D&D 5E Princes of the Apocalypse DM advice please

[JWO]

I'm a relatively new DM and I'm going to hopefully be DMing a PotA game relatively soon. I've been reading through the book and it really seems like there's an awful lot to take in all at once, even just in the descriptions of the many locations that the PCs can visit in Red Larch and the surrounding areas. I'm wondering if anyone had any advice regarding what to prepare before starting. I think I'll probably start the PCs at 3rd level and skip the extra prologue bits (though some of them do look pretty fun).

I know a lot of people say you should prepare as little as possible and just make stuff up on the fly but that's really not my forté and I'd like to have things to fall back on.

Also, did you use the 'Adventure Hooks' for your PCs? How did you present them? Did you just give them the book and get them to choose one or what? It seems like they give quite a bit away...

TL;DR - What did the people who DMed this adventure do to prepare for it?

 

[JValeur]

I definitely think it's a hard one to prepare for. I'm running it at level 6 right now, on my 6th or 7th session. My advice to you is to steer your PC's towards the more fun parts, so you don't have to plan for everything.

Adventure Hooks

My players come out of the Lost Mines of Phandelver, so they are already in factions, and just got the faction hooks. A factionless player got a Windharrow adventure hook. I would simply designate adventure hooks, or speak with the players about it. Most players will forget any information from these hooks, if you keep it vague.

Initial play

Initially, the Feathergale Spire is both the most obvious first location and vastly the most interesting of the elemental cult hide-outs, from an RP standpoint. The manticore hunt is exciting (albeit not very challenging) if done right. You can easily make the Feathergale Spire a non-combat (besides the manticore hunt) encounter, that ends with the party being flown to the Sacred Monastery (although the combat here is not that interesting, it does have a lot of information, and the most obvious way into the depths below).

I have not run the fire elemental camp, but it also looks interesting, both from an RP and combat standpoint. The Monastery and Rivergard Keep are not too interesting, in my humble opinion. Be aware though, that the fire elemental camp is pretty high-level.

Random Encounters

I suck at improvising (or at least, I'm not that good at it) so I actually sat down and fleshed out some random encounters. I did away with some I thought were uninteresting, and improved upon others with stuff I knew my players would like. I still roll for random encounters, but from a smaller, and more prepared list.

Overland travel

The map is very, very large, if you follow the guidelines on the map. Another thread on this forum has compared this map to other maps, and scaled it down a lot, which reduces travel times heavily. I advise you to do this, and read the entirety of that thread, since it really makes travelling a lot less tedious for your players.

I've personally introduced a random weather table that I roll on, to clue my players in that weather is behaving very weirdly. It doesn't have to be anything fancy with mechanics - it could be as simple as opening the DMG and choosing a type of weather for the day.

Read others experiences!
My small post here is a lot less than you need. I would advise you to look around here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/36vwdy/princes_of_the_apocalypse_resources/. It has everything you need to be well-prepared for running PotA (which, sadly, is a lot more than should be necessary when running and out-of-the-book adventure.

My last advice, that I try to follow myself, is to remember to have fun with it and be creative. If you suddenly change a name here, or give out some information that doesn't match with the book, just go with your own direction. The book is meant as helpful guidelines, the adventure is yours!

 

[JWO]

Thanks very much! That Reddit link seems especially useful! I'll be going through all that now

 

[Herobizkit]

PotA is really rough for newer DMs, especially if they haven't run any pre-5e games.

I'd _strongly_ suggest not skipping the prologue, or even better, running the Lost Mines of Phandelver to get your players comfortable with their characters and you comfortable with DMing, THEN jumping into PotA.

For advance prep, I'd collect the names and stats of the important NPCs in the adventure and index them somewhere for easy access.

 

[Rabbitbait]

And I'm in a different camp. I found the factions and the plot hooks really bad and they just felt tacked on to me. I recommend taking some time with the players for them to design their characters and their backgrounds, and then make some adjustments to hook them in based on what they decide. It doesn't need much to get you in.

I also recommend reading through this thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?444419-Princes-of-the-Apocalypse-campaign-recaps

Read other peoples adventure logs - this will give you ideas as well as help you to see how different each groups experiences can be.

Also - here is my own adventure log starting from when we started PoTA: https://deathgrind.obsidianportal.com/adventure-log/feathergale-knights

I've set this in Eberron, but it's still the same adventure - I skipped the prologue as well as I had been running them through another adventure before PoTA came out. The themes fitted though so it was an easy swapover. I was running Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and finished there at level 3.

 

[Lancelot]

My advice, having run it (so far) all the way through to the Fane of the Eye...

1) Start the PCs at 1st level. Either use the indicated prologue side-treks in the book, or consider running the first half of Lost Mine of Phandelver. Personally, I used the material from PotA, and it was a lot of fun. However, you need to pull your punches as the DM. The necromancer boss in the starting adventure can easily TPK a 1st level party if played "optimally". You need to play him as indicated by the adventure notes: he's a coward who runs from the party, might cast a single spell or two in defense, and otherwise collapses in a heap. Same is true of the earth priest under Red Larch. High AC, good HP and decent offensive spells can be hard on a 2nd level party of beginners. Maybe he "wastes" a round gloating or monologuing. Maybe he casts a weak spell for effect, or to show his contempt for the party.

2) Don't neglect the side-treks. They're really important to keep the players from going insane. The module is basically: fight cultists from 3rd-14th level. Grinding through the underground temples is especially trying. The side-treks allow the players to experience something different and unpredictable, before returning to cultist fights.

3) On a similar note, I'd suggest avoiding any random encounters with cultists. There are so many cultist fights in the book; the party doesn't need to fight more when traveling on the road. Instead, use some of the many other interesting encounters with different monsters or NPCs.

4) Don't reveal any of the passages beneath the "above-ground fortresses" until you're ready to do so. In the module, as written, the party can theoretically go to Feathergale Spire (or any of the other above-ground locations), find a tunnel going down, and immediately wander into an encounter zone that is way outside their level range. This may be fine for experienced players and DMs (who can have a fun time with figuring out that they're in over their heads), but it can be a nasty experience for a less proficient group. It's almost certainly better to guide the party through the adventure zones in a more logical order. In my game, I removed the below-ground tunnels altogether. My party finished off the above-ground fortresses in order. Then, during one of the side-treks, they found some old ruins that had a single tunnel descending into the "air quadrant" of the underground temples. This basically ensured they had a smooth progression in difficulty.

5) Be a bit wary with cultist spellcasters. Fireballs can be rough on an inexperienced group; multiple fireballs in the same round can be even rougher. Just because the NPC stat block says they can cast a certain spell, don't automatically make it the go-to option. Vary the NPC tactics, even if it means using a suboptimal spell or option in a particular round. This is particularly important given the sheer number of similar cultists the party is eventually going to be wading through.

6) In hindsight, one of the mistakes I made while DM'ing the earlier parts of the adventure is not directly emphasizing that there are other ways of dealing with the cults than a frontal assault. I assumed my experienced group would at least try some approaches like stealth, subterfuge, deception, etc. They didn't. Every single cult headquarters became a room-clearing exercise. They took no prisoners, and never attempted to infiltrate or bluff the enemy. This made part of the adventure less interesting for everyone at the table, even if it was the players' choice. If I had the chance to do it again, I'd have a helpful NPC actively suggest that the party try to disguise themselves and infiltrate at least one of the above-ground fortresses, simply to change the flavour from a dungeon crawl to more of a social interaction with one or more of the cults.

 

[Rhenny]

Here's some general advice and some specific advice.

In general (and with PoTA) don't be afraid to go off script and improvise at different moments. I always find it much more difficult to stick strictly to the published adventures, and when the PCs do something that draws them away from the written action if I go along with them and develop ideas around their thoughts my sessions usually become more dynamic and interesting. Invariably, there will be a moment later where the group comes back into the adventure and continues into an area or encounter that is written into the adventure. To help me improvise and have options, I create a few encounters or even an encounter path that I can pull out if the situation presents itself. I think this is something that can help when running PoTA because PotA is so expansive. The adventure itself requires the PCs to explore, infiltrate and combat 4 different cults, which could become tedious without breaks. Read through the sidetreks in the adventure too. They can be used to infuse the variety as well.

I've only run about 10 sessions so far. I started the group from 1st level and had them do some of the pre-adventure around town portions of the book, including Tomb of Moving Stones, The Necrmancer's Lair, The Ghost in the cave part of the adventure too, as well as some other random encounters. It all worked pretty well. I dropped a lot of hints using the NPCs in town (mostly Kaylessa and the Constable, but others too). I also introduced a note in a cave that told them about Rivergard Keep and how "Grimjaw buys stuff." (This was not in the adventure, but I wanted to give them a hook to get them there eventually). Overall, it was pretty easy to get the group to go toward the Sumber Hills and eventually catch glimpse of the Feathergale Society Tower. I did however move the location of the Shallow Grave encounter and connected it with the Necromancer cave. I also had the graves be empty so that they group would track the dragged bodies to the Necromancer's cave. This got them closer to the Tower.

The interactions in Feathergale Society tower were fun and had the potential to go a number of different ways. At first, I planned to have the Knights and Thurl Merroska be gracious and inviting to the others, but one of the PCs in the party did something that offended 3 of the Knights, so I had the Knights (with some cultists) try to capture the PCs and bring them up to the Pinnacle to put the offending PC on trial. Miraculously, the PCs were able to subdue the group that attacked them and then they escaped.

To prepare for the Tower, and other above ground keeps for the other cults, make sure you think very carefully about the individual cult's motivations and personality. Slot yourself some options so that when the PCs interact, you can manipulate the foes accordingly.

At this point, my guys are 4th level and camping with some Aarakocra in the Sighing Valley and they are finding out that those creatures suspect that the Feathergale Knights are not what they seem. They told the group that they have seen humanoids flung from the tower, left at the bottom as food for scavengers. The PCs already had a chance to look through the looking glass on top of the tower and they did see some robed figures across the valley seemingly guarding an area in the cavern. I don't know exactly where the group will go next. They may go back to the Tower to take care of business, or they may investigate the robed figures across the valley. We'll see.

 

[designbot]

Read this:

http://detectmagic.blogspot.com/2015/04/princes-of-apocalypse-quickstart.html

And then this:

http://thecampaign20xx.blogspot.com/2015/04/elemental-evil-guide-to-princes-of.html

 

[Bawylie]

1.) Rip the book apart at the bindings.
2.) Reorganize the pages so that relevant sections are available in one area for your reference.
3.) make crazy amounts of notes referencing other pages with stuff you'll or frequently use.
4.) write up your encounters on their own sheets before play, stick these sheets into your former-book-now-pile-of-papers.
5.) be sure, apparently, to memorize a HUGE info dump unrelated to what the adventurers are doing in the moment.
6.) Run on separate themes. Once the players decide to go after one specific cult, stop. Reorganize your pile, take your time with that cult. Spend 2-3 sessions on it, it's activities, rippling effects, and getting to know the involved NPCs and territories.
7.) make a reference map

This is not the type of thing that's "ready-to-run" when you open it. There's a crazy amount of DM work - more than I expect from a pre-published product. This books isn't a good manual and doesn't lend itself to easy use. So you'll have to do the work, the book won't do you any favors.