D&D 5E Chapter Three of Lost Mines of Phandelver is Frustrating

[Herosmith14]

So, I'm currently DMing a group of new players to DnD, and I'm running LMoP. They're currently rebooting after nearly TPKing in the Redbrand hideout. I'm confident they'll clear out the hideout in our next session, so I've been looking at Chapter 3: The Spider's Web so I can prep. I knew this before, when I did this adventure as a player, but all the sidequests (and even the Redbrands, to an extent) break the urgency and over all narrative flow of the adventure, and it annoys me to no end that you have to do all of them if you want to be properly leveled for the next two dungeons.

Yes, I am aware that one of the primary motives for side questing in LMoP is to find the location of Cragmaw Castle and Wave Echo Cave, but if you do what my group did (kidnap a goblin from Chapter 1 and interrogate him, given that the adventure book even says that they can give you rough directions to Cragmaw Castle) that problem is already solved, so if your heroes aren't necessarily that heroic *cough cough, my group, cough cough* you really don't have any motives for sidequesting except for the payout, and some of the side quests don't even have a payout listed in their description!

I go to DnD for the roughly unpredictable story, and the fact that the pretty much required side quests break it up irritates me. I understand that I could just adjust the number of enemies in Cragmaw and WEC, and I might do that anyway, but I feel like that would stump the progressive challenge of the adventure. If any of you have any ideas on how to seamlessly tie the sidequests into the story with proper explanation about why your doing this before you set out to rescue Gundren from his goblinoid captors, they would be greatly appreciated.

 

[pukunui]

That bothered me too. I call it the Dragon Age syndrome - like when you go to see the dwarves, and you're approached by people who want you to look for their lost pigs or convince the mages to let them study magic when you're supposed to be helping the dwarves choose a new king so they'll come help fight the invading army of horrible monsters on the surface (which, of course, very kindly waits while you traipse back and forth across the map undertaking all sorts of sidequests as if there was no time pressure at all ...).

My group picked up on the urgency of tracking Gundren down quickly, so they went into the forest and basically found the castle by scouting around and climbing trees until they spotted the clearing it's in.

They rescued Gundren but his map got burned. I ruled that he would need time to recover from his injuries, so the sidequests became things to do while they waited for Gundren to recover enough that he could lead them to the mine.

As an aside, I found the mine itself to be much too small ... The bad guy should've been able to find his way around to the forge well before the PCs get there ... so I just broke it up into sections and said there were numerous unmapped sections of tunnels connecting them all.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

If I were running an adventure and came to a part that I didn't like, I'd change it. It's a great place to drop in something you think is better, and still provide the info they need.

 

[Mull Ponders]

I found the sidequests to be a nice break from the linear nature of the first two episodes. Also, some of them are quite scary on the surface (you want us to go talk to a WHAT??)

The players took it as a quest hub, and they didn't bother to do all the quests. I also ratcheted up some of the random travel encounters (stirges AND zombies, I used zombies instead of ghouls). I thought Thundertree was pretty much an episode in it's own right, and a good challenge. Didn't care much for Wyvern Tor, it could be easily skipped as it leads nowhere.

 

[happyhermit]

IME the "side quests" work excellent with the pre-gen characters and their backgrounds/I/B/F. If you just plug in characters without taking this into account, and especially if deviating from the standard "heroic" group that is assumed, then the path the players take is less predictable.

Not a problem whatsoever though, there is no reason they should complete "everything" (that is extremely rare IME) and no reason they shouldn't get involved in something else along the way (very common IME).

By "IME" I mean I have run/played/listened/watched to many, many, plays of the adventure.

 

[GlassJaw]

My players are in Ch 3 right now and I've changed a few details here and there.

I wanted my players to have to do some legwork so I did not allow them to interrogate a goblin to find the castle. I assume the designers put that in there as a safety net if the players skipped a bunch of things but that's the fun of Ch 3 and all the side quests!

My players went to Thundertree first after crushing the Redbrands (they found the secret door to Glasstaff's room and surprised him).

I also wanted the players to have to explore Thundertree a bit so I required them to bring info about the cultists to Reidoth before he would direct them to the castle. I also ruled that Reidoth did not know where the mine was. The players have to go to the castle.

I perhaps made it tad more railroady but my group is new and I wanted to let them gain some xp. The module has some really locations and I didn't want to skip them either. And of course they went on to kill the dragon in Thundertree at level 3!


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[Glomb175]

I really enjoyed this campaign at the start but we all got sick of the side quests too so I edited them and pretty much home brewed it. You sound like an experienced DM so I'm sure you can handle it.

I'm gonna make a thread detailing my homebrew elements shortly if you're bothered

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[ExploderWizard]

They rescued Gundren but his map got burned. I ruled that he would need time to recover from his injuries, so the sidequests became things to do while they waited for Gundren to recover enough that he could lead them to the mine.

WOW! They did all the side quests in a day? The badass of the year award goes to.......your party! I'm assuming it was done in a day because everyone is ship shape after a long rest.

 

[aco175]

If the players did not want to go on the side quests you can play the town as very boring and uneventful. Eventually they will bite on a quest, or start killing random NPCs.

 

[pukunui]

WOW! They did all the side quests in a day? The badass of the year award goes to.......your party! I'm assuming it was done in a day because everyone is ship shape after a long rest.

Ha. No. I gave him five levels of exhaustion. Since no one in the party (or in the town) could cast greater restoration, that meant they had five days to kill before he was back to full health. So they went up to Conyberry and Old Owl Well while they waited.