5e Lost Mine of Phandelver Lessons Learnt

Commission I gifted my players at the end of the campaign. It was actually done by one of my players, the talented @CathalDraws

Note: this article contains adventure spoilers! (duh....)
If you plan to play in Lost Mine of Phandelver, stop right here, right now. You've been warned.

This will be a post-mortem article of my initiation to RPGs in general, and D&D in particular. That's f*ing right, I'm not a grognard that played with Gygax's cousin, nor did I start playing with 3.X boardgame edition. There is some fun revising a successful campaign that ended after 23 sessions with the lens of the OSR mindset I came to appreciate after the fact. What would I've done different with that mindset?

Lost Mine of Phandelver is the introductory module for Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition. It is praise by all the 5e accolades as one of the best adventures of the last 20 years.

I was fortunate enough to put together a great group of players through Roll20. The group didn't know each other prior, and was assembled through a recruiting post on the platform. International bunch eager to play. What style do I like? What is my Referee style? No clue, and at this point it's not something I'm considering.

Truth be told, I did a ton of homework and research  before starting. Reading blog posts, watching some of the gazillion play-throughs and reviews on youtube, etc. One of the biggest pain in the butt has been setting up Roll20 maps and tokens (did all manually), and catching up with all the Forgotten Realms lore. That becomes a problem when you have veteran players more familiar with the setting and campaign world than you, and there's a metric ton of legacy to learn.... overwhelming...

But, but,... make it your own! OSR hack and paste in your own setting!

True, but I was naive enough to wave that and build on top of the Realms. I figure a lot of people do this, and I didn't want to overwhelm myself. And I imagine a starter set shouldn't overwhelm anyone.

1) Who is that Black Spider again?

The main villain in this adventure is not given enough attention in the written module. The Black Spider needs fleshing out, a lot. Give him a strong motivation as to why it is after the Forge of Spells. He works best as a mid-manager in the Baddies Corp. Was he hired to find and make the Forge operational by the Red Wizards? The drow noble family of Xhit'erak are after magic items? A hefty sum paid by Duke Zalto and the fire giants (to tie to Storm King's Thunder)? Limitless options here. Flesh it out.

It also pays off to have the players choose a background from the pre-generated characters in the box, or even better make a list of backgrounds/rumors of your own, and assign one to each PC before the campaign. Giving total freedom to my group as to what to choose meant that the motivator for the adventure (rescuing a dwarf NPC they barely know that was kidnapped) is weakish.

2) Make travel interesting...

Chapter 3 of this adventure is based on traveling and exploring the vicinity around Phandalin (the home town), and getting to know some fantastic locations. A mini-sandbox of sorts. As written, this can be dull. It is lacking detail. They offer you a basic method to track travel, and a D12 table of combat encounters. This is not to mention that ration tracking is basically a no-go for 5e player mentality. Just by choosing the Outlander background a whole party is good to go. Lame.

OSR shine! Bring in additional tables of random encounters, especially ones where combat is not the first response. Add landmarks (towers, bridges, ruins, farms, ...) for the characters to explore.

Even as a n00b I was able to bring a couple of additions:

• Example 1: a caravan of bards and performers traveling on the Triboar Trail towards Neverwinter crossed paths with the characters. Lead by an Abjurer wizard, and with several non-traditional bard NPCs on pay (College of the Brush, College of Puppets), they were interesting and engaging enough for the players. The role-playing interactions were superb, and it paved the way in case the characters decide to find them once they deal with this adventure. Spoiler alert: they did!
• Example 2: when the characters spent their first night in the Neverwinter Wood I had a pair of Green Knights (LAWFULnetural) give the character a strong warning that they do not belong in the forest, and they should leave within 3 days. These mysterious knights were also creepy and gave a good sense that the Cragmaw Castle, Black Spider & co. are but a small sample of all the dangers around the area of Phandalin. One player told me the way I played the Green Knights gave him chills.

3) Use those doppelgangers

Make sure you use the doppelgangers in the adventure wisely. They can be true masterminds and a pain in the butt for the players. There are few exceptions on how to unmask these bastards.

They are a wildcard you should use in plotting against the characters, and make the Black Spider more threatening. It is a shame the adventure gives little to no guidance on how to capitalize on these assests.

Note their stats. That +6 Deception is sweet, and should be used extensively. Contrary to that statblock, nothing is stopping them to wield weapons, wear armor, or drink potions to get an extra boost to their abilities. A potion of fire breath can put the heavily armored Paladin or Fighter in a tight spot!

In a realistic world, assuming one of the doppelgangers is always in Phandalin, I don't see a reason why he wouldn't assassinate the PCs one by one... In fairness, we have to give a reason as to why they're holding off!

Maybe the doppelganger believes the party will retrieve an item from a dangerous location, and is just letting them do the work to then snatch and attack?

4) Do not underestimate the players!

No, really. Do not underestimate your players, especially at the grind that 5e can be. If you throw strong encounters, you get told that "it's not balanced" "what CR was this?! lol" and other pearls. This gets to my nerves. Running/retreating is not in the vocabulary of any of the players. I get it, the Marvel super-hero complex of this edition. But it can make actions and their consequences irrelevant. This is hard to balance and I don't have a definite solution yet. Some things I hacked and my players liked.

• used a complex underwater trap (as described in Xanathar's Guide to Everything), including a water weird, poisoned harpoons, and more. This whole dungeon lasted a couple extra sessions, but is one of the few places where the group confessed they felt death at their door.
• used a Nilbog at Cragmaw Castle. The players ended up in love/hate with the little f*cker, big time...
• considerably increased the difficulty of some encounters in Wave Echo Cave. Using more ghouls, other oozes, minotaur skeletons, etc. and a fire giant!
• the Black Spider became a drow mage. Because I wanted that last encounter to have some meat on the bones.

The mentality of "let me look at the character sheet for my spells/abilities/skills" is hard to change, especially with experienced players. I imagine a group of new players would me much more open to think outside of that, interact with the environment, use their equipment wisely, etc.

Closing thoughts

All in all, I really had a great time running this adventure. It was very strong as a start for me, and it offered many hours of fun for a small price tag. There are changes and hacks that will enhance the adventure here and there, but you can't go very wrong with this one really.