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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 8109622" data-attributes="member: 42856">Indeed, you could have a dire situation with an always-worsening situation. I found that most of the module lacked the worse elements of the theme. Which is perfectly in-line with a "mild situation" (like the Year without Summer of 1816 instead of say, the Great Famine of 1317?) and not a full-blown catastrophe of epic proportion. The horror elements you allude to are linked to the lack of hope of the population (which is a great thing to have) while I was referring to the next step of the situation. As it is now in the story, there is a legitimate concern, and the sacrifices to Auril are the main sign that the population is losing it. They are at the point where they accept a lottery to kill one of them to the godess in the hope she will be appeased. It is the sign that they think the situation is terrible, but we're speaking of the realms, where sacrificing to the gods isn't something special. For example, the sacrifice of warth and cattle should just be regular steps of worship (if you imagine FR worship like ancient greece worship), so they are just one step up*... So I am not saying it's ruining the horror element, I am just saying that it's more consisten with the "low horror level" of the module. And it's the solution I'd adopt if in session 0 the players said "OK, we wan't to kick a godess's ass in a nice setting and be the heroes who save all the desperate people of the dale" rather than "we want doom and gloom and be the one who will convince little Timmy that it's totally right for his mummy to be eaten by Yetis from an utilitarian point of view adopted by the Speakers".Agreed, it would be better to have the character confronted to the first outbreak of cannibalism than have them start the adventure when it's a regular occurrence because (a) some PCs can be native of the dale, so they would certainly have reacted before (b) it's more frightening when it's a shocking act of desperation rather than the regular habit of one of the towns... I'd place the different town in different level of starvation however, as it would allow for increasing confrontation to the horror even if the adventure takes places over a short time span).* Actually, the most worrying element in the depiction of sacrifice is that cattle sacrifice is performed not FIRST but, according to the book in "smaller towns that can't afford to give up people give up their food instead". So basically it's implied in the writing that Bryn Shander, Easthaven, and Targos chose to sacrifice "humanoids" first because it's convenient... it's probably unintended but it could be used in a darker rime to have these town absolutely and totally rig their lotteries to get rid of "unwanted humanoids". "He's from Luskan, all Luskanite are pirates, let's send him in the blizzard..."</blockquote>

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