D&D 5E All of the Adventures at once! (Combining the Hoard, Princes, and Abyss in one campaign)

[Daern]

This is not an idea, it's sort of what I've ended up doing.
I have two different campaigns. One started Hoard of the Dragon Queen and got side-tracked then went on hiatus and has restarted deep in the Underdark trying to get Out of the Abyss. The other has messed about in various adventures. At one point they dipped into Hoard and ended up riding Wyverns up to the Skyreach Castle. They battled a bit then retreated and had some other adventures in which I started planting seeds for Princes of the Apocalypse, even handing out some maps of Elemental Temples to tempt them. But now they want to go back to battling dragons so I might drop them back into the Rise of Tiamat.
It's all just sort of happened, but now more or less Tiamat, the Demon Lords and the Princes of Elemental Evil all threaten the Realm.
Why not?

 

[cmad1977]

That's pretty sweet. I bet with all three AP's you have a neat combo of adventures you could plug into anything you wanted.

 

[DMCF]

I suppose the question is if they'll remember who the bad guys are and what great achievements they performed. It does look like quite an endeavor on your part to keep them on track!

 

[Daern]

There's not really a track. They Abyss campaign is pretty much just the module right now, but the other group is just following their nose around, and I'm offering different things (including different shorter dungeons and scenarios).

 

[Daern]

Has no one else done this? That is, make a sort of sandbox where all the adventures are available all the time?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I think the best part of this would be if you made them interact... like the cult of dragons taking on some of the demons...

 

[Uchawi]

You would probably end up having a better overarching storyline, with whatever you make up, versus relying on the ones provided.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Has no one else done this? That is, make a sort of sandbox where all the adventures are available all the time?

Not with the official modules, no.

But I have a setting where all PCs are just adventurers together in an Adventurer's Guild and they can just take on "jobs" which are basically a single dungeon (or mystery). So at the end of the session you're always back at the Adventurer's Guild, get your reward, and be ready to take on the next job on the next session. This also allows for fully dynamic groups.

 

[Thymm]

I did something like that with my main 3.5 group a few years ago.
We first started with some random andventure from the internet and over the years, the party could pretty much do whatever they wanted - I had adventures planned for everything they might come up with. Some self written, some official, some web adventures, mixed together with a good part of homebrew stuff.

Was quite some work in my (DM) side, but my players enjoyed the freedom they had.

 

[wedgeski]

It's in the nature of the books (especially PotA) that you can pull sections out and use them ad-hoc. They've got that going for them. But a true Tiamat/Princes/Demons crossover with all of the various meta-plots interacting? That'd be Realms-shattering. I say put your head down and charge right at it!!