clearstream
(He, Him)
To my reading, restoring the King and restoring the Ordning are symbolically identical. The one equates to the other. It's a classic narrative mapping.
D&D 5E Is Storm King's Thunder a flop . . ? Still early yet but doesn't look that good.
John R Davis
Hero
I love the "Adventure Landscape" set up of the adventures. DM can pick and choose bits to do, players can pick where to go. Lots choice.
Bits the pcs miss you can always slot into future games, or later in the adventure if you wish.
COS was excellent to run and I hope SKT is
Bits the pcs miss you can always slot into future games, or later in the adventure if you wish.
COS was excellent to run and I hope SKT is
Demetrios1453
Hero
The adventure states directly on page 230 that if you, as the DM, want the restoration of Hekaton (or his daughter) and their cooperation with the small folk to destroy their common enemy to be what inspires Annam to restore the Ordning, then that's the case. If you want it to be something different, or decide that it's not possible to restore at all, then that's fine as well. It's all down to what the DM and the players want to do. That's giving the power of choice to the players/DMs and not keeping it solely to the authors, which is just fine by me.
I've just finished a 'Session 0' where some level 12 PCs escorted an Ambassador from Waterdeep to the Storm Kings Court after the Ordniing has been shattered (honestly, that's a pretty big deal and would have been noticed by clerics of other faiths!).
While they were there met the giant lords, Serissa and Iymrith. During the court the king discovered his wife had been murdered by small folk and they had to escape or else be destroyed. They were captured by Iymrith, but not before sending out a 25 word message using a sending stone.
We used some characters from a Waterdeep campaign we'd finished last year. It was a bit of a railroad, because they couldn't escape Iymrith at the end of the session, but they have the information from their sending stone message to inform the level 5 characters they will start running when we begin the campaign properly.
While they were there met the giant lords, Serissa and Iymrith. During the court the king discovered his wife had been murdered by small folk and they had to escape or else be destroyed. They were captured by Iymrith, but not before sending out a 25 word message using a sending stone.
We used some characters from a Waterdeep campaign we'd finished last year. It was a bit of a railroad, because they couldn't escape Iymrith at the end of the session, but they have the information from their sending stone message to inform the level 5 characters they will start running when we begin the campaign properly.
clearstream
(He, Him)
Sure, but the poster's criticism was that "The actual story of the "event" isn't even really resolved or addressed. The adventure just ends and things are assumed to go back to normal somehow behind the scenes." I think if a DM decides that restoring the King doesn't restore the Ordning, then he or she can hardly complain that the Ordning wasn't restored.
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Arial Black
Adventurer
Although I've been playing D&D since the late '70s, I'm usually a player rather than the DM. I make no claim to greatness as a DM.
That said, I ran SKT for an American friend who was about to return to the US, so I decided to start at 6th level (the sandbox bit), have a (very difficult!) Drow encounter at Gauntlegrim, and start the plot that way.
They met the 'good' frost giant, and he took them to the oracular temple.
Our first session was character creation, both crunch and fluff. This meant that, between sessions one and two, I could tailor the plot hooks for the PCs. This is such an automatic thing to, published adventure or not, that it seems a poor criticism that the book itself doesn't have satisfying plot hooks!
After the oracle, the motivation and direction of the campaign is firmly established.
It is true that a lot of the material is this book won't actually be used in this adventure. This does not make it useless; it remains setting information and useful for both fluff information and to be used for sidequests for this or other adventures set in the North.
We had great fun, the adventure is easily accessed by any DM who can be bothered to think about hooks appropriate to the party, and just because the book gives the DM a choice of resolutions doesn't mean that the adventure has no resolution!
Well worth the investment.
That said, I ran SKT for an American friend who was about to return to the US, so I decided to start at 6th level (the sandbox bit), have a (very difficult!) Drow encounter at Gauntlegrim, and start the plot that way.
They met the 'good' frost giant, and he took them to the oracular temple.
Our first session was character creation, both crunch and fluff. This meant that, between sessions one and two, I could tailor the plot hooks for the PCs. This is such an automatic thing to, published adventure or not, that it seems a poor criticism that the book itself doesn't have satisfying plot hooks!
After the oracle, the motivation and direction of the campaign is firmly established.
It is true that a lot of the material is this book won't actually be used in this adventure. This does not make it useless; it remains setting information and useful for both fluff information and to be used for sidequests for this or other adventures set in the North.
We had great fun, the adventure is easily accessed by any DM who can be bothered to think about hooks appropriate to the party, and just because the book gives the DM a choice of resolutions doesn't mean that the adventure has no resolution!
Well worth the investment.
Jester David
Hero
Symbolism is tricky in D&D at the best of times. It's not a traditional literary form and doesn't confirm or follow conventional storytelling techniques. Even when done well, that type of ending can be particularly weak, feeling like deus ex machina and having no apparent cause-and-effect. (Very literally, since it involves Annam and the Dungeon Master hand waving a solution.)
And any action the PCs could take at the end could arguably do the same; stopping any of the giant schemes has a similar symbolic resonance.
In this case it's particularly weak since the restoration of the king isn't the end of the adventure and there's no advice given to restore the ordning then. The restoring of the ordning is just kinda tacked on at the very end.
"So the children learned how to function as a society, and eventually they were rescued by, oh, let's say...Moe."
But this isn't the only issue with the end.
Hekaton isn't foreshadowed. The absence of the Storm King isn't teased for the first chunk of the adventure. It has no relation to any of the problems the players are dealing with, and his capture is also unrelated to the breaking of the ordning and doesn't require that plot point. It's just introduced without any forewarning in the middle, and then still doesn't come up until the end, the last 30 pages of the adventure.
You could strip out the entire Hekaton arc and story, slap on some new adventure hooks, and have it as a completely separate adventure.
The Storm King's absence is likely discovered when talking to the diviner, where the following exchange can occur:
Why did Annam break the ordning? "To rouse his children from their complacency."
What must be done to stop the giants? "Find a magic conch of the storm giant king, Hekaton. Use it to visit Hekaton's court. Root out the evil therein." If the characters already have a conch of teleportation in their possession, the oracle says, "Use the conch to visit Hekaton's court. Root out the evil therein."
This part is particularly egregious, as restoring King Hekaton doesn't stop the giants. In fact, the adventure even says you can still go around facing the other giant clans. So rooting out the evil does nothing to stop the immediate problem.
Now, there's no relation between "complacency" and "restoring the status quo". Really, there's no reason to expect restoring things to reset the MacGuffin.
But most importantly, players aren't going to ask "what must be done to stop the giants?", they're going to ask "how do we restore the ordning?" And there isn't no answer for this in the adventure.
As I said earlier, you could rip out the 30 pages of Hekaton and his court at the end of SKT, the couple pages at the beginning, and then drop in a completely different ending adventure. And it would run just fine, only requiring a couple line changes in the preceding 200 pages of adventure (specifically in the temple with the oracle, directing players to the new adventure).
Which is problematic. Everything in an adventure should build and work towards the climax.
Dire Bare
Legend
While Storm King's Thunder doesn't have a high overall rating here on ENWorld currently, another data point is Amazon.com, where the book is currently sitting at 4.6 out of 5 stars (31 reviews).
I haven't played or run the adventure, but did purchase and read. I am enjoying it so far. Curse of Strahd was way better, so anything following on its heels is going to feel a bit unimpressive.
I haven't played or run the adventure, but did purchase and read. I am enjoying it so far. Curse of Strahd was way better, so anything following on its heels is going to feel a bit unimpressive.
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Your frustrations make sense; bit, not hanong read the book, many of those vague aspects seem to me to be design features, not failures (as in, more that Perkins succeed at something you didn't want, rather than failed at something he did not try?)
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