In my last article, I talked about the importance of the overall structure of campaign adventures.

It’s very hard to run an adventure when you don’t understand the steps the characters must take to navigate their way through it. Each adventure has its own structure, and some have multiple paths.

Hoard of the Dragon Queen is relatively straight-forward. However, there’s a couple of areas that can be obscure to DMs and players. Here’s a summary of the main plot points:

• The adventurers come to the aid of Greenest, which is being attacked by the Cult of the Dragon (Episode 1)
  • Why are the adventurers helping? The default reason is they’re heroes! However, you can look to the adventure hooks in the appendix for alternative reasons. If they don’t want to be heroic, this may not be the campaign for them.
• The adventurers are asked by the mayor of Greenest to scout the Cultist camp and see what their plans are. They are also asked to rescue a monk named Leosin. (Episode 2)
• The adventurers are asked by Leosin to scout the caves near the camp, and then join him in a nearby town, Elturel, for debriefing. (Episode 3).
• The adventurers learn that the Cult is gathering treasure and taking it north. (Episode 3).
• Leosin and Onthar Frume, representatives of the Harpers and the Order of the Gauntlet, give the PCs a mission: Find out where the treasure is going, and what the cult plan to do with it. (Episode 4)
• The adventurers travel with the treasure, facing diverse challenges along the way. (Episodes 4-7).
• The adventurers learn the goal of the cult from Talis the White: To summon Tiamat! (Episode 7)
• The adventurers learn of the alliance between the giants and the Cult, and can act to stop it (Episode 8)
• The adventurers learn the destination of the treasure from Blagothkus: The Well of Dragons. (Episode 8).
• With the PCs having completed the factions’ mission (destination + goal), the adventure ends – although not before they probably fight for control of the Cloud Castle!

What is most likely to confuse players? It’s forgetting the goals given by Leosin and Onthar at the beginning of Chapter 3, since they take many sessions to complete. Chapters 4-6 aren’t revealing much new information; they’re instead providing the characters with the challenge of following the Cult. As secondary goals, they give the players a view of the Forgotten Realms and a glimpse of the scale of the threat.

My advice to anyone running Hoard of the Dragon Queen is to remind players of these goals regularly, perhaps in a recap at the beginning of each session.

What is most likely to be missed by the DM? I think it’s that they need to have Talis or one of her minions tell the adventurers that the Cult want to summon Tiamat. When I ran it, I also described the split of the Cult from its old form under its new leader (and cast Talis as one of the disaffected old guard).

I hope these notes give you a better idea of the overall structure of the adventure.