Lost Mine of Phandelver in Actual Play

The work-game is finally coming to the end of "The Lost Mine of Phandelver", the introductory adventure for 5e. On my read-through, I was hugely impressed with this adventure, but of course there's always some doubt about whether something plays as well as it reads. So...

• As an introductory adventure, with an experienced DM and novice players, it is indeed great. It's maybe a bit basic for more experienced players (goblins, dragons, and orcs - oh my!), but for players new to the game it has a really nice blend of the three pillars, and does well starting simple and becoming more complex as it goes on.
  
• For a less experienced DM, however, it seems that it's not quite as good (the middle section of the game was run by someone else due to my erratic scheduling). The DM in question found that the material was quite poorly arranged, with data that became relevant not being immediately obvious. That's certainly a feature of published adventures generally, and WotC's 5e adventures in particular.
  
• The approach they've taken with the monster stats in particular is annoying - rather than including the stats in with the encounters where they are relevant, they've gathered them all at the back of the book. This is especially damning with "Lost Mine" - since it's part of a boxed set, they could easily have split the material to place the adventure proper in one booklet and move the monsters to a second. (I think part of their motive here is to make it easy to convert to other versions of the game - just use the stats for your preferred edition and the rest should work as-is. But it's still frustrating.)

All in all, though, I'm very well pleased with the adventure. As an introduction for new players, it really is great. And the combination of several mini-dungeons along with strong sandbox sections is inspired - it's something that's particularly good about several of the 5e storylines, but probably at its best here.

Of course, now I need to come up with something to do next...

Hurrah!

After a very long wait, FFG have finally released their 30th anniversary reprint of the Star Wars d6 roleplaying game. Hopefully before too long I'll finally receive my copy, and then it will just be a matter of deciding what to do with it!