Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden

Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition

by Christopher Perkins

SOME SECRETS ARE WORTH DYING FOR

Feel the cold touch of death in this adventure for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

In Icewind Dale, adventure is a dish best served cold.

Beneath the unyielding night sky, you stand before a towering glacier and recite an ancient rhyme, causing a crack to form in the great wall of ice. Beyond this yawning fissure, the Caves of Hunger await. And past this icy dungeon is a secret so old and terrifying that few dare speak of it. The mad wizards of the Arcane Brotherhood long to possess that which the god of winter’s wrath has so coldly preserved—as do you! What fantastic secrets and treasures are entombed in the sunless heart of the glacier, and what will their discovery mean for the denizens of Icewind Dale? Can you save Ten-Towns from the Frostmaiden’s everlasting night?

Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is a tale of dark terror that revisits the forlorn, flickering candlelights of civilization known as Ten-Towns and sheds light on the many bone-chilling locations that surround these frontier settlements.

Genres: Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games, Fantasy, Gaming, Forgotten Realms, Fiction, Reference

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 15, 2020

About the author

Chris Perkins is a Canadian American game designer and editor who is known for his work on Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, currently as the senior story designer.

Reviews

[Raechel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel a little weird rating this book, but it's also 300+ pages and I read through all of it to prep for my campaign. So it's going to count on my reading list, lol.

This is a pretty solid adventure that goes from 1-12, but it does need some adjustment. There's a helpful NPC that the players have no reason to trust... and a dragon encounter that feels really hopeless. Also some of the player secrets have a pretty lame resolution to them, which I will have to change.

However, this has some good bones to it and I like the setting. Looking forward to running it!

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE AFTER RUNNING THE MODULE IS BELOW THE REVIEW

Rime of the Frostmaiden sets out to create a modern horror module for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, and it does so with style and unmistakable passion for its influences. With inspiration stemming from John Carpenter’s The Thing, H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, and Ridley Scott’s Alien (among others), it succeeds at blending shades of dread, horror, isolation, and paranoia with good old-fashioned DND adventure. The result is a dark mix of fun for horror buffs and classic adventure fans alike.

From a DM’s perspective, the book is a polished, well-organized toy box of exciting things to pick and choose from. Adventure hooks, side quests, player secrets and more, all come in various flavors of horror and adventure. It’s also got a sense of humor, which crops up from time to time to give the story some welcome levity. This is a book that had me brainstorming fun ways to use its content, rather than wondering how I would make it work.

Some new things in the book that I like:
- The “player secret” mechanic is a welcome addition. This is something DMs usually have to home brew to get players invested in a new adventure setting. Having the options pre-made and tailored to the story, plus suggestions on how to use those secrets later on, is just good design. I hope this continues with further modules
- Lots of new monsters. The bestiary section of the book contains dozens of new monsters to spring on veteran DND players. Let’s be honest: there’s nothing better than facing something brand new and terrifying
- A handful of magic items and spells are also new, but didn’t wow me as much. Most of the magic items seemed made to help players survive the terrain, and the 3 new spells were level 1, 7, and 9, so only one will be available for the majority of the adventure. There are a couple of scrolls I won’t spoil that are amazing over-the-top items, though

Without getting into spoilers, I’ll say that I also appreciate the sort of “epilogue” options, which tee up a continued adventure should your group choose to keep going.

A few months ago when I learned what this book was going to be (horror in the tundra inspired by some of my favorite movies & stories), I was definitely excited. I’m happy to say the book lives up to the hype and then some, harkening back to the stylized horror and epic scale of Curse of Strahd (which makes sense, thanks to Chris Perkins’ writing on both). I can’t wait to visit the frozen wastes of Icewind Dale and see what’s trapped in the ice...


****UPDATE AFTER RUNNING THE MODULE FOR 6+ MONTHS****

Full disclosure, my group (which finished Descent into Avernus) ran out of steam on this one and we did not get past the first Icewind Dale section of the adventure. Here’s why:

After running this module, I would have to amend my review to 3 stars at most. There is a major problem with the module that, if run as written in the book, causes problems from the first session and can ruin momentum and motivation right away.

Part of the setup for RotF is that the towns are practicing human sacrifice to appease the Frostmaiden. There’s no info on why they do this other than superstition, so right away when the characters are supposed to work with the town officials and townsfolk, the party distrusts and actually antagonizes them.

The town officials and townsfolk are the key to many quests, but right off the bat, the party is not motivated to help anyone. This means you’ll need to quickly backpedal and/or homebrew a cult or something that’s forcing the townsfolk to perform human sacrifices.

Also, the Frostmaiden isn’t part of the immediate action for a VERY long time in the book. Essentially, she is not present or a threat until the late game. If you want to keep her relevant, make a cult serving her that is forcing the human sacrifices.

From the format of the book, it seems like RotF would be better for higher level players, and the campaign should start after all the running around Icewind Dale, maybe in the Sunblight chapter.

In order to keep things interesting, I had to do a lot of homebrew and alterations. It got to be too much work for me, and the group was already kind of down on the adventure anyway.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

We've played nearly all the pre-written adventures and to finally get an answer as to what the black obelisks are is great. Pg 255 if you want to find the answer. However, otherwise this adventure is poorly done. There's no plot, it's essentially random encounters until level 7 and your adventuring heroes are supposed to ignore the fact that the sun doesn't come up, and hasn't for two years. What heroes ignore the most obvious quest hook ever? If you like a sandbox game, then maybe this book is to your liking, but for me this is one of the poorer offerings from Wizards.

[Callum Woodward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read every page in this book and not just flicked through looking at the pretty pictures, I have a fairly good idea of how everything fits together. While there's a lot that is fantastic in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, there are a few central plot points that leave me scratching my head. They work, they're just unexpected from what I presumed the adventure would pertain to.

Let's break this up in two sections, one for players and one for DMs. If you plan on playing, just read the first section (don't worry, I'll let you know when I'm changing). If you don't mind spoilers or are planning on running the game, go ahead and read both sections. First up is for players:

Playing through this, the opening chapters provide a LOT of leeway to go nuts and have a bunch of freedom and fun while completing the quests and learning everything that Icewind Dale has to offer. Learning about NPCs and how they progress through the story is brilliant. With a few options to take out of the book for character creation, this adventure allows you to work with your DM to create a backstory that suits the setting as either an inspiration to get you started or something to tie your already planned chronicle of what they did before winding up here. The best part is that a lot of what's given is also included in the adventure's narrative, providing a personal stake in the happenings of Icewind Dale with some cases either being able to provide the party with an advantage, by means of lore or something else. This adventure also allows a collection of races, which are commonly considered unplayable due to sunlight sensitivity, to be played without hinderance because of the sun being blocked out by Icewind Dale's everlasting winter.

While your playgroup will likely have humourous scenarios throughout the course of this adventure, it is largely inclusive of horror moments. As Perkins writes, a large part of the adventure is isolation. Being trapped in an inescapable tundra filled with blizzards and monsters that lurk within the aforementioned obscuring ice storms, you won't know what's behind you until it's too late. I had a lot of Curse of Strahd vibes while reading this so if you're familiar with the gothic and vampiric nature of Ravenloft, you'll have an idea of what to be prepared for.

Time for the DMs (read as "It's time for spoilers!"):

There is so much you can use in the opening few chapters. Perkins has delivered a gold mine of quests, NPCs, inspiration and maps for you to use in whatever game you want - even one not centred in Icewind Dale. It gives both you and the players so much freedom that you can pretty much run these short quests that set the tone of the campaign and allows players to interact with each other and the scenarios they find themselves in.

Once they've done a few quests within the towns, the players find themselves in the surrounding wilderness to find more secrets hidden within the snow covered land. Perkins provides a brilliant table for you to use for wilderness encounters that makes complete sense - because he includes a weather table that scales with the likelihood a monster would appear in such conditions. The thought that went into helping the person running this adventure is so wonderful to stumble upon and smile at.

Even in chapter 4 when a dragon construct is rampaging the towns that the players have to stop, the adventure provides what happens if the characters aren't present in a town to stop the destruction - involving casualties, town damage and the general response of the town and whether or not they fight back. However, I found that after felling the dragon the story took a turn I didn't expect. The players then go to Auril's abode and - whether they defeat her there or not - find themselves needing to go to a place not foreshadowed to have much to do with their current objective. With that said, the course players get set on in the second half of the book would likely be the best moments for horror to truly take them by the throat and it works, it just feels like two seperate adventures stitched together.

Once all is said and done, the adventure provides an epilogue section to help DMs guide the players and characters out of the story rather than just ending like it did in Baldur's Gate: Decent into Avernus. The appendices following are great and while magic items are limited in this book the creatures section makes up for it, providing another CR8 creature for characters to polymorph into along with some ingenious creations that further cements my love for ideas that Perkins conjures up in his wild imagination. New spells are also included but unless you ignore what the adventure presents, players won't be able to access them til late game and considering this is written for levels 1-10, the level 1, 7 and 9 spells will only have one third available for use and be pretty useless compared to what they could otherwise cast at that point anyway.

As a whole, I'm really looking forward to running this adventure and seeing how it plays out rather than just reading it. It's a little like reading the dictionary start to finish and then writing something using all the cool words you've used. I really enjoyed reading this. There are things included to make you smile as you're going through it, finding Easter eggs left referencing books, films and older adventures. I enjoyed all the quests Perkins included and how they involve in the wider narrative, I just hope I do the transition between the first and second half of the book justice.

Also Goliaths now have cold resistance when picking it as a race from this book, so that's pretty neat.

[Bracken · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as horror adventures go, it's aimed too squarely at the middle of the road. But I get it. D&D is intended to be a broadly accessible game, and suitable for kids. Had just hoped for more with nods to At the Mountains of Madness and John Carpenter's The Thing. Both are off the mark. It's more relatable to a darkened version of Frozen.

[Iain]

Ok, back to D&D. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden came out in September of 2020. It's a hefty book - at 300+ pages for $49.99, there's a lot in here. Even when you pick up the book, it *feels* like there is a lot to it. Put it this way: there's almost 100 pages of extra material after the end of the adventure. This is where all the monster stats are located, but there's also bonus material like "player secrets" that DMs can use to add some extra flavor to their games.

If having secrets in your party seems kind of cold, well then you've nailed the theme of this book. Icewind Dale is a location in the North of the Forgotten Realms. A god known as Auril the Frostmaiden has cast an "Everlasting Rime" (that's right on time…ok sorry) that keeps Icewind Dale in eternal winter. A collection of settlements known as "Ten-Towns" are the bit of civilization in this part of the world, but won't exist much longer if Auril's Rime isn't stopped. That's where the PCs come in…eventually. This adventure plays from Level 1 to Level 11, so there's a lot of adventure before the characters take on this frozen god.
I Think It's Very Vital

If the "cold" theme doesn't come through enough from the cover and introduction to the story, the adventure begins with a "Cold Open". Considering that I've never seen another D&D book use the words cold open to start their introduction to the players, the Dad in me appreciates the pun there. The book "starts" with a series of quests to get the players used to the various parts of Ten-Towns. I put starts in quotations because this section of the book is technically the first third of the adventure, taking the characters up to level 4.

Especially when compared to some of the "on-rails" type adventures that D&D5e has put out in the past, the open world nature of this piece of the campaign is very refreshing. When you get to the later aspects of the adventure, you realize even more how important this early part of the game is. I won't give a bunch of spoilers, but I will say that the more invested you can get your players in the people of Ten-Towns, the more impactful the later storylines will get.
It's like that y'all, but we don't quit

A lot of adventures really start to bog down in the middle of the campaign. I feel like this comes from trying to stretch an ongoing challenge across multiple levels and making each piece of the adventure just as impactful. Icewind Dale takes a different approach to this. It continues the "open-world-ness" of the first portion of the adventure and kicks the players out into the wilderness to tackle various problems and rumors that they've heard back in Ten-Towns. At first, it makes you think "ok, when are we getting to the point", until you realize that this *is* the point. This portion of the adventure helps drive the point home about the cold environment and the impacts that it is having on everyone. It helps make the world "feel" more real.

Plus, these side-quests can provide some needed randomness and variety to your D&D games. These are not straightforward adventures for your characters to churn through. One takes you to an area with a bunch of goliaths - some of which will challenge you to "Goat-ball" (their version of dodgeball). Another one takes you to an abandoned pirate ship in the ice - but players might regret trifling with the "booty" here! My favorite of these adventures involves a bunch of "Gnome Ceremorphs", which are mind-flayers who have absorbed gnomes and are SOOOO CUTE! It's a good thing this adventure isn't extremely horrifying, because it would be hard to make these anything but adorable.

Once you get to the "meat" of the adventure, it plays out very similar to your standard D&D adventure. As I mentioned previously, some of these aspects will play out better if you get your players invested early into the people of Ten-Towns. One aspect that I thought was interesting to me was that in one of the big encounters, the book provides a list of non-combat related activities happening at the same time. Meaning, while your party is doing the fighting, there are background tasks that players could choose to help with if they aren't as effective in this particular combat.

Another weird note is that you might think that the final confrontation is against Auril to take out the everlasting rime. You actually end up doing this around level 8 or so. There's an option for her to fall back and attack players at another time, but the book makes it seem like this is not the most likely scenario. However, the defeat of Auril quickly flows into the final few levels that definitely keeps the party involved. At the very end of the adventure, there's a small twist that can happen if the players aren't careful enough that ends the adventure on a very interesting (but timey-wimey) note.
Conclusion

I really like this book! It is probably one of my favorite D&D5e pre-written adventures. You might even say it's…..pretty cool.

We've had fire with Descent into Avernus, Ice with this book, Water with the Critical Role adventure. Is there a wind based adventure coming soon? What about Heart - or is that The Wild Beyond the Witchlight? That's next on my list of reviews to catch up on.

It's tricky to write a rime, to write a rime that's right on time…..but I'm almost caught up on D&D book reviews!

[Allyn R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

i'm sorry did someone say super aesthetic frozen tundra isolated towns ice lady goddess arctic horror adventure??? sign me the FUCK up

[Patrick Janssen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nog nooit zo veel tijd met een boek besteed

[Michael]

This adventure for Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is set in an unfamiliar part of the familiar Forgotten Realms setting; the far north where a few hardy pioneers have established towns based mostly on fishing and the fur trade. For some reason, the usual Spring thaw has been delayed now for a couple of years, and the penetrating cold is driving locals to extreme measures – in some cases “human” sacrifices – to appease Auril, the goddess of cold and winter. What is needed is a hardy band of adventurers to find out what is causing the problem, and to deal with various threats brought on by the extended winter conditions.

The module is set up for characters “level 1-15,” meaning that it plays out as a more-or-less complete campaign, although if you bring in characters at a level higher than first, you could skip or speed past some of the early, easier quests and get to the meat of things faster. This seems to be the model of most of the Wizards-published adventures I see on the market, rather than publishing a lot of low-level, some mid-level, and a few high-level adventures, their strategy seems to be to publish one long (and pricier) adventure storyline that covers pretty much all campaigns. It does make it harder to use their adventures for an ongoing campaign – it always seems like a waste of money to buy a book you’re only going to run half of – but, of course there are lots of smaller, indy, and amateur adventure models for fifth ed that one can buy that are more focused.

The art in this book is one of its definite strengths, and I was glad to see each artist credited on the page with their art, albeit in tiny light print close to the binding, that requires someone with my eyesight to hold the book up to a light at an odd angle. Another strength is its interesting approach of giving each character a secret motivation that they can share or otherwise with the rest of the group. I don’t have the heart to assign some of the nastier, back-stabbing ones to my players, but I can see how a bit of the spirit of the old “Paranoia” games could come into this setting. There are a number of amusing references to Lovecraft and Poe sprinkled throughout the storyline, but altered enough that familiarity with the source material won’t help players with meta-gaming.

I enjoyed reading this, but I’m going to hold off giving it a final rating until I have run a group through it. No doubt I will update the review at that time as well.

[Ella Jemmerson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book to run out the box with some stuff that can come across as plot holes especially in the early chapters, I find the overall book to be great with good enjoyable and unique encounter and location set up
I think the 2nd best book to run out the box

[MK]

Spent enough time with this book dreaming up useless shit that I’m counting it toward my goal thanks ✌️

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done adventure with many possible side quests. Some very intricate maps and characters. Could be turned into a very long campaign.

[Fynn Cuthbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm counting this, cause it's 300 pages that I'll be rereading over the course of who knows how long.
Super excited to get this adventure started ❄️

[Ian Mathers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't exactly read this under typical circumstances; our D&D group had just played through this adventure and the DM leant it to me so I could check it out. Which was a fascinating experience! I got to see all the stuff he added or changed (all improvements, in my opinion) and got to consider how'd I'd run it myself, and contemplate how different various iterations of this could be, tonally and so on. That's not what I'm rating this on, though (how could I?). I'm going with this rating because I had fun playing through the adventure, it had a lot of stuff we enjoyed that our DM didn't come up with himself, and reading over it I like how the whole thing was organized and could see running it myself. More boring, but I tend to look at these in a pretty functional way.

[Tapio Kurkinen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My group has played 30 sessions of this so far and is currently in Chapter 5 and I feel I have a good idea about the book after reading all of it even if we aren't at the end yet. I think the setting is fantastic and I really enjoy the main plot of the everlasting winter of darkness. I think the world itself has a lot of stuff to explore and do and I enjoy the subtle nods to the old Drizzt books.

I believe that this has been my players' favorite story so far and I largely enjoy running it but I do feel there are some parts that don't really work as they are written in the book and some parts don't feel well handled and fleshed out enough to really hit the right energy at that moment. There is a large amount of additional DM material online and helpful Reddit posts that I have used to help myself to patch these gripes out but I don't believe the book quite reaches its potential. It's really good but I feel it could have been great and it's left to the DM to fix what still remains broken.

[Blaise Birchem · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I ran this adventure in our TTRPG group, these are my thoughts. Like Curse of Strahd, its much more open world progression. You can run it honestly however you like. In my honest opinion of talking to others online, there were honestly two groups of people among Rime of the Frostmaiden readers, those who DID NOT like this book and those who loved it for all the possibilities and chances it presents for players to be adventurous. I am of the latter state of mind. My players had fun and I presented Auril as the boogey man among the cold north. Completeing this adventure ultimately was super rewarding to both me and my players.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a player in this campaign from levels 1 to 17 (we played through almost all the content in this book and used XP levelling), and it was the best DnD campaign I've had the pleasure of playing in. The quests were fun and challenging, and I loved the overall theme and the amazing world building. You truly get to discover and experience every corner of Icewind Dale. The first part of the module is a giant sandbox, though later the story gets more streamlined. It was so much fun. The whole book took us about 18 months to play through with weekly 3-4 hour sessions.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book has some interesting ideas and some VERY interesting post-adventure consequences but the particular horror in this adventure may not be everyone's taste. For more details see my review at https://www.enworld.org/threads/icewi...

[Gary · Rating 1 out of 5]

For me, this is the worst of the new 5th edition D&D books.
Very disjointed and just not well thought out.
I'm glad I bought the alternate cover because maybe I can at least recoup my money.
Save your $$ and if you really need it, buy the pdf instead.

[Ike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't wait to run this campaign!

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled with lore and excellent campaign ideas. A great story (even if a bit lethal).

[Julian Meynell · Rating 3 out of 5]

SPOILERS GALORE

This is an adventure set in Icewind Dale in the Forgotten Realms setting. It basically divides into two parts. The first part is a sandbox and the second part is a more linear adventure. These parts are on average OK but not great. There is in addition a setting which is a well established one and is explained in context of the sandbox portion of the adventure. This is done pretty well. There are several appendices which include a large amount of well done monsters and even interesting new spells and magic items.

However, the whole thing starts by elaborating new rules for cold environments. This is very disappointing and sets the tone for what is to come. I've just read Ghosts of Saltmarsh. That book saves maritime and aquatic environments from the not-a-problem purgatory that the 5e DMG had sent them to. More or less the opposite of this happens here. There are a lot of magical items designed to deal with arctic weather conditions, but these aren't a problem. Nor do you have to do anything to deal with the weather; make a fire? pitch a tent? huddle together for warmth? get inside a dead tauntaun? Why bother? Just put on mittens guys! You'll be fine. I live in Canada and my players would just reject this. They could have at least put in optional rules making things tougher.

All of this would not be such a problem if the book wasn't trying to generate a horror feel, concentrating on a frigid hostile isolated landscape. The rules throughout the book do not support this, nor does the adventure design or even the boxed descriptive text. The book generally fails to set a tone of anything other than generic lowest common denominator D&D. In general, I found it consistently competent and mostly forgettable. There is almost nothing here that as a DM I wouldn't run, but little that I consider to be top rank.

The sandbox elements are fine but uninspired. For instance, there is a clear the mine of kobolds adventure which is probably the third best clear the mine of kobolds adventure I have ever read. I've been playing D&D for forty years, so admittedly I have been at this for awhile, but if they had advertised this as the third best version of all your favorite D&D tropes it would have been very accurate.

The linear elements in the backhalf are more uneven. For instance, at one point you have to decide whether to raid a fortress or intercept a dragon attack. But this is just not going to be apparent to most parties. That fortress is very very standard. Everything is highly competent and very forgettable. It is destined to a future where it is confused with other facilities by the players and no one will remember it, although no one will have a bad time. There is also a dungeon ice cave crawl which reminds me of the Lost Caverns of Tsjocanth in that it starts out with promise but descends into a bunch of random monsters.

The main villain, Auril (the titular frostmaiden diety) is very well done and poorly used. I made the mistake of reading her stat block first, getting excited and then being disappointed. However, the whole thing ends well. The climax is set in a crashed flying city under the ice. For the first time, consistency of setting matters. While, I suppose it is not really innovative either, it feels like it is and it feels as if it would be a barrel of monkeys to play.

Before going on to my conclusion, I just want to mention the art. The art in the book, especially the first two thirds, is easily the best art I have seen in an adventure. In addition, it does capture the tone of dark, chilly isolation that the rest of the book misses and is genuinely beautiful.

I wanted this book to raid for my upcoming viking campaign. It was surprisingly unhelpful in that. The barbarian tribes are shorn of virtually all Norse and Sami references, because depicting Norwegians is racist, I guess. It is all a little bland but I'll probably cannibalize quite a bit of it, because all of it is ok and I am lazy.

[Pádraic]

Within reach of being A Good Adventure, but god its flaws are frustrating. So much great stuff! The opening sandbox sections, as the players explore the interconnected ten towns of, uh, Ten-Towns, and the wider expanse of the Dale, contain fantastic quests, NPCs, interactions, decisions, and possibilities. You'd probably need to make your players locals to have a stronger grounding in helping the region survive the endless midwinter, but with that in place, there's opportunities for plenty of great moments here, with just some minor tweaking for personal taste.

It's good the characters will build up connections to the region, because other the duergar section that follows will have no emotional weight or urgency at all. The dragon setpiece needs some major reworking mechanically, but the theme of messing with what the players hold dear is a great one.

A sidebar: what's with the multiple instances of "the characters cannot advance past level 4 until they move out into chapter 5 or whatever"? Literally just sprinkle some legendary actions on the monsters and raise the DC of the skill checks and let them keep levelling up? It's fine? Like, gated levelling?? What are you even talking about Chris Perkins??

Anyway, the back half of the module is a disaster. Essentially just a series of giant dungeons (although there's some cool design and encounters in them), they have nothing to do with the main focus of stopping the Frostmaiden's spell over the Dale. In fact, when the characters descend into the last two chapters of the book, they might have already defeated the Frostmaiden and ended the endless midwinter, meaning there's no motivation to go down into this apparently wonderful lost city other than, um, I guess this wizard we barely know thinks it'll help her put one over her colleagues.

This lack of even the most basic connective tissue is such a simple error as to be catastrophic. I genuinely don't understand how people employed professionally to write adventure modules could mess up this simple facet so badly. I'm not opposed to delving into a lost wizard city and fighting a vampire gnoll and a bunch of flaming skulls, but I would like there to be a reason for it. Also, there's a possible and mostly unforeshadowed ritual in the city that could send your players 1500 years into the past, which is very funny in the reading, but I imagine would be much less so in the playing if you didn't hint what they were in for.

It's a shame, because despite all the great scenes in here, the phenomenal mood that the flavourful setting creates, I overall can't recommend running this unless you're willing to put in a bunch of work to make the entire back half into something that's at all cohesive.

Personally, I'd foreshadow the duergar a lot more; turn the dragon into, idk, buried golems or something in each town, so that sequence becomes more of a sophie's choice times ten than a frantic and mostly just cruel pursuit; split the poem up among the wizards to get them and their conflict involved more directly; and then combine and condense all of Auril's Abode, the Caves of Hunger, and Ythryn into one thematically consistent dungeon, probably removing all the Netheril aesthetic, because I don't think that meshes at all. Also, the internet informs me there's a bunch of stuff you can steal from the old Legacy of the Crystal Shard adventure if you're interested in fleshing out Icewind Dale's locations a bit more, which seems like not a bad idea.

[Jeremy Blum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rime of the Frostmaiden tells a story set in the Forgotten Realms northern region made famous by author R.A. Salvatore in his Drizzt Do'Urden novels. The plot revolves around a bunch of shenanigans ranging from a rampaging robotic dragon to a mysterious lost empire, and these threads emerge after the exiled goddess of winter, Auril, turns Icewind Dale into a frozen wasteland. It’s decent stuff, and overall I’d say Rime of the Frostmaiden is about as good as Tomb of Annihilation. Nevertheless, after having run a multitude of official 5e campaign books one after another, I’ve started to notice some trends. Chief among these are underdeveloped villains who only show up at the last minute, lots of messy plot threads and a tendency for these books to fall short at evoking their intended mood - cosmic horror, in the case of Rime of the Frostmaiden.

As is typically the case, the campaign starts out pretty well, with Icewind Dale’s multiple villages of Ten-Towns serving as a fun sandbox. But halfway through, players are railroaded into dealing with an impending threat by duergar plotting to raze Ten-Towns to the ground with their big robot dragon, and this comes out of nowhere and honestly, has no bearing on the overarching plot involving Auril. Actually, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Auril has no bearing on the adventure aside from the title, since the Frostmaiden herself barely shows up except as a mid-boss and an optional encounter in the end. The entire finale of the campaign, in fact, is a deep dive into a ruined section of the lost empire of Netheril that is largely Forgotten Realms lore porn and once again, doesn’t really have anything to do with Auril. I know why it was included in this module - because designer Christopher Perkins wanted to evoke the feeling of H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness, which features explorers delving into a forgotten Antarctic civilization and slowly growing mad. Overall, though, Rime of the Frostmaiden fails at evoking much of a cosmic horror feel and largely just ends up as standard D&D in a snowy environment, with the book promising a feeling of disjointedness if it’s run as written.

[Igor Padoim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book summarizes the aesthetic for one such myself, who loves the cold and the dark of night.
As this adventure runs on a night-encased version of a northern real assaulted by freezing winds and the barrenness of tundras, it takes you into a universe of mystery and secrecy.
The first thing in character creation is to choose a secret, which may be as benign as a personal taste for R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt novels or as life-threatening as hosting a tadpole ready to burst open your character's chest. And, even though the overarching theme is not one of horror, the setting has enough horror in it that the environment must reflect a facet of that.
After choosing a secret to your character, you are thrown into a city driven into despair by the winter. Such desperation that the citizens agree to banish their peers into the unavoidable death on the desolate tundra, to lessen their meager food reserves, or even to risk frostbite on warmless nights.
On top of such scenery, there is no lack of antagonists ready to either take advantage of the neverending winter or further it.
A particular joy was to find no shortage of non-straight and/or non-binary NPCs, which show their true colors in spite of the harsh and cruel surroundings - an allegory for the LGBTQ+ community, as I read it.
As the story unravels and the characters grow, the main goals are possible to attain, as one would surely hope for. And yet, you may avoid all trouble presented and travel back into the long-lost past, only to be faced with new (or, rather, quite old) and even more complicated problems to solve.

[Asher! · Rating 4 out of 5]

ID is mostly an excellent module, but the last 2 chapters are somewhat convoluted and lack momentum. It would be fine if a random part of the sandbox didn't make much sense, but the climax of the story needs to be cohesive and exciting, which it's not....

The biggest change that I would make is connecting the frostmaiden fight to the caves of hunger/ythryn more, because right now they feel very separate. Also, the players need a way to follow the dragon to ten-towns without relying on Vellynne. Also there's a town called Dougan's Hole where everyone is inbred and has southern accents. Why.

That being said, this module is stuffed with great things. Ten-towns is an excellent low level area with a good mix of combat, survival, and role playing. AND the achievement based leveling system there is super easy (and continues to be easy for the rest of the module.) The art in the module is beautiful, and the diversity is refreshing. The wizards of the arcane brotherhood are really fun as enemies/allies and I really hope my players get to play with them some. All of the new cold themed monsters are fun! Also the character secrets make REALLY GOOD role playing. In terms of new-ish mechanics the fishing and climbing and extreme cold rules are pretty good, but I'll probably switch them about. Finally, most of the game takes place in a huge sandbox full of quests, which is personally my favorite kind of campaign to dm, and allows the players to make their own choices.

So we shall see how the actual campaign goes, but right now I recommend!

[Ólafur Björn Tómasson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Norðrið á Sverðaströndinni er kjörin staður til að vera með hryllingsævintýri þar sem mikilvægt er að undirbúa sig vel svo maður (og álfar og dvergar og...) verði ekki úti.
Byrjunin er þar sem galli og kostur ævintýrsins er að finna.

Leikjameistari verður að gera töluvert mikla undirbúningsvinnu áður en spilarar mæta til leiks og jafn vel þá verður samræming að eiga sér stað milli stjórnanda og spilara að vera góð.
Þetta er því ekki ævintýri sem maður stekkur beint út í og gæti það verið mjög skemmtilegt fyrir suma hópa að vilja leggjast undir feld og rita saman nákvæmari baksögu en gerist alla jafna.

Fyrstu tveir kaflarnir eru mikið að ferðast frá einum bæ til næsta og er það augljóslega gert til hópurinn kynnist frosna helinu sem er Ísvindadalur.
Af gefinni reynslu er það ekki spennandi fyrir spilara eða meistara að sinna slíkum erindagjörðum og kemur það aftur til undirbúningsvinnunnar sem ævintýrið krefst.

Ein leið sem ég gæti séð fyrstu tvö kaflana virka væri í dúet-spili milli meistara og spilara sem myndi byggja upp söguheiminn hægt og bítandi með einhverjum stórviðburði sem myndi síðan sameina hópinn. En eins og ævintýrið er skrifað er ekki hægt að taka því eins og það leggur sig.
Þó eru mörg góð fræ í bókinni og myndi ábyggilega henta hópi sem væri til í að leggja á sig vinnuna til að lifa og jafn vel dafna í Ísvindadal.

[Ben]

I'm far from an expert as I only got into D&D properly this year but this is the book I've enjoyed the most and the only one I've read cover to cover. Art direction-wise it's phenomenal both in its consistency, colour schemes and evocation of the hostile snowy setting. I'm so excited to use a lot of the stuff in here and there's a good cross section of various types of horror in here too, as well as some excellent character secrets to incorporate. That said, it definitely doesn't seem suitable as a first campaign if you're running it straight from the book as you'd have to make a lot of tweaks to keep people alive, or run it as a high risk game with lots of backup characters/helpers. The back half of the campaign seemed less interesting to me too, unless you can maneauver all your pieces into an epic crescendo, so that may require some work, but overall it's been incredibly useful for getting the imagination going. And it's pretty hard to argue with something that reveres The Thing and contains Snowy Owlbears, Baby Yetis, and 3 Kobolds in a trenchcoat really.

[Ogre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Awkwardly set up; early adventures are set at a DC FAR above a first level party's ability (one of the early missions sets the party against several DC 3 monsters!); the rewards are not logical (an early mission is to retrieve a missing iron shipment. The reward is a set of gems worth 200-300 gp {depending on number of party members} -- to retrieve a shipment worth 150 gp!); and the later adventures are rather random and involve high level traps and monsters with little logic to their appearance. Some of the magic items are either nonsensical or have no details added to them (a scroll of tarrasque summoning, for instance, is ridiculously overpowered; in addition there is a scroll that summons a comet a mile away...with no indication of game effect in doing so.) Awkward, tedious, and relying greatly on the DM to fill in the huge blanks left in the adventure; this is a great disappointment compared to Descent into Avernus.

[Bookwalker · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a little over a year, I have finally finished this massive D&D campaign book. In terms of game and story inspiration value, I’d say this adventure has an endless amount of possibilities. That said, I think as a single adventure story, it feels kind of all over the place, even with three major plot threads. It would have almost been better if the focus was on the Frostmaiden and one of the other two, not both. This is especially true of chapters three, four, six and seven. Although the locations and characters in these chapters were all pretty interesting, they felt only partially attached to the main plot of ending the everlasting winter. Anyway, I am definitely considering running a campaign or scattered game sessions with this. If you’re looking for a winter-themed adventure to inspire your game or writing, read this book.