D&D General About to run Storm King's Thunder; Any tips ?

[AnotherGuy]

Ok. But there are similarities which make some players question.
Like here's a cloud giant. But he's different than the other cloud giants because he has different clothes. So we should trust him?
Like here's a floating tower, but it's not a castle. So we should trust him?
Like here's a cloud giant, and we should just be cool with that and not try to run away because we're 3rd level.

You could pick anything else - likely literally anything in the wide assortment of creatures in D&D canon - and you choose something so near to the villain of the adventure to make the entire campaign hinge upon it. It's a foolish idea.

I get all you're saying...I just do not necessarily agree.
Things play differently at people's tables and that's a good thing I'd say. From my perspective as DM it is interesting when players go "off-script" - I find it presents interesting challenges to me, and it is not always quickly apparent how I'm supposed to navigate this new tangent and how it affects the storyline or timeline if there is one.
I generally need a moment.

Do you know what would've been better? An awakened owlbear. A treant. A lizardfolk reincarnated as a rust monster.

The cloud giant was specifically selected I think because

• he presents a powerful ally in the PCs corner
• could provide insight into giant theology, their society, their unusual thinking, etiquette and their history with dragons as well as details about named giants and relationships or other lore the GM wishes to sprinkle into this campaign.
• the travel mobility (and safety) provided by his tower
• his presence informs the PCs not to paint all giants or category of giants with one alignment brush, there is more nuance
• this adventure is about giants - not owlbears, treants, lizardfolk or reincarnated rust monsters - if you want to go different but useful - they could have chosen as an example, a firbolg druid riding a roc.

Anyways

 

[orangefruitbat]

Some good ideas here. Some of the changes I made:
1) run all three set-piece encounters when the party arrives at the appropriate town. There is no reason to throw two of them away, plus it makes the giants seem like a continuing threat.
2) I changed how the conches work so that the party needed one conch per party member - this gave them a reason to visit multiple giant lairs
3) don't have the Storm King offer storm giant allies for the final fight against the blue dragon - it would make the showdown too easy (at least with my party)
4) I ran a subplot of the Zhentarium trying to infiltrate trading posts across the north to try and achieve a monopoly over trade,

 

[pukunui]

@greymist: My computer is currently out of action unfortunately but I can share my notes once I get it up and running again.

Something else I remembered: I didn’t want the PCs having to go back and forth between the Eye of the All-Father and the various Uthgardt sites, so when the PCs met Harshnag, I had him tell them to gather some giant relics as tribute for the oracle and then meet him at the Eye.

I also made it so their Lords’ Alliance contact sent them a message telling them to meet Harshnag outside Longsaddle.

When they got to the nearby Uthgardt mound, the Cult of the Dragon agents with their airship were waiting for the PCs.

When they were flying to another spot, I had them encounter Felgolos, who was flying on his back and almost crashed into the airship. I can’t remember if they ended up going to the cloud giants’ castle, though.

So the PCs collected some giant relics and then went to the Eye once. Iymrith attacked and as they were leaving, and Harshnag stayed to fight her.

Later, when they visited Maelstrom, they decided they wanted to find one of the other scepters that can control the Wyrmskull Throne, so I sent them to that stone giant library in the Underdark (see Out of the Abyss), where they learned that one was in the Xanathar’s possession.

They went off to Waterdeep and infiltrated the Xanathar’s lair and claimed the scepter, then returned to Maelstrom to free the sister trapped on the throne.

Since I can’t access my notes right now, I would reiterate that you have a look through my session recaps. You’ll get the gist of the changes I made through those, if not the nitty-gritty bits and any mechanical changes.

(I wish the rules for mythic creatures had existed when I ran this. I totally would have used them for Iymrith.)

Suffice it to say, I would happily run this adventure again.