Spoilers Ahead
Sorry for any misspellings, I’m from Brazil and still studying English.
I began with Classics and midway through the campaign, decided to incorporate Shadow of the Dragon Queen with a third-party group of characters for my players.
Below is the sequence I’m using:
G1: Despair/Flame/Hope/Desolation/Ice G2: Dreams G1: Light G2: Shadows G1: War G3: Prelude to War/When Home Burns G2: Faith G3: Shadow of War/The Northern Wastes G1: Deceit G3: City of Lost Names/Siege of Kalaman G2: Truth G3: Shadow of the Black Rose G?: Triumph
Remember that SotDQ will occur a few months earlier than Classics, so here are the modifications:
- No divine powers; the disks haven’t been found yet.
- Kalaman is temporarily under Calof Miat’s rule, as his father Lord Lerrin Miat traveled to Palanthas for a special trade meeting.
- Wyhan will undergo the Test of High Sorcery at the appropriate level (4~5) using a unique device that generates an illusionary, but potentially fatal test. The device has the benefit of showing information that is needed for the mage’s future, akin to the test from Demelin. Additionally, when first encountered, Wyhan is working on teleport conduits for a mysterious client.
- No dragons. Instead, I’ve introduced a tribe of goblins from the Astivar Mountains that use giant bats. These bats have been altered with powers from the Sunward Fortress to be bigger and stronger, now utilized by a special elite force of Hobgoblins and bred in the wastes. The exact location is yet to be determined; I will write a proper article just for those bats.
For SotBR, no modifications, but Soth must be at his prime, no holding back—deliver all the punches, no mercy for the players. If the players win, Soth won’t appear at the end of Dragons of Triumph, and the other party will have an advantage.
Time “corrections”: SotDQ must occur before Dragons of Despair, while SotBR will start after Dragons of War (the battle at High Clerist’s Tower). I suggest a cinematic transition between SotDQ and SotBR, with plenty of downtime and involvement with Kalaman’s government.
Regarding the classics, I’m using the 3.5 version, but any doubts I refer to the original source and 25th-anniversary edition. All named dragons are played to their best abilities and don’t fight to the death unless noted. They serve the queen but have their own agendas, and death isn’t their primary focus.
In Tarsis, my players created another group of characters somehow related to the first party, and they joined on the road to Tarsis. The split of the parties is under the players’ decision, and from that moment, I started rotating between the adventures and parties as outlined above.
I opted for them to create their own characters and ruled that they must be heroes at heart. It’s a big effort to run this saga; I don’t have the ability to make them follow the rails if they’re not on board, such as with a lone wolf character or an evil one. If they are true heroes, they will follow the rails.
But is railroading bad? It depends. Saving a child with a team of heroes isn’t railroading, but with evil characters, it might be. The important thing is to have fun, and we are.
Limiting teleportation or other fast means of transport is crucial. Travel is as important as the destination in this adventure. I’ve restricted teleportation as a dragon army war effort to limit enemy movements. A deal between Takhisis and Nuitari has made all teleportation attempts extremely difficult or teleports them to different locations, only via teleport nexus, where teleportation remains normal.
I think that’s all. Now I have to prepare for “Shadow of War.”
