D&D: Race to the Temple of Storms

Race to the Temple of Storms is a short Dungeons & Dragons adventure balanced for a party of four PCs of fourth level.  I ran it for my kids on Friday last week in a little over ninety minutes.

Race to the Temple of Storms (PDF)

My kids and I have played D&D intermittently for the past several years, but until recently, our sessions had been sporadic in the extreme.  However, I bought the Essentials Kit a few weeks into quarantine, and for a change, my youngest daughter decided that she wanted to run it as Dungeon Master.  It's her first time running and game, and it turns out that Emma really likes DMing while Hannah and I seem to make better players.  Thus, we've been playing a bunch more of late.

It helps that the rest of our lives have been put on indefinite hold.

So.  Emma is running the Essential Kit campaign, Dragon of Icespire Peak, but she felt like she needed a break after running several short adventures in a row.  I therefore wrote this short side-quest as a quick Friday evening family event.  

Dragon of Icespire Peak runs out of the small hillside town of Phandalin, but for this adventure, I moved the party to nearby Saltmarsh in an attempt to avoid either spoiling the larger campaign and/or stepping on my daughter's storytelling inadvertently.  Icespire Peak has some weird plot twist involving orcs and Talos that I didn't want to spoil for myself.  However, we've uncovered enough of whatever's happening that I felt confident piggybacking on the larger idea for the creation of Uriel, the Orc Lord, and here we are.

Our current game is set in the Forgotten Realms, where Uriel wants to secure the blessing of Talos before leading an attack on Saltmarsh and Phandalin.  In this write-up, though, the town is Breakwater Bay (see also: A Beginner’s Guide to Wanderhaven), and Zeus is the Stormlord, not Talos.  

You can, of course, change in and all of that to whatever suits your gaming group.

Notes on game-play:

 -- We got through the intro and travel section so quickly that I wondered if I should have added another travel hazard or a wandering monster.  My kids got caught in the ice storm for two rounds, but it didn't hurt them badly at all.

 -- But then the kids struggled climbing the cliff to the Temple of Storms, and I felt better about it.  They avoided the pit trap but set off the temple's lightning trap, weakening them right before the boss battle.  Oops!

 -- Ultimately, the kids felt like the journey was quick but descriptive while the overall focus stayed firmly on the story's important parts.  That was good.

 -- The Kraken Priest turned out to be a great boss villain.  He nearly killed the whole party with his initial Call Lightning spell, but his AC is so low that every attack the party made against him hit.  This set up an eventual live-or-die last shot for my wife's ranger.  Either she hit and killed the Priest, or she missed, and he killed the whole party.  Drama!  It was literally perfect, and against the Priest's AC 10, her odds of dramatic victory ran about 85%.

 -- It took two tries, but my daughter eventually hit Uriel with the spell Cause Fear as he was climbing up the cliff.  It was raining at that point, and he'd nearly reached the top, so I ruled that he fell to his doom.  His army dispersed over the course of the next few hours, giving the kids an easy victory.  

I felt like they'd earned it after the near-TPK.

D&D on our back deck. Left to right: Hannah, Emma, & me.

Additional Adventure Articles:

 -- The Mystery of Malven Manor (blog post & PDF)
 -- The Fall of Cahokiantep (blog post & PDF)
 -- Race to the Temple of Storms (adventure PDF & AAR blog post)
 -- The Disappearance of Jaxon Carrows (adventure PDF & AAR blog post)
 -- Journey through Crocodile Crossroads (blog post)
 -- Story Starter: The Demon’s True Name (blog post & PDF)
 -- The Mystery of Mordecai’s Monster (En5ider article, $2)
 -- Expanding Mordecai’s Monster (blog post)
 -- Zeke's Mine (blog post & PDF)
 -- Christmas with the Orcs: The Red Man Comes! (blog post & PDF)