D&D 5E (2014) Revisiting Storm King's Thunder

Reynard · Mar 18, 2026

I have the opportunity to teach a bunch of young uns (okay, millenials) D&D (using fantasy grounds). We had session 0 last night, creating characters and getting familiar with the basics of FG. Next week we are going to start the game proper. My intent is to start Storm king's Thunder with them and if they want to continue to play, I will either keep running it or pass it off to the one player that seems most interested in GMing.

I only ran SKT once and not very successfully, shortly after it came out. There are lots of reasons for that, not least being I had way too many players and jumped in at 5th level instead of starting fresh at 1st. But since I have brand new players, I want to start the adventure from the beginning.
So I am looking for advice on running STK, specifically for new players and specifically on Fantasy Grounds.
Thanks.

dave2008 · Mar 18, 2026

I don't have anything for you, but I found these:

@SlyFlourish has this post on his blog "Getting the Most out of Storm King's Thunder" - I usually find his advice and suggestions welcome

Illusory Script "Tips for Running Storm King's Thunder" - I don't know this person or if their ideas are any good

on these forums there is this thread from @S3PTI4N77 "About to run Storm King's Thunder; Any tips?" - this has advice from some of the same people who are likely to respond to your post (and you also commented in that thread)

Reynard · Mar 18, 2026

dave2008 said:
I don't have anything for you, but I found these:

@SlyFlourish has this post on his blog "Getting the Most out of Storm King's Thunder" - I usually find his advice and suggestions welcome

Illusory Script "Tips for Running Storm King's Thunder" - I don't know this person or if their ideas are any good

on these forums there is this thread from @S3PTI4N77 "About to run Storm King's Thunder; Any tips?" - this has advice from some of the same people who are likely to respond to your post (and you also commented in that thread)

Yeah, in the past I have been kind of down on SKT based on the sort of crappy experience I described in this OP. But when I was going through the early parts of modules I happened to own on FG, SKT seemed to have a better start.

zottel · Thursday at 7:16 AM

I have never run it, but heard a lot of good about Storm Kings Thunder - The Alexandrian Remix
It supposedly fixes a lot of the flaws, and adds a lot of interconnectivity iirc.

Reynard · 2026-03-25T14:47:11+0000

We played session 1 last night and I must be an idiot. For the life of me I could not find Nightstone on any map of the sword coast.

Burnside · 2026-03-25T15:03:33+0000

Reynard said:
We played session 1 last night and I must be an idiot. For the life of me I could not find Nightstone on any map of the sword coast.

I don't think it existed prior to this adventure being published.

It's near the Ardeep Forest, in the hills between Waterdeep and Daggerford. I can't recall ever seeing any official Sword Coast map that included it, only fan-made ones.

Reynard · 2026-03-25T15:12:28+0000

Burnside said:
I don't think it existed prior to this adventure being published.

It's near the Ardeep Forest, in the hills between Waterdeep and Daggerford. I can't recall ever seeing any official Sword Coast map that included it, only fan-made ones.

Like, why wasn't it on a map IN THE MODULE?

Burnside · 2026-03-25T15:24:22+0000

Reynard said:
Like, why wasn't it on a map IN THE MODULE?

Yeah, I got nothing.

That levels 1-5 prologue section isn't terrible or anything, but it has a very "this part was written after the rest of this adventure, as an afterthought" feel.