Your First Adventure Is Free: Reworking WotC's Great Upheaval Into a Great Campaign Opener
Here's a confession: Over the last dozen or so campaigns, I have never once opened a brand new campaign with a blank page, i.e. from scratch. As mentioned in the campaign-world post, I always have a broad overview of what I imagine is going to play out, an overarching idea for the campaign, a concept, a boss end villain or specific kind of world or environment. Though, the more campaigns I run, the less detail I create around this broad overview because I so enjoy working with the players to develop the world, the primal conflict and the dramatic ending.
The first adventure of a campaign is the initial crystallization of that overview, the shift from concept to specific details. But it is also the first time that the world can be detailed and expanded. (Hardcore homebrewers will revel in this step because it allows them to stop spending hours developing parts of the world the players will never see and instead spend hours developing a detailed, nuanced adventure that the players will never fully understand, or care about.)
My approach, the approach I recommend, is to expand your world by "hiring" other brains, other ideas, other imaginations, other suggestions. You do this by using a published adventure. You bring their work into your world, you read through it and harvest the ideas, monsters, scenarios and plot suggestions you enjoy and weed out and discard the ones you dislike. You let their work inspire you, not control you.
This is personal preference, of course. For myself, I get a lot more ideas and love being able to adapt something rather than feeling the pressure of coming up with the whole thing myself. I also love the creativity that surges when a seemingly unrelated event can be woven into your campaign to increase its scope, its richness.
What is A Great Upheaval?
A Great Upheaval is Chapter 1 of Storm King's Thunder, and Wizards of the Coast released it as a standalone free introduction on DMs Guild specifically so DMs could get a taste of the longer adventure without buying the whole campaign. It's built to carry a party from level 1 to roughly level 5.
Somebody at Wizards clearly understood the assignment. It comes in four parts:
| Part | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Nightstone | The village itself, post-giant-attack. Buildings burning, the palisade breached, villagers scattered or taken. Mostly rescue and exploration. |
| Dripping Caves | A cave dungeon where the raiders dragged off captured villagers. A short crawl to track them down and free the prisoners. |
| Tower of Zephyros | A side location: a reclusive spellcaster's tower, offering a secondary lead or ally. |
| Unfriendly Skies | A random-encounter framework for giant-related hazards while the party travels between locations. |
DMs call this kind of thing a "bottle episode." Its entire job is getting a party to a workable level before the real campaign kicks off. Which, if you squint, makes it less a finished adventure and more a really well-organized pile of raw material. It's practically begging to be reskinned.
Get it free: DMs Guild: A Great Upheaval.
Cost: Free as of September 16, 2026.
What did I change, and why?
I folded A Great Upheaval into the world we already had: a reason for the party to be there, a landmark that was already ours, a different destination and NPCs who already knew the characters. I didn't run this one as written. I ran it as ours, and I didn't spend a cent doing it.
- Why the party is even there. Instead of showing up as travellers who happened to wander through, they're "potentials," brought to the village two years earlier to train. Every kingdom in our world sends a handful of recruits every year, and this crop just happened to be standing in the blast radius.
- A landmark that was already ours. The village's central standing stone turns out to match the massive pillar in our setting's ruined capital Nightstone (from Monte Cook's Ptolus), something we'd already built out in an earlier video using nothing but a free setting preview. The party had been leaning against that stone for two years without having the faintest idea what it actually was.
- Dropped the last two parts, added one of my own. The published adventure was designed to drag the new characters off to explore more of the campaign world. I decided that I wanted to instead have it lead into their next adventure. So I had the characters set out to rescue the villagers and then discover the secret Night Court, a hidden facility where the royalty of the island's five kingdoms meet to work out issues and bargain for trade and resources. (This phase was also adapted from another published adventure, of course.)
- NPCs who already know the party. Four background characters became four named Guides: the Brewer, the Innkeeper, the Artisan, the Overseer. Every face the party sees in the opening session already has history with them, instead of being a stranger with a name tag.
That's the short version. There's a whole method behind which details to rename, which to reskin, and which to cut entirely, and I'm walking through it step by step in Video 8. For now, the important part is that every piece of this came from something already sitting in the free bin: a setting preview we'd already used, a monster collection as a free download and the maps, NPCs and plot that arrived with this free download.
But there is one more key ingredient.
Why go back through their backstories before you run it?
Read what your players handed you at session zero and look for a detail or two you can bring into this specific session. A trainer, family history or trusted mentor can connect the adventure to a character. You don't need much. Two connections are plenty, and you can save the others for later.
Everything above is worldbuilding you do once, ahead of time, and it'll work for any table you sit down with. The last step is different. It's specific to your players, and it's the part that actually makes the session land instead of just functioning.
Pull out whatever your players handed you at session zero and read back through it with one question in mind: is there a detail or two in here I can bring into this specific session?
Maybe one of the trainers taught a skill that ties straight back to a PC's backstory. Maybe a family history explains why their kingdom sent them here in the first place. Maybe the mentor who falls in the opening battle is the one NPC a specific character actually confided in.
Don't force a connection onto every PC. That feels artificial. Plus you will need the rest of them to sprinkle into a few other of the early adventures. More importantly, even just one or two connections is enough to anchor the world for all the players.
How do you decide what to change in yours?
Start with what your table needs. An established homebrew world gives you details to connect to the adventure. A party of strangers needs a reason to know each other. If you simply want a first session ready to run, the published adventure already gives you one. Adapt the pieces that help.
- If you already have a homebrew world of your own: do what we did with the pillar. Find one detail in the free adventure that can quietly connect to something you've already built, and let that be your reveal.
- If your players are total strangers to each other at the table: steal the "brought here to train" reframe outright. It's a built-in reason for them to already know each other, and it costs you nothing.
- If you want a zero-prep first session: run it as written. It's a complete, free, functional adventure all on its own, and there's no shame in that.
The Receipt
The adventure cost nothing, and neither did any of the sources I used to adapt it. A free setting preview, a free monster collection and the adventure's own maps, NPCs and plot supplied the pieces. Adaptation itself cost my time. The total spent on this first adventure was $0.00.
| Part | Cost |
|---|---|
| Complete level 1 adventure | $0 |
| Every source used to adapt it | $0 |
| Adaptation itself | Your time |
| Total | $0.00 |
Frequently Asked Questions
A Great Upheaval gives you a free starting adventure that you can run as written or fold into your own world. The useful decisions are which details to connect, which sections to keep, and where a player's backstory can make the opening session feel personal. Here are the questions behind those choices.
Can I use A Great Upheaval in my own homebrew world?
Yes. I used the published adventure's maps, NPCs and plot as raw material, then connected the village's standing stone to a landmark in our existing world. Keep the ideas you enjoy, discard the ones you dislike, and let the adventure inspire your campaign.
Do I have to run every part of A Great Upheaval?
No. I kept the village and rescue material, dropped the last two parts, and added the secret Night Court to lead into our next adventure. Your next destination can come from the campaign you are already building.
Does every player need a personal backstory connection in the first session?
No. One or two connections are enough to help anchor the world for all the players. Forcing one onto every PC can feel artificial, and saving some gives you material to bring into the next few adventures.
How much did this first adventure cost?
The complete level 1 adventure and every source used to adapt it cost $0. Adaptation cost my time. The total for this adventure was $0.00.
Next up: Video 8
The full breakdown of how to make changes like these, step by step, is coming in Video 8.
Roll high, spend low.
— The Two Dollar DM
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