So a while back, when 5e just came out, a friend bought a copy of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen campaign book. It sat off to the side gathering dust while we completed a homebrew campaign, until, one day when rifling through his sourcebooks, we decided we’d take the chance to run it.

In retrospect, I do somewhat wish I’d looked up some reviews online as the book’s reputation for being notoriously hard to run proved to be true nearly immediately. Regardless, we powered through most of it over the course of a few months, and I’ll be compiling play reports for you to read based on the notes I took during each session.

Today though, I’ll be talking about the first episode and how I would go about improving and running it.

The Setting

The book opens with a map of the sword coast and a brief introduction of the Cult of the Dragon’s activities, a group that seeks to summon Tiamat, an evil goddess of dragons, onto the land of Faerun. This is meant to be accomplished in part by collecting a massive hoard of gold to present to her upon her summoning. It is on that note that the party enters the game, approaching a town that is being plundered by the cult, with an adult blue dragon circling overhead.

Now I’m going to be honest with you here, the first episode of the campaign CAN be a lot of fun. As written, it’s a fairly challenging couple of sessions in an interesting setting. The main problems it suffers are a lack of enemy and encounter diversity, and a too combat-heavy introduction.

But I’ve ran at least three other groups through this episode, and I (and some of my players) were sick of it. So we skipped the majority of encounters in this episode and instead did two of them in detail. The very first one (Seek the Keep) in which the players lead a family to safety in the keep, and the last one, in which a player faces off against a half-dragon champion in a one-on-one duel.

The Side Missions

If I were running this again, I would likely change the first episode to do a better job of rewarding characters for completing the side missions. There are a number of them, including:

The Old Tunnel – A sidequest that opens the ability to get in and out of the keep without going through the main gates, which are under siege by enemies. The Sally Port – A section of the castle is breached by foes and must be resealed to prevent additional enemies getting through. Dragon Attack – That blue dragon we mentioned earlier is swooping around breathing fire all over the place, and presenting a perfect target to get arrowed a few times by PC’s before flying off. Prisoners – The governor of Greenest wants the PC’s to capture a cultist or two to interrogate. Save the Mill – A mill is being set aflame and needs your help! Except it’s actually a trap meant to ambush the PCs. Sanctuary – A church being used to shelter some townsfolk is being surrounded by patrols that are trying to break in and kill or capture everyone.

There is a 7th event in which the party chooses one amongst themselves to face off against the half-dragon champion to free some hostages. This is the last event that occurs before the cult leaves the town.

Now on to the fun part – Rewards.

The Rewards

The rewards for completing these missions would need to be a little different from the standard EXP + GP.

Opening the old tunnel is pretty simple, with the reward for that being access to missions 5 & 6. Defending the sally port could prevent another attack that would have killed the medics with healer’s kits that rush to the player’s help should they lose the half-dragon battle (hint: they probably will) Fighting off the dragon attack could result in a strong morale boost for the defenders, providing the party and other defenders of the keep with 1d4 temporary hp. Interrogating a cultist could, in addition to yielding information about the cult, result in him telling the party where he hid some treasure for personal gain during the sacking. Saving the mill might allow the players to obtain a few sets of cultist robes to better help them infiltrate the enemy’s camp in a later episode. Some poison could be found in these cultists’ possession too. Rescuing the church from the assailants could provide the party with access to the church’s cellar library, healer’s kits, and holy water supplies in the future.

The Half-Dragon Duel

This one’s the highlight of this episode, and one of the hardest fights in the book (adjusted for relative power level). As written, the character is intended to lose. And while there’s no problem with that, I’d do a couple of things to help the players even the odds. Fighting off the dragon attack for some temporary hp might help, as well as lifting some poison off the ambushers in the “Save the Mill” side quest.

I’d also make the players aware that helping out in ways other than applying some buff spells prior to the fight may be a bad idea, as the hostage situation makes it quite dangerous to intercede.

It might be a good idea to have Langendrosa (the half-dragon) throw some taunts at the player if he loses and maybe even have him kill the remaining hostage anyway, just to really spark the PC’s hatred of him for when they encounter him later. It will make it all the more satisfying when they defeat him for good.

The episode ends with this duel, with the cultists turning around and leaving with their ill-gotten gains.

Tune in next time to hear how my players approached this chapter in my interpretation of the HotDQ campaign.