Of course , let ' s see . well much of the stuff was encounters I picked and at most modified a bit from HotDQ . But I ' ll give you some examples of both that and stuff I added . Hobgoblins attacking a merchant . They had pinned him and his guards behind their fallen wagon and they were hiding behind rock formations , trading arrows and bolts . The merchant can be very grateful if saved . This was happening in the area around Baldur ' s Gate that ' s still included in the Field of the Dead region . It ' s mostly rolling countryside but there are occasional cairns to describe and of course patrols of the Flaming Fists Baldur ' s Gate ' s army , and I described them as well . You can have a patrol camp together with the players for instance . They were working as caravan guards for an elven merchant who didn ' t care much for people , but spoiled her burden animals like they were little kids . This NPC was from the adventure , I don ' t remember her name . They talked with her as much as she would talk with anyone , tried to pry something out of her , almost managed to make her smile in the end . As per the adventure , they were paid and fed as long as they worked for her . Another character attracted their attention , Imsa the Green . She was a human woman and she was completely green . The adventure never tells you why is that , just that she ' s going to Waterdeep to get a fix for that . I played her very shy , but they inquired a lot and made a friend of her . They discovered she was a mage who was experimenting with the magical makeup some purveyors can apply to you in Baldur ' s Gate ' s merchant quarter , and went overboard . She lent her alchemy book to one of the players and acted as his teacher for most of the voyage see downtime rules in the DMG , PCs can learn new tool and language proficiencies if they spend enough time and money on it . Then a couple perytons attacked , trying to carry away one of the players . Boy they shouldn ' t have . When they were defeated Imsa told them a lot of stuff you can find in the MM about perytons , that they were probably trying to take someone to eat their heart and reproduce and that they ' re basically mortal demons . So the player who was learning alchemy took a peryton ' s heart and started trying to concoct something with it , during various subsequent days . I didn ' t wanna give them something too useful because he wasn ' t an alchemist yet , but I decided that whoever drank the horrible liquid would visit the 1 st layer of the Abyss in astral form without knowing it was astral form , thinking it was happening to their real bodies . So I researched Pazunia , the 1 st layer , and took a lot of pictures of demons from the net and readied them in a folder to show them , and wrote about everything I was reading clashing armies of demons and devils , lakes of molten iron , citadels under siege , pinnacles of jagged rock etc . If you have the right books it ' s impossible to go wrong . When they finished the potion they drank it , I gave them the poisoned condition and sent them there , being attacked by vrocks and other beasties and trying to make sense of what was happening . They were absolutely TPKd , but it ' s all good , they woke up feeling terrible and had to stop for the worst hangover they ever had . They met a Waterdhavian noble the worst kind who mistreated his horse . Their elven employer didn ' t take it well and ordered them to stop him . They bought the horse and left the noble to walk . He wasn ' t liking the idea very much and was about to send his mercenaries against them , but his mage , a Turmian wizardess named Faila , deserted him because he was being an ass , and he desisted . They got to know her and one of the players was quite smitten with her , and they started flirting , and so on , y ' know . Taverns . I researched all the taverns on the way , jotted down the details , what they looked like , what fare they served , who was the owner , and when I didn ' t find a detail I invented it . I already knew the typical foodstuffs and drinks of the Sword Coast thanks to Elminster ' s Forgotten Realms by Ed Greenwood . I also asked my mother for some tasty recipes , both for the taverns and for a caravan guard who had been the cook in a mercenary company and liked spoiling the other travellers with her delicious cooking Gourmand feat . This particular caravan guard was just another NPC in the adventure , but I found some good images for her and showed them to my players and they thought she was very beautiful and bang ! Flirting again . This NPC became the lover of a PC and stayed with the party till the end of the campaign and after . I had created a background for her just like you would do for a PC , using the soldier personality traits in the PHB , plus I modified some so that she really wanted to own a piece of land common trait if you ' re from Tethyr like her and I added a couple details about her appearance Tethyrian fashion belt dagger , an ailette i . e . a small shoulderguard with her past mercenary rank on it , so on . She particularly enjoyed the company of the Vengeance Paladin , because they both loved fighting , drilling , training , comparing weapons and armor and so on . So essentially I followed where the campaign took me and what it told me , I just researched the hell out of it . Everything was detailed , most stuff I could show pictures too , found around the Net . Pinterest is a good site for pics if you need one , they have everything and it ' s more orderly than just a Google image search . I went not against but along with their expectations . When the player concocted the foul brew from the peryton ' s heartsblood he was thinking , It ' s practically a demon , let ' s see what I can come up with , so I linked it to demons and decided to give them a tour of Pazunia . Of course it poisons you , it works only in oral form and it can ' t be hidden , so it ' s useless as a poison and disagreeable as a means to divine the planes , but they managed to sell the rest all the same , just not for a fortune . I made it like that because the PC wasn ' t proficient with alchemist ' s tools yet , so a flawed result was the best he could hope for . Also , every couple days I would focus on someone in their caravan , and these NPCs all had goals , personality traits , things they were very good at , flaws , good info , etc , straight from the DMG and from what I know and what I found out about the various races and ethnicities of Faern . Your ship voyage might have been boring because ships tend not to cross many other travellers in their voyages . I mean they ' re ships . But give them islands , both wellsettled and mysterious , give them ports and taverns and NPCs , give them nasty weather and good weather too . make it all about the voyage and what they encounter during it . And make it vivid , describe , show pics , of monsters , NPCs , landmarks , anything . It helps if you know a thing or two about ships , but if like me you don ' t , you can research that too . I dunno , I wrote a lot , I hope it helps . Is there anything else you ' d like to know ?