This post is the second of two posts dedicated to running the Wizards of the Coast official campaign Storm King’s Thunder. The first post covered the structure as the campaign book outlines it, and gave suggestions to how you can run the campaign in a short and concise manner. This post aims to do the opposite, and instead showing you how to make Storm King’s Thunder a sprawling campaign that utilizes more of the source material.

Let’s Do Everything

The Storm King’s Thunder has just over 200 pages detailing the campaign story, and also presenting various Sword Coast locations and possible sidequests. However, a majority of these pages won’t ever be used, if you follow the intended structure of the adventure.

The campaign book suggests that your party visits one of the towns in Chapter 2 (Bryn Shander, Goldenfields or Triboar) and only one of the giant strongholds in Chapter 5-9 (Grudd Haug, Deadstone Cleft, Svardborg, Ironslag or Lyn Armaal). Granted, the campaign book does allow for the fact that your party might stumble upon any of these locations on their travels, or play through the giants’ strongholds after defeating Iymrith.

But, if you would like to ensure that your players try out more of the content in the campaign book – and there’s some really great content in there – you can very easily achieve that with only a little work. Below I’ll attempt to give you a strategy for including as much as possible of Storm King’s Thunder’s cool content, while still adhering to the campaign books overall premise.

Chapter 1

First off, if you want your party to experience more of the giant attacks, you must give them reasons to go to more than one of the three towns, all the way back in Chapter 1. The easy way to do it, is to have Morak Ur’gray give the party all of his quests (see STK page 32). But, if we’re being honest, these quests are kinda lame, and your party would be prone to forget all about the other two quests, as soon as they find more interesting storylines in whichever town they choose to travel to.

Another plan could be to mix up the quests a little, and perhaps make them more rumors, than actual quests. This way you can also sprinkle these in later in the campaign, if you’ve already passed Chapter 1, and still send your party towards more giant attacks. An example of how you can do this in in Chapter 1:

• While interrogating or speaking to a goblin, one of them let it slips that its brother Birbok is working for some hill giants up north by Goldenfields, and that ‘hehee, dey attak de Goldy-town not long ago, dem real strong’.
• After being rescued, Morak Ur’gray tells the party that his cousin, Ghelryn Foehammer (see STK page 255), always talk about a giant-hunting adventurer up by Triboar named Urgala Meltimer (see STK page 254), who might know how to ‘give these here giants a proper talkin’ to, if ye follow what I’m saying?’.
• If Daphne Featherstone (Lady Velrosa Nandar’s lady-in-waiting) survives, she tells the party that Lady Velrosa’s childhood friend from Waterdeep, Duvessa Shane (see STK page 248), recently wrote about frost giants rampaging up by Bryn Shander in the north.

You can make these hooks more questlike, if you want, or put these rumors forth later in the campaign. The specifics of when and how aren’t really that important, as long as providing these hooks a) give your players a greater feeling of self-determination, b) plant the seed for the party being involved in several of the giant attacks. Be aware that not all parties respond well to having multiple ‘vague’ choices, and that this might cause your party to simply go about it linearly – going to Goldenfields first and then to Triboar, before finishing of in Bryn Shander – which is a shame, if you like Bryn Shander a lot more than Goldenfields.

Chapter 2

By the end of Chapter 2, the party should be 6th-level, and have up to six different quests delivered to them from the NPCs of the town they helped defending. For the purpose of visiting as many giant strongholds as possible before the campaign ends, you can choose to highlight a few of these quests:

• Bryn Shander – Duvessa Shane’s quest (see STK page 43) could lead to the frost giant stronghold Svardborg, if you want it to. It seems like a fun quest, provided you put some effort into fleshing it out.
• Goldenfields – Miros Xelbrins rather mundane quest (see STK page 52) will give the characters possession of a ring, that can in turn lead them to the Old Tower (see STK page 116), which in turn leads them to the hill giant stronghold Grudd Haug.
• Triboar – Ghelryn Foehammer’s suggestion (see STK page 62) to go to Citadel Felbarr (see STK page 79), can lead the characters’ straight to Ironslag, the fire giant stronghold.

In addition to this, its also a possibility that the characters capture one of the attacking monsters, and simply get it to show them the way to the appropriate giant stronghold. However you go about it, its quite possible for your party to go straight for a giant stronghold, after finishing the defense of a town. If you also have the party visit more than one of these three towns, you can have the party follow a pattern of defending/visiting a town, and then infiltrating a giant stronghold.

Chapter 3

If you’re already in Chapter 3, or your players don’t bite during Chapter 2, don’t fret. There’s plenty of locations in the Savage Frontier, where the party can find their way to a giant stronghold:

• Beliard (suggested encounter leads to Old Tower – Old tower leads to Grudd Haug)
• Citadel Adbar (suggested encounter leads to Ironslag)
• Citadel Felbarr (suggested encounter leads to Ironslag)
• Daggerford (the party can follow giants back to Deadstone Cleft)
• Evermoors (the party can spot Lyn Armaal)
• Grayvale (suggested encounter leads to Deadstone Cleft)
• Orlbar (suggested encounter leads to Deadstone Cleft)
• Uluvin (the party can follow giants back to Grudd Haug)

You can steer your characters towards any of these locations, with the many means at your disposal. It could be rumors in any random inn about ‘fire giants disrupting trade up by the dwarven citadels in the north’ or ‘people’s seen some giant castle floating above the Evermoors!’. Additionally, many of the suggested encounters attached to these locations can very easily be moved to other locations, so if you’ve set your eyes on a giant stronghold that you want your characters to visit, it shouldn’t be too hard to move around some encounters so that your party will at least have the chance to find the stronghold.

Chapter 4

In Chapter 4 your party is supposed to ransack a bunch of Uthgardht burial mounds, so that they can obtain learn the knowledge of a giant stronghold, where they can in turn find a conch of teleportation, that will take them to the Maelstrom (Chapter 10).

An alternative way to do this, if you still would like your party to visit more giant strongholds, is have the conch be broken and divided between 2-5 of the giant lords – or be an entirely different device, that is naturally split into pieces. This way, you get to choose which giant strongholds you want your party to visit and simply tell they need to go to three of them (or whichever number you choose).

Or, maybe the oracle already have the power to teleport the party to the Maelstrom, but won’t do it before the party has proven themselves. It simply tells them they where all the giants strongholds are, and lets them choose which ones to visit, and then it decides when the party have succesfully proven themselves.

Troubleshooting

Expanding the campaign to include more giant attacks and giant strongholds isn’t entirely without issues.

First problem arises if your players are only level 6 when they head into the first giant stronghold, and therefore might not be the appropriate level for the challenge. I can’t tell you what exactly you need to do to mitigate this, but as long as you’re aware of the issue, you should be fine. Hopefully you’ve had a lot of sessions to gauge the strength of your players, and can take measures to ensure it doesn’t end in a TPK, such as reducing the number of monsters (giants in particular), and allowing for more short or long rests.

Another issue arises if your characters sack so many strongholds that they actually get ahead in level. Obviously you can stifle this by sticking to milestone experience, and simply not award them extra experience for clearing strongholds. You can also just have them level ahead, since most of the challenges in the later portion of the campaign are actually quite hard, and often factor in that your party has NPC help (which you can then just not give them).

Thirdly, as the campaign is written, each giant lord or lady is in possession of a conch of teleportation. Luckily, this one is easily fixed: only one of the giants actually have the conch.

Lastly, as you might notice above, its most likely that your players will find Grudd Haug, Ironslag or Deadstone Cleft. That’s okay, since you can have the oracle point them towards one or both of Lyn Armaal and Svardborg, when the party gets to Chapter 4.

My Sample Campaign

Okay, so that’s a lot of words, but how would all this look in actual play. I’ll give an example based on the Storm King’s Thunder campaign that I’m running myself:

• In Nightstone the party are given clues about hill giant problems by Goldenfields, a giant-expert in Triboar (Urgala Meltimer) and frost giants by Bryn Shander.
• The party heads immediately for Goldenfields, where they follow the hill giants track back to Grudd Haug after repelling their attack.
• After clearing Grudd Haug, they finish Zi Liang’s quest in Waterdeep, and then head for Triboar.
• Too late to defend Triboar from the fire giant raid, they follow the fire giants’ tracks towards Ironslag, passing by Zymorven Hall and Yartar on the way to finish Urgala Meltimer’s quest.
• They succesfully defeat the fire giants at Ironslag, and obtain the dark elves’ Iron Flask (see STK page 186). Intent on returning the flask to Gauntlgrym (for a hefty reward) they travel westward. They meet Harshnag on the road, and he shows them to the Temple of the All-Father.
• When they arrive at the temple, the oracle pushes them towards Lyn Armaal, because Countess Sansuri is the only one who has a conch of teleportation.

This way, my party will have gone through two of the towns in Chapter 2 (although only defending one of them), and visiting three of the giant strongholds. It also makes the walking around part of Chapter 3 feel more goal-oriented, than just randomly walking around.

I hope this post has been helpful to you, and given you a better idea on how to run Storm King’s Thunder. I’ll be posting more about the campaign in later posts, so don’t go too far. Remember, you can read the first post here.

Also, I’ve created some content for Storm King’s Thunder over at the DM’s Guild, such as in-depth tips, resources and maps helpful in running A Great Upheaval, Goldenfields and Triboar, or even a full adventure to run during Chapter 3.

This post is the first of two posts dedicated to the structure of the Wizards of the Coast official campaign Storm King’s Thunder. In the post below I’ll go over some of the structural challenges that one might meet while running the adventure, and outline an approach for keeping a strict narrative structure.

Official Structure

Before we put on our big boy pants and start off on our own, let’s take a look at how the campaign is meant to go.

On page 17 of the Storm King’s Thunder campaign book is a beautifully crafted Adventure Flowchart. However, while it is handy to get the quick gist of the adventure, a lot of the structure in the middle of the campaign isn’t so linear in reality. From the end of Chapter 2 and through to Chapter 4 what the adventurers do, and where they go, is entirely up to you and them. You must choose from a multitude of paths and put some in front of them, and then they choose which road to travel and how they go about it. This guide seeks to help you get a firm grasp on how to handle and steer the plot in these vital middle stages of the campaign.

First, let us quickly recap the campaign as it seems it is intended to be structured:

Chapter 1. The adventurers rescue the citizens of Nightstone and are sent to Bryn Shander, Goldenfields or Triboar.

Chapter 2. The adventurers defend a city from giant invaders and are presented with an array of quests.

Chapter 3. The adventurers travel to a multitude of different locations on the Sword Coast until they meet a giant named Harshnag.

Chapter 4. The adventurers and Harshnag visit a giant temple where they are tasked with finding ancient relics, so they can learn the location of a giant stronghold.

Chapter 5-9. The party attacks a giant stronghold and obtain a magical conch of teleportation.

Chapter 10. The party uses the conch of teleportation to go to the Maelstrom, where they get involved in court intrigue.

Chapter 11. The party attempts to rescue King Hekaton.

Chapter 12. The party attacks the dragon Iymrith in her desert lair.

Contrary to what the Adventure Flowchart might indicate, the campaign can wildly differ from this structure, depending on you and your players’ choices. So, if you want to make sure that your campaign follows this streamlined structure, you’ll have to make some changes along the way. On the other hand, if you’re slightly disappointed with only getting to use one of three cities in Chapter 2 and only one of the giants’ strongholds in Chapter 5-9, you’ll instead need to take steps to ensure that your party doesn’t just breeze through the campaign.

First, let’s take a look at how we can keep the campaign ‘on track’, with the purpose of making your job simpler, ensuring that the campaign motivations and goals are clearly apparent, and that futile sidequesting is kept to a minimum.

The Straight and Narrow

If the idea of your party travelling around the ‘Savage Frontier’ while finishing random quests and visiting obscure places isn’t particularly appealing to you, and you prefer to keep the campaign concise and to the point, this blueprint might be for you. Remember, just because you take control of the campaign, it doesn’t mean that your players can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to improvise or go off on tangents – it just provides them with a clearly visible path towards the campaign’s overarching goal.

The first major decision you will have to make, is which quest Morak Ur’gray gives the party near the end of Chapter 1 (see STK page 32). This quest will, to some extent, decide how the rest of the campaign unfolds.

For the straightest path to the campaign objective – restoring the Ordning and defeating Iymrith – I suggest that you have Morak send your party to Goldenfields. Goldenfields is both the closest quest objective to Nightstone, the quest (informing Miros of the death of his parents and delivering their tressym to him) is reasonable, and you can add in a reward (a 100 gp from the Xelbrin estate) to get the party motivated.

But why will Goldenfields keep the structure neat? Because Goldenfields is where Naxene Drathkala is (see STK page 47). She is a Lords’ Alliance operative who’ve studied the ancient history of giants and dragons. Speaking with her, the party can find important plot exposition that will expand upon what Zephyros might’ve already explained to them about the giants running amoc, further cementing the party’s involvement with the main plot.

More importantly, Naxene’s quest (given out after Goldenfields has been succesfully defended) is to seek out a dragon expert in Waterdeep, who will in turn send the party to visit ‘Old Gnawbone’ in Kryptgarden Forest (see STK page 52 and 95). Old Gnawbone is an ancient green dragon, who uses crystal balls to spy on everything and everyone. She can tell the party two important pieces of information: 1) The location of the Temple of the All-Father, where the party must go to learn how to stop the giant threat and 2) that they should look out for a frost giant named Harshnag (see STk page 118).

Going from there, you can put Harshnag anywhere between Kryptgarden and the Temple of the All-Father. Basically anywhere on the Long Road will work fine. You can even place him in a settlement such as Triboar, Longsaddle, Xanthar’s Keep or Mirabar – or have these places abound with rumors of where the fabled ‘lone giant with a dragonskull helmet’ is. If you like the whole story about the ‘Weevil’, you can also have Harshnag be somehow involved in the hunt for the Weevil at Xantharl’s Keep (see STK page 114), if you just make sure that your party recognizes him, and that he doesn’t villify himself too much trying to catch the criminal. This puts an interesting spin on Harshnag, instead of him just showing up at random.

However you go about introducing Harshnag, your party will quickly afterwards find themselves at the Temple of the All-Father, ready to embark on the Oracle’s relic-quests. This means you’ve gone from Chapter 1 to 4 following a structure that looks something like this:

1. The party saves Nightstone and is sent to Goldenfields by Morak Ur’gray, to inform Miros Xelbrin of his parents’ demise, for a reward of 100 gold pieces. The party is level 4.
2. Zephyros picks up the party on the road, tells them that something called ‘the Ordning’ has been broken, and that he thinks they can put it back together. On the way to Goldenfields, the Howling Hatred cultists board the tower. The party is level 5.
3. The party arrives in Goldenfields, where they get to speak with Miros and Naxene, before the settlement is attacked during the night by goblinoids and giants. After the attackers have been defeated, Naxene tells them of her idea of gaining assistance from a dragon, and asks them to visit Chazlauth in Waterdeep. Zi Liang also gives her quest (which, incidentally, also takes the party to Waterdeep) and maybe Oren does too. See STK page 51-53 for Goldenfields’ quests. The party is level 6.
4. The party goes to Waterdeep. Here they might encounter a cloud giant castle above the city (see STK page 112). They speak to Chazlauth and are send to Kryptgarden Forest.
5. In Kryptgarden Forest the party speaks to Old Gnawbone, who tells them about Harshnag and the Oracle (see page 95). The party sets off towards the Valley of Khedrun and the temple.
6. Following the Long Road, the party arrives in Triboar to find that the town was attacked by fire giants. The townspeople tell the party that a frost giant with a dragonskull helmet helped defend the city, and saved numerous of the city’s inhabitants. He went north, but can’t have gotten far.
7. The party finds Harshnag further north on the Long Road (maybe in an encounter with some wild beasts, bandits or even a dragon) and he helps them get to the Temple of the All-Father. The party is level 7.

By using this blueprint, or something close to it, you ensure that your party are very clearly aware of the goal of the campaign, and that they have a path to follow at all times, to accomplish that goal, even if they sometimes veer from it to finish sidequests.

Next time I’ll go over how to do the opposite of what we’ve done here, when I detail how to go about including as much of the interesting content in Storm King’s Thunder before moving on to the later stages of the campaign.

If you’re interested, I’ve created some content for Storm King’s Thunder over at the DM’s Guild, such as in-depth tips, resources and maps helpful in running A Great Upheaval, Goldenfields and Triboar, or even a full adventure for Chapter 3.

Have fun!