D&D 5E Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"

[Demetrios1453]

Having now browsed through the amazing Out of the Abyss and seeing what a (IMO) really good mega-adventure looks like, I think I'm giving up on trying to make Storm King's Thunder work.

I will probably mine it for the Sword Coast adventuring info from Chapter 3 and the individual giant lairs/plots (the fire giant one is especially fun and could be the basis of its own mini-campaign), but the overarching structure just doesn't work for me.

For me, it was just the opposite. My group and I struggled to make OotA work and gave up on it before the party left the Underdark, while we're just about to complete SKT, with fairly minimal changes on my part as a DM...

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[Motorskills]

For me, it was just the opposite. My group and I struggled to make OotA work and gave up on it before the party left the Underdark, while we're just about to complete SKT, with fairly minimal changes on my part as a DM...

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Yeah, the amount of work required by the DM for OoTA is....jaw-dropping. It's interesting and thematic, and there are some amazing scenes, but it's too damn huge and complicated.

SKT needs a bit of work, but that's mostly on me because I want to make the best, smoothest experience I can, rather than it being forced upon me.

 

[cfmcdonald]

Interesting. Adventures can definitely play differently than they read, and I haven't played either. But SKT feels like a mess, especially in terms of character motivation:

1. rushed intro to get characters to 5th level
2. terrible motivation for them to continue from there (trek halfway across the continent to tell a stranger that their relative, also a stranger, is dead)
3. Really confused overall arc: kraken + daughters + dragon behind murder + kidnapping that characters have no reason to ever know/care about, which is actually totally independent of the breaking of the ordning that is instigating all the other action - so why do we care about the murder/kidnapping again? Shouldn't our main goal be to shut down the giant lords that are actually doing nasty things?
4. Ancient blue dragon bursts in in the mid-game because she somehow knows everything that's going on, and doesn't kill the characters - why? Just to get another deus ex machina NPC (Harshnag) out of the way, it seems.
5. Yet another ancient dragon who also somehow knows everything that's going on sends along an airship to help the characters - why?

 

[Motorskills]

Interesting. Adventures can definitely play differently than they read, and I haven't played either. But SKT feels like a mess, especially in terms of character motivation:

1. rushed intro to get characters to 5th level
2. terrible motivation for them to continue from there (trek halfway across the continent to tell a stranger that their relative, also a stranger, is dead)
3. Really confused overall arc: kraken + daughters + dragon behind murder + kidnapping that characters have no reason to ever know/care about, which is actually totally independent of the breaking of the ordning that is instigating all the other action - so why do we care about the murder/kidnapping again? Shouldn't our main goal be to shut down the giant lords that are actually doing nasty things?
4. Ancient blue dragon bursts in in the mid-game because she somehow knows everything that's going on, and doesn't kill the characters - why? Just to get another deus ex machina NPC (Harshnag) out of the way, it seems.
5. Yet another ancient dragon who also somehow knows everything that's going on sends along an airship to help the characters - why?

All of these are identified flaws, don't disagree.

And they are all manageable. Read this thread alone for some ideas.

I ran LMoP first (replacing Netherstone), and it actually went great, I simply linked the Drow adversary to the Drow in SKT. If I ran it again, I would make those links (and many others) much more explicit.

Despite the route options, SKT is comfortably linear.

 

[Demetrios1453]

All of these are identified flaws, don't disagree.

And they are all manageable. Read this thread alone for some ideas.

I ran LMoP first (replacing Netherstone), and it actually went great, I simply linked the Drow adversary to the Drow in SKT. If I ran it again, I would make those links (and many others) much more explicit.

Despite the route options, SKT is comfortably linear.

Exactly - I never said that SKT didn't have issues, just that my players and I have had a much easier time dealing with them than we did with OotA. In most cases, a bit of foreshadowing, some in-game hint-dropping, and some added encounters will plug the most egregious plot holes. I've listed many of the things I've done to smooth out the adventure in this very thread. And my players, who were getting noticeably bored and restless with OotA before we abandoned it, are having a blast with SKT and are a bit annoyed we're getting near the end....

 

[jiggymardust]

Does anyone have any experience with running the different giant lairs (chapters 5-9)? Do any of them stand out as being more fun or interesting than the others?

 

[Daern]

I also ran Out of the Abyss for a while before it fizzled. It started awesome but we got bogged down in the dwarf city. It felt like a mega plot the players didn't really understand or relate to and not much clarity about how to go about things so they just stumbled ahead from one thing to the next. That was fun for awhile but it lost steam.
I just finished Curse of Strahd and the huge difference was that there was at all times a lot of agency for the player in terms of how to approach various problems and situations.
So far with this one, I'm trying to hold onto what I learned from CoS, which is to make each incidental location or encounter they choose or stumble into no more than a session or two, so that they can then choose another if they like. In CoS that meant they came and went a bit with the Castle Ravenloft.
With SKT it meant I turned both the Triboar and Goldenfields attacks into single sessions of rp+mega-encounter. The players ended up in Triboar after speaking to Old Gnawbones. They had a really fancy dinner and over priced stay at the inn. Then they asked around and ended up in the wizards tower of Kolstaag the Friendless (I showed them the picture of the wizard from Korgoth of Barbaria) paying for information about Harshnag. He spouted some cryptic backstory and then pointed out across the town -the fire giants were attacking! And so it went.
Anyways, this is just to say that I'm treating this like a wide open campaign and players are being lead around by their noses after various leads, but in this case its easy for them to break off and try something else. In the Underdark they had to power through because their was less information and more existential danger.
However, a drow character just joined and gave her the back story having escaped the drow capital city as it was being ravaged by a horde of demons from hell, so its definitely an option later on.

 

[Daern]

Does anyone have any experience with running the different giant lairs (chapters 5-9)? Do any of them stand out as being more fun or interesting than the others?

I haven't, but I'm hoping to run all of them. They all look pretty fun.

 

[Charles Rampant]

I've run Lyn Armaal for a group of level 15 characters. They found it actually a serious threat, after I added a couple Giants to the gate and gave Sansuri six Invisible Stalker allies. After fighting their way through the gate, the griffons and elements on the bridge, and the Giants in the courtyard, they needed a short rest! Based on how they found it, and their estimations of what they encountered, you should not expect a group of level-appropriate characters to be able to handle the Castle if they go head-on, without a lot of rests, unless they find Felgolos very quickly and get his aid. And the Cloud Giants don't seem the ones to just let players sleep in their castle.

I did remove some of the more roleplay elements, as it didn't fit what I needed Lyn Armaal for - it was summoned by the players accidentally, using a Bag of Beans, and they had to attack it pronto as the Giants were busily levelling the group-owned castle with boulders. The encounters and descriptions were all cool, and the players loved the grotesquely-out-of-scale items and furniture that they found.

 

[Motorskills]

Is there a map of Yartar available anywhere ?