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As written, the key problem with the Eye of the All-Father revelation is that there’s no way for the PCs to discover it for themselves. Instead, they just kind of bumble around in Phase 3 until the giant Harshnag shows up, tells them what they “should” have been doing this whole time, and then joins the group as a vastly overpowered GMPC who pretends to be only semi-competent in combat so that he doesn’t make the PCs feel inferior. (That’s literally text, see p. 120.)

Here’s how you fix that:

1. The PCs learn what the Eye of the All-Father is.
2. They find out where it is.

These two steps can happen simultaneously, but if they’re separated, then the first step will make the PCs appreciate the significance of the second step when it happens.

The big change we’re going to make here is inverting Harshnag’s role in the campaign. Instead of showing up at the end of Phase 3 and telling the PCs where the railroad tracks are, we’ll trigger the encounter with Harshnag early in the campaign. (Perhaps he’s traveling in Zephyros’ Tower, p. 32.) And what he says is: “I’m trying to find the Eye of the All-Father, the true location of which has been lost for many generations of giants. (Insert a bunch of lore about the Eye of the All-Father here.) If you learn anything about it, please send word to me via Blackstaff Tower in Waterdeep.” (Although this is not mentioned in Storm King’s Thunder, Harshnag is a member of Force Grey, an elite strike force commanded by the Blackstaff that enforces the laws that Waterdeep’s normal watch cannot.)

If the PCs now locate the Eye of the All-Father and decide to contact Harshnag, THEY’RE the essential players (pun intended). The more awesome Harshnag is, the more awesome they are for having helped him.

THE EYE OF THE ALL-FATHER EXISTS

• Harshnag’s Quest. The giant Harshnag (p. 118) is seeking the Eye of the All-Father and asks the PCs to send word to the Blackstaff in Waterdeep if they discover the lost location of the Eye.
• Frost-Touched Monolith (Triboar). In the courtyard of the Frost-Touched Frog, there is a stone sarsen that stands about nine feet high. Written in Dethek characters in a Giant (Jotun) language is the message, “Here are the lands of the Hill Giants. Decreed as Law by the Eye of the All-Father. Let no small folk enter here, or they shall find our stomachs are their final destination.” The stone was once one that marked the territory around Grudd Haug, but was removed a generation ago by treasure-seekers and brought to Triboar, where Alatha Riversword, the former proprietress of the Frost-Touched Frog, accepted it as payment for a bar debt on a lark.
• Dwarf’s Quest (Citadel Adbar/Citadel Felbarr). The kings and queens of these dwarven fortresses know the legends of the Eye of the All-Father and that it exists somewhere in the Spine of the World. They suggest that the PCs might want to seek it out.
• Gwent’s Advice (Ironmaster). If the PCs are following Augrek Brighthelm’s quest from Bryn Shander (p. 42) and meet with Gwent Brighthelm, he will suggest that they might seek out the Eye of the All-Father. (His information is rather vague: The dwarves know it was a site in the Spine of the World which was of importance to the giants in ages past, and “perhaps they are using it as a command center now.” He does not know the exact location.)
• Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Add Where lies the Eye of the All-Father? To Kayalithica’s Questions, p. 153. (She has not received an answer.)
• 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.”

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.

THE LOCATION OF THE EYE OF THE ALL-FATHER

• Questioning Cartographers (Waterdeep). Count Nimbolo and Countess Mulara, the cloud giant cartographers who visit Waterdeep while the PCs are there (p. 113), have tentatively identified the location of the Eye of the All-Father. They have not yet gone there, but it’s on their list of places to visit (and confirm if their hypothesis is correct).
• Svardborg – Area 4D: Narthex. The ceiling of this building is decorated with a faded mural depicting the peaks of the Spine of the World. (Artistically it makes it look as if the narthex were the root from which these mountains had grown.) Anyone inspecting the mural will note that the peaks have been individually labeled with their names, some of them archaic and/or peculiar to giant nomenclature. One of them is “the Eye of the All-Father,” and indicates the location of the temple.
• Questioning Hekaton. Hekaton knows the location of the Eye of the World, a secret that was passed down to him from his forefathers. (He never had a chance to pass that knowledge onto his daughters, although you might hide a scroll containing the knowledge somewhere within the King’s Tower in Maelstrom, p. 214.)
• Questioning Iymrith. Iymrith knows the location of the Eye of the World. This fact is alluded to in a letter Iymrith sent to Nym (see Finding Hekaton revelations, below). Iymrith might also reveal this information if he ends up allied with the PCs; or if he thinks that seeking the temple might distract them. (You could add the lore book from which he learned it to Iymrith’s Trove, p. 229.)
• 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.”

Note: The players might choose to take a more proactive approach to finding the Eye of the All-Father, rather than simply waiting to stumble across the information. For example, they might head to Candlekeep to do research, attempt castings of legend lore, ask the Blackstaff to consult the spirits of the former Blackstaffs to see if any of them knew the secret before it was lost, or any number of other possibilities. Generally speaking, if they put some effort into this, pay it off by either revealing the location or by pointing the PCs towards one of the clues above. (For example, they might discover that Iymrith stole a book of lore about the Eye of the All-Father from Candlekeep. Or learn that the information would have been encoded in the murals on the ceilings of Ostorian shrines.)

Go to Part 3D: Concept Revelations

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We took a look at the Questioning/Backtracking Giants leads in this section of the campaign earlier. To that end, I’ve collapsed these leads into a single entry for each revelation (with an accompanying list of instances). There are such leads pointing to all five of the non-Maelstrom lairs.

To this we can also add the Eye of the All-Father, which similarly points to all of these lairs.

Structurally, I decided that each lair should also have a lead pointing to it from one of the other giant lairs. This means that once the PCs “punch up” into this layer of the campaign, it will be possible for them to circulate between the giant lairs. (These leads also, by their nature, begin to reveal the factional rivalries and politics between the giants.)

This gives us three clues for each lair, but they’re both formulaic and also very internal to the giants (they’re either the giants themselves, their lairs, or their oracle). So I finished fleshing out these revelation lists by adding one “outside” option to each list. (These are also the clues that the PCs will encounter while moving through the pointcrawl-like structure of Phase 3.)

Maelstrom is an exception to all this: It gets one clue pointing to it from each giant lair plus the prebuilt route through the Eye of the All-Father.

If you wanted to add an extra option to these revelation lists, you might consider putting a map of all known giant lairs somewhere in the Maelstrom. This makes sense (the Storm Giants were ruling over all of these places until just recently and/or Serissa would be doing her best to keep tabs on everyone) and creates the opportunity for a structure where the PCs punch up through the giant lairs, reach Maelstrom, and can then see the whole strategic picture of the giant situation. (Either as a result of the map or by forming an alliance with Serissa.)

I usually try to avoid this kind of “all the clues in one basket” approach because it can obviously short circuit the entire investigation. (All the answers the PCs want, after all, are conveniently right here for them.) Given the overall structure here, though, it’s probably fine. And you could also temper things by making the current locations of, say, Lyn Armaal and Kayalithica a mystery to Serissa.

GRUDD HAUG – DEN OF THE HILL GIANTS

• Frost-Touched Monolith (Triboar). In the courtyard of the Frost-Touched Frog, there is a stone sarsen that stands about nine feet high. Written in Dethek characters in a Giant (Jotun) language is the message, “Here are the lands of the Hill Giants. Decreed as Law by the Eye of the All-Father. Let no small folk enter here, or they shall find our stomachs are their final destination.” The stone was once one that marked the territory around Grudd Haug, but was removed a generation ago by treasure-seekers and brought to Triboar, where Alatha Riversword, the former proprietress of the Frost-Touched Frog, accepted it as payment for a bar debt on a lark. (Either documents can be found in the abandoned tavern testifying to where the monolith was originally found. Or they may need to track down the tavern’s current owner, Artus Riversword (see the Helm’s Hold lead to Triboar, described above).
• High Forest Poachers. PCs who are crossing the High Forest may stumble across the slaughtered remains of megafauna (huge deer, etc.) who have been slain by hill giants and then taken back to Grudd Haug. (It’s possible that the PCs might encounter hunters from Noanar’s Hold, p. 101, inspecting the kill site.)
• Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Kayalithica has reports from scouts she sent to observe Grudd Haug. In addition to providing details of its location and a rough map of its exterior, the scouts also disdainfully report on Chief Guh’s disgusting effort to become “the largest giant” by literally eating her way to the distinction. They dismiss her rovers as being a threat to the stone giants; if anything, Guh has greatly weakened her strategic position by sending giant raiders to scour the surrounding countryside.
• Lyn Armaal – Area 14: Castellan’s Quarters. Cressaro has spy reports and maps identifying the location of Grudd Haug. These include an aerial map of the lodge. The reports of his spies describe with disdsain Chief Guh’s plan to eat her way to supremacy; they do express some concern that if her raiders get closer to the Evermoors they could rile up the people of Yartar or the elves of the High Forest and necessitate Lyn Armaal moving to a new location.
• Questioning/Backtracking Giants. Random Encounter (p. 70 & 71), Goldenfields (p. 51), Uluvin (p. 112), Old Tower (p. 116-7).
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

DEADSTONE CLEFT – CANYON OF THE STONE GIANTS

• Uthgardt Blessings (Stone Stand). Members of the Blue Bear tribe, which has recently formed an alliance with Kayalithica of Deadstone Cleft, seek blessings from the Grandfather Oak at Stone Stand for their efforts. They do so by describing their endeavor on the tanned hide of a bear, which is then tied with blue gut-string in ceremonial knots and left within the clefts between the old oak’s roots. One of these was left by Kriga Moonmusk (p. 66) seeking blessing for her alliance with Kayalithica. The document includes a reference to Deadstone Cleft as Kayalithica’s fortress. (The PCs should be able to make inquiries to identify the location of Deadstone Cleft.)
• Silixia (Grayvale), p. 88. This young brass dragon will point the PCs towards Deadstone Cleft.
• Grudd Haug – Area 13: Prisoner. Gryhawk, the Uthgardt prisoner here, is from the Blue Bear tribe (instead of the Elk tribe). He was a spy sent by Kayalithica, but was captured by the giants. If freed, he will thank the PCs (as described on p. 144) and tell them that he is certain they will also have the thanks of the greater giants that he serves when he returns to Deadstone Cleft.
• Svardborg – Area 1G: Throne Room. Jarl Storvald has correspondence from Kayalithica, in which she proposes an alliance between them — one in which her giants will “tear apart all that the little ones have built, restoring Ostoria to its glory” under her rule, while Storvald’s reavers will “rule the seas.” Her letter notes that she has traveled to consult the oracles of Deadstone Cleft in the Graypeak Mountains, and it has suggested that the All-Father and fortune alike would smile on such an alliance.
• Questioning/Backtracking Giants. Grayvale Run (p. 88), Llorkh (p. 96), Orlbar (Zorkh, p. 103). The origins of the giants in Grayvale Run and Llorkh are not indicated in the text, but are from Deadstone Cleft.
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

SVARDBORG – BERG OF THE FROST GIANTS

• Cloud Giant Cartographers. Count Nimbolo and Countess Mulara, the cloud giant cartographers who visit Waterdeep while the PCs are there (p. 113), were planning an expedition to Svardborg after investigating the giant settlement they believe Waterdeep was built atop of. Their maps include the approximate location of Svardborg in the Sea of Moving Ice, and notations indicate that it has been “recently reoccupied by frost giants.” If groups approach them in a more friendly way, they may mention this in conversation; they will certainly be eager to show off their new maps (allowing characters to notice the notation).
• Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Kayalithica has correspondence from Jarl Storvald, apparently replying to some earlier letter Kayalithica sent to him proposing an alliance. The jarl is tentatively interested in “a world where you rule all the lands of lost Ostoria and my people rule all the oceans from the Sea of Moving Ice” as joint rulers of a new era, but stops short of actually promising anything. (Add Will the giants of Svardborg ally with us? to Kayalithica’s Questions, p. 153.)
• Questioning/Backtracking Giants. Bryn Shander (p. 41-2), Fireshear (p. 83), Helm’s Hold (p. 90), Luskan (p. 97), Port Llast (p. 104). Backtracking frost giants will generally lead you to their reaver ships. I recommend having navigational charts on the ships indicating the location of Svardborg.
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

IRONSLAG – FORGE OF THE FIRE GIANTS

• 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.
• Lyn Armaal – Area 14: Castellan’s Quarters. Cressaro has spy reports and maps identifying the location of Ironslag. These include an aerial map of the Yakfolk Village (p. 174).
• Questioning/Backtracking Giants. Triboar (p. 60), Nesme (p. 100).
• Questioning Drow Raiders (Gauntlgrym), p. 85-86. Drow thieves from Ironslag can be caught in Gauntlgrym.
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions

Note: If the PCs are wandering around the Silver Marches trying to figure out where the fire giants are, don’t hesitate to have NPCs suggest they might go to Citadel Adbar or Citadel Felbarr for aid. (This could equally well apply to any other goals the PCs might be pursuing in the region. Or if they’re working with a faction, the faction might send them to the dwarven kings and queens to discuss a potential alliance against the giants.)

LYN ARMAAL – CASTLE OF THE CLOUD GIANTS

• Zymorven Hall. From their outlook over the Evermoors, the knights of Zymorven Hall (p. 62) have observed winged figures repeatedly flying out of the Evermoors and heading towards the northwest. Lord Harthos Zymorven is concerned that the village of Rivermoot (p. 106), which lies in that direction, may be at risk from these creatures and asks the PCs to investigate. (The winged figures are aarokocra from Lyn Armaal, who are purchasing supplies and food in Rivermoot.)
• Random Encounter, p. 69. The PCs see Lyn Armaal flying above them.
• Ironslag – Area 26: Ducal Quarters. Zalto has correspondence from Countess Sansuri, the Lady of Masks, suggesting/asserting that, with the Ordning broken and the dominion of the Storm Giants at an end, Zalto should swear fealty to her and they could rise together to the top of the new Ordning. (The suggestion has enraged Zalto.) There are also reports from Zalto’s spies, who report that Lyn Armaal seems to have taken up a semi-permanent station above the Evermoors while the cloud giants are searching for something. (Or possibly multiple things.)
• Questioning Cartographers. Count Nimbolo and Countess Mulara, the cloud giant cartographers who visit Waterdeep while the PCs are there (p. 113), have heard that Countess Sansuri is interested in obtaining more up-to-date maps of the lands controlled by the little people. Nimbolo and Mulara aren’t really interested in that, but Sansuri’s agents have requested that they visit Lyn Armaal above the Evermoors. (The agent did suggest that the Lady of Masks was searching for some sort of ancient giant artifact… which does intrigue the cartographers somewhat.)
• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle gives them directions.

MAELSTROM – HOLD OF THE STORM GIANTS

• Eye of the All-Father, p. 151. Oracle tells them that they need a conch of teleportation.
• Grudd Haug – Area 2: Feasting Hall. Chief Guh believes that once she’s placed atop the new Ordning that the All-Father will give the Maelstrom to the hill giants. (Why the hill giants would even want it is unclear; it really can’t be emphasized just how stupid Guh is.) She has scrawled a crude and mostly inaccurate map of Maelstrom on the wall next to her, indicating how she would redecorate.
• Deadstone Cleft – Area 14: Temple. Kayalithica is conspiring with Iymrith. (She does not know that Iymrith is a dragon.) Iymrith’s latest letter scolds Kayalithica, saying that she is “as impatient as the sisters. Serissa’s reign will end soon enough, but we must not move too quickly. Let her failures continue to mount and her support will continue to wither away. Then the legacy of Hekaton will be undone completely, and the storm lords will be lost in chaos while the fate of the new Ordning is decided.”
• Svardborg – Nilraun. The jarl has had Nilraun using experimental techniques to use the conch of teleportation to cast scrying and clairvoyance spells into Maelstrom. He has discovered that Iymrith is a blue dragon, but has not revealed that information to the jarl.
• Ironslag – Brimskarda. In her bodice, Brimskarda has a letter sent to her by Serissa. It appears that Serissa and Brimskarda were once drinking buddies when they were younger; apparently conspiring as friends during various diplomatic summits that their fathers attended. Serissa calls upon these old bonds, hoping that Brimskarda will intercede with Duke Zalto and convince him to honor the fire giants’ contracts for supplying the storm giants with weapons. “Use the conch,” she urges, “And come visit us at Maelstrom. It shall be like old times again.” Brimskarda has not shown the letter to Zalto.
• Lyn Armaal – Area 14: Castellan’s Quarters. Among Cressaro’s papers is a request from the Lady of Masks to a prepare a plan for using the conch of teleportation to infiltrate Maelstrom. (Cressaro has not yet had time to work on this.)

Go to Part 3C: The Eye of the All-Father

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.

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

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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.