D&D 5E A brief rant about Rime of the Frost Maiden, farming, logistics, and ecology

[Oofta]

I think after 50 years the game publishers would have finally learned how to assemble a module that’s runnable and sensible. The fact that almost every one has major issues is a sad testament to how bad at it they are.

Is writing an adventure really that hard? If the pros can’t do it what hope is there for us?

Two sentences of fluff and background in the intro to the mod (that I are being given exaggerated importance) make it unplayable? Really?

 

[robus]

Two sentences of fluff and background in the intro to the mod (that I are being given exaggerated importance) make it unplayable? Really?

Well I wouldn’t know as I don’t have a copy but the fact new products still come out with head scratching decisions makes me sad. I gave up on WotC after the mess that was Dragon Heist.

Edit: I guess my point is I was buying these things to make my life easier but the reality was they actually made it harder because of bizarre choices that I then had to try and sell my players on. No thank you.

 

[Oofta]

Well I wouldn’t know as I don’t have a copy but the fact new products still come out with head scratching decisions makes me sad. I gave up on WotC after the mess that was Dragon Heist.

Edit: I guess my point is I was buying these things to make my life easier but the reality was they actually made it harder because of bizarre choices that I then had to try and sell my players on. No thank you.

I haven't played dragonheist so I did a quick search for reviews and the first review that popped up states "might be the best introductory adventure they’ve ever printed." so apparently at least a few people disagree.

Then you state, based on hearsay that

I think after 50 years the game publishers would have finally learned how to assemble a module that’s runnable and sensible. The fact that almost every one has major issues is a sad testament to how bad at it they are.

Is writing an adventure really that hard? If the pros can’t do it what hope is there for us?

Good grief. I mean, I generally don't purchase mods because I run a home campaign. But I'm not going to go around trashing the writers because of it.

 

[Scott Christian]

Just my two cents:

I have spent time in small Alaskan villages like Unakleet and larger northern isolated towns like Nome. People can talk about other things, even when they have been frozen in for months. They can, and do, try to not consider the situation.

As for ingredients, it directly says there are imports. So I assume that is where some of the other stuff comes from.

 

[Jd Smith1]

To me it’s very minor because it’s just a background detail. The important thing is that it’s been winter for an unnaturally long time and that’s starting to become a problem. Whether that long time is 6 months or 2 years or 100 years isn’t really important to the central themes or the events of the adventure..

I guess it all boils down to imagination and understanding. If you can't really translate the facts into a visual whole, the difference between a scene with some snow and a terminal event such as two years of nuclear winter would be moot.

 

[MarkB]

I guess it all boils down to imagination and understanding. If you can't really translate facts into a visual whole, the difference between a scene with some snow and a terminal event such as two years of nuclear winter would be moot.

Ah, so everyone who takes a different view on the matter than you does so through lack of imagination and understanding. How very open-minded of you.

 

[Morrus]

I guess it all boils down to imagination and understanding. If you can't really translate the facts into a visual whole, the difference between a scene with some snow and a terminal event such as two years of nuclear winter would be moot.

Don't insult people, please, and don't post in this thread again.

 

[Remathilis]

To me it’s very minor because it’s just a background detail. The important thing is that it’s been winter for an unnaturally long time and that’s starting to become a problem. Whether that long time is 6 months or 2 years or 100 years isn’t really important to the central themes or the events of the adventure. If it’s been over a year, it might raise some questions (which is why I would probably change it to a few months if/when I run it), but the adventure is likely to play out pretty much the same either way. So, to me, it’s a minor, niggling thing. A nitpick. Obviously your mileage may vary.

Well, sorta.

While it is minor insofar as it doesn't directly affect the play of the module (and full disclosure, I haven't read the whole module, just skimmed a copy and read the opening to get an idea if it was something I was interested in) it does affect the premise. As in, it IS the premise. And WotC has a track record of having some interesting premises ruined by the issues in the execution. For example: Storm King's Thunder has an interesting premise (the Ordining is broken, giants run amuck!) but the execution has some issues (in SKT's case: resolving the main plot technically doesn't restore the ordining, which is actually beyond the scope of the module). To be honest, I don't think the writers really thought about what two years of endless darkness and blizzard would do to the Ten Towns. They wanted an epic stake; a setting suitable for survival horror. They probably didn't put any real thought into what that would look like. Rule of cool and all. But I think enough people have stated the time frame that WotC provides stretches credibility just a touch.

As you said, its fixable. I just wish WotC had put a little more thought into the effects of it.

 

[pukunui]

As you said, its fixable. I just wish WotC had put a little more thought into the effects of it.

This. These sorts of errors and oversights were more understandable / forgivable when WotC was spitting books out every month. Now they have way more time to work on them and fine tune them. They make a big deal out of quality over quantity, but it doesn’t always show.

I love 5e, and I think WotC did a fantastic job with the rule set. I’ve just been somewhat disappointed with the support they’ve given the game since its initial release.

It’s not because I think WotC sucks and the designers are all hacks. It’s because, given the slower release schedule, I feel the products they put out aren’t as good as they could be. Some are truly awful (like Dragon Heist) but others are really good and, with just a bit more fine tuning, could have been truly excellent.

For instance, I love SCAG, I just wish it had more content in it (including all the stuff I got to playtest that didn’t make the cut).

I love Volo’s, but I wish the playable races had gotten more attention, as some are OP and others are UP and WotC just slapped a “use at your own discretion” warning on them.

In my mind, Rime seems like a good adventure that could have been even better if they’d just take the time to address a few things that they left vague.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I think my argument hinges on a simple choice.

Either you speak with authority on the subject that you are discussing and therefore you don’t need advice from the writer of IWDRotFM.

Or you aren’t speaking with authority in which case why are we listening to what you have to say about what is and isn’t possible regarding winter twilight and it’s effect on plant based life.

You have said pretty specifically that Arctic twilight is brutal and insufficient to sustain life, which is interesting because IWD isn’t the arctic and the degree of twilight was never defined. You spoke as if you were an expert in the issue so I deferred to your claimed experience.

Either way you look at this it's head you win tails I lose, right? I'm either expert enough I don't need the module at all for explaining a two year winter with no one seeing the sun OR I don't know what I'm talking about and... what? I need the module to tell me what two years of no one seeing the sun would do? Well, there's clearly no middle ground, nor is there a case where I both know what I'm talking about and still would like some assistance from the module writers as to how they think this pretend elf fantasy winterland has managed to survive such an obviously catastrophic event.

Sigh, this is a pretty bad argument you've put forward here. It's a false dichotomy with a layer of begging the question -- and by that I mean that there are multiple other positions that the two you've presented AND that the two you've presented both assume your conclusion -- that there's nothing to complain about with regards to Frostmaiden's premise. You've just presented case one where my presumed expertise renders anything the module writers say on the topic moot because I'll just do it better or case two where I should just shut up because I'm talking out of my butt (nice sideswipe there, by the way) about what the winter described would be like and so the author's take should be good enough. You've started at the end and just made statements that support your presumed conclusion. That it's also insulting to me seems beside the point, and probably unintentional.

Look, I like WotC, I think they do pretty good work, and I recognize I'm not in the center of the target audience when they release these products. I own half of the adventures they've released and run SKT while being able to play through my copy of CoS. I had to do a lot of work on SKT -- a lot -- to make it work for my table. That's fine. CoS was the better adventure, but it still needed a lot of attention, and I'd probably completely strip it and rebuild it if I ran it. I like to have tight themes in my campaigns, so that things drive hard, and WotC's adventures are more like the salad bar -- it might have a theme but there's still a lot of everything in there. That's fine, it's not WotC's fault, they need to cater to the widest audience. And, they're on a timetable -- they don't have forever or as long as they'd like to make these things, so it's never perfect even to what they'd want. To me, this issue with the winter's length is probably part of the need to publish -- it's a small detail that probably got changed somewhere and not revisited. Happens. I can fix it, but that doesn't mean that I can't point it out or that doing so is slamming WotC. Feedback helps both WotC (a tiny little bit) and other people that are going to run the module (sometimes quite a lot). There's a reason the "Fixing XXX" threads for WotC adventures both do well here at ENW and also on various blogs and in the DM's Guild. Because there are a lot of possible takes, and WotC isn't perfect. The need to protect this adventure from any criticism of it's premise is weird to me. Pushing back on the WotC sucks is cool, go for it, but the adventure premise? That's a tad strange.

If I were to break it down Pascal's Wager style, it would look like this:

	@TheSword	@Ovinomancer
Winter lasts 2+ years, not much explanation
Winter has lasted less time, or explanation

Why, then, the pushback if you don't care if winter lasts two years or if it could be something else? I haven't seen you, or anyone, actually make an argument as to why the two year winter ups the stakes, or makes things better, or has some deeper and more important meaning. It's just a reflexive argument that this detail shouldn't matter.