At last we come to the last location in the sandbox section of Lost Mine of Phandelver. It’s funny, I’m not sure I noticed this when I started this series. But if you look at the other locations, and you look at the Ruins of Thundertree–there’s a big difference. The other three locations get a couple of paragraphs, one encounter, and no map. Thundertree gets a huge section, a map, a handful of keyed encounters, and an NPC who knows where Cragmaw Castle is AND where Wave Echo Cave is. It’s almost like the designer was trying to tell us something. Let’s get into the breakdown.
Analysis
A lot of people like this adventure, and like the designer who created it. I’ve got no beef with the designer, nor with the people who like LMoP. But I have to say…this is another thing that makes no sense to me. The whole point of the “sandbox” section is for the PCs to hunt for information about where these two primary locations are. We are told that Gundren has a map to Wave Echo Cave, and that’s why he was kidnapped. We are told that the goblins took Gundren to their headquarters at Cragmaw Castle, and Gundren’s buddy wants us to rescue him. But we also know that Black Spider is trying to get to something inside Wave Echo Cave, so of course the PCs could decide that’s the place to go (if they are cold and heartless and don’t care about rescuing poor Gundren).
Here’s what I don’t get…if you put a sandbox in an adventure, and the goal of the PCs is to travel around gathering information about one or the other destination (or both), then why would you make one location in the sandbox so much more important than the others? Because that’s what the designer did here. “Hey look over here, we got a bunch of encounters and a map and a DRAGON over here!” And this NPC, the druid? He’s basically got all the information the PCs need. In one guy. Who according to the text is kind of stuck here trying to figure something out, that has nothing to do with the plot of this adventure. So why even have a sandbox in the first place? If you’re going to railroad the players by making one location obviously more important than the others, and put all the information the players need in that location–what do they need the other places for?
The dragon is mildly interesting. She offers a reward to the PCs if they will get the stupid Dragon Cultists away from her eggs. It could be at least as interesting a roleplaying encounter as the one with the banshee (or hag, if you take my suggestions). There is an interesting new monster, the Ash Zombie, which is kind of fun. And the Twig Blights from Sunless Citadel show up here as well, meaning you could possibly lead into that adventure from here (which is what I was going to do if the game with my son and his friends had continued).
Problems
- This site has WAY more stuff in it than the others. Which is not bad, as such, but means the sandbox isn’t really a sandbox because everything the PCs need is right here.
- Based on the established lore for green dragons (both in D&D generally and in Forgotten Realms particularly) it doesn’t really make sense for a young green dragon to nest in a ruined village. So again…WHY? Why is she here instead of nesting in the forest, which is her natural habitat?
- The druid knowing everything the PCs want to know and being willing to just tell them for nothing: It’s ridiculous. And he’s supposed to be someone who wanders around, presumably serving several small communities on a kind of itinerant preacher circuit. But instead he’s stuck in this one place, like a questgiver in an MMO. “Look over here, I have an exclamation point over my head!”
- What the hell are the cultists doing here? I mean sure they try to recruit dragons, blah blah. But why are they HERE, and stealing THIS dragon’s eggs? No clue. No reason is given. They’re bad guys! Who cares why they’re here?
My Solution
- First of all, the druid needs to move around. I would make a random table, and give him a certain percentage chance of being at any one location in the sandbox. Or even back at Phandelver, for that matter. He’s supposed to be serving the general area, so have him wander a bit. In fact, you can make him a proactive node, rather than a static one.
- Let someone else in the area have information about one or the other of the two major destination points in the adventure, so it’s not all on this druid to give them what they want. Agatha can give it to them, but only if they decide to fail the quest that took them to her. I talk about this a little in the parts about other sandbox nodes. I would spread the love, make the NPCs in those other areas just as knowledgeable as this druid.
- Get rid of the stupid Dragon Cultists, or give them a good reason to be in this place recruiting/intimidating this dragon. I might replace them with some other Forgotten Realms faction instead, depending on what other published adventure I wanted to use next.
- Have fun with the Ash Zombies and Twig Blights. Maybe throw in a goblin encounter as another thread leading to Sunless Citadel. Sunless Citadel would be great if the players miss most of the middle content in LMoP and they need to level up some before the final confrontation. Or it could be good to run after LMoP. I’d have to adjust the difficulty of the encounters, and tweak some things, for a higher level party. But it’s not too hard to do.
Find Your Solution
As I’ve said in many other articles in this series, the main question to ask is WHY. Why is the dragon here, why are the cultists here, why is the druid here? And why is it that the druid knows everything the PCs need or want to know? Make more connections between the various sandbox locations, and seed the information about Cragmaw Castle and Wave Echo Cave in many places, so the druid isn’t the only one holding all that informational capital.
Aside from those things, this is a solid encounter area, with a good map and some interesting opportunities for both combat and roleplay. You could use it as a model to rework the other sandbox locations, honestly, to make the whole thing a lot more interesting. People have created maps for the other sandbox locations, you can find them in a Google search. Or you could go to Dyson Logos’ Dodecahedron blog and pick one of his free maps.
Next time we’ll be taking a little interlude to talk about wilderness travel options in 5E. I probably should have done this before the articles about the sandbox locations, but I didn’t think of it then. So I’m sticking it in here. Can’t have a sandbox with lots of travel if you don’t know how to run wilderness travel! And LMoP itself doesn’t really help you there. But fear not, Gentle Readers! I am here to advise you. Stay tuned!
The Cool Mama 