Right now I have two plot lines to wrap up and then I have to figure out what to do for the next campaign. One of them is the free Critical Role adventure put out on Roll20, called “The Frozen Sick,” and the other is a heavily-modified version of the Dragon of Icespire Peak.

“The Frozen Sick” is a short adventure, up to about level 3, that my group started playing using Roll20’s virtual tabletop. It’s well written, and unlike the other official adventures published, I haven’t had to rewrite anything… which, you know, is kind of the point of using a published adventure.

The Dragon of Icespire Peak is a very different story, however. It takes place in Phandalin, just like the Lost Mine of Phandelver in the starter set. But it’s not a sequel. Instead, this adventure in the D&D Essentials box set is more of a collection of side quests for players to level-grind until they’re strong enough to finally face the dragon, who for some reason has a connection to Storm King’s Thunder that’s never explained or acknowledged.

I started this campaign with three level 4 characters, to buy myself time while I tried to write my own storyline that would pick up afterward and tie into different elements of the characters’ backstories. Some of the changes made to Phandalin are a little strange, so I modified that before picking just a few of the adventures to run, with the encounters buffed up for more powerful player characters. I don’t think I actually want to go on with that storyline now, so I’m hoping to have the players face off against the dragon and then just end the campaign there, with the possibility of bringing these characters back later.

I’ve had to rewrite the final adventure with the dragon because for some reason it took place in an old fortress inexplicably built out in the middle of nowhere, with a history the players couldn’t uncover because there just weren’t any clues to give them. So that’s been completely redone, and honestly, starting over almost from scratch was far easier than trying to adapt everything for probably the third or fourth time. This has been a major problem with a lot of the published adventures I’ve tried so far, where they have plotholes or a linear storyline paired with a nonlinear map.

At least twice in the starter set there were dungeons with a sort of figure eight shape where players had a fifty-fifty chance of encountering scenes in the wrong order… and in Thundertree, as it was written, they could accomplish their main objective in less than 15 minutes. Then they’re warned to leave Thundertree because it’s too dangerous, even though this guy really wants them to fight a dragon way above their level.

The whole reason I wanted to continue this story in the Forgotten Realms was because after the Lost Mine of Phandelver, the players had new, cool items and abilities, as well as unresolved plot hooks involving their backstories. But I’m really not a fan of the setting. Everything in the Forgotten Realms has already been pretty well settled, on a very crowded section of coastline. In a way, it kind if reminds me of Saturday morning cartoons: the party starts out in a big city tavern before they head out somewhere for a wacky adventure, and then they head back to the tavern so everything can return to status quo. It doesn’t leave much room for exploration.

I have the book for Ghosts of Saltmarsh, which I would absolutely love to run next. But then again, I might like to instead start a campaign in Wildemount, with the opportunity for all new characters after The Frozen Sick. Eventually my goal us to have a Wildemount campaign anyway, but the question is “Do I want to take a detour and do Ghosts of Saltmarsh first or go straight into Wildemount?”