In this chapter, it’s all about the pacing.

The end of Chapter 2 gives the adventurers several adventure hooks; missions suggested by the NPCs they’ve saved that give treasure and other rewards. Chapter 3 is the “sandbox” chapter, where the players can explore the Sword Coast doing little missions on the way. It’s all very Baldur’s Gate.

The DM’s role here is to maintain the story and keep things flowing. The worst thing to do is just let things drift. There are four types of encounter here:

• Quest-defined encounters. These are the encounters related to the quests in Chapter 2.
• Location-quest encounters. There are additional quests given in the various settlements in Chapter 3.
• Random encounters.
• Story encounters. These are the encounters given in the end of Chapter 3, which can be inserted at appropriate points as the players explore.

Those are the tools available to entertain the players.

So, what are your goals as a DM?

• Get the adventurers to level 7
• Give them a view of the chaos of the Sword Coast with the giants running amok
• Introduce the different behaviours of the giant tribes so the players understand the backstory when they reach a giant stronghold.

Although you could roll randomly for the random encounters, it’s far better to choose ones that are appropriate to the players. You’ll get a sense of the types of encounters that the players want – role-playing, combat or mysteries – and you can tilt things towards those. If the players get very interested in what the Fire Giants are doing, use more Fire Giant encounters, or use NPCs to point the players to where Fire Giants might be.

When you get down to it, this isn’t meant to go forever. The players start at level 6, they should move on when they get to level 7. Under the assumed speed of play, that’s only 8 hours of play! Each of the individual quests can be played quickly (no more than 2 hours, I’d guess, and likely less), so you can get through them all, throw in a few random encounters, and then you’re ready to move on. The groups I’ve heard about that found this frustrating? They wandered around randomly and didn’t learn anything of the situation. So, take control of the pacing. Run travel in a couple of sentences if the destination is more interesting than what lies beyond. Use random encounters to give a feel for how dangerous the land is. And pick a mix of encounters that suits your players.

Once the players have a better idea of the situation of the Sword Coast and a glimpse of the strange behaviour of the giants, have Harstag encounter the adventurers and move them on to the next chapter!