Structure

This adventure has a rather interesting structure. Chapter 1 is a short intro adventure, called A Great Upheaval, that can be used to get PCs from level 1-5. Or you could use another adventure. Some thoughts are given for using other adventures published by Wizards instead of A Great Upheaval. By far the most successful of these are the guidelines for using Lost Mine of Phandelver. Less useful are the pointers given for transitioning from HotDQ, PotA, or OotA.

Personally, although I appreciate the thought behind this, I feel like it was a waste of effort and valuable space in the supplement. You can’t finish one of these other modules, and then go into SKT. Instead, the writers assume you’ve started one of the other modules, didn’t get very far, and you and your players want to do SKT instead. In this instance, you’re given some tips on transitioning from one to the other. The advice given is decent, but how many groups is this really going to be relevant for?

On the other hand, the advice on transitioning between LMoP and SKT works much better, as you can run that complete adventure and then go into SKT.

Once the PCs are level 5—whether you run A Great Upheaval, LMoP, another adventure, or start the PCs at 5, you then have 3 choices for starting points—Bryn Shander, Goldenfields or Triboar. This is kind of nice because you can pick the location (or adventure) you like better to start. Each basically involves a giant attack that the PCs hopefully get involved in. However, the downside is chances are good you’ll only use one of the three locations (although it’s possible the PCs could go to the others in their wanderings, and then you could run those encounters if you wanted).

This leads us to one of the strengths AND weaknesses of this products. Opinions will likely vary on whether it’s a strength or weakness. You have three decent sized sections on these areas and the encounters within them, but it’s very likely you’ll only use one of the three. This kind of thing crops up a few times in the campaign, leading to the very real possibility that there will be whole sections and chapters of the book you never use.

From the perspective of a DM running this campaign, I’m honestly not sure where I stand on this. I think I’d have to run the campaign, and only after I’d finished it would I feel qualified to give an opinion on whether I felt I’d used enough of the material, or whether too much of it was wasted on me.

I’m a little unsure why the adventure is structured this way. The DM chooses which of the three locations to use. The players or PCs aren’t given the choice. (Although you could maybe rework the adventure so they get to choose between the three. That could be interesting, but to make it work, I think you’d need to come up with better hooks, and you’d definitely need more hooks, because as written the hooks that lead to the three different settlements are virtually the same. I’ll discuss the hooks more later.) So I suppose the benefit is as DM you have three choices of where to do this part of the campaign, so you can pick the one you like the best. However, that means you’ll only use 1/3 of this chapter, and I feel like the pages of the other 2/3 could have been better spent on something you’ll definitely use. Now, it is possible that the PCs could travel to one or both the other locations during the course of the campaign, and if they do, you can run those encounters then.

After you deal with the encounters at the location you’ve chosen, and the PCs have advanced to level 6, you come to the next chapter (chapter 3) in the module, The Savage Frontier. In this chapter you’re given a list of locations in the area in alphabetical order, as well as random encounter tables. Many of these locations and also many of the random encounters point the PCs to important locations that will take them into the next chapter of the adventure.

This chapter is one of my favorite parts of the adventure. I love overland adventures and wilderness exploration. Many of the adventures I ran in the 2e days were exploration or travel-type adventures. This chapter has a lot of locations detailed to a greater or lesser degree. There are LOTS of great adventure seeds in here! Some of the locations include actual encounters.

This may (or may not) make this part of the adventure seem more sandboxy, as the PCs can wander around the area as they wish. However, this results in that same double-edged sword—namely that there’s a good chance you won’t use a good portion of this chapter. Also, the adventure is still ultimately linear as all roads eventually lead to the next chapter.

However, at least for this part of the campaign I think you will be able to capture that sandbox feel. The PCs do have objectives, but thankfully this adventure doesn’t have any kind of ticking clock (and DMs are encouraged to make players aware of this), so the PCs can take as much time as they want to explore the area. Between the described locations and encounters and the random encounters, a DM will have plenty to pull from his sleeves no matter where the PCs go. I think players will really enjoy the freedom of this part of the adventure, however they may find it less enjoyable once they return to the railroad later in the campaign.

This chapter is a goldmine for GMs not interested in necessarily running this campaign, but looking for encounter and location ideas. Most if not all of these locations and encounters could easily be transplanted to your setting of choice. For instance, a location called the Grandfather Tree, which I’m a big fan of, will definitely be in Primordia. This is a giant oak tree, surrounded by regular sized oak trees and protected by dryads and centaurs. The tree has a magical nature, and this encounter is a great example of how you can add some magic to anything in your world, complete with some in-game mechanical affects (eg. those defending the tree gain the equivalent of a bless spell).

There are also numerous NPCs in this chapter that can be mined by a GM for her own adventures.

Finally, if you’re running in the Realms, this chapter gives you a bunch more information and details on locations in the North.

Once the PCs reach chapter 4 they’re 7th level and journey to a ruin with an NPC they meet. This is a part of the adventure I really don’t like as this NPC basically leads the PCs by the nose where they need to go. It feels very contrived. It’s also an odd choice, I think, in an adventure that is giving up so many pages for redundant encounters to try to create a feel of a sandbox. Feels like the writers are stepping on their own feet here.

However, one thing that I really do like in this chapter are the guidelines given on running the NPC that guides the PCs for a while. Specifically we’re given guidelines on how to use the NPC in combat so he doesn’t outshine the PCs or make things too easy. We’ve all heard people talk about the dreaded “DM PC,” and the term almost always has negative connotations. This is when the DM has an NPC that adventures with the party, but this NPC is really just a PC that the DM plays. The DM can get into problems if the DM PC is overpowered, always has the answer, tries to influence where the players go and what they do, and things like that. Unfortunately, though, this can lead to DMs being afraid to use NPCs that travel with the PCs at all, or at the very least being unsure of how to do so. Wizards gives us an example here of how we can take a fairly powerful monster or NPC and have them fight alongside the player characters without stealing the show.

Once the PCs complete chapter 4, they’re level 8. They now have a choice of 5 different giant lords they can go after, and each of these adventures is covered in chapters 5-9. Each of the giant lords is a different type of giant, so here the players have a real choice of where they want to go next, and they can have some control over what kind of adversary they want to face.

It’s suggested the GM can allow the PCs to seek out as many of these lords as they want, gaining a level for every 2 they defeat, so you may get use out of more than one of these chapters if your players bite on that. But I don’t think most groups will use them all, and I think a lot of groups will only use one.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t matter which giant lord the players choose, as they get the needed McGuffin from whichever one they choose. This leads them to chapter 10 and level 9. They can then proceed directly to chapter 12, or they can get there via chapter 11.

Reactions

I have mixed reactions to the structure of the adventure, and I anticipate there will be a pretty wide spread of GM feeling on this. On the one hand, I think chances are good that there will be a good portion of this book that you don’t use. Like me, you may end up wishing all those wasted pages had been spent on more NPC development, more detailing of locations in the North, more new monsters and magic items, etc.

On the other hand, though, this structure may make this campaign a little more useful if you’re going to mine it for encounters, locations, etc. You could even do this if you run the campaign, because you likely won’t use all the encounters, or even all of the chapters. So you could use those in future adventures and campaigns.

I discussed in episode 123 the various innovations in this adventure I really like. You can check that out for more info, but they include how treasure is determined and handed out, the special NPCs, dramatis personae, adventure flowchart, monster roster and new giant options. I think this adventure is the most useful of the 5e adventures Wizards has put out so far for DMs who ultimately don’t run the actual adventure. There’s a lot that can be taken from this book as for as ideas on how to structure adventures and campaigns, interesting ways to use NPCs and monsters, as well as the actual encounters, locations, NPCs, etc.

I like how chapter 3, The Savage Frontier, allows PCs to explore the area and gives you some cool set encounters and random encounters to use. It also gives you a lot of information on locations in the realms. Now this will ultimately get super-annoying for DMs running in the realms as they find their Realms information strewn between numerous books, many of them adventure books—so far LMoP, SCAG, HotDQ, RoT, PotA, OotA, and now SKT. It would be really nice to have it all in a campaign setting book as opposed to bits and pieces in all these books.

I also like how most of the chapters in this book could be run as stand-alone adventures, or worked into a completely different campaign. I really like this approach, and I hope this is the beginning of a new trend by Wizards—making their published campaigns as useful as possible to GMs NOT running the campaigns.