D&D 5E About to Run Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle...

[Feeroper]

Hello,

I am about to run the first part of Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle this weekend for a new gaming group I've just got together. Not having run it before, I wondered if anyone could give me any tips or advice on running it for the first time? Is there anything I should look out for? As I said, I will just be running the first Scenario (Fane of the Sun Swallower I believe it is called?).

Does it help that I have run Scourge of the Sword Coast for Encounters at my FLGS, and am currently running Dead in Thay as it just started this week? I know Ghosts features many of the NPC's and some locations from the Dreams of the Red Wizards modules, but also that they aren't implicitly connected and the PC's from Ghosts do not then move into Scourge.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

The macguffins in Ghosts are assumed to have been found by the Red Wizards in Dead in Thay so, on that basis, Ghosts serves as something of a prequel to Scourge and Dead, but not the sort of prequel you can run with the same party without doing a fair bit of work yourself.

 

[Will Doyle]

I ran into some minor problems with this adventure right from the start. The intro read-aloud tells the players about the orc raid on the Floshin estate, and the kidnapping of his servants. It even ends with "One can only imagine their horrible fate!". A bit of asking around, and the players learn that one servant escaped, but the rest of the women are still missing. Although the dragon attack is a strong diversion, my players were *all the time* wanting to rescue the girls and it made Sir Isteval look like a bit of a pillock for leading them in another direction.

It's a simple fix: just change the intro text, and say that the orcs were tracked down and slain by Sir Isteval after the woman escaped. The rest of the adventure is easy. Definitely play up the cute with the wyrmling - that worked brilliantly for my group.

It's a great dungeon, but overall our group found the clotskull tribe kidnap/rape/breeding thing in rather bad taste, so you may want to cut that out.

 

[Uller]

I ran into some minor problems with this adventure right from the start. The intro read-aloud tells the players about the orc raid on the Floshin estate...

Yeah, I found this part in keeping with WotC's habit of making adventures for low level characters with plots that are entirely in appropriate for the level. The stuff about the orcs and captives all seem like a lead in to a perfect adventure for first level characters, then...DRAGON!!!

I got around this by simply taking the dragon out until the party was too deep into the swamp to really want to turn back. Instead I left the hints of the Sun Swallower to be vague and Isteval wanted the party to find out what it is along with the nature of the cult of Talona.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Yeah, I found this part in keeping with WotC's habit of making adventures for low level characters with plots that are entirely in appropriate for the level. The stuff about the orcs and captives all seem like a lead in to a perfect adventure for first level characters, then...DRAGON!!!

I got around this by simply taking the dragon out until the party was too deep into the swamp to really want to turn back. Instead I left the hints of the Sun Swallower to be vague and Isteval wanted the party to find out what it is along with the nature of the cult of Talona.

Agreed.

I think it's best to keep the locations and the basic ideas but to come up with your own order of events, specifically one that makes more logical sense.