This is my favourite video I've made so far - it took over 30 hours, but it's a big step up for me. If this video made you laugh and you want to help the channel, PLEASE tell a friend. ▼----------------- Why I get rid of Droop -----------------▼ So, why do I suggest cutting beloved goblin friendo Droop? I know a lot of parties have had fun times with their goblin sidekick - and if all you want is a fun sidekick character, you should ignore me and include Droop anyway. But here are my reasons: 1) Droop double-handles exposition. His purpose is to indicate the Redbrands are working with the Cragmaws, but we've already got this information in a few other places. 2) Droop contradicts the session's tone. The silly or sympathetic character clashes with the rescue-friend-from-death-in-jail and make-pact-with-evil-eye-monster stuff we've already got going in this dungeon. I LIKE that other stuff, and I don't want to complicate it. 3) Droop takes brain space. Every character we include, that's a little less Dungeon Master RAM we have for other content. If Droop's not essential or giving some great energy to the session, I don't want to waste the head space on him. Also: it means we can cut an encounter and get through this dungeon quicker. I'm expecting a lot of comments like, "Droop was the best part of this campaign for our group," and that's both legit and valid. Players love collecting NPCs. For me, Droop isn't worth the effort it takes to make him relevant. I think the only reasons I WOULD include him are if the players had somehow misunderstood any clues about the Black Spider's goals or if the story's tone drastically needed lightening. Now, that's "lightening" I said, not lightning. But knowing how good goblins are at self-preservation and how trigger-happy the party wizard is with friendly fire, maybe some lightning is on the cards too. -------------- ❤ Support the Channel ❤ -------------- 💚 Patreon: matthewperkins.net/patreon 💚 Donate: matthewperkins.net/donate 💚 Store: matthewperkins.net/store 💚 DM Guild: matthewperkins.net/dmsguild 💜 Twitch: matthewperkins.net/twitch 💜 TikTok: matthewperkins.net/tiktok 🧡 Discord: matthewperkins.net/discord 🧡 Facebook: matthewperkins.net/facebook 🧡 Twitter: matthewperkins.net/twitter 🧡 Instagram: matthewperkins.net/instagram 🧡 Reddit: matthewperkins.net/reddit ✏ Blog: matthewperkins.net/blog 📧 For marketing/business/sponsorship inquiries, email: mperkins.dm@gmail.com
I had droop be a doppleganger serving the black spider. He tried to sabotage the party by giving bad advice, and then he snuck off at Cragmaw Castle to alert the goblins but the party caught him. One of my party members wanted to ham it up and act like he didn't realise he was a doppleganger to get more info, but another party member stepped in and killed him, then they had an IRL argument lol.
I would totally drop Droop, given your reasoning and modifications that make him redundant, but… my characters already befriended his father (I’ll explain). So, in the goblin arrows portion, they captured a goblin and got information out of him. Great, the module totally explains what the goblin knows! It does not really explain what to do with the goblin afterwards though, so I just played him as a captive while my players tied him up in their sleep sack and brought him around for information. I tried to have him later break free (failed strength check to break out and was just rolling around as a sack of rage) and betray the party (call out to the goblin guards at the cave, who the party would have totally snuck up on if one of them hadn’t thrown a massive rock in the river and make a huge splash sound; that’s just karma. The guard managed to run through the party and cut my goblin’s bonds (out of the bag at this point, just tied up) and… was he was immediately recaptured, while guard was killed). He eventually befriended the party as I let them play nice with him and played him as having no real alliance but rather hating Klarg and simply liking the party enough to befriend them. He actually ended up giving useful info about the layout of the cave and enemies within. He also cut up the sleep sack to create a sort of pants,shirt, cloak, and mask disguise and pretend to be a halfling (got that idea from CR’s Nott The Brave) so that they other goblins wouldn’t come after him as a traitor. Long story short, every enemy in the cave died, both Yeemik and Klarg (Klarg killed Yeemik, who I played as very intelligent and conniving and ready to parlay with the players instead of fighting, and the goblins loyal to him when the party made a deal with him, then left his part of the cave, and let one of the two goblin guards loyal to Klarg get away and didn’t pursue as they were low on health. They took a long rest outside and I had to take the events into account and reasoned that Klarg would put 2 and 2 together and kill Yeemik. This also gave a reason to have Sildar moved to Klarg’s room as well). So, with all of that out of the way (sorry to rant), when I thought the goblin (later named “Skill”) was just going to be disposable, one of my players asked if he had any kids. To make him seem evil, I played along and said “Oh, yesss” “Are you an active part of their lives?” “Yes yes… but not in the way you might think; they fear me!” Somehow, they kinda forgot this detail and still fell in love with this evil backstabbing goblin, so I played along and made the goblin fairly neutral. …but there’s still this kid that he apparently abused, and I know my friend still has this in the back of their mind! So my plan is to have Droop, but instead of making him a comedic sidekick, play it as Skill’s (my goblin’s) lost son. When the party stumbles upon him, Skill (who until now spent every encounter immediately pulling back and hiding) will be the first to charge forward and take on all the bug bears (pushing my party to also fight them), just going all out, full level 2 or 3 (I’m playing it that he’s also getting xp from the fights he’s “in”, but not taking from the player’s xp, just taking an equal duplicate amount, so xp is split between players, but whatever they get, he does as well) Fury of the Small; just as much damage as he can, which should be a startling contrast to the players as he’s kind of a complete coward. When they are defeated, he’ll just embrace Droop and break down that he never thought he’d see him again, apologizing that he tried to “toughen him up” rather than treat him how he should have, revealing that he’s the son he was talking about before and giving new meaning to what he said/his real motivation. He may exposit later that it was Klarg who was splitting the goblin families, explaining his hatred of Klarg and why he betrayed him and the other goblins in charge so quickly. With any luck, this should hopefully go according to plan (lol), turn a comedic character into a sympathetic one, deepen an npc that my players love while fixing an inconsistency with them, and keep the somber tone of the area instead of making in weirdly light hearted before they find the dead mayor. Sorry to rant, but hopefully you found this weird recollection of how this one goblin is messing with the story and how I’m tweaking Droop to match entertaining 😅
@@josiahwilkinson4334 I'm really curious about how it turned out. I'm about to start this campaign as a new DM tomorrow, and I really liked the idea of this whole goblin family reunion thing, so now I'm seriously thinking about implementing this into my game:^^
@@Benevolentforestspirit oh, heh, forgot I wrote all of this. Well, out of my friends and I, I'm the only one who works a normal Mon-Fri, 9-5 job, so we only got to do session 2 a couple weeks ago. The goblin is still around and we ended just before them going into the Redbrand hideout (had them do the other sidequests first to build up npcs so that the twist of the mysterious GlassStaff being Sildar's old flame and the old Redbrand leader alongside the bar owner who was thought missing and possibly dead, and also since I changed portions of the story to make all of the sidequests caused my Neznar in a way that will be revealed at the end). So that's all going to go down tomorrow evening (assuming we don't cancel). I'll let you know how it plays out. Also, I introduced Neznar (who says to call him Nezzy) as an old who mysteriously showed up in town around the same time everything went to sh*t. However my players, who pick up on the most throw away details and ignore the biggest plot points (if I put them in a bar and described in great detail the mysterious hooded figure at the bar staring at them, they would unironically try to talk to everyone else first), so they somehow now think that he's an old man with dementia. Gonna twist that knife later when Gundar's older brother is killed by him (also renamed the Rockseekers as Gundar, Fundar (younder, free spirited, dead in the Redbrand hideout because I missed revealing his death at the southern bandits), and Thundar (the SERIOUS one already at the cave, so no one actually can reach him currently) because I thought it'd be funnier XD). The book is a nice guideline, but do what you want; drop things, add things, the world is your sandbox.
@@josiahwilkinson4334 wow, sounds great! I've DMed my first session recently and it was wonderful - everyone seemed to enjoy this campaign(or at least I hope they did x)), though we were progressing really slowly through the story(by the end of the session 1 the party just got to the Cragmaw hideout), but I like it this way. I've added the little introductory part at the start where everyone could describe their characters, how they met, how they looked, etc. Also I added a minor scene for when they were leaving the city and also I expanded their journey to Phandalin, so that there was at least one special event happening each day of the trip. I'd love to hear how the rest of your campaign plays out, so I'll be waiting!!
I ran this online via Roll20 early in tge pandemic. When I got to the Nothic's lair, I had recorded a bunch of audio of me whsipering in the Nothic's voice, and overlaid several layers of it. The aubject of the whispers was things the players had already done but also some of their secret background information. I had the volume slowly ramp up, and I set this recording to play when they entered the lair. Up until this point i had not used the Roll20 music feature so my players were not expecting it at all - did not even realize it was possible. They were FREAKED. OUT. It was wonderful. "Guys? Guys? can you hear that? Its not just me, right?"
Glasstaff escaped from my players since they fooled around in his lab too long, ignored his familiar, and even started reading the book they found there. They were frustrated enough by this that I inserted him again as the leader of the cultists at Thundertree who tries to sell them to the Dragon, and again as part of the final battle in Cragmaw Castle, where they finally captured him. They loved the ongoing search for him.
@@heyitsMattyP Indeed. They captured him and brought him to Halia. During Glasstaff's and Halia's conversation, the players finally realized that they had allowed Halia to take over the Redbrands (they had failed some important perception checks and missed some clues I left along the way). It was great fun for all.
I went in a 100% different direction with the Red Brands and had them make an alignment shift from bad to good. I ran LMoP as a zombie apocalypse and the Red Brands had to team up with the party to survive. The party had to swallow their pride for the greater good. The manor became the base for the party and the survivors so they had clear the nothic out to make it safe. In that fight I had the nothic taunt the party with their shameful secrets that they hadn’t shared with the rest of the group. He hid in the shadows, mocking their shame, then would use hit and run tactics to whittle them down. My group said it was their favourite battle of the campaign. Iarno “Glasstaff” was a relative to one of the PCs in that game. I used him to get that particular PC to Phandalin. He started out selfish and egotistical but as the game progressed he softened up to his long lost daughter, becoming an endearing father figure. Which made his self sacrifice at the end of the campaign all the more heart wrenching.
I got a little inspiration from one of my friends for this. My nothic in the crevasse is crazy about puzzles. He made a pact with Glassstaff to let him and the Redbrands come and go as they please in exchange for a few puzzles from time to time. Lately, Glasstaff hasn't been delivering, and it just so happens that one of the PC's is carrying around a mysterious puzzlebox for him to solve!
Three of my players are obsessive animal lovers, so when they didn't confront the Redbrands I had them kidnap Buddy the Cat, and hold him as insurance that Bart wouldn't antagonize them anymore. No mercy was had on the Redbrands after that.
The party after arriving in town and finding rooms at Stonehill, started asking about the area and the Redbrands were raised by Tolben. After becoming incited about the Redbrands shaking down the town, they decided to visit (aka storm) the Sleeping Giant taphouse. After taking out 4 of the 5 Redbrands, (charming one) They used the charmed Redbrand (Bron) to lead them to the various locations in the town to remove the Redbrand threat. I had the Redbrands located in several houses that they had acquired to use as positions to watch the town, and not just hole up under the manor. After eliminating 14 Redbrands in the first night in town, I had to launch a counter offensive by the Redbrands lead by Glasstaff, after a few rounds of combat and some really lucky rolls, Glass staff was running for his life.
Great tips! My first party took the Nothic out immediately since they were so creeped out, Droop was a bust, and the cistern was a non-issue. Reminding me that the Nothic know EVERYONE'S secrets just answered my question of how to tie our non-Redbrand rogue to a personal connection. Turns out the Nothic knows about him, as one of the RBs knew him from their guild before joining. Pow! Adding my voicemod software to the thoughts inside their head, and wow, this will rock his world.
Oh Man, I'm running this as a first time everything! I'm DM'ing it for my son. All it took was a couple of dirty looks from the Redbrands outside the Sleeping Giant as the party passed on the way to Transendar Manor! Didn't take him much to take the bait and start kill'n. I guess I'd done a good job making sure he knew they needed to be dealt with.
I had Droop act as the sentry in the Cragmaw hideout, and he ran to Yeemik when he was attacked by the players. After my players cut a deal with Yeemik, I had Droop secretly run away as the players were fighting Klarg. When they got to the Redbrand hideout I described Droop's shoulder injury (one of my players hit him with a javelin on his shoulder) and immediately my players went 'wait a minute' as they recognized this goblin. It was especially funny since they lost some of the goods in their cart as Droop ran away and stole them so they had some animosity towards Droop. I can see how the tone may not fit but honestly my players really enjoyed the whole thing and he really served to make the plotline feel more connected.
Tank you as always! I didn’t grow up with D&D, but when my daughters were teens I ran a campaign for them and their friends for two years. It was home-brew, and I could fudge. But now I’m running this campaign for Zoe neighbor kids. They love it, but ask me a lot of unexpected questions. They are Chines immigrants. Your videos have been invaluable. Once COVID and the universe let me get back on my feet ii’ll join your patron
I love these videos, honestly. My current long-term campaign started out as LMoP and expanded from there (2 years later, they're currently lv 15), so this makes me so nostalgic. This quest in particular gives me fond memories. The Nothic became a central NPC in my campaign. I personally played up the fact that in the lore, Nothics are essentially liches gone terribly wrong and turned him into something of a gollum-inspired character, his greed for arcane knowledge having turned into pure greed for shiny objects. The party immediately bribed him into betraying Glasstaff with a random art item they'd gotten from another quest, and named him Magpie. The party's name is now Magpie's Mutual, as they went on to establish an "insurance" company where for a small annual fee, the party will retrieve any object that you insure with them. He runs their keep (a refurbished Cragmaw Keep) while they're off adventuring.
I'm Running lost mines at the moments with a party of new players and only came across your series after running the first session with kragmaw cave, and its been very helpful. Rather than having the players have the puzzle box from the start i'v had them find it in the possession of the necromancer at Old Owl Well, along with a letter from the black spider informing him that the cave has nearly been found and to 'bring his research if it is complete' . The advice of condensing the NPCs in Phandalin into one or two very memorable ones was definitely the right idea. I'm glad you reccommended cutting thundertree, as i was struggling to think of a way to get my players there and was hesitant about cutting so much content, im now considering using it as a way to bridge the narative from lost mines to the module we run next.
Mate! Great solutions :) I think that's good use for Thundertree too. It leads into other campaigns really well, or could be expanded into its own homebrew campaign. You might have already seen it, but here's a chat I had with How to D&D about cutting Thundertree: ruclips.net/video/cmsk1vCBAXw/видео.html
@@heyitsMattyP Thanks, I'll check that out also. Probably considering running storm kings thunder afterwards, so perhaps replacing the dragon with a giant, or even have the two in a soft conflict over the territory, to link into the story of that campaign
@@Irelandyorkshire Having a fairly even between a dragon and giant, and allowing the players to tip the balance, is a great way to show them their agency!
Thanks for all the advice, I love the vids and the humour. My party decided they were going to feed Iarno to the Nothic so that took a sinister but hilarious turn.
I ran a group through LMoP as my first session, all total noobs, over 2 years ago. Your great videos make me want to revisit Phandalin and do it again with the benefit of hindsight and all your tips.
This series has been amazing so far. I've read a lot of fixes and guides to TLMOP but yours is really thorough, especially with how you focus on considering what players would find fun, which helps as a new DM.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I think the videos are getting better the further along I get :) My general rule for any adventure is: if it's not fun, don't do it. So that's the cornerstone of these videos, I think. Gotta keep it fun!
I built the history between Sildar and Iarno. Sildar had developed the legal system of Phandalin and executed his peer Iarno after his capture. Also, I made the Flaming skull as an element of the Glass staff itself. Its basically a skull head on a stick encased in glass.
Oh man, you make me want the Flame Skull in the Wave Echo Cave to be Glasstaff's undead skull, possessed with some kind of crazy animus. I'd love to see a moment of Sildar approaching the party before burying Iarno and saying, "His head's missing."
Cheers Anto! My wife suggest a rad idea yesterday that I'm cut didn't make it into the video - have the Nothic use the players' real names, not their character names.
Experienced DM here. Running this adventure tonight (out of Phandelver and Below) and loving your videos!! Great takes on combining rooms and role playing the monsters. Years later, but happy to be here. Thanks for the advice
My players missed both Glasstaff and the Nothic. So later while giving them each little solo missions to do, I had the least scrupulous player be hired by the Miner's Exchange lady to go back and assassinate Glasstaff. Also had the woodcutter's wife ask him to look around for her husband's remains so he had a reason to go in the crevasse. He wound up 1v1'ing Glasstaff AND the Nothic and winning out with some good rolls, and got the +1 sword and 100 gold for his effort.
@@heyitsMattyP Champion Fighter actually! The Nothic fight was pretty close (he probably would have died without second wind), but he got a couple good crits in with his shiny new sword.
Awesome video! This series has been really helpful. For our game Glasstaff is a widower. He was easily swayed to support the Black Spider my means of seduction and wealth. When the PCs are in the Red Brand hideout it will be revealed that Glasstaff has been getting hot and heavy with Monteeth instead of the real Black Spider. He gets fuming mad at the intrusion and readies an attack against the trespassing PRUDES!! Haha
Watching your videos made it easier for me to trust myself and change things even on the spot. I loved the idea of Phandalin being a spaghetti western town 🤣 When I ran the Redbrand hideout I turned the Nothic into a Gollum-like character. He loves magic items but also feels lonely and between eating humans and elves and feeding off magic items he seeks friendship and companionship. One of the PC made a deal with him and was actually able to convince the rest to give the Nothic a warm welcome. They loved it for while it lasted. One of the players was not buying it and was aggressive towards the little Nothic who ran scared and betrayed. I was planning to slowly reveal the evil side of the Nothic and make it the "key" for the forge of spells. The PC would have to either easily kill their friend the Nothic or kill the Spectator. They will meet him again though, in the wave echo cave. Not sure if he will be empowered and their final obstacle or sorry and captured by the Black Spider. PS. Thank you for the awesome content
Oh wow! Glad it's all been helpful :) I like that you're keeping your options open and not locking in your plans for the Nothic. I generally try to keep all my plans loose and only prep the next session so I can be more reactive to the players' decisions. Sounds like you're doing a good job!
I'm sure some people will not like the antics but I think they are hilarious ("how to get your players to engage" at 2:07 made me lol haha.) This is amazing content and I really appreciate all of the work.
When I ran Lost Mine, I had the Red Brands be former low ranking members of the Lord’s Alliance (red cloaks) and Glass Staff was their commander. This changed however when Glassstaff’s master was transformed into a nothic when they looked for forbidden knowledge. Wanting to reverse this curse, the Black Spider swooped in to sway Glass Staff to work with them, keeping the townspeople from getting to close to the mine. In exchange, the Black Spider would use the spell forge to help Glass Staff’s former master once the forge was found. Now their own faction, the redcloacks removed their Lord’s Alliance patches as they went from defenders to racketeers. Additionally, since we had three wizards in this game, I has all three of them write to each other in a sort of fantasy Nation of Letters akin to the Enlightenment
Just wanted to say, love giving the Nothic some further backstory and a stronger tie to Glasstaff. I might need to borrow some elements of this for when I run the Redbrand Hideout for my campaign.
I'm loving these guides! I just started running Lost Mines for the third time (combined with Dragon of Icespire Peak this time) and your stuff is pure gold. Thanks and please keep it coming!
Oh rad! Glad you're enjoying it Dan :) Icespire Keep has been sitting on my shelf for *month* waiting for me to read it - I'd love to run it one day. Do you run it in a way where the events and locations are kind of mixed together, or do you tack Icespire Keep on the end of Lost Mines?
@@heyitsMattyP Hey man, I kinda gave up on running Icespire Keep after watching your videos hahahah. I guess I'll just bring some elements and quests, for example, I left Gundren and Don-Jon Raskin (from Icespire) at the Cragmaw Hideout, the party just rescued them. The lore behind it is that over 30 years ago, Gundren, Don-Jon, the father of one my PCs and the mother of another discovered the Forge in an old dwarven fortress (supposed to be Axeholm, from Icespire), they figured the power of the forge was too dangerous to end up in the wrong hands and sealed it behind a huge stone door with a tree carving, some of the leafs are actually made of emerald, which are used to unlock the door. Each of them kept of emerald. Later when the Black Spider went after the Forge she found it sealed, figured out about the emerald leafs and now is after them. The puzzle box you suggested are now 4 puzzle boxes, each with one leaf inside, the Spider has one, the party has 2 and the other is with Don-Jon, who will be kidnapped by the Red Brands and his box stolen. Sorry for the wall of text, your videos really inspired me to run this again with a new twist on it!
I'm running LMoP right now, and my players just had a GREAT rp session last week involving the Redbrands. Sildar gave them an "urgent quest" to find Gundren as quickly as possible, so they have to ply the townmembers for info. The thing is, nobody wants to talk to them because they're so upset about the Redbrands. Two sessions ago the hot-headed halfling rogue in the party challenged the captain of the Redbrands to a duel over a scuffed boot and promptly had his butt handed to him on a silver platter. Even though he lost, his bravery scored the PCs some points and lips started opening. The next day one of the more amiable Redbrands comes to the inn to check on him and extends the invitation to join up. He was also fishing for information about how long they were going to be in town to see if they would be a serious threat or just "passing through." I decided to make some of the Redbrands townies, but young and impressionable; the kind of kids you'd want to steer down a better path. During the conversation with the Redbrand, the party went from being suspicious and hating him, to empathizing with him and even getting a TON of information out of him, and then plotting with him to overthrow Glasstaff and change the Redbrands to something good, with the help of Halia Thornton, of course 😉 lol I was so proud of my players 🥰
Super helpful! Love the idea of having a young, impressionable Redbrand fledgling that the PC's could steer right. Carp, maybe? I want to hook them in to his goodness and then reveal that he's on the fence but sees a future with the Redbrands. Also really like your PC/Redbrand interactions. So good!
I'm running PaBtSO and this angle is going to be my direction too. I've even planned some instances of intimidation and antagonizing of the townsfolk by Redbrands for the players to witness and trigger their ire for the militia turned ruffians(shakedowns, muggings, damsels in distress). I also took Matty's idea of a puzzle box and rewrote it to be a sort of insurance policy for the Rockseekers and really drive home the point of dealing with the redbrands to get Gundren's map back asap. Knowing the significance of their discovery, the dwarf brothers have asked the innkeeper to give the puzzle box to their adventurer friends (I started with meet me in Phandalin) when they arrive in town. The box can be opened with a DC15 intel check or atunement by any player(one of the brothers hobby was making such boxes). Inside is a letter explaining the brothers discovery and a heartfelt request from the brothers that if anything happens to them, the players will do the right thing for Phandalin and protect the Rockseekers discovery.
I have only just started this video but just had to come down here to give props for "handlin' Phandalin" and "better red than dead". Gods and bunnies, man.
I did name my Nothic Ixal, (seemed perfect) and gave him lines that hit my party members with crazy bargains: "I will give you gold to send to mum .. all I ask for is a taste of your pinky finger." It was creeptastic. Instead of confronting them right away and attacking, it followed them through the whole place interjecting with more creepiness when mood called for it. "Bring me another child? (this is the unfortunate farmer's demise)" After a while, the characters will attack it. The player eavesdrop is brilliant btw. (esp if it creates a creepy hook)
I am running my own LMoP campaign, modded to fit in Exandria and lead into RHoD. Despite making completelt different choices about what to change (if anything for me the bugbears are the highlight of the dungeon because I make them all "princes" the Sons of King Grol.), I love your thought process and I am getting a lot out of watching and rewatching this series. Great video.
Just finished watching your vids as I prepare to run LMoP. I have a cool compass/clock prop to put in the puzzle box. I’m going to make the Forge’s guardian/obstacle a space-time rift made by a Phandelver pact wizard who wanted to seal away the Forge (haste on the spectator, slow on its foes, no metal can enter the area of the forge, plus floating earth motes). Same wizard made the puzzle box compass/clock to fix the rift - then died and got buried with it. And I’m gonna make the Nothic a Phandelver pact wizard who was revivified and mutated by the space-time rift, and give the nothic lair earth motes and impossible architecture; so the nothic can for shadow the “guardian” a bit (but of course can’t remember where the Forge/WECave is :).
Barts been a big help to the party with free room and board, free use of horses to get to locations when needed and just generally being a stand-up guy. Some of the party started a brawl outside of the Redbrands bar and ended up killing like 8 of them. (Im adding some bodies as I have a party of 6) Next morning had the Blackspider (disguised as Talia as she's been written out) show up and arrange the trade for Gundren leaving the town unprotected for the night. They returned to find the Stonehill Inn a smouldering pile of ash and Bart missing both hands. Ended the session with Bart passing on a message from the Redbrands: "Seeing as you so happily lend a hand to outta towners, you surely wont mind if we take two as well". My players flew into a RAGE. Storming the hideout tomorrow. Don't think there will be any mercy shown xD
Hi Matthew ! Not sure if you still check the comments on this serie of videos but I still wanted to share my experience on this one. First of all, thank you so so much for your videos ! Not only you give us great ideas to improve the story line of this campaign, but in my case you also taught me how to approach the DM role in a more relaxed way and it helped me so much (I used to stress a lot before each session). Anyway, here is a what happened with my party : After they arrived in Phandalin, they wereimmediately through
Hey Paul! Glad the videos have been helpful :) I still read comments on old videos, but I'm a super disorganised person and sometimes miss responding. Hope your campaign is going well!
Just wanted to say I really appreciate the Glasstaff edits! I feel like the rat familiar as written is too much of a “Gotcha!” moment that doesn’t give the players a fair shot at catching Iarno. If fireball is a TPK, a shatter scroll tones that down (and could allow for fun crumbling rooms in chase sequences).
Kev, that's a great solution with Shatter, because the goal is definitely not to deal damage or kill the players - it's just Iarno's way of signalling himself as a threat and for a little story beat. I wish I'd included that idea in the video!
I motivated my players by setting fire to the Qeline field. Since we played with the ready-made characters, this was a special problem for one of my players, as he plays the rouge, which the nephew of qeline.
my best redbrand moment: the redbrand have a guard post at every bridge / gate into the city. they demend of everyone to gibve up their weapons of the want to get into town. my player, thinking this is the city guard obliged later were bare handed (except for a dagger the rogue smuggled in) when the witnessed some cruel misshandlings of town folk. they go involved in a bar brawl but had to withdraw when a beaten redbrand posse draw their blades… the way they got their weapons back was pretty cool
I’ve run Phandelver once so far, watching this because I’m gonna run it again starting next week. I got my PC’s to fight the Redbrands by having them attempt to run a protection racket on the party after they had acquired a partial ownership of The Sleeping Giant. The party ran the Redbrands out of the tavern and were then ambushed in the street upon their return to town.
My best Redbrand story: I stole a riff from LOTR films with the Gimli & Legolas kill count. When the party encounters the ruffians, two Redbrands start talking about their kills. "We're tied at two, just one behind Parker." They then count the PCs and one says, "I just gotta wipe one more 'an you and I got the lead. Parker gonna piss himself." The idea that the thugs were dismissing the players as notches on their sword belts was so infuriating that my players went full terminator on every Redbrand they could find.
LMoP is my first ever time running a campaign. I already got past this part with my players, but it's great to compare what I did, what I would like to do differently and compare that to these ideas! When my party confronted Glasstaff, he was trying to escape and they found him looking for his once-hidden emergency pack that the players had found. While he was talking to them trying to get out of it, my Wild Magic Sorcerer cast Suggestion and convinced him to hold out his hands and close his eyes 'cause they had something for him. He failed his saving throw, so he held out his hands and closed his eyes. The Sorcerer tied his hands up. As I was about to have him Misty Step away (since Misty Step only needs verbal and not somatic components), they gagged him. Considering the sorcerer loves chaos and the Barbarian loves collecting heads, I expected a fight. I was so impressed with how they prevented the magic user from casting magic I let it go and they brought him back to Phandalin to turn him in.
I've got my Nothic almost acting like Beetlejuice, and it worked. 😆 Only during his insane ramblings did I bust it out but everyone was into it. Cool video
Dude, I'm so frightened of Beetlejuice. When I was a super little kid, we went to Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast, and a guy dressed as Beetlejuice chased me
My players had a few levels before we started Mines so I needed to up the danger level a bit. Escape route for Glasstaff in my version was one of the Wyverns as a mount. After a few stings and party low of hit points and they could not easily get to him while mounted, they retreated and he escaped, setting up Glasstaff for a future encounter again at Wyvern Tor where he was regrouping.
Ran the encounter with the nothic for our second session, hinting at the darkness underneath Phandalin and my elf wizard having a nightmare the first night staying in Phandalin seeing a green eye watching over him in the darkness - and the player immediately picked it up and spun stories for the other plays about magical evil in the dark. Ixal startet reading minds and spilling their secrets already in the tunnel, and my players were freaking out. When they arrived at the crevasse I slowed the pace down and really put weight on the description of the talons and spikes before the green eye appeared from the dark crevasse - they hesitated and started to discuss how to kill it. Then Ixal filled their spaces with magical darkness and they bolted! They are super scared of the mansion now, I don't know if they will every visit. I might have overplayed it, haha. Next session in two days.
In my game, the player actually decided *not* to accept the Nothic's pact, but it was still a satisfying moment for his character who had a history with making dark pacts to resist the offer of power. I gave the players two options, I said the Nothic could probably tell you information or it could give you power. The information might even have been the location of the Wave Echo Cave. Since the player was a Warlock, I was going to give him an extra Eldritch Invocation - I don't think you can go wrong with suping up a character's class abilities in general with this kind of thing. The consequence I had in mind was making the player trade their luck away in the deal. If they accepted, I would replace all their D20 rolls with a D16. If they ever rolled a 16, they could have their D20 back for the rest of the session. The trick is to make whatever consequence interesting and fun too. There might be some fun roleplaying consequences in the madness table of the DMG? Are any of those any good?
@@heyitsMattyP Yeah, great answer. Very thorough. The D16 idea. is a good one, especially if the player chooses the enter the pact on their own volition. I like to hear how DMs approach storytelling and narrative hurdles to tell a great story. keep up the great work. I tend to run D&D modules using the Genesys ruleset but regardless of rules, a good story is a good story.
If one of my players accepts the deal, their eyes will become green and weird like the nothic's: they'll get advantage on perception and insight checks but disadvantage on all Charisma checks (except Intimidation).
15:21 @heyitsMattyP . This series has been extremely helpful to my first campaign of players. They're about to fight the nothic in my current game. I did have a question about the lair actions for the darkness effect. Do you play the darkness lair action like the spell Darkness? Such as do you make it so spells of second level or lower cannot illuminate the Darkness lair action?
So sorry for the late reply! I'd play it like the Darkness spell. Whenever there's already a spell or item that does something like the effect I'm imagining, I'll always just wholesale lift the rules from it.
@@heyitsMattyP A pox on the uncultured swine that don't appreciate a good preamble! But I suppose if helps your channel grow, I'll begrudgingly support the loss of it.
My character was basically Sir Lancelot from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie, so he needed no encouragement to start murdering redbrands in his own particular ... idiom.
I've recently started my own lost mines game, we are about to go into the hideout. I was trying to get them to want to deal with the Redbrands so I had a "captain" of the redbrands see one of the Towneies sitting next to their tap house and had him kick him. That townie was a player and they took it personally.
@@heyitsMattyP I really appreciate yur videos, is helping me my way through plus giving me ideas of my own aalong the way. When my party went to the cragmaw hideout they talked their way in as cave inspectors.. it was very dumb and I thought it was too funny to not let them have it. Also I had it as the cragmaw hideout was filled with the people king grull didn't want to deal with so there were many dumb and gullible goblins in there.
As soon as I read the description about the Redbrands, I immediately pictured them as the Cowboy gang from the movie Tombstone. Rather than run the full LMoP story, I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak for our main "campaign" story, but I'm pulling select parts from LMoP to integrate into Icespire Peak to make a more cohesive story. As part of this, I decided to keep Glasstaff and the Redbrands as a town threat, but I removed the black spider from the story. Instead, the dragon cultist leader Favric is the one who has hired Glasstaff to run adventurers out of town and secure resources from the town. Favric is trying to secure an alliance with both dragons in the area to move up in the ranks. He wants the Redbrands to run off any adventurers that could potentially kill the dragons, which would ruin his plans. And he wants the resources from the mining town to use as bribery for the dragons, so his motivations are in line with the overall story hook of the dragon appearing around Phandalin. The fact that there's a second dragon (Venomfang) in the area adds to the plot as the two dragons are aware of each other, and don't like each other, and are competing for this territory. Now the players have two dragons to deal with, though initially they only know about the one (Cryovain). Venomfang of course uses trickery when dealing with the players, and an interesting chess game could potentially ensue. Also, I decided to keep the note to Glasstaff that the players find, with just a few minor tweaks to it so that it is written by Favric instead of the spider... Lord Albrek, My spies in Neverwinter tell me that strangers are due to arrive in Phandalin. They could be working for the Zhentarim. Capture them if you can, kill them if you must, but don't allow them to upset our plans. See that any information they have on the dragons is delivered to me with haste. I'm counting on you Iarno. Don't disappoint me. - F I also took the Tyranny of Dragons logo (the dragon head with the five lines behind it) and placed it at the end of the letter. Using a fancy script font I then printed it out to have a physical letter to hand to my players when they get to that point. I also made Favric a slightly tougher "mini-boss" fight and gave him a magical sword that can do bonus damage of a dragon breath type. To keep with the theme of the cultists and give him a little more weight as a major character. All of this will eventually lead into the Rise of Tiamat story arc once the Icespire Peak story concludes. It should all tie in together nicely.
One of my players fell in love with Elsa the barmaid at the tavern, and the next adventuring day, I mentioned that Elsa looked particularly busy and that she couldn't really talk to the player sufficiently. After my player inquired some more, Elsa quickly told her about Trilena's good friend Thel Dendrar dying after standing up to the Redbrands. So basically, I moved the Thel Dendrar rumour to Elsa and used Trilena as a friend. This was really interesting actually since then the whole party wanted to go get the Redbrands, and after they wiped them out, they went to Trilena's house and told her, which lead to a very emotional moment with Trilena and her husband and the rest of the party. I thought this was really smart since I really got my players invested In defeating the Redbrands, and I got the questline with the Dendrars to feel so much more relevant.
My players are just about to enter the Redbrand hideout after convincing the Redbrands that they are an award-winning rap group... and are here to give a free concert...
I was planning to run Glassstaff as a younger man (maybe 30s/40s; old enough to have the Redbrands respect, but young enough to not know quite how to lead them efficiently), a bit inexperienced running things (efficiently, anyway; hence the Redbrands will be rather unorganized in their efforts). But I do like the idea of him being a past adventurer with Sildar…
I was DMing for my wife, her sister and sister's husband. SIL had never played before and was joining the game as they were going into redbrand hideout. As they are interrogating the guards in the dungeon, they said "we were just following orders" to which SIL law yells out "so were the nazis" before finishing the redbrand with an arrow to the dome.
I just had the redbrands accost them outside the inn asking for a tax from the players of 10 silver pieces. That aggravated them enough to pursue them and their hideout.
My players straight up murdered Droop. Didn't even try to wake him up. Glasstaff got away, and they still don't know that he's Sildar's old buddy Iarno. I haven't decided yet what to do with him.
Oh no! This is tragic. It kind of feels like that scene from Community where Troy walks in with the pizza and everything's on fire. I actually wouldn't know how to proceed either! Are the players usually the kill-first, roleplay-later kind?
Hi! Great vid, ive been following along with my party. Can you explain why to get rid of the bugbears? I feel like they would make up a huge amount of the combat in this dungeon
I remove the bugbear wing of the dungeon because the bugbears aren't interesting enough to be worth including. If the players are facing the bugbears, that means they've gone the wrong direction and aren't progressing the story, just wasting their time.
The party had gotten to know the barmaid fairly well in the first few days of their adventure and found out she was in love with the carpenter’s daughter. After the party had gone out to deal with the Orcs for Sildar and returned, she told them she was worried, her love and her family had been kidnapped by the red brands and their house tossed. The party rushed over to see this was true and then set out to the bar on the other side of town and the manner to clear shop and find the red brand prisoners. They were very invested and found the hints the the black spider to further the plot to finding Gundren. I honestly think this was the height of our campaign, it felt emotional and tense. And they adopted Droop.
"I know you are duty-bound to arrest me." This is brilliant. He's already intimidated that worthless bastard Harbin, and would probably be let off easily.
Finished up the Redbrand hideout last night... Ixal begged the party for "snacks" which was mainly dead or incapacitated Redbrands, which they happily obliged. Except for the only wizard in the party... Ixal specifically reached out to him as an "understanding fellow magic-user" with a Pact: power! Ixal would teach him how to transfer his life energy into spell energy in exchange for letting him retain his lair - the PC's clearly had the upper hand over the existing residents; mechanically, the wizard can get his spell slots back on a short rest - the cost is 2 levels of exhaustion. The party made "friends" with Ixal and more or less assassinated Glasstaff and many of his Redbrand cronies and dumped them with Ixal, before naming themselves the new heads of the Redbrands. Eager to find out how they pitch this to Bart and the rest of the town... Ixal was able to dish on quite a bit to new new pact-buddy, Ivan. Nezzar = the Black Spider, Glasstaff = Iarno... all kinds of stuff. perhaps Ixal's crack will simply end up overflowing with bodies until the townsfolk team up with the Cragmaws out of desperation to chase the murderous PC's out for good.
My players immediately after dropping off the cart of provisions and hearing one person complain about The Rebrands went directly to The Sleeping Giant Tap Room and started trouble.
Mine too! I had more and more red brands pile out and beat them up. After knocking a few red brand heads over fences, the barbarian got dropped and the rogue and fighter got down to 1 hp each. Perfect time for Nezzar to pop her head up on the Tap house roof, blast the red brands with some magic missles, and hop down with a helpful healing potion for the barbarian. Puzzle box trade established. 😄
In room 9 where the bugbears are intimidating the helpless goblin, the main bugbear's name used to be Mosk, but one of the revisions made when WotC released The Shattered Obelisk, was to change his name to Nosk so nobody mistakes him with a place of prayer
My group fully destroyed both early pure spellcasters in this campaign before they were even able to act. If you can surprise them they're ridiculously weak at low levels. Then my Cleric/Wizard got the Staff of Defense, giving him possible 23 AC 5 times a day at level 2.
My players killed off the Redbrands at the Sleeping Giant, but they never really did anything to find out their hideout or go speak to the right NPCs about where Cragmaw Castle. I tried to lead them on by using your vegan cookies, but chocolate croissants for my rogue players, attacking them, but nothing was enough. They did however complete the Banshee quest and as they exited Sister Garaeles house, stating that Glasstaff wanted to speak to them (Glasstaff having been sent orders to capture the party, unknowing that it was for the puzzle box). The Redbrands put hoods on the party, and as soon as they started leading them away, the leader said: "So how did it feel to kill them? Gary, Luke... You know, Luke was actually my brother..." Before hitting the hooded player in the back with a shovel, and yell "They're resisting!" And that's how I got to finally have my players hate the redbrands and finally deal with them. Your series have made my LMoP-campaign so much better!
I feel like the redbrands wouldn't call themselves "out-of-towners". Maybe "professionals" or "veterans" or something like that. The locals might call them "out-of-towners", but people don't tend to use such a term on themselves.
I mixed things up quite a bit with Iarno... I introduced another NPC, namely... L'Khifrey Albrek-Roethorn, who is of course Iarno's daughter. Iarno did indeed go rogue from the Lords Alliance, and did "disappear" but it was his daughter who brought this to the attention of Sildar Hallwinter. Iarno is basically undercover on a solo mission - a mission of revenge. Just over 2 years ago, Iarno's daughter fell in love with and married Iarno's protege (Daylonir Roethorn) who was really more the son he always wished for. Shortly after Daylonir started a happy life with his new bride he was found murdered. Iarno lost his mind with grief and anger and began to investigate with a focused passion for blood-recompense. One clue led to another and another and eventually to a shadowy character named The Black Spider. Iarno discovered that the only way he would ever get close enough to the Black Spider to kill him would be to go to work for him, to become a trusted lieutenant of sorts in his black web of criminal enterprising. He quietly despises the Redbrands and what he must order them to do... but his mind is fixed on vengeance and no cost is too high... until the Redbrands take his daughter to the cellar...
I decided make the black spider from menzoberranzan. Her last name i made from one of the main houses of the underdark city. So i named the evil faction the Fey-Branche contingency. It also opens up the underdark to the party for a future or continuing campaign.
Yo, I've been taking a lot of your advice. As a new player/DM, simplifying Phandalin took a lot of stress off my shoulders, thanks! Anyways. Once the red brands harassed Molly, my players had finally had enough 😂
Glad to help! The players are only going to interact with 10% of any town in a single session, so you only need to prep a max of 15% of the town to allow you enough tolerance to move content around on the fly and accomodate whatever they want to do. Have fun smashing those Red Boys!
Question! If the nothic has made a pact with Glasstaff allowing the redbrands to move freely about its lair, why does it immediately gobble up that poor red boy who is fleeing for his life?
Good question! If the letter of the law here was something like, "I let you share my lair, and in return you provide me food," maybe the Redbrands hadn't kept their end of the bargain that week?
My read is that the scared Redbrand had just decided being a criminal wasn't worth it, and he was quitting and running for the secret exit out of the hideout. But since he'd just decided not to be a Redbrand anymore and the Nothic can read thoughts, he was fair game for snack time.
Great videos! Starting LMoP next week as a first time dm. Is all of you content available on patreon? How much for all of it? Keep up the great content!!
Hey Liam! Apologies for the late response - glad you're enjoying the series :) The Patreon is set up in a way where to $5 tier gets everything backdated all the way to when I made my Patreon account. The lower tier is mainly for community participation and the tier above is for suggesting video ideas and getting early access when I manage to get ahead on my video schedule.
In my first ever dnd campaign, I played a fighter alongside a bard, artificer, and wizard. The bard did classic bard stuff and got spicy with a barmaid. The next day he sent the artificer out to meet the barmaid and he got mugged by the Redbrands who were after the bard bc the barmaid was apparently in league with them. After that we all got so mad we fixed up the artificer and went straight to storm their hideout
Another fun thing, we found droop the goblin and saved him from the bugbears and with a good charisma roll and a bit of bargaining we made friends with the nothic and called him scoop
My Redbrand story is this: As a Session Zero plot hook, I had the Redbrands as the initial encounters for getting the puzzle box. Most of them I used the simple bandit stat block, but for one of them, I used the Legacy Redbrand with multiattack. She downed the warlock in one turn and he proceeded to Nat 1 his first death save throw. Part 2, when my players got to town, they found out what the Redbrands have done (besides their canonical crimes). They burned down the local library after looting it of all worthwhile material, ran out the blacksmith to disarm the town (save for Lionshield Coster), got the local newspaper shut down, installed a viciously strict curfew (leading to a dangerous combat encounter), and established a chokehold on gambling. My wizard player was pissed that he couldn’t get her the COOL 2nd level spells (player’s a he, character is a she) because there’s no library. Players, especially the artificer, disliked that they have no way to immediately upgrade their equipment. The warlock was upset about the newspaper and had gambled all of his money away. The curfew we’ll talk about soon enough. As a final motivation, my ranger player is actually a Zhentarim agent. Halia had him come to her shop, and set him up to put Glasstaff down. He agreed immediately, finding out where their base was. Part 3, the Redbrands patrol the town after sunset (in case of trouble-makers like my players and Cryovain from Icespire Peak making an attack). My players knowingly broke curfew to escort Qelline Alderleaf home (thr Redbrands had been looking for an excuse to kill her). During this, my players met a “drifter” (an important NPC from my first campaign). The drifter and the cleric both unfortunately failed their stealth checks, getting discovered by the Redbrands. When my barbarian player tried to ask the Redbrands to drop this, their leader demanded the players hand over everything but the clothes on their backs. Yeah, the Redbrand team had four dug graves in the woods near the farm (two decapitated, one backstabbed and shot full of crossbow bolts and their leader (a bandit captain) riddled with bullets, face melted off, slashed to ribbons, and bisected (my players were impressed by his staying power)), a pile of ashes of a fifth (chromatic orb go brr), and three maimed Redbrands (two knocked out by the Drifter, and one got non-lethally mauled by Ripper, Klarg’s former pet). They’re all Level 3 by the way. From Carp, they discovered the secret entrance. Part 4: The current as-of-writing final straw. The players, especially two of them who played in my first game, found out the Drifter’s identity-a nimblewright from Dragon Heist who belonged to a group of friendly NPCs I made. He asked for their help finding and rescuing one of their favorite NPCs. While they in-character never met her, they are eager to rescue her. As well as the Dendrars, who they found out the Redbrands also kidnapped after murdering their patriarch. The cleric is especially on-board with that, after talking to Tempus who is very kosher with war-based murder… and he has declared war on the Redbrands.
@@heyitsMattyP Thank you! I personally wanted to expand the Redbrands since both the original module and especially the rewrite seem to really want to shove goblinoids nonstop in people’s faces. And with my plans to expand Conyberry and what my Black Spider is up to there as a backup lair, the Redbrands have a chance to continue being antagonists with or without Glasstaff thanks to a supplement I found called “Redbrands Roll Call.”
Heya Matt! Awesome video buddy. Quick question, what would you do if instead of going into room 10 and confronting the redbands in there the players skip it and go onto rooms 11 and 12 and confront Glass Sraff? Would you have Glassy immediately flee or fight for a bit and have the redbands leave room 10 and come join the fight?
Hey! Thank you, thank you :) If Glass Staff is in combat alone for even a single round, he's in big danger. I would immediately flee towards the Redbrand allies, but run that portion of the chase in initiative, in case the players can snipe him on the way out.
Howdy Matt! I've just finished most prep for this part of the campaign, but I was hoping I could get your thoughts on something. Because I goofed last adventure and pretty much spelled out where Cragmaw Castle is, my party wanted to go right away to the castle to rescue Gundren. Sildar managed to convince them instead to go to Phandalin, but I'm still worried that they are going to ignore all hooks about the Redbrands and all side quests and go after Gundren again. Which would be fine, but I don't have time to prep for the Cragmaw Castle adventure. Any thoughts on how I can keep them engaged with the goings on of the town?
Hey Cory! Unfortunately, the heart wants what the heart wants. If your players want to go to the Cragmaw Castle, I would let them. But if they're going into town first, make yourself a checklist and see the folowing ANY WAY you can. 1. "The Redbrands are causing trouble!" 2. "There's been a mysterious stranger on the rooftops." After that, if they go to the Castle, let them have a crack, but warn them that it's a tough area at level 2. Maybe even run the Necromancer side quest as an encounter on the way. But if they do the Castle, twist the knife on the Redbrands and advance that threat somehow in their absence.
@@heyitsMattyP Brilliant! Thanks for the reply and the suggestions, Matt. Much appreciated! Maybe just a friendly reminder to my mates that TPKs are NOT off the menu too, if they are insistent on going to Cragmaw Castle! LOL!
@@coryschlichting3517 I played with a DM who had a policy of the "DM Warning" where it might all fun and games, but when we were entering an area or forming a plan that held genuine risk from his perspective that we mightn't be privy to as players, but would be very unfun or feel unfair to lose to, he would say, "Heads up guys, this is your general DM Warning for this area." It didn't get in the way of our agency but made us entirely culpable for all consequences. Maybe that would be a useful thing for your group?
@@heyitsMattyP Oh my dude! I love it!! I'm going to do the "DM Warning"... that's brilliant! Thanks for the suggestion! And I know I've said it a couple of times in other videos and whatnot, but a HUGE thank you for putting all this hard work into this series. I've really been enjoying putting your changes into my game and my mates have been having a blast too.
This is my favourite video I've made so far - it took over 30 hours, but it's a big step up for me. If this video made you laugh and you want to help the channel, PLEASE tell a friend.
▼----------------- Why I get rid of Droop -----------------▼
So, why do I suggest cutting beloved goblin friendo Droop? I know a lot of parties have had fun times with their goblin sidekick - and if all you want is a fun sidekick character, you should ignore me and include Droop anyway.
But here are my reasons:
1) Droop double-handles exposition. His purpose is to indicate the Redbrands are working with the Cragmaws, but we've already got this information in a few other places.
2) Droop contradicts the session's tone. The silly or sympathetic character clashes with the rescue-friend-from-death-in-jail and make-pact-with-evil-eye-monster stuff we've already got going in this dungeon. I LIKE that other stuff, and I don't want to complicate it.
3) Droop takes brain space. Every character we include, that's a little less Dungeon Master RAM we have for other content. If Droop's not essential or giving some great energy to the session, I don't want to waste the head space on him. Also: it means we can cut an encounter and get through this dungeon quicker.
I'm expecting a lot of comments like, "Droop was the best part of this campaign for our group," and that's both legit and valid. Players love collecting NPCs. For me, Droop isn't worth the effort it takes to make him relevant. I think the only reasons I WOULD include him are if the players had somehow misunderstood any clues about the Black Spider's goals or if the story's tone drastically needed lightening. Now, that's "lightening" I said, not lightning. But knowing how good goblins are at self-preservation and how trigger-happy the party wizard is with friendly fire, maybe some lightning is on the cards too.
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I had droop be a doppleganger serving the black spider. He tried to sabotage the party by giving bad advice, and then he snuck off at Cragmaw Castle to alert the goblins but the party caught him. One of my party members wanted to ham it up and act like he didn't realise he was a doppleganger to get more info, but another party member stepped in and killed him, then they had an IRL argument lol.
I would totally drop Droop, given your reasoning and modifications that make him redundant, but… my characters already befriended his father (I’ll explain).
So, in the goblin arrows portion, they captured a goblin and got information out of him. Great, the module totally explains what the goblin knows! It does not really explain what to do with the goblin afterwards though, so I just played him as a captive while my players tied him up in their sleep sack and brought him around for information. I tried to have him later break free (failed strength check to break out and was just rolling around as a sack of rage) and betray the party (call out to the goblin guards at the cave, who the party would have totally snuck up on if one of them hadn’t thrown a massive rock in the river and make a huge splash sound; that’s just karma. The guard managed to run through the party and cut my goblin’s bonds (out of the bag at this point, just tied up) and… was he was immediately recaptured, while guard was killed). He eventually befriended the party as I let them play nice with him and played him as having no real alliance but rather hating Klarg and simply liking the party enough to befriend them. He actually ended up giving useful info about the layout of the cave and enemies within. He also cut up the sleep sack to create a sort of pants,shirt, cloak, and mask disguise and pretend to be a halfling (got that idea from CR’s Nott The Brave) so that they other goblins wouldn’t come after him as a traitor. Long story short, every enemy in the cave died, both Yeemik and Klarg (Klarg killed Yeemik, who I played as very intelligent and conniving and ready to parlay with the players instead of fighting, and the goblins loyal to him when the party made a deal with him, then left his part of the cave, and let one of the two goblin guards loyal to Klarg get away and didn’t pursue as they were low on health. They took a long rest outside and I had to take the events into account and reasoned that Klarg would put 2 and 2 together and kill Yeemik. This also gave a reason to have Sildar moved to Klarg’s room as well).
So, with all of that out of the way (sorry to rant), when I thought the goblin (later named “Skill”) was just going to be disposable, one of my players asked if he had any kids. To make him seem evil, I played along and said
“Oh, yesss”
“Are you an active part of their lives?”
“Yes yes… but not in the way you might think; they fear me!”
Somehow, they kinda forgot this detail and still fell in love with this evil backstabbing goblin, so I played along and made the goblin fairly neutral.
…but there’s still this kid that he apparently abused, and I know my friend still has this in the back of their mind!
So my plan is to have Droop, but instead of making him a comedic sidekick, play it as Skill’s (my goblin’s) lost son. When the party stumbles upon him, Skill (who until now spent every encounter immediately pulling back and hiding) will be the first to charge forward and take on all the bug bears (pushing my party to also fight them), just going all out, full level 2 or 3 (I’m playing it that he’s also getting xp from the fights he’s “in”, but not taking from the player’s xp, just taking an equal duplicate amount, so xp is split between players, but whatever they get, he does as well) Fury of the Small; just as much damage as he can, which should be a startling contrast to the players as he’s kind of a complete coward. When they are defeated, he’ll just embrace Droop and break down that he never thought he’d see him again, apologizing that he tried to “toughen him up” rather than treat him how he should have, revealing that he’s the son he was talking about before and giving new meaning to what he said/his real motivation. He may exposit later that it was Klarg who was splitting the goblin families, explaining his hatred of Klarg and why he betrayed him and the other goblins in charge so quickly.
With any luck, this should hopefully go according to plan (lol), turn a comedic character into a sympathetic one, deepen an npc that my players love while fixing an inconsistency with them, and keep the somber tone of the area instead of making in weirdly light hearted before they find the dead mayor.
Sorry to rant, but hopefully you found this weird recollection of how this one goblin is messing with the story and how I’m tweaking Droop to match entertaining 😅
@@josiahwilkinson4334 I'm really curious about how it turned out. I'm about to start this campaign as a new DM tomorrow, and I really liked the idea of this whole goblin family reunion thing, so now I'm seriously thinking about implementing this into my game:^^
@@Benevolentforestspirit oh, heh, forgot I wrote all of this. Well, out of my friends and I, I'm the only one who works a normal Mon-Fri, 9-5 job, so we only got to do session 2 a couple weeks ago. The goblin is still around and we ended just before them going into the Redbrand hideout (had them do the other sidequests first to build up npcs so that the twist of the mysterious GlassStaff being Sildar's old flame and the old Redbrand leader alongside the bar owner who was thought missing and possibly dead, and also since I changed portions of the story to make all of the sidequests caused my Neznar in a way that will be revealed at the end). So that's all going to go down tomorrow evening (assuming we don't cancel). I'll let you know how it plays out.
Also, I introduced Neznar (who says to call him Nezzy) as an old who mysteriously showed up in town around the same time everything went to sh*t. However my players, who pick up on the most throw away details and ignore the biggest plot points (if I put them in a bar and described in great detail the mysterious hooded figure at the bar staring at them, they would unironically try to talk to everyone else first), so they somehow now think that he's an old man with dementia. Gonna twist that knife later when Gundar's older brother is killed by him (also renamed the Rockseekers as Gundar, Fundar (younder, free spirited, dead in the Redbrand hideout because I missed revealing his death at the southern bandits), and Thundar (the SERIOUS one already at the cave, so no one actually can reach him currently) because I thought it'd be funnier XD).
The book is a nice guideline, but do what you want; drop things, add things, the world is your sandbox.
@@josiahwilkinson4334 wow, sounds great! I've DMed my first session recently and it was wonderful - everyone seemed to enjoy this campaign(or at least I hope they did x)), though we were progressing really slowly through the story(by the end of the session 1 the party just got to the Cragmaw hideout), but I like it this way. I've added the little introductory part at the start where everyone could describe their characters, how they met, how they looked, etc. Also I added a minor scene for when they were leaving the city and also I expanded their journey to Phandalin, so that there was at least one special event happening each day of the trip. I'd love to hear how the rest of your campaign plays out, so I'll be waiting!!
The evil faction shall be called. "The Spider's Web"
This is the correct answer.
@@heyitsMattyP Indeed
Litterally just scrolled down to comment this exact thing.
A little on the nose. Perhaps the Charlottes?
Ha!
I ran this online via Roll20 early in tge pandemic. When I got to the Nothic's lair, I had recorded a bunch of audio of me whsipering in the Nothic's voice, and overlaid several layers of it. The aubject of the whispers was things the players had already done but also some of their secret background information. I had the volume slowly ramp up, and I set this recording to play when they entered the lair.
Up until this point i had not used the Roll20 music feature so my players were not expecting it at all - did not even realize it was possible.
They were FREAKED. OUT. It was wonderful. "Guys? Guys? can you hear that? Its not just me, right?"
Ha! That's very cool - well done :)
This is GENIUS! Too much work for my lazy butt, however I.m definitely going to voice act this now. Thanks for sharing!
Glasstaff escaped from my players since they fooled around in his lab too long, ignored his familiar, and even started reading the book they found there. They were frustrated enough by this that I inserted him again as the leader of the cultists at Thundertree who tries to sell them to the Dragon, and again as part of the final battle in Cragmaw Castle, where they finally captured him. They loved the ongoing search for him.
And I bet that sneaky wizard met a violent reckoning :) Good job!
@@heyitsMattyP Indeed. They captured him and brought him to Halia. During Glasstaff's and Halia's conversation, the players finally realized that they had allowed Halia to take over the Redbrands (they had failed some important perception checks and missed some clues I left along the way). It was great fun for all.
I went in a 100% different direction with the Red Brands and had them make an alignment shift from bad to good. I ran LMoP as a zombie apocalypse and the Red Brands had to team up with the party to survive. The party had to swallow their pride for the greater good.
The manor became the base for the party and the survivors so they had clear the nothic out to make it safe. In that fight I had the nothic taunt the party with their shameful secrets that they hadn’t shared with the rest of the group. He hid in the shadows, mocking their shame, then would use hit and run tactics to whittle them down. My group said it was their favourite battle of the campaign.
Iarno “Glasstaff” was a relative to one of the PCs in that game. I used him to get that particular PC to Phandalin. He started out selfish and egotistical but as the game progressed he softened up to his long lost daughter, becoming an endearing father figure. Which made his self sacrifice at the end of the campaign all the more heart wrenching.
Yes to all of this! I'll always maintain that any idea you come up with will work better than the ideas in the module, so good job :)
I got a little inspiration from one of my friends for this. My nothic in the crevasse is crazy about puzzles. He made a pact with Glassstaff to let him and the Redbrands come and go as they please in exchange for a few puzzles from time to time. Lately, Glasstaff hasn't been delivering, and it just so happens that one of the PC's is carrying around a mysterious puzzlebox for him to solve!
The nothic is so cool! Great job tying it into the story more :)
Three of my players are obsessive animal lovers, so when they didn't confront the Redbrands I had them kidnap Buddy the Cat, and hold him as insurance that Bart wouldn't antagonize them anymore. No mercy was had on the Redbrands after that.
Nice. I did something similar and had them kidnap the little Halfing girl that worked with Bart.
The quality of your content is amazing! Well thought out, well explained, well edited and super fun, always a blast to watch!
Thanks so much Pedro! My goal is to make D&D videos you can enjoy even if you don't know anything about D&D.
Your timing is perfect. I’m running this adventure at the moment and my party have just got to Phandelin. Thanks for the great content and video.
My absolute pleasure :) Gotta keep this ball rolling - up next is the Cragmaw Castle and then the Wave Echo Cave
The party after arriving in town and finding rooms at Stonehill, started asking about the area and the Redbrands were raised by Tolben. After becoming incited about the Redbrands shaking down the town, they decided to visit (aka storm) the Sleeping Giant taphouse. After taking out 4 of the 5 Redbrands, (charming one) They used the charmed Redbrand (Bron) to lead them to the various locations in the town to remove the Redbrand threat. I had the Redbrands located in several houses that they had acquired to use as positions to watch the town, and not just hole up under the manor. After eliminating 14 Redbrands in the first night in town, I had to launch a counter offensive by the Redbrands lead by Glasstaff, after a few rounds of combat and some really lucky rolls, Glass staff was running for his life.
Love that you brought Glasstaff out to the players rather than making them storm the hideout :)
Great tips! My first party took the Nothic out immediately since they were so creeped out, Droop was a bust, and the cistern was a non-issue. Reminding me that the Nothic know EVERYONE'S secrets just answered my question of how to tie our non-Redbrand rogue to a personal connection. Turns out the Nothic knows about him, as one of the RBs knew him from their guild before joining. Pow! Adding my voicemod software to the thoughts inside their head, and wow, this will rock his world.
Voicemod is a game changer! Good idea :)
As someone running my first dnd campaign on lost mines, this series of videos has given me tons of ideas and thank you so much
Excellent! Glad to help :)
Same, running my first 5e and first session in over a decade. Matthew has SAVED my adventuring party from certain boredom, frustration, and death lol
Oh Man, I'm running this as a first time everything! I'm DM'ing it for my son. All it took was a couple of dirty looks from the Redbrands outside the Sleeping Giant as the party passed on the way to Transendar Manor! Didn't take him much to take the bait and start kill'n. I guess I'd done a good job making sure he knew they needed to be dealt with.
I had Droop act as the sentry in the Cragmaw hideout, and he ran to Yeemik when he was attacked by the players. After my players cut a deal with Yeemik, I had Droop secretly run away as the players were fighting Klarg.
When they got to the Redbrand hideout I described Droop's shoulder injury (one of my players hit him with a javelin on his shoulder) and immediately my players went 'wait a minute' as they recognized this goblin.
It was especially funny since they lost some of the goods in their cart as Droop ran away and stole them so they had some animosity towards Droop.
I can see how the tone may not fit but honestly my players really enjoyed the whole thing and he really served to make the plotline feel more connected.
Tank you as always! I didn’t grow up with D&D, but when my daughters were teens I ran a campaign for them and their friends for two years. It was home-brew, and I could fudge. But now I’m running this campaign for Zoe neighbor kids. They love it, but ask me a lot of unexpected questions. They are Chines immigrants. Your videos have been invaluable. Once COVID and the universe let me get back on my feet ii’ll join your patron
I love these videos, honestly. My current long-term campaign started out as LMoP and expanded from there (2 years later, they're currently lv 15), so this makes me so nostalgic. This quest in particular gives me fond memories.
The Nothic became a central NPC in my campaign. I personally played up the fact that in the lore, Nothics are essentially liches gone terribly wrong and turned him into something of a gollum-inspired character, his greed for arcane knowledge having turned into pure greed for shiny objects. The party immediately bribed him into betraying Glasstaff with a random art item they'd gotten from another quest, and named him Magpie. The party's name is now Magpie's Mutual, as they went on to establish an "insurance" company where for a small annual fee, the party will retrieve any object that you insure with them. He runs their keep (a refurbished Cragmaw Keep) while they're off adventuring.
Sarah this is such a rad story that *totally* confirms the Nothic as the best part of Lost Mines - thanks for sharing :)
I'm Running lost mines at the moments with a party of new players and only came across your series after running the first session with kragmaw cave, and its been very helpful. Rather than having the players have the puzzle box from the start i'v had them find it in the possession of the necromancer at Old Owl Well, along with a letter from the black spider informing him that the cave has nearly been found and to 'bring his research if it is complete' . The advice of condensing the NPCs in Phandalin into one or two very memorable ones was definitely the right idea. I'm glad you reccommended cutting thundertree, as i was struggling to think of a way to get my players there and was hesitant about cutting so much content, im now considering using it as a way to bridge the narative from lost mines to the module we run next.
Mate! Great solutions :)
I think that's good use for Thundertree too. It leads into other campaigns really well, or could be expanded into its own homebrew campaign. You might have already seen it, but here's a chat I had with How to D&D about cutting Thundertree: ruclips.net/video/cmsk1vCBAXw/видео.html
@@heyitsMattyP Thanks, I'll check that out also. Probably considering running storm kings thunder afterwards, so perhaps replacing the dragon with a giant, or even have the two in a soft conflict over the territory, to link into the story of that campaign
@@Irelandyorkshire Having a fairly even between a dragon and giant, and allowing the players to tip the balance, is a great way to show them their agency!
Thanks for all the advice, I love the vids and the humour. My party decided they were going to feed Iarno to the Nothic so that took a sinister but hilarious turn.
Glad you're enjoying the videos! I bet that's actually a pretty common solution :) But at least the Nothic is onside now, right?
I ran a group through LMoP as my first session, all total noobs, over 2 years ago.
Your great videos make me want to revisit Phandalin and do it again with the benefit of hindsight and all your tips.
This series has been amazing so far. I've read a lot of fixes and guides to TLMOP but yours is really thorough, especially with how you focus on considering what players would find fun, which helps as a new DM.
Thanks for the vote of confidence! I think the videos are getting better the further along I get :)
My general rule for any adventure is: if it's not fun, don't do it. So that's the cornerstone of these videos, I think. Gotta keep it fun!
I built the history between Sildar and Iarno. Sildar had developed the legal system of Phandalin and executed his peer Iarno after his capture. Also, I made the Flaming skull as an element of the Glass staff itself. Its basically a skull head on a stick encased in glass.
Oh man, you make me want the Flame Skull in the Wave Echo Cave to be Glasstaff's undead skull, possessed with some kind of crazy animus. I'd love to see a moment of Sildar approaching the party before burying Iarno and saying, "His head's missing."
Awesome video dude! I love playing up the nothic horror and the idea of freaking the players out with that meta communication.
Cheers Anto! My wife suggest a rad idea yesterday that I'm cut didn't make it into the video - have the Nothic use the players' real names, not their character names.
@@heyitsMattyP Oh my god that would be some psycho mantis level shiz! I'd nope the hell out of there.
These ideas are so terrifyingly brilliant that I'm angry I didn't come up with them.
Experienced DM here. Running this adventure tonight (out of Phandelver and Below) and loving your videos!! Great takes on combining rooms and role playing the monsters. Years later, but happy to be here. Thanks for the advice
Glad it's still helpful! I'm finishing Phandelver and Below next month (I hope) and I'll be making content for those later dungeons too :)
The ipad whiteboard was a very neat idea. Made pointing out information quite clear and it was probably easier for you to do as well!
Cheers Sun! I'll look for any excuse to use the iPad productively, just so I can justify the purchase :) Maybe a tax writeoff?
that nothic reading the partys mind via actual at table conversation is pure genius, nice one
My players missed both Glasstaff and the Nothic. So later while giving them each little solo missions to do, I had the least scrupulous player be hired by the Miner's Exchange lady to go back and assassinate Glasstaff. Also had the woodcutter's wife ask him to look around for her husband's remains so he had a reason to go in the crevasse. He wound up 1v1'ing Glasstaff AND the Nothic and winning out with some good rolls, and got the +1 sword and 100 gold for his effort.
Oh my god. What class was this player?
Actually: I know. This had to be a barbarian.
@@heyitsMattyP Champion Fighter actually! The Nothic fight was pretty close (he probably would have died without second wind), but he got a couple good crits in with his shiny new sword.
Awesome video! This series has been really helpful. For our game Glasstaff is a widower. He was easily swayed to support the Black Spider my means of seduction and wealth. When the PCs are in the Red Brand hideout it will be revealed that Glasstaff has been getting hot and heavy with Monteeth instead of the real Black Spider. He gets fuming mad at the intrusion and readies an attack against the trespassing PRUDES!! Haha
Watching your videos made it easier for me to trust myself and change things even on the spot.
I loved the idea of Phandalin being a spaghetti western town 🤣
When I ran the Redbrand hideout I turned the Nothic into a Gollum-like character. He loves magic items but also feels lonely and between eating humans and elves and feeding off magic items he seeks friendship and companionship.
One of the PC made a deal with him and was actually able to convince the rest to give the Nothic a warm welcome. They loved it for while it lasted.
One of the players was not buying it and was aggressive towards the little Nothic who ran scared and betrayed.
I was planning to slowly reveal the evil side of the Nothic and make it the "key" for the forge of spells. The PC would have to either easily kill their friend the Nothic or kill the Spectator.
They will meet him again though, in the wave echo cave. Not sure if he will be empowered and their final obstacle or sorry and captured by the Black Spider.
PS. Thank you for the awesome content
Oh wow! Glad it's all been helpful :)
I like that you're keeping your options open and not locking in your plans for the Nothic. I generally try to keep all my plans loose and only prep the next session so I can be more reactive to the players' decisions. Sounds like you're doing a good job!
I'm sure some people will not like the antics but I think they are hilarious ("how to get your players to engage" at 2:07 made me lol haha.)
This is amazing content and I really appreciate all of the work.
Thank you! When I was using a green screen, I was trying to emulate the energy of the Trixie & Katya show
When I ran Lost Mine, I had the Red Brands be former low ranking members of the Lord’s Alliance (red cloaks) and Glass Staff was their commander. This changed however when Glassstaff’s master was transformed into a nothic when they looked for forbidden knowledge. Wanting to reverse this curse, the Black Spider swooped in to sway Glass Staff to work with them, keeping the townspeople from getting to close to the mine. In exchange, the Black Spider would use the spell forge to help Glass Staff’s former master once the forge was found. Now their own faction, the redcloacks removed their Lord’s Alliance patches as they went from defenders to racketeers.
Additionally, since we had three wizards in this game, I has all three of them write to each other in a sort of fantasy Nation of Letters akin to the Enlightenment
I like the idea of the whole Redbrand faction being a Lord's Alliance cell gone rogue! Great way to tie it in :)
Just wanted to say, love giving the Nothic some further backstory and a stronger tie to Glasstaff. I might need to borrow some elements of this for when I run the Redbrand Hideout for my campaign.
I'm loving these guides! I just started running Lost Mines for the third time (combined with Dragon of Icespire Peak this time) and your stuff is pure gold. Thanks and please keep it coming!
Oh rad! Glad you're enjoying it Dan :) Icespire Keep has been sitting on my shelf for *month* waiting for me to read it - I'd love to run it one day. Do you run it in a way where the events and locations are kind of mixed together, or do you tack Icespire Keep on the end of Lost Mines?
@@heyitsMattyP Hey man, I kinda gave up on running Icespire Keep after watching your videos hahahah. I guess I'll just bring some elements and quests, for example, I left Gundren and Don-Jon Raskin (from Icespire) at the Cragmaw Hideout, the party just rescued them. The lore behind it is that over 30 years ago, Gundren, Don-Jon, the father of one my PCs and the mother of another discovered the Forge in an old dwarven fortress (supposed to be Axeholm, from Icespire), they figured the power of the forge was too dangerous to end up in the wrong hands and sealed it behind a huge stone door with a tree carving, some of the leafs are actually made of emerald, which are used to unlock the door. Each of them kept of emerald. Later when the Black Spider went after the Forge she found it sealed, figured out about the emerald leafs and now is after them. The puzzle box you suggested are now 4 puzzle boxes, each with one leaf inside, the Spider has one, the party has 2 and the other is with Don-Jon, who will be kidnapped by the Red Brands and his box stolen.
Sorry for the wall of text, your videos really inspired me to run this again with a new twist on it!
Oh no! My videos killed Icespire Keep!
Emerald leaves in the puzzle box is a rad idea. Giving me those door-to-Moria vibes :)
I'm running LMoP right now, and my players just had a GREAT rp session last week involving the Redbrands.
Sildar gave them an "urgent quest" to find Gundren as quickly as possible, so they have to ply the townmembers for info. The thing is, nobody wants to talk to them because they're so upset about the Redbrands.
Two sessions ago the hot-headed halfling rogue in the party challenged the captain of the Redbrands to a duel over a scuffed boot and promptly had his butt handed to him on a silver platter. Even though he lost, his bravery scored the PCs some points and lips started opening.
The next day one of the more amiable Redbrands comes to the inn to check on him and extends the invitation to join up. He was also fishing for information about how long they were going to be in town to see if they would be a serious threat or just "passing through."
I decided to make some of the Redbrands townies, but young and impressionable; the kind of kids you'd want to steer down a better path. During the conversation with the Redbrand, the party went from being suspicious and hating him, to empathizing with him and even getting a TON of information out of him, and then plotting with him to overthrow Glasstaff and change the Redbrands to something good, with the help of Halia Thornton, of course 😉 lol
I was so proud of my players 🥰
Super helpful! Love the idea of having a young, impressionable Redbrand fledgling that the PC's could steer right. Carp, maybe? I want to hook them in to his goodness and then reveal that he's on the fence but sees a future with the Redbrands. Also really like your PC/Redbrand interactions. So good!
I'm running PaBtSO and this angle is going to be my direction too. I've even planned some instances of intimidation and antagonizing of the townsfolk by Redbrands for the players to witness and trigger their ire for the militia turned ruffians(shakedowns, muggings, damsels in distress). I also took Matty's idea of a puzzle box and rewrote it to be a sort of insurance policy for the Rockseekers and really drive home the point of dealing with the redbrands to get Gundren's map back asap. Knowing the significance of their discovery, the dwarf brothers have asked the innkeeper to give the puzzle box to their adventurer friends (I started with meet me in Phandalin) when they arrive in town. The box can be opened with a DC15 intel check or atunement by any player(one of the brothers hobby was making such boxes). Inside is a letter explaining the brothers discovery and a heartfelt request from the brothers that if anything happens to them, the players will do the right thing for Phandalin and protect the Rockseekers discovery.
I have only just started this video but just had to come down here to give props for "handlin' Phandalin" and "better red than dead". Gods and bunnies, man.
Haha thanks! I think I might have stolen each from people in my Discord
I did name my Nothic Ixal, (seemed perfect) and gave him lines that hit my party members with crazy bargains:
"I will give you gold to send to mum .. all I ask for is a taste of your pinky finger."
It was creeptastic. Instead of confronting them right away and attacking, it followed them through the whole place interjecting with more creepiness when mood called for it.
"Bring me another child? (this is the unfortunate farmer's demise)" After a while, the characters will attack it. The player eavesdrop is brilliant btw. (esp if it creates a creepy hook)
They never expect the eavesdrop :)
I am running my own LMoP campaign, modded to fit in Exandria and lead into RHoD. Despite making completelt different choices about what to change (if anything for me the bugbears are the highlight of the dungeon because I make them all "princes" the Sons of King Grol.), I love your thought process and I am getting a lot out of watching and rewatching this series. Great video.
Just finished watching your vids as I prepare to run LMoP. I have a cool compass/clock prop to put in the puzzle box. I’m going to make the Forge’s guardian/obstacle a space-time rift made by a Phandelver pact wizard who wanted to seal away the Forge (haste on the spectator, slow on its foes, no metal can enter the area of the forge, plus floating earth motes). Same wizard made the puzzle box compass/clock to fix the rift - then died and got buried with it. And I’m gonna make the Nothic a Phandelver pact wizard who was revivified and mutated by the space-time rift, and give the nothic lair earth motes and impossible architecture; so the nothic can for shadow the “guardian” a bit (but of course can’t remember where the Forge/WECave is :).
That's sick! Players absolutely love props, great jjob
Barts been a big help to the party with free room and board, free use of horses to get to locations when needed and just generally being a stand-up guy. Some of the party started a brawl outside of the Redbrands bar and ended up killing like 8 of them. (Im adding some bodies as I have a party of 6) Next morning had the Blackspider (disguised as Talia as she's been written out) show up and arrange the trade for Gundren leaving the town unprotected for the night. They returned to find the Stonehill Inn a smouldering pile of ash and Bart missing both hands. Ended the session with Bart passing on a message from the Redbrands: "Seeing as you so happily lend a hand to outta towners, you surely wont mind if we take two as well". My players flew into a RAGE. Storming the hideout tomorrow. Don't think there will be any mercy shown xD
His hand! On no! That's brutal!
Love the fleshed out redbrands!
Thanks Butcher!
This video is brilliant Matthew, I legit laughed out loud at some points and the breakdown is A+
Quality content!
Aviad, thank you so much! And congrats on 2k :)
Hi Matthew !
Not sure if you still check the comments on this serie of videos but I still wanted to share my experience on this one.
First of all, thank you so so much for your videos ! Not only you give us great ideas to improve the story line of this campaign, but in my case you also taught me how to approach the DM role in a more relaxed way and it helped me so much (I used to stress a lot before each session).
Anyway, here is a what happened with my party :
After they arrived in Phandalin, they wereimmediately
through
Hey Paul! Glad the videos have been helpful :) I still read comments on old videos, but I'm a super disorganised person and sometimes miss responding. Hope your campaign is going well!
Another awesome video! Funny and informative - can’t wait to run the Adventure! Thanks a lot!
My pleasure! Thanks Chris :)
Just wanted to say I really appreciate the Glasstaff edits! I feel like the rat familiar as written is too much of a “Gotcha!” moment that doesn’t give the players a fair shot at catching Iarno. If fireball is a TPK, a shatter scroll tones that down (and could allow for fun crumbling rooms in chase sequences).
Kev, that's a great solution with Shatter, because the goal is definitely not to deal damage or kill the players - it's just Iarno's way of signalling himself as a threat and for a little story beat. I wish I'd included that idea in the video!
Oh my God, the Worms intro! I haven't seen that for like 25 years or something 😂Amazing. Thank you.
YES I'm so glad you called it out - I used to just boot and re-boot the game as a kid to see the intro haha
I motivated my players by setting fire to the Qeline field. Since we played with the ready-made characters, this was a special problem for one of my players, as he plays the rouge, which the nephew of qeline.
my best redbrand moment:
the redbrand have a guard post at every bridge / gate into the city. they demend of everyone to gibve up their weapons of the want to get into town.
my player, thinking this is the city guard obliged later were bare handed (except for a dagger the rogue smuggled in) when the witnessed some cruel misshandlings of town folk.
they go involved in a bar brawl but had to withdraw when a beaten redbrand posse draw their blades…
the way they got their weapons back was pretty cool
I’ve run Phandelver once so far, watching this because I’m gonna run it again starting next week. I got my PC’s to fight the Redbrands by having them attempt to run a protection racket on the party after they had acquired a partial ownership of The Sleeping Giant. The party ran the Redbrands out of the tavern and were then ambushed in the street upon their return to town.
Protection rackets are completely on-theme for this organisation. Good idea :)
you so get how to tell a good story. in your videos and helping us as DMs. handlin phandolin. will using that.
Very kind words -- thank you :)
My best Redbrand story: I stole a riff from LOTR films with the Gimli & Legolas kill count. When the party encounters the ruffians, two Redbrands start talking about their kills. "We're tied at two, just one behind Parker." They then count the PCs and one says, "I just gotta wipe one more 'an you and I got the lead. Parker gonna piss himself." The idea that the thugs were dismissing the players as notches on their sword belts was so infuriating that my players went full terminator on every Redbrand they could find.
I subscribed. I was legally bound for moving into the room by room of the Redbrands.
Very helpful, broad strokes and details alike!
Glad it's helpful :)
Dude, you’ve saved me with your videos lol, these are such high quality.
Glad to help!
LMoP is my first ever time running a campaign. I already got past this part with my players, but it's great to compare what I did, what I would like to do differently and compare that to these ideas! When my party confronted Glasstaff, he was trying to escape and they found him looking for his once-hidden emergency pack that the players had found. While he was talking to them trying to get out of it, my Wild Magic Sorcerer cast Suggestion and convinced him to hold out his hands and close his eyes 'cause they had something for him. He failed his saving throw, so he held out his hands and closed his eyes. The Sorcerer tied his hands up. As I was about to have him Misty Step away (since Misty Step only needs verbal and not somatic components), they gagged him. Considering the sorcerer loves chaos and the Barbarian loves collecting heads, I expected a fight. I was so impressed with how they prevented the magic user from casting magic I let it go and they brought him back to Phandalin to turn him in.
Oh cool! Yeah I had him get caught there the first time I played, I think. But my players killed him
I've got my Nothic almost acting like Beetlejuice, and it worked. 😆 Only during his insane ramblings did I bust it out but everyone was into it. Cool video
Dude, I'm so frightened of Beetlejuice. When I was a super little kid, we went to Warner Bros. Movie World on the Gold Coast, and a guy dressed as Beetlejuice chased me
Droop put the final arrow into so many enemies the party had a statue of him constructed in Phandalin square.
Another great video in a fantastic series! Thank you, sir!
My pleasure!
My players had a few levels before we started Mines so I needed to up the danger level a bit. Escape route for Glasstaff in my version was one of the Wyverns as a mount. After a few stings and party low of hit points and they could not easily get to him while mounted, they retreated and he escaped, setting up Glasstaff for a future encounter again at Wyvern Tor where he was regrouping.
I love this series of videos it’s going to make my campaign so much more fun and interesting.
Ran the encounter with the nothic for our second session, hinting at the darkness underneath Phandalin and my elf wizard having a nightmare the first night staying in Phandalin seeing a green eye watching over him in the darkness - and the player immediately picked it up and spun stories for the other plays about magical evil in the dark. Ixal startet reading minds and spilling their secrets already in the tunnel, and my players were freaking out. When they arrived at the crevasse I slowed the pace down and really put weight on the description of the talons and spikes before the green eye appeared from the dark crevasse - they hesitated and started to discuss how to kill it. Then Ixal filled their spaces with magical darkness and they bolted! They are super scared of the mansion now, I don't know if they will every visit. I might have overplayed it, haha. Next session in two days.
That's great! Ixal is the best part of the whole campaign. Well done :)
I'd like to hear more about the pact with the Nothic. What kinds of boons and consequences would you recommend?
In my game, the player actually decided *not* to accept the Nothic's pact, but it was still a satisfying moment for his character who had a history with making dark pacts to resist the offer of power. I gave the players two options, I said the Nothic could probably tell you information or it could give you power. The information might even have been the location of the Wave Echo Cave. Since the player was a Warlock, I was going to give him an extra Eldritch Invocation - I don't think you can go wrong with suping up a character's class abilities in general with this kind of thing.
The consequence I had in mind was making the player trade their luck away in the deal. If they accepted, I would replace all their D20 rolls with a D16. If they ever rolled a 16, they could have their D20 back for the rest of the session.
The trick is to make whatever consequence interesting and fun too. There might be some fun roleplaying consequences in the madness table of the DMG? Are any of those any good?
@@heyitsMattyP Yeah, great answer. Very thorough. The D16 idea. is a good one, especially if the player chooses the enter the pact on their own volition.
I like to hear how DMs approach storytelling and narrative hurdles to tell a great story. keep up the great work.
I tend to run D&D modules using the Genesys ruleset but regardless of rules, a good story is a good story.
If one of my players accepts the deal, their eyes will become green and weird like the nothic's: they'll get advantage on perception and insight checks but disadvantage on all Charisma checks (except Intimidation).
Good solution!
15:21 @heyitsMattyP . This series has been extremely helpful to my first campaign of players. They're about to fight the nothic in my current game. I did have a question about the lair actions for the darkness effect. Do you play the darkness lair action like the spell Darkness? Such as do you make it so spells of second level or lower cannot illuminate the Darkness lair action?
So sorry for the late reply! I'd play it like the Darkness spell. Whenever there's already a spell or item that does something like the effect I'm imagining, I'll always just wholesale lift the rules from it.
Please keep making these man. I'm running the game now and they're awesome!
Can do! We're getting to the end soon, and on to another module :)
@@heyitsMattyP I hope you do Icepire Peak next and maybe try and incorporate both?
or Icewind Dale or Strahd lol. All the adventures!
But without the preamble, how will I know what players are always saying? :(
According to my analytics, the players are always saying, "When Matt does long intros, people stop watching after about 30 seconds" :D
@@heyitsMattyP That's because you tell them to stop watching and send the video onto an adult
@@heyitsMattyP A pox on the uncultured swine that don't appreciate a good preamble!
But I suppose if helps your channel grow, I'll begrudgingly support the loss of it.
Matthew Perkins they are always saying that...
Yes yes--Preamble is life! 😊
My character was basically Sir Lancelot from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie, so he needed no encouragement to start murdering redbrands in his own particular ... idiom.
I've recently started my own lost mines game, we are about to go into the hideout. I was trying to get them to want to deal with the Redbrands so I had a "captain" of the redbrands see one of the Towneies sitting next to their tap house and had him kick him. That townie was a player and they took it personally.
I love that the players are always just one bad interaction away from violence :) Well done!
@@heyitsMattyP I really appreciate yur videos, is helping me my way through plus giving me ideas of my own aalong the way.
When my party went to the cragmaw hideout they talked their way in as cave inspectors.. it was very dumb and I thought it was too funny to not let them have it. Also I had it as the cragmaw hideout was filled with the people king grull didn't want to deal with so there were many dumb and gullible goblins in there.
As soon as I read the description about the Redbrands, I immediately pictured them as the Cowboy gang from the movie Tombstone. Rather than run the full LMoP story, I'm running Dragon of Icespire Peak for our main "campaign" story, but I'm pulling select parts from LMoP to integrate into Icespire Peak to make a more cohesive story. As part of this, I decided to keep Glasstaff and the Redbrands as a town threat, but I removed the black spider from the story. Instead, the dragon cultist leader Favric is the one who has hired Glasstaff to run adventurers out of town and secure resources from the town. Favric is trying to secure an alliance with both dragons in the area to move up in the ranks. He wants the Redbrands to run off any adventurers that could potentially kill the dragons, which would ruin his plans. And he wants the resources from the mining town to use as bribery for the dragons, so his motivations are in line with the overall story hook of the dragon appearing around Phandalin. The fact that there's a second dragon (Venomfang) in the area adds to the plot as the two dragons are aware of each other, and don't like each other, and are competing for this territory. Now the players have two dragons to deal with, though initially they only know about the one (Cryovain). Venomfang of course uses trickery when dealing with the players, and an interesting chess game could potentially ensue. Also, I decided to keep the note to Glasstaff that the players find, with just a few minor tweaks to it so that it is written by Favric instead of the spider...
Lord Albrek,
My spies in Neverwinter tell me that strangers are due to arrive in Phandalin. They could be working for the Zhentarim. Capture them if you can, kill them if you must, but don't allow them to upset our plans. See that any information they have on the dragons is delivered to me with haste. I'm counting on you Iarno. Don't disappoint me.
- F
I also took the Tyranny of Dragons logo (the dragon head with the five lines behind it) and placed it at the end of the letter. Using a fancy script font I then printed it out to have a physical letter to hand to my players when they get to that point. I also made Favric a slightly tougher "mini-boss" fight and gave him a magical sword that can do bonus damage of a dragon breath type. To keep with the theme of the cultists and give him a little more weight as a major character. All of this will eventually lead into the Rise of Tiamat story arc once the Icespire Peak story concludes. It should all tie in together nicely.
One of my players fell in love with Elsa the barmaid at the tavern, and the next adventuring day, I mentioned that Elsa looked particularly busy and that she couldn't really talk to the player sufficiently. After my player inquired some more, Elsa quickly told her about Trilena's good friend Thel Dendrar dying after standing up to the Redbrands. So basically, I moved the Thel Dendrar rumour to Elsa and used Trilena as a friend. This was really interesting actually since then the whole party wanted to go get the Redbrands, and after they wiped them out, they went to Trilena's house and told her, which lead to a very emotional moment with Trilena and her husband and the rest of the party. I thought this was really smart since I really got my players invested In defeating the Redbrands, and I got the questline with the Dendrars to feel so much more relevant.
Sounds like some good homebrew!
Absolutely amazing content bro 💜❤️
Thank you!
My players are just about to enter the Redbrand hideout after convincing the Redbrands that they are an award-winning rap group... and are here to give a free concert...
I was planning to run Glassstaff as a younger man (maybe 30s/40s; old enough to have the Redbrands respect, but young enough to not know quite how to lead them efficiently), a bit inexperienced running things (efficiently, anyway; hence the Redbrands will be rather unorganized in their efforts). But I do like the idea of him being a past adventurer with Sildar…
I've moved to running both SIldar and Iarno as a bit younger too :) Maybe late 50s for me.
I was DMing for my wife, her sister and sister's husband. SIL had never played before and was joining the game as they were going into redbrand hideout. As they are interrogating the guards in the dungeon, they said "we were just following orders" to which SIL law yells out "so were the nazis" before finishing the redbrand with an arrow to the dome.
Hey I'm all for bashing the fash! So long as your SIL had fun :)
I just had the redbrands accost them outside the inn asking for a tax from the players of 10 silver pieces. That aggravated them enough to pursue them and their hideout.
Another, spidery and meta, evil faction naming option: “The Dark Web”
The the Black Spider's hideout could be called The Silk Road :)
I’m using this one 👍🏼
My players straight up murdered Droop. Didn't even try to wake him up. Glasstaff got away, and they still don't know that he's Sildar's old buddy Iarno. I haven't decided yet what to do with him.
Oh no! This is tragic. It kind of feels like that scene from Community where Troy walks in with the pizza and everything's on fire. I actually wouldn't know how to proceed either! Are the players usually the kill-first, roleplay-later kind?
It happens to everyone ... ruclips.net/video/hrtNL1DuwXw/видео.html
Hi! Great vid, ive been following along with my party. Can you explain why to get rid of the bugbears? I feel like they would make up a huge amount of the combat in this dungeon
I remove the bugbear wing of the dungeon because the bugbears aren't interesting enough to be worth including. If the players are facing the bugbears, that means they've gone the wrong direction and aren't progressing the story, just wasting their time.
@@heyitsMattyP ok that’s helpful! Thanks so much!
The party had gotten to know the barmaid fairly well in the first few days of their adventure and found out she was in love with the carpenter’s daughter.
After the party had gone out to deal with the Orcs for Sildar and returned, she told them she was worried, her love and her family had been kidnapped by the red brands and their house tossed.
The party rushed over to see this was true and then set out to the bar on the other side of town and the manner to clear shop and find the red brand prisoners.
They were very invested and found the hints the the black spider to further the plot to finding Gundren. I honestly think this was the height of our campaign, it felt emotional and tense. And they adopted Droop.
Good job! Sounds like a well-twisted knife right there
My players motivation for dealing with the Red Brands: “Do they have money?”
amen
"I know you are duty-bound to arrest me." This is brilliant. He's already intimidated that worthless bastard Harbin, and would probably be let off easily.
Finished up the Redbrand hideout last night... Ixal begged the party for "snacks" which was mainly dead or incapacitated Redbrands, which they happily obliged. Except for the only wizard in the party... Ixal specifically reached out to him as an "understanding fellow magic-user" with a Pact: power! Ixal would teach him how to transfer his life energy into spell energy in exchange for letting him retain his lair - the PC's clearly had the upper hand over the existing residents; mechanically, the wizard can get his spell slots back on a short rest - the cost is 2 levels of exhaustion. The party made "friends" with Ixal and more or less assassinated Glasstaff and many of his Redbrand cronies and dumped them with Ixal, before naming themselves the new heads of the Redbrands. Eager to find out how they pitch this to Bart and the rest of the town... Ixal was able to dish on quite a bit to new new pact-buddy, Ivan. Nezzar = the Black Spider, Glasstaff = Iarno... all kinds of stuff.
perhaps Ixal's crack will simply end up overflowing with bodies until the townsfolk team up with the Cragmaws out of desperation to chase the murderous PC's out for good.
My players immediately after dropping off the cart of provisions and hearing one person complain about The Rebrands went directly to The Sleeping Giant Tap Room and started trouble.
Mine too! I had more and more red brands pile out and beat them up. After knocking a few red brand heads over fences, the barbarian got dropped and the rogue and fighter got down to 1 hp each. Perfect time for Nezzar to pop her head up on the Tap house roof, blast the red brands with some magic missles, and hop down with a helpful healing potion for the barbarian. Puzzle box trade established. 😄
In room 9 where the bugbears are intimidating the helpless goblin, the main bugbear's name used to be Mosk, but one of the revisions made when WotC released The Shattered Obelisk, was to change his name to Nosk so nobody mistakes him with a place of prayer
Yet they're still rocking Neznar as the main villain lol
My group fully destroyed both early pure spellcasters in this campaign before they were even able to act. If you can surprise them they're ridiculously weak at low levels. Then my Cleric/Wizard got the Staff of Defense, giving him possible 23 AC 5 times a day at level 2.
My players killed off the Redbrands at the Sleeping Giant, but they never really did anything to find out their hideout or go speak to the right NPCs about where Cragmaw Castle. I tried to lead them on by using your vegan cookies, but chocolate croissants for my rogue players, attacking them, but nothing was enough. They did however complete the Banshee quest and as they exited Sister Garaeles house, stating that Glasstaff wanted to speak to them (Glasstaff having been sent orders to capture the party, unknowing that it was for the puzzle box).
The Redbrands put hoods on the party, and as soon as they started leading them away, the leader said:
"So how did it feel to kill them? Gary, Luke... You know, Luke was actually my brother..."
Before hitting the hooded player in the back with a shovel, and yell "They're resisting!"
And that's how I got to finally have my players hate the redbrands and finally deal with them.
Your series have made my LMoP-campaign so much better!
You got a like for "Handlin Phandalin" :)
So my group didn't go to redbands hide out they went looking for clues for the cave. Should I have glass staff and the gang take over the town
@@Hadorus1 im curious if you ended up doing that and how it went
I feel like the redbrands wouldn't call themselves "out-of-towners". Maybe "professionals" or "veterans" or something like that. The locals might call them "out-of-towners", but people don't tend to use such a term on themselves.
Probably correcto! But for the purposes of communicating that most of the Redbrands aren't locals, I don't mind it.
The Pact of the Midnight kings?
The pact of Power?
The shadow crowns?
Oh damn! Well now they all need to have matching tattoos too - I love it!
That's an awesome idea definitely going to have to find a nice tattoo to represent it.
I mixed things up quite a bit with Iarno... I introduced another NPC, namely... L'Khifrey Albrek-Roethorn, who is of course Iarno's daughter. Iarno did indeed go rogue from the Lords Alliance, and did "disappear" but it was his daughter who brought this to the attention of Sildar Hallwinter.
Iarno is basically undercover on a solo mission - a mission of revenge. Just over 2 years ago, Iarno's daughter fell in love with and married Iarno's protege (Daylonir Roethorn) who was really more the son he always wished for. Shortly after Daylonir started a happy life with his new bride he was found murdered. Iarno lost his mind with grief and anger and began to investigate with a focused passion for blood-recompense. One clue led to another and another and eventually to a shadowy character named The Black Spider. Iarno discovered that the only way he would ever get close enough to the Black Spider to kill him would be to go to work for him, to become a trusted lieutenant of sorts in his black web of criminal enterprising. He quietly despises the Redbrands and what he must order them to do... but his mind is fixed on vengeance and no cost is too high... until the Redbrands take his daughter to the cellar...
I decided make the black spider from menzoberranzan. Her last name i made from one of the main houses of the underdark city. So i named the evil faction the Fey-Branche contingency. It also opens up the underdark to the party for a future or continuing campaign.
Yeah cool! Out of the Abyss might have some good Underdark content for you :)
Yo, I've been taking a lot of your advice. As a new player/DM, simplifying Phandalin took a lot of stress off my shoulders, thanks!
Anyways. Once the red brands harassed Molly, my players had finally had enough 😂
Glad to help! The players are only going to interact with 10% of any town in a single session, so you only need to prep a max of 15% of the town to allow you enough tolerance to move content around on the fly and accomodate whatever they want to do.
Have fun smashing those Red Boys!
didn‘t even know i wasn‘t subscribed yet, darn YT.
I now sadly missed out on my chance of a duel with you.
"Handlin' Phandalin" instant sub
danke
Handlin’ Phandalin ROFL 🤣
Perfect video. For a DM 👍
Question! If the nothic has made a pact with Glasstaff allowing the redbrands to move freely about its lair, why does it immediately gobble up that poor red boy who is fleeing for his life?
Good question! If the letter of the law here was something like, "I let you share my lair, and in return you provide me food," maybe the Redbrands hadn't kept their end of the bargain that week?
@@heyitsMattyP Thanks! I was thinking that might be the case :) Looking forward to the next video in this series!
My read is that the scared Redbrand had just decided being a criminal wasn't worth it, and he was quitting and running for the secret exit out of the hideout. But since he'd just decided not to be a Redbrand anymore and the Nothic can read thoughts, he was fair game for snack time.
I love the Nothic noises
tytyty
Great videos! Starting LMoP next week as a first time dm. Is all of you content available on patreon? How much for all of it? Keep up the great content!!
Hey Liam! Apologies for the late response - glad you're enjoying the series :) The Patreon is set up in a way where to $5 tier gets everything backdated all the way to when I made my Patreon account. The lower tier is mainly for community participation and the tier above is for suggesting video ideas and getting early access when I manage to get ahead on my video schedule.
In my first ever dnd campaign, I played a fighter alongside a bard, artificer, and wizard. The bard did classic bard stuff and got spicy with a barmaid. The next day he sent the artificer out to meet the barmaid and he got mugged by the Redbrands who were after the bard bc the barmaid was apparently in league with them. After that we all got so mad we fixed up the artificer and went straight to storm their hideout
Another fun thing, we found droop the goblin and saved him from the bugbears and with a good charisma roll and a bit of bargaining we made friends with the nothic and called him scoop
Droop and Scoop! Very good :)
My Redbrand story is this:
As a Session Zero plot hook, I had the Redbrands as the initial encounters for getting the puzzle box. Most of them I used the simple bandit stat block, but for one of them, I used the Legacy Redbrand with multiattack. She downed the warlock in one turn and he proceeded to Nat 1 his first death save throw.
Part 2, when my players got to town, they found out what the Redbrands have done (besides their canonical crimes). They burned down the local library after looting it of all worthwhile material, ran out the blacksmith to disarm the town (save for Lionshield Coster), got the local newspaper shut down, installed a viciously strict curfew (leading to a dangerous combat encounter), and established a chokehold on gambling. My wizard player was pissed that he couldn’t get her the COOL 2nd level spells (player’s a he, character is a she) because there’s no library. Players, especially the artificer, disliked that they have no way to immediately upgrade their equipment. The warlock was upset about the newspaper and had gambled all of his money away. The curfew we’ll talk about soon enough. As a final motivation, my ranger player is actually a Zhentarim agent. Halia had him come to her shop, and set him up to put Glasstaff down. He agreed immediately, finding out where their base was.
Part 3, the Redbrands patrol the town after sunset (in case of trouble-makers like my players and Cryovain from Icespire Peak making an attack). My players knowingly broke curfew to escort Qelline Alderleaf home (thr Redbrands had been looking for an excuse to kill her). During this, my players met a “drifter” (an important NPC from my first campaign). The drifter and the cleric both unfortunately failed their stealth checks, getting discovered by the Redbrands. When my barbarian player tried to ask the Redbrands to drop this, their leader demanded the players hand over everything but the clothes on their backs. Yeah, the Redbrand team had four dug graves in the woods near the farm (two decapitated, one backstabbed and shot full of crossbow bolts and their leader (a bandit captain) riddled with bullets, face melted off, slashed to ribbons, and bisected (my players were impressed by his staying power)), a pile of ashes of a fifth (chromatic orb go brr), and three maimed Redbrands (two knocked out by the Drifter, and one got non-lethally mauled by Ripper, Klarg’s former pet). They’re all Level 3 by the way. From Carp, they discovered the secret entrance.
Part 4: The current as-of-writing final straw. The players, especially two of them who played in my first game, found out the Drifter’s identity-a nimblewright from Dragon Heist who belonged to a group of friendly NPCs I made. He asked for their help finding and rescuing one of their favorite NPCs. While they in-character never met her, they are eager to rescue her. As well as the Dendrars, who they found out the Redbrands also kidnapped after murdering their patriarch. The cleric is especially on-board with that, after talking to Tempus who is very kosher with war-based murder… and he has declared war on the Redbrands.
Never before have I seen the Redbrands take centre stage like this in their determination to antagonise the players. Well done!
@@heyitsMattyP Thank you! I personally wanted to expand the Redbrands since both the original module and especially the rewrite seem to really want to shove goblinoids nonstop in people’s faces. And with my plans to expand Conyberry and what my Black Spider is up to there as a backup lair, the Redbrands have a chance to continue being antagonists with or without Glasstaff thanks to a supplement I found called “Redbrands Roll Call.”
Heya Matt! Awesome video buddy. Quick question, what would you do if instead of going into room 10 and confronting the redbands in there the players skip it and go onto rooms 11 and 12 and confront Glass Sraff? Would you have Glassy immediately flee or fight for a bit and have the redbands leave room 10 and come join the fight?
Hey! Thank you, thank you :)
If Glass Staff is in combat alone for even a single round, he's in big danger. I would immediately flee towards the Redbrand allies, but run that portion of the chase in initiative, in case the players can snipe him on the way out.
Howdy Matt! I've just finished most prep for this part of the campaign, but I was hoping I could get your thoughts on something. Because I goofed last adventure and pretty much spelled out where Cragmaw Castle is, my party wanted to go right away to the castle to rescue Gundren. Sildar managed to convince them instead to go to Phandalin, but I'm still worried that they are going to ignore all hooks about the Redbrands and all side quests and go after Gundren again. Which would be fine, but I don't have time to prep for the Cragmaw Castle adventure. Any thoughts on how I can keep them engaged with the goings on of the town?
Hey Cory! Unfortunately, the heart wants what the heart wants. If your players want to go to the Cragmaw Castle, I would let them.
But if they're going into town first, make yourself a checklist and see the folowing ANY WAY you can.
1. "The Redbrands are causing trouble!"
2. "There's been a mysterious stranger on the rooftops."
After that, if they go to the Castle, let them have a crack, but warn them that it's a tough area at level 2. Maybe even run the Necromancer side quest as an encounter on the way. But if they do the Castle, twist the knife on the Redbrands and advance that threat somehow in their absence.
@@heyitsMattyP Brilliant! Thanks for the reply and the suggestions, Matt. Much appreciated! Maybe just a friendly reminder to my mates that TPKs are NOT off the menu too, if they are insistent on going to Cragmaw Castle! LOL!
@@coryschlichting3517 I played with a DM who had a policy of the "DM Warning" where it might all fun and games, but when we were entering an area or forming a plan that held genuine risk from his perspective that we mightn't be privy to as players, but would be very unfun or feel unfair to lose to, he would say, "Heads up guys, this is your general DM Warning for this area." It didn't get in the way of our agency but made us entirely culpable for all consequences.
Maybe that would be a useful thing for your group?
@@heyitsMattyP Oh my dude! I love it!! I'm going to do the "DM Warning"... that's brilliant! Thanks for the suggestion! And I know I've said it a couple of times in other videos and whatnot, but a HUGE thank you for putting all this hard work into this series. I've really been enjoying putting your changes into my game and my mates have been having a blast too.