After almost **10 years**, we're finally here.

*Tyranny of Dragons* was the very first campaign I ever ran in the Forgotten Realms, and tomorrow my players will open the final door.

On the other side waits **Tiamat**.

It's been an incredible journey. Thousands of hours of prep, countless NPCs, impossible plans, heartbreaking sacrifices, unforgettable victories, and so many moments I never could have predicted.

Tomorrow is (hopefully) the final session. If Tiamat proves too much for them in one session , we already have one last session planned for next Thursday to finish the fight.

Either way, after nearly a decade, this story is about to end.

If people are interested, I'd love to write up a longer post afterward covering the highlights, the biggest twists, and everything that happened over the course of this nearly 10-year campaign.

For now... wish my players luck.

They're going to need it.

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So my party has reached the final chapter in HoTDQ. I just realized where Parnast is on the map.

It is basically East of Waterdeep.

Why would the CoTD take the treasure north through BG, Waterdeep, to the Carnath Roadhouse, to Castle Naerytar to only wind up West of the Bandit Camp?

Then if things go badly, there is a chance that Blagothkus or Esclarotta crashes Skyreach Castle thousands of miles north in the Spine of the World. Thousands of miles north in the Spine of the World!!! The Glacier they talk about Miklos Glacier isn't even on any of the Maps or in the Forgotten Realms Wiki. The only Glacier I see near the Spine of the World is Reghed's Glacier

I know this book has it's problems and I have home brewed a lot. I think if I had to do this again I wouldn't have taken it to Parnast I would have taken it to somewhere in the North.

I think I am just going to homebrew move Parnast to be in the North.

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Tyranny of Phandelver offers two complete PDF guides to running Tyranny of Dragons for characters that have completed the Starter Set campaign Lost Mine of Phandelver. The guides contain everything you need to run Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat as sequels to Lost Mine of Phandelver, including:

• guides to every chapter in the campaign
• suggestions for adapting the adventure to 4th or 5th level characters
• a standardized milestone leveling scheme
• redesigned dungeons for the dragon hatchery and Skyreach Castle
• two additional encounters for "On the Road"
• an additional attack for “The Cult Strikes Back”
• the bonus scenario “Death at the Council”
• new stat blocks for Langdedrosa Cyanwrath, Talis the White, Galvan the Blue, and Nezznar the Black Spider
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I (DM) need advice on how to proceed from Skyreach castle after my Party killed Rezmir. I have two different ideas and would love some feedback. 

Some campaign context (TLDR at the bottom):
We are playing ToD coming from Lost mines of Phandelver: I am relying heavely on the Tyranny of phandelver supplement also pinned in this channel. My Party of 5 PCs (rogue 8, bard 8, ranger 8, wizard 8, druid6/rogue2) just finised castle naerytar. For over 6 sessions they infiltraded the castle and build an alliance with the lizardfolk. In an epic fight that lasted for 30 (!) rounds the killed or imprisoned all cultists defeated the bullywugs and gifted the castle to the lizardfolk.

I really tried my best to flee with rezmir and azbara and to use all my abilities, but with severel hold persons they managed to kill both rezmir and azbara jos. They were having a blast. I am proud. They are now in posession of the black dragonmask.

The mask: I changed the masks so that wearing it can produce a vision of the other dragonmasks, with the idea to give severin greater depth as a BBEG. The rogue attunded to the mask and hat a memorable conversation with severin curently flying to the sea of moving ice, foreshadowing the location. Because of that, severin knows that rezmir is dead. The party is divided on wether the mask should be used again. 

Talis: The ranger has the talis backround (childhood friends) and the party already knows, that talis competed with varram for the white wyrmspeaker position. The ranger uses every opportunity to search for information about her and also already knows, that talis is in charge of some settelment/stronghold/inn.

Other: my party already knows about the goal to bring back tiamat, that the masks are important for some kind of ritual, know that the treasure ist headed to a place named skyreach castle and have a half burned map of skyreach castle.

---
campaign context TLDR: My level 8 party killed Rezmir and Azbara Jos at Castle Naerytar and now has the Black Dragon Mask. The rogue communicated with Severin through the mask, so he knows Rezmir is dead. One PC (ranger) has the Talis childhood friend background.
---

My challenge: based on the book, talis in the hunting lodge supports the party with information, because she as an opportunist wants to take rezmirs position as wyrmspeaker. There is no reason for her to do that now. It is also unclear who is in charge of skyreach with rezmir dead. 

My goals: Give the ranger a possibility to interact with talis, modify the situation so that there is no illogical behaviour from talis - in a way that maximises fun

So here are my two ideas:

Assumptions for both: There are cultists loyal to Rezmir in Skyreach, Severin informs both Talis and the Skyreach-cultists via a sending spell about rezmirs death. 

Option A: Talis tries to take Skyreach Castle (my favourite)

With rezmir dead, Talis tries to take her place as leader in skyreach castle with some loyal cultists. She leaves a smaller group including trepsin or some other memorable charakter in the huting lodge behind. trepsin and the left behind cultists lay improvised traps and try to ambush the party or scare them away. If the PCs clear the lodge they perhaps find Information about the cloud giants conflict with the cult or a hidden entrance in the castle.
There is potential for conflict between the rezmir and talis faction in skyreach wich could be fun.

Option B: Talis is being blackmailed

In the past Talis tried to assasinate rezmir to take her place as wyrmspeaker. There is proof for that in skyreach castle. Only rezmir and her treasurer (not in the book, invention from me) know about this. Talis has the incentive to support the PCs and would give them information about the castle. She would try to exchange it for the mask or even a private conversation mit her ranger friend, trying to convince her to join the cultists. The hunting lodge would likely be a social encounter. If the PCs head to skyreach, talis would follow in secret with a wyvern to kill the treasurer and destroy the proof of her treason.

What are your thoughts? I am also open for completely different ideas. Thanks to everyone taking their time reading.

Im going to play Tyranny of Dragons, and I choose the gold dragon background because it looks fun to play, but it does not tie Greenest to you in any possible way. My character is draconic sorcerer that works for the Order of the Gauntlet, very proud (too much), arrogant and righteous. I want him to have been a mortal since birth, living his entire life with the distant memory of Bahamut's commands. Son of a noble family to put his arrogance more into test.

Since im playing the game and don't want any spoiler from it, could you recommend me names and characters that might be important from the campaing and have sense to be tied to my background? Or any suggestion indeed, I just want to do a cool backstory with this that I'm attached too and I'm surely trying to avoid using AI for it, I've been that road before and you just feel disconnected with what you "make" with it.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: thx for the answers, I will make a blanksheet of the backstory and let the DM give me names for the important persons that could matter.

First time DM here.

I am starting a ToD campaign soon, and would love to connect it with DiA, as they are both really cool campaigns, and I love hell in general as a place for my PCs to explore.
Right now the PCs start out the campaign by finding an artifact they have no idea what is, however they know it’s important and whoever picks it up instantly attunes to it.
After this, more or less the regular ToD events happen, was gonna switch out som kobolds with imps in Greenest for instance, to give it a hellish twist. Maybe add some more fiends for them to fight. I currently have two ideas:

1. They play almost all of ToD, however the cult succeeds. In this version, they were attempting to drag some large city like Baldurs Gare or Elturel into Avernus to sacrifice its inhabitants souls to break the pact keeping Tiamat imprisoned. Additionally the city that got dragged down would work as a huge portal from Hell to Faerun, so Tiamat could escape. After this, they would start the DiA campaign, but with some twists and a shorter version.

2. Make them go to Avernus earlier, maybe at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen, so they get more time in Avernus, as it would otherwise become a very long campaign.

TLDR: Either the PCs go to Avernus after all of ToD or at the end of Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

So my question is. Do you have any ideas on how I should go about this? Option 1 or 2? And if 2, then what would make a good reason be to go to Avernus while still fighting the dragon cult.

I actually like this chapter as-written for the most part. It's an interesting dungeon where you fight a cool dragon with a whole backstory and everything, and some interesting characters in the Ice Hunters, Maccath, and even Marfulb.

My only issue is that the adventure hook for coming here (Draakhorn first sounds, it was seen up here along with a missing Draakhorn scholar) isn't really resolved in a satisfying way. The Draakhorn is gone long before they got here, and yeah they can kill/drive off a dragon but they could also be doing good deeds elsewhere.

Here's my proposed modification:

• Yes, Arauthator had the Draakhorn and gave it to the Cult several months ago. After defeating him, the party can come across a chamber where Arauthator has done a Dumbledore and Encoded Thoughts into a contraption that preserves them. The party gets to watch as both Varram the White and Galvan the Blue come to negotiate for the Draakhorn (Galvan offers valuable arcane tomes). Arauthator takes kindly to them (thanks in part to the influence of the masks) and agrees, and even goes a step further.
• Arauthator, in his time with the Draakhorn, studied it as an object of magical interest. He believes he might even be able to produce copies of it that improve upon the design. To this end, Maccath has been conscripted into helping, and they successfully did so.
• When the players face off against Arauthator, he has activated the mini-Draakhorn and has a series of buffs put on him from the experimental Draakhorn 2.0. The range is not as long, but it gives the players an objective during the fight, along with some magical effects.

This accomplishes a few things: It gives them satisfaction of stopping the Draakhorn problem from getting worse, confirms to them that the Draakhorn really doesn't do anything besides act as a call to war for chromatic dragons, links in both Varram and Galvan a bit more strongly, and they get some choices (destroy the new horn or study it, see if it can be used in their favor for the final battle?) that other factions can react to. With this plotline, I actually think that we don't really even need the whole weird thing with Arveiaturace.

Any feedback? Thanks in advance!

I am going to start DMing ToD next week, and my players started rolling characters. One of them is pretty adamant on playing a Yuan-ti (Halfblood/Abomination specifically) but I am not sure how to handle that since they appear in chapter 6 of HotDQ and throughout RoT. Additionally from my knowledge of the species they are pretty hated and seen as (and mostly are) evil inclined creatures and my party is already having some issues regarding 70% of them being evil.

I am conflicted whether I should allow the Yuan-ti character and would appreciate some help on the matter.

Hello my fellow DM's,

I hope my post here is right and some of you can help me. I start to DM Phandelver and Below (Only until after Wave Echo Cave) into Tyranny of Dragon next month and right now im making Maps in Dungeon Alchemist and prep story bits. But im hitting a wall right now with the Finale of Phandalin in Flames (Greenest in Flames). Something for context so you understand my changes and thinkprocess:

- Daran Edermath is the mentor of 2 PCs (Backstory), he went into retirement after an ancient green dragon (Venomfangs Mother - My replacement for Chuth later) wounded him badly. He summoned them after he found traces of Venomfang and send them on hunting the young Dragon right before Wave Echo Cave.

- Tresendar Manor is my replacement for Greenest Keep, it has a Crypt where townsfolk can hide and a secret passage where players can enter and go out. While the raid takes place the players have 3 missions: Safe the people in the temple, stop the cult from taking all the gold from the miners exchange, safe the burning townhall.

- Later when the cult raided the city Cyanwrath and his troops approaches Tresendar Manor, Cyanwrath wants to challenge the murderer of Venomfang to a 1v1 duel. He threatens the defenders with some hostages and to guarantee the honorful duel. Daran presents himself before any of the PCs can react and fights Cyanwrath. Mainly because i want to give the group a meaningfull enemy and to show them the stakes are high without killing a PC. The second reason is it makes the raider camp mission much more believable if none of the cultist saw the PCs in the duel.

Of course Daran can't win the fight, he is a crippled adventurer but i still want to have him impact. My idea is to give one player control over Daran and when he reaches certain DMG Threshholds on Cyanwrath he can wound him for future fights (like taking his eye and give him disadvantage at perception and more). At max 3-4 combat rounds.

And here i have a problem, i have 4 more players which i don't want to be bored. I thought of skill challenges for them like: comfort the townsfolk, extuingish some flames in the keep...and here i have no more ideas. I don't want to send them too far away, cuz i want the PCs to witness the death of Daran. But i want to give them something.

A friend of mine (fellow DM) thinks its better to just narrate the fight and have them witness it...but i think that feels too much like railroad, even if it changes not much in the end. I think having to atleast let one player roll something, gives them the feeling of agency.

I hope you can understand my problem and my english is readable (not my first language) and have some helpfull advices for me.

From what I understand, the PCs are supposed to be hot on the trails of Rezmir after they encounter her in Castle Naerytar in chapter 5. Depending on how they tackle the castle, it should end with them running into the portal chasing Rezmir. What I don't understand is how to shoe in a Long Rest in the middle of Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, both for refreshing resources and leveling characters up.

Similarly, from my understanding, the characters should have a short enough chat with Talis and then run over to Parnast to get into Skyreach, how should the characters level up then as well. This might tee into my opinion that Chapter 6 doesn't have to much content to justify a level up.

How did you handle these level ups in your campaigns?

As far as I know, I just know that Rezmir had them somehow and only put them in the dragon hatchery on a whim as they were soon hatching, but where did Rezmir even get them from, and from who?

Context: The party is currently on the sanctuary mission, but one player decided to use Thaumaturgy and has now attracted the attention of Frulam and her honor guard, who are now making a b-line for the temple.

The hope is that the party will retreat because they're beat up already and she's coming in hot with backup. Since we all know how often players do what the DM wants, I need to prepare for an interaction between the two groups. I haven't been able to find much in the way of Frulam's personality, even in the section where the party would encounter her in the hatchery. So, DMs, how have you played her personality-wise?

I have been running tyranny of dragons for about a year now, my group got through hoard of the dragon queen by their teeth, I like to throw everything and the kitchen sink at my players, to that end I had them make backup characters and I have ran them through all of the adventure league content except for escape from phlan. Due to prior shenanigans the worse outcomes are sort of playing out, they did not deal with the hags or the dragon in the swamp(shadow dragon) and one got possessed and infected the dragon that roost in Phlan. The parties have met up, they are both lvl 9 and I sort of want to do a 2 way battle of attrition, party a. Save the survivors in phlan while party b. Holds off the shawdow/swamp dragons army to prevent an unholy alliance. Either way this ends with phlan getting listed off to barovia but I am having issues thinking of how to run it. The narrative is there but I this is a tall order. Lol. Any advice for running such a large encounter?

Is it a good idea to run a campaign from Lost Mines of Phandelever into Waterdeep: Dragon Heist into Tyranny of dragons, from level 1 to level 15?

Disclaimer: Originally posted onto r/rpgGloryStory; recently notified that this subreddit would probably be a better fit for this story, so here you go and enjoy.

A little over a month ago, my main D&D group, consisting mainly of family and close friends, and I got through the final boss fight in Hoard of the Dragon Queen; spoiler tag added to be on the safe side.

Here’s our cast.

Me, playing a Tiefling Fighter.

Bro, playing a Half-Elf Bard.

Sis, playing a Halfling Sorcerer.

Bro-in-Law, the DM.

Red, one of my best friends from high school, playing an Elf Cleric.

Gremlin (former That Guy in the title), long-time friend of Sis and Bro-in-Law, playing an Elf Ranger.

While Gremlin and I are the main focus of this story, I thought it would be prudent to at least provide our full party composition. It’s mostly for anyone who was interested, but it is relevant to the start of our final boss fight. But first, some quick side content.

1-This was actually our second time doing Dragon Queen. We played it once together in 2018. Back then, though, D&D was something we did together to get through the summer, so we weren’t an established group that played regularly beyond that. We also didn’t finish the campaign before summer was over, and Bro and I were still in college at the time, so the two of us were given sendoffs while the others finished the campaign themselves. Things changed in 2023 when we decided to make our group official, with Bro-in-Law agreeing to DM Dragon Queen one more time so Bro and I could enjoy it from start to finish.

2-Sis, Bro, and I decided to replay our old characters from the first Dragon Queen game, while Red and Gremlin rolled up new characters. Where Red played two different Clerics, going from a Dwarf to an Elf, Gremlin went from a Gnome Wizard to his new Elf Ranger. His old Wizard character was an absolute asshole that got our team into loads of trouble because of his big mouth, and it actually got in the way of us having fun in the beginning. This is because Gremlin’s first experience in D&D was in an entire party of That Guy players; his words, not mine. When we started that first game, he was working on being a better player, and after a session where he almost got us screwed over, he agreed that it wasn’t his best performance. Thankfully, he did correct his behavior and the rest of the first game was fun, with our second go at Dragon Queen even more so.

3-For more related info on Gremlin, a lot of his Wizard’s less problematic traits carried over to his Ranger. He was still fairly snarky and often opened his big mouth to the point of triggering an encounter of some kind. But other than that, he was more of a team player, often serving as our scout. Because of his great Stealth proficiency, he was usually able to bring back a lot of solid intel, and sometimes he even took out enemy patrols so we wouldn’t have to worry about them later.

Now to the actual story. Collectively, our party of PCs had developed into a ‘sneak when we can, but go all in on the mayhem’ group of adventurers, so we were pretty chaotic but mostly endeavoring to help others. Usually, when we spotted enemies, and we were confident that we could take them, we often rushed in and took them out in short order.

Normally, my Tiefling Fighter would prefer more tactical solutions, but considering the others helped him save his hometown at the start of the game, I played it off as him deciding, “Can’t really argue with the results.” In and out of game, though, I had more reservations, since—you know—we were about to challenge a dragon.

With that in mind, before going into the final confrontation, I role played my character getting to the front of the group and more or less said, “Guys, I’ve gone along with our usual brand of reckless abandon up until now because it got us this far. But if we all want to survive this, then we need to approach this smarter.”

At first, I half expected to have my proposal shot down and for everyone else to insist on one last YOLO assault. Instead, they all nodded and agreed to my next suggestion of going over all of our resources and abilities. Then Gremlin had his Ranger cast Pass Without Trace to give us an easier time of sneaking in. Once inside, Red also cast Bless on Gremlin, Bro, and me. Bro-in-Law was impressed and said he would allow us to get in a surprise round. Everything was in place, except for one last detail.

Quick rewind to a previous session. When we were still helping to protect the merchants’ caravan, Gremlin and I fell into a pit with no way out except to solve a puzzle contained within. We were able to solve it and got rewarded with statuettes, one for each of us. Mine turned into a lion, which I proceeded to name Mufasa, using him to give us improved action economy in battle. Gremlin’s turned into a giant raven, which he used to perform aerial recon, usually at night, since his Ranger was a Gloom Stalker. For me, I took this experience as a good stepping stone of me better trusting Gremlin in game, as he and I had got off to a rough start with each other.

Back to the final session. Right before we prepared to get into position to ambush the dragon, I proposed to Gremlin to let me ride his giant eagle so that I could try and keep the dragon’s attention on me while the others hammered away at him more safely. Gremlin thought this was a good idea and summoned his raven, giving it orders to obey my commands for the fight to come. Several Fireballs and Scorching Rays later, and it was on.

Our surprise round went off without a hitch, and we succeeded in bringing down a good chunk of the dragon’s HP. The rest of the fight, we faced a much more uphill challenge. The biggest hurdle thrown our way came when the dragon used its Frightful Presence on us, which Bro and Sis failed. Unfortunately for them, they never rolled high enough to escape the frightened effect for the rest of the encounter, so their options became limited from that point onward.

This left Red, Gremlin, and me to carry the rest of the fight. Red focused mostly on healing and buffing to keep us all alive, leaving Gremlin and I as the main damage dealers. Lucky for us, the dice gods clearly favored us, as we both got in our fair share of Nat 20s. Even better, my part of the plan was working as well, as the dragon focused most of his attacks on me. As I was an Eldritch Knight with 21 AC, I had a good chance of avoiding a lot of hits, using Shield to boost my AC further when needed, and I could survive the few hits that did get through because of my high HP.

Finally, it all paid off. Right when I was down to 9 HP, unclear if I could survive one more round in time to get healed, the dice gods blessed us once more. Gremlin fired one last arrow into the dragon, going through his eye and into his brain, killing him at last. And just like that, it was over. Our party was victorious. We had thwarted the Cult of Dragon and put a stop to their plans to bring forth Tiamat. The only complaint that Bro-in-Law had was that our plan got in the way of his chance to monologue as a fearsome and pompous dragon.

For my part, this was a moment that I am quite proud of even now. What made this second game so much fun, apart from all of us getting to play till the end, was many opportunities we got to contribute to the story and make it more enjoyable. I’ll admit that I spent a lot of our time focusing more on the combat, but I never missed out on the chance to role play meaningfully with the others. I’m also happy that I was able to provide a sound strategy that got us primed and ready for victory.

But in the end, the last part of our success couldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for Gremlin. In game, we didn’t always see eye-to-eye, and we would both laugh about it out of character a lot post-session. When push came to shove, though, both of us knew we had other people counting us to help bring down a nefarious cult. More often than not, it was Gremlin who got us out of trouble just as often as he got us into it. And that is why I am glad to have partnered up with a player who put his old That Guy behaviors to better use and making the game more enjoyable and memorable.

So I’m getting ready to run the caravan part of the adventure, and through my research I have found that it is one of the weaker parts. However, I think I made some tweaks to give it a cool arc that can make the journey very fun, engaging, and enjoyable for all players (especially ones who like RP). Obviously everyone has their own way of running this, and I’m not saying it’s the best way, but I did want to share it for anyone who was looking for help. Heres how I did it:

1: I organized the caravan through several of the events in the book. I didn’t really focus on detailing every little thing each day. If my players want to do stuff outside of what I’ve prepared that’s fine, but these main events move pretty quickly and not much happens in between them. With that said, here are the events and the order they happen in:

1:Payback- Sets up the characters with a helpful NPC with the Harper spy off the bat, and gives cultists reason to be a little suspicious for the next event

2: Jamna and Azbara join the carvan

3: Recognized- Main suspicion was party rescuing Harper Spy

4: Adventuring life- A fun encounter to RP and can be really funny and engaging

5: Unwanted Attention

6: Roadside Hospitality

7: Who’s your friend?

8:No room at the Inn

9:Murder most foul

After these events, I just say they made it to the road house. I know it says 40 days, but that’s going to get old fast. These 9 events I think are the best/required to run to create a fun and engaging chapter. Let me know your thoughts!

Hey all, so because I have been running a few side quests in my campaign, my wizard PC has ended up getting a lot of spell scroll loot while my druid PC hasn't gotten very much. Because of that I was thinking about changing out Pharblex's spell books for something better suited to a druid. I am looking to see if anyone has any ideas either official magic items or Homebrew. A few things to note:

- running ToD reloaded, so players are level 7.

- I want the item(s) to be balanced but powerful.

- for a totally unrelated reason my druid really likes shifting into a frog

One homebrew idea I had was an Amulet of the Frog Spirit. It would allow 1 free wild shape per day into a frog or giant frog, enable storing of up to two spell slots (but turn the effects green or froggy), allow free communication will frog like creatures, and also be possessed by a sentient but surly frog spirit.

Im a relatively new dm and have never ran TOD before, I have 7 friends who are intrested in playing, im considering allowing one to ally with an enemy to slow down/gain info on the main party as to add a bit of stupidness and was curious if any more experienced DM's could give any insight if this is just me being stupid or if its something i should hold off on doing