D&D 5E Running Rime of the Frost Maiden

[Paul Farquhar]

Elsa is a cheater, sorcerers don't get find familiar.

 

[MarkB]

I feel like the tiny nature spirits have at least one good Disney song-and-dance number in them.

Oh, I'm the king of the Chwingas babe,
The tundra VIP.
I've ruled with ease,
But had to freeze,
And that's what's bothering me.

 

[Burnside]

I realize this can be changed as needed, but does anybody find the flow as written of the opening adventures and milestone leveling odd? It says one way to run it is to start with either Cold-Hearted Killer or Nature Spirits, run them, level up to 2, and then start doing the town quests. But the main feature of both of those quests is to provide a pretext for taking a tour of the Ten Towns - and what's the purpose of touring the Ten Towns if not to pick up the town quests? Isn't it therefore much more likely that they'd complete one or more town quests on the way to completing the "starter" quest?

EDIT: Never mind, I'm dumb. They're not meant to be completed first, only received first.

 

[jasper]

The cold heart killer quest can have you visiting some of the towns. Yes. You can complete a town quest before you finish the "starter" quest.

• The characters advance to 2nd level after completing their first quest in this chapter.
• They advance to 3rd level after completing three quests in this chapter and advance to 4th level after completing five quests in this chapter.

So if you were an VERY EVIL DM. You could have them never finish the Cold Hearted Killer quest but still level up. The Milestones are for completing quests not completing quests in order of given.

 

[Reynard]

There's definitely a "CRPG" style to the design. While I kind of like that, I'm realizing it might require some similar tools. Organization might be something of a problem: keeping it straight who the PCs have talked to, which quests they have "activated" and so on. I am thinking of using Excel to create an "adventure journal." The more I can keep that stuff on my side of the screen, the less the players will get pulled out of the game by it. That's the theory, anyway.

 

[MarkB]

I realize this can be changed as needed, but does anybody find the flow as written of the opening adventures and milestone leveling odd? It says one way to run it is to start with either Cold-Hearted Killer or Nature Spirits, run them, level up to 2, and then start doing the town quests. But the main feature of both of those quests is to provide a pretext for taking a tour of the Ten Towns - and what's the purpose of touring the Ten Towns if not to pick up the town quests? Isn't it therefore much more likely that they'd complete one or more town quests on the way to completing the "starter" quest?

EDIT: Never mind, I'm dumb. They're not meant to be completed first, only received first.

I got the impression that the two starter quests were meant more as an "either-or" rather than for any particular group to play both - you start the players off with one or the other, depending on your preferred tone, along with the town quest for whichever town you start them in.

 

[Reynard]

I got the impression that the two starter quests were meant more as an "either-or" rather than for any particular group to play both - you start the players off with one or the other, depending on your preferred tone, along with the town quest for whichever town you start them in.

Yeah, it explicitly says the other of the 2 is no longer available once you choose. I plan on using Cold Hearted Killer but having Dannika and her chwinga hunt be a lighter element that pops up from time to time. She strikes me as a good potential romantic interest NPC, and the chwinga as a somewhat silly element that can eventually reveal itself as much, much more.

 

[Anthony Winter]

I started Rime of the frost maiden two weeks ago by using the DNDbeyond encounter of the week ad a means of bringing a disparate group together and leading them north. They all have their secrets as another reason to go there as well.
While i was running Descent into Avernus I was listening to others podcast of live play while driving to work so others may benefit from this:

I've made a change to the 4th encounter to 'horror' it up a little more and to 'de-silly' the intro sessions.

I ran the 2nd and 4th dndbeyond ice wind dale encounter last night. I toned the nonsense in part 4 back by reskinning the skeleton shark with legs.

Instead it was a juvenile kraken killed by an intellect devourer:

 

[Burnside]

I got the impression that the two starter quests were meant more as an "either-or" rather than for any particular group to play both - you start the players off with one or the other, depending on your preferred tone, along with the town quest for whichever town you start them in.

Yeah, I got that (although frankly, you might as well give them both; they don't conflict, and both serve the purpose of driving the party to move from town to town which you'll want them to do). I just mistakenly thought they were meant to complete one of them before doing the town quests.

 

[jasper]

Brain fart. How far can you see in dim light. You only have 4 hours of dim light during the day.