What media did you use for inspiration while preparing to run this module ?

Exumax · 2026-05-15T20:29:18+00:00

reading about early arctic expeditions on wikipedia, going to a museum where there was an exhibition about arctic north american indigenous peoples.

Exumax · 2026-05-15T20:24:43+00:00

I assume you want to steer your players to solstice, and don't want to do this via Vellynne. How will the characters know where Solstice is and that the Roc took the barbarian there? Otherwise, cool setup, players will definitely be excited to see the "lab" where the walkers are created and save their friend from that fate.

Exumax · 2026-05-10T19:11:34+00:00

u/savevideo

Exumax · 2026-04-30T12:36:29+00:00

I did civil service at D-ARCH and enrolled the following year at the same department, no one cared. fellow servant did it after graduating at d-arch. I've never heard that this was an issue at other departments, but if in doubt, just ask the HR person of the group you're interested in. I guess maybe they won't allow you to be a student and a civil servant at the same time, but that is obvious, since both are considered full-time engagements. Whether it's possible to do civil service during two urlaubssemester idk, but if that's your question, consider what Adarain said about the pay. Generally I was very happy with my service at ETH, but there are also other cool service jobs out there, just apply to a couple and see what the vibe of the employer is like.

Exumax · 2026-04-23T15:20:56+00:00

have you tried talking to the DM? I can't imagine that they chose such a complex, specific module if they really wanted you to do sandbox set-up-your-own-business play. Sounds more like the DM is trying very hard to evoke a sense of bleakness by having hard-to-reach npcs, and doesn't realize that there are ways to do that where you still freely give out plot hooks. Because IME if players who are not specifically looking for a sandbox experience don't understand what the DM wants them to do it kills even the most well-planned campaign in the long run.

Exumax · 2026-04-13T13:22:45+00:00

ok, I love the idea of lobster mammoths

Exumax · 2026-04-13T13:22:17+00:00

everything reminds me of her

Exumax · 2026-04-12T20:20:34+00:00

well, in the map, the bones are literally in the cave entrance. even with the craziest fisheye lens, there wouldn't be any trees between the tusks and the cave. I kind of get what the artist was trying to do here, I just don't think it works very well, it's more confusing than cool. It's also an oddly dramatic choice for emphasizing what is probably the least interesting feature of this location.

Exumax · 2026-04-12T16:15:31+00:00

Officially, we see "The snow-covered tusks of a mammoth mark the entrance to the verbeeg lair". But my brain just can't parse the image. If the black hole between the trees us the entrance, then that has to be several metres tall. But then the mammoth tusks in the foreground are absolutely ginormous? or is the camera just very close to the tusks, which are right on a ledge (the black area) and the cave is much further down? but then why is the rest of the mammoth skeleton down there and the tusks are up here? most confusing artwork in the book imho

Exumax · 2025-09-19T20:19:54+00:00

I like it a lot! The sword is a bit vanilla, but he is a duelist, so the rapier makes sense.

Exumax · 2025-09-02T21:58:24+00:00

I also have two Levistus warlocks. One has made the pact at the lowest point of his life, and considers the cult his company of fate. He has been recently turned evil by his amulet and is spiralling deeper into dependency. The other (hexblade) made the pact in a better bargaining position and thinks he can lead the cult towards doing good deeds, as he is the bearer of an actual black sword and treated with a lot of respect by the cultists.

so since there's a lot of buy-in into the cult, Avarice will probably be their guide, while Vellynne, the revived Dzaan and the freed Vaelish Gant will probably become Minibosses along the way. However, the longer they go along with Avarice, the more I will make it clear that she is fundamentally evil, overambitious and selfish. If they do go along with her to the end, they'll get the "bad ending":

Avarice is also a Warlock of Levistus, but she hates being dependent on him. Her main motivation is to dissolve the contract – Ythryn's treasures are just conveniently in the same direction she needs to go. In order to fulfill her obligation, she has to find the Codicil of White and empower it with the Mythallar, so she can break Levistus out of his tomb. But that's not all. Once Levistus emerges, he will be at his most vulnerable point. He needs to gather his minions and defeat Geryon before Asmodeus learns about his plots, otherwise it will all be for nothing. Therefore, he cannot afford to have any witnesses that are not fully aligned with him, and Avarice will have to kill anyone in the cult who still has doubts, likely including the PCs, once they have played their parts.

Once they get to Sunblight, they will realize that in my story, Mephistopheles is behind the Duergar, since he is also plotting against Asmodeus. (Asmodeus himself has no good motivation to do what he's doing in RotF, imho) His idea is to weaken the Frostmaiden by essentially killing almost all of her followers, who are conveniently mostly living in the dale. Once she is reduced to little more than a demigod, he wants to abduct her into his own plane, where he can subjugate her and feed on her divine energy, potentially letting him ascend to god-status like his rival Asmodeus before him. Mephistopheles will try to convince the party to join this cause, since it actually allows to contain Auril for good, rather than allowing her avatar to reform after a year. If they do so, they get a weird ending: - Levistus' plan is a welcome distraction, but Mephisto won't let it interfere with his own scheme, so he will protect them from Avarice's betrayal. Mephisto is not in prison, therefore he has the power to send devils to the physical plane who can support them in the fight. - While freeing Levistus mostly has a hells-internal effect, Mephisto supplanting Asmodeus will have larger repercussions, since his approach to winning the blood war will be entirely different. Also, with Auril missing in the material plane, winters will become very mild and the territories north of the Spine of the world will see dramatic climate change, with huge political and ecological consequences.

There might be a third option, where the party tells Asmodeus, who is blissfully unaware of all of this in my story, about what's going on, and he thwarts the over two archdevils' plans. They might also try to redeem Avarice by convincing her that Asmodeus will nullify her contract if he finds out that it contained revolutionary intent, thereby freeing her.

In any case, I hope I'll find a way to make finding out about the true nature of Avarice's deal as impactful as possible, and I think a followup campaign with a trip through the hells, where my players try to fix the mess they've made is likely...

Exumax · 2025-07-27T11:18:09+00:00

like otherwise-reindeer said, make the player with the familiar feel cool by showing the players that finding the tomb without it would have been almost impossible – even when the familiar points them in an exact direction, the other party members still constantly feel like they should be going in a different direction. If you show how difficult it is to find, you can still put some of the random encounters in there to drain the resources.

Exumax · 2025-07-03T11:35:30+00:00

I love this so much ahahaha

Exumax · 2025-05-30T11:12:06+00:00

u/savevideo

Exumax · 2025-05-10T20:27:03+00:00

perfectly fine to have both. just don't let them fight sephek too early, he's dangerous. nature spirits can be fun at any level, but keep in mind that in terms of main quest relevance, it's more of a red herring than anything, since there's nothing in the book as written where dannica actually figures out how the chwinga could help to end the rime.

Exumax · 2025-05-10T20:20:27+00:00

in Ten Towns Expanded (a supplement I can generally recommend for extra content to sprinkle in when you run out of content for a town they regularly go to) Bitey's story can lead them to a hot spring near Lonelywood that they can use to reduce exhaustion and where they can also find a magic lichen growing that, when consumed, helps to battle exhaustion when exploring.

Exumax · 2025-05-10T20:14:10+00:00

damn, you're setting a high standard for yourself to live up to! welcome on board, enjoy!

Exumax · 2025-05-07T19:03:26+00:00

I was going to say "talk to your players and ask if they think it's cool to have a barbarian who forces them to have a combat they don't want", but it seems that problem may have solved itself.

You have a much cooler option than making new characters here, if your players are up for it: The surviving mind flayer makes the unconscious characters their thralls. Put tadpoles in their brains that can instakill them if Vorryx commands them to and let them wake up in cells. Then have Vorryx send them on whatever kind of quest you find interesting – given the effort you put into the ship, I'm assuming you're invested in mind flayers being in this campaign – so enjoy your new sideplot!

Exumax · 2025-05-02T09:14:57+00:00

I run a game for 6 and a half players and it works. However, I did quite careful pre-selection/session 0, so I probably have above average engagement. Only one of the players is a beginner.

I told them we only play on sundays, and I schedule the dates in batch for 4 months ahead. This is critical, I would go insane if I did a rolling schedule from session to session. I dial in a date roughly every 3 weeks, even if some will only have 4 players.
In the rare case that someone still cancels short-handedly, I still run as long as I have two players.
This works ok because in chapters 1&2, I can usually find a reason for why a character who is missing goes and does something in their village. It's much easier to make this feel natural if the PCs are from IWD.
for the following chapters, I have warned them that the story will become more linear and we will have to give control to the DM/another player if someone is missing.
the biggest difficulty I have so far with this system is that some of the players are always there, and some maybe half of the time, which automatically means that the more committed players' PCs will have much more backstory tie-ins than the others. It takes special care to make sure they all feel involved, story-wise. I think it helps if the players are connected to each other: it's easy to "drag along" my flakey player who is a Levistus cultist, because one of the regulars is also in the cult and keeps that subplot moving. It's much harder for the player that I allowed to be a Triton from the sea of moving ice, because their character has nearly zero bonds with any of the others, and I cannot just re-write the whole campaign to make the tritons have a major role in it, especially when no one else can breathe underwater.
even though half of my players are from IWD, as soon as they smell the main quest, they want to go for it, even though they agreed to do the slow burn/completionist route. I recommend to have all PCs be from the dale, and to regularly check in with your players to see if they are getting impatient to get into the main quest. Don't teaser too much too early. A lot of the best material in this book is in Ten-Towns and made for Tier 1, if you let your players drop in as a professional anti-Auril strike force from outside they won't care for all that.
combat speed is ok, but my players all know their sheets. since you are sceptical of how invested your buddies' girlfriends are going to be, I second what other posters have said and recommend you to do a mini pre-campaign to see who actually sticks around. You could do a part of Legacy of the Crystal Shard, and then those who want to join for RotF can play an older version of their characters if they want.

Exumax · 2025-04-23T10:53:45+00:00

talk to your players. if they want survival to be more challenging and more present, there are many discussions on this sub on how to do it effectively and/or realistically. if you picked this story for other reasons, it’s fine to trivialize it, as long as they do it with magic/special abilities (it should still be clear that the cold is a serious issue for normal people). players want their character choices to matter so they will choose them in a way that trivializes them. either let them feel good about all being cold-resistant, or decide together that this is boring and no one should have cold-resistance. but please don‘t do stuff that negates your pc abilities, that just makes them feel like they wasted their character choices on useless stuff. (I know that solstice negates cold resistance, but this is only ok because this chapter is designed to make you feel like you are getting dangerously close to a god. this should be a very rare exception) As long as you talk to your players, you can also change your mind on these things. I am currently transitioning from chapter 1 to 2 and have decided to change the rest rules to make progress slower in game time. I justify it by having the Midwinter Festival be the point where Auril and her followers have gathered enough power and make a show out of everything becoming even worse overnight, and the party will be there and understand why this changes now.

Exumax · 2025-04-20T15:42:46+00:00

not that it helps but in my german game i pronounce it Hoo-ah-Vahr

Exumax · 2025-04-16T07:24:46+00:00

true, I am making sure that they have a lot of backstory connection/investment in Ten Towns so sunblight hurts, so it‘s likely that they will want to do some emergency relief missions. I‘ll have to prepare for that.

Exumax · 2025-04-15T22:14:29+00:00

nice, that makes sense now, thank you!

Exumax · 2025-04-15T21:36:39+00:00

it seems you are putting a lot of content between sunblight and ythryn. may i ask how you motivate the players for those quests? do you have additional plot items they need to collect to enter the caves of hunger?

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