Not that anyone probably cares but I thought I'd update what's been going on in my current campaign and my thoughts about it.
Phandelin
So I ran the players through the Lost Mines of Phandelver + The Dragon of Icespire Peak. The two starter campaigns go together well and by using both you can dump the lamer missions (or merge them into other missions) and still have plenty to work with.
They enjoyed all that but then when it was winding up I put it to a vote. Keep going with these players or write up new ones and start fresh. We'd started with the Basic set and thus had limited Race and Class options, I thought they might appreciate having more options. But not they all voted to continue. I did allow one Elf Fighter to become a Ranger and allowed everyone to pick Feats. Its rules as written mostly so I sucked it up and let them pick the feats they wanted. I've decided Feats are overpowered and I won't use again.
So then I had them vote on what they wanted to do next. Stay in Phandelin (in which case I'd use the Shattered Obeliks levels to continue their journey, or leave Phandelin. They all voted to leave. They were a bit sick of the place.
Storm King's Thunder
So I looked over different adventure options. We were playing on Roll20 and I wasn't super-confident with creating for 5E yet so I bought Storm King's Thunder. The first chapter takes the players up to 5th level and tells you how to segway over if you come in from another module which seemed perfect at first. I took the Dripping Caves map for later use and plugged on. The next part of the adventure is a Giant attack on one of three cities, GMs choice. I decided to mix things up and have the Hill Giants attack Phandelin. That would make a nice send-off to the little village and if things got tough the PCs could retreat into the dungeons/redbrands hideout.
The party stood their ground and defeated the Giants with missile fire before most of them got close enough to do anything. At this point Storm King's Thunder has a bunch of mini-quests that all seemed stupid and took away any sense of urgency regarding the giants. So I invented a Giant Attack on the nearby city of Leilon and had a small number of giants holding civilian prisoners in that Dripping Cave map mentioned earlier. When that was done I bought Against the Giants and used the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief module. Players enjoyed the sneaking around aspect and avoided any true combat with the Giants in that one.
Some time in Neverwinter
Then I bought White Plume Mountain which I don't think anyone really enjoyed. Too funhouse and the magic weapons are overpowered (players liked that).
One player wanted to get into faction fighting so they went to Everwinter where I had had to make up pretty much everything which was fun as I was tired of prepared modules. I had different factions after the Magic Items attained from White Plume Mountain. Blackrazor was a family artifact stolen from one characters asshole Uncle recently and that Uncle wanted it back and would be sending envoys and eventually a small army to get it. Crazy water-gd cultists wanted Wave and attacked to get it, but eventually a small cult started to form around the player possessing the thing (still figuring how I'll work that one out). Dwarves wanted Whelm and put a bounty on it. That player, a Paladin, in a moment of actual true role playing gave the Hammer back to the Dwarves and earned their friendship.
They met up and helped the rebel group in town, the Sons of Alagondar. They dealt with the conniving Lord Neverember.
They cleaned out terrorists from the Moonstone Masks place and got semi-safe and free room and board for a few weeks. They cleared out the Castle Never, killing a Lich and minions took that over as a place to stay short term. They attacked the Temple of Tempest currently occupied by Red Wizards and broke the Red Wizards power in the city. When that was done they learned Lord Neverember had been assassinated and that evil Uncle had entered the city with a small army looking for Blackrazor. The cousin met secretly with the party, planning to betray his Uncle.
They found the Uncle had some kind of psychic connection with his old sword Black Razor and used that to feed false information to the Uncle. They arranged to meet in the cemetery but the players double-crossed the Uncles double-cross. They killed him. Then brought him back to life so the PC with Blackrazor could kill him again and suck his soul out.
At that arranged to put a puppet on the throne of Neverwinter. They traded control of Castle Never for proper ownership Cloak Tower on the East edge of town which I found to be vacant. And they got a bit tired of fighting against factions, for now.
As an aside Wizards has blown it with Neverwinter. They should have the place mapped out and updated for 5E. Most of what I found was all 4E related materials. I mean the movie took place in Neverwinter, why didn't someone think to release a Neverwinter setting book at the same time? I found some nice maps but it took a bit of looking and everything had to be imported into Roll20 because Wizards would rather make shitty adventures than useful products.
Back to Storm King's Thunder, Sort of...
After hearing from the Harpers that the Hill Giants were trashing the countryside and taking hostages to their queen to eat the players went into the wilderness to hunt them down. They fought a few small groups near Neverwinter, then went after a group with hostages and destroyed it. Then they learned a large group of Hill Giants had been destroyed in battle by human cavalry and wounded groups were about trying to work their way to their home base. They decided to use guerrilla tactics and kill Hill Giants in small groups, letting a few Giant allies escape to tell the tale and fill the Hill Giants sleep with nightmares.
Then a battle near Grudd Haug left the possessor of Blackrazor flush with hit points sucked from dead Giants. The group decided it was time to raid the place and do some damage, and that's where the campaign is currently.
Note the map of Grudd Haug is significantly better than the Hill Giant Stead from G1 but I find the over-arching plotline of Storm King's Thunder to be lacking and full of holes the GM has to fill in. I'm considering changing things up but I'm not sure how or where. i do think if I go with the Storm King's Thunder plan I may have them go after three Giant horns instead of just one. That'd be more interesting at least. We will see.
So to recap, I enjoyed the low level stuff in Phandelin, mostly. Didn't really like the way 5E handles things above 5th level, especially if you consider feats. I really liked the urban/faction play we had in Phandelin but think WotC wasn't a lot of help in that regard. I like a few of the maps in Storm King's Thunder but think it's not terribly well put together as a campaign. And I'm ready to dump 5E entirely and go for Shadowdark when this campaign is over, but we'll see.
