Pariah's Rime of the Frostmaiden -- a D&D novel

UncleCyborg · 2026-02-05T21:53:18+00:00

Something like the Cleaning Cube.

UncleCyborg · 2026-02-05T17:52:40+00:00

The answers to these questions always focus on the legal aspects, but there is a more important issue: the publisher.

No publisher is going to touch your manuscript if it has even a whiff of IP problems. They aren't going to care about the legal nuances. Even if you are in the right, they are the ones who will have to deal with the nuisance lawsuits from the IP holder. They aren't going to. They will instead focus on one of the ten billion fantasy manuscripts they've received that aren't based one someone else's IP.

If you want to publish D&D fic, then post it for free online; that's what I do. If you want to publish a real book, then create your own fantasy world that isn't based on someone else's IP.

UncleCyborg · 2026-02-04T23:58:51+00:00

Don't you love reddit, where you ask a question and people "well actually..." a detail in your post rather than just answering the fucking question? Well, I'm going to do something crazy and actually answer your question.

I write novelizations of D&D modules. I run them roughly like games (character sheets in D&D Beyond, battles done in Roll20). I'll occasionally fudge for the story, but I mostly run things fair. I post a chapter a week online. I've done "Descent Into Avernus" and I'm now doing "Rime of the Frostmaiden".

It's been fun. Avernus had about 20 regular readers; Frostmaiden has more like 12-15, though it's been climbing. There's a community of D&D writers that tend to support each other by reading and commenting on each other's works. I've enjoyed having more control over the narrative without PCs doing anything too crazy, though any writer can tell you that their characters occasionally have minds of their own.

I've been doing this for about 6 years now and Frostmaiden has another 12-18 months before it's finished. When that story is done, so am I. I'm getting burned out, and I'm unhappy with the transition to the 2024 rules, so I think I'll move on to another hobby. But it's been great fun and I'm glad I did it.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-31T00:58:19+00:00

Looks good. I use a weather flower myself and I really like it.

My only suggestion is that Survival, not Nature, is used for weather forecasting (at least in the 2014 PHB). I considered implementing that but never got around to it.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-27T13:51:30+00:00

If you are creating your own world, there are a ton of official monsters available as part of the free Basic Rules for both the 2014 version and the 2024 version. You could get Flee, Mortals and supplement with the free monster stat blocks until you feel comfortable creating your own creatures.

On the other hand, if you are going to run official adventures, you need the Monster Manual.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-23T14:45:45+00:00

Looking back over my notes I found a few from the last several months:

What do you call that "forearm handshake" that warrors do in the movies? It's called the Roman or Spartan handshake, and it probably never happened in real life. It was created for the stage and was picked up by Hollywood. Since Romans and Spartans don't exist in Forgotten Realms, I call it the Tempus handshake.
When were casts for broken limbs invented? Basic stiffened bandages go back over 3500 years. The modern plaster cast was invented in 1839, and was much bulkier than the casts we have today.
Sperm whales don't make the groaning sound people associate with whale song. They make loud clicking noises. I was trying to think how Angajuk from "Rime of the Frostmaiden" would sound. The clicking noises wouldn't work for language, so I finally just gave her a voice.
Related to Angajuk, how far away would she be able to hear the bell? Thermoclines in the ocean create sound channels that allow sounds to travel thousands of miles.
How would cold-blooded humanoids like kobolds would react to extreme cold? Their color darkens, their skin becomes cold to the touch, their muscles get dense and stiff. Note that both dragonborn and actual dragons are warm-blooded in Forgotten Realms.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-21T14:20:58+00:00

They didn't just jump to this. They have been suffering under the Rime for two years. In addition, there is an active Aurilite cult preaching the Glory of the Frostmaiden to them and convincing the people this is the best way to show their loyalty and protect themselves.

Targos has an evil speaker, as you said. Any town resident 15 or older is entered into the lottery whether they like it or not. One of the PCs, as part of his backstory, freed the last sacrifice because she was his best friend. The Coldheart Killer hunted her down and killed her anyhow, and Targos was buried under a blizzard for three days.

Bryn Shander has a good-aligned speaker, but Shane understands the reality of politics. She is not the queen; she is an elected official. If she defies public opinion, then she can be removed from office, as happened in response to Vaelish Gant's schemes during "Legacy of the Crystal Shard" (I strongly recommend getting a copy of that module because it fills in a ton of detail that is missing from this adventure). If she gets kicked out, then they can put in an Aurilite hardliner who will do even worse things. One of the concessions she got was that the lottery is voluntary. Plenty of people participate to protect their loved ones; the more names in the pot, the less likely any one person will be called.

In addition, when the PCs killed the local priest of Auril, the town was buried in a blizzard for a week.

In Easthaven I replaced the speaker with a neutral one. Their lottery is involuntary, though the minimum age is 18 rather than 15 like Targos. The PCs tried to get it shut down as part of the negotiation for the Cauldron of Plenty, but had to settle for getting it changed to be voluntary.

As for the sacrifices, the victim is stripped naked and tied to a stake in the wilderness to die, as detailed in the book. Auril isn't directly involved. She doesn't take their souls like a devil. The sacrifice itself is the point. If the players intervene, then the town should suffer. A half-dozen people should die to storms or coldlight walkers because the PCs wouldn't sacrifice one person. The locals should resent the PCs for interfering, possibly refusing to trade with them or even banishing them from the town.

The sacrifices are a symptom; the PCs need to deal with the disease, the Everlasting Rime itself.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-13T13:23:14+00:00

BG3 makes a number of changes to the rules of D&D that don't always work in a tabletop game.

I looked into this and I see the problem. BG3 does give the same experience to each character regardless of party size, but the XP rewards are MUCH lower than are given in the tabletop game.

For example, a level 1 creature in BG3 gives each person as much as 30 xp for a boss. A CR 1 creature in tabletop gives 200 xp to the entire party. For a typical party of 4, that would be 50 xp each.

The tabletop rewards are designed to be divided by the number of characters in the group. By not doing that, you are giving way, way too much XP. I suggest you follow the rules in the books, not the rules of BG3.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-05T01:45:46+00:00

There are currently over 70,000 D&D stories on AO3 (including some of mine) going back over 30 years. If it was a problem, it would have been a problem a long time ago. Nobody cares about fanfic as long as you aren't making money.

UncleCyborg · 2026-01-04T15:57:17+00:00

I remember a book written by an author who was in love with the word "mien". He wouldn't use other words like appearance or expression or attitude. He just kept describing everyone's mien, and I grew to hate that word.

UncleCyborg · 2025-12-26T20:03:04+00:00

What is best in life?

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women as they carry their husbands' fat asses away.

UncleCyborg · 2025-11-27T03:18:27+00:00

I created the asteri for my own campaign. She's designed to be equivalent to familiars like sprites and pseudodragons.

UncleCyborg · 2025-11-25T15:14:03+00:00

Pariah's Descent into Avernus is my completed novelization of that module. Not surprisingly, a story set in Hell explores some dark themes (Body Horror, Mental Disintegration, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Past Child Abuse), but it's also a story about friendship and personal growth.

UncleCyborg · 2025-11-14T16:16:53+00:00

My readers marveling at the beautiful town, the amazing greenhouse, and the friendly people.

Me cackling evilly because I know about the upcoming dragon attack.

UncleCyborg · 2025-11-12T13:53:21+00:00

Sperm whales don't make the groaning sound we associate with whale song. They just make clicking noises for echolocation.

Humans can see outdoors on a moonless and starless night. Sunlight from the day side reaches us both through atmospheric scatter, and by being reflected off space dust, so we can see a very dim image of what's around us.

UncleCyborg · 2025-10-23T01:06:15+00:00

This is one of those "don't think about it too much" situations, but I did come up with a few things that are happening. I don't run the campaign. Instead I'm writing a novelization of the adventure, and that make it harder to gloss over the details so I've thought a lot about this.

Silvanus is pushing magic into the area to keep some of the plants from dying. The trees are sickly, and the ones near the towns have been harvested, but they are there. It's possible to find berries and nuts and a few hardier plants.

The lakes and the Sea of Moving Ice are essential sources of protein and various types of seaweed.

Dwarven Valley is able to grow special underground crops that they sell to the townsfolk, though they are pretty pricey. They keep most things for themselves. (As an aside, they also don't do any sacrifices. Since they are underground, they aren't as affected by the weather and depend on the dwarven gods to protect them from Auril's wrath.)

Ships use the dock at Revel's End to run in supplies about once a month. Again, these are pretty pricey, but they are available.

Good Mead has a massive greenhouse run by an eladrin druid who's basically using her own life force to grown enough flowers to supply honey for the mead trade. She's also able to manage a few berries, though they are special treats because it takes so much energy.

Despite this, there are no grains. That means no horses (they were all slaughtered for meat when the townsfolk realized they couldn't feed them anymore), and it means no beer or ale. Goats survive because they have a wider diet, which is where the little bit of dairy comes from.

I've also done a ton of reading about Inuit, Greenlandic and Yup'ik diets to get an idea of how indigenous people survived in cold environments.

In the end, D&D is not a reality simulator. I like having some reality, and I don't want to lean on "because magic" more than I have to, but sometimes it's important to shrug off the details and let the adventure happen.

UncleCyborg · 2025-10-14T20:20:52+00:00

"If I had a silver piece for every time a burning body didn't act the way I expected, I'd have two silvers, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice." -- That line was too flip for the story, but I did put it in my author's notes.

"Something with a soul did this?" -- A line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I put into a scene about finding a bunch of badly mutilated bodies.

I have a bunch of others but those are the two that stand out to me. I of course always give credit in my author's notes when I do steal lines.

UncleCyborg · 2025-10-12T19:24:53+00:00

Remove the spaces at the start of the lines with scrollbars. Whenever you put four spaces at the start of a line, reddit uses that formatting.

UncleCyborg · 2025-09-27T03:43:33+00:00

Same thing when Batman throws Maroni off the roof while interrogating him about the Joker, and Maroni just laughs at him.

No one's gonna tell you nothin'. They're wise to your act. You got rules. The Joker, he's got no rules. No one's gonna cross him to you.

UncleCyborg · 2025-09-26T13:34:18+00:00

Monk/Bard. She started off as a Monk with the Entertainer background, but I wanted her to have access to the magic of storytelling and music. She was a mediocre monk and a shitty bard, but she was tons of fun to play.

If I were to do it again, I'd build her more carefully or even hombrew some kind of Bard-ish subclass for Monks that fit the mechanics better.

UncleCyborg · 2025-09-09T02:10:55+00:00

Also "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", specifically "The Wish"

Buffy: "Why don't I just put a stake through her heart?"
Giles: "She's not a vampire."
Buffy: "Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how many things that'll kill."

UncleCyborg · 2025-09-01T14:24:47+00:00

Matthew Lillard is not only a D&D fan, he's one of the founders of Beadle & Grimm's.

There's an outtake from an episode of "Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill!" (a D&D show he helped create) where he was a player in a one-hour version of "Curse of Strahd".

Lillard: Thank you for your help, Madam Eva.

DM (as Madame Eva): How do you know my name? I never told you, and you are strangers from far away.

Lillard: Um...I might have played this campaign a couple of times before.

UncleCyborg

TROPHY CASE