Hi everyone. Newbie DM here. We’re almost done with LMOP and I just started reading though SKT and I feel extremely overwhelmed by the amount of detail, locations, characters this adventure has.
I plan to run it for 2 groups simultaneously since I read it ha lots of potential for it. Since it has so much branching I wanted each group’s actions to affect the other, but so far I have no clue how I could do it.
Chapter 1: On one hand, it seems extremely rushed so characters get to lvl 5 Asap. On the other hand, it specifies so much detail I have no clue how I’m going to present it unless I homebrew many precuel side quests
chapter 2: I’m half way though and it has soooo much detail on each location it is extremely hard to keep track of everything. Plus, there’s only one giant attack and all te prep for the town seems useless (again, unless I homebrew a precuel or something)
chapter 3 seems to be even worse in this regard.
Any tips on how to handle the adventure, pacing and guide the players? Even if I ask at the end of each session where do they want to go next, how do I handle it?
So I've been running this game on a weekly basis for about 3 months now and here's a few things about pacing/the open world.
Spoilers ahead.
1. If you are starting at level 1 I would recommend the opening Nightstone section as it uses milestone progression to get from levels 1-4 and that section can be completed in about 5-7 hours so by the end of the 2nd session (for most groups) you will be at level 5 and be ready to catapult into the full story.
2. There are three adventure hooks in this section that your players will have to choose from and you can have the players pick which one at the end of the second session (my players picked the Tressym as they wanted a flying cat. coincidentally this takes the to Goldenfields which in my opinion was going to be the easiest to run. The third session should be the transit in Zephros' cloud keep and this will allow you two weeks to prepare for Goldenfields or whichever destination they have chosen.
3. Spend a lot of time before the Giant attack laying out the city. there are 6 npc's they expect you to make prominent in this section I only focused on 4. also flesh out the town with your own characters, at this point your party should have about 2000gp in unsold gems and other items if they are loot hungry like my group. You can also treat this Town as their home base for the next little while and have them form bonds with the npc's here. I allowed my group to spend 2 days in Goldenfields before the attack.
4. depending on which NPC's survive the attack they give out quests to lead you into chapter three and the PC's advance to lvl 6. I very literally printed out a map of the Sword Coast/North on 36inx24in Canvas and they use it to plan travel in the game. For example this is a quest from an npc in Goldenfields:
Miros Xelbrin’s Quest
Miros suggests that the characters travel to Amphail and “give his regards” to Arleosa Starhenge, the proprietor of a local tavern called the Stag-Horned Flagon. If the characters do so, Arleosa is delighted to hear that Miros is well and offers to buy them a round of drinks. The two performed together in a traveling carnival troupe many years ago.
Path. This quest will take the PC’s south from Goldenfields along the Northfurrow Road through Waterdeep. Shortly northwest on the High Road before swinging back north via the Long Road, passing through Rassalantar to Amphail.
Having this as an aid has greatly helped me as I can use it to plan the route they will take to get to different locations. With this information I check Chapter 3 for all those locations and plan what they will encounter in each place/on route and this gives me quite a bit of foresight. I also ask them to decide what they are doing for the next session at the end of the current one giving me the week to sort this out.
4. There are a few special quests at the end of Chapter 3 that you should read through and insert where necessary as they can catapult your group forward unexpectedly depending on what your group does. Mine have befriended the Giant in "The Old Tower" which has allowed them to skip forward to Chapter 5 which is where we are at now.
Hope this helps! It is quite a good story, I would recommend reading all the way through so that you at least have knowledge of what npc's are recurring and the basic beats of the plot for the story.
What an amazing walkthorugh!! You have no idea how much it helped! :) So, the idea at the end of chapter 2-3 is to have them take only 1 quest and make them do all the encounters on their way? That would be enough to level them up to lvl 6? I was also planning to throw some homebrew stuff in there.
I'm very newbie to 5e, but seems like this adventure rushes the levels too quick, ad gives them too much coins and Magic Items. Isn't it?
Don't worry about being overwhelmed by all the locations in chapter 3. At the end of a session, the PCs should have an idea of which way they want to go. Make them decide before you pack up for the evening. That way you'll know which locations to read up on, and you can ignore the rest.
I will be running SKT for my group soon, but I felt the Nightstone chapter was a bit lame, so I'm using Lost Mine of Phandelver to get them to level, and then we'll go in to chapter 2.
If you want to use Nightstone, the hooks for going there are a bit weak imo, and the encounter could be tweaked. Here is my take on Nightstone, and some recommended changes: [REDACTED]
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
You said that you were running LMoP already? Right now? It is my understanding that that finished up right around level 5. Just Connect one to the other and transition smoothly. Let them enter with whatever swag you've already given them.
You said that you were running LMoP already? Right now? It is my understanding that that finished up right around level 5. Just Connect one to the other and transition smoothly. Let them enter with whatever swag you've already given them.
Yes. There is a section in the back of SKT that specifically talks about running SKT after LMoP. Given that the PCs will be in the area of Phandelver, which is not far from Triboar, it would be easy enough to have them go there for the Fire Giant attack.
In my game, I decided that the magic Forge of Spells was also a part of the Vonindod that the Fire Giants want. The Black Spider was hired to find the Forge of Spells for a collector, and bring it to Triboar. Rather than the adventure as written, where the piece of the vonindod is buried under the campground, the Black Spider took the Forge of Spells to Troboar to sell to the collector, and the giants show up and take it instead.
I also foreshadowed SKT by having a cloud giant castle float over the area dropping boulders on their way to Nightstone. The PCs found one of these dropped boulders that had the giant rune for Enemy carved into it.
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"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Thank you very much for these links! They are extremely useful!
I am planning on do something similar. Black Spider is looking for a powerful giant artifact inside the wave Echo Cave, since it was the last known location. Unfortunately, the artifact can be accesed due debris from the war.
I also plan to make the characters (a lot later on) travel back in time, and revisit the forge of spells, right before the orc attack and meet some custom legenday heroes they've heard about during the campaign.
Thank you very much for these links! They are extremely useful!
I am planning on do something similar. Black Spider is looking for a powerful giant artifact inside the wave Echo Cave, since it was the last known location. Unfortunately, the artifact can be accesed due debris from the war.
I also plan to make the characters (a lot later on) travel back in time, and revisit the forge of spells, right before the orc attack and meet some custom legenday heroes they've heard about during the campaign.
That sounds super cool, Alejos. If I can make a suggestion... maybe when they find the forge the first time, there could be a skeleton there. The clothes the skeleton wears have deteriorated badly over the centuries, but maybe might look a teensy bit like something someone in the party is wearing? Enough that it doesn't mean it's them, but enough that when they go to the past if one of them dies you can say it was them all along. Just be sure to have other people in the past who are all wearing something somewhat similar to someone in the party, like a cloak the same colour, or a similar style of sword, etc.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing) You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Thank you very much for these links! They are extremely useful!
I am planning on do something similar. Black Spider is looking for a powerful giant artifact inside the wave Echo Cave, since it was the last known location. Unfortunately, the artifact can be accesed due debris from the war.
I also plan to make the characters (a lot later on) travel back in time, and revisit the forge of spells, right before the orc attack and meet some custom legenday heroes they've heard about during the campaign.
That sounds super cool, Alejos. If I can make a suggestion... maybe when they find the forge the first time, there could be a skeleton there. The clothes the skeleton wears have deteriorated badly over the centuries, but maybe might look a teensy bit like something someone in the party is wearing? Enough that it doesn't mean it's them, but enough that when they go to the past if one of them dies you can say it was them all along. Just be sure to have other people in the past who are all wearing something somewhat similar to someone in the party, like a cloak the same colour, or a similar style of sword, etc.
I'm totally stealing it! Awesome :D
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Hi everyone. Newbie DM here. We’re almost done with LMOP and I just started reading though SKT and I feel extremely overwhelmed by the amount of detail, locations, characters this adventure has.
I plan to run it for 2 groups simultaneously since I read it ha lots of potential for it. Since it has so much branching I wanted each group’s actions to affect the other, but so far I have no clue how I could do it.
Chapter 1: On one hand, it seems extremely rushed so characters get to lvl 5 Asap. On the other hand, it specifies so much detail I have no clue how I’m going to present it unless I homebrew many precuel side quests
chapter 2: I’m half way though and it has soooo much detail on each location it is extremely hard to keep track of everything. Plus, there’s only one giant attack and all te prep for the town seems useless (again, unless I homebrew a precuel or something)
chapter 3 seems to be even worse in this regard.
Any tips on how to handle the adventure, pacing and guide the players? Even if I ask at the end of each session where do they want to go next, how do I handle it?
So I've been running this game on a weekly basis for about 3 months now and here's a few things about pacing/the open world.
Spoilers ahead.
1. If you are starting at level 1 I would recommend the opening Nightstone section as it uses milestone progression to get from levels 1-4 and that section can be completed in about 5-7 hours so by the end of the 2nd session (for most groups) you will be at level 5 and be ready to catapult into the full story.
2. There are three adventure hooks in this section that your players will have to choose from and you can have the players pick which one at the end of the second session (my players picked the Tressym as they wanted a flying cat. coincidentally this takes the to Goldenfields which in my opinion was going to be the easiest to run. The third session should be the transit in Zephros' cloud keep and this will allow you two weeks to prepare for Goldenfields or whichever destination they have chosen.
3. Spend a lot of time before the Giant attack laying out the city. there are 6 npc's they expect you to make prominent in this section I only focused on 4. also flesh out the town with your own characters, at this point your party should have about 2000gp in unsold gems and other items if they are loot hungry like my group. You can also treat this Town as their home base for the next little while and have them form bonds with the npc's here. I allowed my group to spend 2 days in Goldenfields before the attack.
4. depending on which NPC's survive the attack they give out quests to lead you into chapter three and the PC's advance to lvl 6. I very literally printed out a map of the Sword Coast/North on 36inx24in Canvas and they use it to plan travel in the game. For example this is a quest from an npc in Goldenfields:
Miros Xelbrin’s Quest
Miros suggests that the characters travel to Amphail and “give his regards” to Arleosa Starhenge, the proprietor of a local tavern called the Stag-Horned Flagon. If the characters do so, Arleosa is delighted to hear that Miros is well and offers to buy them a round of drinks. The two performed together in a traveling carnival troupe many years ago.
Path. This quest will take the PC’s south from Goldenfields along the Northfurrow Road through Waterdeep. Shortly northwest on the High Road before swinging back north via the Long Road, passing through Rassalantar to Amphail.
Having this as an aid has greatly helped me as I can use it to plan the route they will take to get to different locations. With this information I check Chapter 3 for all those locations and plan what they will encounter in each place/on route and this gives me quite a bit of foresight. I also ask them to decide what they are doing for the next session at the end of the current one giving me the week to sort this out.
4. There are a few special quests at the end of Chapter 3 that you should read through and insert where necessary as they can catapult your group forward unexpectedly depending on what your group does. Mine have befriended the Giant in "The Old Tower" which has allowed them to skip forward to Chapter 5 which is where we are at now.
Hope this helps! It is quite a good story, I would recommend reading all the way through so that you at least have knowledge of what npc's are recurring and the basic beats of the plot for the story.
What an amazing walkthorugh!! You have no idea how much it helped! :) So, the idea at the end of chapter 2-3 is to have them take only 1 quest and make them do all the encounters on their way? That would be enough to level them up to lvl 6? I was also planning to throw some homebrew stuff in there.
I'm very newbie to 5e, but seems like this adventure rushes the levels too quick, ad gives them too much coins and Magic Items. Isn't it?
Don't worry about being overwhelmed by all the locations in chapter 3. At the end of a session, the PCs should have an idea of which way they want to go. Make them decide before you pack up for the evening. That way you'll know which locations to read up on, and you can ignore the rest.
There is a great web site that runs through SKT here: http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.ca/2016/08/dungeons-dragons-guide-to-storm-kings.html
I will be running SKT for my group soon, but I felt the Nightstone chapter was a bit lame, so I'm using Lost Mine of Phandelver to get them to level, and then we'll go in to chapter 2.
If you want to use Nightstone, the hooks for going there are a bit weak imo, and the encounter could be tweaked. Here is my take on Nightstone, and some recommended changes: [REDACTED]
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
You said that you were running LMoP already? Right now? It is my understanding that that finished up right around level 5. Just Connect one to the other and transition smoothly. Let them enter with whatever swag you've already given them.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?
Thank you very much for these links! They are extremely useful!
I am planning on do something similar. Black Spider is looking for a powerful giant artifact inside the wave Echo Cave, since it was the last known location. Unfortunately, the artifact can be accesed due debris from the war.
I also plan to make the characters (a lot later on) travel back in time, and revisit the forge of spells, right before the orc attack and meet some custom legenday heroes they've heard about during the campaign.
"Orcs are savage raiders and pillagers with stooped postures, low foreheads, and piggish faces with prominent lower canines that resemble tusks." MM p245 (original printing)
You don't OWN your books on DDB: WotC can change them any time. What do you think will happen when OneD&D comes out?