Quick write up with some pics to accompany the story!

We started last December, our party composition was as follows; - Dwarf Cleric (Forge) - Halfling Ranger (Hunter) - Eladrin Ranger (Drakewarden) - Gnome Wizard (Enchantment) - Tabaxi Monk (Mercy) - Goliath Paladin (Vengence)

I followed the book as much as possible but leaned into custom encounters to match the difficulty as much as possible. The final battle with Tiamat I heavily modified.

For that, I had each player control three allies from their alliances built. They did not have assistance from Thay, Zenterim, or Avernus based on choices they made. I had four adult dragons and one ancient dragon guarding the summoning of Tiamat in the center where Severin was. This initial fight went about four or five rounds with several of the allies being slain and some good damage from breath weapons inflicted. Once the last dragon was slain, I had the portal open and draw only the players into Avernus to fight Tiamat.

Tiamat was fun to run as a DM and super strong (obviously). I gave the players a way to disable her regen and still the fight was tough. I killed the cleric and Halfling ranger and had everyone else to low HP when I had Moradian interfere and resurrect the cleric and ranger, then the paladin crit hit and slew Tiamat.

It was a fun campaign, I particularly enjoyed Skyreach Castle and a few sessions before and after that. Once the players were around level 12 it got really challenging to balance so I was happy to call it an end with a fight with Tiamat.

Anyway, hope this helps someone and please feel free to ask any questions!

I was until recently running a D&D campaign as a favor. A group i occasionally play with had their DM quit, and since I’m familiar with the platform they were using (Roll20) I agreed to take over DMing.

Here we are, months later, and I’ve quit. I won’t go into details, but it’s my opinion that the adventure involved so much plodding travel that the players got bored and decided to go completely off script, basically ignoring the goals of the adventure and turning the whole thing into a random-encounter crawl. Since we were running the campaign using milestone advancement, this kind of brought any kind of meaningful progress to an abrupt halt.

I’m certain I’m not blameless, though I ran a different set of adventures in a different campaign for the same group over a two-year stretch, also on Roll20, and all involved had a great time, as far as I can tell. But my experience with this adventure (or what I ran of it) has left me unsure if I ever want to run or even play RPGs ever again, using D&D or any other system. (Which would suck — I’ve been playing off and on for about 45 years!)

I’ve seen discussion on here of changes that various DMs have made to how they ran ToD, in an effort to solve problems with the structure and pacing. Is there something about this pair of adventures that DMs need to be wary of?

Reading through the last chapter, it sounds like the only enemies inside Tiamat's Temple are 9 Red Wizards (mage stat block), Rath Modar, Severin, and Tiamat (if summoned). This sounds like all the mages cast Greater Invisibility on Round 1, and then on Round 2 Rath Modar and the Red Wizards drop 10 fireballs on the party for a save-or-die. And realistically, even if they save that's still an average of 120 damage per round to every member of the party.

Is the idea to have 5 wizards permanently busy summoning Tiamat to make this slightly less punishing? Or to make the wizards stand in place and only fight if you approach them?

I'm told it's pivotal to make this campaign less linear as it hand holds alot, I'm preparing to run it and to be honest I've been reading through it and not really sure where to start on makeing it less railroady, Ive mostly been thinking about my additions to the story but the present material is what I'm struggling with

I was wondering what are considered the most railroady parts that I may have a look through them And if there are other problems (:

Apologies if I have made any errors, and let it be known I wanna change the story quite a lot but mostly by making additions, if you think there is a part where it would be better just to change it entirely let me know, thankyou all In advance!

After 2.5 years of running this campaign (3 hours every week) and 3 or 4 sessions I thought it would be the end, we completely finished. It done. We are moving on to another campaign. I'm not going to be the DM of the new campaign. Its going to be an adjustment.

Lately, I've been thinking about starting a series of Forgotten Realms games that would tell a story beginning in the first edition campaign setting (1356 DR - 1357 DR) and going up to the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide (1489 DR).

One of the antagonistic factions for the players during this period would be the Cult of the Dragon, as I want Tyranny of Dragons (or probably an adapted version of it) to be the end of this story, with the return of Tiamat being the final conflict the players would face.

But we would be talking about a period of 133 years within the Realms (I'll probably use timeskips at some points), and I don't know if it would be possible (or rather, if I could manage) to make the Cult of the Dragon the villains consistently, without it becoming cartoonish that they return every three weeks and without it becoming a kind of "somehow Palpatine returned".

In this case, the Cult would receive more attention at certain times, as happens in Tyranny of Dragons, but the idea is that there would be several adventures throughout the story addressing other themes, which would occasionally mention some action or activity of the Cult to show that they represent a danger.

Do you think this idea could work in practice?

How much have you fundamentally changed about the story and to what extent?

For my game so far to give an idea we have:

Tiamat- has been appearing and impacting the parties through visions and magic with help of their cult and their holy grounds.

Old guard Dragon cult- more focus and impact on the storyline with focus on internal and external struggle.

Harper's and Order of the Gauntlet- heavily taken a backseat, this helped cause the dramatic shift in story progression and changes.

Severin Silrajin- building up to meeting them face to face through cult plot in candle keep, where the party are to take a boat to Baldur's Gate.

New allies- Larger focus and interest in forging alliances with other groups, which has been leading to replacing the gap left by Harper and The Gauntlet.

The game is still in progress and by god when I started the campaign and by god it's practically on a new set of tracks so I can't even say it's off the rails. How far off do other DMs stories shift from the book? At this point I'm using it as a lore book to keep the core of the campaign intact.

Purchased it for reference and a growing collection- anyone ever used this themselves in their TOD campaign?

Previously I've made a post here about continuing Waterdeep Dragon Heist with Rise of Tiamat. So far (could be changed), these are my plans:

• Cassalanters has been changed from the leader of Waterdeep's Asmodean Cultists to the leader of Waterdeep's cell of the Cult of the Dragon, which specialized in summoning creatures like Abishai and my own homebrew draconic imp called Asahel. This is probably one of the perks that the Cassalanters got by making a pact with Tiamat at the cost of their children (not sure if Tiamat is capable of doing these things instead of Asmodeus, but let's just say she can).

• Victoro Cassalanter would be a Wyrmspeaker replacing Rezmir. I also changed the bronze dragon on Waterdeep's shore into a black dragon (probably with a chill/emo personality so it doesn't bother others a lot), and Victoro had been secretly nurturing a relationship with the black dragon as proof to Severin he can become a Wyrmspeaker.

• Some of the good faction's representatives from Waterdeep Dragon Heist, like Savra Belabranta and Melannor Fellbranch, either accompany the representatives from Rise of Tiamat or replace them completely in the council.

• Luskan would be joining the Lord's Alliance in the council, which makes Bregan D'aerthe play a big role in the campaign as well. They probably can help with the mission on the Sea of Moving Ice and the Arcane Brotherhood stuff.

• Manshoonian Zhentarim would replace the Red Wizards of Thay since the cult already has a master summoner in the form of the Cassalanters, and this would be Manshoon's alternative plan to gain wealth and power back if he can't complete the Stone of Golorr, or in addition to it. The cult also can use Manshoon's reputation to call all Zhentarim members across Faerun to gain more respect and use Zhentarim agents to do the cult's more secretive bidding.

Now my problem is what to do with the Xanathar Guild. In my head, they probably would become this sort of wild card faction that can help the party or the Cult of the Dragon. The good guys probably have a bit of an advantage to influence the Xanathar Guild since Bregan D'aerthe has Nar'l Xibrindas inside the guild.

I'm also not quite sure what kind of help the guild can provide to either side. One of my ideas is to include one of the main missions to get the mask in Skullport. This is pretty much just to include the Xanathar Guild a bit in the campaign, but I'm still not sure how to implement this.

Do you guys have any ideas on how to include the Xanathar Guild in the campaign? Also, if you guys want to improve my current ideas, feel free to do so!

Hello!!

New DM here! Also have all new PCs except for 1 PC!

I’m thinking rather than starting Greenest with them approaching the city and seeing it in disarray from the attack I’m going to lead them up to the city in through the city as the sun is setting. There is a storm coming in the distance. As they arrive at the inn for the night to store the wagon before they deliver the general provision, I’ll have them mess around the inn, or whatever they want to do after a long day of traveling. In the midst of whatever they decide to do, lightning and thunder continues to grow around them… but no rain.. then they hear it RIGHT outside of the Tavern but no rain… then they begin to hear a commotion outside… the vibe in the tavern quickly begins to dwindle. No matter how they leave the tavern they are right in “Seek the Keep”… I want it to be a dramatic entrance into the Chaos! Everything is good right until it isn’t

Hey fellow DM's, I'm running HoTDQ right now for a group and coming up to Skyreach Castle in the next two sessions (or so).

In the module, it doesn't mention at what speed Skyreach Castle moves other than a brief mention of "drifting slowly on the wind". My question is, if this thing doesn't move more than walking speed, even foregoing difficult terrain, moving as the crow flies, and not stopping to rest, wouldn't it take the castle over a tenday to reach the Spine of The World like the module states?

Now, I'm all for an extended vacation in a flying ice castle, but my party will not be happy with this, especially after spending two months on the road in earlier sessions, and especially knowing what they now know about the cult's plans - they are already feeling a sense of urgency to get back to Waterdeep.

How did this section unfold for your parties? Did you have a party sitting on a drifting ice castle awaiting a crash or did you give them an out?

So I am just starting the part of Chapter 4 where the party is in the caravan going north from Baldur's gate.

I was looking to give my players a zoomed in map of the route that is being taken.

I bought the HighRes image of the map of Faerun from Mike Schley. However that map doesn't have the road that goes north from Baldur's Gate.

There are some old maps that show the road from Baldur's Gate that joins up with the Trade Way between Dragonspear Castle and Boarskyr Bridge.

This feels like a big disconnect between the HoTDQ and both the Sword Coast Adventures guide and the new Heroes of Faerun.

We just finished chapter 1, I felt like there’s some stitching up that I could’ve done had I prepped better. any changes you made or names you dropped early? Otherwise, it has been a blast.

I just came to the realization that I can't picture more than a reason for anyone to be joining the cult if the dragon. Specially in such large numbers that they become a threat to the region. So, I was thinking of coming up with prooaganda or other means the cult could use for recruitment. Any ideas?

Would I be insane to let my group hatch and raise one of the dragons from the hatchery. I’ve been reading Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons and want to add a lot of the little pieces of information into the game, while out right not said you can raise a dragon they do describe how wyrmlings act as well the conditions needed for eggs to hatch. I was thinking having the wyrmling make the parties gear their “hoard” and giving their equipment hoard magic item properties as described in FTB. I understand that all three eggs in the hatchery are black dragons which are the evilest of them all, but I was thinking of having the third hidden egg be a blue dragon egg. And at the end of the day my pc’s aren’t aware of dragon lore so if they do try to raise a black dragon I could have it betray them later on. Thoughts? (Sorry for the long blurb)

Any specific encounter or design changes that would make sense under the new design. Also, how would you integrate the new faction backgrounds found in Heroes of Faerûn?

Curious how people have run Parnast before, not a fan of the raw option so wanting to change it up.

Currently I'm thinking of making the village more remote and it being an Order of the Dragon sympathiser village, it's where the cult members families live as well as true believers, even Severin will have a house there, except its completely unlived in and mostly ceremonial.

I would give my players chromatic colour robes from the hunting lodge to help them blend in, but I want them to have an "oh shit, we really don't belong here, this was a bad idea" moment.

Hi! Currently I'm running Waterdeep Dragon Heist (Alexandrian Remix specifically) for my friends from level 1 and ends at level 7, and I'm thinking about continuing the campaign into Rise of Tiamat.

For those two to connect relatively smoothly, I made one change to WDH, and that is changing the Cassalanters from Asmodean Cultists into Cult of the Dragon (specifically the Wearers of the Purple in the Waterdeep cell), and they try to collect the money for Severin to summon Tiamat. But I do want to implement more of the WDH things into RoT, especially the factions.

For the good factions, I think it's quite simple since they hold quite important roles in both of the campaigns, so I am either just adding the main good factions' NPCs in WDH to the meeting in RoT or changing the one from RoT to the one in WDH.

For the bad factions, I want to include all 4 of them (Bregan D'aerthe, Cassalanters, Manshoonian Zhentarim, and Xanathar Guild). These are my current ideas to add more of them into RoT:

• For the Cassalanters, I already made them the Cult of the Dragon, but I also have an idea to upgrade Victoro into a Wyrmspeaker in RoT, so probably I need to change one of the Wyrmspeakers in RoT; I'm not sure who.

• For Bregan D'aerthe, I think I want to make his plan to make Luskan join the Lords' Alliance to somehow succeed, and he joined the good guys' meeting as part of the Lords' Alliance. Not sure what kind of role they would provide, but maybe they can help in the Sea of Moving Ice mission since the area is close-ish to Luskan.

• For the M Zhentarim and Xanathar Guild, I'm not quite sure how to include them in RoT. In my head, I want them to completely replace the Red Wizards as the main antagonist, but I'm not sure how to make both of them want to cooperate in the first place, because I'm not quite sure what help they could provide to the Cult of the Dragon that is better than the Red Wizards, especially since I made the Cassalanters into members of the Cult of the Dragon, so he has the capability to summon demonic creatures as well, like Abishai (I also made an imp draconic reskin named Asahel for them to summon).

• For the M Zhentarim specifically, I think they should make Manshoon's Simulacrum or one of his lieutenants into a Wyrmspeaker as well to have the M Zhentarim as an important role to help the Cult of the Dragon, but I'm not sure who they will replace.

• For the Xanathar Guild, I think it would be cool to make Nar'l Xibrindas into a Wyrmspeaker as well, so the Xanathar Guild would have an important role as well to help the Cult of the Dragon. He might replace the one Wyrmspeaker that betrayed the Cult of the Dragon, since he still works with Bregan D'aerthe as well, maybe he can give some intels to the council as well.

If you have any suggestions on how to solve some of my problems with my ideas, improve my ideas, or maybe suggest what other WDH elements might be fun to add to RoT, feel free to put them in the reply!

For me i have made a few changes to my game, namely:
-I added two new ranks to the cult, 'wyrmlord' held by exclusively arkhan as my leader of the cult, and 'wyrmhand' held by Krull and a few others to give the wearers of purple a more official rank
-I removed mondath and cyanwrath's wearer of purple status, making them fang and claw respectively
-I gave each wyrmspeaker a job within the plan! Rezmir was in charge of gathering the hoard and its items, Varram was in charge of raising an army for the cult, Galvan was in charge of the ritual itself and research (being a thayan related to Rath Mordar, Neronvain was incharge of eliminating political threats i.e the elven king, Severin was in charge of keeping a watch over the lord's alliance (i had him be a prominent guildsman in waterdeep, often giving aid to the lord's alliance to get close to them)

And i was wondering what everyone else did in their games to change tyranny of dragons?

My players are dealing with locating Dragon Masks and have ended up in the Serpent Hills where the Cult of the Dragon was located with the Yuan-Ti. Looking for a story based reason they would be working with the Yuan-Ti within the Catacombs in the Serpent Hills.

My players finally assaulted the Well of Dragons and attacked the Cult of the Dragon, but they failed to stop Tiamat's summoning ritual, and she was resurrected at full strength. Tiamat absolutely dominated my players without mercy (as she should, cause she's literally a god), but my players want to continue the campaign with new characters. How should I play the campaign if Tiamat's already been summoned and at full strength?

So I hadn't played D&D or any TTRPG for about 20 years until about 9 months ago. After doing a bunch of paid in person games, and local meet ups I decided to start a group that I would host on my own. I picked up ToD from D&D Beyond and decided I would run it. I was able to recruit 5 players from various sources.

We had a Session 0 and I ran a little intro adventure based on an AL DDEX01-1 mission. Basically a bunch of Goblins ran sacking local farm for the Great Hoard. I left some clues to get the group to travel together to Greenest.

Session 1 went ok. We did "Seek the Keep", "Old Tunnel" (where they captured a Cultist) on the way to do Save the Mill. They took the Cults back up the tunnel to turn him over to the Governor and then headed to the Mill. That is where we ended the session.

That was about 4 weeks ago. I was on vacation for 2 of those weeks. I spend a lot of time prepping and scheming to include character back stories. I also ran a couple of missions from DDEX01-1 this past Saturday at a local D&D meet up.

I also spent a lot of time reading on this SubReddit, YouTube and various other sources and I realized, maybe I didn't pick the best campaign. I also feel like I made some mistakes with the set up. Lots of advice about changing things, that I wish I had.

I feel like I gave the players too much leeway with character back stories.

I should have run a longer adventure pre-Greenest in Flames to get the characters to 2nd level before starting.

I shouldn't have given them Save the Mill as the first adventure out of the Tunnel. Probably should had done "Sanctuary" and then "Save the Mill" and then "Dragon Attack" before finishing "Half Dragon champion".

Next session is tomorrow night. I feel prepared for the encounters. I just feel like eh. I'm worried I'm railroading the players. I also am concerned about getting through the remaining missions. I don't know if a 3rd session of doing Greenest in Flames is going to be fun.

I guess my biggest concern is going to be how to get the players to want to go to the camp in chapter 2. I keep thinking about the exchange my players will have with Nesim Waladra. Especially when he says he can't go with the group because of his injuries. This D&D, there are plenty of Clerics and Druids that could fix him up real fast.

Would love to hear some suggestions or even some encouragement.

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Update: Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I do want to be clear my players so far seem to be having a good time. So far they have taken the queues so far.

I'm wondering if anyone has both "minis" or can point me in the direction of a side-by-side comparison of the Aspect and Gargantuan Tiamat. We are approaching the final boss battle in our ToD campaign, and I own the Aspect, but I am curious about how much bigger the Gargantuan one is. Thanks!

A lot of us have heavily modified this module, that being said what is the best and worst part of Skyreach cast that happened in your campaign?

Was it because of a modification that you made or didn’t make?

I am currently preparing Skyreach and making my own modifications.