How you feel about Lost Tales of Myth Drannor, which just won the Gold ENnie Award for Best Organized Play at Gen Con, will probably depend upon your needs as a DM and your personal taste.
Written by five of the administrators of D&D Adventurers LeagueTM –Robert Adducci, Bill Benham, Travis Woodall, Claire Hoffman and Alan Patrick – adds to Hillsfar and Myth Drannor lore based on updates submitted by D&D AL players and DMs. Those updates come from Adventurers League play up through the events of Rage of Demons.
However, the six adventures contained within Lost Tales are not tied to any particular D&D AL season. They can be used by themselves, as side adventures to other AL games or hardcover adventures, or, with a bit of modification, added to a home brew campaign.
Chapter 1 explains how a DM can calculate the strength of a party and how to modify them according to that strength. It also includes some good tips for DMs.
Chapter 2 provides the backstory for Hillsfar and where it stands right now in the history of the D&D multiverse. Even if you run a homebrew campaign, the lore in this chapter could be useful. Change the names and locations, and add a snippet or the entire thing to your campaign.
If you do run these adventures as they are within the Forgotten Realms, it includes Hillsfar's problems with The Great Law of Trade and The Great Law of Humanity, the village of Elventree, Lighthouse village, Yulash (which provides an easy connection to the Underdark for either Rage of Demons or your own adventures) and the caravan way station The Stop, though most of those only get a brief description, not a thorough exploration. Similarly, the elves of Cormanthyr get a chapter to provide background and story hooks.
The first adventure involves sprites send to find heroes to rescue a dryad in the forest of Cormanthyr whose tree are besieged by monsters and shadows. The DM is given various hooks to motivate the players, which, knowing players, is always helpful.
Speaking of players, while they're instructed to do as little harm to the forest as possible and technically shouldn't have to use fire at all in the early part of the adventure, the XP reward note says, “If the characters overcome the obstacle and do not burn down a portion of the forest they gain 25 XP.” Clearly the writer knows that players tend to use fire often and indiscriminately.
In the Weirding Vats adventure an old necromantic and alchemical evil is used to experiment on goblins, making them more dangerous. This adventure could easily be modified to have more of a science fiction angle or elements of Eberron if that suits your play style.
If your players like scheming and politics, the last adventure, Spawn of the Maimed Virulence, may be of interest. Three young green dragons are fighting each other over territory in and around the forests of Cormanthor, causing chaos. The players need to convince the dragons to move on, possibly by getting their mother to order them to another area. A party that loves role-play could have a lot of fun with this one.
If you use D&D AL modules regularly, Lost Tales of Myth Drannor should make you happy. If you're looking for Forgotten Realms lore and history, it also delivers, though maybe not as much as a lore buff may want. Just remember that these are designed to supplement the deeper, richer adventures WotC has been producing in the hardcover adventures, not replace them.
This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of ENWorld's User-Generated Content (UGC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
Written by five of the administrators of D&D Adventurers LeagueTM –Robert Adducci, Bill Benham, Travis Woodall, Claire Hoffman and Alan Patrick – adds to Hillsfar and Myth Drannor lore based on updates submitted by D&D AL players and DMs. Those updates come from Adventurers League play up through the events of Rage of Demons.
However, the six adventures contained within Lost Tales are not tied to any particular D&D AL season. They can be used by themselves, as side adventures to other AL games or hardcover adventures, or, with a bit of modification, added to a home brew campaign.
Chapter 1 explains how a DM can calculate the strength of a party and how to modify them according to that strength. It also includes some good tips for DMs.
Chapter 2 provides the backstory for Hillsfar and where it stands right now in the history of the D&D multiverse. Even if you run a homebrew campaign, the lore in this chapter could be useful. Change the names and locations, and add a snippet or the entire thing to your campaign.
If you do run these adventures as they are within the Forgotten Realms, it includes Hillsfar's problems with The Great Law of Trade and The Great Law of Humanity, the village of Elventree, Lighthouse village, Yulash (which provides an easy connection to the Underdark for either Rage of Demons or your own adventures) and the caravan way station The Stop, though most of those only get a brief description, not a thorough exploration. Similarly, the elves of Cormanthyr get a chapter to provide background and story hooks.
The first adventure involves sprites send to find heroes to rescue a dryad in the forest of Cormanthyr whose tree are besieged by monsters and shadows. The DM is given various hooks to motivate the players, which, knowing players, is always helpful.
Speaking of players, while they're instructed to do as little harm to the forest as possible and technically shouldn't have to use fire at all in the early part of the adventure, the XP reward note says, “If the characters overcome the obstacle and do not burn down a portion of the forest they gain 25 XP.” Clearly the writer knows that players tend to use fire often and indiscriminately.
In the Weirding Vats adventure an old necromantic and alchemical evil is used to experiment on goblins, making them more dangerous. This adventure could easily be modified to have more of a science fiction angle or elements of Eberron if that suits your play style.
If your players like scheming and politics, the last adventure, Spawn of the Maimed Virulence, may be of interest. Three young green dragons are fighting each other over territory in and around the forests of Cormanthor, causing chaos. The players need to convince the dragons to move on, possibly by getting their mother to order them to another area. A party that loves role-play could have a lot of fun with this one.
If you use D&D AL modules regularly, Lost Tales of Myth Drannor should make you happy. If you're looking for Forgotten Realms lore and history, it also delivers, though maybe not as much as a lore buff may want. Just remember that these are designed to supplement the deeper, richer adventures WotC has been producing in the hardcover adventures, not replace them.
This article was contributed by Beth Rimmels (brimmels) as part of ENWorld's User-Generated Content (UGC) program. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!
