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

[Paul Farquhar]

Running a single adventure out of the box might be possible

It might be possible to run a whole campaign out of the box, but that's irrelevant to me, I would never choose to do it.

I got a few levels in and ditched it because the players clearly weren’t feeling it.

That's why I suggest a group patron. The players need motivation and an objective. They might be able to find that on their own, but I wouldn't count on it.

 

[Azuresun]

Sorry to hear that your campaign went so poorly. I think having the start of a near-TPK probably put a damper on things that made it hard to recover from.

I've ran three sessions so far, and the PCs are having a blast. However, it's because I read a number of reviews, scrolled through the number of common complaints, and also noticed some things I wanted to change myself.

I'm doing much the same. There are some great set-pieces in the campaign, but they're not tied together very well, and it's entirely possible for the players to miss certain plot threads entirely and potentially end the driving force of the adventure two chapters early! There are some things that get a lot of attention, but which don't really GO anywhere. Notably the prison, which gets a tremendous amount of detail, but an actual reason for the PC's to go there kind of gets left out.

But if you're like me and you love tinkering with premade adventures, this is a dream come true. Much like you, I changed the initial premise--winters have been getting worse over the last two years, but people still hope it's going to get better naturally, and don't know who's actually behind it. Lessening the urgency lets the players engage in small-scale quests without feeling like schmucks, and allows for some escalation later on as things get worse and the PC's can see the towns getting more desperate as the winter intensifies. Further details spoilered just in case my players read this:

Spoiler

The main difference is that Auril isn't present at the start, she's masterminding things through her druids (manipulating the duergar king, sowing despair in the towns to get them to worship and sacrifice to her, recruiting berserkers from the Reghed, etc), whose leader is the one conducting the winter ritual and who fights the party in Chapter 5--after their defeat, Auril appears to take care of things personally and force the quest to Ythryn. Early on, this is intended to introduce a mystery about who's really responsible, one that'll be hinted at through encounters with the druids, the devil cult and a coven of hags, rather than have everyone know right from the start that it's Auril who's behind the whole thing. Having a fake "final boss" handily avoids the whole "whoops, we solved the adventure two chapters early" risk, where the PC's can kill Auril in her fortress and then have no real reason to go to Ythryn other than "dunno, treasure?".

I also wanted to come up with uses for those bits of the adventure that don't seem to go anywhere, by tying them into one of the greater plots. For example, the ghost in the mine adventure might possess someone and escape into the town, where it will....do what, exactly? It's never explained. Ditto for the prison, it's a lot of detail just to have a callback to Legacy of the Crystal Shard. So I'll have the cult of Levistus arrange a jailbreak, which the PC's might be on either side of.

Generally, I want to foreshadow things earlier. Vellayne pops up out of nowhere, delivers a big exposition dump and demands the PC's work for her....so drop her in earlier, looking for her stolen artifact, or employing them to keep tabs on her her rivals.

A couple of suggestions: Use a Group Patron (Tasha's) & replace insanity with stress from VGR.

For the first arc, I just had them employed by the overworked Speaker of Bryn Shandar, who offered them a weekly payment if they helped her deal with all the problems coming across her desk. Simple, and gives them a reason to wander around the towns doing stuff.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

For the first arc, I just had them employed by the overworked Speaker of Bryn Shandar, who offered them a weekly payment if they helped her deal with all the problems coming across her desk. Simple, and gives them a reason to wander around the towns doing stuff.

Yeah, I would say there are three obvious options for patrons - the speaker/council, the Arcane Brotherhood, and the Harpers. Although something like the Zents is also possible. The Duergar or Knights of the Black Sword could be a wild card entries.

What RotFM lacks is Episode One: The Team Assembles.

 

[Lyxen]

One suggestion a bit out of the box is to try the 3pp Odyssey of the Dragonlords. It’s a 1 - 15 level Greek-ish campaign and my players are really enjoying it. They are up to level 7 now and frankly it’s been an absolute pleasure to DM. I’ve barely changed anything which is very unusual for me. My players are part way through a fantasy Olympic Games sidequest that was a fun interlude. I would say the main story is very compelling - as strong as Curse of Strahd and I would put the series on par with it. Worth a look.

I can only second that, playing this one, 7th level now, and it's an absolute blast. That being said, there are tons of add-ons available on the web, and our DM is using them a lot, so I can't attest to what an unmodified campaign would be like, but from what I hear it's still pretty good.

 

[Retreater]

Thanks for the write up. Frankly I’m amazed you made it to the end! Well done. I got a few levels in and ditched it because the players clearly weren’t feeling it.

It was work to customize it to our needs, and in the end I think we'd all have had a better time with another adventure. But my players are stubborn sometimes and really want to finish what they start - evidenced by how The Enemy Within in WFRP 4E is going currently.

We did much better with Tomb of Annihilation and I really enjoyed it.

I ran this to completion with another group. The only things I did was to drop a few hints about where they are going and to trim the hex crawl portion after a few months of actual play.
ToA is a solid adventure. If I were to run it again, I'd make some changes to bring out what I think are the best parts. (For example, I'd probably give them an ancient, rough map of the area early on. And then incentivise them to visit side locations, maybe by hiding some keys there to get into the Tomb. I'd also make the yuan-ti figure into it more.)

 

[lluewhyn]

I also wanted to come up with uses for those bits of the adventure that don't seem to go anywhere, by tying them into one of the greater plots. For example, the ghost in the mine adventure might possess someone and escape into the town, where it will....do what, exactly? It's never explained. Ditto for the prison, it's a lot of detail just to have a callback to Legacy of the Crystal Shard.

I didn't know where the prison was from, but me reading through that section got a strong "Nope, not going to include this one when I run the adventure." It has almost nothing to do with anything, and actually undercuts the rest of the adventure because despite the rest of the towns being at the edge of desperation, the prison seems just fine.

I haven't fully decided what I'm doing with the Duergar yet. One thing that I know that I'll be doing is changing the Dragon to leave after they're in the fortress itself and at least have had an opportunity to see the map of its path along with getting confirmation of its mission. Plus, I think it works more dramatically to have "We have intruders in the fortress, send the dragon to destroy the town NOW" as opposed to "What an amazing coincidence that the dragon starts just as you get there". As it is written, the PCs don't know that it's headed towards the Ten Towns to destroy them, and even if they come to that conclusion there's nothing remotely logical about why the PCs should try to catch it as it moves so much faster than they can. I imagine a lot of PCs would be thinking "Maybe there's something in the fortress to stop the dragon remotely" like killing the spellcaster controlling it.

I'm also thinking about doing a little bit more with the devil influence where they might try to work with the PCs. Right now, I really hate his motivation which is simply "Utterly destroy the Ten Towns because I'm evil", which is really lame. You brought your people out of the Underdark to this fortress and committed their efforts to collecting Chardalyn just so you can destroy some podunk settlements that in no way affect you? Besides, destroying the Ten Towns doesn't seem like a very Devilish thing to do. So, I'm thinking about having it where Asmodeus was encouraging him to go through these plans to conquer the Ten Towns and rule them with an iron fist, but the exposure to all of that Chardalyn has driven the Duergar king insane and warped the plan, which has led him into more destructive goals. Or, I might just leave it at him intending to conquer the Ten Towns with the dragon using strategic strikes and the PCs invading his fortress forces his hand to where he sets the dragon setting to "Raze All" instead. Either way, the usage of the dragon seems like it's a perfect element to limit Short and Long Rests when exploring the fortress, so I'm not sure why it's not used to that effect.

 

[lluewhyn]

What RotFM lacks is Episode One: The Team Assembles.

Most of my first session was done in a loose role-play that leads up to "How did you find yourselves up in Icewind Dale?". Interestingly, the Orc Fighter and Elven Ranger had suggested they met up fighting an undead in the south in the previous Session Zero, so we role-played that battle through narration (and OMG, it was bonkers!). The Cleric is actually a Duergar (this will be interesting later on, lol) who described his way up from the Underdark where he popped out in IWD. They were all hanging out in the Northlook Inn when the bloodied and battered dwarves staggered in and threw themselves down by the fire, and the four PCs were the ones who inquired what was going on and met the rest of each other that way.

 

[TheSword]

I started off with an airship crash of people travelling to Icewind dale because of the barrier around the dale. Auril effectively crashed the ship. They came across various survivors in the first session including some of the other party that were linked in through their backgrounds that had seen the airship crash. I’d just finished reading Alive!

They scavenged the ship and then tracked through the snow to the rear of the ship that was balanced on a cliff edge. Quite good fun them trying to scavenge the aft castle before it toppled over with their weight.

The rest of the adventure never quite lived up to the start

 

[Azuresun]

I haven't fully decided what I'm doing with the Duergar yet. One thing that I know that I'll be doing is changing the Dragon to leave after they're in the fortress itself and at least have had an opportunity to see the map of its path along with getting confirmation of its mission. Plus, I think it works more dramatically to have "We have intruders in the fortress, send the dragon to destroy the town NOW" as opposed to "What an amazing coincidence that the dragon starts just as you get there". As it is written, the PCs don't know that it's headed towards the Ten Towns to destroy them, and even if they come to that conclusion there's nothing remotely logical about why the PCs should try to catch it as it moves so much faster than they can. I imagine a lot of PCs would be thinking "Maybe there's something in the fortress to stop the dragon remotely" like killing the spellcaster controlling it.

I'm also thinking about doing a little bit more with the devil influence where they might try to work with the PCs. Right now, I really hate his motivation which is simply "Utterly destroy the Ten Towns because I'm evil", which is really lame. You brought your people out of the Underdark to this fortress and committed their efforts to collecting Chardalyn just so you can destroy some podunk settlements that in no way affect you? Besides, destroying the Ten Towns doesn't seem like a very Devilish thing to do.

Yes, that's my inclination too. Fight through the fort to reach the dragon, and then see it leaving.

When I get there, I'll probably make it so that Auril's worshippers are influencing Xardarok--they pointed him towards the tainted chardalyn in the first place, like with the berserkers, and now they're guiding his madness towards "make a glorious display of your power and claim this land for your own".

One thing I do plan on using the Duergar for is to liven up the mind flayer quest, if only because it seems a bit funny that this psychic beacon is blasting away right next door to this fortress of psionic dwarves (seriously, check the map) and none of them have caught it. Could make for a fun "enemy of my enemy" dilemma if they send out a hunting party just after the PC's discover the nautiloid. Also keeps the duergar as a presence in the story when the otherwise vanish for most of the Icewind Dale arc.

 

[lluewhyn]

For me, I just expect more work to be done by the designers to make the story come together

I feel your pain on this. Virtually every module I've read by WotC tends to have poor writing in one way or another which requires the DM to have to put in extra work. Oddly enough, Lost Mines of Phandelver, the very first module released for 5E, is the best written one where a DM can pretty much run it straight out of the box. I'm not sure of the cause, but my guess is that there are so many different people writing different parts of the adventures without enough oversight to make sure things are internally consistent which leads to a "too many cooks in the kitchen" feel. One funny thing that stuck out to me reading RotF is that despite the setting establishing there's poor visibility for four hours a day and pretty much no visibility the rest of the time, most of the areas and encounters describe things in visual terms that the PCs would be seeing from far away, which implies a certain lack of QC oversight from someone in charge. Based upon some of the other modules I've read, it seems to be a regular practice.

So, I went in with expectations of balancing and consistency problems from the get-go knowing that I would have to tweak things to not make it a slog. This helped give me a more positive outlook on the adventure. It also helps that the adventure is overstuffed with things to do and explicitly tells you that you're not supposed to do all of it, just pick and choose what you like best. This is something that I really appreciated as I don't have to worry about problems with any particular quest since I can just ignore it and do something else instead.