Mega 5th edition campaigns

[j_spencer93]

Ok....this may sound nuts but I am wanting to either tie all of the campaigns together or to split into into two that join together....however i am not coming up with any ideas how to connect them or which ones should be grouped together. Would love any feedback or ideas you have had yourself concerning this idea.

Rise of Tiamat/Hoard of the Dragon (1-15)
Princes of the Apocalypse (1-10)
Out of the Abyss (1-15)
Curse of Strahd (1-10)
Storm King's Thunder (1-10)

[TrinculoLives]

Like if you had the inhabitants of the Underdark transported to Borovia? That would be... messy.

[Falcon X]

Behind the scenes between Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Out of the Abyss (All cannonical, but associating these things is not):
- The mind flayers are pulling the strings behind the demon uprising in the underdark. If you have read Salvatore's "Archmage" you can probably pull your own conclusions. Regardless, Gromph Baenre, the one who summoned the demons, was manipulated into doing so by a drow psion who learned his psionics from Mind Flayers. That's cannonical.
- The mind flayer's motivation is their growing war with the Githyanki.
- The Githyanki have a deal to work with Tiamat and the Red Dragons.
- Tiamat is trying to rise to our world.

Princes of the Apocalypse:
I don't know much about this module, so I'll give some speculation:
- The Elder Elemental Evil (Tharizdun) is behind everything. Way behind, and has been laying the pieces together for years.
- This ties into the Shard of Evil that Tharizdun found when the Obyriths (some Demon Princes) came into this world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obyrith

Storm Giants:
I know nothing about this module. However, the final chapter of Hoard of the Dragon Queen has you in a floating castle run by giants. I know there is an old feud between the Giants and the Dragons...

Specualation:
- The Mind Flayers and Obyrith's, both creatures from far planes, are more connected than we once thought.
- Tharizdun could be trying to get lawful creatures in the upper world to go to war with chaotic creatures of the underdark for whatever reason.
- Tharizdun resents the Demon Princes. By using their Shard of Evil to create the Abyss, he gave them a realm to rule over. In return, Tharizdun was imprisoned eternally. More likely, he thinks if h can get the demon princes on the same plane as the lawful dragons, the dragons can find a way to destroy them forever.
- What better way to get rid of the Demon Princes than to get them stuck in the Demiplane of Dread forever.

[mgshamster]

Regarding Tharizdun

Sorry, not Tharizdun, Vizeran. Vizeran Du'Vir.

You meet him in OotA and he gives you a ton of background information on the campaign, plus he's the lead in for some major quests in the second half of the adventure.

He's also a major player in Princes of the Apocolypse.

That's a direct tie between PotA and OotA.

[Falcon X]

Regarding Tharizdun

Sorry, not Tharizdun, Vizeran. Vizeran Du'Vir.

You meet him in OotA and he gives you a ton of background information on the campaign, plus he's the lead in for some major quests in the second half of the adventure.

He's also a major player in Princes of the Apocolypse.

That's a direct tie between PotA and OotA.
Really! I haven't read PotA. That's the exact kind of info I need for my game. (I'm going deeper into De'Vir and his "friends".

[mgshamster]

Really! I haven't read PotA. That's the exact kind of info I need for my game. (I'm going deeper into De'Vir and his "friends".

It's been a little bit since I looked it up, but it seems as if I can't immediately back my own claims. However, Vizeran is a worshipper of Tharizdun. Maybe that's why I got their names confused the first time.

The wiki on him only mentioned OotA, but I did find a Reddit that says V is part of PotA backstory mentioned in chapter 1, even if he's not direct not in the campaign.

So not a major player as far as the PCs are concerned, but still a "major player" in the backstory that leads up to PotA.

[2D8HP]

Storm King on pages 231 & 232 has options to do levels 1-4 using:

Phandelver,

Dragon Queen,

Apocalypse,
or
Abyss, but not

Strahd.

[j_spencer93]

Thank you guys alot. Some of the info above i was not aware of and it will help greatly. Really not sure if i should allow them to play through each as the same party as originally pitched by them.

[SillyPopeNachos]

I'm currently running a 1-20 campaign using a mixture of playtest adventures and Tyranny of Dragons. So far it's going well, and my next will likely be Storm King's Thunder leading up to Curse of Strahd (Ravenloft is a 1-way trip, so the reverse order wouldn't work).

[mgshamster]

You may want to try mixing them up a bit.

Run the first 5 levels of Out of the Abyss, starting with their capture and escape from the underdark. Down play the demons; try to make it more underdark and less madness/demonic influence.

Once on the surface, pick up Storm King's Thunder for levels 5-10.

Then hit up Elemental Evil (aka Princes of the Apocolyose) as a 10-15 adventure. You'll have to upgrade the first half a bit, but not by much. Either remove some of it or upgrade enemies or simply focus more on politics than combat.

Lastly, upgrade the latter half of Out of the Abyss to a 15-20 adventure (not that difficult, really, as you're dealing with demon lords).

Requires a little bit of work as a gm, but not anymore than running your own campaign.

[Nicrosil]

Something I recommend is divvying it up to three parts: the first part is pretty much the adventure as written, the second is Curse of Strahd, and the third is the greatest cult stomping adventure in the history of D&D.

The purpose of the first part is to get the characters through the first few levels, and build the seeds for the third part. I recommend HotDQ or the first half of OotA for this, since there are natural stopping points: the players board Skyreach Castle, or escape the Underdark for the first time. Suddenly, a strange mist surrounds them...

I put CoS as an "interlude" because it doesn't really fit anywhere else. The whole point of Barovia is that it's isolated from the rest of the world. This does require heavy revision since the level range is shrinking, however. When the characters kill Strahd, they find themselves back at the Sword Coast, but evil factions have taken advantage of their absence.

Back from Ravenloft, your characters have honed their abilities, but now have to deal with the dragon, demon, and elemental cults. To make things worse, the giants are freaking out since the Ordning was broken. I recommend structuring this as a hexcrawl, where the players march through the Sword Coast and Underdark, shutting down the cults and giants where they see them, getting hooks and gearing up for a final showdown at the Well of Dragons. Or, you could tie this in to the RoT faction meetings pretty easily, making "episodes" out of the elemental cult temples, the Underdark cities, etc.

Either way, you end up with an epic showdown at the Well of Dragons between Tiamat, the four elemental gods, all of the demon lords, and whatever key BBEGs are in Thunder King, which is pretty dope.

[j_spencer93]

I freaking love the ideas. Seriously, going to have to start making notes on how to mix them. Thinking of just one party now. Like the suggestions for melding them together. Might shake things up a bit as well.

Really like the episode idea. I might want to add, my players have made it 100% clear...they plan on fighting Tiamat, the four Elemental Evils and all of the Demon Lords. They are greedy in that way.
How about running mines of Phandelver first? It has a drow connection and directly has a connection to the tiamat quest. At the end the drow could ambush them and tranq them.

MEGAQUEST
Mines of Phandelver (player’s are knocked unconscious at end)
Start out of the Abyss (until first escape)
Curse of Strahd (players are consumed by mist, transported back once Strahd is beat)

Players return and find that several cults have overrun most of the sword coast, and that the giants are taking matters into their own hands to stop it, deeming the humans unfit to rule the world anymore.

Out of the Abyss (rework part 8; start from there; De'Vir may even inform them of how since he wants to stop this plot too.)
Storm King’s Thunder (Start at part 4: rework slightly; players learn of much from the factions of the sword coast)
Rise of Tiamat (simply start rise of tiamat)
Princes of the Apocalypse (the cults aren't hiding, no need to. They openly operate now, racing to complete their goals before the cult of dragons; start at part 4)

Honestly I am not sure why Hoard of the Dragon Queen/Rise of tiamat just can't be started from the begging. Yea it be real easy at first, but don't think it would be to bad.
Another problem....I know how my party is with powerful relics...will them having the relics from PoTA make them OP? And,i havent looked into it, but what keeps them from taking the demon lord's weapons?

[Falcon X]

What if the glue that holds them all together is Strahd?
Several different ideas:
1. The players get sucked into the demiplane of dread, but it's into a new domain. In this domain, the world is shattering in all the ways of all those campaigns. Strahd is a figure in this domain as he has expanded his territory (it can happen...rarely). So, the whole game is the stuff that the Dark Lords of Ravenloft sentence upon the characters.
2. Somehow Strahd has found a way to manipulate the real world from Ravenloft and he is the big bad at the end.
3. What if someone ELSE in the Demiplane of Dread is manipulating this. Go back in time a little to when Vecna, Kas, or Iuz found their way into the Demiplane. There is no question that Vecna could make everything in all these adventures happen, even while exiled to the Demiplane.
The players must ultimately ally themselves with Strahd to defeat this guy.

What if this spans multiple worlds?
There is a single person running around to different worlds or dimensions pulling the strings to make these events happen. The players must gather clues from each thing they encounter.
Three systems present themselves in my mind:
1. Spelljammer: They are literally different worlds that the players fly to in spaceships.
2. Planescape: The players chase this guy through portals spanning different worlds.
3. The Strange: Earth people chase a classic archvillain (Moriarty?) who became sentient on one of the Earth's spinnoff worlds. They have to jump into new bodies and learn new tricks as they follow the events unfolding in each of these worlds.

[j_spencer93]

Have one player that likes spelljammer...the rest dont.
Planescape is a fave of mine, but again, have a player that literally hates planar travel. Done it before and he immediately stopped playing, said it stupid and doesn't make sense, etc etc
i would like that but I can guarantee my players would find it annoying.

In general they prefer straight forward campaigns with some social points (one player begs for them but couldnt talk a toddler into taking a sucker, as yes i know how that sounds, seriously....his diplomacy sucks. Once he choked a guy in game saying it was his diplomacy check...).