tolcreator
Explorer
Just a preface to the following essay/screed/rant: I really like the adventure and I'm planning on running it and looking forward to a good time! But there is this one glaring thing...
Something that annoys me about the adventure is how blase people are about the situation. "Just another gruesome day in Icewind Dale" says the opening "read this to the players". No it's not! "The tavern is abuzz with talk of"... How can the taverns be abuzz? And how can it be on any topic other than "How are we going to survive the next week". The rest of the adventure reads like this is just a normal, if severe, winter, rather than the apocalypse ( and it IS the apocalypse, albeit a very local one). The locals seem to have an attitude of "Oho! Cold enough for you? Ah you weak southerner". But buddy, you're not surviving this either. I can see how the villages with pop of 100-200 might survive by hunting or ice fishing, but even then: After a year of winter, there should be no more fish: Not because the humans have eaten them all, but because the fish themselves have no food. Hunting and ice fishing is how they weather a normal winter.
I was listening to the Dragon Talk podcast and the question of how the bees of Goodmead have survived. This was answered by saying they live in the mead house which is kept heated. And I can see this is how the bees survive a normal winter, but what are they eating? There are no flowers and have not been for 2 years, and yet the bees are not only surviving, they are still producing enough honey to make enough mead to supply the entire region.
Even assuming the people of 10 towns are getting food shipped in ( And they're not, more of that later ) or have magical means of food production ( cauldrons of plenty, create food and water, goodberry, which requires a level of casual magic 10 town's doesn't have and I'm not willing to give it ), we're looking at total ecological collapse last year. No more reindeer, fish, moose, crag cats, yetis, gnolls, etc etc.
Ice fishing isn't supplying a big town like Bryn Shander. Bryn Shander suffers, like most D&D / Fantasy cities and towns, of being a town in the middle of wilderness, when it should be surrounded by farms ( A town of 1,200 will need an agricultural hinterland of 12,000 or so ). To supply it with food in exchange for the raw materials and goods it produces: Would require 1 cart load of food per person per year, but this food is also feeding the dwarves, and a good chunk of the larger towns like Easthaven. So that's about 4 thousand cart loads. Another problem is that you can't ship that food up until it's harvested, and it's harvested in September or thereabouts: So by the time you get that food up to the pass through the Spine of the World, the pass could well be closed by snow. I was entertaining the notion of using Hundlestone as a sort of depot, the carts from Luskan move the grain to there, and then teams of dog sleds from Bryn Shander move it in relays through the pass ( and what are the dogs eating? What are the axebeaks eating? etc etc ).This BTW is Icewind Dale AS NORMAL, not during the current crisis. I would probably have moved Bryn Shander to the coast, and had supplies come in by sea, which is so much less effort than by caravan over a mountain pass. Bryn Shander seems to be influenced by boom towns like in the Klondike gold rush ( but it's in a steady state, it's been here centuries, not here for 2-3 years and then gone again ). In the Klondike, almost everything was shipped by boat, and when it had to be done overland ( like over the white pass ) this was just a section separating river, lake, or sea routes.
My solution
OK so I'm going to base MY icewind dale on the Norse settlements in Greenland, including it's climate. These had agriculture, and that wasn't just because it might have been warmer then: Farming is done in greenland today. In particular sheep and goats will do a lot better than the cows the Norse used ( musk ox live there year round, even on the northern coast! I'm thinking if you can domesticate an axe beak, you can domesticate a musk ox) Food shipments can still be a thing, but they're shipping in supplemental material, trade goods not staples, like spices, wine, dried fruits etc. Some grain and spuds ( and rhubarb, from articles on Alaskan agriculture I'm reading ) can be grown locally, and in particular meadows mown for hay or silage to feed animals during the winter ( wild musk ox would roam in search of winter forage, domestic ones would be fed by hay / silage over the winter ).
The other change I will make for my own sanity is remove "It's been winter for 2 years" and slot in "All this started on the Winter Solstice, and it's now 2 or 3 or 4 months later and the days have not been getting any longer" and there is real worry about how folks are going to survive with no spring on the way. AFAICT there is still contact with the outside world, so someone is going to break the news that the days are getting longer around Luskan etc, so there will be talk and perhaps preparations made to leave, at least some people are. And maybe there is a lot of friction between "I'm staying the course" and "I'm heading south" folks, but that's all the more drama. The community is facing mass famine, that's the sort of thing that produces refugees. Having it be 2 years of winter means all the yetis, crag cats, polar bears, etc etc etc, all went extinct last year. This time line means that if the PCs are successful, they can save the community and ecology, rather than a pyrhic victory 2 years too late.
These are elements I'm going to add to my own game, again if nothing else for my own sanity and to have an answer to my players who WILL bring up these questions.
Something that annoys me about the adventure is how blase people are about the situation. "Just another gruesome day in Icewind Dale" says the opening "read this to the players". No it's not! "The tavern is abuzz with talk of"... How can the taverns be abuzz? And how can it be on any topic other than "How are we going to survive the next week". The rest of the adventure reads like this is just a normal, if severe, winter, rather than the apocalypse ( and it IS the apocalypse, albeit a very local one). The locals seem to have an attitude of "Oho! Cold enough for you? Ah you weak southerner". But buddy, you're not surviving this either. I can see how the villages with pop of 100-200 might survive by hunting or ice fishing, but even then: After a year of winter, there should be no more fish: Not because the humans have eaten them all, but because the fish themselves have no food. Hunting and ice fishing is how they weather a normal winter.
I was listening to the Dragon Talk podcast and the question of how the bees of Goodmead have survived. This was answered by saying they live in the mead house which is kept heated. And I can see this is how the bees survive a normal winter, but what are they eating? There are no flowers and have not been for 2 years, and yet the bees are not only surviving, they are still producing enough honey to make enough mead to supply the entire region.
Even assuming the people of 10 towns are getting food shipped in ( And they're not, more of that later ) or have magical means of food production ( cauldrons of plenty, create food and water, goodberry, which requires a level of casual magic 10 town's doesn't have and I'm not willing to give it ), we're looking at total ecological collapse last year. No more reindeer, fish, moose, crag cats, yetis, gnolls, etc etc.
Ice fishing isn't supplying a big town like Bryn Shander. Bryn Shander suffers, like most D&D / Fantasy cities and towns, of being a town in the middle of wilderness, when it should be surrounded by farms ( A town of 1,200 will need an agricultural hinterland of 12,000 or so ). To supply it with food in exchange for the raw materials and goods it produces: Would require 1 cart load of food per person per year, but this food is also feeding the dwarves, and a good chunk of the larger towns like Easthaven. So that's about 4 thousand cart loads. Another problem is that you can't ship that food up until it's harvested, and it's harvested in September or thereabouts: So by the time you get that food up to the pass through the Spine of the World, the pass could well be closed by snow. I was entertaining the notion of using Hundlestone as a sort of depot, the carts from Luskan move the grain to there, and then teams of dog sleds from Bryn Shander move it in relays through the pass ( and what are the dogs eating? What are the axebeaks eating? etc etc ).This BTW is Icewind Dale AS NORMAL, not during the current crisis. I would probably have moved Bryn Shander to the coast, and had supplies come in by sea, which is so much less effort than by caravan over a mountain pass. Bryn Shander seems to be influenced by boom towns like in the Klondike gold rush ( but it's in a steady state, it's been here centuries, not here for 2-3 years and then gone again ). In the Klondike, almost everything was shipped by boat, and when it had to be done overland ( like over the white pass ) this was just a section separating river, lake, or sea routes.
My solution
OK so I'm going to base MY icewind dale on the Norse settlements in Greenland, including it's climate. These had agriculture, and that wasn't just because it might have been warmer then: Farming is done in greenland today. In particular sheep and goats will do a lot better than the cows the Norse used ( musk ox live there year round, even on the northern coast! I'm thinking if you can domesticate an axe beak, you can domesticate a musk ox) Food shipments can still be a thing, but they're shipping in supplemental material, trade goods not staples, like spices, wine, dried fruits etc. Some grain and spuds ( and rhubarb, from articles on Alaskan agriculture I'm reading ) can be grown locally, and in particular meadows mown for hay or silage to feed animals during the winter ( wild musk ox would roam in search of winter forage, domestic ones would be fed by hay / silage over the winter ).
The other change I will make for my own sanity is remove "It's been winter for 2 years" and slot in "All this started on the Winter Solstice, and it's now 2 or 3 or 4 months later and the days have not been getting any longer" and there is real worry about how folks are going to survive with no spring on the way. AFAICT there is still contact with the outside world, so someone is going to break the news that the days are getting longer around Luskan etc, so there will be talk and perhaps preparations made to leave, at least some people are. And maybe there is a lot of friction between "I'm staying the course" and "I'm heading south" folks, but that's all the more drama. The community is facing mass famine, that's the sort of thing that produces refugees. Having it be 2 years of winter means all the yetis, crag cats, polar bears, etc etc etc, all went extinct last year. This time line means that if the PCs are successful, they can save the community and ecology, rather than a pyrhic victory 2 years too late.
These are elements I'm going to add to my own game, again if nothing else for my own sanity and to have an answer to my players who WILL bring up these questions.
