Which D&D campaign should I run? A DM's comparison

The question behind “which campaign should I run” is almost never about quality. All the major 5e campaigns are competently made. The question is which one matches how much prep you can do each week, how long your group will realistically keep meeting, and what your players want out of a game.

Here is what each one actually asks of you.

The short answer

The easy ones

Dragon of Icespire Peak is a job board. Three quests are available, the party picks one, you prepare that one. You never hold more than a single location in your head, and each session has a clean beginning and end. It is the lowest-stress campaign in print and it finishes in eight to twelve sessions, which matters more than people admit — a group that finishes something is far more likely to start another. Our full guide to running it covers which quests to cut.

Lost Mine of Phandelver is the better story and slightly more work. It has a proper three-act shape, a memorable villain in the Black Spider, and Phandalin, which is the best small town published for 5e. The Redbrand hideout is a genuinely good first dungeon. The DM guide covers the pacing problems in the middle.

Run either of these first. Then run the other one, combined, in the same region — they share Phandalin and slot together neatly.

The great one

Curse of Strahd is still the high-water mark. Barovia is small, bounded and fully described, so the sandbox never sprawls. Strahd is the only 5e villain who is present throughout rather than waiting at the end. The Tarokka reading randomises three major elements, so no two runs are the same and the DM cannot be spoiled by a player who has read the book.

What it asks of you: tonal control. Barovia is gothic horror and it collapses instantly into comedy if you let it. It also expects you to play Strahd as an intelligent recurring presence, which means improvising him in scenes rather than reading a statblock. Our guide to running it covers the Tarokka reading and the pacing of Strahd’s appearances.

Not for a first campaign, but a very good second one.

From the shop

DnD Handouts — 8 Complete Campaigns, 45,000+ Props

$134 $40.20

Browse on Etsy →

If you expect to run more than one of these — and most DMs do, over a few years — the per-campaign handout bundles add up fast. The combined bundle covers all eight campaigns on this page: props, letters, maps, NPC cards, tokens and paper minis for Strahd, Saltmarsh, Icespire Peak, Phandelver, Tomb of Annihilation, Dragon Heist, Icewind Dale and Witchlight in one download.

The specialist ones

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is the campaign you can run for people who do not enjoy combat. It is explicitly written so that the entire adventure can be completed without a single fight, and the Feywild setting gives you licence for logic that would be nonsense anywhere else. Excellent for younger players, mixed groups, and tables burnt out on encounter balance. Weak if your players want a tactical game — the running guide covers where to add teeth.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh is an anthology, not a campaign, which is either a feature or a problem depending on your group. If people miss sessions, episodic adventures are far kinder than a continuous plot. It also has the best naval rules in 5e. The work is connecting the seven adventures, which the Saltmarsh guide handles through the town’s three factions.

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden has the strongest opening act of any 5e campaign — ten isolated towns in permanent darkness, each with a secret, and genuine survival pressure. It also has a notorious second half that changes genre abruptly. Run the first act, and be ready to make choices about the rest. See running Rime of the Frostmaiden and the cold weather survival rules.

The demanding ones

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist is short, brilliant at the edges, and hollow in the middle. The first chapter is excellent, the finale is excellent, and between them is a city, a faction war, and a great deal of blank space that you fill. Experienced DMs love it because it is a framework for the campaign they wanted to run anyway. New DMs frequently stall in chapter two. The running guide covers how to structure the middle.

Tomb of Annihilation is the lethal one. A death curse on a timer, hex-crawl jungle travel with supply and disease tracking, and a final megadungeon that kills characters with traps rather than monsters. Tables that want danger love it. It demands the most bookkeeping of any campaign here — see the running guide and the hex coordinates tool for the travel half.

How to actually choose

Three questions, in this order.

How much prep can you do in a week? Be honest, and assume the honest answer is less than you hope. If it is under an hour, run Icespire Peak or Phandelver. Everything else will start well and stall around session eight.

How long will this group keep meeting? Most groups do not last a year. A campaign that takes 50 sessions will probably not finish. That is fine if everyone knows it, and demoralising if they expected an ending. Short campaigns finish, and finishing feels good.

What do your players want? Ask them in a session zero rather than guessing. A table that wants tactical combat will be bored by Witchlight. A table that wants roleplay and intrigue will resent Tomb of Annihilation. This is the single most common reason a campaign fails, and it is the easiest to avoid.

Before you commit

Read the whole book first — not the first chapter. Every campaign here has a structural problem somewhere in the second half, and knowing about it in advance is the difference between adjusting for it and being ambushed by it in month four.

Then do the cheap prep that pays off across any campaign: decide how you will prep sessions fast, get your battlemap workflow sorted before session one rather than during session three, and set up a recap habit so the plot survives the gaps between sessions.

The short version

Pick for prep load first, length second, tone third. Icespire Peak and Phandelver to learn. Curse of Strahd when you are ready for something great. Witchlight for a table that does not want to fight. Dragon Heist and Tomb of Annihilation only when you are confident improvising. The best campaign is the one you will still be running in month six.