The problem with Storm King's Thunder and 5e modules overall

"Lear the Giant King" from Dungeon Magazine No. 78 (2000)

I have been incorporating elements of premade 5e modules into my D&D homebrew which I have been running twice a month at the local library. 

With 5e being eight years old now, there is a lot of material that WotC has put out during the years, including a plethora of what we used to refer to as "prefabs," or pre-written campaign modules for DMs to run if they are short on time or to draw inspiration from. After collecting all the source books for DM (except for a few of the campaign settings that I am not that keen on, I am looking at you "Acquisitions Incorporated") I have invested in "Storm King's Thunder", although it is not the latest adventure book I purchased, that would be "Candlekeep Mysteries." which as some of you know, is just a series of one-shots you can drop into your ongoing campaigns.

But even though this book has been out for quite a while (first print 2016 if I am not mistaken) I chose it to represent some of the problems a DM will experience trying to run the adventure as written, and as an example of what Wizards gets right in their pre-written adventure books and why they are sometimes problematic. I won't get too deep into what is wrong with the book, since it has been out a number of years, there is plenty out in the interwebs if you want to read a review or if you are on the fence about picking it up or whether or not to run it.

Instead, I will discuss what attracted me to it and what my plans are with the adventure now that I own it in hopes that others will benefit from such information. Now, first off: Upon careful examination of the story, it was fun to discover that the game designers drew inspiration from many old D&D books, adventures and sources and that it is influenced by the old Shakespeare play "King Lear."

Maybe that is why the adventure starts off with a Dramatis Personae with the main members of the adventure's cast of characters listed in alphabetical order for easy reference. There are a lot of NPCs in this book and the index lists all of them, over 60! Of course, it will be up to the DM and players whether they interact or use them all.  

 The adventure centers on King Hekaton, the most powerful of the giants, and his daughters and what happens in the aftermath of the shattering of the ordning, a caste system imposed upon Giant society by their gods. The adventure can be ran with the initial chapter in the book which takes PCs from levels 1 to 4 or with other published adventures that accomplish the same thing. Personally, one thing that I find Wizards got right is setting up a lot of their pre-written stories in the Forgotten Realms, so that DMs can theoretically flow players from one to the other seamlessly. At least that was the goal, but of course, this doesn't always work out in practice.

The book does have a nifty handy flowchart which details this and notes that chapter 2 is intended for characters that are level 5 where the PCs can then explore three areas with multiple encounters. This happens again two chapters later where PCs are given the choice between five different areas to explore and again after Chapter 10 where there is a choice of two ways to conclude the adventure.

Michael Selinker's adaptation of the Shakespeare play which was published in the magazine came during that nebulous time in D&D history when the game was transitioning from AD&D 2nd edition into the radical revamp WotC made which eventually led to 3rd edition, but the adaptation still follows 2e rules as evidenced by creatures and NPC stat blocks which still make mention of older game mechanics like THACO. Just like Lear, the protagonist of SKT, King Hekaton has gone missing and part of the adventure hook is for the PCs to go searching for him. Unfortunately, even though the book is rife with tensions and political intrigue concerning the king's court and the turmoil which engulfs it after the king goes missing, and following the events of chapter 2, the largest chunck of the book, Chapter 3 "The Savage Frontier" is dedicated to locations in the Sword Coast that the PCs can explore.

Many critics have pointed out, and I concur, this is where SKT starts to break down as the pages and pages of locations detailed in the book, while interesting, could have been presented as a separate supplement or as part of the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. 

So here's the bottom line: I don't regret investing in SKT, I remember walking into the hobby shop and going through all the printed adventures looking for a good one to engage my players who are currently embroiled in a combination of a homebrew with elements of the original starter set adventure with portions of the "Essentials Kit" module just to keep things interesting. I remember being excited over the prospect of having a big epic adventure involving the giants as part of our ongoing 5e campaign, but the best way to run this, upon careful study, is to take bits and parts of it and use them separately. This is how a lot of DMs approach 5e prefabs and SKT is no exception.

Chapter 3 does have a useful section and tables for random wilderness encounters, as well as suggested encounters for the many locations of the North such as Amphail, the Grandfather Tree, Beorunna's Well, Icewind Dale and Waterdeep. I have not done a deep study of how interconnected these encounters are in relation to the overall main narrative, but I have seen reviews which suggest that they are not.

In conclusion, it takes a bit of work to incorporate pre-written adventures into existing or homebrews for 5e, but with a little bit of work, a DM can draw inspiration from their story hooks or even lift whole sections without having to run them as written, grabbing encounter and interesting story elements and tweaking them for their own purposes. It is clear to me now that this was the intended consequence of making the Forgotten Realms the default setting for 5e, although of course, there are many other settings including some that are unique to this system including the "Magic the Gathering" inspired setting like Ravnica and Strixhaven. 

Storm King's Thunder by Wizards of the Coast (2016)

Getting ready for RvR: DAOC Classic server on the way?

I thought for the inaugural post for this blog I would briefly mention my return to Dark Age of Camelot in 2022. There are still some die-hard players who love this mmo and are playing it today. Usually when I do a search with the /who command I get at least 75 players on a weekend night, which is pretty decent for a game that is this old.

Chris Neal of the Massively Overpowered game site posted early in 2022 that Broadsword producer Talal “Eldariian” Saad had mentioned a classic new DAOC server promising big things like content that will be larger in scope and scale, longer periods of access to server dynamics, the ability to focus on or remove specific expansion features, and “wholly new and very exciting objectives,” all while offering players a level playing field to start off with. The dev. team for DAOC is pretty small so it is not any wonder that here we are 6 months later and this is still being developed.

Why do I get the inkling that we will probably get a DAOC classic server before Camelot Unchained, the RvR three faction mmo being developed by Mark Jacobs and his team, ever sees the light of day. I mean, here we are in mid July 2022, almost a decade after I first heard about this project and even though it entered beta 1 phase four years ago, and over $4 million has been pledged, still no concrete release date for the updated game has been forthcoming. 

At any rate, I felt an itch to play DAOC and even though I still have my wow account, I am thinking of alternating between these two mmos in the near future. It was relatively easy to join the Raven of Vallhala guild on the Ywain 4 server and spent a good amount of time in the old ToA expansion continent leveling and preparing to get my template for RvR.

I had a max level character back in the day and playing a zerker is rather easy, you pretty much get angry and beat up on mobs, the skills are relatively easy to acquire and learn. The only other Dark Age related news we had recently is that the traveling merchants have returned. According to a community post earlier this month, prices have been adjusted for some of the stores and a wide range of items were added including event and campaign items, including a bigger selection of potions.

The merchants can be found in Midgard just outside of Svasud Faste in the Vale of Murlan, in Albion just outside of Castle Sauvage in Camelot Hills and in Hibernia just outside of Druim Ligen in Connacht. This even will run until Monday, August 1.