I was just noticing little links between them that might be twisted/exploited by a clever DM to perhaps allow for a parallel campaign that uses bits and pieces but maybe goes a whole other direction. There's a tenuous alliance b/n Dragons and Giants during the Tyranny of Dragons storyline. Then a treacherous Dragon manipulating Giants during Storm King's Thunder. Dragon Heist hinges on missing gold, whole Tyranny of Dragons has the Cult of the Dragon stealing hordes. Dragon Heist also has possible villains which might include a family that could easily be knee deep in the Baldur's Gate Descent storyline... I dunno. Maybe some massive conspiracy by a mastermind behind the scenes? Someone who benefits from some/all of these nefarious plots coming to fruition? A Faerunian Lex Luthor perhaps? Lol
I don’t use the modern modules so I cannot speak to those specifically. But the specific reason I prefer older modules is that they tend to be shorter so I feel that grants me a little more flexibility to do what you described. Finding interesting ways to link multiple modules together in clever ways that make many disparate adventures all come together into a larger campaign like that has been a fantastic tool for a DM’s toolbox for decades. And if you can find multiple interesting ways to mix and match them then you can be fairly confident that you can make some connections even when the players do exactly the opposite from what you expected.
Modern adventures are not modules... In the sense that they are not meant, like the old ones, to be modular in design. The old "modules" were literally modular -- they were named that because you could pick one up and plop it down into your world almost entirely without the need to edit anything, and run it as is, assuming you had a group of characters of the right levels. You didn't need to have done any particular module before, and you didn't need to follow up with any particular module after.
The current batch of adventures are not modules, and frankly most of them are not what I would call adventures, because an adventure generally has one basic plot or storyline. The current batch of books are actually campaigns, some of them long enough to get characters from level 1-13 or 1-15. Because they are designed that way... and because just about nothing published by WOTC addresses the upper levels (14-20), you can't, at least as they are written, easily follow one of these campaign adventures up with another one.
So, if you want to connect them all into one campaign, you will have to do a lot of modifications -- to all of them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I could see maybe running the same players, with different characters, through each one. Then at the end homebrew that mastermind adventure. Let each player choose one of the characters they used in one of the campaigns, and bring them together. Like the marvel movies. Where each of those first published adventures is like iron man, Thor and capt. America. Then the homebrew brings them together, starting at level 14 for what acts like the avengers. It would take a long time and a very stable group, but it could be really cool.
I'm currently running Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning portal as a single campaign. However, both of these are more or less collections of loosely linked modules rather than hardcover storyline campaigns.
If you are looking for an underlying storyline to somehow link most of the full campaign hardcover books then you might be able to come up with something to tie several of them together but you might need to adjust the content to fit some overarching theme you might come up with. I don't think there is anything immediately obvious to directly link together, giants, dragons, underdark, devils/demons, extra planar vampires, death curses and proto-gods, waterdeep and the legendary undermountain dungeon, frigid adventure in the far north and others. (though there are hints that some obelisks mentioned in various places may have some significance). (On the other hand, if you want to come up with some idea of Acerak trying to manipulate the multiverse for their own benefit bringing various forces for evil into conflict then ... it might work?)
When I first jumped back into D&D, I ran both LMoP and DoIP as a combined campaign, letting my groups figure out where they wanted to go (I was running two separate campaigns). I found that it offered a great deal of flexibility while allowing me to get back into DMing without a bunch of heavy lifting. Since then I have found that it allows for flexibility, more freedom to explore for the groups, and actually keeps people from meta gaming (since we're not following one adventure or the other). One big example for you: Will they encounter the green dragon from LMoP? Or the white dragon from DoIP?
Additionally, it has allowed me to insert my homebrew ideas, creatures, magic items, plot twists, and the like at the time and place of my choosing (which helps, as work will often kick my ass and leave little time for preparing). With some input from the forums, I came up with ideas for Tresendar Manor and what it would take to rebuild it, NPCs who might assist them with it that they meet along the way (saving the miners in Mountain's Toe Gold Mine for example), and what type of keep it would become. I figured out what their take of Wave Echo Cave was, how they received it, where the map in Mormesk's book lead, and the like.
TL/DR it's a great way to do most of the heavy lifting while allowing swamped DMs the opportunity to insert their own ideas at the point of their choosing.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
Yes, my Storm King's Thunder campaign started of with lvl 1-3 being an old adventure from 2e leading into "The Forge of Fury" from Tales from the Yawning Portal, then that led to Bryn Shandr just before the Giants attacked. As the proper SKT campaign went on I added random encounters with the Cult of the Dragon every now and then, and in the endgame I made the Cult responsible for the abduction of the King with Iymrith taking the role as a head of the blue dragonflight who had been approached by the cult seeking to ally with her to obtain the Storm King's throne for some nefarious purposes.
In the end, the party died while hunting for the Draakhorn but not before taking out several heads of the cult, resurrecting the Giant Queen, and possibly being enough of a hindrance that the rest of the Sword Coast could muster a defence against whatever the cult had planned together with the Storm Giants. (Had they survived the campaign would've led to the final battle at Tiamat's Temple.)
are you talking about the modules for Adventure League and other stuff on the DMs Guild or the adventure paths (hardcovers)? I have ran the seasonal modules as a campaign for AL people. The only thing to there is take notes and have monsters remember the pcs name.
i have homebrew played in a campaign which mix Tyranny of Dragons and a little bit of Giants.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I was just noticing little links between them that might be twisted/exploited by a clever DM to perhaps allow for a parallel campaign that uses bits and pieces but maybe goes a whole other direction.
There's a tenuous alliance b/n Dragons and Giants during the Tyranny of Dragons storyline.
Then a treacherous Dragon manipulating Giants during Storm King's Thunder.
Dragon Heist hinges on missing gold, whole Tyranny of Dragons has the Cult of the Dragon stealing hordes.
Dragon Heist also has possible villains which might include a family that could easily be knee deep in the Baldur's Gate Descent storyline...
I dunno.
Maybe some massive conspiracy by a mastermind behind the scenes?
Someone who benefits from some/all of these nefarious plots coming to fruition?
A Faerunian Lex Luthor perhaps? Lol
I don’t use the modern modules so I cannot speak to those specifically. But the specific reason I prefer older modules is that they tend to be shorter so I feel that grants me a little more flexibility to do what you described. Finding interesting ways to link multiple modules together in clever ways that make many disparate adventures all come together into a larger campaign like that has been a fantastic tool for a DM’s toolbox for decades. And if you can find multiple interesting ways to mix and match them then you can be fairly confident that you can make some connections even when the players do exactly the opposite from what you expected.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Modern adventures are not modules... In the sense that they are not meant, like the old ones, to be modular in design. The old "modules" were literally modular -- they were named that because you could pick one up and plop it down into your world almost entirely without the need to edit anything, and run it as is, assuming you had a group of characters of the right levels. You didn't need to have done any particular module before, and you didn't need to follow up with any particular module after.
The current batch of adventures are not modules, and frankly most of them are not what I would call adventures, because an adventure generally has one basic plot or storyline. The current batch of books are actually campaigns, some of them long enough to get characters from level 1-13 or 1-15. Because they are designed that way... and because just about nothing published by WOTC addresses the upper levels (14-20), you can't, at least as they are written, easily follow one of these campaign adventures up with another one.
So, if you want to connect them all into one campaign, you will have to do a lot of modifications -- to all of them.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Agreed. That's what I meant by "bits and pieces." They're all far too involved to link sequentially.
I could see maybe running the same players, with different characters, through each one. Then at the end homebrew that mastermind adventure. Let each player choose one of the characters they used in one of the campaigns, and bring them together.
Like the marvel movies. Where each of those first published adventures is like iron man, Thor and capt. America. Then the homebrew brings them together, starting at level 14 for what acts like the avengers.
It would take a long time and a very stable group, but it could be really cool.
I'm currently running Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning portal as a single campaign. However, both of these are more or less collections of loosely linked modules rather than hardcover storyline campaigns.
If you are looking for an underlying storyline to somehow link most of the full campaign hardcover books then you might be able to come up with something to tie several of them together but you might need to adjust the content to fit some overarching theme you might come up with. I don't think there is anything immediately obvious to directly link together, giants, dragons, underdark, devils/demons, extra planar vampires, death curses and proto-gods, waterdeep and the legendary undermountain dungeon, frigid adventure in the far north and others. (though there are hints that some obelisks mentioned in various places may have some significance). (On the other hand, if you want to come up with some idea of Acerak trying to manipulate the multiverse for their own benefit bringing various forces for evil into conflict then ... it might work?)
When I first jumped back into D&D, I ran both LMoP and DoIP as a combined campaign, letting my groups figure out where they wanted to go (I was running two separate campaigns). I found that it offered a great deal of flexibility while allowing me to get back into DMing without a bunch of heavy lifting. Since then I have found that it allows for flexibility, more freedom to explore for the groups, and actually keeps people from meta gaming (since we're not following one adventure or the other). One big example for you: Will they encounter the green dragon from LMoP? Or the white dragon from DoIP?
Additionally, it has allowed me to insert my homebrew ideas, creatures, magic items, plot twists, and the like at the time and place of my choosing (which helps, as work will often kick my ass and leave little time for preparing). With some input from the forums, I came up with ideas for Tresendar Manor and what it would take to rebuild it, NPCs who might assist them with it that they meet along the way (saving the miners in Mountain's Toe Gold Mine for example), and what type of keep it would become. I figured out what their take of Wave Echo Cave was, how they received it, where the map in Mormesk's book lead, and the like.
TL/DR it's a great way to do most of the heavy lifting while allowing swamped DMs the opportunity to insert their own ideas at the point of their choosing.
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
Yes, my Storm King's Thunder campaign started of with lvl 1-3 being an old adventure from 2e leading into "The Forge of Fury" from Tales from the Yawning Portal, then that led to Bryn Shandr just before the Giants attacked. As the proper SKT campaign went on I added random encounters with the Cult of the Dragon every now and then, and in the endgame I made the Cult responsible for the abduction of the King with Iymrith taking the role as a head of the blue dragonflight who had been approached by the cult seeking to ally with her to obtain the Storm King's throne for some nefarious purposes.
In the end, the party died while hunting for the Draakhorn but not before taking out several heads of the cult, resurrecting the Giant Queen, and possibly being enough of a hindrance that the rest of the Sword Coast could muster a defence against whatever the cult had planned together with the Storm Giants. (Had they survived the campaign would've led to the final battle at Tiamat's Temple.)
I am one with the Force. The Force is with me.
are you talking about the modules for Adventure League and other stuff on the DMs Guild or the adventure paths (hardcovers)? I have ran the seasonal modules as a campaign for AL people. The only thing to there is take notes and have monsters remember the pcs name.
i have homebrew played in a campaign which mix Tyranny of Dragons and a little bit of Giants.
No Gaming is Better than Bad Gaming.