D&D 5E Tips for Tyranny of Dragons?

[embee]

So first of all, many thanks to all of you all for your input. It is very much appreciated.

Got some time to myself to set down and go through HotDQ and I think I'm going to start with them meeting up with the caravan near the Mere of Dead Men en route to the Carnath Roadhouse, which will also let me run "Book of Cylinders" from Candlekeep Mysteries. This way, I can bypass most of the caravan section but still get some of the highlights and expand their world a bit.

Meanwhile, the party doesn't have to schlep all the way down to Waterdeep or Greenest or Baldur's Gate and I still have plenty of side adventures left scattered around from the three followup adventures from DoIP (Storm Lord's Wrath, Sleeping Dragon's Wake, Divine Contention).

 

[jayoungr]

Got some time to myself to set down and go through HotDQ and I think I'm going to start with them meeting up with the caravan near the Mere of Dead Men en route to the Carnath Roadhouse, which will also let me run "Book of Cylinders" from Candlekeep Mysteries. This way, I can bypass most of the caravan section but still get some of the highlights and expand their world a bit.

My advice, if you do it this way, is to be sure you have a reason for the PCs to keep following the treasure on to Castle Naerytar, Parnast, and Skyreach Castle. When I ran Tyranny of Dragons, I had them all attend a meeting in Waterdeep with the heads of their organizations, at which the PCs were given the task of tracing where the treasure was going, finding out what it was to be used for, and then sabotaging the cult's plans if possible. If they don't have a firm mission at this point in the story, the PCs may not see a reason to do those things. In particular, they might decide to just ride Skyreach Castle to the Well of Dragons instead of trying to scuttle the cult's mission.