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

[lluewhyn]

Still, it's failure, and even more, failure to actually accomplish something.

I'm not certain we're disagreeing? When I said a "good portion of the adventure", I meant a majority of the adventure, not that that part was "good".

 

[Lyxen]

I'm not certain we're disagreeing? When I said a "good portion of the adventure", I meant a majority of the adventure, not that that part was "good".

Oh, OK, my bad.

And this "bad" just means "bad"

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Over time, WoTC has made the writing teams for their books larger and larger. This has resulted in really disjointed adventures as it is extremely obvious that different sections of the books are written by different teams. Very often each section foreshadows some big things that is just not picked up in the next section.

The earlier books were just a few people doing the writing and they are way more cohesive.

I wish that they would go back to tighter teams.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

they find out that no one told them to do this

Nowhere in the text does it say that. There are lots of frost druids running around, along with other diviners who could communicate the will of the gods.

The PCs are not going to want to help those particular leaders very much.

The PCs can always try and take over.

At the least, there's a good chance that they will demand the sacrifices be stopped before they decide to help.

And so, they stop the sacrifices and everyone dies. As pointed out, there is no way people could have survived for two years of this - unless Auril was keeping them alive.

Or, they could go on a quest to defeat Auril before the end of the month, so there won't have to be any more sacrifices.

 

[Burnside]

If the PCs talk to the people in charge, they find out that no one told them to do this, they just decided to start murdering their own townsfolk on a hunch, and despite absolutely no beneficial change in weather they're still murdering their own people 12 months later. The PCs are not going to want to help those particular leaders very much. At the least, there's a good chance that they will demand the sacrifices be stopped before they decide to help.

If the PCs get picked to be in the lottery, especially after helping a town already, it's game over.

The "whose idea was this" thing is a major omission that makes it hard for the DM to grapple with the sacrifices subplot.

Either the sacrifices are useless nonsense, in which case there should be some paranoiac Jim Jones-type figure in the Ten Towns leading them, or they are NOT useless, in which case the leaders of the towns are making a grim calculation to ward off even further calamity. Both options are interesting and viable and could even have been presented as options, allowing the DM to choose. Even if for whatever reason the designers didn't want to flesh this out, just a couple of paragraphs outlining this would I suspect be helpful for many DMs, especially less experienced ones.

 

[Burnside]

Nowhere in the text does it say that. There are lots of frost druids running around, along with other diviners who could communicate the will of the gods.

The PCs can always try and take over.

And so, they stop the sacrifices and everyone dies. As pointed out, there is no way people could have survived for two years of this - unless Auril was keeping them alive.

Or, they could go on a quest to defeat Auril before the end of the month, so there won't have to be any more sacrifices.

The book does explicitly say that the sacrifices are useless and do nothing. If the sacrifices were the thing that was keeping them alive, I'd personally find that way more interesting.

 

[Azuresun]

The "whose idea was this" thing is a major omission that makes it hard for the DM to grapple with the sacrifices subplot.

Either the sacrifices are useless nonsense, in which case there should be some paranoiac Jim Jones-type figure in the Ten Towns leading them, or they are NOT useless, in which case the leaders of the towns are making a grim calculation to ward off even further calamity. Both options are interesting and viable and could even have been presented as options, allowing the DM to choose. Even if for whatever reason the designers didn't want to flesh this out, just a couple of paragraphs outlining this would I suspect be helpful for many DMs, especially less experienced ones.

The way I plan to do it is

Spoiler

there is a steadily growing movement that says that only supplication to Auril can save everyone, engineered by the druids and other agents of Auril--for example, Sephek is recast as a vigilante taking it on himself to "offer sacrifices" before it becomes official policy anywhere, and a couple of loggers in Lonelywood can oeprate without fear of the beast after pledging themselves to Auril and making offerings. As time passes, especially in settlements without leaders who strongly oppose this, these cults gain more strength.

 

[lluewhyn]

The "whose idea was this" thing is a major omission that makes it hard for the DM to grapple with the sacrifices subplot.

Ok, so I went back and read the section on page 21 and you're right, it's left somewhat ambiguous, so it's my interpretation of the text that the Speakers came up with it on their own since nowhere else does it specify minions of Auril have told them to do this. I could swear I read somewhere in the text that Auril isn't appeased by the sacrifices in the slightest, but if so I don't remember where it was.

Either way, I'm going with your Option 2 where the PCs are seeing Druids are just now preaching the sacrifices to the towns which will bring relief, but only for a short time before the conditions get even worse the next time.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

Dragon Heist is definitely busted. But I took inspiration from the Alexandrian's Remix and am now running a version of it that has turned into one of my best campaigns ever.

 

[Myrdin Potter]

Dragon Heist is fine. Low level and set in a huge and famous city. Somewhat of a railroad but I think that is more a nod to having a cohesive adventure to play in such a big place. They also tried to bring in a decent number of of iconic FR characters.

My current campaign (I think at the two to three year mark with one 3 hour game a week) started with it. Party is 12/13 level now and in DoMM. But for ages they were off on sea adventures (port city lead to that) and I have wrote a bunch of urban adventures as well (liberally stealing from Call of Cthulhu and other 3rd party sources).

I find that the “Encounters in Waterdeep” book really helps to allow a DM to have the party wander around. I also use Raging Swan urban dressings and eventures liberally.