An inspiring campaign
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed running Storm King’s Thunder. It’s an adventure which can draw characters into the world of the Forgotten Realms, explore the North as a big sandbox, and have them confront some of D&D’s most iconic villains: giants and dragons.
But the adventure also requires some tweaking to make the most of it. While running SKT, I have found a few tips which help adapt Storm King’s Thunder to the party and takes care of some of its weaker points.
1. Run Lost Mine of Phandelver and then SKT
As I have written previously, the Starter Set adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver works wonderfully as an introductory adventure before starting with SKT at level five. In LMoP characters can build connections with the town of Phandalin as a home base. They also learn about the lore, history, and politics of the Sword Coast and the North.
Read this if you want to learn more about how to connect the two adventures.
2. Choose three giant lords as villains
As written there are too many giant lords to keep track off—both for us, and our players. Instead of throwing all of the giant lords and their schemes at the players, we focus on three. Pick the ones which inspire you the most. We can then spend some time specifying the motivations of these three giant lords. What is their main goal? How do they achieve it? What are villainous milestones on the way to their goal?
Instead of staying mostly in the background, we can have minions and agents of these giant villains interact with the party from the beginning of the adventure. Have some of the chosen giant lords attack settlements, destroy harvests, and make life difficult for the players and the NPCs they meet.
Whichever three we pick, we need to make sure that the player characters find the corresponding relic to bring to the Eye of the Allfather.
3. Tie characters to the giants before the campaign starts
As with any campaign or adventure, we want to tie our player characters’ backstories and motivations to the theme and story of Storm King’s Thunder. We can do this before we begin playing the first session, for example, in a session zero. In session zero, hand each character a secret which ties them to the developing story. Players can, of course, refuse a secret and pick a new one. Or you can work with players on individual secrets which connect their characters to the adventure.
Here are ten ideas for character secrets to tie the characters to Storm King’s Thunder:
| d10 | Character Secret |
|---|---|
| 1 | The character’s home was destroyed in a giant attack. |
| 2 | The character used to trade with a group of giants but they have turned increasingly violent recently. |
| 3 | The character has giant ancestors. |
| 4 | The character prays to a god of the giants. |
| 5 | The character is an eager historian of the Thousand Year War between giants and dragons. |
| 6 | The character belongs to the Lords’ Alliance who are worried about increasing giant attacks on their settlements. |
| 7 | The character is part of the Zhentarim who are looking to capitalize on the increasing chaos caused by giants. |
| 8 | A character is part of the Order of the Gauntlet, charged to protect the people of the North from the increasing giant threat. |
| 9 | A character is part of the Emerald Enclave who are worried about the unsettled natural order which has the giants in disarray. |
| 10 | A character has violent dreams of an ancient blue dragon covering the North in shadows, and killing giants everywhere. |
4. Introduce Iymrith early
In Storm King’s Thunder, as written, the main villain appears rather late in the adventure. Characters battle barbarian tribes, Zhentarim, and of course evil giant lords. But the “final boss”, the grand villain is an ancient blue dragon named Iymrith. To soften the surprise, we can hint to the players early on that Iymrith drives the chaos within giant society. For example, we might have draconic minions like a cult of blue dragonborn or even blue dragon wyrmlings harass the party. Or Iymrith herself makes an appearance in the first few chapters to scare the characters and warn them to stop interfering in things far beyond their pay grade.
5. Make Iymrith’s motivation clear to the PCs
It can be difficult for players to recognize Iymrith’s motivation for her villainous schemes. But we can distill her motivation to a very clear and concise core. Iymrith seeks revenge against the giants for the violence of the Thousand Year War. Dragons and giants, the two major primeval forces of the planet, waged a bloody war for a thousand years. This war has ended, and Iymrith wasn’t alive during the war. Yet, she has never forgiven the bloodshed that the giants inflicted on her ancestors. Now she has partnered with another ancient enemy of the giants. Together with the kraken Slarkrethel, she wants to throw giant society into chaos. And what better way to accomplish this than by capturing the god-king of the storm giants, Hekaton.
If in the process of destroying all of giant kind, the human settlements of the North fall into chaos and despair—well, that’s a welcome side effect for Iymrith.
Early on, we can have the characters learn about the history of the Thousand Year War. Most importantly, that some dragons, like the legendary Iymrith, still hold grudges against the other side. Then later on, the party might find remains of giants brutally slaughtered by Iymrith. Perhaps there’s even a note of revenge on them, left by Iymrith or one of her lackeys.
6. Use Character Quests for Chapter 3
Chapter 3 of Storm King’s Thunder is a massive gazetteer of the North for the player characters to explore. Instead of using the sparse adventure hooks in the locations described in this chapter, we can focus the exploration of the North on the characters’ personal motivations. We can offer quests tailored to the characters. These quests give them reasons to explore from location to location across the North.
These quests will be most effective if we put three of them in front of the players at any time. Tie each quest of the three active to a different quest and follow the characters’ chosen path across the North.
In addition, if we can, we can connect a personal character quests with the overarching story of SKT. This way, we can introduce the villains of our campaign and have them interfere with the characters’ goals.
Here are ten ideas for character-focused quests in Chapter 3 of Storm King’s Thunder:
| d10 | Character Quests |
|---|---|
| 1 | A friendly NPC is held prisoner in a settlement overrun by hill giants. |
| 2 | An heirloom of one of the characters is in the hands of a Kraken Society cell in a location. |
| 3 | A personal rival has made a pact with fire giants looking for the Vonindod in a location. |
| 4 | A friendly NPC asks the party for an escort to another location. |
| 5 | A faction close to one or more PCs asks the party to explore a battlefield where giants were slaughtered in a dragon attack. |
| 6 | A settlement is under siege by a cloud giant in her flying castle. She demands a treasure map be handed over or else she will raze the settlement. |
| 7 | The characters learn of a powerful magic item kept by a lesser giant lord in their lair. Can they pull of a heist? |
| 8 | Records of a character’s personal history can be found in a library. But a local cult who secretly worship Iymrith prevent anyone from accessing the library. |
| 9 | An NPC close to one or more of the characters was murdered. The characters can investigate the murder, which leads them to a cell of Kraken Society operatives. |
| 10 | The characters are asked to hunt down a roaming frost giant who destroyed a farmstead, and killed NPCs known to the characters. |
7. Storm giants can become group patrons
Even though there’s no group patron in the adventure, the giant princess Serissa, or another storm giant, can become a group patron for the party. The characters can help Serissa rid herself of the Iymrith’s manipulations, and then find her father Hekaton. Later, the storm giants can help the characters plan their assault on Iymrith’s lair.
In my campaign, Hekaton died, and Serissa became the queen of the storm giants. Perhaps in your campaign, Hekaton becomes the group patron. Or Uthor, Hekaton’s uncle.
Either way, the storm giants can provide knowledge and resources, and drive the story forward with quests relating to the Ordning and Iymrith.
8. Use Ally Actions or NPC sacrifice in the final battle
Before we run the final battle in Iymrith’s lair, we can let the player characters gather allies to aid them in the battle. This includes the storm giants. Instead of running all of those NPCs turn by turn, we can abstract their efforts to Ally Actions. These are special actions the player characters get to take to represent their allies’ efforts.
Alternatively, we can use NPC sacrifice as a mechanic for the support of allied NPCs. In this mechanic, players can choose to put NPCs in dangerous situations to gain a bonus to a roll, or a penalty to the roll of an enemy.
