so ive tried to read the book. im aware that its not the best written and has its issues. but i kinda wanna run it. so my question would be. what can i do or changes can be made to make it run smoother and what events, interactions, and encounters should be changed in any way?
I've actually been running my friends through a heavily homebrewed run of Hoard... a big part of it was that they wanted to continue to use the characters they had already used to play through Lost Mines of Phandelver, so I had to scale everything up for a party that started at level 5. That said, I had a lot of fun adding to the adventure and making changes to it. One thing I often do with adventures is just change the race of NPCs... I just find humans kind of boring.
For example, in the first village where the story starts, I changed Governor Nighthill to be a Dragonborn instead of a human... this helped to establish Dragonborns as a race, since the players didn't really encounter any before this, and by doing so it made the presence of Half-Dragons within the story hold more significance. My players also got attached to the Kobolds early on, finding them too cute to attack on sight, which the module kind of assumes they'll do. So I had to come up with names, personalities, and motivations for the Kobolds.
In general, it'd be a good idea to have an NPC generator or something handy, just in case your players try to actually communicate with any of the groups that get little elaboration in the module itself.
I'd also suggest looking up some details about the major cities that the adventure takes the players through. Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep are both visited during the adventure, but the module dedicates at most two paragraphs to actually describe those locations. Depending on the type of players you have, they might want to rush through these locations to get to their next destination, or they might want to explore these large cities at length. I'd recommend either prepping a unique store of some kind, or at least having a store generator handy.
We're in rise of tiamat right now after having done hoard with the lead-in of lost mines.
If you're going at HotDQ from something like LMoP, I'd suggest having the cult attack Phandalin instead of Greenest (essentially flip the geography). I wish I'd done this. This has the added benefit of eliminating the drudgery of the fourth episode which is just a long caravan trek north. (For that episode, I wanted to give the party a chance to get one of the masks so I have determined that the cult still doesn't have all the masks they need to summon Tiamat at full power. I ended up giving them a dungeon crawl and eliding over most of the journey north. This also led to them bypassing Naerytar entirely and meeting with the Council of Waterdeep sooner.)
HotDQ tends to take away player choice a lot. I've found myself having to think hard about what the Cult and other enemies are doing so that when the players do go off the rails, I know where everyone is and I can advance the overall story (as thin as it is) while not railroading anyone back to where the adventure dictates. Hopefully it's making it feel a bit more dynamic. (Also, I DM for two kids so keeping their engagement high has necessitated some of the changes I've made.)
HotDQ also does a lot of "gotcha!" type of things. There's not a lot of chance to thwart the cult's plans or disrupt them much. They have a chance to get the blue mask? Psych, it's fake and the real one is out of reach. There's not a lot of lore about the masks present in the adventures either so I've had to come up with a lot of that on my own. (I stole shamelessly from LoTR, I won't lie.) Giving my players the opportunity to get the green mask (which they did on the aforementioned dungeon crawl during episode 4), set up for them to meet some of the cult's higher ranking members when the cult discovered what they had and came after it. They lost the green mask and a party member in the attack (it was a DMPC that was accompanying them so as to keep fun high for the players) but gained the blue mask and killed the blue wyrmspeaker in the process.
Now that the party has learned a good deal about what the cult intends to do and has relayed it to the Council of Waterdeep, the Harpers know where to focus their energies. They're gathering even more intel and now are sending the party out on specific missions. We just defeated Arauthator. Next we'll be going after Varram the White (whom the party has unofficially met so a little bit of vengeance to be had) and I may change it up and give them the chance to get the white dragon mask. I'm hoping one of the kids takes legend lore as a spell and casts it on one of the masks when they get it. Then I can give them more lore about the masks (which will give them more information and also present a dilemma to one player who is out for revenge on the red dragon that killed his entire clan).
Study the episodes in-depth before you run them. Make notes, write things down in an order that makes sense for you. Dungeon descriptions are sorely lacking in content and the book really should have been delayed in order to benefit from some clarity edits rather than rushing to publication.
Best thing I can suggest is either GUARANTEE that the party can't get the dragon masks, or make something up that the cult can complete its goal without them.
When I ran it, the party got the Black mask pretty easily and held onto it for a WHILE. When we were in Rise of Tiamat, the barbarian was like, "Hey, doesn't the cult need these to summon Tiamat? Yes? Ok." *Shatters mask* Campaign done lol
Now, This was our first DnD campaign that we got to last more than 2 sessions so our the player's characters were boring, generic, and hastily made (we never thought we'd get this far lol) so we were ready to end this campaign and start a new one with the beginning intention of being a long running campaign. So I didn't try very hard to keep the Dragon Campaign going lol. BUT you might wanna think up some contingencies!!
HotDQ also does a lot of "gotcha!" type of things. There's not a lot of chance to thwart the cult's plans or disrupt them much. They have a chance to get the blue mask? Psych, it's fake and the real one is out of reach.
There's a fair amount of railroading in HotDQ/RoT, but the "gotcha" aspects that cosplay mentions is probably the biggest area that could use some change. One of the few campaigns that I got to play through as a player (versus running as a DM), and it was fairly disheartening to the group that every attempt to hinder the cult was met with a "red herring" errand or a "fake" success. I would allow the players to have some real successes versus finishing a chapter to only learn that it didn't actually matter.
Not sure if the final summoning ritual required all five masks or not, since I wasn't running it, but I would allow it to work even if the players successfully retrieve one or more of the dragon masks. Let them have some real victories even if they learn that the ritual at the end is still going to occur...
We're in rise of tiamat right now after having done hoard with the lead-in of lost mines.
If you're going at HotDQ from something like LMoP, I'd suggest having the cult attack Phandalin instead of Greenest (essentially flip the geography). I wish I'd done this. This has the added benefit of eliminating the drudgery of the fourth episode which is just a long caravan trek north. (For that episode, I wanted to give the party a chance to get one of the masks so I have determined that the cult still doesn't have all the masks they need to summon Tiamat at full power. I ended up giving them a dungeon crawl and eliding over most of the journey north. This also led to them bypassing Naerytar entirely and meeting with the Council of Waterdeep sooner.)
I just wanted to comment on this to talk about the connecting thread I made between LMoP and HotDQ...
In LMoP there's a quest to acquire Bowgentle's Spellbook for the Harpers. My party had mostly joined the Harpers by the end of Mines, and the last thing they did in the module was speak to the banshee to learn where the spellbook actually is. I knew we were going to move on to Hoard by then, so I had them learn that Bowgentle's book was in Greenest, and had them sent down to escort the book back north to the School of Knowledge in Neverwinter so it can be studied. The book has ended up becoming a major plot point now... I changed the story so that Bowgentle was an extremely talented Evocation Wizard who specialized in banishment spells and undoing summoning rituals. Unfortunately, to explain how to reverse a spell requires him to write down how the spell is meant to be done in the first place, so the Cult stole the book in order to reverse-engineer the ritual to summon Tiamat, and now Bowgentle's book is a major plot point.
Interestingly enough, the cult only needs two masks to form the mask of the dragon queen and summon Tiamat. They just need all 5 in order to summon her at full strength. (Only needing minimum of two masks is in the description of the Mask of the Dragon Queen. Needing all 5 for full-strength is from RoT where it talks about weakening Tiamat. You can weaken her by destroying the mask of the dragon queen, removing it from Severin and then out of the sanctuary, or by holding any of the masks so they can't be used in the ritual.)
so ive tried to read the book. im aware that its not the best written and has its issues. but i kinda wanna run it. so my question would be. what can i do or changes can be made to make it run smoother and what events, interactions, and encounters should be changed in any way?
I've actually been running my friends through a heavily homebrewed run of Hoard... a big part of it was that they wanted to continue to use the characters they had already used to play through Lost Mines of Phandelver, so I had to scale everything up for a party that started at level 5. That said, I had a lot of fun adding to the adventure and making changes to it. One thing I often do with adventures is just change the race of NPCs... I just find humans kind of boring.
For example, in the first village where the story starts, I changed Governor Nighthill to be a Dragonborn instead of a human... this helped to establish Dragonborns as a race, since the players didn't really encounter any before this, and by doing so it made the presence of Half-Dragons within the story hold more significance. My players also got attached to the Kobolds early on, finding them too cute to attack on sight, which the module kind of assumes they'll do. So I had to come up with names, personalities, and motivations for the Kobolds.
In general, it'd be a good idea to have an NPC generator or something handy, just in case your players try to actually communicate with any of the groups that get little elaboration in the module itself.
I'd also suggest looking up some details about the major cities that the adventure takes the players through. Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep are both visited during the adventure, but the module dedicates at most two paragraphs to actually describe those locations. Depending on the type of players you have, they might want to rush through these locations to get to their next destination, or they might want to explore these large cities at length. I'd recommend either prepping a unique store of some kind, or at least having a store generator handy.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
We're in rise of tiamat right now after having done hoard with the lead-in of lost mines.
If you're going at HotDQ from something like LMoP, I'd suggest having the cult attack Phandalin instead of Greenest (essentially flip the geography). I wish I'd done this. This has the added benefit of eliminating the drudgery of the fourth episode which is just a long caravan trek north. (For that episode, I wanted to give the party a chance to get one of the masks so I have determined that the cult still doesn't have all the masks they need to summon Tiamat at full power. I ended up giving them a dungeon crawl and eliding over most of the journey north. This also led to them bypassing Naerytar entirely and meeting with the Council of Waterdeep sooner.)
HotDQ tends to take away player choice a lot. I've found myself having to think hard about what the Cult and other enemies are doing so that when the players do go off the rails, I know where everyone is and I can advance the overall story (as thin as it is) while not railroading anyone back to where the adventure dictates. Hopefully it's making it feel a bit more dynamic. (Also, I DM for two kids so keeping their engagement high has necessitated some of the changes I've made.)
HotDQ also does a lot of "gotcha!" type of things. There's not a lot of chance to thwart the cult's plans or disrupt them much. They have a chance to get the blue mask? Psych, it's fake and the real one is out of reach. There's not a lot of lore about the masks present in the adventures either so I've had to come up with a lot of that on my own. (I stole shamelessly from LoTR, I won't lie.) Giving my players the opportunity to get the green mask (which they did on the aforementioned dungeon crawl during episode 4), set up for them to meet some of the cult's higher ranking members when the cult discovered what they had and came after it. They lost the green mask and a party member in the attack (it was a DMPC that was accompanying them so as to keep fun high for the players) but gained the blue mask and killed the blue wyrmspeaker in the process.
Now that the party has learned a good deal about what the cult intends to do and has relayed it to the Council of Waterdeep, the Harpers know where to focus their energies. They're gathering even more intel and now are sending the party out on specific missions. We just defeated Arauthator. Next we'll be going after Varram the White (whom the party has unofficially met so a little bit of vengeance to be had) and I may change it up and give them the chance to get the white dragon mask. I'm hoping one of the kids takes legend lore as a spell and casts it on one of the masks when they get it. Then I can give them more lore about the masks (which will give them more information and also present a dilemma to one player who is out for revenge on the red dragon that killed his entire clan).
I've also taken some of the suggestions here and there that Sly Flourish put out in his detailed breakdown of the episodes of HotDQ. https://slyflourish.com/greenest_in_flames.html
Study the episodes in-depth before you run them. Make notes, write things down in an order that makes sense for you. Dungeon descriptions are sorely lacking in content and the book really should have been delayed in order to benefit from some clarity edits rather than rushing to publication.
My Homebrew Backgrounds | Feats | Magic Items | Monsters | Races | Subclasses
Best thing I can suggest is either GUARANTEE that the party can't get the dragon masks, or make something up that the cult can complete its goal without them.
When I ran it, the party got the Black mask pretty easily and held onto it for a WHILE. When we were in Rise of Tiamat, the barbarian was like, "Hey, doesn't the cult need these to summon Tiamat? Yes? Ok." *Shatters mask* Campaign done lol
Now, This was our first DnD campaign that we got to last more than 2 sessions so our the player's characters were boring, generic, and hastily made (we never thought we'd get this far lol) so we were ready to end this campaign and start a new one with the beginning intention of being a long running campaign. So I didn't try very hard to keep the Dragon Campaign going lol. BUT you might wanna think up some contingencies!!
There's a fair amount of railroading in HotDQ/RoT, but the "gotcha" aspects that cosplay mentions is probably the biggest area that could use some change. One of the few campaigns that I got to play through as a player (versus running as a DM), and it was fairly disheartening to the group that every attempt to hinder the cult was met with a "red herring" errand or a "fake" success. I would allow the players to have some real successes versus finishing a chapter to only learn that it didn't actually matter.
Not sure if the final summoning ritual required all five masks or not, since I wasn't running it, but I would allow it to work even if the players successfully retrieve one or more of the dragon masks. Let them have some real victories even if they learn that the ritual at the end is still going to occur...
I just wanted to comment on this to talk about the connecting thread I made between LMoP and HotDQ...
In LMoP there's a quest to acquire Bowgentle's Spellbook for the Harpers. My party had mostly joined the Harpers by the end of Mines, and the last thing they did in the module was speak to the banshee to learn where the spellbook actually is. I knew we were going to move on to Hoard by then, so I had them learn that Bowgentle's book was in Greenest, and had them sent down to escort the book back north to the School of Knowledge in Neverwinter so it can be studied. The book has ended up becoming a major plot point now... I changed the story so that Bowgentle was an extremely talented Evocation Wizard who specialized in banishment spells and undoing summoning rituals. Unfortunately, to explain how to reverse a spell requires him to write down how the spell is meant to be done in the first place, so the Cult stole the book in order to reverse-engineer the ritual to summon Tiamat, and now Bowgentle's book is a major plot point.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Interestingly enough, the cult only needs two masks to form the mask of the dragon queen and summon Tiamat. They just need all 5 in order to summon her at full strength. (Only needing minimum of two masks is in the description of the Mask of the Dragon Queen. Needing all 5 for full-strength is from RoT where it talks about weakening Tiamat. You can weaken her by destroying the mask of the dragon queen, removing it from Severin and then out of the sanctuary, or by holding any of the masks so they can't be used in the ritual.)
My Homebrew Backgrounds | Feats | Magic Items | Monsters | Races | Subclasses