I really like this idea. Just want to organize this and add some thoughts. 0 - Establish Party's Organization and Goals Could use Patrons from either - Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, - Eberron Rising the last War, - or Acquisitions Incorporated Could also make up your own. It’s up to you and your players, just make sure there is a reason to connect and a long term goal to accomplish. Levels 1 to 3 - Simple Missions to establish a home base (Should be related to Patron and Goals) Could use either - Waterdeep Dragon Heist - First Few Chapters - Baldur's Gate Descent into Advernus - Chapter 1 only All that matters is that there is a town to start in, a few easy missions to take, and a home base to establish by the end. Levels 4 to 6 - Explore the World (related to Patron Goals) Using Mainly Storm King's Thunder - Chapter 3 (Could also use Icewind Dale - Chapter 2?) Patron hosts a few missions across the country, plenty of room for strange events and side quests along the way. This is the time to explore the world and meet new people. (Optional) Could also have gates to either the Shadowfell (Ravenloft) or the Feywild for one-off adventures as a break from the main campaign. These trips should be temporary and not detract from the main game. Levels 5 to 8+ - Mid-Level Missions Using all of the following - Icewind Dale - Chapters 3, 4, & 5 - Ghost of Saltmarsh - Chapters ??? (Busy work on route to Chult) - Tomb of Annihilation - Chapter 5 (with the Death Curse in effect only on Chult or just starting once characters get to Chult) More exploration and a few, cool, mid-game adventures to take part in. (Could conveniently be related to Patron goals) Up to Level 20 - Endgame The video recommends one of the following, but I'd like to add a few more ideas (you choose what works best for your game): - Out of the Abyss - Final Chapters (Fight Each Demon Lord!) - Baldur's Gate Descent into Advernus - Chapters 2 and onward (Literally fight off hell itself! The beginning may feel under leveled by this point, but thematically It should work). - Icewind Dale - Last two chapters (Finding an ancient city and possible time travel event! Also, a Tarrasque summoning!) These final missions tie into the climax of the campaign. I really like the idea of this kind of campaign and the setup, while complex, doesn't sound too bad. Kinda wish there was an official campaign book that has this structure. Kinda like a "tour guide" book with samples of adventures and encounters found from other books(and possibly lead to other books to learn more) and just enough material for DMs to run their own campaigns.
Haha 😆 When I saw your thumbnail I thought, “wow how cool that Jordan just made a video about all the books too!” Well done on this, and thanks for the reference
I'm just about to finish a two year campaign over covid that used your idea for mixing the starter and essential kit then moved it into the three part divine contention add ons. Looking at using the Ruinstone from that to link into essentially a sandbox campaign the other 5e books picking and choosing the fun stuff as they flop around Faerun. Cheers again for your early content on Icespire was super valuable!
A massive “all published” campaign has been my dream since I started researching the 5e Forgotten Realms. 3 1/2 years later… and after most of that time being spent in quarantine or trying to convince my friends to try playing for the first time… I found out that my neighbor’s boyfriend who moved in with her plays, and now I host a weekly game with him, his brother, and my cousin who lives with me… I’ve started them in Dragon Heist and plan to branch out as we go. I also recently invited some of those old friends to join us whenever they can make it, and hopefully I will have the campaign I was dreaming of for all this time! Ha
All I can imagine for a climax is the party tricks Lolth and Zariel into fighting and they kill each other in a giant “objective; survive” style mission
I want WotC to put out a 1-20 epic book the size of the Tyranny of Dragons re-print. A sprawling epic like what ToD was trying to be, but learning from the 7 years of experience they've had since. Maybe a few low level quests to get the party invested in a location like what they did in Frostmaiden, before having them end up involving themselves in some grand scheme by Szass Tam. Great opportunity to have a whole host of NPCs statted out for the party to befriend or become enemies with
Dragon Heist is where we started, next we did Storm King's Thunder, we are now in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Great progression, although I did change some of it to fit my campaign. Good video, thanks.
I've done this. I started over a year ago. My group is company D...and Jim darkmagic is their main contact and they start in Daggerford. The megacampaign combines dndnext adventures, which are focused around Daggerford. Those adventures involve red wizards and elemental portals. This is a good prelude and driver for the nearby princes of the apocalypse content and from there it links to storm kings thunder, tyranny of dragons, waterdeep, and out of the abyss. The other sword coast adventures I have linked together for different campaigns.
The second I saw "Inc" at the end I knew this was going to be good. The Acq Inc book has a bunch of great material for supporting other adventures which has been used frequently in their live and streaming games.
I’ve actually been combining a lot of the adventures together. I just take parts of each of the different modules and try to fit it into one coherent story. I just take a little bits from different adventures and then I alter them to fit my story.
It's a very difficult process to combined the larger premade adventures together, but I like your Lego brick approach. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I'm running Tyranny of Dragons right now as my through line and layering pieces throughout as they level up. Here is my current setup: Out From the Abyss Lost Mines of Phandelver Dragonheist Horde of the Dragon Queen Rise of Tiamat Decent into Avernus Literally takes them down the Sword Coast in a multi layered adventure from 1 to 20. This should set up the next set for my players which will go back north dealing with the rise of the Giants and Auril. The finale will end in a mashup of Tomb of Annihilation / Tomb of Horrors in Chult with a few remaining modules thrown in for good measure. Three acts total.
The easiest way I've thought of to combine most if not all of the books is: Run the Tyranny of Dragons saga, but have 'Rise of Tiamat' require the actually world-spanning adventure which it purports to be (but which in the book itself actually feels much smaller scale than it should). Start with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, then the party gets a ship and their job is to go around finding magical maguffins (like the dragon masks) and recruiting allies. The party goes on an island-hopping treasure hunt to find one dragon mask and get into some ship battles as they sail between other adventures (with Ghosts of Saltmarsh), and some of the random islands they run across could also be settings for mini-adventures from the other anthology books (Tales from the Yawning Portal, Candlekeep Mysteries, etc.). At some point they run into a cloud castle owned by giants out on the ocean and do all the sea-faring parts of Storm King's Thunder (which could still keep all its main story beats and still have the Sword Coast reference material as needed), culminating in your recruiting the giants for the final battle against Tiamat. The party learns that one of the masks is hidden in the lost city of Omu and try to get the merchant princes of Port Nyanzaru on their side as they seek it out (Tomb of Annihilation). And of course Ten Towns and the Dale-dwelling barbarians and goliaths would help if the party was to free them from the Everlasting Rime (Rime of the Frostmaiden) and maybe one of the Dragon Masks is somehow in Auril's abode or Ythryn. In between all this, they are periodically returning to Waterdeep to check in with the council, and along the way they get caught up in the events of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (as well as, possibly even Dungeon of the Mad Mage). Perhaps they also have to help out Baldur's Gate with its refugee crisis and the city of Elturel in order to enable them to help, and so you could use some or all of Baldur's Gate, Descent into Avernus. In such a massive world-spanning adventure, it'd also be easy to insert your own homebrew; for example, I'd add a desert-themed adventure near Calimshan in order to recruit allies there and go on an adventure searching the desert for ancient ruins where another dragon mask is hidden. Maybe the party thinks of reaching out to some Underdark races for help and they find out about the demon problem (as in Out of the Abyss) so they mount an expedition as in the second half of that book (or they found a random island while sailing around which had a pit leading all the way to the Underdark, they fell down, woke up captured by Dark elves, and so part 1 of OotA happens too). Curse of Strahd is the only one that you couldn't easily fit in this way - though due to its nature you could just insert it anywhere as an interruption to change things up (and maybe you can even get the Barovians as allies by the end so that there's some payoff). Of course, to make all this work, you'd have to stretch out the timeline of Tyranny of Dragons - make it so that the Cult of the Dragon's plan is going to take several years to pull off (which realistically it should). But otherwise, it's not that hard to fit everything together.
An epic plan. I had started something similar by simultaneously running 2 separate campaigns, but mushing and dividing all the published WotC and AL stories that ran through Phandelver.
13:50 I don't know about in 3rd edition, but I know 4th edition had stats on Lolth in Monster Manual 3. You'd need to use the Mythic Monster rules to adapt her properly, though, as that's how she worked in 4e.
We combined Stormkings, Against the Giants, and Tyranny of Dragons with two concurrent rival parties, then with lower level parties started the other Tales from yawning portal and tied the MAIN events of Wrath of Demons and Princes of Apocalypse, we scaled Tomb of Annihilation way the hell up and the three highest level parties went through it with the main change being Acererack was behind all other events, and his last act was to send his shade against Halastar Blackstaff to try and Possess Him to cast Karsus' Folley. Spell Fails because Mystara's laws but Magic is turned off again for a day. This lapse in magic causes the rest of Faerun to blame the Sword Coast. We ended with three level 17-20 parties and four 6-12 parties ready to set off a War defending the Sword Coast from the Rest of the Continent.
I found a blog post, Waterdeep: Descent into Avernus. They recommended playing through Dragon Heist then moving into Baldur's Gate. At the time Cabdlekeep Mystery wasn't out, so I'm adding that in. Once you get out of Avernus you find yourself in Undermountain (so now you play Doungen of the Mad Mage)
I really do hate how you're spying on me hahahaha This is exacly what I'm doing in my own game. After finding the vault of dragons, my players became their version of Aqc inc and now are chacing the orrey. Currently they are in the rocket from Candlekeep Dekonstruktion, and soon will go to the feywild and try to find another part to go back to the prime material plain. From that they'll probably go to Chult or the Icewind Dale. Great video, shout out from Brazil!
I just found this video. This is a badass idea! I"ve been wanting to do something similar, but had not figured out a way to keep the characters from shooting up in level too fast. This works very nicely. Well done!
Throughout the video, I kept thinking about what kind of character would be motivated to go on a MacGuffin hunt, but then you name-dropped Lolth and I thought "Ah. I see. Just play a Drow and let things go full circle."
That a great idea! Personally i would add some non module contect for each module, like R and R roleplay sessions and med side quests like one where the party is task to investigate disappearing citizens around the city of Waterdeep or a another city in the sword coast where it leads to a mind flayer kidnapping operation under the city
So, I am basically doing the same, except I am combining Descent as the initial module start to finish, adding in the Rod of 7 Parts, and the “Theoparts” from Greyhawk as quest pieces along the way (Glassya will send them to Stygia to collect one of the Rod Parts to begin the questing) driven by Zuggtmoy and Iuz the Ancient driving the players into Out of the Abyss after DIA, and then guiding them through the realms facing the Abyssal Plague. They will be chasing the Voidharrow eventually and trying to collect the 7 Rod parts as well as the 3 Theoparts to prevent the release of Tharizdun while combating Iuz and Zuggtmoy as the final battle for their dominance over the Prime Plane in Princes of the Abyss as a final module…. Possibly even bringing in The Chaos Queen or Miska at the end. I love the Orrey of the Wanderer addition and will borrow that from you!
I mean, if our plan is to travel the sword coast, then the first half of Tyranny of Dragons (Specifically Hoard of the Dragon Queen) literally has you travel from the Greenfields below Elturel to just shy of Neverwinter. Rise of Tiamat also has some extra places to go such as the Serpent Hills and the north. It also lets you tie into the Thayan aspects of ToA, and sets up using Descent into Avernus, which makes specific reference to Tiamat's last attempt to escape her prison. There's also a tie in to Storm King's Thunder through the giant in Skyreach. Using the Acq Inc framework even means you can kind of hot swap between SKT and RoT's plot points. The Council of Waterdeep (with a representative from AI) has work they're doing to prevent Tiamat's ascent but needs occasional help from the party. Maybe the search for a member of the arcane brotherhood in RoT is swapped out for looking for Avarice in Icewind. Goddamn, I'm kinda mad I've run these adventures now because it'd actually be great to run this all together!
I love this. Was thinking of pulling a few of the books together for one of my groups and this is a really great way to do that. I think a clutch move would be to start off with LMoP before heading to Waterdeep to make the home base (or maybe using the manor in Phandalin as one). The adventure with the Black Spider would cleverly lay the groundwork for an eventual drow/Lolth turn. Especially if the Spider doesn't actually know that the first piece is there (I'm assuming he's there for his stated LMoP reasons), and his somewhat hollow motives as-written are explained as Lolth's machinations, manipulating him into recovering the artifact as a byproduct of his conscious mission. I have a group currently going through Sunless Citadel from TFtYP, and I think I'm going to use your campaign structure once they're finished with the dungeon. One of the PC's is looking for info on a goblin who stole something from him, which means I can suck them right into LMoP with the namedrop of the Cragmaw Goblins. I do like the idea that the party will find an Orrery Piece at the end of this first adventure, but it won't be recognized by anyone as something special until the end of the next. So I may play it as the Spider is just doing his thing when the party comes along looking for these goblins, and Lolth's behind-the-scenes machinations were supposed to result in the PC's wandering into the Black Spiders scheme, dying and (incidentally) being stripped of the item she wants before they even really knew what it was they had. When they evade that, she shifts her plans, making them the focus of her plans like in the video. My players are new to D&D and wanted a campaign that took them all over, ATLA-like, so this would be a ton of fun for them. And ince I can play it more long-term with the Lolth reveal, I can maybe rip some stuff from The Black Company books and give her this gradual Kina-like influence over things. Also, I'll probably cap it off with the Call From The Deep adventure, to give the PC's a little full-powered romp at the end of the adventure (meaning I'll probably have a good reason to use some of the later-game SKT stuff to lay down the groundwork for the kraken, at some point).
Im honestly doing something similar to this in my home game, I got the Acq Inc book not long after we started the campaign, so I promoted my group to an Acq Inc sub group (they chose the I-Team after their fallen npc party member, a life cleric Dwarf named Ignis), and were given a Lighthouse base in Waterdeep. A few sessions into the campaign they came across a home brew magic item that allows them to teleport to specific locations across the map depending on which symbol is selected on the items selector wheel. Each symbol corresponds to locations highlighted in each book, (Chult, Ten Towns, Baulders Gate, Waterdeep, and HOME; the cyberpunk metropolis that exists in secret on the dark side of the moon. (A homebrew surprise for a player that's really into Cyberpunk stuff) In town, they can find a job board that has jobs for each adventure in Saltmarsh and Yawning Portal (or just pick up a tip from the tavern itself) and, finally, way out in the ocean is a massive cloud of swirling grey mist floating on the water, an entrance to Ravenloft.
Never have I related to another human being more than you in the first 30 or so seconds of this video, lol. I'm constantly having to rewind almost everything I watch/listen to (including some of your own videos) because my mind will run a tangent from one single detail I just heard, lol.
Really loved this idea of yours! Seems like so much work to actually put togeather so I'm not sure I'll ever get to running it haha, but it def sparked the imagination!
I had a similar idea, but, it was Vecna behind it all and as they completed each section it's activated a monolith, that was secretly tied to Vecna and towards the end he makes his presence known
When I get like that watching D&D material I end up falling asleep forgetting my trousers are still half on. You sir end up coming up with a master plan to run a large scale epic campaign. Just using available source books. BRAVO xD
Listening through this now but had to say as I’m listening that I am doing this right now! Laying ground work for everything but also building in home brew threads if the players want to follow something different. It’s so much fun!
3.5E 's Expedition to the Demonweb Pits was a levels 9-12 adventure that brought the party to stop Grazzt from making a pact with Lolth. They eventually make their way to the Demonweb Pits to face aspects (weakened "avatars") of the demon lords. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Demonweb_Pits
I DM a few groups, 1 is running Lost Mines of Phandelver -> Dragons of Icespirepeak -> Hoard of Dragon Queen -> Rise of Tiamat. Another group is going through Dragons of stormwreck isle -> Ghosts of Saltmarsh -> Radiant Citadel->Light of Xaryxis.
So fun that you bring this up! I'm currently planning a planar-themed fetch-quest campaign along the Sword Coast, and I'm using a ton of parts of adventures to get it done!
I love the idea of a mega campaign and Jordan I love your suggestion of tying everything to llolth 😊👌 For me this is exactly what d&d is "for" in terms of adventuring 👍
I’ve been considering a hodgepodge campaign of a lot of pieces of published adventures (WoTC and 3rd party) in my homebrew setting, and this just gives me even more great ideas and connective threads. Thanks for this!
Pretty cool idea. I do this now with other modules and combine them to stories I've built myself. I then look for tie ins with my prayers previous campaigns either with their current characters or past characters who may have died.
This sounds like it has elements from the book "Queen of the Demonweb Pits". Great book, great inspiration, one hell of a main character. Over all, it sounds like a great idea. Good video
This gives me some great ideas for my high level party after they finish Tyranny of Dragons, but instead of jumping around the swordcoast, they're jumping across Faerun and a few initial planes before taking on dark gods from the beyond.
I would watch you play this adventure for the next couple years!!! Would honestly be much happier if you did not tell us the ending and just let us watch you and your party experience it
I tried to do something a little similar on a smaller scale for my campaign. I was running Lost Mine of Phandelver and the party decided to spend a little time in Neverwinter after having managed to kill Venomfang. Anyone who has read or run LMoP knows that there's nothing in there for Neverwinter, so I looked through the 4th Edition's 'Neverwinter Campaign Setting' for ideas. A bunch of the character backgrounds, as well as details on the Ashmadai, Shadovar, Uthgardts, Abolethic Sovereignty and the (former) Cult of the Dragon are easy to turn into little quest hooks. I also added the Dead Rats and the Nashers seeking the Crown of Neverwinter for good measure. We've pivoted to Dragon of Icespire Peak now though, but the party may yet pick up on some of these threads later on in the game.
I'm currently in the process in mashing up Strixhaven, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and Candlekeep. The carnival is located southeast of the common campus grounds. And the Biblioplex's library will function as Candlekeep. Alsoo, after watching this video, I like the idea of using the Acq Inc using to make another Extracurricular where the members are used to retrieve lost artifacts or stolen artifacts and brought back to Strixhaven (Lorehold being the majority of the members). I love the idea of mashing up multiple campaigns/modules/books! I would even use Arasta (from Theros) as the BBEG (I own her mini).
I'm about to start something like this. I had already run through Dragon Heist, Descent into Avernus, Icewind Dale, Witchlight and currently Out of the Abyss with the same players. I'll be running Tyranny of Dragons next, but I've all intention of tieying back their old characters and bringing back some NPCs and repercursions as they travel alongside the Sword Coast. Zariel died, so maybe Bel wants to free Tiamat now and there is no one to stop him. The Hourglass Coven may be interested in something revolving the Cult of Tiamat somehow. The Mythalar in Icewind Dale may be the key to something regarding the Mythalar in Waterdeep that protects it from dragon attacks, etc. As they visit old places, their old PCs will appear as NPCs with side-quests, after completing those, they will be able to "recruit" them for the Waterdeep council and then take them again into adventure to Thay and other relevant places for the adventure. An epic adventure awaits!
I guess great minds think alike. I already had this sort of concept already. Start them in Tyranny of dragons. Cassalanters from waterdeep are agents of the dragon queen who need the gold for the ritual. As the game progress, use dungeons from salt marsh and tales of the yawning portal as necessary. A human isnt leading the cult of the dragon, Arkahn the cruel is. And while all this is goong on. Rolling on a random table to see if the death curse from tomb of annihilation kicks in. If the characters fail, both barovia and elturel dissapeared from this plane of existence because their rules made deals with devils to save their people. (So nice of them). And if the characters win, the giants see this as their time to rise. Frost maiden gets thrown in there is the players decide to run and hide from events.
Great planning. I have something similar going on right now but I’m the early stages. I didn’t know about the cool artifact, makes me rethink. Also, I am planning on possibly dropping in some stuff from Yawning Portal like against the Giants since it was originally part of the GDQ modules. Great video!
I like it, be great to have a break down of what levels to be running everything at in regards to the progression of the books. I have a campaign I'm working on right now where you take essentially Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Candlekeep and run all of those levels set in Saltmarsh. Basically making each of the levels specified in it progress giving the players more choice on which adventure at the level they are at to run, and making an interconnected story.
Just a note, the final adventure of the GDQ series of modules from way back is "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" which is a high level adventure where you go there and stop Llolth from doing some evil stuff. Definitely a good template for your finale idea!
I’ve been running my campaign with my wife, son, and dad for 3.5 years. Started with LMoP, then a combination of STK and HotDQ/RoT and now finally in a tier 4 play of Bauldurs Gate reimagined as Hyrule from Ocarina of Time (my son is Link). We just hit level 19.
I am currently running a game I call “the module game”. Starting with lost minds/dragon of icespire peak and running the adventures published by Wizards in a chronological order. The group is divided into 2 separate parties accomplishing the separate modules in succession. The game was made by the simple desire for me to have my players play each and every module made from Frost Maiden and bellow. Very fun, very long! But, been a labor of love ever sense! So, yeah sorta the same thing I guess lol!
0:01 as someone with both Asperger's and adhd, that's just how my mind works. that's why we get distracted so easy, we can get bored waiting on our mouth to finish a sentence and be off thinking about something else entirely.
I mean, instead of running it that Lolth was behind everything you could make it Tiamat and run the very last section of Rise of Tiamat with a full strength dragon goddess at the very end
I showed this to my players and their jaws collectively dropped. Please make this a reality and create a solid outline of levels for this. I want to run it for them!!
This is old skool think man...you better be careful :-) I watched the same video and as the host was dismissing books I was thinking of those sitting on my shelf that I have had time to study and thought there are no bad books here...you just take a chainsaw to them and make them your own...that was a pillar of old skool D&D. Every adventure published has great bits even if it doesn't resolve as a whole...maps, characters, plot lines,etc. I remember buying a MERPS supplement (Calenhad-A Beacon of Gondor) just because I wanted the Beacons in my game and it was loaded with other content that I used as well. Things like this are what makes being a DM fun :-)
I've had the same idea but i haven't quite completely figured out my events and modules yet. Lost mine of Phandelver. Then they start exploiting the mine for resources under a patron's franchise (aquisition incorporated). Giving them choices of different patrons to align with ( good, neutral, evil). Collect the 5 masks of Tiamat, either to stop the cult of the Dragons or bring Tiamat back. Using Icewind Dale, ghosts of saltmarsh, Chult, water deep as locations to find the masks. Travel somewhere with a spelljammer ship,, come back.. All that while players try to slowly unify the North as they become more politically influential (political intrigues). Throw in giants, Elves, drows, yuan ti somehow. In the end at level 20, they unify the north, bring back/stop Tiamat, defeat an even greater evil than Tiamat that has been planing to destroy the material plane.
I planned on making this even bigger, adopting the West Marches style of play and getting several people in on this. I know for a fact that I am going to steal the Saltmarsh idea now, and quite possibly add the Acq Inc aspect of the game.
I have a long form campaign that is gonna hit a bunch. Not all but a lot. Starts spelljammer. Do some fun stuff in space and hint at the Light. Crashland the spelljamming ship and have it destroyed. Land in saltmarsh. Do the first adventure in saltmarsh. They hear that waterdeep might have spelljamming helms. Take their new ship to waterdeep and meet some interesting characters. Make contact with the Mercane that lives there and says he will sell them one for 250k gold. They of course don't have that and start the dragon heist campaign as well as potentially some acquisition incorporated mechanics. Thus in order to get the gold to pay for the helm. Once they have the money for the helm the Mercane says that they have to wait 1 year for the order since he didn't judge them to have the ability to come up with the money that fast. While wasting time they find out there is a carnival near them that takes them into the feywild. Upon completing that quest one of the hags whom they have slighted warps the mirror they were supposed to use to get home to instead take them to a strange land called Barovia. Cards on the table I don't know if I want to run strahd proper or a van rickter side quest. When they leave they find Giants running amok and get started taking care of that problem. By the end of this however a beloved NPC has died or a PC character has died. And unfortunately a death curse is laid upon the land. They follow clues leading them to Candlekeep in order to research where the curse is coming from and get sucked into a book. The book leads them to the information they seek and they head out to Chult. From there they have gained significant prestige upon completing the quest and even by this time have their helm. However they are approached by higher ups seeking their fame and power and tells them of some adventures that have escaped the underdark and tell tales of demons running amok. They agree to delve into the underdark to handle the situation. When reaching the surface a beloved NPC as well as the ones that tasked them with the demonic undertaking tell them that a crazed dragon cult is preparing a world ending event. If successful in quelling this threat by combining the forces of the friends they have made along the way the world is at peace once again. At least until the astral seeds begin falling all over Faerun and the evil empire of space elves that they learned about many many years ago have finally come to roost. Traveling into space as higher level adventurers they handily quell the galactic threat. A bonus that I would like is a player is from Krynn. Specifically Palanthus. I would love for them to take their montley crew to see his home world and revel in his newfound confidence. Only to find that the great threat of Tiamat that was stopped by the group has simply changed her target to another world. Once again attempting to save the world from this vile deity they set out to defend not only a nation but a world amidst the clash of armies and come face to face with the proxies of an old foe. And of course the PC's have every opportunity to do whatever they want and if for whatever reason they want to go north or to other locations where the plot hooks will be I shall oblige but this is probably the thing I have in mind the most.
Yes! This would a lot of fun. And it would let you hit a lot of the iconic points in these adventures. Too bad I'm knee deep in SKT or I would have done this.
This really gives me some ideas and inspiration for the game I'm running! It won't be quite like this (because I want to mess with Elder Evils), but assembling the Orrery as an overall goal and a few other ideas presented here I will probably use in some way. :)
I am doing something very similar to this already. I started with parts of Tales from the Yawning Portal because it was a cheap buy, went to Phandelvar next and am working through HOTDQ and Tyranny of Dragons. I plan on using Out of the Abyss. I have player arcs and side quests that tie the different pieces together. What is nice is I can take the NPCs from all of them and have a very rich world with lots of lore at level 1. Drop pieces of information that will be relevant in later stories.
You have these books totally out of order with the timeline 😵😵💫 and I took inspiration from a previous video you’ve done on the modules put into order. Started with hoard of the dragon queen where one of my players older siblings were the heroes who thwarted demogoron in into the abyss, where some of them died
Currently doing something similar with an indie adventure and Yawning Portal. Something about letting someone else do the hard work and just respinning and riffing on it feels like the perfect way to DM.
I’m totally running something like this! I started them in Waterdeep and had to investigate a new village that has seemed to pop at on thin air Hommlet! They had options to run Act inc, Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Prince of the apocalypse.
This is an amazing idea! Didn't Lolth have a giant mechanical spider vehicle in the Demonweb Pits too? I think that was in the AD&D adventures... that might be a cool addition to the campaign's climax.
I mean I doubt you read this comment, but thanks. I have been thinking about running a "mash up" 1-20 adventure in Forgotten Realms and thinking about how to tie in the books. This item is an absolute fantastic idea. I will start it in Baldur's Gate because, well, it is crazy popular right now and I will use a couple of additional books as well. If we can have Boss Fights from ALL of the books involved, including maybe throw in Zariel. I am going to post this on Start Playing Games tonight. Thanks again.
I've been running an ongoing campaign using all the books like this but we started in storm King's Thunder using the missing black obelisk as a starting point. Long story short the Giants are being manipulated to find all the obelisk thinking it will be the key to open up the gates to their original city under icewind Dale. Unfortunately that is where the avatar of changed Oblivion has been trapped.
I really like this idea. Just want to organize this and add some thoughts.
0 - Establish Party's Organization and Goals
Could use Patrons from either
- Tasha's Cauldron of Everything,
- Eberron Rising the last War,
- or Acquisitions Incorporated
Could also make up your own. It’s up to you and your players, just make sure there is a reason to connect and a long term goal to accomplish.
Levels 1 to 3 - Simple Missions to establish a home base (Should be related to Patron and Goals)
Could use either
- Waterdeep Dragon Heist - First Few Chapters
- Baldur's Gate Descent into Advernus - Chapter 1 only
All that matters is that there is a town to start in, a few easy missions to take, and a home base to establish by the end.
Levels 4 to 6 - Explore the World (related to Patron Goals)
Using Mainly Storm King's Thunder - Chapter 3 (Could also use Icewind Dale - Chapter 2?)
Patron hosts a few missions across the country, plenty of room for strange events and side quests along the way. This is the time to explore the world and meet new people.
(Optional) Could also have gates to either the Shadowfell (Ravenloft) or the Feywild for one-off adventures as a break from the main campaign. These trips should be temporary and not detract from the main game.
Levels 5 to 8+ - Mid-Level Missions
Using all of the following
- Icewind Dale - Chapters 3, 4, & 5
- Ghost of Saltmarsh - Chapters ??? (Busy work on route to Chult)
- Tomb of Annihilation - Chapter 5 (with the Death Curse in effect only on Chult or just starting once characters get to Chult)
More exploration and a few, cool, mid-game adventures to take part in. (Could conveniently be related to Patron goals)
Up to Level 20 - Endgame
The video recommends one of the following, but I'd like to add a few more ideas (you choose what works best for your game):
- Out of the Abyss - Final Chapters (Fight Each Demon Lord!)
- Baldur's Gate Descent into Advernus - Chapters 2 and onward (Literally fight off hell itself! The beginning may feel under leveled by this point, but thematically It should work).
- Icewind Dale - Last two chapters (Finding an ancient city and possible time travel event! Also, a Tarrasque summoning!)
These final missions tie into the climax of the campaign.
I really like the idea of this kind of campaign and the setup, while complex, doesn't sound too bad. Kinda wish there was an official campaign book that has this structure. Kinda like a "tour guide" book with samples of adventures and encounters found from other books(and possibly lead to other books to learn more) and just enough material for DMs to run their own campaigns.
Great thoughts!
Haha 😆 When I saw your thumbnail I thought, “wow how cool that Jordan just made a video about all the books too!” Well done on this, and thanks for the reference
I'm just about to finish a two year campaign over covid that used your idea for mixing the starter and essential kit then moved it into the three part divine contention add ons. Looking at using the Ruinstone from that to link into essentially a sandbox campaign the other 5e books picking and choosing the fun stuff as they flop around Faerun. Cheers again for your early content on Icespire was super valuable!
A massive “all published” campaign has been my dream since I started researching the 5e Forgotten Realms. 3 1/2 years later… and after most of that time being spent in quarantine or trying to convince my friends to try playing for the first time… I found out that my neighbor’s boyfriend who moved in with her plays, and now I host a weekly game with him, his brother, and my cousin who lives with me… I’ve started them in Dragon Heist and plan to branch out as we go. I also recently invited some of those old friends to join us whenever they can make it, and hopefully I will have the campaign I was dreaming of for all this time! Ha
All I can imagine for a climax is the party tricks Lolth and Zariel into fighting and they kill each other in a giant “objective; survive” style mission
A 1-20 campaign is what I've always wanted
I want WotC to put out a 1-20 epic book the size of the Tyranny of Dragons re-print. A sprawling epic like what ToD was trying to be, but learning from the 7 years of experience they've had since. Maybe a few low level quests to get the party invested in a location like what they did in Frostmaiden, before having them end up involving themselves in some grand scheme by Szass Tam. Great opportunity to have a whole host of NPCs statted out for the party to befriend or become enemies with
Dragon Heist is where we started, next we did Storm King's Thunder, we are now in Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Great progression, although I did change some of it to fit my campaign. Good video, thanks.
I'm doing Dragon Heist into SKT now! Seems a great fit.
@@ArcRevenant It is great.
I've done this. I started over a year ago. My group is company D...and Jim darkmagic is their main contact and they start in Daggerford. The megacampaign combines dndnext adventures, which are focused around Daggerford. Those adventures involve red wizards and elemental portals. This is a good prelude and driver for the nearby princes of the apocalypse content and from there it links to storm kings thunder, tyranny of dragons, waterdeep, and out of the abyss. The other sword coast adventures I have linked together for different campaigns.
The second I saw "Inc" at the end I knew this was going to be good. The Acq Inc book has a bunch of great material for supporting other adventures which has been used frequently in their live and streaming games.
I’ve actually been combining a lot of the adventures together. I just take parts of each of the different modules and try to fit it into one coherent story. I just take a little bits from different adventures and then I alter them to fit my story.
It's a very difficult process to combined the larger premade adventures together, but I like your Lego brick approach. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
The ultimate adventure of ultimate destiny.
I'm running Tyranny of Dragons right now as my through line and layering pieces throughout as they level up. Here is my current setup:
Out From the Abyss
Lost Mines of Phandelver
Dragonheist
Horde of the Dragon Queen
Rise of Tiamat
Decent into Avernus
Literally takes them down the Sword Coast in a multi layered adventure from 1 to 20.
This should set up the next set for my players which will go back north dealing with the rise of the Giants and Auril.
The finale will end in a mashup of Tomb of Annihilation / Tomb of Horrors in Chult with a few remaining modules thrown in for good measure. Three acts total.
I just now found this video, having already started running a mishmash adventure for about a month so far.
The easiest way I've thought of to combine most if not all of the books is: Run the Tyranny of Dragons saga, but have 'Rise of Tiamat' require the actually world-spanning adventure which it purports to be (but which in the book itself actually feels much smaller scale than it should). Start with Hoard of the Dragon Queen, then the party gets a ship and their job is to go around finding magical maguffins (like the dragon masks) and recruiting allies. The party goes on an island-hopping treasure hunt to find one dragon mask and get into some ship battles as they sail between other adventures (with Ghosts of Saltmarsh), and some of the random islands they run across could also be settings for mini-adventures from the other anthology books (Tales from the Yawning Portal, Candlekeep Mysteries, etc.). At some point they run into a cloud castle owned by giants out on the ocean and do all the sea-faring parts of Storm King's Thunder (which could still keep all its main story beats and still have the Sword Coast reference material as needed), culminating in your recruiting the giants for the final battle against Tiamat. The party learns that one of the masks is hidden in the lost city of Omu and try to get the merchant princes of Port Nyanzaru on their side as they seek it out (Tomb of Annihilation). And of course Ten Towns and the Dale-dwelling barbarians and goliaths would help if the party was to free them from the Everlasting Rime (Rime of the Frostmaiden) and maybe one of the Dragon Masks is somehow in Auril's abode or Ythryn. In between all this, they are periodically returning to Waterdeep to check in with the council, and along the way they get caught up in the events of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (as well as, possibly even Dungeon of the Mad Mage). Perhaps they also have to help out Baldur's Gate with its refugee crisis and the city of Elturel in order to enable them to help, and so you could use some or all of Baldur's Gate, Descent into Avernus. In such a massive world-spanning adventure, it'd also be easy to insert your own homebrew; for example, I'd add a desert-themed adventure near Calimshan in order to recruit allies there and go on an adventure searching the desert for ancient ruins where another dragon mask is hidden. Maybe the party thinks of reaching out to some Underdark races for help and they find out about the demon problem (as in Out of the Abyss) so they mount an expedition as in the second half of that book (or they found a random island while sailing around which had a pit leading all the way to the Underdark, they fell down, woke up captured by Dark elves, and so part 1 of OotA happens too). Curse of Strahd is the only one that you couldn't easily fit in this way - though due to its nature you could just insert it anywhere as an interruption to change things up (and maybe you can even get the Barovians as allies by the end so that there's some payoff). Of course, to make all this work, you'd have to stretch out the timeline of Tyranny of Dragons - make it so that the Cult of the Dragon's plan is going to take several years to pull off (which realistically it should). But otherwise, it's not that hard to fit everything together.
An epic plan. I had started something similar by simultaneously running 2 separate campaigns, but mushing and dividing all the published WotC and AL stories that ran through Phandelver.
13:50 I don't know about in 3rd edition, but I know 4th edition had stats on Lolth in Monster Manual 3. You'd need to use the Mythic Monster rules to adapt her properly, though, as that's how she worked in 4e.
We combined Stormkings, Against the Giants, and Tyranny of Dragons with two concurrent rival parties, then with lower level parties started the other Tales from yawning portal and tied the MAIN events of Wrath of Demons and Princes of Apocalypse, we scaled Tomb of Annihilation way the hell up and the three highest level parties went through it with the main change being Acererack was behind all other events, and his last act was to send his shade against Halastar Blackstaff to try and Possess Him to cast Karsus' Folley.
Spell Fails because Mystara's laws but Magic is turned off again for a day.
This lapse in magic causes the rest of Faerun to blame the Sword Coast.
We ended with three level 17-20 parties and four 6-12 parties ready to set off a War defending the Sword Coast from the Rest of the Continent.
I found a blog post, Waterdeep: Descent into Avernus. They recommended playing through Dragon Heist then moving into Baldur's Gate. At the time Cabdlekeep Mystery wasn't out, so I'm adding that in. Once you get out of Avernus you find yourself in Undermountain (so now you play Doungen of the Mad Mage)
My brain does that ALL THE TIME and it sort of gets disorientating. Great video as always @Jorphdan!
This sounds awesome! You should collect all this info, expand on some of the finer details, and then sell it on DMs Guild. I'd totally buy that!
I really do hate how you're spying on me hahahaha
This is exacly what I'm doing in my own game. After finding the vault of dragons, my players became their version of Aqc inc and now are chacing the orrey. Currently they are in the rocket from Candlekeep Dekonstruktion, and soon will go to the feywild and try to find another part to go back to the prime material plain. From that they'll probably go to Chult or the Icewind Dale.
Great video, shout out from Brazil!
I just found this video. This is a badass idea! I"ve been wanting to do something similar, but had not figured out a way to keep the characters from shooting up in level too fast. This works very nicely. Well done!
Throughout the video, I kept thinking about what kind of character would be motivated to go on a MacGuffin hunt, but then you name-dropped Lolth and I thought "Ah. I see. Just play a Drow and let things go full circle."
That a great idea!
Personally i would add some non module contect for each module, like R and R roleplay sessions and med side quests like one where the party is task to investigate disappearing citizens around the city of Waterdeep or a another city in the sword coast where it leads to a mind flayer kidnapping operation under the city
I love the idea of the Tiamat crisis being the kicking off point for all the events that unfold in the metaplot
This is one of the greatest takes on a, deconstructed, "Choose your own adventure RPG" I've ever seen and I'm here for it!!!
Community D&D!!!
My NPC is walking continuously into a wall but is levitating 7 feet in the air.
So, I am basically doing the same, except I am combining Descent as the initial module start to finish, adding in the Rod of 7 Parts, and the “Theoparts” from Greyhawk as quest pieces along the way (Glassya will send them to Stygia to collect one of the Rod Parts to begin the questing) driven by Zuggtmoy and Iuz the Ancient driving the players into Out of the Abyss after DIA, and then guiding them through the realms facing the Abyssal Plague. They will be chasing the Voidharrow eventually and trying to collect the 7 Rod parts as well as the 3 Theoparts to prevent the release of Tharizdun while combating Iuz and Zuggtmoy as the final battle for their dominance over the Prime Plane in Princes of the Abyss as a final module…. Possibly even bringing in The Chaos Queen or Miska at the end. I love the Orrey of the Wanderer addition and will borrow that from you!
I mean, if our plan is to travel the sword coast, then the first half of Tyranny of Dragons (Specifically Hoard of the Dragon Queen) literally has you travel from the Greenfields below Elturel to just shy of Neverwinter. Rise of Tiamat also has some extra places to go such as the Serpent Hills and the north. It also lets you tie into the Thayan aspects of ToA, and sets up using Descent into Avernus, which makes specific reference to Tiamat's last attempt to escape her prison. There's also a tie in to Storm King's Thunder through the giant in Skyreach.
Using the Acq Inc framework even means you can kind of hot swap between SKT and RoT's plot points. The Council of Waterdeep (with a representative from AI) has work they're doing to prevent Tiamat's ascent but needs occasional help from the party. Maybe the search for a member of the arcane brotherhood in RoT is swapped out for looking for Avarice in Icewind.
Goddamn, I'm kinda mad I've run these adventures now because it'd actually be great to run this all together!
Such a great idea. I would love to see more videos about this. Maybe doing a part by part planning session to build a community version of the idea.
I love this. Was thinking of pulling a few of the books together for one of my groups and this is a really great way to do that.
I think a clutch move would be to start off with LMoP before heading to Waterdeep to make the home base (or maybe using the manor in Phandalin as one). The adventure with the Black Spider would cleverly lay the groundwork for an eventual drow/Lolth turn. Especially if the Spider doesn't actually know that the first piece is there (I'm assuming he's there for his stated LMoP reasons), and his somewhat hollow motives as-written are explained as Lolth's machinations, manipulating him into recovering the artifact as a byproduct of his conscious mission.
I have a group currently going through Sunless Citadel from TFtYP, and I think I'm going to use your campaign structure once they're finished with the dungeon. One of the PC's is looking for info on a goblin who stole something from him, which means I can suck them right into LMoP with the namedrop of the Cragmaw Goblins.
I do like the idea that the party will find an Orrery Piece at the end of this first adventure, but it won't be recognized by anyone as something special until the end of the next. So I may play it as the Spider is just doing his thing when the party comes along looking for these goblins, and Lolth's behind-the-scenes machinations were supposed to result in the PC's wandering into the Black Spiders scheme, dying and (incidentally) being stripped of the item she wants before they even really knew what it was they had. When they evade that, she shifts her plans, making them the focus of her plans like in the video.
My players are new to D&D and wanted a campaign that took them all over, ATLA-like, so this would be a ton of fun for them. And ince I can play it more long-term with the Lolth reveal, I can maybe rip some stuff from The Black Company books and give her this gradual Kina-like influence over things.
Also, I'll probably cap it off with the Call From The Deep adventure, to give the PC's a little full-powered romp at the end of the adventure (meaning I'll probably have a good reason to use some of the later-game SKT stuff to lay down the groundwork for the kraken, at some point).
Im honestly doing something similar to this in my home game, I got the Acq Inc book not long after we started the campaign, so I promoted my group to an Acq Inc sub group (they chose the I-Team after their fallen npc party member, a life cleric Dwarf named Ignis), and were given a Lighthouse base in Waterdeep.
A few sessions into the campaign they came across a home brew magic item that allows them to teleport to specific locations across the map depending on which symbol is selected on the items selector wheel. Each symbol corresponds to locations highlighted in each book, (Chult, Ten Towns, Baulders Gate, Waterdeep, and HOME; the cyberpunk metropolis that exists in secret on the dark side of the moon. (A homebrew surprise for a player that's really into Cyberpunk stuff)
In town, they can find a job board that has jobs for each adventure in Saltmarsh and Yawning Portal (or just pick up a tip from the tavern itself) and, finally, way out in the ocean is a massive cloud of swirling grey mist floating on the water, an entrance to Ravenloft.
Some of the first campaigns that Aqu Inc podcasr did was portions of the rod of seven parts
Never have I related to another human being more than you in the first 30 or so seconds of this video, lol. I'm constantly having to rewind almost everything I watch/listen to (including some of your own videos) because my mind will run a tangent from one single detail I just heard, lol.
This is a great idea. And you gave us the base framework to get it started. Thanks.
Really loved this idea of yours! Seems like so much work to actually put togeather so I'm not sure I'll ever get to running it haha, but it def sparked the imagination!
I had a similar idea, but, it was Vecna behind it all and as they completed each section it's activated a monolith, that was secretly tied to Vecna and towards the end he makes his presence known
When I get like that watching D&D material I end up falling asleep forgetting my trousers are still half on. You sir end up coming up with a master plan to run a large scale epic campaign. Just using available source books. BRAVO xD
In "Queen of Spiders" from 2nd Ed. you go to the demon web pits to fight Lolth at the end.
Listening through this now but had to say as I’m listening that I am doing this right now! Laying ground work for everything but also building in home brew threads if the players want to follow something different. It’s so much fun!
very cool ideas man, kudos on bringing it all together
3.5E 's Expedition to the Demonweb Pits was a levels 9-12 adventure that brought the party to stop Grazzt from making a pact with Lolth. They eventually make their way to the Demonweb Pits to face aspects (weakened "avatars") of the demon lords.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedition_to_the_Demonweb_Pits
Solid outline. I like a good "cross-campaign" mega-campaign like this. Sooooo tempted to give this a try! Thanks, once again, for the inspiration!
I truly enjoyed this video. Thank you for all the work you put into all the videos
That's great! Thank you 😁
It's almost like they put the different parts in the different books on purpose. This is a great concept and sounds....deadly.
I DM a few groups, 1 is running Lost Mines of Phandelver -> Dragons of Icespirepeak -> Hoard of Dragon Queen -> Rise of Tiamat.
Another group is going through
Dragons of stormwreck isle -> Ghosts of Saltmarsh -> Radiant Citadel->Light of Xaryxis.
So fun that you bring this up! I'm currently planning a planar-themed fetch-quest campaign along the Sword Coast, and I'm using a ton of parts of adventures to get it done!
I love the idea of a mega campaign and Jordan I love your suggestion of tying everything to llolth 😊👌
For me this is exactly what d&d is "for" in terms of adventuring 👍
I’ve been considering a hodgepodge campaign of a lot of pieces of published adventures (WoTC and 3rd party) in my homebrew setting, and this just gives me even more great ideas and connective threads. Thanks for this!
Yup I think I’ll run this as an overarching campaign. Love following this and the obelisk stuff!
Pretty cool idea. I do this now with other modules and combine them to stories I've built myself. I then look for tie ins with my prayers previous campaigns either with their current characters or past characters who may have died.
This sounds like it has elements from the book "Queen of the Demonweb Pits". Great book, great inspiration, one hell of a main character.
Over all, it sounds like a great idea. Good video
Going to dust of the old Spelljammer books but you have given me a spectacular idea.... hmmm Thank You
This gives me some great ideas for my high level party after they finish Tyranny of Dragons, but instead of jumping around the swordcoast, they're jumping across Faerun and a few initial planes before taking on dark gods from the beyond.
I would watch you play this adventure for the next couple years!!!
Would honestly be much happier if you did not tell us the ending and just let us watch you and your party experience it
I am currently try to put a group together, and was wondering what I was going to run. Now I know exactly what I'm going to do. Thanks for this video!
I tried to do something a little similar on a smaller scale for my campaign.
I was running Lost Mine of Phandelver and the party decided to spend a little time in Neverwinter after having managed to kill Venomfang.
Anyone who has read or run LMoP knows that there's nothing in there for Neverwinter, so I looked through the 4th Edition's 'Neverwinter Campaign Setting' for ideas.
A bunch of the character backgrounds, as well as details on the Ashmadai, Shadovar, Uthgardts, Abolethic Sovereignty and the (former) Cult of the Dragon are easy to turn into little quest hooks. I also added the Dead Rats and the Nashers seeking the Crown of Neverwinter for good measure.
We've pivoted to Dragon of Icespire Peak now though, but the party may yet pick up on some of these threads later on in the game.
I'm currently in the process in mashing up Strixhaven, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and Candlekeep. The carnival is located southeast of the common campus grounds. And the Biblioplex's library will function as Candlekeep. Alsoo, after watching this video, I like the idea of using the Acq Inc using to make another Extracurricular where the members are used to retrieve lost artifacts or stolen artifacts and brought back to Strixhaven (Lorehold being the majority of the members).
I love the idea of mashing up multiple campaigns/modules/books!
I would even use Arasta (from Theros) as the BBEG (I own her mini).
I'm about to start something like this.
I had already run through Dragon Heist, Descent into Avernus, Icewind Dale, Witchlight and currently Out of the Abyss with the same players.
I'll be running Tyranny of Dragons next, but I've all intention of tieying back their old characters and bringing back some NPCs and repercursions as they travel alongside the Sword Coast.
Zariel died, so maybe Bel wants to free Tiamat now and there is no one to stop him. The Hourglass Coven may be interested in something revolving the Cult of Tiamat somehow. The Mythalar in Icewind Dale may be the key to something regarding the Mythalar in Waterdeep that protects it from dragon attacks, etc.
As they visit old places, their old PCs will appear as NPCs with side-quests, after completing those, they will be able to "recruit" them for the Waterdeep council and then take them again into adventure to Thay and other relevant places for the adventure.
An epic adventure awaits!
I guess great minds think alike. I already had this sort of concept already.
Start them in Tyranny of dragons. Cassalanters from waterdeep are agents of the dragon queen who need the gold for the ritual. As the game progress, use dungeons from salt marsh and tales of the yawning portal as necessary. A human isnt leading the cult of the dragon, Arkahn the cruel is. And while all this is goong on. Rolling on a random table to see if the death curse from tomb of annihilation kicks in. If the characters fail, both barovia and elturel dissapeared from this plane of existence because their rules made deals with devils to save their people. (So nice of them). And if the characters win, the giants see this as their time to rise. Frost maiden gets thrown in there is the players decide to run and hide from events.
I would have a blast running that for our group. We always talk about running the pre-made but we never do.
I've always wanted to do this. It's something I wanna make, but also something I'd wanna play in with my wizard so badly
I’ve been meaning to have a Toril-a-thon campaign! Many thanks, Jorphdan! ^_^
This is something I’ve been considering since my players started getting toward the end of LMOP, so I’m looking forward to digesting this video.
I'm taking ALL OF THIS, *but* run it in my homebrew world and instead of the pieces being for thy Orrery, they're phalacteries of Aumvor the Undying.
Great planning. I have something similar going on right now but I’m the early stages. I didn’t know about the cool artifact, makes me rethink. Also, I am planning on possibly dropping in some stuff from Yawning Portal like against the Giants since it was originally part of the GDQ modules. Great video!
I like it, be great to have a break down of what levels to be running everything at in regards to the progression of the books.
I have a campaign I'm working on right now where you take essentially Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, and Candlekeep and run all of those levels set in Saltmarsh. Basically making each of the levels specified in it progress giving the players more choice on which adventure at the level they are at to run, and making an interconnected story.
Just a note, the final adventure of the GDQ series of modules from way back is "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" which is a high level adventure where you go there and stop Llolth from doing some evil stuff. Definitely a good template for your finale idea!
I’ve been running my campaign with my wife, son, and dad for 3.5 years.
Started with LMoP, then a combination of STK and HotDQ/RoT and now finally in a tier 4 play of Bauldurs Gate reimagined as Hyrule from Ocarina of Time (my son is Link). We just hit level 19.
I am currently running a game I call “the module game”. Starting with lost minds/dragon of icespire peak and running the adventures published by Wizards in a chronological order. The group is divided into 2 separate parties accomplishing the separate modules in succession. The game was made by the simple desire for me to have my players play each and every module made from Frost Maiden and bellow. Very fun, very long! But, been a labor of love ever sense! So, yeah sorta the same thing I guess lol!
Neat idea, this reminds me of the original Greyhawk campaign: Temple of Elemental Evil >> Slavelords >> GDQ
That is exactly what I was thinking
I did the same thing you described in the opening (linking thoughts together and not paying attention) while watching this video
0:01 as someone with both Asperger's and adhd, that's just how my mind works.
that's why we get distracted so easy, we can get bored waiting on our mouth to finish a sentence and be off thinking about something else entirely.
I mean, instead of running it that Lolth was behind everything you could make it Tiamat and run the very last section of Rise of Tiamat with a full strength dragon goddess at the very end
I would totally play that! Specific levels and locations would be helpful!
I had this idea when "Tales from the Yawning Portal" came out.
I showed this to my players and their jaws collectively dropped. Please make this a reality and create a solid outline of levels for this. I want to run it for them!!
This is old skool think man...you better be careful :-)
I watched the same video and as the host was dismissing books I was thinking of those sitting on my shelf that I have had time to study and thought there are no bad books here...you just take a chainsaw to them and make them your own...that was a pillar of old skool D&D. Every adventure published has great bits even if it doesn't resolve as a whole...maps, characters, plot lines,etc.
I remember buying a MERPS supplement (Calenhad-A Beacon of Gondor) just because I wanted the Beacons in my game and it was loaded with other content that I used as well.
Things like this are what makes being a DM fun :-)
I think this is great starting idea for a long term campaign
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern campaign... kind of... love it.
I've had the same idea but i haven't quite completely figured out my events and modules yet. Lost mine of Phandelver. Then they start exploiting the mine for resources under a patron's franchise (aquisition incorporated). Giving them choices of different patrons to align with ( good, neutral, evil). Collect the 5 masks of Tiamat, either to stop the cult of the Dragons or bring Tiamat back. Using Icewind Dale, ghosts of saltmarsh, Chult, water deep as locations to find the masks. Travel somewhere with a spelljammer ship,, come back.. All that while players try to slowly unify the North as they become more politically influential (political intrigues). Throw in giants, Elves, drows, yuan ti somehow. In the end at level 20, they unify the north, bring back/stop Tiamat, defeat an even greater evil than Tiamat that has been planing to destroy the material plane.
I planned on making this even bigger, adopting the West Marches style of play and getting several people in on this. I know for a fact that I am going to steal the Saltmarsh idea now, and quite possibly add the Acq Inc aspect of the game.
Wow! What a ride. Excellent ideas.
Okay so when are you running this stream for us to watch, Jorphdan??? This is glorious
I have a long form campaign that is gonna hit a bunch. Not all but a lot. Starts spelljammer. Do some fun stuff in space and hint at the Light.
Crashland the spelljamming ship and have it destroyed. Land in saltmarsh. Do the first adventure in saltmarsh.
They hear that waterdeep might have spelljamming helms. Take their new ship to waterdeep and meet some interesting characters. Make contact with the Mercane that lives there and says he will sell them one for 250k gold. They of course don't have that and start the dragon heist campaign as well as potentially some acquisition incorporated mechanics. Thus in order to get the gold to pay for the helm. Once they have the money for the helm the Mercane says that they have to wait 1 year for the order since he didn't judge them to have the ability to come up with the money that fast.
While wasting time they find out there is a carnival near them that takes them into the feywild.
Upon completing that quest one of the hags whom they have slighted warps the mirror they were supposed to use to get home to instead take them to a strange land called Barovia. Cards on the table I don't know if I want to run strahd proper or a van rickter side quest.
When they leave they find Giants running amok and get started taking care of that problem.
By the end of this however a beloved NPC has died or a PC character has died. And unfortunately a death curse is laid upon the land.
They follow clues leading them to Candlekeep in order to research where the curse is coming from and get sucked into a book.
The book leads them to the information they seek and they head out to Chult.
From there they have gained significant prestige upon completing the quest and even by this time have their helm. However they are approached by higher ups seeking their fame and power and tells them of some adventures that have escaped the underdark and tell tales of demons running amok. They agree to delve into the underdark to handle the situation.
When reaching the surface a beloved NPC as well as the ones that tasked them with the demonic undertaking tell them that a crazed dragon cult is preparing a world ending event. If successful in quelling this threat by combining the forces of the friends they have made along the way the world is at peace once again.
At least until the astral seeds begin falling all over Faerun and the evil empire of space elves that they learned about many many years ago have finally come to roost. Traveling into space as higher level adventurers they handily quell the galactic threat.
A bonus that I would like is a player is from Krynn. Specifically Palanthus. I would love for them to take their montley crew to see his home world and revel in his newfound confidence. Only to find that the great threat of Tiamat that was stopped by the group has simply changed her target to another world. Once again attempting to save the world from this vile deity they set out to defend not only a nation but a world amidst the clash of armies and come face to face with the proxies of an old foe.
And of course the PC's have every opportunity to do whatever they want and if for whatever reason they want to go north or to other locations where the plot hooks will be I shall oblige but this is probably the thing I have in mind the most.
Yes! This would a lot of fun. And it would let you hit a lot of the iconic points in these adventures. Too bad I'm knee deep in SKT or I would have done this.
This really gives me some ideas and inspiration for the game I'm running! It won't be quite like this (because I want to mess with Elder Evils), but assembling the Orrery as an overall goal and a few other ideas presented here I will probably use in some way. :)
Already running something in a custom world but similar. I love your idea better!
Also more videos like this please. TBH I love all your lore videos but also like concept stuff like this. That I can use to be a better DM
I am doing something very similar to this already. I started with parts of Tales from the Yawning Portal because it was a cheap buy, went to Phandelvar next and am working through HOTDQ and Tyranny of Dragons. I plan on using Out of the Abyss. I have player arcs and side quests that tie the different pieces together. What is nice is I can take the NPCs from all of them and have a very rich world with lots of lore at level 1. Drop pieces of information that will be relevant in later stories.
And I thought I was being ambitious trying to combine tyranny of dragons with storm kings thunder and running them for a party.
I’m 100% gonna add this concept to my home game
You have these books totally out of order with the timeline 😵😵💫 and I took inspiration from a previous video you’ve done on the modules put into order. Started with hoard of the dragon queen where one of my players older siblings were the heroes who thwarted demogoron in into the abyss, where some of them died
Currently doing something similar with an indie adventure and Yawning Portal. Something about letting someone else do the hard work and just respinning and riffing on it feels like the perfect way to DM.
I’m totally running something like this! I started them in Waterdeep and had to investigate a new village that has seemed to pop at on thin air Hommlet! They had options to run Act inc, Hoard of the Dragon Queen or
Prince of the apocalypse.
This sounds badass! I want to play this!
Yes, I would absolutely run this adventure.
This is an amazing idea! Didn't Lolth have a giant mechanical spider vehicle in the Demonweb Pits too? I think that was in the AD&D adventures... that might be a cool addition to the campaign's climax.
I mean I doubt you read this comment, but thanks. I have been thinking about running a "mash up" 1-20 adventure in Forgotten Realms and thinking about how to tie in the books. This item is an absolute fantastic idea. I will start it in Baldur's Gate because, well, it is crazy popular right now and I will use a couple of additional books as well. If we can have Boss Fights from ALL of the books involved, including maybe throw in Zariel. I am going to post this on Start Playing Games tonight. Thanks again.
Great video!!! I have gotten akot of ideas thank you
I've been running an ongoing campaign using all the books like this but we started in storm King's Thunder using the missing black obelisk as a starting point. Long story short the Giants are being manipulated to find all the obelisk thinking it will be the key to open up the gates to their original city under icewind Dale. Unfortunately that is where the avatar of changed Oblivion has been trapped.
I have often thought about doing this, running them all one after another in chronological order (as best makes sense).