Well, it has been a while since my group went through Thither, but My group had, probably too much, fun frolicking through the forests. I ensured that my players felt like they could explore as much as possible in the woods. I wanted to give them some wiggle room to make this campaign their own.
That’s when the party decided they wanted to become drug makers and dealers.
This took the campaign on a bit of a mysterious side quest. Their drug was named Patch, a hallucinogenic that allowed them to also talk to creatures. The unfortunate demise of Zarak was being a test subject for the different batches they made after going through the Wayward Pool. Fusions of the Goblin Candy were also added to the testing, and Zarak was pleasantly lost in another dimension of his mind with being carted around through Thither.
Juniper reappeared during this section and having loved the owlbear when the characters were children hadn’t diminished when they grew to adulthood. This brought a new task that the party had to remember: keeping the adult owlbear fed. I found this wonderfully thought-out fishing game by Saffy Penrose on Reddit for my players to be entertained during a session (link below). A lasting moment was when the fairy held the halfling over the river to get closer to the fish.
I found the forests of Hither to be a lot of fun for my players. They gained a lot of companions, which came with their own challenges, before gaining even more in Yon. Though, I will save talking about that when I write about Yon.
Tips and Tricks
Hunting Tips: Survival checks to track, stealth to sneak up on the animal, then an attack roll, with an advantage on a successful stealth attempt. If it’s hit but not killed, it runs, and they must track it again.
Let Them Eat Cake: Letting my players add in some chaos made them connect more with the campaign. They had a lot more fun with it, but there were moments when I had to bring them back to the main story and move forward.
Links
Hunting Document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q4Vk376JNQKeOqX9HxZYlIyGEW4kLXnq/view?usp=sharing
Music:
Thither DM Document:
Love the idea of a day spent fishing and seeing what they get! Thanks for sharing the supplement.
I am a fairly inexperienced DM getting ready to run this adventure and was about to create the kind of documents you have already made. Took a chance and did a search one last time and found your materials! Thank you for putting in the hard work! This will make running this adventure a lot easier.