Brindlewood Bay is a storytelling game by Jason Cordova. The players take on the rolls of the Murder Mavens mystery book club in the titular town of Brindlewood Bay. The elderly women of the book club, who are huge fans of the Gold Crown Mysteries by Robin Masterson and starring the feisty super-sleuth Amanda Delacourt, somehow keep finding themselves tangled up with local murder mysteries in real life.

And there are a disturbing number of murders per capita in this sleepy little vacation town.

The reason there are so many murders here are the Midwives of the Fragrant Void, cultists who worship the “chthonic monstrosities that will usher in the End of All Things.”

That’s right. We’re mashing up Murder She Wrote with Lovecraft, along with a healthy dose of other mystery TV shows from the ‘70s and ‘80s (including Remington Steel, Magnum P.I., and even Knight Rider).

Brindlewood Bay sets things up with a fast, elegant character creation system that lets you quickly customize your Maven, sketch in their background, forge connections with the other PCs, and flesh out their personal version of the Murder Mavens. Then it wraps the game around a Powered By the Apocalypse-style resolution mechanic, performing evocative moves by rolling 2d6 + an ability modifier with three result tiers (miss, partial success, success). To this now familiar mix, it adds a couple mechanical wrinkles:

• An advantage/disadvantage system tuned for the 2d6 mechanic; and
• Crown moves, which allow you to override the results of a die roll by either playing out a flashback scene (developing and deepening your character) or advancing your character’s connection to the dark forces in Brindlewood Bay, moving them inexorably towards retirement.

The Crown moves, in particular, seem to work very well in play, with the former building organically on the sketchy foundation established during character creation and the latter relentlessly advancing the dark, long-term themes of the game.

Brindlewood Bay’s real claim to fame, however, is its approach to scenario design. It comes bundled with five one-sheet scenarios (and provides guidelines for creating your own), but these notably do not include the solution to the mystery. In fact, there is no solution until it is discovered (created) in play.

Instead, each scenario presents:

• An initial scenario hook that presents the murder,
• A cast of evocative suspects,
• Several locations, and
• A list of evocative clues.

Examples of these clues include:

• An old reel of film showing a debauched Hollywood party.
• A bloody rug.
• A phone message delivered to the wrong number.
• A fancy car, the brake lines cut.

And so forth. There’ll be something like two dozen of these clues for each scenario.

The idea is that the PCs will investigate, performing investigation moves that will result in the GM giving them clues from this list. Then, Rorschach-like, the Mavens will slowly begin figuring out what these clues mean.

So how do you know what the solution actually is?

This is actually mechanically determined. When the Mavens huddle up, compare notes, and come up with an explanation for what happened, they perform the Theorize move:

When the Mavens have an open, freewheeling discussion about the solution to a mystery based on the clues they have uncovered — and reach a concensus — roll [2d6] plus the number of Clues found … minus the mystery’s complexity.

On a 10+, it’s the correct solution. The Keeper will provide an opportunity to take down the culprit or otherwise save the day.

On a 7-9, it’s the correct solution, but the Keeper will either add an unwelcome complication to the solution itself, or present a complicated or dangerous opportunity to take down the culprit and save the day.

On a 6-, the solution is incorrect, and the Keeper reacts.

When it comes to roleplaying games, I’m generally pretty skeptical of the “have the solution be whatever the players think it should be” GMing method. I mention this for the sake of others who share this opinion, because within the specific structure of Brindlewood Bay as a storytelling game it works great.

One key thing here is that the players must know what’s going on here: That the clues have no inherent meaning, that they are assigning meaning creatively as players (not deductively as detectives), and that the truth value of their theory is mechanically determined. I’ve spoken to some GMs who tried to hide this structure from their players and their games imploded.

Which, based on my experience playing Brindlewood Bay, makes complete sense. The game is entirely built around you and the players collaborating together to create meaning out of a procedural content generator stocked with evocative content. (If you’re looking for an analogy, Brindlewood Bay turns the GM’s creative process when interpreting a random wandering encounter roll into the core gameplay.) If the players aren’t onboard with this (for whatever reason), it’s going to be grit in this game’s gears.

But if everyone is on the same page, then the results can be pretty memorable.

For example, in my playtest of the game the players created a really great theory for how the circumstances of the murder came to pass. Then, on a roll of 8 for their Theorize move, I twisted the revelation of who was actually responsible for the death itself in such a way that the Mavens all collectively agreed that they needed to cover up the crime. Simply fantastic storytelling and roleplaying.

There are a couple niggling things about the game that I think merit mention.

First, instead of having the first scenario of the game be the Maven’s first murder mystery, the game instead assumes they’ve been doing this for awhile. (Sort of as if you’re joining the story in the middle of the first season, or maybe even for the Season 2 premiere.) There are kind of two missed opportunities here, I think.

On the one hand, the story of that “first Maven mystery” seems pretty interesting and everyone at my table was surprised we weren’t going to play through it. On the other hand, having posited that the Mavens have already solved several mysteries together, the game doesn’t leverage that during character creation. (By contrast, for example, the Dresden Files Roleplaying Game from Evil Hat Productions assumes the PCs have prior stories in common, but builds specific steps into character creation in order to collaboratively establish those events and tie the characters together through them.)

Second, I struggled to some extent running Brindlewood Bay because the game’s structure requires that the clues be presented in a fairly vague fashion. (This is explicitly called out in the text several times, and is quite correct. Like the rest of the group, the GM doesn’t know what the true solution of the mystery is until the Theorize move mechanically determines it. So the GM has to be careful not to push a specific solution as they present the clues.) The difficulty, for me, is that I think clues are most interesting in their specificity. And, for similar reasons, both I and the players found it frustrating when their natural instincts as “detectives” was to investigate and analyze the clues they found for more information… except, of course, there is no additional information to be found.

The other problem I had as the GM is that the Rorschach test on which Brindlewood Bay is built fundamentally works. Which means, as the story plays out, that I, too, am evolving a personal belief in what happened. But, unlike the players, I have no mechanism by which to express that belief, except by pushing that theory through the clues and, as we’ve just discussed, breaking the game. It was frustrating to be part of a creative exercise designed to prompt these creative ideas, but to then be blocked from sharing them.

These are problems I’ll be reflecting on when I revisit Brindlewood Bay. Which is a trip I’ll definitely be taking, because the overall experience is utterly charming and greatly entertaining. I recommend that you book your own tickets at your earliest opportunity.

Style: 3
Substance: 4

Author: Jason Cordova
Publisher: The Gauntlet
Price: $10.00 (PDF)
Page Count: 40+

BUY NOW!

Go to Table of Contents

We’ll start revising the revelation lists for Storm King’s Thunder by looking at the leads that take us from Nightstone to the Three Cities (Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, and Triboar).

A significant change in these revelations is that I’m breaking up Morak’s Quests from Nightstone (p. 31). As written, all three of these quests take the form of, “Please tell so-and-so that their family member is dead.” If you’re using all three hooks (as I recommend), this is very repetitive. I wanted both more variety and, where possible, higher stakes. So we’ve done that and also changed up the scenario hooks so that they come from different people.

Whereas it’s relatively likely that the PCs will enter the regions around Goldenfields and Triboar coincidentally during their travels (if they don’t stumble into them directly), the trick with Bryn Shander is that there’s nothing to really draw the PCs up into the Frozenfar (where we could naturally seed local activity that would hook the PCs into Icewind Dale). To counteract this, I’ve included a hyper-flexible lead in the form of a Harper’s Message that can be dropped into any one of a dozen locations.

Note that the Blod Stone and Escorting Ghalvin Dragonmoor leads are both included for completeness, but both are likely to either happen after the giant attacks these revelations are designed to introduce or preclude them from happening (for reasons described earlier).

BRYN SHANDER

• Delfryndels’ Quest (Nightstone). The Delfryndels’ neighbor and friend Semile Southwell was killed by a giant’s boulder (p. 22). They’ve gathered a small bundle of Semile’s personal belongings and would dearly like to see them delivered to Semile’s brother, Markham Southwell, who lives in Bryn Shander. The PCs are wanderers… is there any chance they might be heading towards the Frozenfar? (If they see that the PCs have Semile’s gold ring, which was looted from her dead hand by a goblin, they’ll request that it, too, be given to Markham. Or express their regret that the ring is missing.)
• Missing Everlund Merchants (Everlund). A merchant named Chenu sent agents to Bryn Shander to arrange the purchase of knucklehead scrimshaw (which is incredibly popular with the mercantile and noble families in Everlund). They were supposed to have returned two months ago, but there’s been no sign of them. She’s looking to hire some people who can handle themselves to figure out what happened to them. (Inquiries reveal that they were killed in a yeti caravan attack. They had no identifying paperwork, but the PCs can identify them by their merchant’s sigil. Duvessa Shane (p. 38) has held the money they were carrying in care; if the PCs can satisfy her that they are the rightful agents, they can receive the money and perhaps even arrange for the scrimshaw that Chenu needs.)
• Frozenfar Caravan (Hundelstone). A caravan in Hundelstone lost its guards to a yeti attack. They’re ready to head back north into Icewind Dale, but they need new protectors. (You can find a usable caravan in Legacy of the Crystal Shard.)
• Harper’s Message. A Harper agent asks the PCs to deliver a message to Beldora, a Harper operating in Icewind Dale. In whatever location the message is coming from, a recent string of murders was traced to a local cult of Auril. Documents found with the cult indicated that they had received visions of an “Ice Maiden” appearing on the Reghed Glacier; an omen of Auril’s “ascension.” They’d like Beldora to look into it.
• Blod Stone (Berg of the Frost Giants), p. 156 & 165. This magical artifact points towards the nearest blood relative of Artus Cimber, which is currently Sirac of Suzail in Bryn Shander.

Note: Alternatively, if the PCs belong to a faction who might be hostile to the Harpers, you could have them sent on a mission to assassinate, expose, or blackmail Beldora.

GOLDENFIELDS

• Nightstone’s Need (Nightstone). Nightstone’s food stores have been destroyed or looted. They need a large shipment of food as soon as possible, and the best place to go for it is Goldenfields. Whoever ends up in charge of Nightstone when the dust settles will ask the PCs to make the journey and arrange things.
• Call for an Old Friend (Uluvin). If the PCs save Uluvin from the hill giants, the community will need help rebuilding. The grateful widow Zorandra Heller (p. 112) remembers a moon elf druid named Aerglas who lived in the town for awhile when she was a young girl. She believes he would be able to help them now, and gives the PCs a ring of protection with his sigil which was given to her mother as a gift by Aerglas. She knows that Aerglas now resides in Goldenfields.
• Dead Messenger. (Dessarin Valley) While passing through the Dessarin Valley, the PCs find the body of a dead messenger in the livery of House Thann of Waterdeep (Dragon Heist, p. 162). He’s carrying a message addressed to Zi Liang of Goldenfields informing her that her father has died. (Zi Liang’s Quest, p. 52, is now in immediate response to her father’s death.)
• Zhentarim Payroll (Bargewright Inn). Zhentarim-affiliated PCs will be asked to deliver a coffer to Shalvus Martholio in Goldenfields (p. 46). The coffer contains cash Shalvus will be using to make strategic bribes to officials in Goldenfields to further the Black Network’s goal of taking control of the community.
• Escorting Ghalvin Dragonmoor (Den of the Hill Giants), p. 144. Freed from the hill giants, Ghalvin asks the PCs to escort him back to Goldenfields.

Note: The Call for an Old Friend hook points the PCs to Lifferlas’ Quest in Goldenfields.

TRIBOAR

• Morak’s Quest (Nightstone), p. 31. Morak’s friend and neighbor, Darthag Ulgar, was eaten by giant rats. Darthag ran the Lionshield Coster trading post in Nightstone, and his ex-wife runs a similar trading post in Triboar. The trading post is a vital lifeline for Nightstone’s economy. Morak asks the PCs to travel to Triboar, deliver news of Darthag’s death, and try to make arrangements for the Lionshield Coster to send an agent to Nightstone.
• Deed to the Frog (Helm’s Hold). If the PCs accept the quest given to them in Helm’s Hold (p. 91) and encounter the raiding frost giant, they will discover that he has taken a prisoner named Artus Riversword. The frost giant knows that his lord is seeking Artus Cimber and when he heard Artus’ wife shout her husband’s name (just before the giant killed her), he concluded this must be the guy. Riversword is unrelated to Cimber, but he is the descendant of Alatha Riversword, who was once the proprietess of the Frost-Touched Frog in Triboar (p. 56). Artus and his wife were heading back to their farmstead from a local village market. Artus will ask the PCs to help him carry his wife’s body home for burial, and then give them the deed to the Frost-Touched Frog as thanks for saving his life.
• Armorial Order (Citadel Felbarr). King Morinn and Queen Tithmel once received splendid suits of ceremonial armor from Ghelryn Foehammer of Triboar (p. 57). They would now like to order an armorial crest of their coat of arms from the talented smith. Since the PCs are outsiders, would they consider carrying the royal request to him?

Note: The king and queen are already designed to give the PCs a lead pointing at the Forge of the Fire Giants (p. 79). I recommend sequencing these requests with Ghelryn Foehammer’s Quest (p. 62): The PCs are asked by the king and queen to deliver their message to Foehammer; Foehammer then asks them to let the king and queen know he will deliver the armorial crest and also writes them a letter of recommendation; on the strength of the letter of recommendation, the king and queen then send the PCs to investigate the fire giants.

Since Citadel Felbarr is somewhat out of the way, you might want to strengthen this by adding an extra lead or two pointing at Felbarr to begin with. However, this is probably not necessary: Because Triboar is a major crossroads, the leads here can afford to be a little more esoteric.

Go to Part 3B: The Giant Lairs

A point of frequent confusion, in my experience, is the distinction between the organization/structure of a CAMPAIGN and the organization/structure of a SCENARIO. Terminology is often used interchangeably between the two, partly because there is not, broadly speaking, a critical apparatus for this that is widely agreed upon, but also because people will often think of a campaign as just being sort of a “big adventure.”

This is, generally speaking, not an accurate or useful way of thinking about a campaign. Even a big campaign with a strong, unified concept is still ultimately made up of individual scenarios. Descent Into Avernus, for example, is a single “big adventure,” but it is clearly composed of specific scenarios (starting with a murder mystery which leads to a dungeon crawl).

So we can talk about scenario structures, but we can also talk about campaign structures. And it would probably be useful to clearly distinguish the two.

We could start by looking at how scenarios are organized within the campaign:

One-Shot. Structurally this is a campaign which, from a certain point of view, isn’t a campaign. It’s a “campaign” that consists of a single scenario. The name can be misleading, as a single scenario might take several sessions to resolve. But whether you play through, for example, The Sunless Citadel in one eight-hour session or four two-hour sessions, it’s structurally a one-shot.

Episodic. In an episodic campaign, the players are presented with a single scenario. When they complete that scenario, they are presented with the next scenario. And so forth. For example, the PCs explore the Sunless Citadel, then they explore the Forge of Fury, then they solve the Anyoc murders, and so forth.

Multi-Threaded. A multi-threaded campaign is similar to an episodic campaign, but there will be multiple scenarios in play at the same time (and being resolved in parallel). For example, while the PCs are still exploring the local dungeon, they return to town and get involved in a murder mystery.

Sandbox. A sandbox campaign is one in which the players choose or define what the scenarios will be. For example, this might be a hexcrawl where a town is surrounded by multiple dungeons and they choose which one to explore. Or it might be the Dracula Dossier, where the players are confronted with a vampiric conspiracy and are completely responsible for what targets they’re going to choose and what ops they’ll create to deal with it.

Hypothetically you can look at the output of a sandbox campaign and it will look the “same” as an episodic or multi-threaded campaign. (In other words, it will consist of the players either engaging with one scenario after another sequentially or engaging with multiple scenarios simultaneously.) But what you prep for a sandbox campaign is fundamentally different; how you run the sandbox is different; and, as a result, the player experience is different.

The other thing to look at here is how the campaign is prepped. Without diving into specific prep techniques, this can be broadly delineated as a spectrum between holistic prep and just-in-time prep.

Holistic prep is when you prep an entire campaign ahead of time.

Just-in-time prep is when you only prep a scenario as you’re beginning that scenario.

For example, with just-in-time campaign prep you might have a sandbox with six dungeons around a town, but if the PCs don’t go to a particular dungeon it will never get mapped or keyed. Most published campaigns, on the other hand, are examples of extremely holistic prep by necessity.

Note: This should not be confused with the concepts of low prep or zero prep. Low prep is a philosophy about what you prep and how much you prep. Zero prep, which is sometimes also used as a synonym for low prep, is about specific game structures that are used to procedurally generate content from some form of setting seed — Technoir and Blades in the Dark are prominent examples. Low prep/zero prep techniques are probably likely to appeal to GMs who also find just-in-time campaign prep appealing, but they’re distinct things. You can, for example, holistically plan an entire campaign using low prep techniques before the campaign ever begins.

FINAL THOUGHTS

As I noted at the beginning, this is a very broad conceptual breakdown of campaign structures. It’s not remotely comprehensive. Within any one of these categories there are A LOT of possible techniques, including undoubtedly many which have not even been invented yet. For example, take a peek at:

• Dracula Dossier
• Hot Springs Island
• Duskvol from Blades in the Dark

Each is an example of fairly holistic prep for a sandbox campaign, but their structures and approach to prep are fundamentally different. And these differences,  of course, also affect how the material is used in actual play, which, in turn, require distinct GMing techniques to be most effective.

It might also be interesting to consider how these structures influence the underlying concepts and content of a campaign. The Dragon Heist Remix, for example, takes an episodic campaign and, using essentially the same underlying scenario material, reorganizes it into a multi-threaded campaign with light sandbox elements.

The combination of prep structure and prep timing also reveal one final campaign structure not discussed above: The holistic, branching episodic campaign.

The simplest example of this is an episodic scenario at the end of which the players have a choice between two mutually exclusive scenarios: They can choose to do either Scenario A or Scenario B as the next episode. For example, if the supervillain AC/DC escapes, then the next scenario is chasing her down. If AC/DC is captured, then the next scenario is preventing AC/DC’s superhero boyfriend and his thugs from breaking her out of jail.

(You can’t really have a just-in-time branching campaign because you know the outcome of a scenario before you prep the next one. AC/DC escaping/not-escaping will absolutely affect the future scenarios you design in such a campaign, but you’re never going to prep both branches, because there’s never a point in such a campaign where both branches actually “exist” simultaneously, if that makes sense.)

What you have here is the classic Choose Your Own Adventure prep. And it is almost always a terrible idea. You’re basically choosing to deliberately spend a bunch of time prepping stuff that you know will never actually be used.

If you’re prepping your own campaign and you reach a point in your prep where you can’t see past a particular choice or outcome, that’s probably a good indication that you should stop prepping and start playing to find out. (Once you’ve found out, you can continue your prep.) It can be slightly more justifiable in a published campaign (even if half of the groups don’t use Branch X, there will be other groups who do). But in either case, you’d almost certainly be better off using node-based design or some similar technique to avoid the problem to begin with.

To put this another way, branching episodic prep is the result of trying to incorporate player choice into a structure that isn’t designed for player choice. When that happens, you will probably almost always want to switch to a more appropriate structure.

Which leads me to one final thought, which is that the structure of a campaign can also change over time. For example, you might launch a campaign with a short series of episodic scenarios designed to set up a premise for a sandbox campaign. Or the PCs might make the choice in a sandbox campaign to pursue a large goal that naturally shifts the campaign into an episodic structure.

None of the structures described here are one-true-ways. They are tools to be used. And which tool is most appropriate will depend on the task at hand.

Go to Table of Contents

ANALYZING THE REVELATION LISTS

With the published revelation list from Part 2 in hand, we can use it to quickly assess weak points in the campaign. And there are obviously some things that immediately jump out at us.

First, though, I should say that I was somewhat surprised by how robust this revelation list appears to be. You can see that a lot of these revelations are flush with clues. Certainly more than I had initially thought when simply reading through the campaign book.

However, the word “appears” is somewhat key here.

The thing to note is the lack of variety in the clues. Notice how many of them are some form of Question a Giant. This creates two problems.

First, a lack of variety in your clues can result in a flat and uninteresting investigation. You can see how the primary experience of this campaign could easily boil down to, “Talk to a giant. Talk to another giant. Talk to another giant. Talk to another giant. Talk to another giant.”

Second, and more importantly, this uniformity is a hidden form of fragility. The Three Clue Rule states that for any conclusion you want the PCs to make, you need to include at least three clues. And, technically, talking to a giant in Bryn Shander, talking to a giant in Helm’s Hold, and talking to a giant in Port Llast are three different clues.

But the function of the Three Clue Rule, ultimately, boils down to redundancy. Because these clues are all identical in form (you have to question a giant), they can all fail in the exact same way (the players don’t question a giant). Maybe the players never even consider the possibility of questioning a giant. Or maybe one of the PCs is a dwarf who has sworn an oath of vengeance on giant-kind (a reasonable character concept for a campaign pitched as “take the fight to the giants’ doorsteps!”) and will never take a giant prisoner. There are lots of possibilities, just as there are for missing any clue. The point is that the number of clues in these cases may only offer an illusory robustness.

We can see the effect here clearly, I think, if we look at the Phase 5 revelation lists after removing all forms of Questioning a Giant:

PHASE 5 – DEN OF THE HILL GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

PHASE 5 – CANYON OF THE STONE GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Silixia (Grayvale), p. 88. This young brass dragon will point the PCs towards Deadstone Cleft.

PHASE 5 – BERG OF THE FROST GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

PHASE 5 – FORGE OF THE FIRE GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Track Triboar Raiders (Triboar) p. 60.
• King’s Request (Citadel Adbar), p. 78. King Harnoth asks the PCs to raid Ironslag.
• King and Queen’s Request (Citadel Felbarr), p. 79. King Morinn and Queen Tithmel ask the PCs to raid Ironslag.
• Questioning Drow Raiders (Gauntlgrym), p. 85-86. Drow thieves from Ironslag can be caught in Gauntlgrym.

PHASE 5 – CASTLE OF THE CLOUD GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Random Encounter, p. 69. The PCs see Lyn Armaal flying above them.

In a single glance we can immediately see that only the Forge of the Fire Giants remains robustly supported by the Three Clue Rule, and the fragile funnel through the Eye of the All-Father is also obvious.

ANALYSIS: THE ENDING

Looking at the full revelation list, the other thing that’s obvious is that the end of the adventure doesn’t work.

The clear intention is that the PCs are supposed to unveil the conspiracy between Iymrith, Mirran, and Nym. But, as far as I can tell, there’s really no way for them to discover that conspiracy (other than blindly asking the oracle).

Furthermore, the final sequence of the campaign — making an alliance with Serissa, tracking down the Morkoth, rescuing Lord Hekaton, and then raiding Iymrith’s lair — is strung together by only the thinnest of threads. It’s easily broken, literally leaving the campaign at loose ends.

This is all exacerbated by another problem with the ending, one which is not specifically revealed by the revelation list: The central goal of the campaign is “stop the giant attacks.” The rescue of Lord Hekaton and the death of Iymrith is explicitly presented — structurally, textually, and diegetically to the characters — as the way to achieve this.

But… it doesn’t.

The root cause of the giant attacks is that the Ordning was broken. That happened before Hekaton was kidnapped and has nothing to do with the woes of the Storm King’s court or the machinations of Iymrith. So… yeah. Logically, there’s no reason that saving Hekaton or killing Iymrith would resolve that problem.

This is basically confirmed by the “Adventure Conclusion” section on page 230 of Storm King’s Thunder, which more-or-less says, “We ran out of pages. There is no conclusion.”

The first problem, obviously, is that the adventure doesn’t have an ending.

The second problem, though, is that it’s obvious from the beginning that saving Hekaton won’t logically solve the problem the PCs are trying to solve. This makes it incredibly difficult (bordering on the impossible) to motivate the PCs to do any of that. This plays a large role in why the end of the adventure is so tattered. It’s really difficult to design clues pointing to a conclusion when the conclusion doesn’t make any sense.

REVISING THE REVELATION LISTS

To fix these problems, we just need to revise the revelation list — fleshing it out with additional clues that will make the scenario more robust.

Before we do that, however, there are two big questions we should answer.

First, do we want to maintain the funnel through the Eye of the All-Father?

My personal predilection is to say no.

The structure doesn’t really make a lot of sense in terms of the game world. These giant raids are happening all over the place and are kind of a big deal. (If you’ll pardon the pun.) It doesn’t really seem logical that the PCs are supposed to seek out a hidden temple in order to figure out anything substantive about why the raids are happening or where the threat is coming from.

The structure is not particularly interesting in its own right. In fact, almost the opposite is true. In Phase 3 of the campaign the PCs are motivated to go traveling through the Savage Frontier, scooping up a variety of leads as they go that motivate further travel. But because, with one esoteric exception, the campaign is designed to funnel the PCs through Harshnag (who shows up as a “random” encounter on p. 118) to the Eye of the All-Father, none of these leads actually go anywhere. As a result, the campaign kind of just spins its wheels.

You can certainly improve this by including more clues leading to the Eye of the All-Father, but (a) such clues are easier to justify seeding into the giant lairs and (b) it’s probably more effective to ditch the funnel, let the PCs investigate the various giant factions independently, and then include the Eye of the All-Father as an additional (and very powerful) resource in continuing those investigations.

Second, how do we fix the fundamental problems with the ending?

There’s really two parts to this. First, the structure of the mini-arc around the Storm King’s court (identifying the Iymrith conspiracy, tracking down the Morkoth, rescuing Lord Hekaton, raiding Iymrith’s lair) needs to be made more robust in its own right, with a fully functional revelation list that adheres to the Three Clue Rule.

Second, there’s the more fundamental problem of the campaign not actually providing a conclusion that ends the giant violence.

The easiest solution to this problem would be to revise the premise of the campaign to match its actual structure. As written, Storm King’s Thunder ends when Lord Hekaton is returned to his throne and vengeance has been taken on the conspirators who betrayed him. If we want this to be our conclusion, then we simply need to set things up so that this outcome does, in fact, end the violence.

In other words, the giant attacks are caused by Lord Hekaton’s disappearance, so that his return logically brings them to an end. And we can do this by either (a) having the All-Father break the Ordning due to Hekaton’s disappearance or (b) skipping the whole concept of the Ordning and just having the giants out of control because Hekaton’s court is in disarray and no longer able to control them.

As noted, this is easily done. (It’s at least 99% accomplished by just remembering that the Ordning was now broken when Hekaton disappeared and having the various giant factions report things accordingly.) I think the drawback, however, is that “the king is dead, so everything is chaos” is just metaphysically much less interesting than the deeper and more profound upending of the giants’ social order by the All-Father.

The other option, therefore, is to re-align the ending so that it syncs up with the existing lore. Broadly speaking, I see two possibilities here:

• The PCs systematically eliminate every giant threat; or
• The PCs help one of the giant factions achieve victory in the new Ordning, ending the conflict.

The first approach can be crudely achieved by going from one giant lair to the next and stabbing giants in the face until there are no more giants, but I think there are both aesthetic and practical problems with this. The short version is that it’s difficult to really take the giant threat seriously if it can be trivially solved by five people acting alone.

This is something a lot of narratives — particularly “chosen one” narratives — get wrong. To understand why, consider two examples that get it right: Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and the droids can all be absolutely essential to the rebel victory, but if the Death Star was just blown up by the Millennium Falcon flying solo (pun intended), the stakes would immediately collapse. The same would be true if there were no armies in Middle Earth and Frodo and Sam could just walk up to Mt. Doom unaided and defeat Sauron. In both cases, the heroes are larger than life because they are the essential lynchpins in a much larger effort.

The final conclusion from all this, ultimately, is that the PCs will need to (a) figure out how they want to solve the problem and (b) start forming alliance(s) to make that happen. The good news is that, whatever course they decide to chart for themselves, we’ll probably be able to handle it through a common structure.

We’ll come back to that. Let’s start by revising the revelation lists leading up to that conclusion.

Throughout these revised revelation lists, I will be providing a description of how the lead should be integrated into the campaign. You may still need to figure out exactly how to do the final implementation, and I do recommend incorporating these clues into your prep notes for a location/scenario so that they don’t need to be cross-referenced from the revelation list.

Go to Part 3A: The Three Cities

Go to Table of Contents

In Part 1 we broke down the overall structure of Storm King’s Thunder. To briefly recap:

• Phase 1: Nightstone.
• Phase 2: The Three Cities, in which the PCs go to Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, or Triboar (which is subsequently attacked by giants).
• Phase 3: The Savage Frontier, a pointcrawl in which the PCs journey across the North.
• Phase 4: Eye of the All-Father, in which the PCs recover giant artifacts stolen by Uthgardt barbarians in order to convince a powerful oracle to give them guidance.
• Phase 5: The Giant Lairs, in which the PCs raid one or more giant lairs to gain the magical artifact they need to teleport to Maelstrom (the court of the storm giants).
• Phase 6: Finding Hekaton, in which the PCs rescue the king of the storm giants and then hunt down Iymrith in its lair.

Once we understand the structure of the campaign, we can analyze it.

Looking at the totality of Storm King’s Thunder, it’s fairly clear that the pointcrawl is largely non-essential. (This should not be understood to mean that it’s bad or that it shouldn’t be part of the campaign. If our adventures were only made up of what was structurally essential, they’d be pretty dreary and uninspiring affairs.) While the pointcrawl in Phase 3 makes the world feel alive and can be a good way to deliver additional leads to make the scenario more robust, ultimately the campaign requires the PCs to follow the node-based scenario into the funnel that will take them to Phase 4.

So the primary focus of our analysis will be the node-based structure of the campaign, and we can do that by looking at the revelation list.

Because of the auxiliary pointcrawl, it should be noted that there are a number of leads in the campaign pointing to “non-essential” nodes. Their function, as we’ve noted, is to keep PCs moving through the Savage Frontier so that they can continue triggering pointcrawl content. We won’t be including all of these leads in the list below, instead focusing on the campaign-essential revelations and the clues that point at them.

REVELATION LISTS AS PUBLISHED

PHASE 2 – BRYN SHANDER

• Morak’s Quest (Nightstone), p. 31. Morak sends the PCs to Markham Southwell in Bryn Shander to tell him that his sister is dead.
• Blod Stone (Berg of the Frost Giants), p. 156 & 165. This magical artifact points towards the nearest blood relative of Artus Cimber, which is currently Sirac of Suzail in Bryn Shander.

PHASE 2 – GOLDENFIELDS

• Morak’s Quest (Nightstone), p. 31. Morak sends the PCs to tell Miros Xelbrin in Goldenfields that his parents are dead.
• Escorting Ghalvin Dragonmoor (Den of the Hill Giants), p. 144. Freed from the hill giants, Ghalvin asks the PCs to escort him back to Goldenfields.

Note: I’m including Ghalvin Dragonmoor here for completeness, but it doesn’t completely hold up. The function of this revelation is to put the PCs in Goldenfields to experience the hill giant attack. If they’re rescuing Ghalvin, they’ve probably devastated or destroyed the hill giants, making the attack on Goldenfields potentially unlikely. (Although in certain circumstances you might be able to recast it as the hill giants coming to Goldenfields in pursuit of the PCs.)

PHASE 2 – TRIBOAR

• Morak’s Quest (Nightstone), p. 31. Morak sends the PCs to tell Darthag Ulger’s ex-wife, who lives in Triboar, that he was killed.

Note: As written, the DM is supposed to only give the PCs one of Morak’s Quests (essentially choosing which of the three Phase 2 cities they’ll go to).

PHASE 4 – EYE OF THE ALL-FATHER

• Claugiyliamatar (Kryptgarden Forest), p. 96. If the PCs enter Kryptgarden Forest, the green dragon flies out of her lair and informs them the Eye of the All-Father can tell them “what must be done to end the giant menace.”
• Harshnag (Proactive Node: Harshnag), p. 118. If the PCs “randomly” encounter Harshnag, he tells the PCs they should consult the oracle to “learn how best to end the giants’ threat to the North.”

Note: Claugiyliamatar lies at the end of a short quest line which originates in Goldenfields (p. 52). Naxene Drathkala sends the PCs to a dragon expert in Waterdeep, who then sends them to the Kryptgarden Forest to look for the green dragon.

PHASE 5 – DEN OF THE HILL GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Questioning Giant Raiders (Goldenfields), p. 51. PCs can intimidate the giants to lead them back to their home base.
• Questioning Giant Pillagers / Ogres (Random Encounter), p. 70 & 71.
• Questioning Giant Raiders (Uluvin), p. 112.
• Questioning Moog (Random Encounter – Old Tower), p. 116-17.

PHASE 5 – CANYON OF THE STONE GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Silixia (Grayvale), p. 88. This young brass dragon will point the PCs towards Deadstone Cleft.
• Questioning Giants of Grayvale Run (Grayvale Run), p. 88. This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Deadstone Cleft.
• Questioning Giants in Llorkh (Llorkh), p. 96. This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Deadstone Cleft.
• Questioning Zorkh (Orlbar), p. 103. Mute stone giant can point characters towards Deadstone Cleft.

PHASE 5 – BERG OF THE FROST GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Questioning Bryn Shander Raiders (Bryn Shander), p. 41-42. This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Svardborg (and could also be tracked back to their ship).
• Questioning Fireshear Reavers (Fireshear). This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Svardborg.
• Questioning Helm’s Hold Reavers (Helm’s Hold). This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Svardborg.
• Questioning Luskan Reavers (Luskan). This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Svardborg.
• Questioning Port Llast Reavers (Port Llast). This is not indicated as a lead in the text, but these giants are from Svardborg.

PHASE 5 – FORGE OF THE FIRE GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Track Triboar Raiders (Triboar) p. 60.
• King’s Request (Citadel Adbar), p. 78. King Harnoth asks the PCs to raid Ironslag.
• King and Queen’s Request (Citadel Felbarr), p. 79. King Morinn and Queen Tithmel ask the PCs to raid Ironslag.
• Questioning Drow Raiders (Gauntlgrym), p. 85-86. Drow thieves from Ironslag can be caught in Gauntlgrym.

PHASE 5 – CASTLE OF THE CLOUD GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.
• Random Encounter, p. 69. The PCs see Lyn Armaal flying above them.

PHASE 6 – A GOLDEN GOOSE COIN WAS FOUND NEAR QUEEN NERI’S BODY

• Serissa’s Mission (Hold of the Storm Giants), p. 209. If Serissa is convinced the PCs want to help, she gives them the coin.

PHASE 6 – LORD HEKATON IS HELD ON THE MORKOTH

• Questioning Lord Drylund (The Grand Dame), p. 219.

CONCEPT REVELATIONS

In addition to the structural revelations, there are also a few key concepts that the PCs need to learn.

THE ORDNING HAS BEEN DISSOLVED

• Questioning Giants. Hypothetically, you could talk to almost any giant in the campaign and they’d be able to explain that the Ordning has been dissolved. (This includes Harshnag, p. 118.)
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. If the PCs ask why the giants are rattling sabers, the oracle will tell them the Ordning has been dissolved.

LORD HEKATON IS MISSING

• Questioning Nirva & Jaral (Secomber), p. 107. These cloud giants know that Hekaton is missing.
• Questioning Harshnag, p. 118. When he shows up, Harshnag can tell the PCs that Hekaton is missing.

IYMRITH IS ACTUALLY A BLUE DRAGON

• ???

MIRRAN & NYM ARE CONSPIRING WITH IYMRITH

• ???

YOU NEED A CONCH TO REACH MAELSTROM

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. The oracle tells you.

Go to Part 2B: Revising the Revelations