D&D 5E Storm giant's thunder

[Shades of Eternity]

I generally like storm king's thunder but it suffers from meandering plot syndrome.

It tells a great story that the Pcs aren't really involved in

How do you fix?

 

[dave2008]

I generally like storm king's thunder but it suffers from meandering plot syndrome.

It tells a great story that the Pcs aren't really involved in

How do you fix?

There have been lost of ideas on these forums. I'm a little bored so I will try to dig some up!

 

[dave2008]

OK, there is one of the "enhancing" threads: Enhancing "Storm King's Thunder"

I have also since posts about people combining it with RoT, but that may have been individual post in other threads.

 

[dave2008]

You can also get some enhanced giants in my thread: 5e Updates: Monstrous Compendium, though most of the relevant giants where created by @Demetrios1453 in this thread: Homebrew Giant Elites

 

[Retreater]

I had to scrap the convoluted plot ("meandering" is a good term for it) and find another way for my party to get involved. They wouldn't trust the flying cloud giant, so they missed out on their only connection to the plot. I think my story ended up going better anyway.

1) Giants are attacking, unprovoked.
2) The giants waging war against each other, and civilization is getting in the way.
3) The party went to an oracle that told them what's going on with the giants is that there are artifacts tied to each giant clan that have been buried in the region. A legendary item - in the hands of the right chieftain - will make them incredibly powerful. If the legendary item is destroyed, that clan's fate is tied to the item, and they will begin to wither.
4) So the party gets in a race to find the items before the giants get ahold of them.

 

[dave2008]

3) The party went to an oracle that told them what's going on with the giants is that there are artifacts tied to each giant clan that have been buried in the region. A legendary item - in the hands of the right chieftain - will make them incredibly powerful. If the legendary item is destroyed, that clan's fate is tied to the item, and they will begin to wither.

That seems odd, why would they fight to get artifacts keyed to their clan I thought you were going to say there was one artifact that could empower any clan, thus they were all fighting to get it. What is motivating them to fight if they all have artifacts?

 

[Retreater]

That seems odd, why would they fight to get artifacts keyed to their clan I thought you were going to say there was one artifact that could empower any clan, thus they were all fighting to get it. What is motivating them to fight if they all have artifacts?

Ok. So maybe I didn't explain all of the backstory. The dragon that's behind all of it in the original SKT adventure orchestrated this to get the giant clans killing off each other by giving them the locations of their artifacts. (This let me use the big map and have a sandbox adventure instead of just one site for one artifact.)
In my adventure the fire giants wanted the fire giant artifact, but they also wanted to get the hill giant artifact, frost giant artifact, etc. They could then try to destroy the rival clans' artifacts, store them in Vaults, or even loan them out to a vassal clan (like if they teamed up with hill giant underlings).
Does that make sense?

 

[MerricB]

I generally like storm king's thunder but it suffers from meandering plot syndrome.

It tells a great story that the Pcs aren't really involved in

How do you fix?

It's not a meandering plot. It's a late-appearing plot.

The thing with SKT is that it presumes that the characters are taking part in a D&D campaign where the players are wandering around the Sword Coast, doing small quests for people. (Much as in the D&D Essentials Kit).

Into that campaign, SKT slowly brings in the idea that giants are causing trouble. "Giants attack a town" could be just another small quest, much as what has occurred before. But then you leave Triboar (or wherever), and the players begin to realise that there are more giants about than there should be. And they're doing odd things.

At this point, the characters are still doing small quests, but they're realising something is wrong in the world.

And then Harshnag turns up, and the plot gets underway.

The trouble with "A Great Upheaval" is that it starts things too soon. The players get to know there's trouble in giant land at the very beginning, rather than working it out for themselves. And then the adventure abandons that plot thread to go back to "general adventuring" and the players wonder what is going on.

Ignore A Great Upheaval. It's a disaster. Run a standard D&D campaign for the first five levels in the Sword Coast, then slowly build the giant threat... and then let the rest of the adventure proceed.

Cheers!