The Lost Mine of Phandelver

It's still a terrible name. But...

I've now read through the adventure, and it's actually very, very good. Exceptionally so, in fact - in the years since WotC bought TSR they have produced only a very few adventures that I would consider to be 'good', and not too many that are even 'okay'; this is actually one of the very best. It blows both the 4e adventures I've read ("King of the Trollhaunt Warrens" and "Tomb of Horrors") out of the water, and it outclasses all of the 3e adventures back at least as far as "Red Hand of Doom". It's even a better adventure than the highly regarded "Sunless Citadel".

In short, although I can only recommend getting the Starter Set if you intend to use this adventure, if you do have use for a starter adventure, this one is worth the price of admission by itself.

So what's so good about it?

The adventure is split into four parts. The first part is very, very basic - there are some goblins, and a small dungeon. But this is good; for new players you want something immediately understandable, and for new players to the edition you want something to take them through the rules mechanics. Still, for people who know 5e already, I recommend just skipping this part; narrate some of the outcomes, advance them to 2nd level, and go on to part two.

Part two details a basic starter town, complete with several NPCs, competing agendas, and a few mini-quests. Which is rather nice. The confrontation at the end of the chapter is a bit obvious, but even that has its moments.

Part three then provides a sandbox-y wilderness area, again with several mini-quests and two mini-dungeons.

And then part four presents a larger dungeon, this one with a fairly clear objective.

So, that's already quite varied for an introductory adventure, and is suprisingly sandbox-y and non-linear. On top of that, the adventure does two other things that are worth noting:

- In each of the mini-dungeons, and also in the full dungeon in part four, there's no one clear way to go - there are several choices throughout. Granted, most of these choices come to "which will you do first, but that's still better than the extremely-linear nature of other adventures I could name.

- There's one encounter in part three that is almost certainly beyond the PCs, and very likely to get them killed... even if they do everything 'right'. This is something WotC has studiously avoided ever since "Forge of Fury" (the second 3.0e adventure published), which caused a massive backlash. It's also something I'm very glad to see - it seems the days of being sure you can just wade through everything are gone.

There's probably more I could say about the adventure, but I'd be heading into spoiler territory. But in terms of writing, of atmosphere, and of roleplaying opportunities, this one is way ahead of the curve.

Good work!