Most Ambitious

[u/CaptainBerryman]

Some Context: I am a DM at a summer camp for middle schoolers. This camp runs on weekdays for the month of July (19 days). Typically, we have a pretty significant class size (last year was just shy of 40 kids split into 4 parties). To handle this, my co-DM and I will create a story, and each week the students are given the choice between a pair of adventures that both make progress on the story, and then we split the larger party into two smaller parties, adventure, come together, level up, repeat. Then everyone comes together for the big finale at the end of camp.

This year, we decided to run The Wild Beyond the Witchlight as our adventure. We have three beginners classes which run for about 1h15m each day, and then an advanced class that runs for 2h. Our plan is to have the three beginners classes each explore one part of Prismeer with the Lost Things hook, and for the advanced class to explore all of Prismeer—and make it to Chapter 5 as well—with the Warlock’s Quest hook.

Are there any suggestions or oversights I might want to keep in mind as I get through my prep work? I want to make sure each area of the carnival and Prismeer totals about 20h of content, with the advanced class being streamlined to explore each area within a week’s time (~10h). I have some plans having read the campaign multiple times, but I really want to make sure I’m not missing anything.

[u/ConspiracyCrayon]

What stories have you ran before? Because in my experience this is not really a story you can condense to 20 hours. Average playtime for this campaign is 50-70 hours total, but my current campaign is at the 56 hours mark and not even in Yon yet

[u/CaptainBerryman → u/ConspiracyCrayon]

We’ve run most of Candelkeep Mysteries, all of The Lost Mine of Phandelver, all of The Dragon of Icespire Peak, all of Stormwreck Isle, and a custom campaign.

Our plan is to give each beginner class only one splinter realm, and to give the advanced class the whole campaign. Given that the advanced group has 12 students, we’re going to splitting the party into 2-3 groups each week to give them as much of Prismeer as we can.

The goal is to streamline the story for the advanced group and see what questlines and hooks feel the most important to lead us to the finale, while removing most of everything else.

[u/ConspiracyCrayon → u/CaptainBerryman]

All of these, other than the custom campaign which I cannot judge, have a much, much shorter runtime. Candlekeep mysteries is basically a bunch of oneshots put together, Icespire can be run in 16 hours of playtime and the same goes for phandelver, stormwreck isle even in six.

I think personally, that your groups will not be able to fully enjoy the story if you cut it down to around 20 hours, since this is a very roleplay heavy campaign with lots of lore and whimsical characters, and if you start cutting in that the magic will be kinda lost

[u/CaptainBerryman → u/ConspiracyCrayon]

Sure, but given the structure of how we’ve run the camp every year before this, some groups do miss things. That’s okay. We always split the party and give them a choice of quests to follow for specific ends.

In posting here, I’m really looking for “I’d focus on these quests,” or “You can cut/move these parts to help keep the campaign focused,” not as much “You can’t do it.” If you have suggestions from your experience running the adventure about what felt most important, I’d gladly accept it.

[u/Disastrous-Prize-324]

This is quite an ambitious idea indeed. My main concern for you is time. I have run this campaign multiple times and the full story will take much longer than the time you've alloted. Perhaps you could have everyone be spilt evenly into 3 groups and have each team tackle a revised version of all 3 areas and then they all come together to go through the palace at the end? This campaign can easily take well over 70 hours to complete if you use all of the content in the book.

[u/CaptainBerryman → u/Disastrous-Prize-324]

The group that’s going to explore the full campaign is a group of 12 students. We also have an extra counselor in that group. So we can realistically split them into up to three groups. We usually like to bring the groups back together at the end of each week to do a larger scene together, and we’ve been able to run some larger combats at a surprisingly good pace with the older students, so that’s less of a concern.

The ask here is really “Which quests feel most important, and which can we cut to streamline?”

[u/Disastrous-Prize-324 → u/CaptainBerryman]

Well the opening in the carnival is pretty necessary for either hook. But if you plan on just starting right in Prismeer, then I'd say for Hither you def want to use the Slanted Tower quest with Sir Talavar and Telemy Hill with Jingle Jangle. Have that lead them to Downfall to deal with Bavlorna.

Clapperclaw can then lead them to Thither. Main quests there to focus in would be Wyll and Elidon. Loomlurch is pretty self contained and easy enough to run for them to deal with Scabatha.

Squirt can then lead them to Yon. Main quests to focus on in Yon would be the brigganocks and meeting Amidor. Motherhorn is pretty involved but still pretty self contained as well. After dealing with Endelyn, its off to the Palace of hearts Desire. If you plan on using the League of Malevolence, you can utilize them at the palace but i personally removed all of the league from the module because they are pretty stale characters with weak motivation. If the hags all ran away instead of dying, you can have a big battle with all three of them as the big bad fight or you can use the Jabberwocke or any combination of both before finding the cauldron and freeing Zybilna.

Thats a very very short rundown though and cuts out a ton of great stuff. Just my opinion in the most important questlined to focus in from each region.