D&D 5E DMs: Any experience with merging Lost Mines with Icespire Peak?

[Azzy]

Pretty much what it says on the tin: Do any of my fellow 5e DMs have any experience with and advice for integrating both Lost Mines of Plandelver with Dragon of Icespire Peak (and its follow-up adventures)?

I'm looking to do this, but I wanted to see what others have to say on the matter.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I'm actually running a game of this right now! They really mesh together quite well, as Icespire Peak is really a collection of side-quests. I cut out the beginning of the Phandelver part (the goblins) and replaced it with the three Icespire quests for level 1s, and now the party jumps between the two based on their tastes.

 

[Rellott]

I am only running LMoP at the moment, but I had considered implementing some of DoIP into it, until I decided to save that stuff for when I actually run that with my group. But I did notice that you could get a decent quest line out of dealing with the orcs.

 

[Nebulous]

They mesh together wonderfully. I would still use Phandelver as the backbone of the adventure, but sprinkle in Icepspire as side quests. Before the pandemic hit we I was going to have the green dragon and white dragon team up and do a lot of damage to Phandalin, and then further use more quests from Icespire as the party would now have two dragons to deal with, not one.

The quests with the spellcasting orcs have a thread you can tie all the way from the lighthouse to the logger camp to forest base to the woodland manse and lastly the circle of thunder.

 

[Rellott]

The quests with the spellcasting orcs have a thread you can tie all the way from the lighthouse to the logger camp to forest base to the woodland manse and lastly the circle of thunder.

Don’t forget about Butterskull Ranch and Wyvern Tor.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm running Phandelver right now and insert Icespire Peak and Neverwinter Campaign Setting locations as appropriate. One of the PCs was a gnome of the area so we had her be from Gnomengarde (IP), and the journey up to Cragmaw Castle went around a bad area of Neverwinter Wood, the Dread Ring (NCS). Other bits will get added or used for flavor as the adventure continues.

 

[aco175]

I would be careful with leveling the PCs past either endgame. The PCs could be level 5-6 before they finish either one and you will need to beef up the later parts to make things more exciting.

This is fine and the dragon could be more dangerous and even in league with Spider at some point. It would be cool if the PCs could disrupt the two becoming allies. Spider could also use some allies to make him more dangerous.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I'm running a tweaked version of Icespire Peak with some Lost Mine sprinkled in. I really like Cragmaw Caves and Cragmaw Castle, so I used both of those maps as orc lairs. And I added a secret cult to Phandalin that's very different from the Redbrands and Glasstaff, but takes inspiration from the notion that there should be a threat to overcome within the town itself. My advise to you is to cherrypick the parts from each adventure that you like best and cut out the parts you like the least. Do that and you can have a sandbox starter town that's a lot of fun.

 

[Weiley31]

For some reason, I always imagined Dragon of Icespire Peak being set before Lost mines of Plandelver. Don't know why.

Though my explanation for why Cryovain is rampaging in Icespire Peak is because its suffering from the Dracorage Mythal and is pretty much foreshadowing Tyranny of Dragons(2019).

 

[Nebulous]

I'm sad that we won't get to finish Lost Mine. The group is broken up now. They were a couple rooms away from having to fight the Black Spider, who was a phase drider mage in my campaign, much, much tougher.