Im curious how you incorperated you adventure tie ins from adventures in Dungeon magazine. Which adventure did you use and how did it work in your bigger campaign? Not so interested in following an entire campaign like savage tied but rather the smaller ones and how they fit into your bigger picture.
One example for me. I used one in a issue of dungeon where an old guy was looking for a recovery from a chest in a sunk ship. The ship was being gaurded by a giant squid/octopus. I ended up putting the scene outside of waterdeep and using the old guy as a hook to more work being needed. One of them ended up being a pirate lighthouse adventure that tied as another perfect hook in my campaigne.
Im interested in what your story was?
When I was about 3/4 through my Night Below campaign (in 3rd ed.), Dungeon came out with "The Lich Queen's Beloved" which I just had to work in somehow. I changed the story so the aboleth/illithid knew the githyanki incursion was coming and were preparing for war by dominating the surface world. Then I added a githzerai prisoner NPC, who informed the PCs what was really going on. At the end of this campaign the party defeated the grand savant aboleth and made an uneasy alliance with the illithid, who provided them with some vital info.
When they returned to the surface, the incursion had already begun. I wrote a short war campaign (using a lot of githyanki material from Dragon mag) where the PCs kindom got its butt kicked by the githyanki horde led by a B'kallash Dreadnought. The players got to take part in the losing cause, which led to them being recruited to infiltrate the lich queen's palace and take her out. I used my githzerai NPC to tie-in the Sha'sal Khou and they were off to battle Vlaakith on her turf. The players had their asses handed to them in round 1, but managed to beat her in round 2 (after many deaths and much, much bloodshed!) There were many memorable moments and we had a blast!
That's it in a nutshell. Incidentally, the githzerai NPC was converted to evil from room 26 and now spends his time plotting the PCs' demise...