My group of two years will be starting up a Tyranny of Dragons run in June. I have read through the adventure at a few times and love the story so I am excited to run it. However, I know Tyranny is considered to have quite a few problems and obviously, I want to make it as good as it can be for my players as this will be our first adventure in the Forgotten Realms.
I have found Sly Flourish quite helpful and am reading through their articles as well as Power Score's guide. Are there any others I should hit up?
For those who have run Tyranny of Dragons, what did you do that either worked or didn't work?
Edit :- An adjustment I made was combining episodes 2 and 3 by having the raiders get the move out order while the Adventures are there and had them drafted into loading waggons with loot from the hatchery thus gaining them access to it. I put Leosin Erlanthar and a load of other prisoners in area 6 meat locker... I just didn't like the going back to the raider camp again setup... and so far so good then again my players were happy to be sneaky
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
I ran this for about 3 chapters for my friends and they enjoyed it. Although it has some problems with evil characters for example. Motivation for characters to help can be very hard to find if you want to avoid being the generic WoW NPC Quest giver. I have gone entirely off-branch now. I will use some NPCs from it and dungeons, but for now, my players are going to Avernus directly.
They can stop the cult, they can try and fight Tiamat directly or help Tiamat by fighting Asmodeus. Granted it just happened due to two of our characters dying to bad luck on rolls and I gave them the Devil Contract opportunity to keep living.
Ever since I dropped the very linear story-telling of HotDQ I feel there is less badly written scenes in which they let a family die, because they have no reason to help, due to their alignment being on the wrong end of this. So they needed a little help and that I got from Descent into Avernus mixing in a little bit, which so far has lead to very good results.
In addition to Sly Flourish and Powerscore (their guides are the best), I’d recommend reading Merric’s Musing Tyranny of Dragons too. You’ll also need to get the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide if you don’t already have it, as all the towns and city in the adventure are hardly detailed at all.
I've been running my group through this one for the last couple years. I've posted a lot about it over the years. Here are some links to some of the posts I've made:
Hi all,
My group of two years will be starting up a Tyranny of Dragons run in June. I have read through the adventure at a few times and love the story so I am excited to run it. However, I know Tyranny is considered to have quite a few problems and obviously, I want to make it as good as it can be for my players as this will be our first adventure in the Forgotten Realms.
I have found Sly Flourish quite helpful and am reading through their articles as well as Power Score's guide. Are there any others I should hit up?
For those who have run Tyranny of Dragons, what did you do that either worked or didn't work?
Thanks in advance!
Currently running HotDQ for the first time also finding Sly Flourish very helpful
Hack & Slash - http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/p/hoard-of-dragon-queen-index.html super useful aswell
Edit :- An adjustment I made was combining episodes 2 and 3 by having the raiders get the move out order while the Adventures are there and had them drafted into loading waggons with loot from the hatchery thus gaining them access to it. I put Leosin Erlanthar and a load of other prisoners in area 6 meat locker...
I just didn't like the going back to the raider camp again setup... and so far so good then again my players were happy to be sneaky
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
I ran this for about 3 chapters for my friends and they enjoyed it. Although it has some problems with evil characters for example. Motivation for characters to help can be very hard to find if you want to avoid being the generic WoW NPC Quest giver. I have gone entirely off-branch now. I will use some NPCs from it and dungeons, but for now, my players are going to Avernus directly.
They can stop the cult, they can try and fight Tiamat directly or help Tiamat by fighting Asmodeus. Granted it just happened due to two of our characters dying to bad luck on rolls and I gave them the Devil Contract opportunity to keep living.
Ever since I dropped the very linear story-telling of HotDQ I feel there is less badly written scenes in which they let a family die, because they have no reason to help, due to their alignment being on the wrong end of this. So they needed a little help and that I got from Descent into Avernus mixing in a little bit, which so far has lead to very good results.
In addition to Sly Flourish and Powerscore (their guides are the best), I’d recommend reading Merric’s Musing Tyranny of Dragons too. You’ll also need to get the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide if you don’t already have it, as all the towns and city in the adventure are hardly detailed at all.
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I've been running my group through this one for the last couple years. I've posted a lot about it over the years. Here are some links to some of the posts I've made:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/82017-dexterity-checks-in-rise-of-tiamat-ice-caves#c3
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/96865-advice-for-running-tyranny-of-dragons#c5
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/96865-advice-for-running-tyranny-of-dragons#c3
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/96531-horde-of-the-dragon-queen#c7
One of those links has a more extensive list of links to my previous posts about this adventure. Hope they help!
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Wow, thanks everyone! All of this is great and definitely gives me a ton to think about and use. This is awesome!