Ideas for a snowy/icy/arctic campaign

[lin_fusan]

Arg! I was planning a similar campaign (with a Planescape Ysgard feel) about a Norse winter lasting three generations. I was going to reskin it for 4th ed, such as having Rituals be based after the futhark/rune alphabet.

But I can't find my notes!

I'm afraid my notes were on a 'back of an envelope', and those envelopes were lost in my latests move...

 

[GuJiaXian]

Arg! I was planning a similar campaign (with a Planescape Ysgard feel) about a Norse winter lasting three generations. I was going to reskin it for 4th ed, such as having Rituals be based after the futhark/rune alphabet.

But I can't find my notes!

I'm afraid my notes were on a 'back of an envelope', and those envelopes were lost in my latests move...

Wow, that sucks. Remember any of the salient details?

 

[Charger28Alpha]

Re-Skinning printed adventures is a great time saver. For converting ones set in a warm or temperate climate to a cold climate Google Image Search is your friend. For towns type in "Turf House". For any other area the PCs will go just type in "Winter" before the terrain (Forest, River, Hills, etc). The images should help you visualize changes from a more temperate adventure setting.

Locations that have to deal with extreme cold, can also be used for horror type scenarios. In lands with extreme cold settlements will end up being isolated in the deepest part of winter. In addition just the cold is a killer, so heading out into it presents its own danger. Add in monsters unaffected by the cold and you can come up with situations and encounters that cause players to break out in goose bumps.

 

[JackSmithIV]

Well, there are plenty of good motifs for designing ice-related adventuers. Forgotten Realms has a ton of them.

To give a taste of what I'm doing right now, I'm running a Forgotten Realms 4E campaign that takes place in the Northwest. The party is composed of a high ranking member in the Cormyrian military and his retinue. At one point, they were in the Greypeak Mountains. I gave this area plenty of creative energy, considering I intend to bring them back on multiple occasions. This allows me to inject that isolated, arctic feel into my campaign on occassion.

I had a mountain-top way-station run by a group of barbarians decendant from Uthgardts. It's a docking point for airships from the Five Companies, and an incredibly small settlement (3 or so buildings) where the characters feel warm and welcome while they stay. Under their mountain, however, is the ruins of the dwarf city Sirrak'Var, which was torn appart and ravaged by the Spell Plague. The Order of the Blue fire keeps a huge base of operations there, studying the plagued ruins.

A seperate ruin, Krystrid'Var, lies a few peaks away. While more safe and accessable, it's inhabited by a moody, feral ancient white dragon. At one point, this dragon's temper caused blizzards that held the player's at the waystation for days, until the players went to parley with the dragon, who then sent them on the quest to recover eggs, stolen by the Cult of the Dragon.

Just giving you a piece of what I was doing. I was able to, with very little heavy lifting, incorporate three popular Faerunian power groups into a small mountain range. Snowy areas are really great, atmospherically. Combined with some really somber music (I use the soundtrack from "The Fountain" for the Greypeaks), you can really get a bunch of great sessions out. Good luck!

 

[haakon1]

In print Dungeon, there were several adventures that took place in or around Greyhawk's cold Blackmoor region.

I don't recall the issues or titles offhand, but I remember:
- One was a cover adventure. It was about recovered a demonic cloak that a demon had given the Witch-Queen, Iggwilv. The title had something to do with all that. What was most cool about the adventure, to me, was the encounter table for things like a blood-drinking undead mist that can roll in.
- Another was by Wolfgang Bauer. It was about raiders on a coastal village, who retreated into the lands of Black Ice. The title was something like "Raiders of the Black Ice".
- Another was a followup by Wolfgang Bauer, about an outpost of the City of the Gods (near the lands of Black Ice), full of clockworks.

 

[fissionessence]

There was a cold weather adventure in the DDI a few months ago. It included a fairly dandy "survive the blizzard" skill challenge.

I think this is a reference to Menace of the Icy Spire, which is for 2nd-level 4E characters. I just finished running this one two nights ago, and I really like it. Also, I played it in LFR a few weeks ago and it was fun there too

It may not totally fit in the campaign you described, though, because SPOILERS: it is an unnatural magical winter, and once the players finish the adventure, they have relieved the region of the cold. You may have to reskin some fluff to make it fit an all-wintery campaign.

Also, I attached a trilogy of short adventures someone wrote and uploaded onto a filesharing website. I couldn't find the adventures anywhere else, so instead of linking I'm just attaching them here for anyone interested. The creator's username is chrisking1976. They're set in Icewind Dale, but I don't remember that being integral to the plot. Also, they're not really polished, but hey, they could work for someone. They're paragon-tier adventures.

~

 

[Rechan]

If your setting is ice-covered and all that, then you need some area like a valley in the center of a ring of mountains that's a jungle, or some sort of subtropical forest.

It's almost necessary.

 

[Stoat]

I was thinking about Icy Spire. I remember thinking when I read it that the skill challenge could be pretty easily adapted to a wide variety of different hostile climates/environments.

I once planned a campaign/adventure arc in which an ancient High Elf/Eladrin, his life maintained only through regular doses of medicinal herbs, hires the PC's to escort him deep into the arctic wilds. The setting would have featured frost-choked pine forests, ragged, icy mountains and a glacial fields. Monster would include bugbears, trolls, hill giants, frost giants and white dragons. The action would climax in an abandoned Eladrin citadel with a strong Mountains of Madness feel.

But instead, the players voted for a campaign I call "One of you has inherited a castle in the jungle!"

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I'm working on a 4e setting that is set in a perpetual winter or fall (fall would have been when normally there be summer).

The basic premise behind why it is like this is essentially:

[sblock]For a time the Spirit World and our World were connecting but only in that the creatures of the world had their spirits residing their and their bodies here (besides for Humans we were unique in having our spirits with us in this world) as well as some powerful spirits that resided in both.

Then the scientist, craftsmen, scholars and arcanist spirits that now resided in the Spirit World crafted a means to bind the two worlds together allowing communication, trade, exchanges of knowledge, etc. This generally bumped up the World's level of technology to Industrial-Era.

However, in time the Spirit Courts grew suspicious of the growing knowledge the World had gained and severed the connection. Not only did our technology and society seize to a halt. But many spirits either died, were severed, mutated, etc. The largest impact of which was on the spirits of nature, seasons and the world they became disrupted and left in their wake a endless winter.

Hundreds of years has passed since then.

There is other deeper reasons and plot-lines but that is what the common people believe.[/sblock]

Some of the unique winter-oriented elements I have include:

• A city carved into and bolted onto the side of a glacier, because of its constant movement however daily work must be done to shore up the connections between the glaciar and the city.
• Most cities are built against ice, stone, metal, natural barriers against the path of most blizzards. They also formed in man-made or natural holes or ditches in the landscape for protection from wind and snow and because of the warmer temperature.
• Everyone knows basic survival techniques like building ice shelters.
• Fashion is entirely based around usage specifically in the cold. There is little time or need for fashionable wear and is actually looked down upon as wasteful.
• Food is generally meat and various kinds of fungus found in caverns underground.
• A sea of black ice. The whole sea has frozen over and because very little snow deposits itself over this sea it has remained as black as coal. Though the ice is many meters thick various creatures are known for shattering their way through to get at prey above.

 

[Dausuul]

Post it?

It's... big. I put a lot of prep into this campaign, much more than I have in the past. Also, at least two of my players are regular visitors to this forum, although I'm sure I could trust them not to read it. I'll e-mail it to anyone interested.