LiquidAnalog's DM Guide to Hoard of the Dragon Queen

Introduction

Wow. I ran the Hoard of the Dragon Queen with a small group of experienced players as a level 1 campaign. This was a huge success – spanning about 40 sessions of chase and revenge. This guide is my take on how to run this brilliant adventure.

HOTDQ is not considered as one of the best 5E modules. Some critics consider it as one of the worst (if not the worst) of the 5th Edition campaign books. And indeed, as written it could be a justified verdict. There are several bad sections and omissions in the module that could easily derail the experience or even cause the players to abandon it completely.

I am unsure which is worst – completely missing a major chapter of the story (“you pass through Baldur’s Gate – get the info elsewhere”), or the part where the party is requested to spend 60 days in a caravan with a very detailed but completely irrelevant list of 20 NPCs. Those things must be fixed for this module to shine, as I show below.

This module demands a LOT from the DM running it. However, with careful tweaks that I will share here, this campaign is pure gold.

Many Thanks!

I conducted a LOT of research when preparing to and during the run of this campaign – and most of the ideas I used in my run have been adapted from the briliant DMs that kindly shared their experience on the web. I strongly recommend you also read through the ideas and analysis by those wonderful authors:

Sly Flourish – Great ideas for the entire campaign
Hack & Slash – Sharp and opinionated guide
Lutes and Dice – A great Youtube creator from Ukraine, with great insights on the campaign. Watch all of his HOTDQ episodes
Merric’s Musings
Power Score RPG

Overview of my modified campaign synopsis

I am going to get into each chapter in detail in the following sections, but I want to quickly outline the most important changes I recommend to introduce to the module.

This entire campaign is basically a huge chase story. From the shocking night of the attack on Greenest, the characters will try to figure out what this army is about, and as more information is revealed they will find themselves chasing the hoard across the map – only to find that each time they are one step behind. So for pacing, you need to make sure there are major challenges presented to the characters throughout the chase, and also introduce the intentional change of tone. Its impossible to maintain a sense of urgency and chase for tens of D&D evenings.

The module, as written, provides several stellar chapters – Greenest, the Raiders Camp and caves, Carnath roadhouse, Castle Naerytar, and Skyreach Castle – which are all gold. However the module falls flat on the biggest chunks in between.

Biggest Change

The biggest change I recommend is place the Carnath Roadhouse and the Swamp three days away from Baldur’s Gate. I think that traveling for 60 days to reach the Mere is the biggest design mistake in this module. The list of NPCs given for the ride is OK but means nothing for the rest of the story, and most of the episodes during this road-trip feel like filler material to me – definitely not contributing to the main storyline. Not to mention – the way the trip is written you have to pass close to Waterdeep – another huge city for the DM to describe (and god forbid if the players want to step in).

So where should we place the Mere? I chose the Trollclaws. This area has very little lore, so it does not bluntly step over any canon. And I never mentioned the swamp name, so not to override “The Mere of Dead Men” which stays put north of waterdeep.

Synopsis

So here is my suggested campaign synopsis. I elaborate on each episode below.

Greenest in Flames – This is pure gold. One minor but critical change: The characters start in Greenest when the attack commences.
The Raiders Camp – Excellent
The Caves and Dragon Hatchery – Excellent. Some thoughts about the egg
The road to Elturel – The heroes are actively chased – first by Frulam and her goblins, then by undead swarm (saved by the Elturel Companion)
Elturel – A festival is in progress! Forget your sorrows for two days. Competition, prizes and a major change of tone.
A boat ride to Baldur’s Gate – Exciting times! A rapids challenge, and an Ogre bridge encounter, before reaching Baldur’s Gate.
Baldur’s Gate – A major injection. Requires high detail and story. You need to allow the heroes to roam the streets, the shops, the gates, the inns – and interact with the city.
Baldur’s Gate Adventure: A Haunted house – A major injection: A mini-dungeon that is desperately needed here for complete change of tone. This mini adventure is here as means to gather a critical piece of information on Tiamat.
The Caravan to the Carnath Roadhouse – Here is the biggest change: it should take only three days. This also completely avoids the need to introduce a SECOND huge city (Waterdeep) in the party’s path. I placed the Carnath Roadhouse near the Trollclaw Ford at The Trollclaws, and the mere at the northern part of the the TrollClaws. More on that below.
Carnath Roadhouse – The episode itself is great as is.
The Mere and Castle Naerytar – This chapter is brilliant as written.
The Hunting Lodge – Trim this chapter completely. Ignore it and have the trail lead directly to Parnast.
Skyreach Castle – Cut unneeded NPCs, but otherwise this is a brilliant conclusion to this grand campaign. The big reveals, and the epic battle that the heroes have been waiting for to conclude the story in a bang.