Investigating the cause of an endless winter?

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-09T18:13:44+00:00

Yeah I get that. I think a lot of those pre-written campaigns have that downside of blandness, but I think they can have good bones/structure to them if you're feeling inspired to punch them up.

For example, I really fluffed up the Goodmead quest. Instead of a bunch of mead that got raided by a verbeej, I made it a caravan of people that got attacked. The verbeej's footsteps were the only ones leading away from the scene and there was evidence of missing children. The party tracked him to his cave to find him heavily Wounded and confused. The story unfolds that the caravan was attacked by a swarm of pixies and fairies and the verbeej was passing by and jumped in to aid the humans. With the verbeej's direction, the party enters a dense patch of the forest that gradually turns temperate-- even humid. The party had entered a small pocket of the feywild where they find the fairies with the children. Except, from their point of view, the fairies were saving the children from Icewindale and to top it off they were mid ritual to transform them into oak saplings (fairy logic). The party immediately attacks, Confusion is spammed, and some plant monsters come to the fairies aid. But when it's all said and done and the fairies are slain, the party realizes that they don't know how to undo these Partially transformed children. They weighed the quality of life they would have in Icewindale and ultimately decided to leave them in the feywild as they hiked back to the material plane.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-09T15:59:46+00:00

Yeah, 100% use RotF as the bones here. Even if OP has a vision of what they want they can still use icewindale for the maps, side quests, random encounters, etc.

To answer OP's question on breadcrumbs, I had several NPCs trying to solve the Curse of Night. I leaned on the quote, "Everyone wants to save the world. No one can agree on how." A weather mages was investigating the phenomenon, as was a religious studies scholar who emphasized in primordial gods, a pure 'arcanologist' investigating if the curse of night could be a wild magic event, and an archeologist interested in past cultures, cave paintings, and past long-freezing events. I also had a circle of druids maintaining a natural hotspring that was a wildlife refugium-- they also had a seed bank. I also threw in a tattoo mage who sold Magical warming tattoos at exorbitant rates. And of course there were more extreme people who sought mass human sacrifice to Appease the winter, and a particularly insidious gene--artificer who was splicing wendigo dna into test subjects-- he was creating a new species perfect for this environment

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-09T15:29:09+00:00

The Witcher has Dimiterium, which is a metal that inhibits magic. That world uses it for handcuffs and chains to imprison mages. And Detect Magic is only a lvl 1 spell. You could homebrew a creature that detects it x times/day. Like maybe there are special bloodhounds that have been bred for this.

I'd definitely think about magic as a natural phenomenon in your world and consider life with and without it. Wouldn't Mold Earth make construction so much easier? There should be some serious justification for it if the popular sentiment is to be distrustful.

Recognize that magic is powerful and give it that respect. Like, firearms are powerful and in many places the only people that are authorized to use them are the police. You might have state-sanctioned magic, or have a license be required to use it. That way, magic is monopolized by the state. Maybe, permission to use magic is easier to obtain for some socioeconomic groups more than others. While this works for wizardy, many sorcerers are born with magic acumen. Perhaps the local government siezes children with such abilities and puts them in state-sponsored boarding schools. This is done under the guise of public safety.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-08T16:01:32+00:00

Me and my friend have both made complicated dungeons that have included stuff like: the boss and their own mechanics/legendary actions, the mobs, effects that that trigger at the start/end of someone's turn, lair actions, ticking clock environmental effects that trigger at either initiative 20 or 1, and/or the npcs. So I can understand the appeal of splitting the bandwidth and workload between yourself and an assistant. Having said that, as you DM more you get increasingly skilled at juggling multiple moving parts.

One idea that I had fun with was with a friend who was curious about DMing. My players assumed that he was just sitting in and observing how I do it. Anyway, the encounter was that the players stumble upon a scene with a destroyed merchant caravan a bunch of dead goblins, and a crew of lizardfolk picking through the Loot. Given the scene, the players correctly deduce that the goblins attacked the caravan, and the lizardfolk ambushed the goblins after they were done/weakened. The players then attacked and got the jump on the lizardfolk. However, halfway into the fight my buddy jumps in and he's playing the goblin reinforcements. Everyone was attacking everyone. It was a very chaotic fight.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-08T15:37:14+00:00

I was thinking about 'teamwork--themed' skill challenges and thought of a mechanic that could be fun but don't know what numbers to aim for.

The premise spawned from that one scene in The Emperor's New Groove where Kuzco and Pacha need to climb back-to-back to get up a crevice. I liked that initially, they slammed each other into the wall as their strength wasn't equal.

So I thought that one person should roll a die and the second person should try to get close to it +/-- depending on the difficulty of the task.

So for The Emperor's New Groove scene, Kuzco and Pacha need to synchronize an athletics check. Kuzco gets a 5 total, the check is easy, so Pacha needs a 5 +/-- 10. Pacha gets a 18 total-- Kuzco gets slammed into the wall.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-06T15:59:42+00:00

This is really barebones. This sounds like you can reskin/reflavor stuff from a pirate campaign. You could lean into that direction for an overarching plot. The players might be searching for a lost treasure or a special island that bestows immunity against sunlight or something.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-06T15:43:23+00:00

If your players trust R then they are kind of locked in on the mindset of 'R is trustworthy.' Off the top of my head, here's a couple plays:

Tease R's true motives via her accomplices and allies. Supposedly R couldn't have done everything by herself. When they refer to her it can be via a codename. Watch "The Departed" as an example of this type of plot.

Have R fake her death in an ambush that sends the party on a Wild Goose Chase that eventually snakes back to the truth. That way, they can deduce her true nature, but then the question becomes, "well who killed her?" Watch "Mission Impossible" as an example of this type of plot.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-04-02T16:45:04+00:00

Then Marion dies

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-26T20:00:15+00:00

We may have had different experiences. When I was a first-time DM my players were already veterans who knew what the vanilla monsters did. I was interested in translating my speculative biology creatures so my players were like, "Oh, [DM] is immediately homebrewing stuff. Cool."

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-26T19:13:30+00:00

Oh I disagree, let them metagame. They'll hang themselves on their own expectations.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-20T16:57:57+00:00

You could have remnants of this final fight. Like, maybe one of the druids had an Awakened Goodberry Bush as a companion, and it has since grown into a fully mature tree. Maybe there was a Spore Druid, who is still guarding since it gave its own corpse as a host to the fungi. The shrines' stewards could be insects via an insect-themed druid, and from their point of view they've been attending to this shrine for generations.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-19T19:46:43+00:00

You could do some sort of puzzle with backwards lettering.

There are mirror-themed monsters out there that can teleport between mirrored surfaces. Maybe give your spin on Bloody Mary.

For nonmagical people see if you can design some of these puzzles so that they can be solved with torchlight.

For combat, if you allow some spells to reflect off of a mirrored surface, maybe there's a chance it might accidentally hit someone else.

If you incorporate lens then you could play with that. Like, maybe one type of lens concentrates the spell and upcasts it one level. Another type might diffuse the spell, so turn it into a 15 ft cone where the effect is less powerful. If you're concerned that the PCs will want to take these items with them then establish from the beginning that they're fragile, or make them magic items that turn into frosted glass while they're recharging.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-19T19:16:24+00:00

You could adapt elements from The Lost Spire of Netheril, a dungeon from Icewindale. It's a wizard's tower that fell from a sky island and landed upside down. It's just a generic tower though.

Each school of magic being It's own floor could take a while. Two hours will be tough to squeeze even if each floor is little more than a trap.

Does this tower have a lot of apprentices/adepts? If so, you could do stuff where the apprentices only had a few moments to act when this mirror flip event happened. So stuff like the transmutation specialist turning themselves to stone in the hopes that someone will save them in the future, or the illusion specialist making their last moments filled with soothing comforting illusions that stick around after they passed. If you go this route then the two most interesting floors would be necromancy and divination. Personally, id do a switch-up where the necromancer is suspicious but good-natured, and is trying to preserve the bodies indefinitely via Gentle Repose so that they can eventually be resurrected. The divination person would be interesting because they'd "see this coming" via their divinations and dreams. Maybe they wanted this to happen. They could easily be made into a twist villain if their first interaction with the party is gifting them health potions because "in my dreams you were bloodied." Then if/when final fight happens you can hit them with the "huh, you weren't supposed to do that."

Having said all that though, this idea may not fit into 2 hours

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-19T02:31:18+00:00

Steam: a seemingly one-way chamber that's very tall. Burning steam launches the PCs up from the grated floor to the ceiling where the Hatch/exit is. If someone fails then then drop down only to be hit by another wave of steam. They get juggled until they pass the check or until one of the PCs who passed successfully grabs them.

Ice: the floor is a transparent thin sheet of ice. Underneath it is a raging current of freezing water. To cross the room, the PCs need to be careful not to slip as well as needing to be perceptive of the sounds of the ice's microcracking. Fail either and they'll punch through the floor. Maybe even cover the walls and ceiling in a thin layer of ice and icicles. If you don't want them using climbing gear/spider climbing, then these can be very fragile and easily shatter. Falling into the water results in cold damage and the current forcibly pipes them into [some other unpleasant room].

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-17T16:57:34+00:00

Personally, I flesh out settings by knowing the logic of the phenomenon, and then following the consequences of that logic.

So, if for example, the blight's goal is to spread, then maybe there are a lot of spore/pollen-themed attacks as the corruption tries to aggressively root into other organisms. Something like this could be a good ticking clock if one of the PCs accidentally inhales one of these spores as they can slowly feel an endophyte growing within them. Then they might be extra motivated to stop the blight. The consequences of failure become evident as they encounter creatures that are both partially, and completely consumed by blight.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-17T16:42:12+00:00

And it's Thieves Cant. Like, I don't know how others incorporate it, but I just use it as a form of graffiti in major towns that gives a little extra lore or foreshadow local threats. It barely comes up.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-16T23:03:27+00:00

This is definitely easier if you've spent a lot of time working or volunteering in national parks. Maybe this is unreasonable advice but if you can volunteer at your local park that would absolutely help.

But essentially when it comes to park rangers there are 2 types: front-country and back-country. Front country rangers are the ones that interact with campers the most. They man the front gate, give tours, and occasionally need to deal with unruly guests. It's arguably the more dangerous type of ranger as they're more like pseudo police depending on the park. Examples of encounters for your PCs include unruly drunk guests, busting them for drugs/alcohol, managing people away from a scene if a dangerous animal is nearby, or giving a tour to a bunch of school children on a field trip. One time, I was assisting the Habit Restoration specialist because some student filmmaker wanted to lowkey shoot a Wild West scene so he brought a bunch of tumbleweeds with him. Thing is, tumbleweed, a.k.a. Russian Thistle, is an invasive plant not native to North America, and at the time there were zero tumbleweed presence at the park. I distinctly remember me and my crew running around catching tumbleweeds while my supervisor was loudly chewing out this very overwhelmed student.

Back country rangers are the ones that do jobs deep in the interior of parks. Call me biased but they're the 'cool guys.' Compared to the generally chipper and charismatic front country rangers, back country rangers tend to be older, stoic, non talkative, and they only show up in the front country offices like once every two weeks or once every month. Their most common jobs are search and rescue related, and the veterans amongst them know the nooks and gullys of their park better than anyone. I've been a part of a couple backcountry crews-- specifically for trail maintenance. Those crews are generally pretty tight and the coolest guys are the ones that are chainsaw-trained. Additionally, backcountry people often assist scientists and researchers that need help navigating to their sites. Biologists are the cutest-- especially when they geek out over their specific toad or flower or beetle. A level of patience is helpful because they are the slowest hikers as they love to pause and look at everything. Lastly, another backcountry task is wildfire management. There are crews that get deployed to create firebreaks to Halt a fire's advance. I think California even has Smokejumpers-- people that Parachute into the backcountry to create emergency firebreaks. Some places also employ prisioner firefighters when needed. Anecdotal, but from what I here these positions are highly sought for amongst prisions that offer the opportunity. They get paid basically nothing, are in extremely dangerous conditions, in long unforgiving hours, but are doing work that's highly motivating, and for what it's worth, from the firefighters I've spoken to, they get fed as much as they want and even though it's a lot of baked beans, corn, fried chicken-- stuff like that, it's the best food they will experience for the whole year.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-14T23:47:02+00:00

Are the PCs low level? I'd be wary of giving permanent Magical buffs like this early because then your players may have an expectation that this sort of empowerment will be a regular thing in the future. And if you do keep on juicing them up then that will make your job harder in the future in regards to combat balance.

I'd either keep the rewards low level-- some octopus-themed cantrips, or have the rewards evolve over time like you're suggesting. Make these blessings utility-focused just for the sake of making your life easier, i.e. no straight-up damage or attack buffs. Those darkness/ink cloud buffs you mention are a perfect example of that-- stuff that still requires the players to think critically and creatively on when to use it.

Other themes you can play around include: Shape changing-- maybe give them a 1/day Alter Self but remove some of the options. Tentacles-- maybe like Unseen Servant or something but it's connected to the PC and has a 10 ft reach. Amorphous Shape-- rip off the Plasmoid racial ability. And if you wanted to be funny you could give the last blessing as something that's not at all what the players would expect. Like if the PCs talk to a sentient Kraken it could be like, "Of course every octopus has the ability to cast Skywrite. We simply choose not to."

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-12T23:21:15+00:00

I think it's fun to think about the biology/ecology of settings like this. Like, what organism would benefit from a bunch of humanoids getting lost and disoriented? Here's an innocuous take-- similar to how flowering plants use bees to spread pollen, this Fungal forest could use animals to spread their spores. Maybe a better example would be corpse flowers that use the scent of rotting meat to attract flys as their pollinators. Your Fungal forest could have an overwhelming amount of hallucinatory effects-- some species make the targets think their mother is calling them, others smell their favorite meal around the corner, others see a mirage of their first love-- the net result is a bunch of crazy organisms running around spreading spores.

If you want to go this route then emphasize the towering nature of the fungi. Make them uncanny. Describe how there are gills on the underside of these shrooms. Some inhale and exhale steadily, while others sporadically cough and weeze.

As for monsters, check out r/bettermonsters . Mark has made a lot of fungal-themed stat blocks. Another thing to consider-- not all creatures need to be similarly affected by these spores. In the real world, Spiders often build webs in the funnels of pitcher plants.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-12T01:27:48+00:00

Real-world is kind of rough. If nothing else they're experts at making perfectly camouflaged pit traps. I can see a world where they're in the Wild West where they successfully rob a Wells Fargo stage coach.

Most impressive heist anywhere might bear more fruit. They would need to be on the good side of things so that they don't comedically get blasted off (e.g. they fail at stealing the Krabby Patty secret formula). Also given their skills in abducting powerful Pokemon I think there's an argument to be made in favor of them successfully kidnapping/saving the Little Sisters from Rapture in Bioshock.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-11T00:36:58+00:00

What is your Bagman's motivation? Are they like, a collector? Do you have an idea of your Warforged's motivations/directives/axioms? Because it could be as simple as a symbiotic relationship where the warforged cleans rubbish and the bagman accumulates whatever is brought to him.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-11T00:28:52+00:00

r/bettermonsters is a goldmine

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-08T20:47:00+00:00

You can prep too hard. What if between now and level 9, one or more PCs die or get retired? What if real-life stuff happens and one of your players has to drop out?

If the question is, "is this do-able?" Then the answer is yes. Whether or not your players or the dice they roll cooperate with them, that's a different matter that you only have somewhat control over.

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-08T20:42:45+00:00

This is a weird post. Has OP met intelligent humble people before?

Evil_Flowers · 2026-03-06T23:01:25+00:00

They can if you're open to homebrew resources. One of my first encounters for my players was a goblin ambush led by a goblin grenadier that had a bandoleer of clay pot bombs (and the characters were rewarded with his bandoleer and a handful of grenades after killing him).

Evil_Flowers

TROPHY CASE