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

[Charlaquin]

Same way you got in, through the Yawning Portal. You pay a 1 gold piece toll and they lower the elevator.

My guess is the DM misread the comment about 1 gold buying you a one-way trip through the portal, assuming that meant you had to find a completely different way out, rather than that you had to pay another gold for the return trip.

 

[Burnside]

My guess is the DM misread the comment about 1 gold buying you a one-way trip through the portal, assuming that meant you had to find a completely different way out, rather than that you had to pay another gold for the return trip.

Maybe, but hard to explain the very specific "you can get out once you reach the third level" thing.

The book's pretty clear:

"Durnan charges adventurers 1 gp each to descend into the well, whether they opt to use the rope or not. The return trip also costs a piece of gold, sent up in a bucket in advance."

 

[Eltab]

Maybe, but hard to explain the very specific "you can get out once you reach the third level" thing.

The book's pretty clear:

"Durnan charges adventurers 1 gp each to descend into the well, whether they opt to use the rope or not. The return trip also costs a piece of gold, sent up in a bucket in advance."

My group got around that problem by paying Durnan 2GP each: one to go down and pre-pay for the trip back up.

The DM who trapped the party in Undermountain until they reached the third level, goofed up. Once he/she acknowledges the error, though, let it go and move on with the adventure.

 

[Azzy]

I presume you mean temperature of minus 40C?

That’s fine, that’d be like northern Russia, Canada, and Scandinavian countries. All of these countries expérience temperature reaching that low, but are far from an average temperature of -45C.

An average below -25C is rare for these countries even in the deepest months of winter. Nevermind an average of -45, which would assume regular spikes of -60C. With the wind factor, that could go down to an equivalent of -80 and worse, which is nearing the temperatures at the equator on Mars.

unless the -45C already include the wind? Anyhow. In itself the temperatures are appropriately apocalyptic; I’d had expected more migration from 24 months of it.

As for the wacky FR-apocalypse of the month; yeah, I’m right there with you...

Pre-Frostmaiden's Flatuence, Icewindale's wind speeds were about minus 10-20℉ (5.5-10℃) due to winds blowing in from the Trackless Sea in the west. For the current situation, I had assumed that the extreme temperatures would be ±18℉ (±10℃) for a low of 31℉ (35℃), but I was pulling those numbers out of my arse (I live in Florida in the US, so I'm completely ignorant about the sorts of environments that have these god-awful temperatures).

The listed wind chill in Rime is just dumb, even taking an apologetic position, I agree that needs to be yeeted into the sun and replaced with something more sensible. According to the internet, blizzards have sustained wind speeds of 35+ mph (56+ km/h) and severe blizzards have sustained wind speeds of 45+ mph (72+ km/h). However, I couldn't find the sustained wind speeds of the most sever blizzards (all they provide are gusts, if they provide wind speeds at all), so for a though experiment I went with 90 mph (145 km/h) (because that sounds pretty extreme). So, given those numbers (which, again, are pulled out of thin air), I figured that at the most extreme the wind chill would be -136℉ (-93℃). So, the average wind speed should be a LOT less extreme. Even with a "normal" blizzard that has 35 mph (56 km/h) sustained winds and the average -49℉ (-45℃) temperature as its base, that's still a wind chill of -93℉ (-70℃). Which is still probably way too high. However, that's assuming the unusal circumstances as snow storms (let alone blizzards) shouldn't be occurring 24/7. In fact, in Rime, blizzards are said to last 2-4 hours.

 

[Remathilis]

I find it amusing that the people who are arguing that flavor-text and fluff of a module is no big deal and the DM can change it if they want spent a lot of the summer debating lines of fluff describing Chult, Vistani, orcs, and drow. Maybe the fluff is more important than people want to give credit to after all?

 

[Fenris-77]

As an aside, where I live we go through long stretches of winter where its below -30 and very regularly -40 ranging occasionally into the -50's. That's the school closure mark up here btw, -50. Oh, it's just -49? Off you go kids.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That's kind of an extreme take on what I've said, and it takes a bit of a leap to get to your "under that logic". The adventure IS good (IMO, naturally) because of the sum of its many good parts. They absolutely could NOT have "written anything" and still have it be good. It has a bunch of small problems that are easily fixed. (Yet again, you can see them as big problems if you chose to, that's all fine, I just don't). Every adventure I have ever read has things that I don't like about it. That's not because they're all bad (some of them are bad), it's because it's not possible to write an adventure that will be all things to all people.

I personally agree that the idea that Icewind Dale has had no light and a -45 average temp for 2 years, as the module appears to say (yet while showing otherwise) is a bit too much for how I'd run it, but I also think that those sentences are a very minor detail in an otherwise very good book. (There's other things I'd change too, like the speed of travel by dogsled and just how dangerous falling into water might be, and yet those are also still minor things).

This is not to say that I don't think that it's possible still to make better D&D books than this one. I think it's one of the better ones, but of course, there's still plenty of room for improvement. I'd be surprised if the people who wrote it thought that it couldn't get any better.

I guess I did jump a little far, but I'm just getting confused and frustrated how people can look at something that is a problem for some of us, and think that "it isn't a problem if you ignore it" is a solution. Or like Sword, continue to harp that we clearly wouldn't have been happy without a scientific dissertation on tree growth.

And, maybe it is a minor detail in terms of size of the detail, but the impacts of it are not minor. This vastly changes how the module will be interpreted by some players. It changes us from the horror of man against nature, to just being a backdrop of being a little chillier than normal. This changes it from an apolcalypse that has led to the breakdown of society, to an inconvenience that people grumble about in the bar after work.

This "minor detail" changes everything about the entire tone of the entire adventure for me.

 

[Fenris-77]

This "minor detail" changes everything about the entire tone of the entire adventure for me.

The words in bold are key. You can't really argue with that statement as written. If it's an issue for you then you should address it, without a doubt. It isn't an issue for me, but that's at the same level of personal taste and style. This only turns into an issue when you take those two bolded words out and people start trying to argue about absolutes, which is silly IMO. The fact that I might present reasons why this sort of detail doesn't bother me, and ways that I might deal with the inconsistency in play, is not me suggesting that everyone should adopt my answer, nor that their issues are baseless.

 

[HomegrownHydra]

The words in bold are key. You can't really argue with that statement as written. If it's an issue for you then you should address it, without a doubt. It isn't an issue for me, but that's at the same level of personal taste and style. This only turns into an issue when you take those two bolded words out and people start trying to argue about absolutes, which is silly IMO. The fact that I might present reasons why this sort of detail doesn't bother me, and ways that I might deal with the inconsistency in play, is not me suggesting that everyone should adopt my answer, nor that their issues are baseless.

Ok, except you said that "Anyone who wants to get all tangled up based on a single line of fluff text is probably having less fun than me" which clearly indicates that you think your attitude towards the adventure is superior to those who have problem with this particular issue. If people would think like you do then they would have more fun.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I guess I did jump a little far, but I'm just getting confused and frustrated how people can look at something that is a problem for some of us, and think that "it isn't a problem if you ignore it" is a solution. Or like Sword, continue to harp that we clearly wouldn't have been happy without a scientific dissertation on tree growth.

And, maybe it is a minor detail in terms of size of the detail, but the impacts of it are not minor. This vastly changes how the module will be interpreted by some players. It changes us from the horror of man against nature, to just being a backdrop of being a little chillier than normal. This changes it from an apolcalypse that has led to the breakdown of society, to an inconvenience that people grumble about in the bar after work.

This "minor detail" changes everything about the entire tone of the entire adventure for me.

I understand that you feel that way (and that's okay), but I disagree that it would somehow be changed to an inconvenience - the idea of the situation getting gradually worse not only doesn't stop it from being an apocalypse (in fact, if it continues to get worse from there than it really would be absolutely terrible) - it just deals with the "How is anything still alive?" question. (Along with stuff like Druids and Clerics helping out as best they can).

It's still a horrible situation to be in, and (to me at least) still allows for things like cannibal cultists. I for one, would not play any of it as a simple inconvenience, but anyone who wants a lighthearted romp in the snow could play it that way if they choose to.

The words in bold are key. You can't really argue with that statement as written. If it's an issue for you then you should address it, without a doubt. It isn't an issue for me, but that's at the same level of personal taste and style. This only turns into an issue when you take those two bolded words out and people start trying to argue about absolutes, which is silly IMO. The fact that I might present reasons why this sort of detail doesn't bother me, and ways that I might deal with the inconsistency in play, is not me suggesting that everyone should adopt my answer, nor that their issues are baseless.

Exactly. It's an easy trap to get into when discussing anything on the internet (both sides of any argument tend to do it). Everything looks like an attack, so people tend to attack back as a defense - and even if they don't intend their defense as an attack, the other side interprets it as one. I actually think we're really all on the same side here. It just doesn't always read that way.