Dungeons and Dragons: Storm King’s Thunder Review

‘Tis often a shame how the world works. Fate can be a cruel mistress. Not but the day after I received my first press kit from Wizards of the Coast, Project-Nerd blog will no longer be producing content. Alas, woe is me. Et cetera and so-on. 

Though these are gloomy times for Project-Nerd bloggers and editors like myself, this is no doubt an exciting time for me as I get to review the new Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Storm King’s Thunder!DnD_TRPG_StormKingsThunder_Cover

This 256-page adventure presents a great adventure that pits your table of players and heroes against giants bent on reshaping the world. Giants are rampaging the land, the sea, and the skies and the peoples of the Forgotten Realms need a team of heroes to help them. D&D fans already got a preview of Storm King’s Thunder this summer with Force Grey: Giant Hunters, an eight-­episode weekly show starring a group of comedians and actors, co-­produced by Nerdist and Geek & Sundry.

The uniqueness of Storm King’s Thunder is that it is the first D&D 5th Edition adventure developed completely in house by Wizards of the Coast. The prior 5E adventures were all joint designed by various third party publishers such as Kobold Press and Green Ronin Publishing.

This adventure starts off with a nearly 2 full-page-detailed table of contents, followed directly by an alphabetical list of important NPCs that your adventurers may run into during their journey. A detailed adventure background follows, accompanied by gorgeous art and detailed tips on running the adventure. Included is a flowchart that describes how several chapters are connected, helping the Dungeon Master to figure out where his or her players are headed next.

One of the benefits of this adventure is how it can be a fresh start for a party of characters, or be the continuation of a previous journey. Appendix A of the tome gives intriguing plot hooks for Dungeon Masters to continue the journey from the Lost Mines of Phandelver Starter Set Adventure, Hoard of the Dragon Queen, Princes of the Apocalypse, or Out of the Abyss adventures.

The entire book contains beautiful artwork, drawings of some of the encountered NPCs, as well as colorful and compelling location maps to ease the Dungeon Master’s description and planning. It seems like a lot of the Dungeon Master’s work is done for them in this adventure. Additionally, many wonderful descriptions of people, places and events are peppered throughout to help those who are less descriptively inclined.

The adventure seems well put together. This is the fall season’s D&D storyline, and it also coincides with your local Adventures League story–as well as the Neverwinter MMO.DnD_Cryptic_Neverwinter_StormKingsThunder

Overall, if you like buying Dungeons & Dragons pre-made adventures, I highly recommend this product. While the $49.95 MSRP price tag may seem a bit steep for some, the amount of content provided seems well worth it. No doubt the price will eventually drop slightly, but the amount of content and hours of fun that could be had with this adventure more than make up for it, considering most of us have paid more for a video game with a fraction of the play time. I can’t wait to get a group together for this one!

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