Anyone have any thoughts about best time of year (in game) to begin SKT? To those that have played through, roughly how much time passed over the course of the campaign?
(Gosh, I've been meaning to post in this thread for ages, we wrapped 'act 1' of a planned three a short while ago and I wanted to update y'all on how it went and what we did.)
I started the adventure in Triboar, the night before Highharvestide. We ended on the 14th of Marpenoth, sixteen in-game days over twelve sessions of play, and we covered Chapters 2, 3, and 6. (We usually play for around four hours a session)
During these sixteen days, the party travelled on foot from Triboar to Everlund (Darathra's sidequest), then by riverboat to Silverymoon (Othvir's sidequest), then headed into the Evermoors because they wanted to fight this one particular stone giant I had mentioned a few times (I just moved Deadstone Cleft into the Evermoors and let them run through the stone giant dungeon a level early, but didn't give them a conch for it.)
We have a Totem Barbarian who took the Elk totem feature at 6th level, which doubles the overland movement speed of the party, so they get around quite quickly without any of the additional movement options the book allows for. Between her and the Harper's teleport circles, I'm not sure they're going to need any additional travel abilities. (All the better, the airship is a little silly for my tastes.)
My weather descriptions during Act 1 were all about the temperature dropping and intermittent rains heralding the beginning of 'mud season'. I'm going to skip ahead a little and start Act 2 in the middle of winter, after 'mud season' has given way to winter snow, and the North has already frozen over for the season. They want to head to Yartar from Silverymoon, so I'm going to have them make the trip down the frozen river on ice skates!