Today I ran my first session in a duet campaign for 5e D&D. My player wanted to play an investigation-focused campaign, so I built an investigation based on one of the one-shots in the Defiance in Phlan Adventurers League module, where instead of being told the results of the investigation and being sent to the dungeon, the player gets to also do the investigation part.
The majority of the session was walking around town talking to people, in a way that would probably be less engaging for a full party, but is very fun for a single-player campaign, since the investigation is fully player-led.
A duet definitely takes a lot more out of me as a DM, since there's less break for me where the players just talk amongst themselves, but also because there's a lot less intraparty debate, things move along a lot faster than in a game with a full party.
No combat today, so no reports on balancing combat yet. My player is my regular table's Forever DM so I can't tell if what I ran was actually fun or if he was just so delighted to be a player for once that he would have had fun if his PC was placed on a railroad and watched paint dry for two hours.
So, ultimately, I'm cutting more of Lost Mine of Phandelver than I initially expected to from my Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign. Here's what I'm keeping. Spoilers for LMOP within.
One of the PCs is the son of the player's first 5e PC, who was also a gnome rogue who died to Venomfang in a LMOP campaign. This has pushed me to setting the events of LMOP in the not-too-distant past of my DOIP. However, I'd already planned to establish the area as magically and geologically very active, and in my version, there were a series of earthquakes in the region before LMOP could resolve. This left the area in a state such that: the Redbrands were defeated and the goblins in the area were not as ascendant as they had been. However, the location of Wave Echo Cave was never discovered by either the Black Spider or the residents of Embree aside from the Rockseeker brothers, who all died either in the earthquakes, or from the goblins.
This means that I'm keeping the maps of Castle Cragmaw and Wave Echo Cave as dungeons my party will enter as part of the story. They may also end up optionally traveling to a rekeyed Thundertree or Wyvern Tor. I may also keep the encounter with Agatha near Conyberry as a possible random encounter as well.
The remnants of the Cragmaw goblins will be encountered if the party partakes in my inclusion of the Havel's Cross one-shot as a sidequest, as they have nearly all relocated to elsewhere by now.
Ultimately, instead of my original plan, I've gone with a third option for running DOIP based on this edit suggested by u/bashamguy, which changes the white dragon to a storm dragon (blue dragon), and the majority of the Talos-worshipping orcs are the dragon's servants. I've renamed the dragon Rhitthinnar instead of keeping the more white-dragon-sounding name of Cryovain.
We were missing our Paladin for the first session, so I gave the party (Sorcerer, Barbarian, and Rogue) one of the sidekicks (Kwan, who I made into a celestial warlock) for their first quest to round out the party in case they went to the Dwarven Excavation. They chose to go to Umbrage Hill instead, where they were able to talk down the manticore attacking the midwife's house.
I feel pretty strongly about making clear that the Talos cult is a specific orc group, so I changed the midwife to an elderly orc woman named Adabraza, who worships a generic earth-mother type goddess. (I'm using a mis-mash of deities, and she worships something closest Greyhawk's Beory.)
Interestingly, I rolled for Rhitthinnar's location during this time, and he was in the region of where the paladin would have been, so at the start of the second session, when everyone ran into each other in the tavern back in Embree, the Paladin and a few of the other sidekicks (Gallandro and Talon) he'd been traveling with escorting a caravan from New Perlicam to Embree, were telling stories about the dragon they ran into on the road here.
The now assembled Level 2 party of Sorcerer, Barbarian, Rogue, and Paladin opted to check out the Dwarven excavation.
I seeded a couple of other dungeons here, by having the reason they needed to see the dwarves being that Harbin Wester wanted information on where the orcs may be based out of, and where the town could evacuate to in case of emergency. The orcs seeded both the Holyrood (The Shrine of Savras in the DOIP book as written) and the ruins of Castle Corvallis (Castle Cragmaw from LMOP, but completely rekeyed), so the party will probably be checking those out next instead of Gnomengarde.
The party made pretty short work of the ochre jellies, and the combats felt pretty good for the level they were at (although I staggered the two jellies in the temple room), but I think the Investigation/Perception DCs to find the secret rooms was a bit high for a low level party. If I were running it again and really thinking about it, I'd have the dwarves come in after the main temple jellies were taken care of and help the party case the place -- they've canonically already found one secret door, so if the party couldn't find them, I'd have the dwarves find them instead so they could explore more of the dungeon. (As is, I just let the party take 10 to eventually find the doors, since there's no real time crunch in this dungeon.)
Instead of having the dwarves have run from the jellies, I had an orc scout wander into the excavation, and the dwarves hide (down the hidden corridor they found), and the orc died to the jellies, as a bit of foreshadowing.
We stopped before the party completed the dungeon, so we're finishing it up next session.
Probably need to work on keying Castle Corvallis for Levels 2-3 before the next session in case the party finishes up early in the Excavation and heads back early before setting out for the Castle ruins. I've got a rough draft of a Level 3 key for it, but I may need to adjust things.
Anyway, things are a bit awkward but I think going mostly well so far.
I like the layout and vibe of the Dwarven Excavation, but really dislike how much of it is hidden behind DC 15 checks and would definitely alter it in the future.
Since both Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak take place in the same region in the Forgotten Realms, it's often recommended to run them together. However, doing so requires (at least in my opinion) some alterations to one or both adventures.
LMOP includes a young green dragon Venomfang in the ruins of Thundertree, while DOIP implies the whole region (including Thundertree) is now the territory of the young white dragon Cryovain, whose lair is in Icespire Hold. At the very least, in my opinion, you need to rid yourself of one of the dragons for combining the modules to make sense.
Option 1: Remove Thundertree
This is probably the easiest of your options. Thundertree is a completely optional dungeon, especially if you're using some of the quests in DOIP to fill out LMOP, so the players will have no trouble obtaining the amount of experience they need to continue the adventure.
The players can either gain the druid's trust another way, or find the locations of Cragmaw Castle or Wave Echo Cave in another way than being guided by the druid.
This also allows you, if you want, to completely drop the plot with the Dendrar family if you wish.
Option 2: Rekey Thundertree and Remove Venomfang
This is the second easiest option in my opinion, as it doesn't involve significantly changing either module, but merely rekeying a side quest dungeon.
To do this, you'll need to remove both Venomfang and the dragon cultists in Thundertree and replace it with something else.
This is the option I've been running with (despite really liking some other more complicated options), and I've put in some different cultists, who are working for a potential down-the-line bad guy. They're purposely trying to keep Thundertree corrupted, and there is a corrupted treant in the area to replace Venomfang.
You could do anything with Thundertree though, especially if you're trying to seed the adventure after the current one for your party.
Option 3: Keep Venomfang as written, remove Cryovain
So this is where you'd have to start re-writing the campaigns. This option prioritizes maintaining the plot as written in LMOP, but rewriting significant portions of DOIP.
If you go this route, you need to know why the orcs are leaving their old territory for the area near Phandalin, especially given the goblinoid activity in the area. The implication in DOIP is that the orcs were living in Icespire Hold, but were pushed out when Cryovain arrived and made it his lair. you could keep this basic concept, but then you'd need to replace what took over Icespire Hold with something or someone else.
This isn't necessarily a bad idea, since as-written, Icespire Hold is a bit of a letdown of a dungeon, but it involves more writing on your part as a DM.
Option 4: Keep Venomfang as your dragon, and also she's behind everything
One of the big complaints about both DOIP and LMOP is that the final bosses are something of a let-down. The Black Spider doesn't get built up nearly enough in LMOP, and isn't a particularly challenging encounter, and while Cryovain can certainly hassle the party long before they arrive in Icespire Hold, the dragon makes up very little of the module.
This rewrite (which I would like to run someday), removes the Black Spider, and Venomfang becomes the mastermind behind the Redbrand/Cragmaw alliance, something quite in-keeping for the typical green dragon.
The orcs could still have been pushed out of Icespire Hold by an unrelated threat, or it could be by a related one, or they could still occupy Icespire Hold, and the Talos cultists we meet in DOIP may also be working for Venomfang.
This version is definitely a bit beyond me as a new DM, but it's probably my favorite resolution to this issue, and to the finales of both LMOP and DOIP being a bit underwhelming as written.
Given that too many of my players follow my other social media, I’ve decided to start posting here about my thoughts, design ideas, module changes, and chronicling the campaigns I run.
I am new to running tabletop role-playing games, and will soon be starting my first real campaign. (D&D 5e, using an edited combination of Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mine of Phandelver.)
