My current campaign of Storm King’s Thunder is run using the D&D Adventurers League rules. One of the aspects of those rules is that I can’t use milestones. XP must come from the players overcoming monsters, whether through negotiation or combat and set XP awards in the text. In the case of SKT, it’s almost entirely overcoming monsters. The little quests in the adventure don’t have XP awards upon completion, which they likely would have if the adventure were written solely for DDAL play.

So, to give the characters enough XP to progress to level 7 by the end of the chapter, I’m making liberal use of the “random” encounters while they are travelling. I’m not determining them randomly. Instead, I’m choosing each one to further the story (and award lots of XP).

This has become my standard tactic in hardcover adventures: I choose the wilderness encounters, although there are still times when I let the dice decide.

Each of the random wilderness encounters suggests a basic set-up. The giants are trying to excavate something. The orcs have prisoners. However, many of the details of the encounter are left up to you. Consider the following when fleshing an encounter out:

• What time of day do the adventurers meet the monsters?
• What is the terrain?
• Are the monsters all together, or are some set as scouts? Are any hidden?
• Are there any buildings or ruins nearby?
• At what distance to the adventurers become aware of the monsters? Alternatively, what distance to the monsters become aware of the characters? There are times when the monsters are aware first and can set an ambush!
• Are the monsters travelling or stationary?
• What are the goals of the monsters? Do they want to kill the PCs? Or are they willing to avoid them or converse with them?

These are questions you should be asking for most encounters; however, they are especially pertinent when you’re running encounters for the adventurers while they’re travelling. It’s very easy to default to “you see orcs 60 feet away, roll for initiative”. There are times when you need no more than that, but spending a little more time framing the encounter can help engage the players with the story.

For Storm King’s Thunder, the encounters should mostly relate back to the giants’ activity. To summarise:

• Fire giants are looking for parts of an adamantine monument
• Cloud giants are seeking ancient magic
• Frost giants are looking for the Ring of Winter
• Stone giants wish to destroy all structures built by small folk
• Hill giants are looking for food

Encounters with non-giants should tend towards folk that have already encountered the giants. They could be terrified, looking for a new home, taking out their frustrations on the PCs, or hoping to get past as quickly as possible. Have the stone giants ordered the orcs to destroy all the human settlements, but the orcs have decided that they should get some slaves as compensation? That forms the basis of an encounter.

If you use miniatures, finding good wilderness maps helps significantly. Paizo’s range of Flip-mats or the new D&D Dungeon Tiles (for Wilderness!) both can aid this. There are other products out there as well. I find wilderness maps the hardest to represent without these sorts of aids.

You want to make the encounters relevant so that they help tell the story, difficult enough to challenge the adventurers without slaughtering them all, and provide a sense of how dangerous the Sword Coast has become with the giants causing chaos! Good luck!