D&D 5E Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"

[BigBadDM]

Here are a couple of plot points I have changed so far:

1) The wyrmskull throne is just that, the skull of an ancient blue dragon. Iymrith's old lover to be exact.
2) Iymrith and her lover attached Triboar thousands of years ago. Iymrith's lover died from the Vonidod
3) The drow seek to control the Dawn Titan via an ancient command word. Command word tied to Mines of Phandelver in the Caves of Echoes. Drow exploiting Giants for Vonidod for their own.
4) The Oracle is nothing but the phylactery of Vecna looking to be reborn.
5) The artifacts under the Barbarians sites are Vecna's treasures, including eye and hand.
6) The sword of Kas is in the treasure hoard of Iymrith. The barbarians are the remnants of the armies that defeated Vecna.
7) Used the alternate story lines for Stone Giants and Cloud Giants in the front of SKT are being used.
8) Through years of battles, Harshnag is missing an eye.
9) Other details related so specific PC backgrounds (ie. Gnomes think one of the characters stole the ring of winter)
10) Combined castle from chapter 1 SKT (nightsone) into Cragmaw Castle location.
11) Other giant lords schemed with Iymrith to capture Storm King and kill wife.
12) Iymrith schemed with daugthers for power struggle.
13) Iymrith wishes to see all giants destroyed, uses PCs for this purpose
14) Conch shells can transport 2 people (or 1 giant). Forcing characters into 2 giant lords.

 

[Demetrios1453]

So, ran a session for the first time in a few weeks (due to scheduling conflicts, but thankfully we'll be able to play weekly on Sundays again for awhile). My group left Triboar and set a course to do all the side quests they had picked up in that section, with their first stop being Noanar's Hold. The main tweaks I added outside the story as published is that when they passed through Yartar, I heavily seeded some of the later plot. They noticed Lord Drylund's party barge as they crossed over the bridge in Yartar at dusk (and it would be kind of hard to not notice it!), and since one of the characters is a Waterdhavian noble, he got a hand-delivered invitation to go aboard (which the party declined to do at this point as they had so much else to do). I also made sure to seed Harshnag's appearance - tavern talk in the towns they are going through mention not only all the giant attacks, but that there is a frost giant seemingly fighting the other giants. Also, the party encountered a farm which had been recently attacked by fire giants, but Harshnag rescued the farmers and defeated the fire giants, much to the humans' surprise...

 

[MiraMels]

Also, the book makes a big deal of Storm King's Daughters happening after Tyranny of Dragons, but I'm running them as concurrent, and here's why I think that's a good idea.

If you, the DM, want to run with the interpretation that Annam broke the Ordnin, then the two being concurrent gives him a motivation for doing so: "King Hekaton! Our most ancient enemies are trying to pull their goddess into the Material Plane, and you are letting the SMALLFOLK DEAL WITH IT THEMSELVES? I can't intervene any more directly because of the rules we dieties must follow post-Sundering, but get your act together!"

If you, the DM, want to run with the interpretation that Imyrth's manipulations broke the Ordning, then that gives her the motivation of wanting to weaken the giants' internal hierarchy to pave the way for Tiamat's return.

I can't really think of any parts of the campaign that'd get weird if didn't explicitly happen after Tyranny of Dragons. Thoughts?

 

[Daern]

I like the idea. Another option could be that Imryth is trying to weaken the giants so that they are unable to organize resistance to Tiamat.

 

[Motorskills]

Here are a couple of plot points I have changed so far:

1) The wyrmskull throne is just that, the skull of an ancient blue dragon. Iymrith's old lover to be exact.
2) Iymrith and her lover attached Triboar thousands of years ago. Iymrith's lover died from the Vonidod
3) The drow seek to control the Dawn Titan via an ancient command word. Command word tied to Mines of Phandelver in the Caves of Echoes. Drow exploiting Giants for Vonidod for their own.
4) The Oracle is nothing but the phylactery of Vecna looking to be reborn.
5) The artifacts under the Barbarians sites are Vecna's treasures, including eye and hand.
6) The sword of Kas is in the treasure hoard of Iymrith. The barbarians are the remnants of the armies that defeated Vecna.
7) Used the alternate story lines for Stone Giants and Cloud Giants in the front of SKT are being used.
8) Through years of battles, Harshnag is missing an eye.
9) Other details related so specific PC backgrounds (ie. Gnomes think one of the characters stole the ring of winter)
10) Combined castle from chapter 1 SKT (nightsone) into Cragmaw Castle location.
11) Other giant lords schemed with Iymrith to capture Storm King and kill wife.
12) Iymrith schemed with daugthers for power struggle.
13) Iymrith wishes to see all giants destroyed, uses PCs for this purpose
14) Conch shells can transport 2 people (or 1 giant). Forcing characters into 2 giant lords.

I like these, I'll use many of them!

I'm still working my way through the book, but the role (ambition) of the Kraken seems a bit lacking to me? If that creature makes Iymrith look like an infant, the Kraken simply being a temporary jailor seems a bit thin, what do you think?

 

[JValeur]

Another shameless piece of advertising. I've just uploaded a DM's Resource for Goldenfields in Chapter 2 of Storm's King Thunder. The product is created to enhance the city of Goldenfields when you run it during the Storm King's Thunder adventure, as well as significantly reduce the preparation time needed to run Goldenfields in an entertaining way. The download includes:

• Introductions - a guide to introducing Goldenfields and its NPCs to your players in an immersive and entertaining manner.
• Attack on Goldenfields - a step-by-step guide to running the attack on Goldenfields, giving you a plan to follow so that you don't get overwhelmed.
• Playable NPCs - an evaluation of each playable NPC.
• NPC Quests - an evaluation of each NPC quest, as well as advice on which to focus on.
• Maps - no less than four 50 x 50 handdrawn maps of four different locations in and around Goldenfields, that can be both printed or used with a digital tabletop. The features of each map are also explained, and each map come in a gridded and ungridded version.
• Creature Cards - Printable index cards for each of the creatures your players are likely to interact with during the attack on Goldenfields.

Personally, I think it's an invaluable resource on the merits of the included maps alone (but I would think that, wouldn't I?), so I hope you'll give it a go. Here's the link again: DM's Resource for Goldenfields.

 

[JValeur]

And, yet another one I've just uploaded a DM's Resource for Triboar. The product is created to enhance the town of Triboar when you run it during the Storm King's Thunder adventure, as well as significantly reduce the preparation time needed to run Triboar in an entertaining way. The download includes:

• Introductions - a guide to introducing Triboar and its NPCs to your players in an immersive and entertaining manner. Includes two one-page quests that introduce your party to all the playable NPCs.
• Attack on Triboar - a step-by-step guide to running the attack on Triboar, giving you a plan to follow so that you don't get overwhelmed.
• Playable NPCs - an evaluation of each playable NPC.
• NPC Quests - an evaluation of each NPC quest, as well as advice on which to focus on.
• Maps - two 50 x 50 handdrawn maps of different locations in Triboar, that can be both printed or used with a digital tabletop. The features of each map are also explained, and each map come in a gridded and ungridded version. The maps are scaled perfectly to the map of the town found in the book.
• Creature Cards - Printable index cards for each of the creatures your players are likely to interact with during the attack on Triboar.

 

[Demetrios1453]

So, ran another session today, the second half of the "Go around the North completing side quests at level 6" section. A good time was had by all, especially during the Carriage House caper in Silverymoon, where the party's plan went completely awry (give the guards food poisoning to incapacitate them) due to the guards not being human after all (cambions are resistant to poison), followed by a memorable polymorph cambion to vampire spawn wild surge...

But the reason I'm posting is to follow up on the results of some of the things I had suggested. Seeding hints about Harshnag paid off, as they began to actively ask questions about him among the sages of Everlund and Silverymoon, and thus when they did meet him at the end of the session, it wasn't a completely out-of-the-blue deus ex machina. Moreover, the sages also mentioned a mysterious giant oracle somewhere in the Spine of the World, so the party immediately asked Harshnag concerning it (and he responded that visiting it would be an excellent idea). Finally, having gone to Yartar twice now, they have already interacted with Lord Drylund and have actually taken a trip on The Grand Dame, so that is fully seeded for when Serissa gives them the golden goose token clue. So, if you want to run SKT as written, make sure to do these and it should definitely smooth some of the slightly rougher edges already discussed concerning the adventure.

I'm going to make sure Harshnag does discourage the party from going in gung-ho when it comes to the storm giant section, mentioning that summarily murdering members of the royal family would probably not be a good way to get on the good side of other members.

Beyond that, they already know the name of the hill giant chieftain Guh, and know that a fire giant duke has been sending out groups to find pieces of the Vondidod. I believe that they currently think that the latter is going to be the focus of the campaign, given their questions to the various sages they've consulted, so I'm quite amused by the possible misdirection...

 

[dpmcalister]

Keep all these good bits coming. We have a character generation session this week and then I'll start running it next week so this is all gold for me

 

[Daern]

I'm planning to plop my group into 10 Towns if they escape Ravenloft. Looking at the upcoming D&D comic issue from IDW it looks like the same will happen in that comic. And the Neverwinter MMO mission apparently is all about finding the Ring of Winter. Anyone know anything about the MMO?