against cars from Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini....

12th place - UK5 - The Eye of the Serpent.  This result was not unexpected, as it's quite forgettable.  It's not bad, just a little bland.  See my detailed review

11th place - L2 - The Assassins Knot.  Playing it with 5E rules was far from ideal - a whodunnit doesn't work quite so well with 5E's Insight skill and Detect Thoughts both being spammable!

10th - UK3 - The Gauntlet.  Whaaaaaaaaattt!

9th - UK4 - When A Star Falls.  You fools.  Whose stupid idea was it to allow players to have opinions?  Review here

8th - UK2 - The Sentinel.  Gobsmacked this one finished above its more superior siblings UK3 and UK4. Review!

7th - I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City.  I expected this to be around here, most placed it towards the middle with just 1 dissenter.

6th - C1 - Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. As I1.

5th - UK1 - Beyond the Crystal Cave.  1 player *loved* this.  The player who would probably have disliked it was away for the session in which we played it.

4th - T1 - Village of Hommlet.  An expected result, as this has had an enduring impact on our 1E campaign.  My Review tells you why...

3rd - X5 - The Temple of Death.  Slightly confused by this, I thought my conversion was messy, and it all ended with that near TPK.  Nought as strange as folk - apart from RPG players - who are even stranger!

2nd - X4 - Master of the Desert Nomads.  No surprise. This converted really well to 5E, and the set piece nature of the battles worked well with that system.

1st - X2 - Castle Amber.  3 out of 4 players rated this as #1, but was that down to the adventure itself, or was it down to my DMing?  You'll have to wait to see the analysis.... coming soon....