Storm King's Thunder

To be honest, I didn't actually want to GM this game. The GM for the group I was playing with at the time suddenly stopped showing up. To keep the group continue to meet up, I offered to GM a different campaign.

SKT Gist

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How I Ran the Module

I started the group at level 3, and in Icewind Dale. That region out of the 3 starter regions seemed the most combat heavy, which is what this group expressed interest for. I supplemented the Icewind Dale region with lore from the Rime of the Frostmaiden module.

I asked players what giants they're most interested in having participate in the campaign so I can focus on pulling in material for those only. This module is so big, so lore heavy, and so long that any way I can cut down on material greatly helped. We followed the frost giants, the hill giants, the cloud giants, and the storm giants.

Commentary

Like I briefly mentioned above, this game is too big. It's too sandbox. It's so hard to run. The adventure book is essentially Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide part 2. Because it's like a sandbox environment, the players actually rescued Hekaton fairly early in the game.

Also, the villain Imrith made no sense to me. I understand that she's the villain in the giant's perspective, but to the players, she's just some dragon who messed with the giants' social hierarchy for fun.

What I Learned

I learned that I should play with the type of players that I enjoy playing ttrpgs with. If I don't particularly enjoy their style of play, I shouldn't feel forced to continue. Some players enjoyed combat-heavy games and others enjoyed roleplay-heavy games. And me? I enjoy world-building games.

I also learned that I should limit the amount of material I pull in from other sourcebooks. When I was pulling some lore from the RotFM module, we almost ended up playing that game instead of SKT. Some players kept latching onto every single detail I gave and I kept feeding them more and more details because they kept asking questions.

Finally, I learned that I need to play D&D because I want to, not because I feel like I need to. Even though our GM suddenly dropped the game, I didn't need to step up as GM simply because I was the only one with GMing experience. If I didn't feel comfortable doing it, just don't do it.