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I have studied the Year of the Shadow Lodge arc a bit. It would seem to me that a lot of the scenarios took place in the order they came out. Though only loosely in a lot of cases as many are interchangeable order wise without diluting the metaplot. Especially with a lot of the middle parts. Unfortunately, as Mark already said, the scenarios were not designed to be played by the same PC all the way through. It would be very clunky without the GM doing some potentially signifiant handwaves, revisions, or changes. If you try and play them all strait through based on tier then a lot of events in the metaplot get convoluted. For instance…

One idea I would like to recommend is for you to have two party’s of PCs playing concurrently with one another. One in the 1-7 range, and another in the 7-11. Ideally you would also have a level 12 group to also fit into the Shadow War timeline. But I’m under the impression that you are playing this group for credit, and not really a homebrew type of deal where you can finagle around with things. So you would have to wait for them all to retire before playing those scenarios.

So here is my recommendation on which scenarios to play in which order without taking things like scenario tiers into account or other scenarios you might want to fit in. Unfortunately for Drogon, City of Strangers does not seem like an option. Though I would highly recommend trying to fit these two scenarios in if possible. Warning: this can be potentially spoilerish.

Here is my suggestion on how you could handle Grandmaster Torch for First Steps.

The key for me is malicious intent when I GM and play. If the player is doing it for what I feel are malicious reasons, such as doing it to be a jerk, deliberate intent to kill another PC, or is being wholly reckless with other people’s characters, then I will put a stop to it. But if a player is doing it for strategically sounds reasons, and the other player is ok with the action, then I will give more leeway.

For example, during one scenario I was when I was playing a Wizard. Right after we had finished one encounter Bad Things happened and another encounter was cinematically triggered. Unfortunately, the party Alchemist had earlier drank a potion of Invisibility, and was right next to the new enemies. Given the party was already beaten up, and spread all over the place I wanted to do something drastic to even the odds, so I decided to drop an Empowered Fireball into the area. But given my character did not know the Alchemist was in that area due to his invisibility and my character had no reason to believe he was in the area he would most likely designate (he was off completing a Faction Mission during the last battle), the Alchemists was also going to get hit. I felt really bad about it, and apologized to the player, but he said he understood, and the GM allowed it. But if the player or the GM had objected I would not have done it. Both to not be a jerk, and to keep things friendly at the table. And I if I had ended up killing that PC, I would have been willing to pay whatever it took to bring him back.

A lot of this is really situational. Both for strategic considerations at the table, who is at the table, and the specific situation. But I think intent is a big thing to consider, and anything malicious should not be tolerated at a table.