The original Baldur’s Gate computer game had a massive problem. The side content was more entertaining than the main quest!

It’s a funny thing about designing open world games, which a lot of D&D is. It works fine as long as everything is side content – a smorgasbord of options that the players can choose. Which quest to go on? Which dungeon to brave?

But the moment that you set up a major ongoing quest, then all the side content becomes distractions. This is especially the case when the major quest has time pressure. And most of the time, they do.

It’s especially noticeable in Shadow of the Dragon Queen and Tomb of Annihilation. The players are given specific tasks (find where Lord Soth is doing, find the location of the Death Curse), and so any content that doesn’t lead to their destination begins to feel wrong. It’s at its worst when there’s a significant diversion. Even when there’s a noble reason for that diversion, the perceived time pressure causes problems.

Tomb of Annihilation manages to get around most of the problems by having the party searching for the location of the Soulmonger, as they don’t know where it is. At this point, every bit of side content is potentially a clue leading to the location. And that’s what you want: reasons to believe that this encounter will help you on your way. Those encounters that quickly reveal themselves to not having any useful information should be skipped by the players. So, in theory, all side content in Tomb should begin with the hook of “this may give you what you need”.

Once the location of Omu is revealed, side content becomes ignorable again. Take a direct line towards the ruined city! The extra content you engage with now are of the form of challenges that may stop you from reaching your goal. And, occasionally, things that can help you once you get there. But side content that just takes time to investigate and has a side goal not related to your major goal? It doesn’t work at this point.

And once the party reach Omu, things open up again: they are in exploration mode, and so having side content they can engage with is possible. Part of the challenge is working out what is relevant.

I love Omu; the interactions there are the best part of Tomb of Annihilation.

Most of my problems with the early part of Tomb come from too many encounters not even pretending to help you find the origin of the Death Curse. They’d be fine if you were in exploration mode without a major goal, but you’re not: you want to find encounters that lead you there. I think there’s a lot of DM intervention and crafting of the encounters needed to properly run the beginning of Tomb of Annihilation, and I wish the text gave you more of a clue as to how you might do it.

Shadow of the Dragon Queen, in contrast, is a much more directed adventure. Most of the time, you’ve got orders and you’re following them through what are mostly linear wilderness expeditions and dungeon crawls. This isn’t great for players who want more of a free hand, but other players who are happier with following along the events of the story, it’s fine.

The weird bit is when you get to the search for Lord Soth in the Northern Wastes. You have a clear goal: Find out where Lord Soth is going and what’s he’s doing. You’ve got this big hexmap of the area. So, obviously you start exploring the hexes, looking for encounters that point you in the right direction?

No. That’s not how it works. I wonder if it was originally how it worked, and then the playtesters noticed that it was too easy to miss important encounters. Or perhaps they just wanted to shoehorn another named character from the original novels.

Because what is in the book is odd. You get an encounter at the beginning of this section with Dalamar, an apprentice wizard. He potentially can tell you your destination. So, you explore the locations he suggests, and he tells you where to go. Which means you just go there, right?

Meanwhile, there’s a separate plotline unfolding in the wilderness: a group of sea elves that have been captured by the Dragon Armies, and a major side quest is rescuing all of them. On the world-building side of things, this makes perfect sense. The activities of the Dragon Armies in this region work pretty well. (Not as well as the Army of Kalaman following you about, but anyway). But from the point of view of the goals of the characters, it’s a problematic diversion. It gets you no closer to finding Soth. It doesn’t even give you any allies to help fight the Dragon Armies. (Oh, if that had been offered, it would have made a tempting side quest). Instead, you have the option of helping “just because”.

It’d be very nice if the choice has a consequence. If you help the elves, you gain later aid, but the NEXT section is harder because you’re late. But the adventure can’t pull that off. Instead, you’re left with this content that feels to be pulling you away from the main adventure for no great reason.

And then there’s Clystran. This is an absolutely key NPC to meet, who is needed to finish the adventure. At least he isn’t in a set location – you can and should place him as the party make their way through the wilderness. All good. Escorting him home probably won’t take the party much out of their way, so this is fine. He’s got a story reason to be there, and he’s important later. And it doesn’t feel like you’re diverging too much from your goal. (Indeed, you may be aiding it). This is the sort of encounter you want.

Once he gets home, he wants you to accompany you to feed dragonnels. Now, why do you do that? It’s got a good story reason, and it helps build up later relationships, but wouldn’t you rather be going after Soth?

I do wonder if this subquest is more important in the offer than the acceptance. It lets you know about Clystran’s affinity for dragonnels, so even if you don’t accompany him, what happens later makes sense. As such, this works.

Overall, I think Tomb of Annihilation and Shadow of the Dragon Queen are worthy adventures, but both demonstrate different problems with side quests when you have a main quest that needs to be completed with some urgency.