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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 7236582" data-attributes="member: 42040">I am a fairly experienced DM, 6 sessions into Storm King's Thunder. Things aren't clicking together well, so I wanted to come here for your suggestions and support. I have six players: two that I have been gaming with for nearly 20 years; one that I have been gaming with for nearly 5; another player who I've known for a few years, but who isn't the biggest fan of the D&D system; and another two players who are relatively new to the hobby (including my girlfriend). The characters include a fallen aasimar barbarian, wood elf ranger, dwarf cleric of life, dwarf weapon master fighter, human wild magic sorcerer, and half-elf bard. Our sessions take place every two weeks and last about 4 hours.Due to a busy work schedule and not knowing a lot about 5E, I decided to run a pre-written module instead of creating a homebrew campaign. SKT wasn't my first choice of module, but after piecing together my group, I found this was the only one that no one had played, DMed, or read extensively. We started at 1st level since several of the players are relatively new to 5E. The first session, investigating Nightstone, went well. But I started changing things I didn't like about the module, and I have a feeling this might have been the start of the problems I'm having now.Instead of having the flying Deus Ex Machina tower with the stone giant come to the party's aid, I decided the party could go on foot to their next destination. (The party was very nervous about giants in flying castles having just attacked Nightstone, so I thought it would further complicate the adventure.) I did put in an option for them to ride on giant eagles borrowed from the elves of Ardeep. The dwarven cleric had received a vision of Goldenfields under attack, so they headed there in haste.I ran the Goldenfields attack by the book with one exception: I didn't give the characters the NPCs to control in the side fights. It seemed confusing to new players and had little to do with the focus of the adventure. Likewise, the side quests seemed really tangential; plus the characters so concerned with the giant raids that they had no interest in doing anything other than trying to track down where the giants came from.At this point, I introduced Harshnag, the frost giant. SKT is written so the group wanders aimlessly in the Savage Frontier for weeks and levels up before finding him. I wanted to give the party something to work towards, trying to find out what's going on with the giants. Harshnag agreed to meet them in Bryn Shander far to the north. He claimed he needed this time to research the location of an Oracle.At this point, the party is leveling up multiple times per session - basically after each fight. I'm just trying to keep pace with the module so they'll be ready to go to the Oracle within a couple sessions. Because there's basically nothing else going on in the module until they go to the Oracle.The group reaches Triboar, and I decide to play out the Fire Giant fight. Otherwise I would just have to handwave the travel and levels 4-6. It was a cool fight, but some of the players expressed frustration that it was an overly difficult fight that seemed too repetitive with the Goldenfields fight.A couple of random encounters on the road and stopping at a few towns along the way to roleplay, the group finally got to Bryn Shander. I was going to have Harshnag meet the group outside and take them to the Oracle. Because of a player's unexpected absence, I did not want to run the Oracle fights and info dump without him, so I decided to run the Bryn Shander chapter a little "off the cuff." And the session went badly.The group could not find Artus Cimber or his stolen ring. Because he's not there. He's supposed to be in ... Waterdeep? The group tries to parlay with the giants, swindle them, etc. There is next to no information presented on Bryn Shander. I got completely lost and now the Frost Giants are attacking the party - because "that's what the module says." We ended with Harshnag having found the group as all hell breaks lose outside the gates of Bryn Shander.The characters are now 7th level. The players have no connection to anything going on in the adventure. Honestly, even after they find the Oracle they have to wander through the wilderness to try to find artifacts to find a clue that might lead them to a giant chieftain. I'm just at a loss on how to salvage this. Everything seems so loosely connected (if at all). The characters have little motivation. This has easily been the worst campaign I've run in the past 15 years. It's frustrating that I'm disappointing my players like this.</blockquote>

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