D&D 5E Is Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden the New D&D Adventure?

It looks likely that the upcoming D&D adventure is indeed an Icewind Dale based storyline called Rime of the Frostmaiden! I can't vouch for the veracity of this, but I was cc'd into a Tweet by Navy DM on Twitter who says they found it on Reddit.

Feel the cold touch of death in this adventure for the world's greatest role playing game.

UPDATE -- the awesome Geek Native ran the small cover screenshot through an image enhancing application, to create the larger image below.

There's a post here on Reddit which says "The DnD Beyond YouTube channel posted a trailer for a new book, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, then immediately deleted it." The post has been removed since. I found the above image posted by somebody called smightmight, who looks like they screen grabbed it from the video before it was removed.

The Frostmaiden is one of the names of Auril, an evil goddess in the Forgotten Realms. You can read more about her on the Forgotten Realms wiki.

Rime is ice which forms from water droplets on surfaces.

An Icewind Dale setting was the current favourite guess for the location of the new D&D adventure based on various hints from WotC, including this snowy owlbear t-shirt!

(thanks to Pixellance for pointing me at this!)

 

[aco175]

I wonder how much of the book will travel out of 10 Towns. Some of the other books travel rather far and I'm not sure how much civilization is 10 Towns. There appears to be only 5000 people there and the dwarves of Kelvin's Cairn. I would be ok with the adventure traveling all around the Spine of the World and into areas north of Silverymoon.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If this is the book that "people who liked CoS would like", it may not just mean it horror. It may mean it's a sandboxy adventure in which you wander around the Ten Towns helping people out, whilst preparing to face a greater threat.

The Icewind Dale computer games venture beyond Icewind Dale - indeed they are mostly beyond it!

To the east is the Spine of the World mountains - will Kuldahar feature?
To the south is Luskan, I doubt the adventure will go there, but it could be the start point.
To the west is the Sea of Moving Ice.
To the north lies the Wall Reghed glacier. The land beyond is almost completely unexplored.

 

[Shroomy]

If this is the book that "people who liked CoS would like", it may not just mean it horror. It may mean it's a sandboxy adventure in which you wander around the Ten Towns helping people out, whilst preparing to face a greater threat.

The Icewind Dale computer games venture beyond Icewind Dale - indeed they are mostly beyond it!

To the east is the Spine of the World mountains - will Kuldahar feature?
To the south is Luskan, I doubt the adventure will go there, but it could be the start point.
To the west is the Sea of Moving Ice.
To the north lies the Wall Reghed glacier. The land beyond is almost completely unexplored.

To perhaps reinforce the horror element, that cover art is pretty horrific, and I've seen some online speculation that the owl-creature on the cover is a hill giant vampire named Morg that was created by Paul F. Culotta in Dragon 236 (he could turn into a giant owl). I looked up the article he appeared in and back in 2e, he lived in the Kryptgarden Forest, but he could have migrated north over the intervening 100+ years. Don't know for sure, but I'm intrigued.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To perhaps reinforce the horror element, that cover art is pretty horrific, and I've seen some online speculation that the owl-creature on the cover is a hill giant vampire named Morg that was created by Paul F. Culotta in Dragon 236 (he could turn into a giant owl). I looked up the article he appeared in and back in 2e, he lived in the Kryptgarden Forest, but he could have migrated north over the intervening 100+ years. Don't know for sure, but I'm intrigued.

The scale is off for it to be a giant. Unless the wolves are also giant the figure is human-sized, significantly smaller than an owlbear, never mind a hill giant.

 

[Shroomy]

The scale is off for it to be a giant. Unless the wolves are also giant the figure is human-sized, significantly smaller than an owlbear, never mind a hill giant.

Unless they're dire or winter wolves, which are Large.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Unless they're dire or winter wolves, which are Large.

Even if the wolves are large, it's still too small to be a huge creature, which is what hill giants are.

 

[ddaley]

Giant or not... I can't wait. My daughter gets home from college in a couple of weeks. We'll have to try to wrap up CoS this summer so we can start on this one!

 

[Parmandur]

I have a source but not going to reveal. However, the source doesn't know if this book IS a 1-10+ type campaign book or a loose conglomerate of adventures.

Say no more, say no more...was just wondering if I missed something!

 

[Parmandur]

If this is the book that "people who liked CoS would like", it may not just mean it horror. It may mean it's a sandboxy adventure in which you wander around the Ten Towns helping people out, whilst preparing to face a greater threat.

The Icewind Dale computer games venture beyond Icewind Dale - indeed they are mostly beyond it!

To the east is the Spine of the World mountains - will Kuldahar feature?
To the south is Luskan, I doubt the adventure will go there, but it could be the start point.
To the west is the Sea of Moving Ice.
To the north lies the Wall Reghed glacier. The land beyond is almost completely unexplored.

Yeah, I think the CoS reference seems to be structural: sandbox region beset by a looming supernatural menace the PCs need to build up to facing.

Not a bad structure.

 

[vpuigdoller]

How is this new book a remake? Simply because it is set in the Realms? I doubt it is a remake of Crystal Shard... which I believe was written for Next. That was actually my first experience playing in this part of the Realms.

Agreed I doubt is a remake of Legacy of the Crystal Shard even in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus they updated gazetteer info from Murder in Baldur's gate. They did not reused the adventure.