We played our seventh session of Shadow of the Dragon Queen on Monday, July 3, 2023, proceeding through Chapter 5: The Northern Wastes.

At the end of the last session, the party had rescued the young human Clystran from either drowning or being eaten by giant spiders (or both!) and were now taken by him to the town of Heart’s Hollow. At present, they had two goals: find out where Lord Soth was going and rescue the captured elves from Camp Carrionclay.

As I noted in my last report, I had diverged from the story-as-written by omitting Dalamar. This gave me a problem: there is no other way as written in the adventure to let the players know where the City of Lost Names was. On the other hand, it made for a much easier introduction for Clystran, who needed to appear in the adventure for later events. (Quite frankly, I preferred the version I ran).

The trouble I find with the Dalamar version of events is that you do the three locations he needs, gain the information on the City, and all of a sudden you’re moving directly to it and any additional content is a distraction from what you need to do. The idea that Lord Soth is just going to hang around until you’re ready to find him – perhaps after several weeks of doing side content – doesn’t flow well. You see this sort of behaviour lots of times in computer games. And, indeed, I’ve seen a lot of criticisms of Cyberpunk 2077 because the main story needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. Which means the 60% of the game that is side content doesn’t make sense for the character to engage with.

So, given that you need to save your friends in Kalaman, why are you pausing to help with the elves again and putting the town at risk?

I’d advise, should you want to alter how the adventure runs, that you include two additional sources of the City’s location:

• The leader of Heart’s Hollow knows where it is, which she’ll give to the party if they fulfill her quest.
• The leader of the elves also knows its location. All the party need to do is rescue him!

As you’ll see, I chose the first option for this playthrough, and omitted all mention of Dalamar. That isn’t to say that the Dalamar quest line can’t be entertaining, but it’s a lot more directed – and it then makes little sense for the players to engage with the other content in the chapter.

So, the party were led by Clystran into Heart’s Hollow, and there they met several of the prominent citizens around the town. For the most part, however, it was a chance to rest and resupply. Vermin was intrigued by Clystran’s fascination with the wild dragonnels and wanted to accompany him to their lair. However, most pressing for the players was the need to rescue the captured sea elves. And so soon the party headed out again.

Camp Carrionclay was about a day or two’s journey away. At this point, I stopped using random encounters as the party travelled. This was due to a couple of factors: They didn’t award XP and only occurred once per day (according to the adventure-as-written). Once per day combat encounters (as most are), don’t do much in 5E. They’ve got to be deadly to feel significant. And if the party doesn’t gain XP – because I was using story-based progression – they quickly just fill up time with no story significance. D&D 5E is rarely attritional during wilderness travel. Even the players were feeling how pointless they were. So, we stopped. The first ones gave a sense for the dangers of the wastes. More than that wasn’t adding anything.

The camp itself is one of those opportunities for the characters to show their ingenuity. They’ll need to if they want this section to not devolve into a big free-for-all. The adventure does give a couple of suggestions for approaches the characters might take (basically, disguise themselves or try to enter at night).

My players were not in that sort of mood. It was all about the head-on assault. And this would take up a fair chunk of the adventure, as they fought wave after wave of Dragon Army soldiers, as subsequent members of the camp became aware of what was happening. Yes, the fireballs that Parren could cast quickly became important to crowd control.

Checking over my Roll20 logs, I get the following time stamps:

7:37 pm: Initial initiative rolls made for the party and the guards on watch.

7:53 pm: With the first wave dealt with, six more Dragon Army Soldiers enter the fray, and initiative is rerolled for everyone.

8:09 pm: The barbarian comments “We should do head on assaults more often.” At which point a LOT of dragon army soldiers, an officer, and a Sivak draconian attack. Oh, and the Hobgoblin warlord commander of the camp.

9:01 pm: The baaz draconians who were protecting the dragonnel pens and the jail finally join the fray.

9:06 pm: The party finally defeats the last of the camp!

Well, that was most of the session. The players weren’t always at their tactical best. In particular, Hrothkar the barbarian decided to ascend one of the guard towers, just as a large number of extra foes attacked, leaving Tordek the dwarf fighter frantically trying to hold them off on his own. The party is really set up for both Hrothkar and Tordek to fight side-by-side, with their abilities synergising nicely. Whenever Hrothkar goes off on his own, things suffer badly. Vermin the ranger and Parren the wizard are not front-line fighters.

Hrothkar’s decision was partly influenced by our use of Dynamic Lighting on Roll20, which meant he had no line-of-sight to the additional foes. And partly due to the player not paying attention to the rest of events. Somehow, they struggled through.

The characters could finally explore the camp. They could rescue the sea elves. Hooray! However, the sea elf leader wasn’t present. Alas! But they could gain directions to the further site he had been taken to. Another journey beckoned.

Perhaps even more intriguingly, they found a large egg – a dragon egg! This, they carefully carried, curious as to what it portended.

However, there was one danger still to approach. The adult black dragon, Akhavi, returned to the camp after a scouting expedition. The party was depleted and not in any ways ready to face a dragon. (Honestly, they weren’t even if they were fully healed). Quickly, everyone scattered and attempted to hide, with the party failing a group Stealth check badly. Not surprising, given the DC was 26. (It would be 21 if the party hadn’t caused a mess at the camp – hardly an improvement!)

Who did the dragon attack? I left that up to fate – that is, my dice. And the roll indicating Hrothkar. The black dragon breathed acid on him, for 61 damage. However, Hrothkar made his saving throw – only 30 damage was easily survivable for the barbarian. He might have fallen unconscious, though!

The dragon, bored already, flew away, not to appear again in the adventure. Suitably cautious, the party made their way back to Heart’s Hollow. And such ended our seventh session. A little role-playing to start, and a lot of combat for most of the session, before the exploration of the camp. They found a couple of nice items, but the main success was freeing the prisoners and gaining the egg.