Hoard of the Dragon Queen: Raiders' Camp - Part 1

So, chapter 2 of the Hoard of the Dragon Queen. Just a reminder but I’m going to look at this in depth, so there will be spoilers aplenty. I think the easiest way to describe this section is that it’s a sandboxed area that requires a number of things to happen.

This chapter has three subsections.

• Stragglers - Really slow and not too bright raiders that the party should be able to not only take but also get information from.
• Rear Guard - Soldiers meant to either stop people like the PCs from attacking the camp before the raiders have had a chance to rest and regroup or at least warn the camp of an impending attack.
• Camp life - Infiltrate the camp, find information, and save the monk, Leosin Erlanthar.

The Stragglers

I feel like the stragglers serve three purposes. First, a reminder to the players and the DM that not all of the NPCs are super bright or tactical. I mean, these characters just raided a town, are in no rush to get back to their camp, and they have a campfire that can be spotted from miles away. The second purpose is to show and/or reinforce that there can be factions even among the raiders, an important point when the PCs realize that the camp is full with a hundred or so raiders. Not only do the humans and kobolds do different things when attacked, they provide different information when questioned. Finally, they can provide information to help with the upcoming challenges, potentially allowing a party to skip a challenging fight and having their cover blown before they even reach the camp.

Rear Guard

This one has me scratching my head a bit. The text of the adventure even states it’s the smart thing to bypass this encounter. It feels like a trap encounter for a hack ‘n slash party. In some ways, that’s fine, there are upcoming challenges that will have serious consequences if the party adopts the hack ‘n slash approach, but it also makes me wonder if there are better ways of handling this. Also, it doesn’t really provide the party with a safe space to learn this lesson. If the runner successfully reaches the camp, the person who has to “pay” for the party’s decision is really the DM, I think it becomes both more difficult and less fun to run.

There’s also an issue, maybe due to editing, of conflicting information. In the rewards section, the description says that the cultists outfits and weapons could be invaluable to the PCs when they try to enter camp but the camp section says “[i]f characters are wearing Cult of the Dragon regalia taken from the rearguard, the characters have disadvantage on [a recognition] roll because no one returning to camp at this time should be in uniform.”

The Camp

Obviously, the primary quest in the camp is to free Leosin Erlanthar. Personally, I’m not sure my groups would necessarily care unless I did work upfront to weave Leosin into their backstories.

When they decide to attempt to free him depends on two things: do they want to try to collect information first and if they are recognized. These two things provide the main tension for the area. The more the PCs can learn about the cultists’ plans, the easier the rest of the adventure will go, both from them and the DM. However, with each question they ask, they risk revealing themselves as newcomers and/or running across someone who recognizes them. So, for me, I’d approach pacing by using this tension to work for me.

Now, SlyFlourish has some great suggestions on his blog for how to run this part of the adventure. I particularly agree with not being afraid to split the party here. Safety in numbers isn’t going to work when you are easily outnumbered 20 to 1 anyway and the dramatic tension that can occur when you switch to the next person right after the current PC realizes they have been recognized can be priceless. Of course, it depends on your group.

One of the difficulties I’ll stress here is that while this section fits perfectly within the hero’s journey narrative, it works against the self-concept many people have of heroes, since you can’t directly challenge the bad guys here. I can see this being frustrating for some players. Adding injustices within the camp that the players can defeat might help relieve some of that frustration if it happens. The hunters mght be an interesting place to add this in. For instance, they could steal some of the meat back for them or something. Finding ways to secretly aid the prisoners could also work or even somehow making the prisoners’ guards look bad.

Well, that’s it for now. Next time I’ll come up with a cheat sheet similar to the one I created for the first episode.