How to run the Cragmaw Castle and King Grol in LMoP - D&D 5th Edition Starter Set Guide 6 

I don't actually know whether there's a castle siege in Braveheart or not, but I'm not about to watch a Mel Gibson movie to find out. Please leave a comment, like the video and subscribe - I'd love to hear your Cragmaw Castle story! -------------- ❤ Support the Channel ❤ -------------- 💚 Patreon: matthewperkins.net/patreon 💚 Donate: matthewperkins.net/donate 💚 Store: matthewperkins.net/store 💚 DM Guild: matthewperkins.net/dmsguild 💜 Twitch: matthewperkins.net/twitch 💜 TikTok: matthewperkins.net/tiktok 🧡 Discord: matthewperkins.net/discord 🧡 Facebook: matthewperkins.net/facebook 🧡 Twitter: matthewperkins.net/twitter 🧡 Instagram: matthewperkins.net/instagram 🧡 Reddit: matthewperkins.net/reddit ✏ Blog: matthewperkins.net/blog 📧 For marketing/business/sponsorship inquiries, email: mperkins.dm@gmail.com

Our party managed to basically accidentally speedrun Cragmore Castle, we found the hidden entrance in room 11 (helped by my character having Masons Tools proficiency), walked straight to room 14, then turn 1 of combat our Paladin crit-smited King Grol.

My best story for this adventure is when Venomfang, the dragon was changed to have a side quest where my players helped him score a date with a local Dryad. D&D is amazing and strange.

My players trusted Nezzar and "convinced her" to help them get Gundren back before potentially trading the puzzle box as Gundren was the one who needed it in the first place. She agreed to meet them on the outskirts of Cragmaw Castle in 5 days, to give her "time to scout around the castle with her colleagues". (Giving the party just enough time to do side quests) Iarno Glasstaff escaped Tresendar Manor when the wizard used Knock to open the locked door there, and then the party durdled around for a really long time before getting to Glasstaff's room. I had Glasstaff run to Cragmaw Castle. When the party arrived at Cragmaw Castle Nezzar was nowhere to be found. After spotting the side entrance and picking the lock easily they managed to stumble their way into the King's room only having to fight his two guards outside. Waiting inside were King Grol, Glasstaff, and Nezzar! The party smelled her immediate betrayal. But I decided to twist the knife a bit. As they were all arguing and attempting to interrogate Nezzar, Nezzar walks into the room covered in goblin blood! "Sorry I'm late, boys" she says. They immediately turn to the fake Nezzar and begin combat, still fully trusting the real Nezzar. Afterwards, Nezzar (the real one) goes to "stabilize" the downed party member who also happened to be the one with the Puzzlebox in their posession. She snatched the Puzzlebox, while the fake Nezzar stood up off the ground (Real Nezzar had landed the "final blow") and dashed to steal the map. The party failed a few rolls to stop them from leaving and Nezzar Dimension Doors out with both the Box and the Map.

When my group and I played LMoP, the GM played it roughly by the book. When it came to Cragmaw Castle however, he had to improvise, and he did it masterfully ! One of our players got isolated during the fight with King Grol and went to fight the emissary of the Black Spider on his own. When the player came back, he was in a bad state, and told the rest of the party that he had to make some sacrifice to win his duel. He was a monk from a strange order we didn't know much about, so we accepted the fact. We managed to save Gundren, we spared King Grol, freed the Owlbear, it was all well and good. ** fast forward montage of all the secondary quests, since we did Cragmaw Castle quite early in the campaign** Once we reached the Wave Echo Cave, and the final battle against the Black Spider, we were pretty confident : we are six against one (Gundren was with us), we are level 5, the bad guy makes his speech and we inevitably come to rolling initiative. The aforementioned monk goes first. He makes a step forward towards the Black Spider. Then he immediately turns around and attack our half-orc fighter ! We are stunned ! The dots connect for a few of us : the guy with whom we've spent the last FIVE or SIX sessions was a bloody doppelganger ! We scream our rage at this long-delayed treachery, the fight is now five against two. It is the turn of the goblin warlock, but he seems to flabbergasted to act. Since he and the monk had a good relationship, I interpret it as shock, and the good-natured bard that I am try to embolden him to avenge his friend ! And it seems to work ! He decides to cast I-don't-recall-which spell and aims it... at me ! Prepare for trouble, and make it double ! The Black Spider didn't have one, but TWO doppelganger sidekicks, that just now stabbed us in the back and joined with their master. I'm not gonna describe the whole fight, but it was one of the most tense and hopeless one I have ever played ! And the ending had a bittersweet taste for we effectively lost two friends in the fight. But oh boy, did it have drama !

My players hated Sildar too, though in their case it was because his seemingly being friendly with Iarno and the shifty townmaster meant they were all in on the black spider alliance. They just kept his equipment for themselves and later ran him out of town after leading a revolt against the townmaster. They also just yesterday decided to arrest Reidoth but that's a different story haha. Guess I need to work on making my friendly NPC's more likable.

I definitely am going to use your idea of King Grol’s character and motive. I am going to change Klarg to fit this narrative. Klarg becomes Grol’s immature son. With King Grol about to die, Klarg would naturally take over, but Klarg isn’t ready for the responsibility yet, so Grol sends him to the High Road to force travelers to pay “taxes” that will help repair the castle. Yeemick, being the strongest goblin, is Klarg’s right hand man, but whispers lies and deceit to Klarg to make him oppose his father. Yeemick’s true motive is to twist Klarg into doing his wishes, thus, when Klarg becomes King on Grol’s death, Yeemick will rule the goblins simply by being the true power behind the throne, Klarg as his puppet. If Klarg dies, Yeemick just has to wait until King Grol dies then rally the goblins against the hobgoblins and rule directly.

Ooh,was that a Thought Slime reference? Lord Oculon smiles on this video

Awesome idea for the tribe to have ideas of royalty, really enjoying all the twists you're adding through this series! Thanks!

I really love the kingdom-mimicry. I like my goblins to be connected to the fey, and it's very "faerie" to be trying to emulate humans like this. It gives me vibes of the Labyrinth movie with David Bowie.

Well done.. My players are just outside Cragmaw Castle and our session is tonight and you now have me second guessing all my prep work.

I love the idea of using Sildar instead of Gundren as a way to make the adventure feel fresh, especially if its the second or third (or eight) time you're running the adventure for a new group.

Awesome getting ready to run Cragmaw Castle for the 2nd time (all new players) and stoked to use your ideas! I might give Sildar's sword and armor to King Grol to be recovered. Wanted to share that the last time I ran this, the Paladin prayed at the altar, and having just hit level 3, they had a vision of a celestial (pre-avernus Zariel) coming down and reading the tenets of their oath and branding/knighting them.

This continues to be such a high quality series! I'm running a party through this campaign as we speak and they just reached Phandalin for the first time. Can't wait to incorporate more of these ideas into our game!

Thank you! Thank you! THANK YOU!! I was prepping for this tonight - didn't think my campaign would get there tonight but they did. Your prep for the King Grol helped tremendously, when they captured a goblin. It really added to the flavor of the the campaign - thanks so much!

My players convinced the archers to bring them in to see the king, and somehow schmoozed their way into getting in his chambers. Then in a turn of events put him to sleep and intimidated him so much that he spilled all the info they needed and walked them right back out the front door to the shock of the crowd. All that planning just to be surprised by my players again! Love this series!

This series has been fantastic - thank you!

I’m running the castle tonight, thank you so much for all the great content!

Dude this is my first time playing Dnd and obviously being the DM. And thank you so much. For economic reasons my friends and I had to flee our country and are scattered around the world but this is now something we do once a week and it's pretty fun.

HAHAHA "RIDING THE GRICK!!!" Amazing.

Dude, it's both entertaining as well as really educative! Love how much work you put into your videos. Makes it really stand out from all the rest out there. Lots of appreciation send to you from Germany!

Ran this last night using this video as a template. Went really smooth. Good stuff. Thanks!

great stuff. LOVE the content

I love your sense of humor and personality! Thank you for all your hard work, friend. Commenting to help your analytics!!

I'm loving this. I think making Grol the way you've talked about it awesome. Make him somewhat sympathetic, while still definitely a bad guy. You've given me so many ideas and definitely made my playthrough of Lmop much better for my friends that I'm DMing for. And they are absolutely having a blast! Thanks for all of these!

Love the militaristic ideas and how to make these villains sympathetic and persuadable....and the part about the goblins not 'needing' any adventurers is just perfect flavoring. Well done.

Super helpful, thanks Matthew.

Been waiting on this one, it ended my campaign. My party waltzed in the front door, but I didnt cut or fudge any enemies, and all your points about complex hallways and endless goblin encounters bleeding into each other are spot on. I too redid Grol, but they were so beat up and exhausted IRL by then they just grabbed Gundren and ran. And nope, I did NOT save energy for that end of session RP, everyone limped back to Phandalin at 1 HP and *crushed*.

As a first time DM, you made my DOSI campaign epic (after the boot side quest, Tarek ended up playing a huge role). The doppelganger (Monteith) in LMOP was a deckhand on Compass Rose and ended up taking Tarek's image after seeing him near the wreckage of Compass Rose - from here he swam back to Neverwinter to join the spider! Currently running LMOP as a sequel. I commented on another video and joined Patreon (awesome content on there btw!), but I wanted to comment for reach and simultaneously express my appreciation for the work you do - I've been on YT over a decade and you have quickly become my favorite content creator. The image of obstacles that King G. Overcame and the Bless this Grick were hilarious. Thanks for what you do, Matty P! You seem like a rare soul and put a smile on my face and made our campaigns so memorable. Thank you again.

This is perfect!!! I am running this later this week and this is going to help me a lot! Thank you!!!

I clicked on this video so fast I'm so excited! (also nice stache)

Great series! Helpful as always, even more so now that I'm going to start running a LMOP campaign this weekend. New DM and a group of new players...What could possibly go wrong :P

I had one orc leader from wyvern tor flee and the party tracked him to the side entrance to the castle. Great fun. Also the owlbear was king grols pet "Hoot Hoot" who was fed the cowardice glass staff who fled the hideout

I think I've enjoyed this video the most so far. It just feels really 'nice' to me! Very tight. You continue to increase in quality!

Thank you so much!!! I used your videos/ stats to run this last night! My players had an amazing time, tons of drama and npc interaction, ended up coming in area 11 and making way between 12,13,14. The boss fight was👍 the monsters ended up knocking 3 of 4 players unconscious (2 at once, 1 later) but the cleric was able to help our fighter turn the tides! Great videos sir!!!!!!

First vid of your I've seen. And I'm really impressed. Great voice, great pacing, great advice. Wish you the best.

This was actually pretty damn good content and suggestion so I'm going to comment for the notoriety. Thanks for the video :)

Enjoyable……subbed!!!

its definitely a fun dungeon, and while the owl-bear encounter is a bit tacked on its absolutely one too keep, i already know my players would need to fight it simply because its a big monster, while its also a teaching moment because its a very tough fight to pick needlessly, and could lead to the bossfight becoming significantly more deadly

Loving this series. Thank you! I’ve played LMoP but now prepping to DM it. Cragmaw Castle was my favourite bit of the campaign. We set a diversion and entered through route 10 into room 7. Our bard cast Shatter on the room of goblins and took them out in 1 shot! We struggled with King Grol so my level 3 cleric sat and prayed and unleashed a ridiculously high level spell from her god. Needless to say, my DM said she couldn’t do that again!

Hey Matt - awesome content - I've been running Lost Mines on roll20 during lockdown in Melbourne and stumbled upon your stuff only recently! I wish I had stumbled sooner cos your content is so helpful and streamlined for helping new GM's. Defs gonna refer people to this channel! Keep up the great work.

Commented on another video too - this series is especially helpful. I'm running LMoP right now as my first DM experience. I like a lot of the changes you're making too. I started this adventure the "normal way" and have a group of players just getting ready to crash the Cragmaw hideout. The only thing is... they left two captured goblins alive and unattended! I particularly like your ideas about the Cragmaw gobs being interested in having a real knight train them. Maybe they got word from Klaarg, or Yeemik, who's using this to bargain for more power. Either way, when they emerge victorious from the cave as freshly-minted level twos, if they're sufficiently well rested and ready to fight I think I'll have a patrol show up from the castle to negotiate and pickup Sildar. These knew gobs would have found their friends along the way and know there's adventurers about! They'll have to choose how to fight off these guys and get Sildar away alive. I can always use this as the "hey, Gundren had you bring the supplies because he hid a puzzle box in them" moment. Something my players wouldn't know about yet. Maybe I'll let Sildar die to increase pressure on the party to rescue Gundren... we'll just have to see

Bro, you are AMAZING

Refreshing take on King Grol! I borrowed from your ideas about civilising the Cragmaw and also made Grol an unlikley sort of leader. He was a deft hand at oil painting and had been adapting the landscapes hanging around the castles to become peaceful scenes peopled by goblinoids and bugbears. I kept the hobgoblins though and even toughened them up with a Hobgoblin Captain who caused a fair amount of trouble, only to meet vicious retribution from the party. I also made the goblin "priest" a Nilbog, who unfortunatly failed his confusion and charm attempts and got killed pretty quickly after burning his damage-as-healing reaction, but provided a nice bit of flavour nonetheless. The storeroom also contained a chest with an Immovable Rod in it, which the monk used expertly to escape the Owlbear, who was released by the hobgloblins as a late Plan B when things went south. My PCs were rolling really well. I also kept the doppelganger who attempted to kill Gundren, was foiled, and then tried to escape with the map but was pickpocketed successfully by the rogue. The doppleganger is not finished yet though, as next session it will shapeshift into an injured local trappper, offering reward for a safe escort out of the area. It will then attempt to steal the map back and kill Gundren, probably resulting in a chase where it will attempt to hide and shapeshift again (perhaps a harmless halfling fisherperson who says, "he went that-a-way"!). My PCs have not encountered a doppelganger before and are convinced the drow was genuine, so I'm hoping the doppelganger's second form will also fool them, and then if it comes to it, the third form will arouse some appropriate suspicion. I'd like the doppleganger to eventually be cornered and revert to its hideous natural form for last-ditch fight. Wish me luck, and hopefully my players don't stumble across this comment before next Saturday!

Great video as always! I'm excited to see what you do with Wave Echo Cave - especially Nundro. I feel like after Sildar in the cave and Gundren in the castle, the third NPC hostage in a dungeon is a bit stale.

My party happened to storm the castle with the townsfolk and it was the most cinematic experience I’ve ever imagined in my life.

I've adapted the campaign for an other system, and in my setup Phandalin is a sort of fallen city, à la Osgiliath from the Lord of the Rings. After the invasion of the mines, the town quickly lost prestige when its main source of income was shut down, and felt in ruins as people were leaving. The city the players actually interact with is a small village built a mile or so from the ruins from rubbles and old stuffs, where it's easier to defend with a small garison. Most of the "quests" happen in the ruins or around the area. In my setting, King Grol had occupied an old barrack in what used to be the noble quarters, decorating it with old dusty tapestries and artifacts from the noble houses.

I am a very new dungeon master and my friends know even less than me. We are playing the starter set and last session they encountered the young green dragon who basically killed them all but one with the poison breath, which was a shocker for me because i was really trusting the module to not make a TPK that easy, especially because it was meant for new players. That was a real downer and I reserved the effect leaving everybody who died with one hit point to run away . Later I researched how other people handled the dragon and they changed so much or bend the rules and focused on a narrative rather than combat . I was sad that I didnt think of researching it beforehand and just trusted the module a lil too much. So now ive been looking up how to handle the rest and the way you do it sounds really awesome! Thank you :D

I really loved that my players actually used their brains when encountering the castle. The druid became a small rat and mapped the whole place undetected. At night, they knew how many scouts there was, and where Gundren was imprisoned. So, they came through the tarp at construction site (closest spot), stealthly unlocked and opened the door where Groll was, took Gundren and ran away, without any combat. Btw, when Gundren was safe, the druid came back and opened the door to unleash the Owlbear and create chaos in the castle. That was FUN!

Ur videos really helped me! I inserted several encouters with the black spider (who's a woman of course) and it was soooo much more satisfying!

As some one who is addicted to old school runescape i loved seeing that stat page

man you really are slimming this module down quite a bit! propably rightfully so took my group (me first time DM played a bit as player before and my players all rookies) 1,5 sessions to go through my starting scene, goblin arrows and the hideout allone

In my campaign, Gundren is a doppleganger, the party rescued him and he’s back in Phandalin at the moment, Also Sildar is too a doppleganger, and is now running the town in place of the murdered town master ( murdered by the redbrands ) I can’t wait to see they’re faces when Sildar and Gundren are there with the black spider when they get to the encounter, They’re going to find Gundren and Sildar locked away in the echoing cave, with the Rockseeker brothers sadly tortured and killed in there with them

To further the idea that King Grol is nearing the end of his life and the cragmaw tribe are attempting to mimic a monarchy I’d use Cragmaw castle as a way of retroactively adding some character to Klarg from earlier. Have Sildars armour sent to Grol as an initial gift alongside a message that Sildar will be sent shortly to instruct them in knightly combat and noble etiquette. Make it so that Klarg was attempting to secure his position as Grols inheritor prior to the PC’s most likely busting into the hideout, freeing sildar and killing him.

Running through the castle tonight and watching this video as part of my preparation! I love the idea of jester goblins so I'm going to properly make a court room and have king grol wear a way too small crown

Oh man. This one is great. I put my heroes in a dilemma by having Axebiter's orcs raid Phandalin early on, so they had to choose between dealing with Wyvern Tor and Cragmaw. To help them make them choice, I had Sildar gather the heroic members of the town in a second party (including Iarno, who was maintaining his legitimate identity and wore a mask as Glasstaff), agreeing to take on whichever task the heroes didn't. The heroes attacked the orcs, and when they returned they learned Sildar's troop was captured (naturally, since Iarno was there to sabotage him)! Suddenly the stakes were higher!

I'll be running Cragmaw Castle today. The last session ended with the Moon Druid impersonating a goat and most of the goblins from rooms 3 and 4 going out to hunt lunch.

Hey just stumbled onto your channel and love the take on LMoP! I started DMing my very first campaign last month and my players just finished clearing out the hideout. So it is probably too late to incorporate everything that I like from your ideas, but I'll definitely incorporate your takes on running the dungeons. Thanks a lot for the great source of inspiration! Now.. from the chatter after the last session, I gather that my players want to go directly to searching for Cragmaw Castle. How would you handle such a situation? They'll be definitely outmached there, no matter how much I tweak the encounters.

I just ran this tonight and I wish I had seen this video beforehand! My players went in through the side and completely bypassed the whole front of the castle. I’m still trying to figure out what kind of XP to give them for making a tactical decision like that. There are some great ideas in here!

I had the Black Spider in the throne room with King Grol. King Grol doesn't want to give the map to Black Spider unless the Black Spider gives Grol some gold first. Basically, it's the same as written in the adventure, except you swap the doppelganger with the real Black Spider. She'll quickly Dimension Door away after stealing the map, though, unless the Party can really pin her down and take it.

Well, today I dm'd the session. The party had to explore the castle and save Gundr, simple as that. Turns out that due to 2 crits Grol mopped the floor with my players and they had to be taken prisoners. I tried to play it off with him, letting them go with no gear, but they have to bring him the head of Nezar and spread rumors of his power across Phandalin. No idea how will it go, can't wait for next session.

My players' solution to Cragmaw was to use disguise self to look like a goblin walking in one end and the druid attack as a bear at another end. The hero/goblin running around warning everyone of a bear attack was hilarious and I have no idea how they survived.

Very interesting concepts! I am now running LMoP and really invested in Rockseeker. We started the adventure in Neverwinter where Gundren is a cunning entrepeneur slowly amassing power amongst the poor to creep into the ranks of the city's elite. Our first session was spent just talking with the dude. My players loved it and really want to rescue him. I made it so that Gundren's map is in cypher and the Rockseeker brothers are the only ones that can read it. So Gundren has convinced Grol to give the map over to the spider knowing that without the dwarf, the map is useless. This way Grol gets to negotiate a better reward from the spider, and Gundren buys time to be rescued. I am still working out how to tie it in with the other brothers and the spider already being in the cave...maybe they are playing a game of cat and mouse hiding from the black spider. And the spider can counterplay Gundren's move by using him as bait to get Nundro and Tharden out of hiding.

Love this series. I'm just finishing up a group that unfortunately started before you started it(with a covid break in the middle). Anyway I'm running again for my brother (just one player with a few sidekicks) and I'm interested in many making Sildar the prisoner. What would you do about the fact that Gundren knows the location of wave echo cave from the start? What other changes do you think I'd need to make?

When I ran this we snuck up on Grol and heard his conversation, it was with The Black Spider insted. We kicked the door down and the Black Spider grabbed the map and portal'ed outta there using a book, Grol ran for the portal but it dissappear and we killed him, later we killed the Black Spider and recovered the book " the joy of extradimensional spaces". Next we portaled into the book and raided the Spiders Chateau for treasure, I made it a house of hell. Cheers 🍻

I liked and left a comment. Thank you cheese.

I think you have to seed King Grol early, like maybe Droop or the first camp of goblins. Connecting all of the big bads is also essential to make it feel like one cohesive module. Maybe the Cragmaws were invaded by the Redbrands and took some goblins as prisoners, causing the goblins to become more militaristic? Maybe King Grol decides he doesnt want to fight you but the doppelganger is able to send him into a magic-induced frenzy?

I loved your idea about Sildar, but didn't see any need to rewrite the whole Adventure. I just retconned that Sildar and Gundren were captured together from the very beginning, and the Sildar my party saved from The Cragmaw Hideout was the doppelganger. The doppelganger then had the opportunity to spy on the party and give them false clues throughout the entire Adventure, until the two ran into each other face-to-face on the road back from Cragmaw Castle. It was quite a shock moment for the party :-)

This castle went by pretty quickly for my party. They donned their disguises, skipped the front door, and went in room 6 saying they were looking for King Grol. High persuasion and the bugbears let them in. Every single enemy they ran into, the Bard talked his way past. They did fight the Grick. When they got to King Grol, he was sick of arguing with the shapeshifter. Party offerred to take the map so he could get out of the conversation. Nat 20. They took Gundren and walked out with the map. Shapeshifter followed them out, assuming Grols form, and said nice work, we got rid of him, I need the map back now. Low perceptions meant they were fooled, but they didn't give it back. So I started "Returning War Band" and "Grol" ordered "KILL THEM!" Party slew everyone and made off for WEC.

For when we(as players) approached Cragmaw Castle, my father cast a jump spell on my character, I am was a 20STR Barb. Imagine the scene from the Avengers where hulk is jumping around the city, essentially that was our approach.

The King Grol fight for my players was really cinematic because one of the characters was Gundren's Cousin and was basically 1v1ing King Grol and scored like 2 nat 20s against him xD

Hey @heyitsMattyP , loved your video! But it got me searching everywhere for the arts and pictures you used to represent the castle interior! Would you show me where?

I was watching this for like time 18 (I can totally run LMoP now without the book 😄), I had a major realization: the Cragmaws are building a society - they are totally going to be drinking the koolaid! King Grol is doing something revolutionary... his followers, down to upward-mobile Yeemik, are totally going to be pro-Cragmaw. So I’m giving them a uniting war cry (“We are Cragmaw!”) that they use to rile each other up as well as throw in stashes of files to use to give them the unifying sharpened teeth. Now, I have to point my PC’s back towards the cave... they decided to not follow the fleeing Goblin Arrow gob and instead just continue to Phandalin... 🤷🏼‍♂️ worst case I use your idea for Sildar to set himself free and just show up in town.

What I did: I had both Sildar H and Gundren R, the party patrons and quest givers, captured and taken to Cragmaw castle. I have a party of 6, so I increased the numbers at the castle and in the patrol by Targor Bloodsword. I made the hobgoblin a hobgoblin captain, and King Grol a Bugbear chieftain, and his wolf a dire wolf named 'Viscera'. The "Sildar" they rescue at the Hideout is actually the doppelganger Vyerith in disguise, sent by the Black Spider to spy on the party, see if they know where the Cave is. The party knows it wants to rescue their "daddy" Gundren (he's an adoptive father figure to two of the characters in Neverwinter), so they go with "Sildar" to do so, not knowing that the real Sildar is a prisoner there too. They come up with a great ruse on their own, pretending to be Glasstaff and some Redbrands delivering a prisoner to King Grol. But the hobgoblin lieutenant at the gates only lets some in for the audience with the King: the rest have to wait in the mess hall. The rogue, wizard disguised as Glasstaff, and barbarian tied up as a 'prisoner', along with "Sildar", go to see King Grol. Vyerith/"Sildar" betrays the party after King Grol detects the ruse (the wizard uses Crown of Madness for Grol to squish the hobgoblin lieutenant), outs Vyerith to the rest of the party ("Vyerith, quit playing around"), V murders the party's rogue (the player wanted to play another character anyway so we schemed together), gets the map from King Grol, and got away. That left the party split in the castle. The two left with Grol were taken prisoner. The remaining 3's ruse got discovered and had to fight bugbears and goblins in the mess hall. The prisoners escaped after confirming that Sildar and Gundren were there chained upstairs in a dungeon. The castle then went on full alert and attacked them all in several waves. The player who lost the rogue had her ranger character sneak in and help. King Grol calls a ceasefire and gives the party a deal: they kill Targor Bloodsword, who Grol suspects is planning a mutiny by dawn, he will release Gundren and Sildar to them. The party leave the castle, find a spot to take a short rest, and decide no, they're going to kill King Grol instead. Targor Bloodsword intercepts them and offers them the same deal: they kill King Grol, he will let them leave unharmed. The party goes back in and defeats Grol, barely managing to stop him from slaying Gundren and Sildar in revenge. It was great!!

I'm running this tonight. Pretty sure my players are planning to disguse themselves as redbrands and bring droop the goblin along so i'll let them head straight for the throne room unimpeded, although they may have their weapons taken. I'm replacing the doppelganger and making it a female drow with two scimitars, it will have the pretty much the same stat block. I just don't see the point in using doppelgangers when they are not doing any undercover spying. I'm also going to have the black spider in the throne room. He'll misty step through an arrow slit and flee on the first round of combat, assuming Grol will kill the party. It makes the "I guess I'll have to deal with you myself" line resonate a lot more when they meet again in Wave Echo Cave.

Greatest rapper alive, change my mind

Great artwork, where did you get it?

Any advice for a party that made it to Cragmaw Castle BEFORE the Redbrand hideout? I'm trying to steer them back to town so they don't get annhilated in Wave Echo Cave

This was a great help. I'm playing LMoP with my two kids aged 7 and 10 so making everything much simpler and easier. I like the idea of cutting pointless encounters. I accidentally combined two rooms (room 14 and its antechamber) which actually turned out better in the end. I'm just at the point where Vyerith comes in but I'm going to have her pretend to be a Drow whose brother has been kidnapped and has come to the castle to negotiate a ransom. My guys have killed Grol already (Wizard put him to sleep and Rogue cut his throat - that's kids for you) so Vyerith is temporarily isolated, frustrated and scared. She's going to try to travel with them a bit to get the map and might have a go at killing Gundren en route. I'm hoping my Players will catch her in the act of either trying to look at the map or trying to kill Gundren, neutralize her and get her to confess who she really is.

My boys have armed the whole town for an epic fight with Iarno. Let’s see if they bring them along to the castle!

Omg Grol's obstacles 😂💀

So I run it for 2 friends with your Ideas. So I made the wolfs in a kennel like you suggested .. well my players feed dead goblins to them and now have a pet wolf (female) as a sidekick .. they named her ... well shakira the shewolf ...

My players found one of the side entrances and snuck in, freed the owlbear and took out Grol early and then began working their way through the castle backwards. It was almost anticlimactic however they had worked their way around in such a way that about 60% of the goblins had retreated to the feasting hall where they turned up the tables and barricaded themselves in. This split the party on both sides of the hall and ended in a firefight that went in long enough for a parlay, in the end the party left the goblins behind under the promise the cease all aggression against travelers and the town, else the party return to finish the job. It was good fun but I would run the whole thing differently in the future as it was a long slog through a lot of combat. Love your thoughts on this quest!

I'm running this campaign tomorrow, and something fun happened earlier in my campaign that might be cool for you guys. My ex-rebrand player was asked by the other players why he was betrayed by the redbrands, so he spitballed that he slept with Glasstaff's sister. WHAT? he doesn't have a sister. But it was such a fun detail that I let it fly. Turns out the sister (I call her Lara) is not actually his sister (as he revealed upon getting captured last episode). Rather she's working with the black spider, it was she who brought the bugbears to the redbrand hideout. Here's the kicker, I made Glasstaff a little bit racist against Dark Elves, and that he thinks there are 3 dark elves (rather than one dark elf and two dopplers. He explains that after he made it clear how he felt about dark elves they started sending this human woman instead. Here's he fun bit, I'm going to add an old mural to this castle and upon seeing it the ex-redbrand player will recognize the woman in the mural as Glasstaff's sister. However, this ruin is nearly a thousand years old so how can it be the same woman?! Turns out it's the doppler in this castle. Now if she spots the player she might react happily to seeing him alive, depending on the mood around the table. Maybe she's pregnant, that's good for some drama. Anyhow, thanks for these videos it's always fun to get some advice when you're a first-time DM!

If the elf wizard is in the party,, Maybe describe a vision like the one on his player card during a rest..to get him to cragmaw castle.

My players didn't trust Sildar from the start and seriously considered locking him in a cell in Phandalin

Aww man I feel bad for King Grol now. Not so much The Black Spider though!

My npcs liked the tweaked version of Nezzar so much that they decided to ally with her and so she took the chance to encourage them to kill the Grol so she could keep the rebuilt castle for herself.

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Thinking of switching out the owlbear for some other beast. Had a really solid encounter with one while lost in the woods. Looking for something fresh but analogous. Suggestions anyone?

I'm running Cragmaw Castle on Sunday. The party are an absolute killing machine. Lot's of uncommon races with powerful abilities. I'm boosting the wolf to Dire Wolf and the Bugbear to Bugbear Captain. I'll throw in Iarno and a few Redbrands as well. But tell me please, are King Grol's abilities bonus actions or in place of an attack? cheers!

My players got mistaken between cragmaw hidout and the redbrand hidout, and now are convinced that Gundren is working for the bad guys no matter how plainly I explain he was taken prisoner. Had to had Oakenstaff ( glasstaff) steal the clerics Holy Bicycle and take it to the castle to get them to go there. But ONLY for the bike. They dont trust Gundren, nor care for his fate.

Hasn't happened yet, but preparing lost mines for a new group where I'm going to switch Sildar and Gundren. Sildar is going to train the Goblins badly on purpose so they have disadvantage on attack rolls, as a favour to the players. Planning to give Sildar knowledge of the mines rather than Gundren, along with the map, so that, if the party decides to go straight to the W.E.C and essentially abandon Sildar, they would have a rough time of it. Going to discuss this discretely with my players, but is this rail-roading too much?

I think the hardest part of this scenario is keeping stealthy. Once combat breaks out it should alert the entire castle. They’ll rush to the sound of combat or prepare themselves to repel invaders. Can the PC fight every enemy in a castle at the same time? Maybe or maybe not. How to deal w/ that is the issue.

Was that an eyeball zone reference?

My party is about to head to cragmaw castle but they haven't been to the redbrands hideout. Should they go there first or do you think it matters?

So here's the story - My DND crew did a quick look around and found the canvas door. Coming in through that side, they walked in on the HobGoblins who were guarding King Grohl and dispatched the first one immediately and blocked the path of the second one to warn the King. He let the Owlbear out. Then my Bard KO'd the HobGoblin with a Crit Crossbow shot, and offered it to the owlbear as lunch, and then they got out of dodge blocking the second exit to the room - hoping the Owlbear would go in and take care of the King *not that they knew he was in there, but they made correct guesses. They then went and cleaned house of all but one goblin who was too scared to come out and face them. The Owlbear decided to leave after eating both the Hobgoblin corpses, but the Hobgoblin ranging force returned in this time, so under fog of war these posts were replaced (king Grohl just thought his Hobgoblin to be dense and let the thing out - the bodies being eaten their was no trace of intruders) - the team then came back - my Druid turned into a Wolf shape, seduced one of the two Wolves that came back and lured him away from the main guard. after killing him, this alerted two of the hobgoblins and the other wolf and a battle ensued. they finally cleaned house, killing 3 goblins and Snarl, as well as King Grohl. Encounter felt too easy for them so I need increase the level of difficult going forward a bit. many DM curses were had.

What happened to podcast with zipperon that you mentioned? where could i find it?

Not the only one who’s had problems with players thinking Sildar is a bad guy 😂🤦‍♂️

My players suspected sildar because sildar knew Iarno, so when they worked out who Glass Staff was, they thought that meant Sildar was also a traitor to the Lord Alliance.