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The core structure of Phase 1 is fairly straightforward:

• The PCs arrive in Nightstone and discover the town badly damaged by a cloud giant attack, abandoned, and infested with goblins.
• After discovering that the townspeople evacuated to the nearby Dripping Caves, the PCs go to the caves and rescue them from the goblins who have taken them prisoner.
• The PCs receive (in the Remix) adventure hooks pointing them towards Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, and Triboar (see Part 3A).

And that should basically wrap things up.

… except it doesn’t.

After the PCs clear out the goblins in Nightstone, the village is immediately attacked by a completely unrelated group of orcs. And then, after the PCs fight off the orcs, the village is immediately attacked AGAIN by a group of Zhentarim mercenaries.

So, to sum up, in just a couple of days Nightstone has been independently assaulted by cloud giants, goblins, orcs, and Zhents.

That is, to put it mildly, some incredibly bad luck for this town. More importantly, it’s really repetitive gameplay that completely grinds the campaign to a halt at the very moment that it should instead be kicking into high gear.

The reason this happens is that Storm King’s Thunder needs to level the PCs up to 5^th level so that they can face the Tier 2 challenges of Phase 2 (i.e., fighting a bunch of giants). The designers level the group up after clearing the goblins out of Nightstone and rescuing the villagers from the Dripping Caves, but they don’t think they can justify more than that, so they just stuff in a couple more fights so that you can level the PCs up after each of them.

FIXING THE ORCS

They’re dumb.

Cut them.

Note: Greg Benage suggests that the orcs could be a raiding party connected to the Iceshield orcs at the Hill Giant lair of Grudd Haug. He had clues from the raiders lead to Harpsheild Castle, a location which appears in Scourge of the Sword Coast, and from there to Grudd Haug. That’s a good idea, and if the PCs end up extending their stay in Nightstone (see below) having these orc raiders show up later could work well. You could also use this idea if the PCs return to Nightstone at some later date.

FIXING THE ZHENTARIM

The Zhentarim are a bit more complicated. Before the cloud giant attack, a Zhent agent named Kella Darkhope had been sent to Nightstone to investigate the possibility of turning the village into a Zhentarim stronghold. The cloud giant attack has created a perfect opportunity, and so she’s sent a message requesting the dispatch of a Zhentarim strike team.

The presentation of the Zhentarim in Storm King’s Thunder is a little incoherent. The book can’t quite figure out if the Zhentarim should be a faction that the PCs will want to join and work with or if they’re moustache-twirling villains. This is actually a common problem in 5^th Edition books, because roughly half of the writers seem to be aware that the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide had the Zhentarim turn a new page as a kinder, gentler, more nuanced organization… and the other writers are familiar with them twirling their moustaches in the video games and novels of the ‘80s and ’90s.

In any case, the Zhent plan in the book seems to be:

1. Murder people.
2. ???
3. Profit?

This is a silly plan, because Lady Nandar, the ruler of Nightstone, was killed in the cloud giant attack. So the really obvious play for the Zhentarim to make here is, “Oh! Good townspeople! We have come to you in your hour of need!”

Then they help the PCs save everybody, the PCs move on (as PCs are wont to do; or, if not, the Zhents can nudge them aggressively in that direction), and the Zhentarim settle in as the new protectors of the town in this troubled time.

This approach has a few advantages:

• It provides an opportunity for the PCs to ally with the Zhentarim and perhaps even be recruited by them. (If so, you might consider creating a Zhentarim scenario hook pulling the PCs into Phase 2 in addition to the others found here.)
• It plays nicely with the themes of established order being upset and power vacuums being created (and filled) that resonate naturally throughout Storm King’s Thunder.
• It can be neatly incorporated into the broader question of what post-crisis Nightstone looks like.

Which sets us up for…

THE END OF PHASE ONE: NIGHTSTONE’S FATE

As noted, with Lady Nandar dead there’s a power vacuum in Nightstone. The village has also been horrifically damaged, with key infrastructure in the form of food stores and economic pillars (including farms and the Lionshield Coster trading post) being destroyed.

We don’t necessarily want the PCs to get mired in fixing Nightstone, but we do want to provide a satisfying conclusion to Phase 1 by providing closure for this crisis.

First, we’ll let the PCs contribute to rebuilding Nightstone by moving forward with the adventure. This is achieved in Part 3A of the Remix, where two of the scenario hooks leading to Phase 2 of the campaign are rebuilt to feature responses to the crisis.

Second, the key question that will wrap up the adventure is: Who will rule in Nightstone?

Options include:

• The Zhentarim
• Morak Ur’gray, the dwarven proprietor of Nightstone Inn who can act as something of a neutral figure in the community
• A patriarch or matriarch of one of the major families of the village (SKT, p. 31)
• An appointed or democratically elected council
• A PC (guess this will be a different campaign; or maybe the player swaps to a new character)

Simple Conflict. Have the Zhentarim arrive when the PCs have explored about half the town (ideally after they’ve met Kella independently). The Zhentarim won’t immediately make a play for leadership (although Insight checks might suggest that’s their goal); they’re “just here to help.”

In the Dripping Caves, seed rivalry between a couple of family heads. (My eye is drawn to the Delfryndels, who own the village mill, and Taela Summerhawk, the apothecary, but you might just go with whatever NPCs seem to click with the players.) Establish early that they have different opinions about the best way to deal with the goblins and/or escaping the caves. Morak is also there, clearly trying to moderate the conflict.

Once everyone is back in Nightstone, have someone offer themselves to become the new leader. This is probably the Zhentarim if they’re still in the picture. Have others make their claim in response. Morak asks the PCs what they think and enough of the other families follow their advice.

More Dynamic. In this scenario, have just two significant candidates plus Morak. This will likely be the Zhentarim and one of the major families (I’d go with the Delfryndels, although maybe having it be Destiny Agganor, the tiefling who worships Asmodeus, would create more drama).

The key thing here is that the leadership will likely be determined by the other five major families of Nightstone. Use Morak to frame the situation, but, at least initially, avoid having him prefer one option over another. (If he expresses a preference, the players may assume that they’re “supposed” to back Morak’s candidate rather than making the choice for themselves.) Morak is concerned about the economic well-being of Nightstone, and this may also be a good opportunity to drop his scenario hook.

At this point, it’s up to the PCs to talk with each of the major families and try to influence them. Persuasion checks are easy here, but also think about small favors the PCs could do (using other skills) to win favor. If you wanted to flesh this out more, add distinct tensions and relationships between the families for the PCs to discover, exploit, and/or resolve.

Note: If the Zhentarim lose out on having Kella or Xolkin become the new Lord Protector of Nightstone, it’s up to you how they respond. You might have them attempt a last minute assassination and seize power (sparking a fight that presumably the PCs will get involved with). Alternatively, they might just roll with the punches, approach the new leader, and say, “Congratulations! Now, it looks like you’ll be needing some armed men to help keep the town safe. Shall we talk terms?” and establish a local base that way.

THE ISSUE OF ADVANCEMENT

As we discussed earlier, the PCs are supposed to be 5^th level heading into Phase 2 of the campaign. We’ve eliminated some of the milestones in Nightstone, so we’ll need to rearrange things to look like this:

• Advance to 2^nd level after clearing the village of goblins.
• Advance to 3^rd level after rescuing the villagers from the Dripping Caves.
• Advance to 4^th level when a new leader has been chosen for Nightstone.
• Advance to 5^th level after the encounters in the Tower of Zephyros.

If this seems too rushed for you, here are some other options.

Phandelver. Start the campaign by running the PCs through the Lost Mine of Phandelver from the D&D Starter Set. It’s located fairly close to Nightstone and will dump the PCs out at 5^th level, which is more or less perfect. Add a hook from Phandelver to Nightstone, level to 6^th after the Dripping Caves, and skip the level up after the Tower of Zephyros.

Dragon Heist. Waterdeep: Dragon Heist also wraps up with the PCs entering Tier 2. (This is a little less true with the Alexandrian Remix, but still close enough.) What I recommend here is starting the PCs in Nightstone, advancing them to 3^rd level, and then sending them to Waterdeep.

During the events of Dragon Heist you can seed material for Storm King’s Thunder: Harshnag can be their contact with Force Grey, for example. Towards the end of Dragon Heist, Count Nimbolo and Countess Mulara can arrive in Waterdeep in their flying castle (SKT, p. 112-113) so that the PCs can meet them and learn that they’re planning to stay for several months while studying at some private libraries in the city. (As giant stuff starts to happen later on, the PCs might return to Waterdeep to meet with those giants again.)

At the end of Dragon Heist, of course, you’ll need to come up with new hooks to send the PCs to one or more of the Three Cities for Phase 2. But since they’ll have likely aligned with one or more factions during their Waterdhavian adventures, you can ultimately just give them a faction mission to set them on their way.

Just Do It. Alternatively, just start the PCs at 3^rd level. Level them up after rescuing the villagers from the Dripping Caves and again as they get dropped off by the Tower of Zephyros.

Go to Part 2: Revelation Lists

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Storm King’s Thunder is built around two core structures.

The primary structure is node-based. In Phase 1 of the campaign, the adventure begins in Nightstone, where the PCs get a lead to one of three cities (Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, and Triboar).

In Phase 2 of the campaign, whichever city the PCs go to will be attacked by giants, resulting in the PCs getting a wide variety of leads which will point them to various locations across the Savage Frontier, the northern realms of Faerûn.

This launches Phase 3, featuring the second structure of the campaign, which more or less acts like a pointcrawl. Locations throughout the Savage Frontier are keyed with encounters, which the PCs will trigger as they navigate through the region (primarily by road). Many of these encounters, in turn, will point to other nodes/locations.

Thus the node-based structure prompts PCs to move throughout the Savage Frontier, which triggers content in the pointcrawl, which gives the PCs more leads to the node-based content.

The node-based elements of Phase 3 are, at least hypothetically, designed to funnel the PCs to the Eye of the All-Father, an ancient giant oracle. In Phase 4 of the campaign, the Eye requires the PCs to recover artifacts stolen from the giants by the Uthgardt tribes and scattered around the Savage Frontier. For each artifact the PCs recover, the Eye gives them a lead to a citadel of a giant lord:

• Den of the Hill Giants
• Canyon of the Stone Giants
• Berg of the Frost Giants
• Forge of the Fire Giants
• Castle of the Cloud Giants

The PCs can raid one or more of these citadels during Phase 5 of the campaign. Each giant lord possesses a magical conch of teleportation, which is keyed to the court of the Storm Giants. This is another funnel leading to Phase 6, with the PCs using the conch to travel to the Storm Giant court (in an underwater fortress called Maelstrom) and forge an alliance with Serissa. Serissa gives them a wooden coin that was found at the location where her mother’s body was recovered, and she believes it may also be connected to her father’s, Lord Hekaton’s, disappearance:

• The coin leads to a gambling riverboat called the Grand Dame.
• On the Grand Dame, the PCs must question Lord Drylund, who tells them that Lord Hekaton is being held on a ship called the Morkoth.

After being rescued from the Morkoth, Lord Hekaton invites the PCs to join him in assaulting the lair of Iymrith, a blue dragon who had infiltrated his court and was responsible for his kidnapping.

Note: There are two places in the campaign where the PCs are abruptly given access to aerial travel. At the end of Phase 1, a cloud giant offers to give them a lift in his flying fortress. And at the beginning of Phase 4, a dragon randomly decides to send the PCs an airship that they can use for the rest of the campaign.

If you look at the structural analysis of the campaign above, you can see why this happens: Overland travel in Storm King’s Thunder is handled through the Phase 3 pointcrawl. Because the content of this pointcrawl is keyed for Phase 3 (what’s happening in the game world at that time; what clues and leads are relevant to the PCs during that phase), it would cause problems for the PCs to encounter that keyed content before Phase 2 or after Phase 3 is complete. To avoid that, the designers simply arrange for the PCs to literally fly over the pointcrawl unless the PCs are in Phase 3.

For ease of use, let’s title these phases:

• Phase 1: Nightstone
• Phase 2: The Three Cities
• Phase 3: The Savage Frontier
• Phase 4: Eye of the All-Father
• Phase 5: The Giant Lairs
• Phase 6: Finding Hekaton

We’ll be referring to these phases throughout the Remix.

STRONG HOOKS

The campaign as written is underhooked. The PCs are never given a strong reason to actually care about all this giant stuff that’s going on.

The book includes four hooks:

• Get paid to fight goblins in Nightstone. (This is resolved by the end of Phase 1.)
• Get paid to guard nobles in Nightstone. (This goes nowhere.)
• Get paid to negotiate with elves. (This goes nowhere.)
• Contact an agent in Nightstone who can connect you with high-paying jobs. (He apparently can’t do that. But he will give the PCs some letters to deliver.)

As you can see, most of these dead end in Nightstone (and only one of them actually has anything resembling a satisfactory conclusion). This isn’t necessarily a problem, as you can structurally pull the PCs into an introductory scenario like Nightstone and then deliver the big, meaty hook that will pull them into and through the rest of the campaign.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t really happen either. Instead, Morak Ur’gray gives them a mail carrier hook with a generic message in order to procedurally shuffle them along to Phase 2. And even if you flesh those hooks out a bit more (as we’ll do in Part 3A: The Three Cities), the fundamental problem remains that there’s not really anything motivating them to figure out what’s going on with the giants.

This is not to say that they won’t investigate the giant stuff. But it becomes quite likely they’ll end up doing it because it just sort of… seems like the thing they’re supposed to be doing? The unmotivated play will become rote, with the players kind of drifting through the campaign. These are the types of games that often just wither away as the players put less and less priority on playing.

Of course, many players will find ways to motivate themselves or become motivated by the events of actual play. That’s the gold standard, and will almost certainly be the most effective motivation. (Stuff that actually happens at the table is almost always seen and felt to be “more real” than stuff concocted for back story.) But we can certainly prime the pump a bit.

Connections to Nightstone. In the first two phases of the campaign, giants attack four different communities. Simply giving the PCs a strong connection to one or more of these communities can do most of the heavy lifting for getting them invested in the campaign.

In the case of Nightstone, simply look at the list of prominent families and their dead (SKT, p. 31). Having the players related to one of these families not only makes for easy pathos, it can also easily explain why they’re coming home to Nightstone in the first place.

Alternatively, a PC might still live in the Nightstone. Having the cloud giant attack wipe out their home and/or business can easily motivate them. (At the beginning of the campaign, they might have been out of town on an errand. Alternatively, they can just finish digging their way out of the rubble as the other PCs show up.)

One potential problem with Nightstone-related hooks, however, is that, as written, the PCs will never actually track down the giants who attacked the town. Being unable to find that closure (or even make an iota of progress towards finding the cloud giants responsible) will be very frustrating for the player(s). Check out “Creating New Giant Lords” on p. 12 of Storm King’s Thunder and be prepared to flesh out an additional cloud giant faction.

You’ll probably also want to steer clear of having a PC related to Lady Velrosa Nandar, unless you want the campaign to really disappear down a rabbit hole. Nandar’s heir will be the de facto ruler of Nightstone after her death, making it overwhelmingly likely that the campaign will remain rooted in the village as the PCs focus on rebuilding in the wake of the crisis.

Connections to the Three Cities. Connections to the three cities of Phase 2 — Bryn Shander, Goldenfields, or Triboar — can all the follow the same basic pattern as connections to Nightstone. There’s plenty of lore there to flesh out a PC’s background and lots of notable NPCs for them to have a connection to.

This connection can help justify the link from Nightstone to Phase 2. (“You’re from Triboar? Can you take this message there for me?”) If they already have a connection to one of the prominent NPCs, it’ll also add oomph to the scenario hooks delivered after the giant attacks in Phase 2.

It’s also possible to weave these connections together. For example, a PC might be from Bryn Shander and a member of the Southwell family. Coming south to Nightstone to visit their sister Semile, they tragically discover that she’s been killed by the cloud giants. The Delfryndels (see Part 3A) give them a bundle of Semile’s things that they’ve gathered together, and they’ll need to return to Bryn Shander to let their brother Markham know that Semile has died.

A History With Giants. The other option is to simply tie a PC directly to the giants. Was their mentor/mother/first love killed by a giant? Or, flip it around, and their mentor/mother/first love IS a giant.

You may want to be a little wary of characters who “hate all giants,” though. Even though that seems like a really natural character concept for a Fight the Giants! campaign, Storm King’s Thunder requires that the PCs be willing to work with at least some of the giants. The Remix will, in some ways, reduce that strict necessity, but will also hopefully be enriching the options for giant cooperation and it might be a shame to nip those options in the bud.

(On the other hand, a character who has good cause to be prejudiced against all giants who learns that the reality is more complicated than that could be an incredibly powerful roleplaying experience at the table.)

Friendship can actually be just as strong as animosity here: There’s something wrong with the giants. The breaking of the Ordning has shattered their society, and while that’s an opportunity for some, it’s arguably a problem for all of them. If there are giants that the PC(s) care about, they’ll be strongly motivated to solve this problem. (And to do so in a way that either keeps the giant(s) they care about safe, benefits them, or both.)

MAKING THE HOOKS

How do you actually seed these elements into the PCs’ back stories?

It depends on how you actually go about creating characters for the campaign. There are, of course, lots of ways of doing this. I’ve previously written in detail about the method I typically use for campaigns like this in Running the Campaign: Designing Character Backgrounds, the short summary is:

1. Establish the campaign concept.
2. Have the players pitch their character concepts.
3. Collaborate on a public integration, with the GM using their expertise in the setting to take generic archetypes of the character concept (e.g., northern barbarian) and make them specific (e.g., an Uthgardt barbarian).
4. Have the GM do a private integration of the character, tying them into the larger structure of the campaign (e.g., Is there a major villain? Make the long-lost brother of one of the PCs).
5. Bring the party together. At least 95 times out of 100, you’ll want to explain why the PCs are all going to hang out and do things together — specifically, the usually crazy things the campaign concept is predicated on — before you start your first session. 4 times out of the remaining 5, you’ll probably want to have things pre-arranged so that they fall in together within the first few scenes.

Most of the concepts described above are going to fall into the public integration phase. Is there a PC from a small village? Suggest Nightstone and begin feeding them appropriate lore to flesh out their back story there. A major city? Triboar. Are they a druid? Give them connections in Goldenfields.

And so forth.

Note that the PCs don’t all need to have the same hook. And these hooks may or may not be the reason that they’re adventuring together. You might want to check out Random GM Tip: Bringing the PCs Together for additional tips.

If this process has not already explained why the PCs are heading to Nightstone, I recommend working with the players to come up with a better reason for that than just “maybe there’s some money to be earned there.” What you’re looking for is something specific. For example:

• Some highly specific lore about the nightstone itself. (For example, the PCs may have stumbled across information relating to the apocalyptic capacity of the stone during a previous adventure and they’re following up on those leads.)
• Did one of the players decide to create a Zhentarim? Then they’re being sent to meet with Kella Darkhope (replacing the zhent agents who would normally show up).
• They’ve been hired by someone to assassinate Lady Nandar.
• A rich uncle has left the Nespers a tidy sum of money and the PCs have been hired to deliver it.

But try to avoid anything that can’t actually be resolved by the end of Phase 1, unless you do, in fact, want to spend extra time in Nightstone and Ardeep.

Go to Part 1B: Nightstone Conclusions