On a Useful Review of Rise of Tiamat

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• My daughter pointed at the cover and said "Daddy book! Dinosaur!" So that's a win. The white dragon head looks a lot like a dinosaur, more so than the others.
• Disclaimer: Tiamat does not apologize for TPK's
• Another if "important nonplayer characters. . . were killed or captured, simply replace them with new nonplayer characters here—or assume that they were resurrected between the previous adventure an this one"
• Are these characters totally necessary? I don't know, but killing them should have some long term effect. I believe this type of advice is necessary for organized play, but for home play the players certainly should be able to screw up their plans.
• Man, I'm reading the outline. I'm picturing a dog in a banana suit saying "It's evil dragon killing time, evil dragon killing with a baseball bat!" Don't click that link.
• The bit about needing to ally with the Red Wizards against the exiles is really really good. Especially if you're combining this with Phandelver. 
• It's explicitly called out as a open-framework adventure. "[N]ot all your game sessions need to stick to the main track of the adventure narrative". What's more is that it explicitly says in this adventure that it's big and complicated and doesn't hold the Dungeon Master's hand on purpose because it's expected that even though it's hard, that they expect you to be good at your job. I'm happy about this.
• What's this NPC statblock?!
• Name
• Alignment/sex/race/class
• Ideals:
• Interaction traits:
• Pledged Resources:
• Apparently modern design visits Dungeons and Dragons! (Does something like this look familiar?)
• For the Forgotten Realms fans, there's a description of nearly every leader or king who's a member of the Lord's Alliance. That's really cool.
• Now that I've reached the first episode, I realize that not once have I run across anything that's raised any alarm bells. This is a player driven adventure with a time limit, objectives, and real consequences for failure. So far, this combined with the explicit statement about how this is a grown up adventure for Dungeon Master's with their big boy pants on means certainly sets it up among the better products that have been farmed out officially. Really, the "flaws" in Hoard of the Dragon Queen are that the Dungeon Master is expected to be good enough to handle the actions of the player characters, even when those actions are somewhat questionable. Should they rush into a town under attack by a blue dragon? Probably not, but most players will. Will they succeed, word is, a lot of people haven't done well. 
• tl;dr: The presentation of this module makes me hold Hoard of the Dragon Queen in higher esteem.
• Some people have complained that the adventure isn't laid out in a "linear" fashion. For instance, you go back to "chapter 1" several times. I have trouble understanding how anyone who makes that complaint isn't an ultramaroon. This is a sourcebook, not an adventure path. You use chapter one as the reference to run the adventure when they are in Waterdeep—it's where the waterdeep information is.
• The Council Scorecard is awesome. But it needs to be bigger. You can really see how much they tried to get in here, when they take something like that and shrink it to half a page. 

• The picture at the head of episode 2 is stiff and static, but expressionistic. There's an expressionistic quality to all the art that I really like. The paint has an impasto quality and is really interesting and unlike most art in gaming today. I'm a fan. 
• The white dragon encounter is already entertaining. Having to find his moving iceberg lair? Brilliant.
• This second tomb adventure is excellent also! The players follow in where the cultists have already gone. They see signs of where they have been and nearly every encounter has several outcomes. 
• I still don't like boxed text, espcially boxed text that assumes player action. That is still present in this module. 
• Goodness, adult green dragon in his lair is no pushover. This adventure is going crazy with possible total party kills. Surviving to the end of it legitimately, no matter what happens with tiamat is impressive.
• Heh, Dragons become a regular part of the cultists strike force. Here's an example with where a ranger who has a favored enemy can make a bit situational difference. 
• Oh, except here it notes that the character's will be raised by allies (perhaps) allowing them to continue with a possible advantage. Now that the cult thinks they are dead. . .
• Holy crap, a boatload of good dragons. Realms fans rejoice!
• The most frustrating thing about this adventure is that there are few encounters with good dragons—that more than anything else is what some of my players are looking forward too. I've fixed that problem in my own campaigns, but am a little sad they have to reach the Nether Mountains (and level 11+) before it occurs. I'm not saying it isn't realistic, but having the opportunity to at least see, encounter, or interact with good dragons would go a long way towards exciting players. Still, you can't have everything. And I am a skilled Dungeon Master. . .
• What? A maze that's mythical and not tedious? The adventure encounters in the back end of the path are really good. A lot of people were hoping that this adventure would be comparable the legendary Masks of Nyarlathotep adventure for Call of Cthulhu (not to set your expectations too high). The Rise of Tiamat definitely moves towards that kind of gameplay.
• The mission to Thay is excellent. Creepy, horrifying and overwhelming. It lives up to exactly what I think entering Thay would be like.
• The module contains the heading "Ruthless play and high stakes" in bold. Warm feelings.
• Oh, here's a giant super entertaining block of text about what happens when (well. . . if) Tiamat wins! Oh, man, it's awesome."[T]he age of mortals comes to an end, and the age of dragons begins." No kidding.
• Even if you win it's a mess!