The FUNNIEST thing by far is that I have been watching MrRhexx's videos in order to come up with homebrew ideas based on D&D Lore and run Storm King's Thunder. 😂

@evantyler8647

4 жыл бұрын

Nice

@Burnsez

4 жыл бұрын

Agreed. And I don’t disagree, this module is hard on the DM that wants the players to have an immersive experience.

i dont understand anything about d&d but i would listen to this guy retelling how he tied his shoes in the morning

@TheDennisjeppsson

Жыл бұрын

I know a bit of dnd but I second this statement. MrRexx is amazing

@sufurrancho

Жыл бұрын

His voice is magnetic

I love that the auto generated subtitles changed Valachi to Milwaukee and now I want to play curse of straad, Wisconsin edition.

This was actually my favorite campaign I ever ran. However, when I take off the rose tinted glasses, I believe it's because the players and their really memorable characters, and I changed the campaign heavily. It's so sad that I moved from that group

@TransilvanianHunger1334

4 жыл бұрын

Why did you moved from them?

@iX1NS0MN14CXi

4 жыл бұрын

@@TransilvanianHunger1334 I transferred locations for my job. Better pay, lower cost of living. I still play some online games with them though

@killahface967

3 жыл бұрын

Play on discord and roll20/shard. I actually enjoy the online setting a lot more than physical. It’s easier to organize and create content.

I ran the campaign and finished it so this might be a long comment : - The nightstone issue : Although it might not be clearly stated, the one who claimed the Nightstone is clearly the countess. Her section actively described how she is looking for artifacts and magical power, so it's not really difficult to come to this conclusion. - Zephyros : As suggested on a reddit post that I can't find, I used Zephyros as an exposure character, which means he drops a lot of lore during the few days travel which really hooked my players in the quest. But the travel is not a problem. At the end of the Nightstone quest, the players should be handed a destination to deliver a message and that's how they are suggested to go to X place (see Morak's quest). So this is not an issue... - Cities of the Coast : I agree that there is nothing to do in most cities. In my game, a character had ties to Neverwinter and Waterdeep so I made it so that many NPCs were native from there and could be met again. Also what I would suggest is take some quests that are suggested for other places and move there there (i.e. the Weevil quest) . But I agree that there is something missing. At the same time, some of those settlements are not that "important" to the story... But you can make it. Also, the giants are supposed to be constantly attacking the cities, so a giant attack or siege is always an option. - Choosing the giant : The same reddit post I mentioned suggested to force players to visit more than one giant which I tried and worked well. When they attacked the Hill Giants they made the Chieftain fall to the basement and her weight broke the artifact (I'm simplifying here). They then went to Svardbarg next and they got a little more information about the frost giants. - Running the open world : The players are handed many quests to do that will have them travel all over the place. I made it so that my players told me exactly what they wanted to do so I could prepare and make things interesting for them. Also, although this section is suggested for 1 level, I handed XP normally and my players leveled up with the challenges I put before them. That made it so that they leveled up even before they met Harshnaag, as a reward for all the questing and traveling. - Homebrewing : yes it's necessary to homebrew to enjoy the game. It's not a game for begginer DM. I added many NPCs and elements to tie into my character's backstory. I also asked my players to have a reason to be a group (not doing the tavern meetup) and have a common goal (which ended up being an endgame goal) that I could also tie into the giant narrative. I also added A LOT about the Kraken Society. Some examples : a strange curse/disease plagues the people of the coast and healing spells only help contain the condition instead of healing it. They later learned that the cursed was created and maintained by the KS cultists. I also added encounters with cultist with the basic logic that they are trying to capture spellcasters to curse them and transform them into Kraken Priest. I understand most of your criticism and I agree : you mus add stuff to make this campaign engaging. But as a DM with 10+ years of experience, it was somewhat simple to see the parts that were lacking and improve them, or see the open spaces where I could add my own stuff. As a final note, I would add that players should not come into the game with unannounced expectations. If they want to do a character that is linked to a settlement and you don't want to disappoint them, take some time apart to talk about what they really love/slash want for this settlement. So even if Waterdeep and Luskan and Neverwinter are not expanded upon a lot, it should not be an issue as your players will cross many town and cities and dont need a barrage of lore everytime they enter one. They need information to stay hooked to the story. Add what you must to make your players happy, if that's really what they want. I only mention it because you talked about it a few times in your video. I never dealt with this personally a lot because my players don't know the Forgotten Realms that much. Hope you make this campaign great! PS : I'm French Canadian so my English might be off...

@raminazimi4978

4 жыл бұрын

I love your take on the giants. I have taken my party through all of the giants and are currently trying to take on the horde that is trying to get into citidal Adbar to take the primordial.

@rayr9685

4 жыл бұрын

I agree much the same as a first time dm with a huge lore library in my head. I just Wikied the City of Waterdeep and made a rtf document and turned it into like a 3-4 session event they're now headed off toward Gudd Haug with a platoon of the Order of the Hand. I was seriously dissapointed with the purchase though after realizing most locations were empty or only had small menial easy to miss hooks. It is taking a toll on prep time though.

@LethannAeda

3 жыл бұрын

@@rayr9685 You can also use the last chapter of Dragon Heist which is nothing but a guide to waterdeep itself. LOTS of RP opportunities there.

@texteel

3 жыл бұрын

"But as a DM with 10+ years of experience, it was somewhat simple to see the parts that were lacking and improve them, or see the open spaces where I could add my own stuff." Yeeees, but that doesnt excuse the module from being stupid, incomplete and poorly written. That is a "modders will fix it" attitude that should not be tolerated. Skyrim was never worth 60 bucks, with the amount of mods it needs to not be boring. I bought it for 3.75 on a chrismat. Have played it for years before that tho. Same thing here. We must demand quality, and vote with our wallets when that quality is not being met.

@Ikbob11

Жыл бұрын

"Not good for beginner dms" Hahahahaha, oops XD I'm running it rn as my first campaign, and I feel like Brian laying tracks in front of the moving minecart XD

excited to watch a 40 minute video about what's wrong with storm king's thunder

@daygenandrews1321

4 жыл бұрын

23 minutes in, enjoying myself so far

@pacal007

4 жыл бұрын

FluffCarnage music is great too. 👌🏼

Storm kings thunder thighs

@cornuschristi1814

4 жыл бұрын

Thicc thighs save lives

@jamesbenedict7516

4 жыл бұрын

Thunderclap them cheeks!

I see you created a new playlist for this video. Does that mean we'll be getting more commentary videos? If so, I'm on board!

@coolio3267

3 жыл бұрын

Same

@docop8926

3 жыл бұрын

Y ask this dude anything? Henever responds in the comment section

I actually enjoyed this rant, and would definitely would listen to another

Your voice sounded so different in the first few seconds, I legit thought I clicked someone else video, not yours. I wanted to share, keep being awesome Rhexx.

Tried to run this as my first full campaign out of byrn shander and ended up scrapping it after 2 sessions. The time I had to put into homebrewing this and trying to make things in the open world was just too long to the point I decided to just create my own world which is already going smoother.

I used my character's backstories to fill in the gaps of play in Chapter 3. It took them from level 6 through 7 to play through their collective background stories. I also changed the story to they had to find three Giant strongholds before moving on to the next chapter.

This is incredibly timed. I got Storm King's Thunder literally the DAY this video came out, and have been researching up and down to see what I need to know before I run it. Im not set to do so for probably 6 months or so, which seems to be a good thing if this video is to be believed. What you have said is actually amazingly helpful, and honestly I consider it good news! I have wanted to learn how to make a world myself for some time... and wow does it look this is an amazing practice field! I have never personally created a city or anything like that... and the info presented in this book alongside the lore of the world will guide me to what "checkboxes" I need to hit when designing things like this. And with it literally handing me all the lore for the land, I plan to treat this as a world building tutorial! Thank you for this insight, I'm actually somehow MORE excited to run this.

Even Chris Perkins seemed to try and spend as little time within the module as he could.

This video is excellent. I had all these issues running this game as well. I would have to end sessions early because the players wanted to go somewhere that had nothing in it, and I would have to go home and home brew stuff. It ended up being really stressful and not very fun.

A video going over how to repair Prince's of the Apocalypse would be great!

@costelloarbuckle4659

4 жыл бұрын

Yep

@StorytellingRon

4 жыл бұрын

Hah... I did one... specifically feeling like Mr. Rhexx... frustrations on these... by no means as good a vid maker as Mr. R. But here's my fix on Princes of Apocalypse... kzread.info/dash/bejne/gI192cisepa_m9I.html

Mr. Rhexx, I really like your videos. I think it would be cool to learn about the planes.

Currently running this adventure with lots of homebrew

@slickrickard

4 жыл бұрын

Recently finished Storm King's thunder to great success took about 2 years had to do this to make it work. Homebrew Homebrew Homebrew. That being said the bones made for a great story once I made changes my players seem to like it I DM'd for 6 and they finished at level 13. We actually took the characters into Tomb of Annihilation prestige they are now 14 but one has already died.

@ROBHELL82

4 жыл бұрын

Same. And my head hurts after almost every session lol

@ilcuzzo12

4 жыл бұрын

I'm running SKT. You are mostly correct. Glad you brought up Luskan. I knew my party was traveling south along the coast so I dove back into the 3.5 faerûn material and had the characters encounter the high captains and the hostower mages. They loved it and it was loosely related to the breaking of the ordering. It was obvious that I was going to have to do a lot of homebrewing to make it all fit. Running SKT takes more work than a normal campaign unless you want to railroad your party.

If the open world is empty there is only 2 options: 1st. Add content from anywhere else - but is your it now the adventure players wanted to play? They agreed to play SKT, but this part is Phandelver, that is Dragonheist... 2nd. Do not run this as open world. Build Rails and guide players through the most interesting parts of adventure. Let them choose what dungeon they want but don't let them go to empty places.

@beetlejuss

3 жыл бұрын

The 2nd one! Our DM just gave us the Quest and side Quests, and we choose the side quest and been playing this for like 3 years... But that was our decision.

@zedgathegreat9122

3 жыл бұрын

This is what I've been doing, well, maybe a mixture of both. All those empty towns? They don't exist. I might have one or two on certain crossroads, but they may be run down places players can seek refuge for a night, but don't want to hang out in, or more of a farmer's market type place with basic amenities. If I'm not trying to have adventures, shops, or rest areas in a place, then it shouldn't exist. I don't need to describe every village my players walk through, or even give them the idea of "hey, we should stop here and solve everyone's problems". Those places just don't exist, there is no temptation to run off and find meaningless quests that just add more work for both me and players. I tend to shrink down things by a huge margin. Places only exist if you as the DM allow them to exist. Players will never know if something is missing or you decide to skip over a few meaningless towns on a road. Everything is a source of imagination. Don't like a town, or a quest, or think that by saving a few NPCS they should get every quest available? then tweak it to how you want to run it. Future quest makes you backtrack to a previous village you emitted? Move to another memorable place. I really think of the one of greatest things of SKT is it really tries to push DMs to make it their own and it's as much of an open world for the players as it is for the DMs. It's really "Here's a great storyline, but how will you make it your own?" and not "here's the story, run it this way."

Start of video: "I wanted to take the time..." *40 minutes later* Wait, that was *my time* too... I mean, he's right

As a first time DM that's going to start with this (and actually bought the book) I'm afraid/scared and hopeful that this video will give good hints to improve it. I heard a lot of bad things about it *after* i bought it, the main suggestion is to drop a lot of hints about the K. Society.

@Grixis_Teller_of_Tales

4 жыл бұрын

I advised this don't be afraid to come up with your own stuff. the book is merely to aid you and give you a synopsis of the adventure and the plot. your players will build the story. If you need advice don't be afraid to ask.

@spkt0r

4 жыл бұрын

I already posted this but im afraid it will get buried, hope this helps. The Nightstone is a device that moves people and some small items or a small wagon from where the Nightstone is to the Tower Of Zephyros or as i like it, The Haunted Citadel Zephyros the Thrice Damned, allowing for near-instantaneous transportation. The Nightstone is only able to do this at a leyline point where multiple ley lines converge. The stone can be moved by the citadel to the Citadel or to a new location, a special recall ritual is performed using the dialing home device. The stone Teleports like the wizard spell Teleportation Circle with a 20’ foot diameter, an invisible force projects from the ground and locks everyone into the teleportation ring during the teleport. The teleported person can take up to 300gp (1 gp weight is 1 ounce) weight per their lvl excluding thier armor, personal weapons, clothes, backpack, and familiar, a 4th lvl character would be able to bring with them 1200gp weight which is 75lbs +what they are wearing, and whatever is in their backpack. The Players can combine there weight limit so 4, 4th lvl characters can bring 300lbs with them (feel free to change this number). The player characters are able to take one other person with them as long as they are touching and with in the circle. The Dialing Home Device is a series of pieces that can look like jewelry or weapons at first but is in fact an oversized Alidade or you can make it a pocket watch for giants with no glass (so imagine two bucklers for the front and back of the watch, two small daggers, they could double as simple magical items +1 and so on don’t go to crazy with it). The device needs to be on the player characters to collect the living energy from them for 24hrs, one piece per player. Once they take possession of one of the pieces it is tied to them only death can separate it from them. Once the device it put together and everyone is touching the device or another player touching the device they all teleport away to home . Nightstone the town, the hole where the Nightstone was standing is a portal that leads directly to the dripping caves and it works because the Earseekers (make Earseekers human bandits real scum of the earth types that are very good at subterfuge and have been to the town once before to help steal the Nightstone for Zephyros using the Dialing device) have Dialing Home Device pieces. The way it works is that one of the Humans/Goblins jumps into the hole and disappears (seen by the mage of the party) the device glows and shows them that there is a clear connection to the hole. The Hole is special because the Nightstone was standing on it for such a long time that part of the magic seeped into the ground with limited uses. There will be enough pieces for each player +1 the creature that already went thru. The way I would try it is to run the Tower Of Zephyros instead as The Haunted Castle/Citadel Zephyros the Thrice Damned (Chosen of Khorne or Tzeentch, I love those stupid ever chickens, insert Lovecraftian horror here). The question you have to ask yourself is does Zephyros have to be alive at all? Zephyros can be a ghost or the players may have to defeat him because he is absolutely bat shyt crazy wizard that is corrupted by chaos magic. He would still be Neutral good but have an alter ego/split personality. The castle/citadel in the cloud. The way the players come across it. Is thru the exit of the dripping caves the Cloud Tower is located on what seems like a mountain with a lot of cloud surrounding it, as the players move up the mountain the clouds get thicker and thicker, all they can see is the road in front of them turns to clear marble stones(solid clouds), when the look up they always see the Tower or Citadel. The castle/citadel is somewhat a static cloud where its in a place till sunset and then it teleports randomly (aka contorled by the DM where he fake rolls some dice behind the GM screen very dramatically) along ley lines, within the castle/citadel is a Stargate like device (A non-movable stone gate circular or a stone plinth, insert Nightstone here). The other major dungeons in the adventure could have other Nightstone at the centre of the dungeons or there endpoint, the Dial Home Device that the players have works on them as well and they take you to a new tower with its own owner or the tower may be part of the original citadel of Zephyros, so more towers that that when placed together take the player to a citadel or a simple castle. I know i'm over complicating the simple cloud tower, the idea is that it does not go anywhere anymore and it still does move but only to places where you want it to move. The Nightstone can be placed anywhere else in a campaign by the players eventually they can gain control of the Cloud citadel and can be moved along ley lines, but it should be very costly to the players not only in money but magical items that are consumed in special ritual. just an idea and sorry i could only peruse the adventure in the store.

@Grixis_Teller_of_Tales

4 жыл бұрын

@@spkt0r interesting but that's the thing about SKT it leaves room for your own adventures

@Koroistro

4 жыл бұрын

Oh, to be fair I'm starting this at level 5, at Bryn Shander. All my PCs have already close links with what's happening with the Frost Gigants. I'm starting them with they being tasked (they are mercenaries) to assault Zephyros' tower (in stead of the dwarves) and I'm going to run the combat against the Evil Air cult, after a little exposition they'll get in Bryn Shander.

@Grixis_Teller_of_Tales

4 жыл бұрын

@@Koroistro not bad concept as this would also be during the elemental apocalypse or Prince of the apocalypse

To me premade “adventures” are more sources of lore than anything else. It’s more dynamic lore whereas the stuff you’re making most vids about are more static. As if a diviner is predicting some of the things that could happen and the sites associated with it. I’m always using the players’ backstory as the main source for any adventure though. Guess that means I’m home brewing more than most but it does hugely limit your reliance on adventures like these which might not be the best written one. As a result you can appreciate the dynamic lore which IS presented by these publications a lot more. Ps. I’ve been GMing for 25 years now so I might have a different perspective than most. Happy to share though.

@Metalhammer1993

4 жыл бұрын

same here. The way I run curse of strahd, there are many details that I either forgot, or added because they made sense to me (for instance instead of the Tree in the druid´s grove at yester hill, my players fight strahd, the druids and a second shambling mound. Similar to the one in the death house.) but I´ll just stick to the book to get an idea of the campaign. playing it by the book doesn´t work by design. The books give you a setting and major characters the rest depends on the players really.

@xuantianshangti8735

4 жыл бұрын

I agree to a point, I feel like they’re excellent for a gm and party that want to play but don’t have the time for a full in depth game. But on the other hand, they’re limiting and linear, they don’t allow for much in the way of lateral thinking and generally hand hold the hell out of the players. Contrived things happen for contrived reasons and the like. So for a party that has the time, a home brew campaign will generally be better but for a group without that time then modules are quite useful

I love all the freedom it gives to me as DM. I close all the gaps with homebrew and make it my/my player's own. It has a nice story and setting, just gotta make the small extras that make the campaign more personal.

before watching this vid "For an adventure about giants, theres not that many giants/giant Kin in this adventure" thats my assumption before seeing the video

@brotherbear92

4 жыл бұрын

I wish that was the problem with this adventure.

Since I'm working on my own homebrewed D&D world (several, actually) this is giving me a lot of advice in of itself about what I should do with plot hooks, building up areas, and creating an overall story. I'm actually looking forward to more videos that describe what people can do as DMs to make their worlds better (even if the hints and tips are indirect) and having your videos as a reference for how in depth things can go, it's a useful tool! Thank you for going through all this effort! Once I get a proper job, you can bet I'm going to start supporting you on Patreon ^~^

Hello. I've been running this campaign for a long time now, albeit with large gaps in between due to scheduling. This is actually the first module I've ever tried to run for a group, so I was not aware of how different it was to other campaigns. When I got to chapter three, I spent hours rolling random encounters and events for each and every town and stretch of road in order to make the journey more than a fast travel, since I thought it was a given to do so. I agree with you on the fact that if I didn't like homebrewing, it would have been an extreme chore for me, but I enjoyed it. I don't even have to stick to the random encounter table, which I used for most of the map. I can add anything I want without trying to create a map. It's a veritable DM's sandbox for those who dislike or aren't great at mapmaking, so I guess I just got lucky. Sorry for the ramble. I still loved the video and got a lot of insight into the module because of it, and I look forward to using this to help me improve my run further. Thank you very much, and I wish you luck in yours!

"You might see some scribbles" *insert mummy yelling yeet*

I've been running storm King's Thunder for over a year. My players mostly just do a bunch of side quests and I also Homebrew a lot of extra stuff in the world. They have not actually even defeated a giant Lord yet and it's been a year-and-a-half LOL. The most important thing to understand about storm King's Thunder is that the main plot it's not the most important thing. There are dozens of side quests that are not very flushed out but can be really amazing if you just put a little creativity into them. Of course the problem there is that it can become difficult for your players to know what side quests they have which is why I actually built them a quest log. I have a quest log hand out in roll20 that organizes the quests by major quests, side quests, etc. I just put a basic description of the quest and their goals and then I put a little bullet point under it anytime they accomplish anything related to it. If they end up completing it I move it down to the completed section. It's all about organization. If you run storm King's Thunder as this idea that the giant threat is not super urgent and give your players the opportunity to just sandbox around you will probably enjoy running it a lot more but it might take a really long time LOL. If you want to chat with me personally about some of the quests I've added and that I've expanded on let me know. I've been thinking about actually releasing a big fat document on like DMS Guild detailing all the additions I made.

@simonbennertz1958

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah I'm interested, just noticed that KZread removed the message feature :p

@rojokongen

4 жыл бұрын

@@simonbennertz1958 yeah, I'd be interested in your ideas!

The campaign was rumored to be based on Kanye "The Giant" and his quest to find the Al'e-Zei.

SKT is great for homebrewing types, it gives you the bare-bones foundation to build each location and introduce sidequests. - I never introduced the Wizard Hat Tower, I rewarded the Party with a donkey and wagon from the town of Nightstone.

Something about listening to you talk about the module with church sermon music in the background is oddly satisfying.

@osgiliath4

4 жыл бұрын

For some dumb reason I initially read that as church semon music.

I think the solution to this problem is a richer Sword Coast compendium. We have a MM for a variety of monsters, but the Sword Coast itself could use a location guide with deeper descriptions and locations for major cities and local NPCs. An establishment of basic vendors, guilds and faction operations, and some time frame of events that might have taken place before or after arrival. The wikis fill this roll pretty well and I homebrewed events and character encounters from the books and games into a 1-20+ experience starting from LMoP with no other adventures.

I finished DMing SKT last year, and if was in fact my first campaign that I ran. I picked it because of the videos that lauded it as being a great adventure. I admit that I wasn't really expecting to need to homebrew as much as I did, and that I was mainly working with a pre-made module so that I wouldn't need to homebrew. As it turned out, Chapter 3 is indeed a pain, and I ended up doing a lots of research (because SCAG sucks). What's left of my notes on the map are here: docs.google.com/document/d/1eUrAXvYI3taqh2J4LkVdqNrdMwwEqemJAXYwT_kx2is/edit?usp=sharing though there's some stuff I deleted when it wasn't needed. My players wanted to go higher than level 11, so I built on top of the SKT story that the kraken was the real big bad. My players snatched away a valuable magic Macguffin from one of his temples, and after the conclusion of the main SKT stuff, they hunted down artifacts in a race against the kraken's forces, before defeating him. It was a fun campaign, but lots of work!

I enjoyed this, and even more do I enjoy the idea of MrRhexx doing DnD commentary. I would love to hear your thoughts on the different modules, for better or worse.

I Ran Skt for two years after finishing lost mines, so i skipped the whole nightstone stuff, but my dude, storm kings thunder was a blast for me to run, i kinda read it from cover to cover a lot of times, so the main plot was always in my head, BUT, i spent a LOT of time with custom stuff based on my players backgrounds and A WHOLE THREE SESSION SIDE STORY in womford and bargewright inn cause my players went : "OOOH THERES A VAMPIRE HERE, LETS INVESTIGATE AND KILL HIM, WE'RE VAN HELSING NOW". But seriously, my main grievances with the plot were in two points, the giant relics that harnasg sends the group to find, in some of the places there is missing info, and the conclusion to the maelstrom stuff is lackluster (before rescuing Hekaton). My advice for anyone running this campaign is to always keep the broadstroke of the plot in mind, but try and follow along on small-scale stuff, how the giants upheavel is affecting the north, etc. Oh, and the nighstone STONE, its a easter egg from all the adventure modules, there is always one black obelisk thingy that has no explanation, some people think that its building up to something.

I fused Tyranny of dragons with Storm king thunder, both running at the same time. Changed the reason the order was broken, it because giants let a traitor to their kin and creed into their ranks. Go semi linear with Tyranny of Dragons and side questing on the important plot hooks of Storm King Thunder. Edit: also they started in Mines of Phandelvin + Dragon of Icepick, both launches great to both, Tyranny of Dragons and Storm King Thunder, black spider is one of the mercenaries that fire giants hired the map he is hiding has spots for locations giants are going to attack triobar and the other two, also black spider wants to sell magic weapons to the giants in their civil war. The white dragon was sent to watch that area and how Triobar conflict unfolds

@iX1NS0MN14CXi

4 жыл бұрын

I recently finished running a campaign blend of HotDQ/RoT/SKT/DH. Old Scar is the one leading the raids and Imyrith leads the sabotage and planning. Old Scar polymorphed various dragons to raid Nightstone, stealing the Nightstone artifact. The reason I made was that this homebrewed artifact increases the value of currency around it by times 10 (silver becomes gold, gold becomes platinum), meaning the board needs to be 10 times less. Polymorphed dragons causes the blame to be off of the dragon cult and instead on the giants. Imyrith gets the Storm Giant queen killed and Hekaton kidnapped so they cannot retaliate. She plants herself with the three storm giant sisters. Eventually the players get to Waterdeep, where they meet Volo and get the tavern. Manshoon wants to get the treasure as he is betraying the dragon cult. Instead, he wants to use it to fund the upcoming war. He also has been given the ability to plane shift, and did to Ravnica. He needs the dragonstaff to allow Niv Mizzet to be in Waterdeep as a last defense against Tiamat. I played him as an arrogant anti hero, wanting to protect his beloved city no matter the cost. Also it conveniently allows Ravnica races later in our timeline. The party eventually deal with rampaging giants and by rescuing Hekaton, they can eventually lead a war front to the Well of Dragons. I let the party play as a team of giants that fought against Imyrith, while the characters themselves fought Old Scar. It was amazing.

@MiguelAngelGutierrezRamirez

4 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the ideas, bro. I'm currently homebrewing HotDQ/RoT/CoS/LMoP/DoIP, your input is invaluable, specially the part of letting PCs play as Giant NPCs. I'm cooking a very complex ritual for the Endgame and I might do the same with Giants and/or Dragons.

I am currently playing Curse of Strahd and loving it, I don’t know how the story is going to go so unfortunately I am going to have to wait to watch this video! Sorry about that, I’ll be back to watch it another time :) Keep it up, I love all your commentary and videos!

@MetaMdad

4 жыл бұрын

Antonia well he doesn't seem to talk about anything specific in strahd but he does name drop some locations and a generic thing you can find there. ie. strahd's castle has vampire spawn

@Nia-Jean

4 жыл бұрын

@@MetaMdad thank you for letting me know! I really appreciate that. I'll watch it right now :)

I would love to see you rant or chant about other modules! I learned a lot about what makes adventures good or bad. Thank you for that deep dive!

The music in some of these videos including this one are just so relaxing to listen to in combination with his voice.

Your lore videos really helped me build my SKT campaign ! Thanks. Also, don't feel bad about burning that banana bread.

My party spent almost a year on Waterdeep Dragon Heist so running STK we bypassed the section with Nightstone entirely and Im having my character who left since im DMing be one of the ones who dealt with it offscreen and reference it in campaign. Our party allied with Force Grey and so I made Zephyros Force Grey aligned as well so there was a big meeting with the blackstaff for assignment buildup and the party was tasked with finding Harshnag and ultimately find the Temple of the All Father. Good DMs can utilize better plot buildup and actual back references to prior points in the campaign. So I intend to utilize Waterdeep NPCs to the best of my ability in tandem with the majority of the party airshipping around the world with multiple plot hooks not just the Giants but incorporating cultist threats such as princes of the apocalypse going on around the dessarin valley at the same time and also a few homebrew enemy threats like Zhent agents or the occasional chromatic dragon nemesis. There's so much but this book is really open. I love that I can get my DM imagination going but also it's a lot. Also custom Giant Lords are good ideas too but it's another buildup STK is busy but standalone the book falls apart in a lot of spots without good DMing or homebrew add-ons

Love all your content. I would love more campaign explanations like this one.

First time dm. Started with Phandelver. Moved to Triboar. Loving chapter 3. My free time evolves around preparation. Love the freedom. Everything can be adjusted in a phantasy world. Who cares where a giant stronghold is located. I've winged my way through empty cities. Finally having the party someone or something directing them to something fun elsewhere. Got my own huuuge encounter lists per biotope/player lvl, so traversal is also exiting for even me. Only took me about half a year to set up :-) But I was new to dm'ing and playing. Had to read all the rules from zero. In short: it's doable.

Rexx, you have made a fatal mistake. Now I want an analysis on every campain books for 5e. It is now mendatory.

I think storm kings thunder if spilt up into 2-3 books like how the tyranny of dragons campaign was, then they might have been able to add more content to the areas that feel empty

The secret of Storm King's Thunder is to ignore the map, everything's fast travel, throw a Sword Coast Adventure Guide story in that annoying gap in the middle where you're supposed to level up to a certain point before continuing the story, then continue on as if you never passed any of these cities and towns that don't have any content. They have no content so they might as well not even be there and 5e is so heavily designed around DM fiat to make things up that they left out the entire exploration pillar from the game so you might as well just skip travel time. "lets go to that place", "okay, so you spend several days traveling through the dense woods foraging for food along the way and you end up at the place"

@irontemplar6222

3 жыл бұрын

I honestly hate that. The obsession with the big damn quest.

I am enjoying your content Mr.Rhexx but I personally disagree, I love everything to do with Storm King's Thunder. It's an open ended adventure, where there is very few pieces of loot that is stated to be this or that. It gives the Dm more freedom to customize his stuff for his players. And if you as a Dm have experience and the knowledge of those other cities. You can tie them into other things. Like there is a thing specific for Citadel Adbar, but the party wants to go to say Gauntlegrym, or to Mithril Hall, swap those minor details and who is ruling to fit but give the same scenerio. To be fair I am a very experienced Dm, who has always had an open world sort of idea.

@jasonwhisnant5457

3 жыл бұрын

Yea, I've run extremely sandboxy campaigns and STK is essentially the formula for running one. 1. Setting 2. Overarching Plot 3. Story to tie plot to places (which actually can be changed as necessary) 4. Opportunity to put in more character-driven adventures. I have a feeling this DM doesn't have that type of understanding going in to the module.

I always come back to just listen to this when I need tranquility. Hope it is working out for you!

My plan to deal with the emptiness was not to show the players the map in the first place. I like to run games where world maps are very scarce, big, acurate maps even more. This way they might have a general idea where to go by asking the NPC's etc, and not know what they're missing on. It also gives a lot more control to the DM, because it becomes much easier to focus the group on a particular region if they only know it from talking to NPCs

Please do more videos like this, I would love a series of down to earth, in depth thoughts on modules even though it's a lot of work

Storm Kings Thunder has been my favourite campaign as a player, but now I know how much work it must have been for my DM. You're a legend Mr Bean if you stumble across this comment - Arden/Adsandoral says thank you!

When I was the DM I mostly stripped away their choice of where to go bryn shander/triboar are NOT for 5th lvl players as by the time the party got to triboar from goldenfields it was a group of 5 or so and they were lvl 6-7ish had them do the fight there and I had to play stupid to not tpk them from the magmins, orcs, and fire giants. the easiest way to run this is boarding the mythical dm express where the next stop is plot. disregard most sidequests the module has to offer they do nothing but sidetrack a party afterall who cares about the tree in goldenfields wanting you to go to shadowtop cathedral you will literally never go there. Goldenfields into waterdeep have them meet harshnag who tells them to meet him near mirabar maybe get a wagon or something either way have them take the road north through the towns to triboar do the battle then head to mirabar find harshnag go the the eye DONT give them the airship because that gives the players choice to go somewhere that has nothing in the module instead have the oracle(you the dm) give them a very old conch shell that will take them to the various evil giant holds starting from hill going up the ordning. each giant you fight makes the conch shinier newer more powerful until you beat sansuri and you get the conch of teleportation

@jasonwhisnant5457

3 жыл бұрын

That's only if you want to run a railroad campaign, which is fine if that's what you want to do. But I think SKT is meant for Sandbox style play. I think it would be great if the developers of all the 5e modules would've actually categorized their games along a continuum so that DMs and players could see what they're getting into. They could then add supplements, to make them more money, on how to make a module more on one side of them continuum or the other.

17:00 Whenever we hit those flyover cities, i usually just make up a sidequest that furthers one of their backstories. Although sometimes I just let it be downtime. In Rivermoot, I added a couple interesting little backwater shops and they had a relaxed shopping session.

I had an issue witht he campaing that I failed to see how to keep the players engaged or "Why they are on this mission" of any kind, you know a coherrent story to tie them to the happenings of the world... don't know how to else phrase it.

So, the way this campaign works is like this. The party learns of a stolen item. The party is then hired or volunteers to find said item. The DM then creates narrative to lead said party to the next set of bread crumbs. If the villagers know that giants took the item, but don’t know which type of giant it is they saw. The party can gather information about giant types and learn of possible locations were giants live. Start with the weakest giants first. The party will travel to these locations and should be ambushed or detoured regularly on their journeys. This will build narrative amoung the players/characters and help to level them up from any fights they might have with the giants. (Ambushes: use bandits, pirates, Knowles, lizard folk, ext…) it should depend on the location the party is in. Don’t put pirates at the top of an ice mountain. Just use some basic common similarity to the region. The more experienced and knowledgeable the DM is with the area the better the traveling encounters will be. The DM then can make the party repeat the learning process of other giant settlements by saying that the giants don’t have the stolen item. This campaign is more about the journey and the narrative between players and some key NPCs. Give your players bread crumbs. I promise you they will gobble them up just to find the next one on the trail.

I enjoyed this. And I think a lot of your points are very fair. I've been running SKT very successfully, albeit with lots of changes and homebrewing. Part of what I've done is to limit the geography so it is not quite so open world.

Great vid! It highlights why I hate running published adventures from a default campaign setting! Home brewing or improvising plots and characters into the default world requires massive research and study into the world to prevent inconsistencies! For instance I just ran Dragon of Icespire Peaks. Now I’m running Lost Mine of Phandelver. In both the city of Neverwinter is probably the largest city in the area. But there’s little info on the city. The characters I ran for visited here many times. I had to improvise much. Ok no biggy. But all of a sudden there’s a ruin called thunder tree I didn’t know about while running icespire peaks. My characters would have went right past it and the DM didn’t know it was there. Ok no biggy. But now I’m running Lost Mine of P and I see that in Storm K’s Thunder there is actually a Hold or Keep between Thundertree and Neverwinter. (Helms Hold or something) It’s Spire dominates the landscape. Players are wondering why I haven’t described it to them!!! In fact they went right past it from the Dragonburrow to Neverwinter while running Icespire. I even put a trail and small halfling village in that location while home brewing. Now I see that the town of Triboar isn’t far at all from the Butterskull ranch or Old Owl well. Good thing my players didn’t know of its existence until the DM purchased SKT and looked at the map!! In fact the dm should have gotten the sword coast adventures guild and all these other source materials that flesh out the map and extensively studied them before any play was attempted!! Otherwise it’s one inconsistency after another. I don’t get these headaches and inconsistents when I 100% home brew the world and stories. The default world is mostly boring, tedious, inconsistent, and incomplete. Just think how important that ‘Hold of the Helm’ or whatever it’s called should be during LMOP. A freaking green dragon, Venom Fang, has just showed up as new neighbor!!!! lol like that’s not going to cause all sorts of waves in motion! Why wasn’t it included in LMOP or DOIP? Lazy inconsistency of the default world and it’s published adventures. Rant over. Catharsis gained. Happy gaming everybody!!

TL;DR, I agree, this module has some incredible sections (Giant Lords' Lairs, Eye of the All Father), but it is DEFINITELY a module to play if you're ready for tons of homebrewing. This was my first module, and my first session as a DM ever. I didn't realize that other modules have good descriptions for most of the areas. I've been improvising and homebrewing like a goddamn madman, as well as pulling up wikis and lore videos to flesh out details when I suspect they may go to a location. I wanted to use a second dungeon, so the Storm Giant leader told them they needed to bend another giant lord to the Storm Court, in order to prove that Smallfolk are worth having a truce/alliance with. Those dungeons seem like the best part of the entire module, so the more the merrier, just gotta find other reasons to go to 'em. We completed the campaign about a year ago, defeating Iymrith. As the biggest part of their loot, I gave them two rolls from Magic Table (I) because I figured the campaign was ending, and that would be a nice note to end on. ...81, Deck of Many Things, one player's soul is trapped in an item held by a Balor Demon in the Abyss. After several sessions, they got him back, but now he is part druid and in connection with the grandfather tree, who is hurting for reasons unknown to the players. Mostly because I wanted to do something in the High Forest, to be honest. :D At this point, they are level 13 and trying to stop Slarkrethel from ascending to a lesser deity. They are currently in the Undermountain rooting out Kraken cultists who have established a presence beneath Waterdeep, while the Harper partymember is in the city investigating a high priest who is suspected to have joined the cult. I realized that my amount of homebrewing didn't really increase after we completed the module's contents, and most of what I ran throughout it was already being homebrewed.... Except the Eye of the All-Father and giant lords' lairs, which we all found quite enjoyable on their own.

The nightstone is actually mentioned before the first chapter in the introduction. If you wish to create more giant lords to challenge the players, there is a suggestion to create a cloud giant wizard planning to cast an apocalyptic spell using a large obsidian rock called a nightstone as a material component.

Lost an entire friendship group due to this campaign, along with allot of misunderstanding but oh well.

MrRhexx: "I don't know if there's a point to this, if there's a purpose to this video..." Audience: "We don't care, we just like listening to you talk about this stuff!"

Hey Rhexx, great video. Love your opinions on this, very interesting. This did highlight to me how I really am ALL about homebrewing and adjusting modules though, as SKT was one of my favorite modules as it provided a overall backdrop, and I was left to fill in the spaces. I spend A LOT of time coming up with personal quests, new story lines, changing the existing story line to cross paths with my PCs backgrounds etc. I wasn't a huge fan of ToA, even though it has a lot of room for homebrew, I didn't enjoy being stuck in Chult personally but that's just my opinion. I was fun for the first 20 sessions or so, but got a bit stale for me from a creative perspective soon after that. I have been DMing for 10+ years though, so I could see how I am likely a bit more comfortable coming up with completely homebrew quests and story lines, especially as I also run a 100% home-brewed world for another game. I think as you become more experienced as a DM you can become more comfortable with this, although maybe not as it also depends on what you enjoy as a DM, your style etc. Cheers mate.

I wish this video came out a year ago when i was about to run this xD

I picked up some custom adventures that take place in the Longsaddle and Triboar and few other places, and I made small but visible hooks for the players to be intrigued enough to go to the new place after they are done with the previous one. They are still in Triboar, just dealt with the terror that haunted that place. They are up for the giants next. I took some of the "unimportant" NPCs, like that female ranger Zindra, and made her part of the custom quest. I played DnD for a decade, and I have some of the lore in my head, but the most important thing here, I think, is to listen to the players while playing and write it down. They will give you some extra ideas to put in the module, and their short but nicely composed backstories can help immensely. But yeah, you need some knowledge to run this campaign

this sounds like me ranting about sharktale being like 3 good movies in a trench coat held together by jack black and will smith

SKT is my first long term campaign and this also describes my experience. I wanted to run a prefab adventure so it would be less work but SKT is more like a book of writing prompts than a premade adventure, at least before Harshnag shows up. This was fine in the Icewind Dale. I managed to make the location relatively 3d via finding info online about the 10 towns and homebrewing backstories for people like the town speakers. All was going well until my hubris at how well the homebrew content was going got the better of me. I ended up sidetracking the party into a 5 session long hunt for an abboleth terrorizing the town of Hundelstone because of half a paragraph mentioning that the town hired adventurers to protect their mines from monster incursions from the underdark. Your videos on abboleth lore were a great help for this! They're really interesting monsters and great antagonists. In hindsight this was waaaaay overambitious. I involved players from my other group I play in because the actual party was under level and the whole thing just became very complicated and messy. That said, everyone had a lot of fun, I got a recurring villain and the players (who are relatively new to DND) got a chance to see the play style of a much more experienced group. However it took far too long, had very little to do with SKT and required a lot more improvisation and homebrew than I probably should have been doing. Lessons were learned. I will keep homebrewing adventures like this whenever the party goes to one of the many interesting locations with barely half a page of text but I am more cognizant of some of the potential pitfalls inherent in doing this. I bought a SCAG for this purpose but I think I will be having them run into Harshnag sooner rather than later. Overall SKT has a really neat premise and the world itself obviously has so much potential but considering how thin on the ground the actual content is, I wish I'd ran something else for my first time. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't psyched about researching/homebrewing content for the Sword Coast. I'm running it again for my other group and all I am certain about right now is that I won't run Great Upheaval (at least in it's current form) and that I plan to make it a little less sandboxy so I can have some content ready for them wherever they go.

Hey Rhexx can you do a video about what you think about D&D 5th edition?

This was different from your other stuff but I still really found myself enjoying this

I started my first ever campaign DMing with the Lost Mines of Phandelver and plant seeds from STK during that adventure. It has been great!

This was especially meaningful to me. I am a brand new DM. My PCs wanted me to run Dungeon of the Mad Mage, but I first wanted to run Sunless Citadel to get my feet wet. We finished Dungeon Heist and in Waterdeep so I am home brewing travel from Waterdeep to Oakhurst for Sunless Citadel. I am looking in Storm King’s and Princess and anything I can to get content for the Long Road and High Road. My next task is looking for Neverwinter content. Thanks for your thoughts and rant 👍

Nightstone is basically Chekhov's gun, which is a dramatic principle that states that every element in a story must be necessary, and irrelevant elements should be removed; elements should not appear to make "false promises" by never coming into play. This a classical writing mistake, and extremely annoying.

@paulsavas2394

4 жыл бұрын

FishZapper Not necessarily. I seem to recall the book saying that in order to rise to the top of the “new” Ordning, the cloud giants wish to collect artifacts that in some way edify them. Although it does not out and out state this, the night stone could clearly be such an ancient artifact. No?

@fishzapper9338

4 жыл бұрын

@@paulsavas2394 we'll it is in the case that the mystery of what it does never comes into play, left totally unused. they could just say it contains no magic, it's just an artifact, and that would not affect the story at all. It's mystery is unused in the story.

@paulsavas2394

4 жыл бұрын

FishZapper Totally unused. Thank god WoTC has us to fill in the blanks and connect the dots!!!

@Rexidiotarum

4 жыл бұрын

I had Countess Sansuri make a comment to that effect. "We thought it was an Ostorian Artifact, but it wasn't so we just threw it over the side of the castle. No big loss, though." Just to really emphasize how little she thought of the "little folk."

@RW77777777

4 жыл бұрын

Macguffin is a closer analogy where the The Nightstone is a Macguffin and it's purpose or location is neither important or necessary to complete the story to satisfaction. as per the wiki page. Do King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table lack importance because they never see or find the 'Holy Grail' They never found The Maltese Falcon what's in that briefcase in Pulp Fiction. who the hell cares about some rock?? when people of the Dessarin valley are dying and being forced from their homes by giants. And it's not happening exclusively in cities with Osterian artifacts in the village square.

My dude, this is a really long way to say “everything” but you do you lol

I'm in the middle of running this module for my party, and I have to say it's been a blast, but I agree with that many of your points. I think it lends itself well to a dm like me who doesn't want to Homebrew an adventure, but also doesn't want to feel restricted by a set module's story. I've definitely added in Homebrew (I'm a sucker for Homebrew) and heavily modified the story to mine and my parties liking, but I can see how it's a trap for a lot of dms who believe they'll get a nice and tidy package that the other module's offer

Do all the Giant Strongholds. Use the airship to travel around the map. Increase the levels to 15th+. Upgrade Iymirth via Greenwoods 'Wyrms of the North'. Make the Nightstone the material component to create a Demon Comet sent by a Cloud Giant to melt the glacier and reveal the lost capital city of the giants, Voninheim.

Best suggestion I have is, develop as much background knowledge of these other area as you can, then alter the beginning content to fit different cities. This does require you to develop a limit on not only where the giant takes the party but also to what you can fit the content for.

"The Ordening gets dissolved." I shall ignore that.

You have to remember if you stick to DnD and you presenting it in your voice with your chill music. you will keep retention XD I love listening to all your videos.

This is the first thing I played through and met with 5e we managed to make this a lot bigger and more to all of these places by making all our player characters backstory and character development go through this and I think this is the best way to ply it we did add a slight bit of homebrew but it was just enough to make some of these bigger places that have nothing to them bigger and make them apart of the main story.

I can't imagine how huge the book would be if it included fully detailed description and missions for every location. All of the info on these locations already exists in other places, it would be dumb for them to include it here too. Many groups will never visit most of these locations and if they do, a GM can just prep that one place.

I'm currently running this, got to chapter 3, and I'm home brewing all of it. I was at a loss for a long time as to do at chapter 3 because it felt so empty. I have trouble running any town because as you say, there is simply nothing there.

I ran Storm King's Thunder I think sometime just before this video was published, and we did use roll20. here's what my issue with the game were: 1. Map scales are HUGE. It suggests that they're not meant to be used as actual playing maps and instead references. 1A. Storm King's Thunder doesn't have a hex map for overland travel. 2. The freakin' coin mission and kraken society is absolutely random how they're introduced, so I had them hinted at/described as part of a conflict for a PCs backstory super early. I explained this to my players and they appreciated me doing this. I recommend having them be relevant for more things earlier than the literal end of the game. 3. Like what you said, the book provides absolutely no information on larger settlements. Since I was not familiar with the setting compared to likely a large group of others, I didn't know what to do when the book told me "go read another book" like Kay thanks man. 4. There is so much lore drops throughout the game that even our best note taker was just like "uh okay" and even got lost in it. 5. This module vomits all the money at you for little effort. Which makes sense cuz it's like you're going into this place of giants, but literally there's a closet where it has all the money that the party would ever need plus more after splitting it evenly. This is a book that I think was supposed to be a campaign setting first and that has a pretty cool story to follow second. I think what would be the best idea for this book is to use this book to rip content from to add into other campaigns as side missions. There are so many mini adventures and side stuff EVERYWHERE that I would be 95% certain that nobody would know you took it from Storm King's Thunder. As someone who really likes running adventures straight from the book, managing it was easy cuz not a lot of background stuff was happening, and the conflict is super slow, which was what the designers of the adventure was going for. I had to use my imagination to fill in a lot of gaps, which I know can be issues for some people. But I made sure the table had fun to the best of my abilities. I was using this adventure as a means to test my skills as a DM after watching a lot of DM advice material and it proved to be a bit harder than what I expected. I also had a relatively problem player at the table that seriously killed my motivation from running future games. However after watching this video I realized now that SKT turned out to be a lot harder to run for beginner DMs in general. So I might end up going through running another adventure entirely in the near future whenever my friends have a time slot open. Thank you for your insight!

I've run SKT from start to finish, the way me and my group ended up doing it was turning it into a more all encompassing adventure by having the characters be tasked with dealing with all of the different giant lairs. They did become pretty over-powered by the end, but it wasn't too difficult to ramp up the challenge of the final boss. Though, like you suggested in the video, I did end up having to homebrew a bit. For the most part I kept it pretty basic, and winged it a little here and there, but it worked, I think. The players seems to have enjoyed it, even if some died every now and then.

I recall reading somewhere online that the nightstone Was giant artifact that repelled dragons. Regardless it is a scattered and rudderless, but the various missions seem solid on their own?

Honestly the fact that this is a sandbox campaign is what makes it attractive IMO. I know that for new DM's (especially those who just ran their first adventure in LMoP or something similar) that's NOT what they're looking for, but having this huge map with just little idea seeds spread around that you get to germinate on your own to work with your party and the stories your players want to tell? That's awesome. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but D&D and being a good DM is a labor of love. If you want to fall back entirely on the content to DM for you, pick a more straightforward, railroad campaign like Descent, Tiamat, etc, not a huge sandbox "northwest faerun gazeteer" book like STK.

@KihuOtter

3 жыл бұрын

Just a bummer to see someone ripping on a cool campaign for 40 minutes because... They don't want to be creative or help guide their characters to the areas in the adventure that ARE really, really well developed. It's OK to have a flyover town where the party just pops in rests and moves on. Not every square inch of every place in the world has issues that need adventurers to solve them. That's OK. Let your players enjoy a moment of peace and roleplay some downtime. That's awesome too!

I honestly love the story of this campaign. It seems like it can be mixed with a bits and pieces of other campaigns. But I'm excited to hear your thoughts maybe itll help me because I've never finished a campaign not for lack of trying but my players and my friend group get bored quick and keep liking to start new ones where we take turns being a dm. Course i haven't played since highschool and I'm 26 now.

I ran Storm King's Thunder and finished a couple of days ago. The way I did it was pretty much a little open world adventure, kinda, not really. First of all I was running this side by side with Rise of Tiamat. All the chaos with the giants was so they wouldn't mess with that. I find that a little more interesting? Specially if, during the final part of Tiamat, you have the adventurers that helped the giants arriving in cloud castles all epic like. Background things during that but I think it makes the whole thing a tad more epic. When I did the Nightstone part, my players really didn't worry about the actual stone. They were more worried about the huge destruction and human lose that the cloud giants had done. I just skipped the mad cloud giant and let the players keep going to Goldenfields, cause in Nightstone one of the players met their aunt, long lost aunt, they were looking for their family. Their aunt took them to Goldenfields were the rest of their family lived and the rest is history. Hill giants attack Goldenfields and then they face the hill giant boss, and BAM! Conch of Teleportation. EXCEPT, they didn't really wanted to "fix" the problem. This characters were kinda of "adventure fatigued", they just wanted to live simple lives. Ok. No problem. I had other party start in the mountains, looking for adventure and did the frost giants dungeon. EXCEPT, they used a Portable Hole while carrying a Bag of Holdings and I WARNED THEM beforehand about doing that. Those players weren't really... feeling it? They just didn't click with their own characters, a little too much as "joke characters" that didn't worked out. So I just ended that there, they ripped space apart and POOFed!... Back again to the original players, two of them were going to get married (the characters), so they travelled to the Silver Marches to meet the groom's parents. SURPRISE! Their home town was kidnapped by fire giants. Enters the fire giants dungeon (I also ran the cloud giant's dungeon since they had befriended the bronze dragon in Daggerford, but that was like a little side thing). And this time they did had enough. They used this conch of teleportation and went to Maelstorm. One warlock with witch sight later pim pam pum, DONE.

Love this type of ranty video

One thing that you forgot is that the Nightstone gets tied back into Rime of the Frostmaiden.

Hey MrRhexx! When are we going to see a "What they don't tell you about the ROC" Video? In need of one soon please! Love your work and keep up the detailed charismatic videos!

Just started SKT. Took over DMing from friend who wanted to play. She ran Phandelver and leveled everyone up to 7! So...I obviously have to make some changes. Lords Alliance sent the group with a few others from Waterdeep to go check out Some of the towns surrounding Waterdeep to check after rumors of some "rumblings" without much more info. On the way to Triboar, they come across the 'random' encounter Dig Site. Except i added a Fire Giant for good measure. Two of the PCs speak Giant and during the ill-advised battle, they here one Giant saying to the other, "Get the Vonindod. And then pointing at the thrid giant say "Triboar. Happy Field. Broken harness" and With no other explanation, and then two head north east. The party is still sucking wind and with two down (one at two fails) the remaining Fire Giant says "Duke Valto shall be exalted and you small creatures shall die in fire!" and then runs off east. When they get Triboar I think they will figure out that MerryMeadow is one of the ranchesto the south east and head there with some of the towns guards...just to defeat a bunch of orcs an to see smoke coming from Triboar...then they will run back and watch another Vonindod being pulled out. After spending some time in Triboar I assume they will also then head to Goldenfields to make sure things are safe and then experience the Hill Giant attack. I've added a higher level Ranger connected to Yartar who they will meet in Triboar to drop some info and tell them about Harshnag. that's about as far as I've gotten...but I really want to try to connect all these random things in SKT, I will use Kraken Society to prey on some of the character's flaws...but I'm not sure how I'll get them to Bryn Shander. I think the open world section will be following clues to find Harshnag. But...I'm loving the challenge...and want to hear how you do it this time Mr. Rhexx!!!

While I can't help with the problem with the lack of descriptions, I would highly recommend just implementing more than one of the giant lords. This can be easily done by rumors for the Stone and Hill Giants, but maybe it works for the others too. I would recommend keeping the traveling part before meeting Harshnag short, and expand it when they get the airship. Then you can spread rumors about the giant lords or have the players spot groups of giants on their own. For example, after the players went to the oracle, they get to know that farms around Goldenfield get raided by Hill Giants and the town itself could be at risk. Then they have the opportunity to travel there and you can direct them to Grudd Haug directly after. After they defeated the Giant Lord, they notice that the magical conch got broken because Chief Guh sat on it. Now they have to seek another Giant Lord. The Frost Giants could attack and overwhelm the players when they search the sea for Hekaton, capturing them and taking them to Svardborg. So you can make them relevant even after obtaining the conch. And lastly I would combine the Nightstone plothook with the plan of the Cloud Giant Lord. Players can encounter the castle pretty much whenever you want while they fly their airship. Most of these thing require way less work than one might think, you just have to bring the adventure to your players, not them having to seek it in the "empty" world.

Did the check out the Power Score Guide. Handy references and overview DM.

100% agree with everything you say in here. Strahd and Chult are also my favorite campaigns. The fun and replayibility of Chult can not be overstated. The variation in guides, and randomness that characters decide to go.. I've run it twice already so far and it's been amazing both times.

Thank you great vid.

One easy fix would be to have a bunch of mini adventures that are kind of transferable to any city. That way no matter where the players go,you'd have something to do

I can relate to the points, though the adventure worked for me pretty well without much homebrewing. What I did was I gave the map to my players on session zero (I removed some important places from it, like Iymrith’s Lair) and described the ones they liked and the ones with adventuring material from the book. Then we discussed backgrounds tied to such places so I knew where my players will be motivated to go. Then I added and shifted some random encounters (which were not random at all) to reinforce characters’ development and plotpoints. My advice for first time DMs (for this adventure or any other really) would be this: don’t plan out your plot before you know your players’ characters. That brings me back to LMoP, which I think is highly overrated. It was a second story I ran (first was Death House from CoS, which was a blast), and it was a mess. I thought to myself that I had to use everything from the material, so I gave out all of the sidequests there. As a result my players lost all interest in the Mine and went to wonder around killing orcs and stuff. The carelessness of the five factions presented in the town didn’t help either. What I realized later was that the only ones who cared about the dungeon was the dwarf brothers, who weren’t present due to being abducted, and the BBEG, who never showed up to thwart the adventurers until the very end. A throughout passiveness really killed the mood. I’m not saying it isn’t salvageable, a DM who knows what he’s doing can portion sidequests and involve NPCs to create the sense of urgency and tension, but for a clueless newbie it just doesn’t work, which is why imao they addressed that in DoIP.

[SPOILERS] I'm glad I'm not alone in this MrRhexx - I am exactly where you are on this. I am currently halfway through DMing SKT and it's difficult - I bought it because I an overly ambitious homebrew world that I didn't have time for so I thought I'd buy a module and save myself time on prep etc. But it's been almost as much research running SKT as completely building from the ground up. I'm pouring over the D&D wiki finding every scrap of information I can find on various towns cities and locations. Finding every suppliment with any info and importing it, sometimes from old editions which means I need to try and extrapolate what might have happened in 100 years of history. I know. I'm going about this in a purist way but I want the realms to feel real and consistant with the official lore and charactors. Some of my players also read various D&D novels so I feel that if I deviate far away from the official lore I'm letting down their fantasy of faerun. And D&D is all about living fantasy. If I tell them my version of luskan is nothing like the one they know - that's gonna bring their experience down. I love the idea of slowly building all our Faerun adventures into a vast knowledge of a persistant world. But it's pretty clear to me now that the way to do that is to start small and slowly widen the lens. SKT does the opposite. I like to have my prep set out nice and neat ready to go so I'm really prepared, nothing is gonna stress me out in game and make me say something dumb that doesn't make sense in the story. This one is just too much work for anyone but the most hardcore of DMs. I've just come to learn that my players don't mind being railroaded a little - so I just lead them down the path I want them to follow (which kind of defeats the purpose of the book as Chris Perkins explained it...). Chapter 3 for me has now become - whack some forshadowing in and get the hell to Harshnag. But there is a lot of stuff in there that they will miss because of this. Your point about the fast levelling in chapter 1 and the nightstone being unimportant have also both presented themselves in my campaign. initially my players were trying to find more info about the nightstone and I had to work to shift their focus towards the giants in general. And they are now persistantly asking me when they will next level up XD Edit - I should note even though I said this is too much work. IM COMMITTED NOW AND I'LL RUN IT INTO THE GROUND IF I HAVE TO. Hey everyones still having fun right so it's all good

I love these rant videos:)

When i ran SKT i ended up expanding the module to go up to 15th level and let the party go to all 5 giant lairs. It made the adventure a lot more dungeon-crawley and less focused on exploration, but at least there was never a feeling of missing out on content or not feeling like most places were completely empty and worthless. Of course, I ended up having to scale all the encounters up a few levels and that took some time, but it worked out alright in the end. All in all, SKT was a pain to run and while I'm happy I got a good campaign out of it I'm excited to never have to deal with it again

SKT is your nemesis, your Joker/Newman/Lex Luthor/Ivan Drago you have to keep getting back on the horse until you tame that beast!