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Hoard of the Dragon Queen, looking for advice on how to draw party back on track
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<blockquote data-quote="hastur_nz" data-source="post: 7171524" data-attributes="member: 40592"><p>So on reflection, I think that, at best, you can only take some of the elements from Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and use them in completely different ways. I've done a bit of that in my current Storm King's Thunder campaign, where I've fleshed out and added to various little bits, making them "make sense" in terms of the evolving "plot" that's coming out of my game; for example played out the alliance between Hill Giants and Orcs, with the Hill Giant Chief trying harder to shut down the PC's.</p><p></p><p>I think in your campaign, you are especially battling with the desire to keep a "sandbox" style of adventure, where you have a random collection of PC's with no clear unifying goal, with players attempting to create their own mini-games, but with no real glue to bind it all together. So to help it out, I'd suggest add some more glue, try and bring the threads together, and focus on Cause and Effect, i.e. the players do something, they see the results (which are probably not good), so they can easily find some motivations, if "save the region" isn't motivating them. </p><p></p><p>Can you help make "defeat the Cult of the Dragon" a unifying goal for the group, and hence play out a modified form of the HotDQ end-game? Only you know the answer, but if you want it to be, you just need to make the conflict personal enough to all the PC's, until they can't wait to kill them all. Take your idea of skyreach threatening the sword coast, but turn it up to 11 and make it *personal* not just something that threatens NPC's that your PC's don't seem to care about. Make the conflict direct, between the antagonists and the protagonists.</p><p></p><p>Or do the PC's end up looking, to the common folk, effectively just another "bad guy group", in which case just who are the Real Heroes that eventually turn up and save the day from your players machinations, or die trying? In other words, add some new antagonists, in direct conflict with the PCs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="hastur_nz, post: 7171524, member: 40592"] So on reflection, I think that, at best, you can only take some of the elements from Hoard of the Dragon Queen, and use them in completely different ways. I've done a bit of that in my current Storm King's Thunder campaign, where I've fleshed out and added to various little bits, making them "make sense" in terms of the evolving "plot" that's coming out of my game; for example played out the alliance between Hill Giants and Orcs, with the Hill Giant Chief trying harder to shut down the PC's. I think in your campaign, you are especially battling with the desire to keep a "sandbox" style of adventure, where you have a random collection of PC's with no clear unifying goal, with players attempting to create their own mini-games, but with no real glue to bind it all together. So to help it out, I'd suggest add some more glue, try and bring the threads together, and focus on Cause and Effect, i.e. the players do something, they see the results (which are probably not good), so they can easily find some motivations, if "save the region" isn't motivating them. Can you help make "defeat the Cult of the Dragon" a unifying goal for the group, and hence play out a modified form of the HotDQ end-game? Only you know the answer, but if you want it to be, you just need to make the conflict personal enough to all the PC's, until they can't wait to kill them all. Take your idea of skyreach threatening the sword coast, but turn it up to 11 and make it *personal* not just something that threatens NPC's that your PC's don't seem to care about. Make the conflict direct, between the antagonists and the protagonists. Or do the PC's end up looking, to the common folk, effectively just another "bad guy group", in which case just who are the Real Heroes that eventually turn up and save the day from your players machinations, or die trying? In other words, add some new antagonists, in direct conflict with the PCs. [/QUOTE]
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