D&D 5E Adventures in Elsir Vale (pre-Red Hand of Doom)

[BluejayJunior]

Lost Mines of Phandelver (starter box) would be easy to drop into the Elsir Vale or just outside of it. That's what I am planning on doing. That would get characters to level 5. Then throw in something to transition from LMoP to RHoD and get the characters another level and you're good.

 

[Ringtail]

I bought this collection several years back and have occasionally sprinkling them into games over the past few years. The Complete Adventures of M.T. Black Volume 1. They are excellent adventures, spanning a range of levels at 1-2 sessions each. I'll be honest, a lot of them seem kind of simple and were used as introductory adventures for new players but an experienced GM like you could probably liven them up a little. There's also a Volume 2 if you like these. I think they're all forgotten realms by default but that's easy enough to fix.

I also like the Book of Lairs from Kobold Press. These are like mini-dungeons but they are good for one session sort of things and cover a gamut of levels. They are mostly mini-dungeons but are good for one or two sessions. They also have a bunch of similar products like Eldritch Lairs, Creature Codex Lairs, Prepared! and Prepared! 2. I think most of these reference monsters from Kobold Press's Creature Codex and Tome of Beasts however. Tales of the Old Margreve might also be a good choice though they are forest themed I think.

Call of the Elvenflow, Wayward Wives, the Tainted Grove and the Bourne of Candles are a short series of adventures themed around the Moonsea in Forgotten Realms. The theming for some might be too specific to relocate easily, but I've ran the first two in this series and they were excellent. Wayward Wives was my favorite.

Oh, and the Uncaged books. My brother has run a few out of these are they were pretty fun to play in. Again, short, spanning a range of levels.

 

[pukunui]

Our internet was down for about 6 hours yesterday, so I wasn't able to do any work. Instead, I grabbed Rime of the Frostmaiden off the shelf and started reading through the Ten-Towns quests. I think most of them would work quite well in Elsir Vale. I was already considering making the vale's climate more temperate, with hot summers and snowy winters. I could start things off in winter time and give them the option to investigate various opening quests.

Spoiler

• Bremen's "Lake Monster" quest: There's only one lake on the map in Elsir Vale - the lake next to the city of Dennovar. I could put the lake monster there, but I feel like it would beg the question of "why hasn't the city guard dealt with it already?" Instead, I could make it a river monster and have it be bothering any of the smaller towns/villages along the Elsir River. (Or I could just have there be a smaller lake somewhere that's just not on the map.)
  
  
• Bryn Shander's "Foaming Mugs" quest: I'm inclined to skip this one, but if I were to use it, it would probably make the most sense to have it pop up when the PCs go to one of the more remote towns in the vale.
  
  
• Caer-Dineval's "Black Swords" quest: I could set this one in Dauth, with the cultists hiding out in the ruined keep there.
  
  
• Caer-Konig's "The Unseen" quest: I'm inclined to skip this one as well, primarily because it is more closely tied into the bigger duergar plot in Frostmaiden.
  
  
• Dougan's Hole's "Holed Up" quest: Hillwatch would be a good stand-in for Dougan's Hole.
  
  
• Easthaven's "Toil and Trouble" and "Town Hall Capers" quests: The only suitable place to put these would be Dennovar. I could make it a smaller town (rather than the biggest city in the vale). That could work quite nicely.
  
  
• Good Mead's "The Mead Must Flow" quest: I could replace Good Mead with Nimon Gap. Some of the produce from the orchards surely must go into making alcohol, and the verbeeg who steals the mead could be living in the nearby hills.
  
  
• Lonelywood's "The White Moose" quest: Either Elsircross or Marthton could be the setting for this one. Marthton works well because of the barrows in the nearby forest (which could be elf barrows rather than old druidic human barrows). If I were to use Elsircross, the druid could have created the killer moose to punish the locals because of their logging. (Maybe greedy "Baron" Trask is cutting down more trees than he should be or something.)
  
  
• Targos' "Mountain Climb" quest: Starting town doesn't really matter, but the lost climbers could either be in the Giantshield Mountains to the north or the Wyvernwatch Mountains to the south. (Technically the Wyrmsmokes to the west are an option as well, but I'd rather not send the PCs that way too soon.)
  
  
• Termalaine's "A Beautiful Mine" quest: Termalaine becomes Red Rock. The gem mine can either become one of the copper mines or be a unique mine. There's a minor mention of some politics in this quest - which could be a result of "Baron" Trask from Elsircross wanting to add Red Rock to his "domain".

There are also some quests from the broader Icewind Dale chapter that could be fun to sprinkle in (and they're tuned for 4th level, so they'd be the last few quests the PCs undertake before embarking on RHoD).

I used Sunless Citadel as my introduction to RHoD; I gave the kobolds links to the Red Hand and it seemed to work quite well. I appreciate the OP was looking for shorter adventures, if you remove the second level and the plot elements relating to it then it needn't take many sessions to run.

I've run the 5e version of The Sunless Citadel before and didn't enjoy it all that much, but I appreciate the suggestion just the same.

Lost Mines of Phandelver (starter box) would be easy to drop into the Elsir Vale or just outside of it. That's what I am planning on doing. That would get characters to level 5. Then throw in something to transition from LMoP to RHoD and get the characters another level and you're good.

I have noted that I think Dauth would make a good stand-in for Phandalin. I would rather use the Essentials Kit adventure, Dragon of Icespire Peak, due to the fact that it's really more sandboxy with a bunch of short quests. Plus I think just about everyone in my group has either played in or DMed LMoP, so it's a bit overused at this point. (It also doesn't fit my criteria insofar as it is a longer adventure more or less set in one place.) I appreciate your suggestion just the same, though.

I bought this collection several years back ...

Thanks for all those suggestions! I'll take a look at those.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

The adventures anthologies of Adventures in Middle-Earth are really good; each adventure is stand-alone but they can be linked by an over-arching plot if you want to. They work quite well for low-level adventuring in a more ''point of light'' setting.

Adventures in the Wilderlands is my favorite one and should take your PCs to level 7. It does a good job of mixing challenges from all 3 pillars of play. You could replace the named NPC (such as Beorn) with another names NPC from the Red Hand (like the old, last giant from the mountains).

You'd need to replace the Tolkien's orcs for more goblinoids, but the difference between the two of them is pretty thin anyway.

 

[pukunui]

@vincegetorix: Thanks! I'll check those out as well!

 

[IndigoTraveler]

@vincegetorix: Thanks! I'll check those out as well!

I second the Adventures in Middle Earth 5E as well. Just watch out: since Cubicle 7 no longer has the license for it, trying to find copies of em for Non-Scalper prices can be a headache.

Case in point, I found four of the ones I wanted for Normal Retail value. It was a headache and a half though for the searching. The other two I got, well I paid 79 and 20 for when they are normally 29.99 and Less respectfully.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I second the Adventures in Middle Earth 5E as well. Just watch out: since Cubicle 7 no longer has the license for it, trying to find copies of em for Non-Scalper prices can be a headache.

Case in point, I found four of the ones I wanted for Normal Retail value. It was a headache and a half though for the searching. The other two I got, well I paid 79 and 20 for when they are normally 29.99 and Less respectfully.

That's a shame. I thought Free League (or Modiphius) got the license to continue to publish the One Ring and AiME stuff so they could still produce older material.

I just went to check my local FLGs and they are out of stock of older AiME stuff.
On nobleknight.com they indeed go up to 200 U$D!

Guess I'll treasure my own books!

 

[Satirical Bard]

Sorry for the minor necro, but I just came across this. I had originally planned to do the same, at least with prologues for levels 3-4, to get the party (and players, let's be honest) invested emotionally in the vale before it burns to the ground. In the end people wanted a shorter campaign so we just dove straight in with the ambush. Below are some thoughts from that prep, but definitely keen to hear more from others!

One idea I had was to use The Scroll Thief from the Tyranny of Dragons AL season 1, set it in Brindol and change the 3 stolen books to things that tie into the RHOD story (eg the book stolen from the wizard could be a book on Tiamat stolen from Immerstal; another could point to Rhest, and the lienage one could maybe connect to the Vraath Keep adventure hook in RHOD), and have Miha the spy behind it all. If run at 1st-3rd level, the payoff will be quite a fair bit later, and hopefully pretty cool.

Another AL option is DDEX2-10 Cloaks and Shadows (from the Elemental Evil season, with good reviews), reworking the elemental cult into Kul's people. Perhaps Miha has set up the cult cell (having seduced Zor) and now that the invasion is imminent, is removing any potential telltales. This would be set in Brindol (or even Dennovar), and has a political intrigue element in which the party are actually hiding form the law, having been framed for a murder.

There are probably tons of other AL adventures that would fit in pretty well too.

Wolves of Welton can be placed almost anywhere in the vale, and is a highly rated (and free) 2nd-3rd level adventure.

WOTC actually published a short prologue adventure for level 4. It's pretty lame IMHO, but could be built on. Weirdly, they don't even specify a potential location in the vale, other than that it's "in a hillside cave at the fringes of populated land (near where the PCs are adventuring), living off of pigs and sheep stolen from nearby farmsteads," which fits pretty much every single named locaton in RHOD.

I tried to find a perfect adventure for Baron Trask in Elsircross because the lovely little detail in RHOD is screaming for a prologue or side quest adventure, but no luck so far. Ideally it would be something emphasising his evil alignment, and giving the party either a reason to hate him or overthrow him (but ultimately to point out that good and evil are not static racial features).

I really like your idea of reskinning some of the ROTFM ten towns early quests, but I haven't played through any of them to know which ones are the most fun.

From the Essentials Kit, my personal favourites were Gnomengarde, a much-revamped Dwaren Excavation (replacing the TPK gem trap with a more Indiana Jones-eque slowly collapsing ceiling, and spending time to describe the temple's details), and Axeholm (again, building up the tragic story for the party to learn - this one could give the party a boon when negotiating with the dwarves in RHOD perhaps; would need debuffing to level 3-4).

From LMOP I would think either of the rescue missions (Cragmaw Hideout and Cragmaw Castle) could be worked in fairly easily, with the castle being in the Witchwood near any of Drellin's Ferry, Talar, or Elsircross. As could Thundertree, but you'd have to be confident you can get Venomfang Ozzyrandion out of there alive.

 

[pukunui]

@Satirical Bard: Thanks for the input! I haven't made a whole lot of progress on this myself, as I kind of got bogged down on some of the overarching setting elements. But I haven't given up on it entirely, and I really appreciate that you took the time to post your suggestions.

 

[Plaguescarred]

Dragon of Icespire Peak from the Essential boxed set has more "help the locals" type adventures than dungeon crawls that could work, it visit nearby settlements. It could be situated in Dauth or Elsircross for exemple and explore the surrounding region during it's different missions.