D&D 5E Running Rime of the Frost Maiden

[Burnside]

I haven't read every single 5E hardcover, but I have read, run, or played most of them. From the ones I've read, run, or played, the only ones that I would say don't carry the "a good DM needs to fix it" caveat are Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, and Lost Mine of Phandelver.

 

[Burnside]

I did find it tricky in the initial Ten Towns sections to limit the players' exposure to plot hooks. The tricky part is that they're only really supposed to follow up the quests at a few of these locations before they level out of these quests and are supposed to move on to the wider world, but in a lot of cases the quickest way to get to the next quest objective from town A is to follow the road through towns B, C and D, and then it's "do I drop the plot hooks for these towns and see what they nibble, or do I make this the one town where mysteriously nothing interesting is going on and then they'll obsess about it?"

Just by virtue of how they have moved through the towns and which ones they visited and spent time in, my players are well into the duergar storyline and haven't encountered ANY of the awakened animals/evil druids stuff.

They are super into it, but I do think they are starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of quests and subplots on offer.

 

[tetrasodium]

I haven't read every single 5E hardcover, but I have read, run, or played most of them. From the ones I've read, run, or played, the only ones that I would say don't carry the "a good DM needs to fix it" caveat are Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Annihilation, and Lost Mine of Phandelver.

Rhime takes it to another level by hiding it from a gm trying to figure out what to fix in ways that make correcting "it" needlessly opaque when it comes to simply discovering what "it" is rather than just rewriting the whole thing and scratching your head when suddenly duergar or whatever

 

[Burnside]

Rhime takes it to another level by hiding it from a gm trying to figure out what to fix in ways that make correcting "it" needlessly opaque when it comes to simply discovering what "it" is rather than just rewriting the whole thing and scratching your head when suddenly duergar or whatever

Absolutely, but if you look at stuff like Out of the Abyss or Tyranny of Dragons, in comparison Rime does a great job of letting the DM know what's going on. Those adventures conspire to conceal that information from you.

On the other hand, Storm King's Thunder lets you know what's going on. It's just that what's going on is lame.

 

[MarkB]

Just by virtue of how they have moved through the towns and which ones they visited and spent time in, my players are well into the duergar storyline and haven't encountered ANY of the awakened animals/evil druids stuff.

They are super into it, but I do think they are starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of quests and subplots on offer.

Hah! My players got through a couple of the duergar encounters, but they've encountered so many awakened animals that it's become a running theme, and the party druid - who rejected an Auril druid's attempts at recruitment - is starting to feel personally targeted.

One of the funniest of those moments was from the random wilderness encounters. I rolled an encounter at night, that would feature an awakened animal, and the randomly-rolled animal I got to work with was... a snow hare. So I figured "okay, what the heck can a hare do to a 6th-level party?", and had it sneak in past their posted watch, acing its stealth checks, and tuck a chunk of chardalyn under the druid's pillow, giving him a random insanity when he woke up.

That hare had a charmed life. It was in and out of there without any trouble, and only got spotted the next night, when it came back and tried to slip some poison into their evening meal. And then it lasted two rounds of combat against the paladin who was on watch at the time, and managed to miss four greatsword attacks against it as it hopped away at its full 20-foot speed.

When he finally connected he sunk a max-level Smite into it just to make sure.

 

[Burnside]

Hah! My players got through a couple of the duergar encounters, but they've encountered so many awakened animals that it's become a running theme, and the party druid - who rejected an Auril druid's attempts at recruitment - is starting to feel personally targeted.

One of the funniest of those moments was from the random wilderness encounters. I rolled an encounter at night, that would feature an awakened animal, and the randomly-rolled animal I got to work with was... a snow hare. So I figured "okay, what the heck can a hare do to a 6th-level party?", and had it sneak in past their posted watch, acing its stealth checks, and tuck a chunk of chardalyn under the druid's pillow, giving him a random insanity when he woke up.

That hare had a charmed life. It was in and out of there without any trouble, and only got spotted the next night, when it came back and tried to slip some poison into their evening meal. And then it lasted two rounds of combat against the paladin who was on watch at the time, and managed to miss four greatsword attacks against it as it hopped away at its full 20-foot speed.

When he finally connected he sunk a max-level Smite into it just to make sure.

Amazing!

I am stealing this evil bunny. I will give you no credit and my players will think it was my idea.

 

[Retreater]

Just by virtue of how they have moved through the towns and which ones they visited and spent time in, my players are well into the duergar storyline and haven't encountered ANY of the awakened animals/evil druids stuff.

They are super into it, but I do think they are starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of quests and subplots on offer.

My party hasn't encountered any of the duergar stuff, and if I sprang it upon them now (at 4th level) it would definitely feel tracked on and disconnected.

On the other hand, Storm King's Thunder lets you know what's going on. It's just that what's going on is lame.

Agreed. I took the sites out of that one and wrote my own story.

Honestly, my experience with this adventure is pushing me over the edge to not want to run any more WotC campaign adventures - after I've run many others and seen their failings too. I'm not a bad writer at all and I'm confident that I could write something better for my table and easier for me to run than most of WotC's offerings.
The only problem would be putting it all onto a VTT.

 

[Reynard]

My party hasn't encountered any of the duergar stuff, and if I sprang it upon them now (at 4th level) it would definitely feel tracked on and disconnected.

My players got involved with the duergar almost first thing and have decided it is the most important thing in the world so they have focused all their efforts on stopping them. It has worked out very well (although the duergar themselves as presented are pretty boring, so I have had to make them more interesting).

 

[Retreater]

My players got involved with the duergar almost first thing and have decided it is the most important thing in the world so they have focused all their efforts on stopping them. It has worked out very well (although the duergar themselves as presented are pretty boring, so I have had to make them more interesting).

Are you tying the duergar into the ongoing snowpocalypse and two years without a sun? For my group, there is nothing that can be more important than that.

 

[Reynard]

Are you tying the duergar into the ongoing snowpocalypse and two years without a sun? For my group, there is nothing that can be more important than that.

Nope. I am not a big fan of campaigns that are just one big adventure. I like the fact that Rime is a messy sandbox with a bunch of disconnected mini-adventures. I also think it is silly to have 1st level characters to take on a "save the world" quest right out of the gate. They're 1st level? Why would they head off into the ice to kill a goddess? If the campaign continues after they raid the duergar HQ (I am ambivalent about the campaign overall and need to trim some gaming from my schedule; also, potential TPK) they have gathered a few hints about the Netherese city, and have a bunch of personal stuff they might need to get done that they have pushed off to deal with the duergar. This style of play is more interesting and fulfilling IMO than a huge singular quest with a clock.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

although the duergar themselves as presented are pretty boring

Boringness is kind of their shtick. However, if you are playing them without an "always LE" flag you can throw up some ethical dilemmas, especially for dwarf PCs. "What if that guy I just killed was telling the truth about being screwed over by the surface dwarves?"

They are really squishy and easy to kill though, if I ran this adventure again I would make them much tougher.

 

[Retreater]

Our last campaign dealed a lot with duergar, so I'm fine with excising them from this one.
Even though my players were eager for a sandbox, they don't like the lack of structure. So lesson learned.

 

[MarkB]

Our last campaign dealed a lot with duergar, so I'm fine with excising them from this one.
Even though my players were eager for a sandbox, they don't like the lack of structure. So lesson learned.

I've just finished the Sunblight questline, culminating with the dragon attacks on Ten Towns, and it was suitably epic, though the final confrontation was a little bit of a let-down (the dragon, not being Legendary, didn't fare great against the party once they locked it down with some movement-inhibiting spells, and I rolled terribly on its saves).

But it would be very easy to excise those couple of chapters from the campaign, given the amount of material available in chapter 2. With my players, I didn't touch on any of the Reghed Tribe related encounters (not deliberately, just worked out that way) but it'd be relatively easy to string those together into a coherent plot thread, then work in the Lost Spire of Netheril to start building plot points towards chapter 5.

 

[pukunui]

• The adventure describes apocalyptic climate conditions that have been going on for two years and then proceeds to basically hand-wave them because, as written, said conditions are way too extreme to realistically deal with while still telling the stories the writers want to tell. (Friendly dwarven merchants want to hire you to get their stolen ingots back? No. By this point, friendly dwarven merchants have degenerated into cannibalism, died, or fled the region. Nobody cares about ingots during the apocalypse.)

As frustrating as this sort of stuff is, I'm fairly certain it's by design so that you can completely ignore the metaplot and just use the book as a setting guide for Icewind Dale. They do that a lot. You can ignore the death curse and use Tomb of Annihilation as a guide to Chult. You can ignore the giants and use Storm King's Thunder as a guide to the Savage Frontier. You can ignore the drow and demons and use Out of the Abyss as a guide to the Underdark. And so on.

Yes, it does mean that the metaplot tends to be thin and not all of the side quests or other bits and pieces play nicely with it, but it does make for added value in that it's easier to adapt those bits and pieces for a homebrew campaign or whatever.

 

[Reynard]

Boringness is kind of their shtick. However, if you are playing them without an "always LE" flag you can throw up some ethical dilemmas, especially for dwarf PCs. "What if that guy I just killed was telling the truth about being screwed over by the surface dwarves?"

They are really squishy and easy to kill though, if I ran this adventure again I would make them much tougher.

By "boring" I meant as mechanically interesting opponents, not as characters. I like having irredeemable stock enemies so I have no problem with them being just plain evil.

I mixed in a couple types, and I also have some monster action house rules I use to make sure creatures with cool abilities get to use them. Briefly, I give most enemies with spell like abilities a recharge 4+ "cast any spell as a bonus action" ability. I use variations for other abilities, or allow melee opponents to stack knocking prone or forced movement onto attacks.

 

[Retreater]

As frustrating as this sort of stuff is, I'm fairly certain it's by design so that you can completely ignore the metaplot and just use the book as a setting guide for Icewind Dale. They do that a lot. You can ignore the death curse and use Tomb of Annihilation as a guide to Chult. You can ignore the giants and use Storm King's Thunder as a guide to the Savage Frontier. You can ignore the drow and demons and use Out of the Abyss as a guide to the Underdark. And so on.

Yes, it does mean that the metaplot tends to be thin and not all of the side quests or other bits and pieces play nicely with it, but it does make for added value in that it's easier to adapt those bits and pieces for a homebrew campaign or whatever.

Right. My first run-through of ToA had the death curse. Second time around, I cut it, and I encourage everyone who runs it to do the same. (You can still have dead uprisings and other reasons to go on the adventure. Just nothing as world-shattering as the death curse.) Had I fully thought it through, I would've cut the endless winter from RotFM - though it has much more of an impact on the setting than the death curse in ToA.

But that being what it is, my group is about 4 levels into RotFM and I have to salvage what I can from this disaster of a campaign.

 

[pukunui]

Right. My first run-through of ToA had the death curse. Second time around, I cut it, and I encourage everyone who runs it to do the same.

Precisely, although for my second run-through, I am merely delaying the death curse so that the players can enjoy roaming around the jungle and visiting the various adventure locations before I introduce the curse and draw them towards Omu.

Had I fully thought it through, I would've cut the endless winter from RotFM - though it has much more of an impact on the setting than the death curse in ToA.

Should I ever get to run this adventure, I intend to drastically shorten the period of time since the start of Auril's endless winter. (Most likely it'll be some time in what should be the first summer after she started and people will finally be starting to think "Hey, wait, this isn't normal, we never got a spring, and it's supposed to be summer but the sun's still not coming up!")

 

[Burnside]

Should I ever get to run this adventure, I intend to drastically shorten the period of time since the start of Auril's endless winter. (Most likely it'll be some time in what should be the first summer after she started and people will finally be starting to think "Hey, wait, this isn't normal, we never got a spring, and it's supposed to be summer but the sun's still not coming up!")

This is exactly what I did. Winter has continued through mid-summer. But it hasn't been two years. So the situation is desperate but it's not the lifeless, frozen desert that it would have to be after two years of the conditions described.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I've just finished the Sunblight questline, culminating with the dragon attacks on Ten Towns, and it was suitably epic, though the final confrontation was a little bit of a let-down (the dragon, not being Legendary, didn't fare great against the party once they locked it down with some movement-inhibiting spells, and I rolled terribly on its saves).

Absolutely. Once the players manage to catch up with it the dragon dies like a punk. If I run this adventure again I will drastically buff the dragon or make sure the party are no more than level 4 when they encounter it. There are a couple of other boss monsters who are very underpowered too: Gnoll Vampire, Xardorok Sunblight, Iriolarthas.

 

[MarkB]

So, my party are currently in Auril's abode, and are about to face the Trials of the Frostmaiden in order to recover the Codicil. That's where we left off last week, and this evening the Trials begin. So I need some advice - has anyone run this part yet?

Because, as written, they sound both very cool and extremely impractical. The way they begin - by teleporting everyone who's in the antechamber when the inner door is opened - is practically guaranteed to split the party, and that wouldn't be so bad, except that some of these trials go on for literally days. I could see one character being left behind in Auril's fortress while the others do their trial, with Auril due to get home in a few hours. Or one character teleported away to face a trial alone while the rest just hang around for the best part of a week.

My plan A was to make sure everyone keeps their position on the map updated (we're playing on Roll20) so I know who does and doesn't get taken, and then after the first trial they'll know how it works.

But I'm wondering if it's better to just have the trial teleport everyone in the main room when someone opens a door. That's going to be bad news for the awakened walrus who wasn't looking to take on any trials, but I don't think bringing him along will actually invalidate any of the trials.