D&D 5E Is Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden the New D&D Adventure?

It looks likely that the upcoming D&D adventure is indeed an Icewind Dale based storyline called Rime of the Frostmaiden! I can't vouch for the veracity of this, but I was cc'd into a Tweet by Navy DM on Twitter who says they found it on Reddit.

Feel the cold touch of death in this adventure for the world's greatest role playing game.

UPDATE -- the awesome Geek Native ran the small cover screenshot through an image enhancing application, to create the larger image below.

There's a post here on Reddit which says "The DnD Beyond YouTube channel posted a trailer for a new book, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, then immediately deleted it." The post has been removed since. I found the above image posted by somebody called smightmight, who looks like they screen grabbed it from the video before it was removed.

The Frostmaiden is one of the names of Auril, an evil goddess in the Forgotten Realms. You can read more about her on the Forgotten Realms wiki.

Rime is ice which forms from water droplets on surfaces.

An Icewind Dale setting was the current favourite guess for the location of the new D&D adventure based on various hints from WotC, including this snowy owlbear t-shirt!

(thanks to Pixellance for pointing me at this!)

 

[Reynard]

I passed on SKT and Dungeon if the Mad Mage. First seemed to be trying to be a sourcebook, the second was a rehash.

I hated SKT with a passion but that means we did not get very far into it, so maybe it got better?

As to DotMM, I used a couple levels for high level play and it was fun enough in a beer and pretzels kind of way. I can't say I have any nostalgia for Undermountain or the Realms in general so that part did not mean anything to me.

 

[Horacio]

I love 5e as a game system. I'm just not loving how WotC is choosing to support it. I wish that the slower release schedule meant better quality. And I wish 5e wasn't so much of a DIY edition. There's just not enough time in the day anymore to do all the D&D things I'd like to do myself (and still have time to take in other forms of entertainment). I'd much rather know that what I'm buying is something I can use with minimal effort. Alas, the only 5e product I can really say that about is Lost Mines of Phandelver. I was able to run that with almost no prep / variation at all!

Indeed, Lost Mines of Phandelver is really the only 5e adventure ready to be run with few preparation, I would also love seeing more adventures like it

 

[pukunui]

I hated SKT with a passion but that means we did not get very far into it, so maybe it got better?

I think it really depends on your group. The group I ran it for includes some players who are really into Skyrim, so they absolutely loved the whole open world aspect of it. They went off on all sorts of side quests and had an absolute blast with it.

I also think part of what throws some people off is that, by default, the adventure gives you three possible starting locations and five possible giant lairs, but expects you to use only one of each, so people get upset that there's all this content they won't be using. However, it's easy enough to use all of it in one go, so I don't really feel like that's a legitimate complaint. It's harder to use all the content in Dragon Heist in one go than it is to use all the SKT content.

 

[Reynard]

I think it really depends on your group. The group I ran it for includes some players who are really into Skyrim, so they absolutely loved the whole open world aspect of it. They went off on all sorts of side quests and had an absolute blast with it.

I also think part of what throws some people off is that, by default, the adventure gives you three possible starting locations and five possible giant lairs, but expects you to use only one of each, so people get upset that there's all this content they won't be using. However, it's easy enough to use all of it in one go, so I don't really feel like that's a legitimate complaint. It's harder to use all the content in Dragon Heist in one go than it is to use all the SKT content.

I started with the hill giants and there attack on the farming town (whatever it was called) and it was just a boring slog. Granted, that group had issues of its own, including too many players (some of whom did not get along well IRL). I should give it another shot at some point, or at least mine it for ideas.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes, it's got lots of great parts. They just don't add up very well. I did make good use of the Xanathar's Lair in my SKT game, and I do appreciate having official stats for important NPCs like Laeral Silverhand. Volo's Waterdeep Enchiridion is fantastic. However, it also contains some of the most egregious railroading I've seen in a long time, as well as a climax that is anything but.

Most of the hardcovers double as a sourcebook, so I'm not sure why that counts against SKT. I know some people claim the plot is thin, but that could be said about pretty much every other hardcover as well. As for Mad Mage, it certainly isn't the first, nor will it be the last, rehash. I'm not sure why that counts against it either. My main issue with it is that it is just plain boring. I intended to use some of the higher-level dungeon areas as standalone adventures but none of them caught my interest enough to make me want to put the work into adapting them.

That said, I've been disappointed with most of the 5e books in various ways since about Volo's. As an alpha playtester, I was super bummed when I saw that they hadn't bothered to revise the playable monster stats at all, despite plenty of feedback that they needed a bit more work. Instead, they chose to leave them as-is and just slapped a "use at your own risk" disclaimer on them. That was the point at which I began to be disillusioned with WotC's support of 5e. Xanathar's and Mordenkainen's were further blows, as were releases like Dragon Heist.

I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic about this new Icewind Dale one, but I'm not holding my breath.

I love 5e as a game system. I'm just not loving how WotC is choosing to support it. I wish that the slower release schedule meant better quality. And I wish 5e wasn't so much of a DIY edition. There's just not enough time in the day anymore to do all the D&D things I'd like to do myself (and still have time to take in other forms of entertainment). I'd much rather know that what I'm buying is something I can use with minimal effort. Alas, the only 5e product I can really say that about is Lost Mines of Phandelver. I was able to run that with almost no prep / variation at all!

OK, that turned out to be more of a downer of a post than I thought it would be. I'd better send myself off to bed.

Yeah not disagreeing with to much of that. Xanathars looked great more I see it there's a lot of powercreep.

Ravnica a bit to niche.

I'm not to surprised editions tend to be spotty. They've made very few bad stuff but there's a bit of average stuff there and it was for a while.

 

[Zardnaar]

I have seen many posts where people say they don't like Aquisitions Inc., and I sincerely wonder why.
Is it the tone and the art, that are quite different for the usual ones? I can understand it's a turn off for some people, but the content is solid. The franchise idea can be used for many other kind of organization, the adventures are well done...

Sorry, I digress...

Tone, art, and I don't care about AI worth a brass wazoo.

 

[Xenonnonex]

So. A theory.
BG 1. BG 2. Soon BG 3. -> BGDiA.
IWD 1. IWD 2. -> IWDRotF.
PST. -> Planescape shenanigans will be involved. In the next adventure.

 

[jayoungr]

Ravnica a bit to niche.

It really isn't. Sure, there's an introduction to the M:tG setting of Ravnica, but the book also has solid advice on building urban adventures with factions. The tables of suggested story hooks are pure gold and do not depend on running a game set in Ravnica specifically.

 

[Xenonnonex]

Ravnica a bit to niche.

Ravnica is bad frigging ass. People are missing out. If they simply dismiss the book contents they are missing out.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

I'm buying this book just so I can know what the heck the thing on the cover is.

Or... you could just wait for spoilers here on EnWorld.