Ender's Crafts: Storm King's Thunder

Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Storm King's Thunder

After a couple of my players tested their skill in DMing, the responsibility of propelling the story forward got back to me. Would I have the time to construct an adventure from nothing? Fortunately, we did not have to find out, as one particularly enthused player bought an off-the-shelf adventure: Storm King's Thunder. Now all I had to do was stitch together all our previous adventures...

Main setting

The adventure takes place in the Forgotten Realms setting. Now, granted, I could have rewritten everything.. but I saw no point. Upon scanning the continent map, I found the perfect spot where the Zarek valley, Wychwood and the temple would be situated. Well, almost perfect, given the climate, but we'll gloss over that. Conveniently, all 3 home-brewed adventures took place in a generic fantasy setting, so placing them in Faerun did not present any more difficulties.

And so, the world is no longer "the" Forgotten Realms... it is "our" Forgotten Realms!

Adventurer backgrounds

Fortunately, I am somewhat familiar with the Forgotten Realms (at least the parts pictured), having played a lot of Neverwinter Nights 2 and having read a lot of R. A. Salvatore's books. Again, the PCs all had fairly generic backgrounds and I had no difficulty placing their origins in the setting. Except maybe the Dragonborn... but nothing a bit of blend between 4E's "points of light" setting and the Forgotten Realms did not solve. It's not like the PCs will ever delve into ancient history. Right? RIGHT?

Campaign adjustments

The introductory part of the campaign needed a bit of fiddling. I did not want to leave the PCs unanchored in the world (even if the Zarek valley campaign ended with cities asking for help against the giants' invading). To refresh the players' memory, as well as showing them the devastation the giants brought into the realm of men, I condensed the story parts of the introduction (levels 1-5) into just a couple of sessions. I left most fighting out, and made the remaining fights tough enough to present a challenge.

Some directions and distances also needed adjusting, as the campaign assumes the PCs going up the road from south, whereas my party was travelling east to west, but that was also easily done away with.

Blog posts

Having learned from the 4E game (where I had no way of remembering what went on during the sessions after a year or so), I had one player take notes even during the Zarek valley campaign. He was supposed to write the articles from the players' perspective (as I had for the two short intermissions)... alas, he did not. But we were blessed with another adventurous soul who dared take on the other guy's notes and produce the following articles. I merely did the editing, spellcheck and added notes to provide context or DM insight.

Adventurers

Finally, the PCs:

Groin, dwarf life cleric (the journalist!)
Ireth, wood elf druid of the land
Ren, kor monk (the scribe!)
Selene, half-elf wild magic sorceress
Solid, dragonborn paladin
Szivem, human draconic sorceress
Tari, wood elf ranger

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