D&D 5E Rime of the Frostmaiden Post-Mortem (Spoilers)

[Azuresun]

A much better dramatic choice, which the adventure doesn't really touch, is whether or not to stop the human sacrifices. Human sacrifices are bad, but the Sephek Kaltro situation suggests that screwing with them can cause Auril to retaliate. So the question of whether or not to try to stop them is an interesting one for the players, because arguably until the Rime is lifted, the sacrifices are a necessary evil. The adventure is no help in this area though, since it includes zero info about whose idea the sacrifices were in the first place, and who is in charge of them.

Not to mention, a lot of the leaders of the towns are portrayed as good and moral people who probably wouldn't okay this unless they had proof it was the only way to survive. Also, none of the town descriptions take this into account--NPC's are generally friendly, eager to chat and worried about things like elections for a new speaker or missing iron shipments, they never seem like desperate apocalypse survivors who would probably offer the PC's as sacrifices so that they don't have to risk anyone they love.

It makes a lot more sense if the towns with weak or evil leadership start trying sacrifices ("no, it's fine, we're using condemned criminals, promise!"), and it escalates over time, egged on by agents of Auril--they make offerings of food, then warmth, then humans as the winter gets progressively worse. For me, it's another reason to have the story start just as the winter starts getting really bad, so the PC's can actually witness this decline, and maybe fight it themselves.

 

[MNblockhead]

I don't run many WotC adventures, but I find I enjoy running them a lot more when I enhance them with content I find on DMs Guild. Of those I've run and played in, or have at least read through in enough detail to have a good idea on how they might play or need to be altered:

1. I loved Curse of Strahd. I really think you can run it well out of the box. I don't think you have to run it grimdark horror, PCs afraid all the time to enjoy it. They give some mechanics and advice for that sort of thing, but you can entirely ignore it and the game runs just fine. My only complaint was that Strahd himself didn't provide for an epic end battle. That's mostly on me. Still, I think it is the best of the main adventure books for 5e in terms of design, writing, DM manageability. A manageable sandbox that doesn't require the DM to spend a lot of time filling in. The only thing I added to Curse of Strahd is that I used "A Structured Milestone System for Curse of Strahd" by Milestones Made Easy on DMs Guild. Not at all necessary, not really an "improvement" to the adventures, but I that systems of level advancement worked really well for Curse of Strahd.

2. Tomb of Annihilation was also excellent. Easy to run hex crawl, fun locations, an interesting premise and challenge to solve. I don't think you have to do much extra work as a DM to fill things in. I could run this right from the book with my only prep being reading through it and prepping maps (its fun to use a VTT or printed maps for this adventure).

3. Storm Kings Thunder was disappointing to me. I knew when first reading it that I would not be interested in running it, but I keep it around to pull locations out of to use in home brew.

None of the other adventures caught my fancy, except for Rime of the Frost Maiden as I liked the concept, but I think I would need to spend quite a bit of time adding to or customizing it to run it how I like. I think it would be fun to throw it into my homebrew campaign world and tie it into other story arcs.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You are probably right, it's tough to write things down, it's just that in the end, it just makes bad design even more obvious.

Some players feel that is something is written down then it has to go down that way.

I don't have the adventure, but I guess if I wanted to get the players to a certain place I would think of several different leads that would take the players to the next plot point, and use the one which best fitted what they where doing to look for it. But if you write all the options down it takes up a lot more space and time.

Probably why I will never get to put an adventure on DMG!

 

[lluewhyn]

Not to mention, a lot of the leaders of the towns are portrayed as good and moral people who probably wouldn't okay this unless they had proof it was the only way to survive. Also, none of the town descriptions take this into account--NPC's are generally friendly, eager to chat and worried about things like elections for a new speaker or missing iron shipments, they never seem like desperate apocalypse survivors who would probably offer the PC's as sacrifices so that they don't have to risk anyone they love.

The other issue for me is that having the PCs walk into this has a huge likelihood of alienating them from wanting to help the townsfolk. The PCs are supposed to be heroes, but here they're immediately put in the path of not wanting to help people who are so willing to screw themselves over. When my players were creating their characters, I told them "You don't have to be Good, but helping the people of Ten Towns overcome this terrible winter curse is the premise of the adventure so make characters that would have reasons for wanting to do that". I don't need WotC trying to make my job (and my players' jobs) any harder by encouraging them to say "Screw these people, I'm going back down south." God forbid the towns try to enter up the PCs as sacrifices as some people have suggested. There's also the farcical element that as written, these sacrifices have been going on for twelve months now and the Rime hasn't improved at all.

Someone else suggested above that even if the PCs are wanting to help at this point, stopping the sacrifices will become their number one goal which makes doing any of the side quests not related to that goal seem out of character.

 

[Burnside]

Not to mention, a lot of the leaders of the towns are portrayed as good and moral people who probably wouldn't okay this unless they had proof it was the only way to survive. Also, none of the town descriptions take this into account--NPC's are generally friendly, eager to chat and worried about things like elections for a new speaker or missing iron shipments, they never seem like desperate apocalypse survivors who would probably offer the PC's as sacrifices so that they don't have to risk anyone they love.

The overall number one problem with the book is that the apocalyptic conditions described in the introduction are not reflected at all in the subsequent adventures, locations, and NPCs. After two years of no sunlight and 40 below, the Ten Towns should be a deserted wasteland. About 95% of plant and animal life in Icewind Dale should be dead. The dwarves you're supposed to meet in Bryn Shander who want to overpay you to recover their stolen ingots from some goblins? Those dwarves are either dead, have long since left the region, or have degenerated into cannibalism (kinda like The Road, but way worse). The goblins who stole the ingots? Dead. The elk herds hunted by the Reghed nomads? Dead. The Reghed nomads? All dead.

One of the first things you kinda have to do is as a DM with IWD: ROTF is decide that either the Everlasting Rime can't possibly be as intense as the book describes, or can't possibly have been going on for TWO YEARS. 2-3 months of those conditions would be an emergency that needs to be fixed immediately; after 2 years of that it would be way too late; everyone would be dead.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The PCs are supposed to be heroes, but here they're immediately put in the path of not wanting to help people who are so willing to screw themselves over.

That's not heroes, that's judgmental bastards. If people didn't help people who had screwed themselves over no human would ever get helped ever.

 

[lluewhyn]

And then, wait for it, when they catch up, whether it's after following or losing time along the street, WHATEVER HAPPENS, the drows are still there waiting for a apparatus of kwalish to take them. So, basically, and as usual for the whole chapter, whether the adventurer fail or fail worse, it does not matter. Nothing the PCs do matter, and for me this is the worst possible design for an adventure which is supposed to be centered around the characters.

Your choices and luck will determine whether you "Fail, or fail harder". That was a good portion of the adventure for me in a nutshell.

 

[lluewhyn]

One of the first things you kinda have to do is as a DM with IWD: ROTF is decide that either the Everlasting Rime can't possibly be as intense as the book describes, or can't possibly have been going on for TWO YEARS. 2-3 months of those conditions would be an emergency that needs to be fixed immediately; after 2 years of that it would be way too late; everyone would be dead.

That's why I decided to go with 2 months, because 2 years means everything is dead or left. I don't care how isolationist these people are, no one is sticking around in these kinds of weather conditions without even getting into the sacrifice issues.

Not that it matters for the PCs since they don't have thermometers, but I also tend to think "Average daily temperature is -49° F with windchill lowering that even more by up to 80° is kind of harsh too. When the PCs enter Termalaine, there's a boy on a crate shouting to the people passing by about the local news, which is kind of comical when you think about the temps.

 

[Lyxen]

Your choices and luck will determine whether you "Fail, or fail harder". That was a good portion of the adventure for me in a nutshell.

Still, it's failure, and even more, failure to actually accomplish something.

 

[lluewhyn]

That's not heroes, that's judgmental bastards. If people didn't help people who had screwed themselves over no human would ever get helped ever.

If the PCs talk to the people in charge, they find out that no one told them to do this, they just decided to start murdering their own townsfolk on a hunch, and despite absolutely no beneficial change in weather they're still murdering their own people 12 months later. The PCs are not going to want to help those particular leaders very much. At the least, there's a good chance that they will demand the sacrifices be stopped before they decide to help.

If the PCs get picked to be in the lottery, especially after helping a town already, it's game over.