D&D 5E (2014) Rime of the Frostmaiden Post-Mortem (Spoilers)

[Scott Christian]

I didn't use them. Some seemed of the variety of "you're secretly evil and going to betray the party" but none of them actively encouraged a party to come together and adventure to solve the issue.

What could've been awesome? Party starts off in a suddenly frozen camp and need to make it to the Ten Towns before "whatever" is pursuing them catches up to them.
What could've been awesome? Party stumbles into a sacrifice to Auril (or are maybe targeted for the sacrifice themselves). Why are the people doing this? Who is involved? How deep does this go?
What could've been awesome? Pretty much anything besides the random, unconnected quests given to us at the start of the adventure - which don't even seem to fit what's going on in the world. (Go fight these goblins who stole these iron ingots - which have nothing to do with the Frost Maiden, the deathly eternal night and winter, etc.)

I agree. Those sound great. So you are looking more for an entire group's reason, not individual characters. I agree, that is something the APs could definitely improve on.

 

[Shardstone]

Sounds like you're having a good time with Curse of Strahd.
When I ran it, it took about six months of weekly play, but they eventually got very focused on the Vistani predictions so they weren't just traipsing across Barovia. There are several towns and dungeons they didn't even encounter.
I did think Castle Ravenloft itself was anti-climactic. Having played it in several editions, I think the 5e version was the "weakest" of them all. Most of the fights were with a couple skeletons or zombies that would be shattered before the turn order even made it around the table. Strahd was a pushover.
The party was prepared, had all the artifacts (the Sunsword can make quick work of any undead), and had several NPCs that came along to help.
The players were satisfied, but I as the DM was a little letdown.

I would love to read more of your post mortem campaign stories/experiences.

 

[Retreater]

I agree. Those sound great. So you are looking more for an entire group's reason, not individual characters. I agree, that is something the APs could definitely improve on.

Maybe a bit of both? I don't want individual goals to blatantly go against what the group needs to accomplish. Like if a party member wants to go to one of the Towns to check on a friend who has disappeared, that's fine, because the party should be investigating the Ten Towns. However, when you have a motivation that's something like "you're a reincarnated wizard from the old Netherise city who wants to use the party to claim your old wizard power to rule over the region" that's the kind of stuff I don't think is helpful. And when I saw dark secrets like that, I scrapped them.
We were fresh off a bad dynamic in the Amber Temple (in Strahd) where not only were Dark Powers going to derail the adventure, also disrupting friendships in real life.

 

[Retreater]

I would love to read more of your post mortem campaign stories/experiences.

I'll be happy to write up some of them, though they won't be quite as fresh as Frost Maiden. I do have some that would be relatively positive for a change (just so people don't think I'm completely negative all the time.)

 

[mbriddell]

I had been playing this campaign with a group that played for about a year and a half just finished the campaign tonight.

We got the "bad ending" of getting hurtled back in time and I'm still decompressing from it.

All in all it was a campaign that I was excited to going into because I was looking forward to experiencing the geography and environment of the region and having an adventure dealing with all that. But our group struggled with a lot of things going through it. There were some chemistry and communication issues that pervaded many of the early sessions and at one point actually had us encountering the "Cold Open" killer- albeit several sessions into the game- and then just letting him go on his merry way due to the party not being as communicative as they should have.

The episode with the dragon was a high point (at least for me) because we had to wind up chasing it through several of the Ten Towns (which wound up being the 5 and a Half Towns by the time it was all over) and have multiple fights with it before we brought it down for good, and the DM revealed during the last fight that one of the players was actually a Chosen of Auril, which made for a spicy twist going on to the next portion of the module.

From here it seemed like the module failed to live up to expectations as we ventured to Grimskalle, expecting to encounter Auril there but finding only a mostly empty fortress. I was surprised that a so-called deity wouldn't have had better protections in their fortress. The DM told us later that he changed the tenet trials because he didn't care for how that section was originally written and because we had encountered some aspects of them earlier in the campaign based in part on some of the players' backstories.

From there it was off to the Reghed Glacier and Ythrin. We had Vellyn in tow with us but she ditched the party halfway through the glacier while the party was resting, never to be seen again. It was implied (and confirmed afterwards) that she ventured onto Ythrin on her own (because we were too slow, apparently) and perished in there. As we arrived at the entrance to Ythrin, we had our big showdown with Auril with the party at 8th level. Her first two forms appeared together, with the 3rd form appearing after the first was destroyed. It was a very stressful fight but the party ultimately prevailed after our sorcerer Twin-Polymorphed two of the characters into Mammoths and Auril proceeded to get curb-stomped.

After this, we did a bit of exploration of Ythrin and one player nearly got turned into a Nothic before getting cured. We gathered the components for the Arcane Octad (which the DM compressed all into one tower because they were trying to wrap up the end of the campaign as quickly as possible at that point), then got hoodwinked by the damn brain in a jar into activating the Obelisk with no proper warning of what it would actually do.

All in all the abruptness of how it ended left a bad taste in my mouth. To be honest, if I was to run this, I would have to rip everything after Grimskalle out because the last couple chapters just felt so disconnected and different from what the rest of the campaign laid out.

My biggest overall gripe with the campaign (whether it's how it's written or how it was run) is that the major story beats rarely feel like you're able to make a "good" choice and that you're constantly stuck with dealing with lesser of two (or more) evils.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

We got the "bad ending" of getting hurtled back in time and I'm still decompressing from it.

I see that as less of a bad ending, and more of a beginning of a Star Trek story.

My biggest overall gripe with the campaign (whether it's how it's written or how it was run) is that the major story beats rarely feel like you're able to make a "good" choice and that you're constantly stuck with dealing with lesser of two (or more) evils.

That's pretty much the point. It's not supposed to be a grand heroic quest. Even the best outcome only makes life better for a few hundred people. But I think it's a good idea to prep players with that kind of info before committing to the adventure. It's the grimdarkest of the WotC offerings.

 

[Weiley31]

the DM revealed during the last fight that one of the players was actually a Chosen of Auril, which made for a spicy twist going on to the next portion of the module.

Now that's a Secret that I'm surprised wasn't an actual option in the book.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Now that's a Secret that I'm surprised wasn't an actual option in the book.

It kind of almost is. Midwinter Child: Auril the Frostmaiden has blessed me, for I was born on the midwinter holiday. I have resistance to cold damage.

Running the adventure with some PCs working towards conflicting objectives is very much part of the original intent.

 

[mbriddell]

It kind of almost is. Midwinter Child: Auril the Frostmaiden has blessed me, for I was born on the midwinter holiday. I have resistance to cold damage.

I think that's exactly what the DM came up with.

 

[Retreater]

All in all the abruptness of how it ended left a bad taste in my mouth. To be honest, if I was to run this, I would have to rip everything after Grimskalle out because the last couple chapters just felt so disconnected and different from what the rest of the campaign laid out.

Sorry you had a bad experience with this campaign. What you're describing is why I had the climactic showdown in Grimskalle and didn't use the latter third of the book. A friend of mine is also running this adventure, and when we were talking shop about it, he came to the same conclusion without my opinion (I didn't want to influence his running of it unless he asked me first).
We ultimately came to a similar conclusion: RotFM is an unfocused mess of an adventure, likely written by several teams of writers without a common direction.
The only connection made to the climactic last third of the book is a side quest (which could easily be missed) halfway through the book. It would be as if the writers decided to make the epic showdown involving an invasion of mind flayer gnomes (with their crashed ship being a scout ship to prepare for that invasion).
Instead, we're given the overview of a lost city. I don't think there are even any maps that go with it (with the exception of a generalized layout of the city) - you don't even get the areas where "big" combats are supposed to take place. Compare that to Omu in Tomb of Annihilation, where they provide the city map, as well as the individual temples where you solve puzzles and gain the keys.