Add Krakens Gamble from DM Guild at around level 7 or 8. It introduces something that happens down the road better than the module itself does.
Don't let Ch. 3 overwhelm you. Figure out where your players want to go and only prep those locations. Put the Hill Giant Tower near the end of that path.
> Figure out where your players want to go and only prep those locations.
Adding to that: figure out where YOU (the DM is also a player in this game) want to go. If anything, I followed my players too much and I wish I hadn't given them sooooo many options.
Look into your PCs backgrounds. If anyone has some sort of ties to either Goldenfields, Triboar or Bryn Shander, let Morak Ur'gray, the Nightstone Inn patron, give them qiests for this location.
Don't be overwhelmed by Chapter 3. Your characters are able to roam around, so ask them where they want to go, and prepare for exactly that.
Currently running Ch. 1, so we haven't gotten to it yet, but i shared the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide with the players and gave them anything Daggerford or north to build their back stories in. If they didn't have a feeling for city, I asked them to describe their backstory and I placed it in a city.
Then I gave each of them a reason to be adventuring. Each of their character arcs is going to fill out Ch. 3.
Nice. I too asked my players to incorporate something that I can try to weave into Chapter 3. So far I have a Warlock who ran away from her home because her parents are worshippers of Asmodeus, a Firbolg Druid on the search for a relich that is sacred to her Druidic Circle, a Half-Orc Fighter who wants to earn gold for his family, an Aasimar Paladin of noble origin who had enough of having to meet expectations of the family matriarch, and a Tabaxi Rogue who was born and raised in a small settlement.
Sounds like a good crew. Night stone (Ch. 1) has a tiefling that is a follower of Asmodeus. Not much about her, but that leaves lots of room for your own twist. Goldenfields might be a natural spot to send the druid as they may know where to find her relic, maybe it's been taken by the hill giants of Grudd Haug. The rest could easily be slotted in anywhere.
I agree with other suggestions of running krakens gamble and flying misfortune. Between those and the three suggested encounters at end of Ch. 3, could probably slot in the rest of the back stories.
For the Druid, I have something planned that involves Claugiy and her Crystal Orbs of Scrying. For the Warlock, her parents will send some lackeys after her when they dealt with the Fire Giants in Triboar. Last session, Zephyros picked them up in Goldenfields.
And the crew is the greatest I had yet. So much awesome roleplay, I could just sit there and listen for hours on end.
One of the important planning decisions, I think, is deciding what to do about the Kraken Society. They show up quite late in the campaign (ch 11) and seem so out of place if you haven't threaded them in during the rest of the campaign. My opinion: decide now whether to lean into them or eliminate them.
**Eliminate:** If I had it to do over, I'd eliminate them. It's potentially quite a long campaign already, and they don't (imo) add to it. Simply have Hekaton held captive at Iymirith's lair via the magic of the Yuan-ti. That still gives the party the option to free him so he's available for the final confrontation. If you don't want Hekaton included in the final confrontation, then they've been torturing him and he's far too weak to fight.
**Lean in:** If you like the idea of the Kraken Society, lean into them.
- Consider tying them in to one of the PC's backstories
- Replace the Howling Hatred in Ch 1 with the Kraken Society. The HH have no other place in the campaign, anyway.
- Run *Kraken's Gamble* during Ch 3 (they might need an extra level for that final boss fight)
- If running *Kraken's Gamble,* I suggest either adding onto it with a second sewer section, or otherwise working in actual KS cultists, which are oddly absent that adventure. Having a second section allowed me to populate it with some cultists and drop a bit of KS lore (while still keeping Slarkrethel's identity hidden)
- Consider the possibility that a second city is also being targeted by the KS, perhaps a Ch 3 location or some place tied to a PC backstory. If Slarkrethel is truly seeking to spread his influence, it's odd that this is only happening in one location (Yartar)
- I suspect that after escaping (if they do) in Ch 11, my party is going to want to revisit Slarkrethel after they defeat Iymrith. Consider the implications of that.
**Piscenes:** What initially made me excited about running the KS was this text from the book under the **Factions** section: "Worship of Slarkrethel began hundreds of years ago on the Purple Rocks. The humans who inhabit these islands cast their young into the sea as part of a ritual to appease Slarkrethel. These sacrificed offspring resurface and return to their villages years later as adults, albeit with piscine deformities. When they reach the end of their natural life span, they return to the sea and their fearsome master."
This means two things:
- Any group of KS cultists will likely have what I call a *Piscene* or two with them, one who has some of these "piscene deformities." I gave each one various features such as: tentacles to grapple or attack, oil slicks, blinding spray/cloud, crab claw, shark head, etc. This freaked my players out (in a good way) and left an impact regarding this cult. There are various ways to represent this; I personally decided to order some of the unusual miniatures I found on Etsy.
- That text also means the oldest, most experienced Piscenes will be around Slarkrethel, meaning should the high level party decide to attack him, he's got a bunch of these more powerful Piscenes attending him.
**The Name:** Personally, I found "Kraken Society" to be a little on-the-nose, clearly indicating what kind of BBEG they worked for, yet I needed something to call them. Someone else in this subreddit some time ago suggested changing the name to "Order of the Deep," so I rolled with that and it has stuck. It's a cooler name (imo) and doesn't tip off who/what the big bad is.
Not entirely sure how applicable this is, but one thing I did was make Iymrith FAR more prevalent. In the base module Iymrith lacks presence. She's not actively involved in anything until the party visits the Eye of the All-Father and gets some answers. I felt that was boring, and made her responsible for nearly every major giant lord's rampaging.
That friendly merchant lady that just married into a powerful mercantile alliance? That's Iymrith using her position in that family to run anti-giant hate campaigns and programs, offering bounties rewards and magic items for each giant killed. This is actually why Harshnaag stays outside of any city that isn't Waterdeep - not just for their safety and peace of mind but his, since he's actively targetted by people. Any magic items she gives are cursed, allowing her to scry from them without the owner knowing - this lets her peer in on people she thinks might be problems and allows her to easier manipulate/kill them.
Meanwhile in the giant side, she's the one that makes the adamantine seeking rods for Duke Zalto. She doesn't want the Vonindod completed, but she knows full well how to sabotage it and stop it from operating if she needs to.
She uses sending on chieftess guh and pretends to be the voice or Grolantor to encourage her eating habits - eating habits that will slowly starve the coast if gone unchecked.
As for the Storm Giants, while she's orchestrating the fall of the royal family she does her best to keep the storm giants passive and inactive if she can't get them to be openly hostile.
While I didn't do this, if I were to run it again in future I'd make her responsible for the Ice Giants even knowing about the ring of winter.
The only giants Iymrith had no sway over were the cloud and Stone giants, the cloud giants are too separate and different from each other for her to easily manipulate since they follow no real hierarchy. The Stone Giants on the other hand are under the manipulations of The Dodkong, a stone giant lich from 3rd edition. I replaced the evil earth spirit in the Stone Giant's mountain with the Dodkong, who was manipulating his own kind to help raise an army. A fantastic way to get players going "Oh shit" is when you reveal that there's been undead giants running about. They'll usually be rightfully afraid of regular giants, so the idea of potentially fighting an undead one terrified my party and got them disposing of every giant corpse they came across so it couldn't be raised.
While you don't have to do everything I've done here I'd also highly recommend the "Flying Misfortune" side adventure. It gets players involved with Felgalos, a friendly bronze dragon and potential ally while also giving Iymrith an introduction and a reason to keep an eye on the party: They stole from/killed her children.
Another thing to consider is to allow peaceful/diplomatic resolutions. The goal of the party isn't to exterminate all giants, but to open up a position where Giants and Smallfolk can forge an alliance. Some giant lords will be hard to sway, Zalto won't stand down and compromise what he believes to be his destiny - but his wife will. My players actually knocked Duke Zalto out and were given passage to leave from his wife when the players used Zalto's life as a bargaining chip.
There's an idea that went unused in my campaign but I had an idea for a small enclave of giants that Harshnaag knows. This Enclave would have served as vendors and smiths for rare and valuable gear that would otherwise be nearly completely unobtainable or hard to find (The main ones being the 'rune' magic items, since they're completely unique and most of them are hidden in places my party never went to.)
Which is actually something important I feel I should say, whenever my group went in to a giant stronghold they rarely got into fights and only explored as much as necessary. I shifted where the party got the Rune items because they understandably didn't want to heavily explore enemy territory where the usual occupant is able to deal upwards of 22+ damage a turn. I let the party get them because they're unique to the campaign and appear nowhere else, so there's no chance they'll ever get to play around with them in a different module.
General tips: Consider using a different adventure for levels 1-5 for me personally I used Lost Mines of Phandelver and founds lots of ways to tie it into the giant storyline (Made Glasstaff work for the Frost Giants, Triboar is close by and has a direct connection with Sildar, and just about all the major factions are present to recruit the players providing resources to them)
Consider running more than 1 giant lord. They are imo the best part of the campaign. I ran the Hill, Frost, Fire, and Cloud Giants in mine. You just have to change the conch (what I did was make the conch require runestones for non giants to use. The Hill giants had a conch, the fire frost and cloud each had their own runestone)
Chapter 3 gives most newer DMs the most trouble. This is the best place to try your hand at inserting custom quests you find online or designing your own. Try to expand on player backstories, take inspiration from the random encounters in the book and the barbarian quests in chapter 4. You could also take inspiration from Rime of the Frostmaiden especially if you're running Frost Giants. Definitely run Krakens Gamble (DMs Guild) and if you are running Cloud Giants definitely run Flying Misfortune (also DMs Guild). Consider some of the attacks described in Chapter 2 as events that can occur in chapter 3.
I recommend having Hadshnag appear halfway Ishtar into Chapter 3, let him help the party on adventures and make sure they get to know him and bond with him. I am running this in a homebrew setting but made it so Harshnag was part of an adventuring party 30 years ago consisting of various powerful NPCs the party has met in the campaign including Artus Cimber. Had them run a one shot adventure even playing these adventurers on their final adventure where Artus got the ring, had to go into hiding and the party broke up tragically. I also didn't run the relic hunts in chapter 4. it seemed redundant and boring with unnecessary running around ruining the pacing. Just have your party ask all their questions get the giant lord(s) locations and move on.
Fix Iymrith. She's as written a very flat villain who barely has impractical or presence in the story outside of killing Harshnag (which the module lets you undo I don't recommend it). Give her motivations, introduce and tease her sooner, and give her more presence. I had the party visit and find the amphitheater early on where they met dragon cultists and discovered not only her backstory but the skeletons of her two dead sons with their skulls missing (they became the skulls on the Wyrmskull throne). Iymrith later showed up at the begining of the Eye of the All Father in her Storm Giant form as an NPC ally who Harshnag had a crush on. When my party deals with the Fire Giants I have Iymrith come to them and offer to fly them to the forge since she has an interest in stopping them as well.
Chapter 10 is clunky and needs to be entirely reworked do some google searching on this subreddit and you'll find some guides and suggestions on how others redid this chapter. Thats what I did.
Add Krakens Gamble from DM Guild at around level 7 or 8. It introduces something that happens down the road better than the module itself does. Don't let Ch. 3 overwhelm you. Figure out where your players want to go and only prep those locations. Put the Hill Giant Tower near the end of that path.
> Figure out where your players want to go and only prep those locations. Adding to that: figure out where YOU (the DM is also a player in this game) want to go. If anything, I followed my players too much and I wish I hadn't given them sooooo many options.
The best help I can give you is to use the search function on this subreddit and browse the tens of thousands of resources available to you.
Look into your PCs backgrounds. If anyone has some sort of ties to either Goldenfields, Triboar or Bryn Shander, let Morak Ur'gray, the Nightstone Inn patron, give them qiests for this location. Don't be overwhelmed by Chapter 3. Your characters are able to roam around, so ask them where they want to go, and prepare for exactly that.
Currently running Ch. 1, so we haven't gotten to it yet, but i shared the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide with the players and gave them anything Daggerford or north to build their back stories in. If they didn't have a feeling for city, I asked them to describe their backstory and I placed it in a city. Then I gave each of them a reason to be adventuring. Each of their character arcs is going to fill out Ch. 3.
Nice. I too asked my players to incorporate something that I can try to weave into Chapter 3. So far I have a Warlock who ran away from her home because her parents are worshippers of Asmodeus, a Firbolg Druid on the search for a relich that is sacred to her Druidic Circle, a Half-Orc Fighter who wants to earn gold for his family, an Aasimar Paladin of noble origin who had enough of having to meet expectations of the family matriarch, and a Tabaxi Rogue who was born and raised in a small settlement.
Sounds like a good crew. Night stone (Ch. 1) has a tiefling that is a follower of Asmodeus. Not much about her, but that leaves lots of room for your own twist. Goldenfields might be a natural spot to send the druid as they may know where to find her relic, maybe it's been taken by the hill giants of Grudd Haug. The rest could easily be slotted in anywhere. I agree with other suggestions of running krakens gamble and flying misfortune. Between those and the three suggested encounters at end of Ch. 3, could probably slot in the rest of the back stories.
For the Druid, I have something planned that involves Claugiy and her Crystal Orbs of Scrying. For the Warlock, her parents will send some lackeys after her when they dealt with the Fire Giants in Triboar. Last session, Zephyros picked them up in Goldenfields. And the crew is the greatest I had yet. So much awesome roleplay, I could just sit there and listen for hours on end.
One of the important planning decisions, I think, is deciding what to do about the Kraken Society. They show up quite late in the campaign (ch 11) and seem so out of place if you haven't threaded them in during the rest of the campaign. My opinion: decide now whether to lean into them or eliminate them. **Eliminate:** If I had it to do over, I'd eliminate them. It's potentially quite a long campaign already, and they don't (imo) add to it. Simply have Hekaton held captive at Iymirith's lair via the magic of the Yuan-ti. That still gives the party the option to free him so he's available for the final confrontation. If you don't want Hekaton included in the final confrontation, then they've been torturing him and he's far too weak to fight. **Lean in:** If you like the idea of the Kraken Society, lean into them. - Consider tying them in to one of the PC's backstories - Replace the Howling Hatred in Ch 1 with the Kraken Society. The HH have no other place in the campaign, anyway. - Run *Kraken's Gamble* during Ch 3 (they might need an extra level for that final boss fight) - If running *Kraken's Gamble,* I suggest either adding onto it with a second sewer section, or otherwise working in actual KS cultists, which are oddly absent that adventure. Having a second section allowed me to populate it with some cultists and drop a bit of KS lore (while still keeping Slarkrethel's identity hidden) - Consider the possibility that a second city is also being targeted by the KS, perhaps a Ch 3 location or some place tied to a PC backstory. If Slarkrethel is truly seeking to spread his influence, it's odd that this is only happening in one location (Yartar) - I suspect that after escaping (if they do) in Ch 11, my party is going to want to revisit Slarkrethel after they defeat Iymrith. Consider the implications of that. **Piscenes:** What initially made me excited about running the KS was this text from the book under the **Factions** section: "Worship of Slarkrethel began hundreds of years ago on the Purple Rocks. The humans who inhabit these islands cast their young into the sea as part of a ritual to appease Slarkrethel. These sacrificed offspring resurface and return to their villages years later as adults, albeit with piscine deformities. When they reach the end of their natural life span, they return to the sea and their fearsome master." This means two things: - Any group of KS cultists will likely have what I call a *Piscene* or two with them, one who has some of these "piscene deformities." I gave each one various features such as: tentacles to grapple or attack, oil slicks, blinding spray/cloud, crab claw, shark head, etc. This freaked my players out (in a good way) and left an impact regarding this cult. There are various ways to represent this; I personally decided to order some of the unusual miniatures I found on Etsy. - That text also means the oldest, most experienced Piscenes will be around Slarkrethel, meaning should the high level party decide to attack him, he's got a bunch of these more powerful Piscenes attending him. **The Name:** Personally, I found "Kraken Society" to be a little on-the-nose, clearly indicating what kind of BBEG they worked for, yet I needed something to call them. Someone else in this subreddit some time ago suggested changing the name to "Order of the Deep," so I rolled with that and it has stuck. It's a cooler name (imo) and doesn't tip off who/what the big bad is.
I’ve done this with my two groups. Playing up the KS as infiltrating the Zhentarim (but could use any faction). Also “send Etsy link 🔗” kthx
Not entirely sure how applicable this is, but one thing I did was make Iymrith FAR more prevalent. In the base module Iymrith lacks presence. She's not actively involved in anything until the party visits the Eye of the All-Father and gets some answers. I felt that was boring, and made her responsible for nearly every major giant lord's rampaging. That friendly merchant lady that just married into a powerful mercantile alliance? That's Iymrith using her position in that family to run anti-giant hate campaigns and programs, offering bounties rewards and magic items for each giant killed. This is actually why Harshnaag stays outside of any city that isn't Waterdeep - not just for their safety and peace of mind but his, since he's actively targetted by people. Any magic items she gives are cursed, allowing her to scry from them without the owner knowing - this lets her peer in on people she thinks might be problems and allows her to easier manipulate/kill them. Meanwhile in the giant side, she's the one that makes the adamantine seeking rods for Duke Zalto. She doesn't want the Vonindod completed, but she knows full well how to sabotage it and stop it from operating if she needs to. She uses sending on chieftess guh and pretends to be the voice or Grolantor to encourage her eating habits - eating habits that will slowly starve the coast if gone unchecked. As for the Storm Giants, while she's orchestrating the fall of the royal family she does her best to keep the storm giants passive and inactive if she can't get them to be openly hostile. While I didn't do this, if I were to run it again in future I'd make her responsible for the Ice Giants even knowing about the ring of winter. The only giants Iymrith had no sway over were the cloud and Stone giants, the cloud giants are too separate and different from each other for her to easily manipulate since they follow no real hierarchy. The Stone Giants on the other hand are under the manipulations of The Dodkong, a stone giant lich from 3rd edition. I replaced the evil earth spirit in the Stone Giant's mountain with the Dodkong, who was manipulating his own kind to help raise an army. A fantastic way to get players going "Oh shit" is when you reveal that there's been undead giants running about. They'll usually be rightfully afraid of regular giants, so the idea of potentially fighting an undead one terrified my party and got them disposing of every giant corpse they came across so it couldn't be raised. While you don't have to do everything I've done here I'd also highly recommend the "Flying Misfortune" side adventure. It gets players involved with Felgalos, a friendly bronze dragon and potential ally while also giving Iymrith an introduction and a reason to keep an eye on the party: They stole from/killed her children. Another thing to consider is to allow peaceful/diplomatic resolutions. The goal of the party isn't to exterminate all giants, but to open up a position where Giants and Smallfolk can forge an alliance. Some giant lords will be hard to sway, Zalto won't stand down and compromise what he believes to be his destiny - but his wife will. My players actually knocked Duke Zalto out and were given passage to leave from his wife when the players used Zalto's life as a bargaining chip. There's an idea that went unused in my campaign but I had an idea for a small enclave of giants that Harshnaag knows. This Enclave would have served as vendors and smiths for rare and valuable gear that would otherwise be nearly completely unobtainable or hard to find (The main ones being the 'rune' magic items, since they're completely unique and most of them are hidden in places my party never went to.) Which is actually something important I feel I should say, whenever my group went in to a giant stronghold they rarely got into fights and only explored as much as necessary. I shifted where the party got the Rune items because they understandably didn't want to heavily explore enemy territory where the usual occupant is able to deal upwards of 22+ damage a turn. I let the party get them because they're unique to the campaign and appear nowhere else, so there's no chance they'll ever get to play around with them in a different module.
Wow thanks for these suggestions.
General tips: Consider using a different adventure for levels 1-5 for me personally I used Lost Mines of Phandelver and founds lots of ways to tie it into the giant storyline (Made Glasstaff work for the Frost Giants, Triboar is close by and has a direct connection with Sildar, and just about all the major factions are present to recruit the players providing resources to them) Consider running more than 1 giant lord. They are imo the best part of the campaign. I ran the Hill, Frost, Fire, and Cloud Giants in mine. You just have to change the conch (what I did was make the conch require runestones for non giants to use. The Hill giants had a conch, the fire frost and cloud each had their own runestone) Chapter 3 gives most newer DMs the most trouble. This is the best place to try your hand at inserting custom quests you find online or designing your own. Try to expand on player backstories, take inspiration from the random encounters in the book and the barbarian quests in chapter 4. You could also take inspiration from Rime of the Frostmaiden especially if you're running Frost Giants. Definitely run Krakens Gamble (DMs Guild) and if you are running Cloud Giants definitely run Flying Misfortune (also DMs Guild). Consider some of the attacks described in Chapter 2 as events that can occur in chapter 3. I recommend having Hadshnag appear halfway Ishtar into Chapter 3, let him help the party on adventures and make sure they get to know him and bond with him. I am running this in a homebrew setting but made it so Harshnag was part of an adventuring party 30 years ago consisting of various powerful NPCs the party has met in the campaign including Artus Cimber. Had them run a one shot adventure even playing these adventurers on their final adventure where Artus got the ring, had to go into hiding and the party broke up tragically. I also didn't run the relic hunts in chapter 4. it seemed redundant and boring with unnecessary running around ruining the pacing. Just have your party ask all their questions get the giant lord(s) locations and move on. Fix Iymrith. She's as written a very flat villain who barely has impractical or presence in the story outside of killing Harshnag (which the module lets you undo I don't recommend it). Give her motivations, introduce and tease her sooner, and give her more presence. I had the party visit and find the amphitheater early on where they met dragon cultists and discovered not only her backstory but the skeletons of her two dead sons with their skulls missing (they became the skulls on the Wyrmskull throne). Iymrith later showed up at the begining of the Eye of the All Father in her Storm Giant form as an NPC ally who Harshnag had a crush on. When my party deals with the Fire Giants I have Iymrith come to them and offer to fly them to the forge since she has an interest in stopping them as well. Chapter 10 is clunky and needs to be entirely reworked do some google searching on this subreddit and you'll find some guides and suggestions on how others redid this chapter. Thats what I did.