I'm wondering which town I should pick in chapter two. Any of the three would be fun for my groups characters. I'm a new DM, so if there is one that may be easier to run then I'll go that route. What advice does everyone have?
Give the players the quests (they're pretty weak excuses to get them to each town) and let them choose and just roll with it.
1st time DM here also running SKT, I'm at chapter 4 now. Some of it has been pretty challenging for me, but it's all part of the learning experience and I prefer to let the players dictate where they go. Chapter 3 can be a bit daunting as they can literally go anywhere for as long as they like. I just talked to them and asked which quests they thought they were going to want to do so I could do some prep on them between sessions. I also prepped some of the cooler encounters and slotted them in where I felt they'd be fun/appropriate, the rest I've just been winging.
Finally, don't be afraid to go off-book. I've done that a few times now when I've felt that the in book hooks were less interesting or made less sense to how the party functioned. Also listen to your players. For example up to this point (do I need to put a spoilers thing here?): They'd cleared out Nightstone, in the process taming a goblin berzerker I'd put in the town to challenge them should they walk it (this is where my party doing things I didn't expect began...). They then cleared out the dripping caves most effectively, and even I was feeling that the in-book quests weren't really rewarding them enough. They wanna fight and get cool stuff. To this point there'd been a drought of cool stuff.
So when they ran into Zephros, rather than the two encounters on the journey they should have, I kept the one with the Alliance (as two PCs are alliance I thought that'd have promise for some interesting RP from them) but ditched the cultists when they party asked Zephros to help them find magic stuff. He gave the party the location of an undiscovered tomb and they went off on a whole separate adventure on the way to the town. A river trip, tomb raid, boat race and dungeon crawl later, they arrived at Triboar and we're back on book, with some cool little plot hooks in there that linked to a previous adventure, and to one of the PCs motives for hanging around with this party.
I'm wondering which town I should pick in chapter two. Any of the three would be fun for my groups characters. I'm a new DM, so if there is one that may be easier to run then I'll go that route. What advice does everyone have?
Give the players the quests (they're pretty weak excuses to get them to each town) and let them choose and just roll with it.
1st time DM here also running SKT, I'm at chapter 4 now. Some of it has been pretty challenging for me, but it's all part of the learning experience and I prefer to let the players dictate where they go. Chapter 3 can be a bit daunting as they can literally go anywhere for as long as they like. I just talked to them and asked which quests they thought they were going to want to do so I could do some prep on them between sessions. I also prepped some of the cooler encounters and slotted them in where I felt they'd be fun/appropriate, the rest I've just been winging.
Finally, don't be afraid to go off-book. I've done that a few times now when I've felt that the in book hooks were less interesting or made less sense to how the party functioned. Also listen to your players. For example up to this point (do I need to put a spoilers thing here?): They'd cleared out Nightstone, in the process taming a goblin berzerker I'd put in the town to challenge them should they walk it (this is where my party doing things I didn't expect began...). They then cleared out the dripping caves most effectively, and even I was feeling that the in-book quests weren't really rewarding them enough. They wanna fight and get cool stuff. To this point there'd been a drought of cool stuff.
So when they ran into Zephros, rather than the two encounters on the journey they should have, I kept the one with the Alliance (as two PCs are alliance I thought that'd have promise for some interesting RP from them) but ditched the cultists when they party asked Zephros to help them find magic stuff. He gave the party the location of an undiscovered tomb and they went off on a whole separate adventure on the way to the town. A river trip, tomb raid, boat race and dungeon crawl later, they arrived at Triboar and we're back on book, with some cool little plot hooks in there that linked to a previous adventure, and to one of the PCs motives for hanging around with this party.