(Princes of the Apocalypse) Dessarin Valley Sandbox 1 - A Revised Introduction & Table of Contents & Player Friendly Map

I've been a bit busy with real life of late to get this series properly started, plus I have yet to read Princes of the Apocalypse from cover to cover. More importantly, I realised tonight when I saw the map to the left that my strategy for tackling this series was all wrong so, hopefully, this post will be the first step for going forward with the right strategy.

A Revised Introduction

I'm a big fan of the northern parts of the Forgotten Realms and the trilogy of products covering the area shown in this map of the Dessarin Valley - FR5 The Savage Frontier, Volo's Guide to the North, and The North - are some of my favourite products judging by how much I have read and/or used them.

What I now plan to do with this series is ignore the adventure locations covered by Princes of the Apocalypse but focus on the other named locations on this revised map with a view to turning this area into a sandbox of sorts. Hopefully this will give DMs of Princes of the Apocalypse some ideas for adventures outside of PotA for those times when they or their players feel like a break from unrelenting Elemental Evil.

Personally, I have no plans to run Princes in this area as I have some other ideas for Elemental Evil-themed adventures in Aglarond and Underchasm which pre-date PotA by some years.

Some Useful Links

• This post at the Power Score blog organises the adventure really well and flags a lot of the problem areas, including the botched map scale. If you're going to run Princes "as is", you should definitely check this out. He also links to some other useful resources. Frankly, I wouldn't run Princes without going through this post in detail.
• My original post for this series includes copies of almost all of the maps and most of the art.

A Revised Table of Contents

Now this list is much more manageable. I will edit in the links as I make each post.
  

Amphail (3)
Bargewright Inn
Beliard
Black Maw Bog
Cairn Road
Conyberry
Dessarin Hills
The Dessarin Road
Evermoor Way
The Forlorn Hills
Gaustar's Creek
Goldenfields
The High Forest
The Horn Stream
The Iron Road
Ironford
Jundar's Pass
Kheldell Path
Kryptgarden Forest
Lance Rock
The Long Road
Red Larch (2)
River Dessarin
River Surbrin
The Stone Bridge
The Stone Trail
Sumber Hills
Sword Mountains
Vale of Dancing Waters
Westbridge
The Westwood
Womford
Yartar

Map Scale

It seems that WotC screwed the pooch on the scale of this map which is marked as 10 miles per hex whereas the regional map with the Neverwinter Campaign Setting and Lost Mine of Phandelver are based on 5 miles per hex... and that the hexes are actually supposed to be 7.5 miles per hex in both cases. Or something. If you look at the comments at the bottom of <this post> you can find where Chris Perkins 'fesses up to the error without offering any sort of solution. Ho hum.

I only bring it up here in the event that your campaign also uses the adjoining map If it does, you should decide what scale the hexes really represent just in case your players notice or you have OCD. I'm just going to call them 5 mile hexes and leave it at that.