Kiss And A Slap: Lost Mines of Phandelver

This is the first official adventure published for 5th edition D&D. It was published before the Dungeon Master's Guide, and is intended to introduce players and dungeon masters to the game from scratch. It is included in the starter set which is overall less impressive than the adventure that comes with it. LMoP is widely regarded as one of the best introductory adventures ever made, and one of the best adventures for 5th edition to date. Despite this recognition, LMoP is not without its rough patches.

I told myself I wasn't going to review this one. Everyone's reviewed this one. But I play it too often to not review it.

10 Problems With Lost Mines of Phandelver

1. The maps are inconsistent and it annoys me. Look, I love maps. I use them to set up battle grids on my gaming table. Without them, I either have to make it up from scratch or run it theater of the mind style. Maps allow you to track the passage of time during travel. Maps create a visual sense of realness for the players. Maps matter. It would not have been difficult for them to make a couple of small maps for the minor encounter sites. It would not have killed them to use a hex grid on the world map with a scale that matches the travel pace rules in the PHB.
2. It was made before the DMG treasure guidelines, and you can tell. Let me put it lightly: Characters who come out of this adventure will come out of it decked out like a christmas tree. Some encounters offer almost no reward for severe risk. Some treasures are just laying around and up for grabs. It can be a bit jarring going from such a generous campaign over to the other published adventures.
3. It was made before the DMG encounter guidelines, and you can tell. Let me put it lightly: Your players should just roll up two characters to start. Especially the first ambush and the first dungeon crawl are severely balanced against the players. There is a dragon in this book too- new players used to games like Skyrim will be sorely disappointed by the results of charging it with sword in hand.
4. It is not meant to run with original characters. Look, the game doesn't give much to maintain character interest in the mainline adventure. Many most almost all PCs are inclined to drop off the wagon, get paid, and move on with their lives without regard for their quest giver's fate. The book it comes with gives next to no guidelines for building a new character. Original characters tend to be awkward in the locale described, as continued motivation is supposed to come from the hooks the pregens came with.
5. The narrative is kinda' cliche. It just is, OK? For anyone who is immediately offended by standard tolkeinesque high fantasy, this is probably a deal breaker. This is standard Forgotten Realms fare, folks.
6. Chapter 3 is a disorganized mess. Spoiler Alert: Chapter 3 is a sandbox with multiple optional adventure hooks which direct the players toward Cragmaw Castle or the mine of Phandelver. The problem? Some of the locations are tied to quests given in chapter 2. The connections between the quests and their quest givers are not obvious, and there is no explanation for what you're supposed to use this stuff for. For example, it just explains what Old Owl Well is without stating why the players might be going there. This forces an attentive DM to go back through the previous chapter to figure out who wants the players to go there and why. Tis is why my book is full of sticky notes.
7. The NPCs are talking name plates. You know what would be nice? Some information about who these people are other than a description of their name, occupation, and attitude. As it is, as a DM, all of the NPCs in the town are completely forgettable unless you take some real prep time to flesh them out. Most new DMs are probably not experienced with character writing. Why not give them some examples to go off of? Would have made it easier for me to keep their names straight, at least.
8. No guidelines for improvisational play. In a couple more points, I'm going to be raving on and on about how this adventure has something for everybody. Know this: I am a hypocrite and I am full of dog shit. There is no guide for a DM to resolve what happens when the players go off the rails. Now, in some ways this is better than old books which encouraged an abusive and manipulative style in which the players are forced back on track through passive aggressive gaming. However, giving no advice at all isn't exactly helpful either, is it? What happens when the players attack the bandit hideout, get scared, and run? What happens if the players barricade themselves in a room in cragmaw castle? What happens if the players decide to smoke the goblins out of their cave? How does a newbie DM know to generate new content on the fly without ever having done it before? This book's negligence of improvisation fails to acknowledge the true power of RPGs: the ability to do anything and everything you can imagine. A DM who only understands to run the material in the book is an unwitting sycophant to the publishers. The closest they get to improvisation guidelines are the spots where they prompt you with "Hey, you might have this character do X Y Z if you want." and leave it up to you to make it up from there. For players who do want X Y Z but don't know how to get there, you've kind of just hung them out to dry.
9. Low production quality. The publishers really dropped the ball. Maybe they were trying to make it cheap to lower the barrier to entry? Whatever. I'd like a hardcover version. The paperback pamphlet it comes as is flimsy and definitely not ready for the rigors of constant handling and page flipping with multiple bookmarks. My booklet is getting pretty ragged.
10. More for DMs than for players. There isn't very much in here that helps the player. Like I already said, it neglects character creation. It teaches the rules to the DM in terms that the DM needs to understand them, but otherwise just leaves the players to their own devices to read the rule book themselves. It gives absolutely zero guidance on how a new DM can teach their new players the game as they learn it together. A missed opportunity.
11. NO. You know what?! ONE MORE THING! Phandelver is a stupid fucking name. So is phandalin. And so is phandal. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper geeky. There is a known group of people who will bail as soon as they hear that name just because it sounds exactly like the stereotype of what D&D was supposed to be in the 1970s.

10 Great Things About Lost Mines of Phandelver

1. It is as true and pure to the spirit of D&D as possible. This is what Dungeons & Dragons is all about. It has dungeons. It has dragons. It has a group of friends pretending to be big damn heroes. It has magic. It has fantasy. It has violence. You can not get more pure than this. Above all else, LMoP does one thing best: it teaches D&D as an experience.
2. It actually teaches new DMs how to DM. It is possible to sit down with 5 people who've never played, open the box, choose someone to be a DM, and start playing. From scratch. No past experience at the table. No preparation. Many people have been introduced to the game in just that way. That is EXACTLY what an introductory adventure is supposed to do, and it's amazing it took 40 years for someone to figure that out. As for the learning process, it starts easy and slowly works the DM into running increasingly complex aspects of play, eventually culminating in a wide-ranging sandbox followed by a huge hardcore dungeon crawl mixed with wandering monster tables. In a way, getting your players to level 5 is like working your way through a practical crash course on dungeon mastering followed by a final exam.
3. It has a little bit of everything. This adventure has little pieces of virtually every style of play anyone has ever done. It has roleplay, it has dungeon crawling, it's even possible to run the sandbox part as a hex crawl! It has theater of the mind play and grid tactics combat. It has check based exploration and improv based exploration. The game has a balanced mix of combat, exploration, and roleplay. All three pillars of adventure in perfect balance. No other adventure seems to hit on all 3 points in such an even handed way.
4. It's super portable. I know all the locations are clearly from the Forgotten Realms, but here's the thing: it doesn't do anything with those names. They're just names. That means you can plop this adventure into any campaign setting- even a homebrew one! All you have to do is fix the names to suit.
5. Breathing space! In the Realms no less! So my big problem with the Forgotten Realms is that it is DENSE. The history is long and convoluted. There are hundreds of novels detailing every nook and cranny of the setting. For someone new coming to the setting, it is completely overwhelming. How do you add your own adventure to something so utterly thick with content? This book shows you how. It lets you dive right in without worrying about what R.A.Salvatore wrote on page 346 of a novel published in 1996.
6. It's actually fun! Haha, what a fucking idea, eh?! I cannot describe how many token adventures I've played that exist just to serve a purpose other than fun. This. Is. A. Game. This is the first time I've ever seen a starter adventure that understands its primary purpose is to be enjoyed. This adventure is so fun, I have run it multiple times- and it just never seems to get old!
7. This thing is beefy. Five levels of xp is a buttload of encounters, and there is a lot of shit to do. My current run has been going for about 3 months now, racking up about 18 hours across biweekly sessions, and we're only just getting to the fourth chapter now! So not only does it introduce new players to the experience of a single session, it has enough material to give the experience of an actual ongoing campaign.
8. It never plays the same way twice. I've run LMoP about 8 times now, though rarely to its completion. I have never, ever seen this adventure go the same way twice. There's enough room for creativity that, (as long as you know how to think on your feet) this adventure can go sideways at any time.
9. There's a secret 5th chapter. In one of the chests in the last dungeon the players find a map that leads them to a dungeon designed by the DM. This is your graduation gift for completing the adventure: an opportunity to step beyond running the game and learn how to prepare one for yourself. This is your opportunity to apply everything you've learned thus far and create your own adventure with the resources you have at hand! The adventure essentially closes with "Now spread your wings and fly."
10. It flows directly into most other published adventures very well. With a little bit of a handwaved road trip, this adventure can lead directly into Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat. Princes of the Apocalypse is even more local and flows really well with almost no effort. Out of the Abyss doesn't flow quite as nicely, especially as it's a significant tonal shift. The players are high enough level to get sucked directly into Curse of Strahd without need for running Death House. Storm King's Thunder flows directly from LMoP almost as well as PotA. Tales from the Yawning Portal, along with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, all require a road trip, but otherwise flow quite well. Tomb of Annihilation has the hardest one to jump to, as it requires both a long road trip and a long boat ride. It's hard to justify why the adventurers suddenly picked up shop and went on such a long journey.

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