The Dragon of Icespire Peak Campaign Diary - Episode 1 - Welcome to Phandalin

The Prep…

"Little town... its a quiet village... little town..."

Ah the dreaded town episode of the adventure. It is necessary to give the players a base of operations, and a place for some safe roleplaying. But man, do the town episodes slow down your game's momentum. It is especially rough when you start the game in town. I usually prefer to start in the middle of a quest, or plunking the characters down right at the start of the dungeon.

There are plenty of ways to avoid starting in a town and jumping right into the adventure proper. Actually Lost Mines of Phandelver  does that quite well with the goblin ambush on the road. Dragon of Icespire Peak starts in Phandalin, and the characters have to decide what adventure to take from there. 

I struggled with this episode because the last time I started a longer campaign it got so mired down in the town stuff that the adventure felt like a slog. I wondered if I should have just started the game with the two players already on an adventure I picked out from the three that they are offered. But that would be taking away some of the choice from them, and part of the fun of this campaign is selecting the adventures that appeal to the group. What's the point if the Dungeon Master is picking for you? Besides, I ended our Session 0 with them traveling to Phandalin. So they were expecting some town roleplaying.

In the end, I started the session with the party arriving in town. I provided a list of the main locations in the campaign notes, so they could think about what they might visit first. Not sure if it worked, because they spent some time deciding where they were going to go.

As I mentioned in the previous entry we are using the very handy map that came with The Essentials Kit. The map of Phandalin with the clearly marked places of interest came in very handy. I used a lego minifigure of young Elrond from Lord of the Rings as the marker for where they were. 

We aren't playing this, but I'm getting some
good ideas from it.

I did some calculations before the game to determine how long it took them to get to Phandalin based on the map, how long they rested after the gerblin battle. It ended up being about dusk when they arrived in town.

So I really didn’t have a Strong Start for this session. It is difficult when doing a town episode, but I did my best to keep things moving. Because we have two hour sessions, I knew I needed to keep my encounters quick but packed with good information and role playing. The goal for this session was to pick up a quest to start next session, and maybe do some initial exploration of the town. I had a combat encounter planned if the opportunity lent itself, but it wasn’t one that was actually in the adventure.

Again, I borrowed from Lost Mines of Phandelver and pulled the idea of a group of toughs in the village. My Rogue has the background element that I can tie the ruffians to. The rogue caused an innocent to go to prison because of her actions. I worked with her on details for the backstory. So it turned out that she got a dragonborn warrior implicated in a theft she committed. He figured out it was her and made it known to other mercenaries. The toughs in town know the dragonborn and recognized her. They decide (drunkenly) to get some payback for their pal. I spent some time fleshing out some of the NPCs in the town and some of the sidekick characters as well. I followed the guidelines from Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and didn’t go overboard, but got enough flavor for each so that they were distinct and interesting.

The Story...

Lots of places to see and NPCs to annoy.

The duo arrived at the inn, since night was falling and they needed a place to sleep. The characters bought a meal and rented some rooms. They talked to the halfling owner (I changed a lot of the NPCs to fit some of the goofy voices I can do and make things a bit more interesting). The toughs entered the inn for some more drinks (they were already pretty wasted when they got in). They didn’t quite start a fight, but sounded like they were itching for one. The heroes also met their first sidekick, the “cowboy elf” Inverna. She chatted with the hero’s and mentioned that she would be willing to help if they went orc hunting. 

The pair went to their room, and barricaded the door in case the toughs got an idea to visit in the night. But the night was uneventful.

The next day the pair visited the Shrine of Luck. They noticed that it was made of pieces of ruins from several cultures. But no one was around that early in the morning to chat with. The pair then headed to the Provisions store and talked with the owner. I made him a John Candy type with a silly Chicago accent. I added a treasure barrel in the shop. Before the game I rolled on the trinket table and added two odd items in there. A white glove and a scabbard of mysterious design. My players picked right up on the single white glove/Michael Jackson joke and had to buy the glove. Of course I made both secretly magical, but they need to identify the item to find out about their mysterious powers. Since it was white and scaled I made it absorb cold damage, like the absorb element spell. The scabbard does the same with fire.

"I would like to purchase... your kicky scarf."

After the pair left the shop, they ran into the toughs in the street waiting for them. The thugs had hangovers, but were itching for a fight. I figured we could have a nice fist-a-cuffs battle in the street, classic Western style. But my players surprised me. The Druid used her Gust cantrip spell to cause some nearby bushes to rustle. One thug turned on her heels to see if she could detect the new threat. The Rogue used her Thaumaturgy spell to cause her voice to become booming. Spoke spoke in the Infernal language (just saying she was hungry), but the thugs were then convinced she was cursing them with some hellish spell. They ran away, the most sober one saying “I told you this was a bad idea. Viper is going to have our ass!” My Rogue player picked up on that hint.

The adventurers then headed to the townmaster’s hall. I love the NPC concept in the module for the Townmaster and how he is so afraid of the dragon that he won’t come outside to talk or invite them in. I used my pompous British commander voice (inspired by Chris Perkins’ wonderful Admiral Warrington Munt voice from Dice Camera Action). The players got a kick out of this guy, and had fun interacting with him as he talked about the jobs he wanted them to do from behind his closed door. 

After reviewing the three adventures in front of them, they settled on visiting Umbrage HIll and convincing the Midwife to come back to town. Although it paid the least, it was the closest and they figured the easiest to complete. After that they were both interested in visiting the dwarven excavation site. 

So with the new quest selected they were ready to start off next time, although they discussed maybe picking up a sidekick to help them out.

The Post…

Overall this was a tough session because it was a town/shopping session. I tried to make the NPCs interesting and fun to interact with. The most successful was certainly the Townmaster, but they warmed up to Barthen the shop owner too. The toughs made for some intrigue in the town, and gave it a bit more flavor than they were expecting. I loved the way they resolved it without a fight and I awarded both players with inspiration points for quick thinking. They got their quest, found a magic item and picked up a backstory element. 

I realized after the fact that I could have added a backstory element for the Druid as well. I think I can still work it in the next session at the start, but we’ll see. 

We finished in two hours and they technically had about four NPC encounters and one “combat” encounter. Not a bad bit of work. Next week will be a bit more technical, because we will get into a combat situation for sure. Still I’m looking forward to it.

Up Next…

Session 2: Taking Umbrage