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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Greg Benage" data-source="post: 7236817" data-attributes="member: 93631">SKT definitely has a narrative spine. You could write it up like this:"Giants have emerged from their strongholds to threaten civilization as never before. Hill giants are stealing all the grain and livestock they can, while stone giants have been scouring settlements that have been around forever. Fire giants are press-ganging the small folk into the desert, while frost giant longships have been pillaging along the Sword Coast. Even the elusive cloud giants have been witnessed, their wondrous floating cities appearing above Waterdeep and Baldur’s Gate. Where is the storm giant King Hekaton, who is tasked with keeping order among the giants?The humans, dwarves, elves, and other small folk of the Sword Coast will be crushed underfoot by the onslaught of these giant foes. The only chance at survival is for our heroes to work together to investigate this invasion and harness the power of rune magic, the giants’ weapon against their ancient enemies, the dragons. Can our heroes restore order by discovering and turning the giants’ own power against them?"Okay, that's just paraphrased from the product description. Now, that narrative spine runs through a big sandbox, and it takes some work on the DM's part to engage the players in that sandbox and to prevent that narrative spine from getting lost in it. This seems to be where you've fallen a little short. It seems like the players likely have no idea what they're doing or why.I can't think of anyway to make the aftertaste of this speed-leveling and skipped content go away. But at this point, I think you can possible salvage the campaign by picking the characters up and placing them solidly on the narrative spine. They're supposed to piece together the narrative while playing in the sandbox, but that's not really an option now. They need to discover what the problem is and how they can solve it. Harshnag and the Oracle can do that, if the players still care at this point. Alternatively, and perhaps more ideally, you can set things up for Harshnag and the Oracle by using the giant chaos as an obstacle to something the players do care about, assuming there's something they care about. "We want X, but we can't have X because giant chaos, so we need to find out what's causing giant chaos and put things right."</blockquote>

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