Review copy and images courtesy of
Wizards of the Coast.
Pros:
- Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition)
- Variety in locations and types of encounters
- Chapter 1 is released for free on the Dungeon Masters Guild at http://www.dmsguild.com/product/189150/DDIA05-Storm-Kings-Thunder-A-Great-Upheaveal-5e
- Plenty of characters to role-play as a Dungeon Master
- Some very nice and interesting encounters
- Layout of adventure is extremely easy to follow thanks to an adventure outline and an alphabetically ordered list of characters
- 256 pages long
- Many of the characters in the adventure have ideals, flaws and bonds presented
Could Go Either Way:
- No new player options (since I run a lot of homebrew games, I prefer to make new player options myself)
- It's not as atmospheric as Rage of Demons or Curse of Strahd.
- Adventure is open-ended and requires serious Dungeon Master preparation (for those who like the control, it's a massive pro)
- By design it appears that roughly 1/5th of the adventure by page count (50-60 pages) can be bypassed as a result of the branching structure of the adventure (this is offset by having no player options, meaning there is simply more adventure than Princes of the Apocalypse). The book, removing the introduction and appendices, is 212 pages long (removing the 50-60 pages leaves us with roughly 150 pages of adventure). 55 more pages are taken up by describing the setting location.
- Milestone leveling is heavily emphasized (I don't think the XP values will work well)
- Giants (if you think giants are meh enemies, you won't like it)
Cons:
- The story ending seems ... odd ... possibly (look in the adventure itself section for details)
- You'll need the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide to run the adventure (no more supplement PDFs)
- The bindings might be off (my copy is pretty good but it isn't as good as my copy of Curse of Strahd)
- No PDF version*
- No included grids*
* Denotes nitpicking. I
say this every time.
 |
| The cover of Storm King's Thunder. |
Introduction
On
September 6th,
2016, a brand new adventure called Storm
King's Thunder
was released by Wizards of the Coast.
This time the focus is on giants, with a splash of dragons and
politics. I'm a bit late with my review again, but hopefully someone
finds it useful. As of writing this, I've read the book cover to
cover, run the first chapter (available for free here)
and started on chapter 2.
I
think there is fun to be had in Storm
King's Thunder
and that there is some good art (as we've come to expect), though as
always there is some I don't care for much. The adventure has some
very interesting encounters in my opinion. However, the adventure
doesn't have the same urgency as some of the others already released.
It also isn't as atmospheric as the last couple of adventures that
were released. The adventure also has a lot of material that may not
be used at all due to the flow of the adventures and the choices
presented. The overall flow, however, is very well presented. I'd
like to see similar flow diagrams and alphabetically ordered lists of
characters in adventures going forward (if you can't fit it into the
book, shove it on the website).
The Adventure
New Player Options
There is not much here.
There are some new magic items. That's it. There are no new
backgrounds, no new spells, and there are no class options. It may be
the smallest amount in an adventure to date. I prefer it this way so
it didn't bother me. I prefer to make my own player options. That
way, I vet it all and clearly approve of the options. It also lets me
make sure it works well with what I'm trying to bring to life. If you
want more options like some of the other adventures had, you'll be
disappointed.
New Monsters
We
Dungeon Masters get a few more monsters. We also get some new options
for giants to make them a little more interesting to fight and a
little more varied. In many places, existing stat blocks are modified
instead of creating new creatures. I like this generally, but I think
we'll need a collection for this kind of thing eventually (otherwise
you'll need to consult a lot of adventure books for monsters or just
remaking existing monsters which results in inconsistency).
What You Need to Play
The Monster Manual,
Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide are
referenced at the start of the adventure. If
you wanted to use the basic rules and/or the SRD, you are out of
luck. Tables from the Dungeon Master's Guide
are often used in order to make magic items random in the adventure.
These tables aren't present in the adventure or in the SRD, so you'd
need to make things up yourself. Without having seen the tables and
generally knowing what's on them, you run the risk of giving items
too powerful or too weak. There are multiple monsters that are not in
either source as well (the number is reduced if you use the Hoard
of the Dragon Queen and Princes
of the Apocalypse supplements).
I counted as I went through. There are 16 creatures missing if you
don't use the supplements and 8 if you do. You might be able to get
away with house ruling if you are a D&D veteran (not knowing what
the creature is suppose to be puts you at a disadvantage) but
otherwise you'll run into a few problematic encounters.
 |
| Art example of a Northlander longship from Storm King's Thunder. It's one of my favourites. |
The Adventure Itself
The first chapter of the adventure is available for free on the DMs Guild. However, it's the kind of chapter that was
previously put into the appendix section (like Death House in
Curse of Strahd) of the adventure and is meant to get players
to the proper level for the real meat of the adventure. In this case, the level they are trying to get the players to is level 5 (so that they can stand a chance against the giants). The real cool
parts of the adventure are how all the different groups in Nightsone
(globins, orcs, Zhentarim and elves) interact with the players and
the possibility of forming uneasy temporary alliances. The presence
of the settlement walls also allow for gameplay reminiscent of a
siege. The settlement map is also nice and very reusable. If you want
to run your own campaign and don't have many maps, it makes for a
very nice generic settlement. It really is heavily based around
milestone leveling though. The jump to 4th and 5th
level in particular don't work if XP is used because there just isn't
enough there from combat alone. You can add story reward XP to make
up the difference but in that case you are just doing milestone
leveling in a more roundabout way.
The organization of the adventure is extremely clear thanks to the
alphabetically ordered list of characters called the “Dramatis
Personae” and the high level diagram that shows how the chapters
fit together in the scope of the adventure. Details on when the
characters should gain levels is also in one easy to reference place
at the end of the adventure. It continues the use of bold to make
creatures stand out on the page (to make stats easy to look up) and
provides references to the appendix when it's a new creature. The
wandering monster tables are also nicely done and often cover more
than one area at once by using multiple columns. As a result, all of
the wandering monsters are in one place. Locations also have a roster
of all the monsters in an area as well as their actions if some
conditions take place (usually it has to do with the creatures being
put on alert). All of this together makes it easy to reference
particular characters, know the general flow of the story, and know
which monsters are needed for an encounter.
The adventure has many difficult encounters. In the introduction, the
adventure goes out of its way to say that many of the encounters are
designed to be deadly. One of them in chapter 2 could have the
characters, with some backup from the locals of the town they are in,
face off against 3 frost giants and 2 winter wolves at level 5. There
is a gate that makes things more even, but considering that a frost
giant is a challenge rating 8 creature, it's a tough fight. There are
many similar encounters in other parts of the adventure (this is one
of the more extreme examples) which help test the players but also
give them a way to win. Running is a valid option and planning is
important to make sure too many giants aren't encountered at the same
time.
The encounters are usually described well and give multiple avenues
for players. However, we continue the stealth confusion where in some
cases a group stealth check is used and in others an individual
stealth check is used. There are some encounters where I felt a few
more details could have been helpful in order to have a better idea
of what the authors had in mind (the frost giant encounter I
mentioned above) but overall they are done well. There is enough to
quite easily fill in the gaps of what's missing. However, gaps will
need to be filled and preparation time will be important. Even
excluding that, many of the dungeons and encounters have many moving
parts that the Dungeon Master should be aware of. There will also be
quite a lot of overland travel and possible random encounters. These
need special planning and handling from the Dungeon Master to be
compelling.
The adventure provides a great variety of locations (castles in the
sky, underwater partially flooded castles, regular castles, dwarven
cities, frozen terrain, open sea exploration, etc.), characters and
opportunities to role-play. The different types of giants make it
easy to have all kinds of different situations, environments and
enemies. It's a small detail, but I liked that there were many cases
where names for the creatures were provided when it would have been
easy to just say “a goblin”. It doesn't happen every time but I
did appreciate when it was done. The airship was also a nice addition
that gives the situation a very different feel and allows for
different situations.
There is a section in this adventure giving suggestions on how to
combine it with other published adventures (except Curse of
Strahd). Doing so replaces the free chapter 1 section. To me it
seems that the Lost Mine of Phandelver would work best because
it ends at the correct level. It doesn't really introduce the players
to the conflict and symptoms of what's going on the same as chapter 1
does. Instead, it ends up acting more like a sequel to Lost Mine
of Phandelver. The other adventures have very serious problems
that won't go away (such as demon lords) that just seem like bigger
problems in comparison. Still, having some suggestions for how tie
the adventures together is appreciated.
Up until now, it was common to have the adventure also function as a
mini-supplement. In Out of the Abyss we got the underdark. In
Curse of Strahd we got Barovia. This time around, we get the
Savage Frontier in the north. A good 55 pages are used to describe
the different places and characters within them. Some of them could
be used to run their own one-shot adventures with ease (the 4 wight
brothers are a personal favourite). Since the Sword Coast
Advenurer's Guide was released earlier, there are some mentions
to that book. Some of the locations overlap so extra details are
provided in that book. I don't think you need that book and
that you can do without it, but it is referenced.
The Story and Issues (SPOILERS)
The big picture story is that the caste system of the giants, the
ordening, has been broken for some reason. Now, giants are vying to
have their type of giant elevated to the top. At the same time King
Hekaton, arguably most powerful of storm giants (the most powerful
giant type as confirmed by the SRD), has gone missing.
The story has some issues, though it can still be run as it is quite
easily. Some of the characters, in particular the daughters of the
Storm Giant King, would have benefited by being expanded upon
(luckily we Dungeon Masters can do that ourselves pretty well).
When we get King Hekaton back and wrap things up, the ordening isn't
necessarily restored (though the adventure does suggest that is a
potential ending). If it's not, can Hekaton rein in the badly
behaving giants? If he can, then we don't need to come back to finish
off all of the misbehaving giant lords. All he needs to do is say
“here I am” and it's done. It also would seem odd to go and
finish off the giant lords before going on to the conclusion from a
story perspective. From a level perspective, it makes sense (the
players would gain levels and have a better chance of surviving the
climax of the adventure). I'd imagine that Hekaton would love some
revenge right about then and wouldn't love the idea of waiting. As a
result, a good portion portion of the book will probably be bypassed.
This is offset by having no player options contributing to the length
of the adventure. Naturally, unused sequences can be recycled in
future campaigns and sessions.
 |
| A piece of art of the Morkoth, a ship featured in Storm King's Thunder. |
The Art and Book Build Quality
The art is what we are
used to in this edition. There is
still a variety in the art and art styles. As usual some are worse
than others but in general it was well done and measures up to what
we are used to. There are also 3 two page spreads in the book, one of
which is a map. Most of the maps are drawn to look like a real aged
and worn parchment map. They have a nice sketch style to them where
they look accurate but not all of the details are presented. You also
clearly get the impression that you are looking at a drawing, though
a very good one. A few of them break this style, however, and I
typically found these to be some of the weakest (about 3 of the maps
I found to have far less of a wow factor because of this change in
style). Unfortunately, this includes the final combat encounter.
Within the real aged style there are 2 different aesthetics which
tended to focus on two different locations in the adventure. Both
worked for me but there is a clear aesthetic break on elements such
as the text on the map. What they do have this time is a gallery of
some of the art from the book on the website. You can find it here
(http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/storm-kings-thunder).
I'd say it's a good representation of what you would see in the book
itself.
On
the first page of my book I can see that the binding isn't as good as
my copy of Curse of Strahd (my
copy had a perfect binding). It's still almost perfect and nothing
like my copy of Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide,
but it's still worth keeping an eye on this when you are picking up
your copy. It makes me think that there could be ones with much worse
binding than my copy and some of the previous books did have
problems. It's disappointing that this has happened in this edition
and something to keep an eye out when buying D&D books going
forward. The pages were very straight this time though. Again, I'd
recommend looking for this when picking out your book.
Price
The suggested price on the
book is $49.95 in the USA and $63.95 in Canada, as we have come to
expect. Online prices tend to be lower but you won't be able to look
for the possible issues mentioned in the quality section.
What I felt was Missing
Again there is no
supplementary PDF. I miss having every monster and magic item needed
for the adventure in a quickly searchable format. Some of the newly
added elements, such as the alphabetically
ordered list of characters, would have been very
convenient in PDF format.
Again, there are also no
grids provided like what we had during the 4th edition
time period. Some maps are sold by the artists who made them but it
didn't look like there was an easy way to buy a single pack of all
the maps featured in the adventure. For that reason, you are probably better
off just using the maps in the book as reference and using tiles. It
won't look nearly as good if you don't have enough environment pieces
or miniatures, but it'll at least be consistent and cheaper.
Free Stuff
The
first chapter
(http://www.dmsguild.com/product/189150/DDIA05-Storm-Kings-Thunder-A-Great-Upheaveal-5e)
is provided for free on the Dungeon Masters Guild.
There isn't really anything else that I've seen so far.
Summary
I don't think I liked this
adventure as much as Curse of Strahd
or Out of the Abyss.
This comes mainly from tonal, aesthetic and story choices in the
adventure. I also greatly prefer horror themed enemies, undead and
demons to giants. However, there are some really interesting
encounters that I'd like to see in play. It's also not that Storm
King's Thunder is a bad
adventure (in fact, I think I'll have a fun time with it), but I
can't say that it is my favourite. If I could buy just one of the
published adventures, it wouldn't be this one. However, it isn't my
least favourite either. The layout, however, is by far one of the
clearest if not the clearest of the published adventures of this
edition. I hope to see similar layouts going forward. There are also
plenty of role-play opportunities. It will require some serious
Dungeon Master preparation to flesh out characters (the three Storm
Giant princesses in particular could be easily expanded on) and to
tighten up the story, but there is a lot here that can be used for a
fun campaign. It's definitely worth running. Take a look at the free
chapter as well, which is similar to Death House
from Curse of Strahd
(it's meant to level characters up so they can face the main
adventure), in the “Other Stuff” section below.
Other Stuff
- Reading over this book, I noticed 11 typos and minor mistakes. None of them influenced the meaning but they were a little jarring to notice (on pages 13, 13, 23, 65, 88, 95, 125, 138, 202, 208, 241).
- Creatures not included in the SRD are (PoA stands for Princes of the Apocalypse and HoDQ stands for Hoard of the Dragon Queen): yuan-ti (HoDQ), goblin boss, orc Eye of Gruumsh (PoA), orc war chief, orog (PoA), cambion, drow mage (PoA), drow elite warrior, shadow demon (PoA), young remorhaz, yeti, ankylosaurus, aarakocra (PoA), hobgoblin warlord, piercer (PoA), helmed horror (PoA).
- This adventure is deadly, especially if players don't employ stealth. The adventure even notes that early
- The adventure is open-ended and allows players to explore.
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