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LULU’S MEMORY MYSTERY

As we’ve discussed, recovering Lulu’s memories is a central pillar of the campaign: It is essentially the only way to recover the Sword of Zariel, and while the Sword of Zariel is not essential (in the Remix) it is certainly positioned as a major goal and resource.

Getting the Sword, it should be noted, is almost entirely procedural: Get the pieces for the dream machine. Strap Lulu into it. Ta-da! You get the location of the Sword of Zariel.

But if we take a step back, the real goal is to get the players invested in the True History of Zariel. The process of piecing together this enigma:

• Provides a tantalizing mystery that will keep the players engaged with the campaign and eager to figure out more.
• Creates a context for their interactions with the denizens of Hell (particularly the former Hellriders and others who participated in those events).
• Builds a relationship (albeit by proxy) with Zariel, creating the emotional foundation for the campaign’s conclusion.
• Elevates the procedural accomplishment of activating the dream machine by providing not only the location of the Sword, but simultaneously a sense of closure on Lulu’s story.

So how do we build this mystery?

Lulu’s Original Memories, the ones that she has when she first appears in the campaign, are our foundation. Structurally, these are the facts that we know the party will have at any given point in the campaign. Ideally, we’ll want enough chunks that the players can begin rampantly speculating about how they’re connected, but vague enough that no definitive answers are really possible. We can think of each chunk as a “catalyst,” in the sense that they give the speculations of the players material to react with (and will likely speed up that speculation, too).

Lulu’s Triggered Memories are the memories that she spontaneously regains, either semi-randomly or in response to specific stimuli. These will primarily be additional catalysts — they’ll be vague enough to mostly raise new questions, providing fresh fodder for the players’ theory-crafting. (The more of these the PCs gain access to, however, the more complete their understanding of Lulu’s history will become, making it easier to figure out how events relate to each other.) Some of these triggered memories, however, can also be rewards, providing definitive answers for some of Lulu’s experiences.

If the PCs follow the Sword of Zariel threads all the way to their conclusion, there will also be four Memory Dives. These are the Vision from Torm, the Dream Machine, Claiming the Sword, and Zariel’s Spark. Each allows the players to actually experience parts of Lulu’s and Zariel’s story.

There will also be Other Sources of information on Zariel’s history. (If we think of the mystery as primarily being the True History of Zariel, then we’ll also recognize that Lulu’s memories are just one way of achieving that goal!) These can include historical records, questioning the “surviving” Hellriders, etc.

Finally, we’ll organize all of this using Revelation Lists.

In doing so we will, of course, observe the Three Clue Rule. But we’ll want to use some special care here.

First, we want to structurally protect the memory dives. These should feel like big, momentous events with significant pay-offs for the effort the players have put into achieving them. We don’t want to “spoil” them because if they don’t reveal anything new, it’ll deflate the moment. Therefore, the memory dives should have:

• Clear, definitive versions of events that could only be imperfectly understood before.
• Lynchpin moments that could NOT have been learned previously.
• Really mysterious, obscure versions of NEW events (i.e., new catalysts that can only be cleared up by future revelations).

This means we need to pace and position our revelation lists (and the clues in those lists) so that they set-up and pay-off the memory dives. We can actually think of each memory dive as a funnel, with certain revelations/clues positioned before the funnel and others generally not available until after the funnel. (It should be noted that the structure of the scenario more or less mirrors these funnels: For example, the PCs will almost certainly have the Vision from Torm before leaving Elturel; they won’t be able to journey to the Scab before the Dream Machine; and so forth.)

LULU’S ORIGINAL MEMORIES

Lulu is suffering from amnesia. Her first memory is of “waking up” in the red sands of the Avernian wastelands. (Although she only later learned that she was on Avernus, the First Layer of Hell.)

• She wandered for an interminable period of time before coming to the River Styx.
• She followed the River Styx out of Avernus, journeying through the Outer Planes.
• After any number of adventures, Lulu passed through a portal and found herself in a place called the Nexus, a seemingly endless gothic castle filled with magical portals. There she met Niveral-Sca, the Mistress of Eternity. Niveral-Sca had iridescent skin that gleamed with serpentine scales, her pupil-less eyes gleamed with a golden light, and her small feet never seemed to touch the ground when she walked. Hearing Lulu’s story, she identified a portal that would return her to the world of the home she dimly remembered (see below).
• Passing through this portal, Lulu emerged in Neverwinter in 1488 DR.
• She made her way south from Neverwinter, eventually returning to the area around Elturel.

Lulu only has a few fragmentary memories of the time before her inexplicable amnesia. (These have returned to her slowly over time since she first woke up without any memory at all.)

• Her strongest memories are of being friends with a beautiful warrior angel. She and the angel came to a city called Elturel and led an army of knights from that city on a charge into Hell itself. (Lulu doesn’t remember the actual battle, but assumes they must have lost and guesses that this is how she lost her memories. Having returned to modern Elturel, she now knows that these events must have taken place a long time in the past.)
• Sometimes this feels like a magician’s trick: She remembers riding through the portals to Hell, seeing the plains of Avernus stretched out in front of her, and then… Everyone is gone and she’s on the Avernian plains all by herself.

Other fragments of memory include:

• A silver beach beneath a pair of blue moons. (Sometimes she remembers her warrior angel being with her there.)
• Flying over a vast, dark ocean. The water reflects a sky filled with diamond-like stars. In the black depths below, a huge whale seemingly made from golden motes of light swims.
• Looking out a window made from gems set into silver and gold, across a verdant landscape where metallic dragons flit through the sky.
• The taste of blood and fur in her mouth.
• A busy marketplace carved from a cliff-face. She was speaking to a winged lion with the kind-yet-stern face of a man.
• Flying over a boundless expanse of black, cracked basalt. A single-file line of strange, polyhedral-shaped creatures marches below, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Design Note: This can be used as either a handy reference for the GM and/or, if Lulu is a PC, given as a handout to her player. I also recommend empowering the player to flesh out any of the events that happened in Lulu’s life after she “woke up” in Avernus. (For example, they could make up any number of stories about her adventures along the Styx.) Check out Running the Campaign: Designing Character Backgrounds and Dragon Heist: Creating the Characters for how this type of player/GM collaboration on character backgrounds can work in practice (although the process is sort of inverted here).

DM’S INFO: The last few fragments of Lulu’s memory are mostly visions from the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia. They are, in order:

• The beaches of Mercuria.
• Flying over the waters of Lunia (with a celestial whale in the depths).
• Looking out the window of Bahamut’s Palace, also in Mercuria.
• Killing a gnoll during the First Visit to Idyllglen.
• The market of Heart’s Faith in Lunia.
• The Great Modron March. (Not this one, though. The dates don’t line up.)

Go to Part 6D-F: Lulu’s Memories (Triggered Memories)

I have done remixes for both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus. It’s perhaps not unsurprising that I have been frequently asked how I would connect the two campaigns.

It’s not something that I, personally, had given a lot of thought to. My own run of the Dragon Heist campaign ended with the PCs poised to pursue very different goals: Some had become ensconced as leaders of the Harpers in Waterdeep. Others were heading to the Sea of Fallen Stars to pursue threads from their characters’ backstories. (Although we’re taking a break from those characters, I’m planning to return and run separate campaigns for both of those threads.)

So I guess that would be my first word of caution: It’s quite likely that connecting the two campaigns will actually be a really bad idea. By the time you get to the end of Dragon Heist, your campaign will have built up a lot of momentum, and all of that momentum is likely to be tied to Waterdeep. (The whole function of Trollskull Manor is, in fact, to give the PCs permanent ties to the city.) It probably makes more sense to follow that momentum (continuing to explore the factions and intrigues of Waterdeep) than it does to uproot the whole campaign and head south.

The other thing to note here is that the whole function of the Dragon Heist Remix is to turn the campaign into an active playground. I know where my Remix campaign ended up, but I honestly have no idea where yours did: Who are the PCs allied with? Which enemies survived? Where’s Neverember’s gold? What other resources have the PCs accrued? What enigmas are the PCs most interested in pursuing? Do they have the Stone of Golorr? If not, who does? Did they end up adopting kids or falling in love? The possibilities are almost limitless.

With those provisos in mind, here are some general thoughts on how you might connect the campaigns.

START AT THE BEGINNING

If possible, the first thing I would do is to plant the seeds of the transition from the very beginning. As the players are creating their characters for Dragon Heist, encourage some or all of them to make characters who have a connection to Elturel. This is more or less what I discuss in Remixing Avernus – Part 2: Character Creation, it’s probably just a little more difficult to explain why you’re encouraging the players to do this if the campaign is going to be taking place in Waterdeep.

First, this can easily include having Lulu as a PC in Dragon Heist. This actually fits in well with her revised backstory, in which she returns to Toril via a portal that takes her to Neverwinter before journeying south to Elturel. It might be interesting to explore that connection to Neverwinter — did she meet Neverember? Or perhaps she met Dalakhar? Alternatively, you might just move the portal so that it leads to Waterdeep (and she has likely just come through it as the campaign is beginning).

Second, you’re still going to want a Hellrider for Descent Into Avernus. Could they have been sent to Waterdeep to investigate links to Asmodean cultists who were recently captured in Elturel? Perhaps the cultists were kidnapping people in Elturel, and their interest in looking for similar disappearances in Waterdeep leads them to Volo (looking for people to investigate his missing friend) at the beginning of Dragon Heist? (This link will likely bias your Dragon Heist run towards the Cassalanters. The twist where the friendly nobles looking for help saving their Asmodeus-cursed children turn out to actually BE the Asmodean cult leaders will be great. More on this connection below.)

Third, for any Elturel-connected character the players do create, try to find ways for them to have unfinished business back in Elturel (or perhaps Baldur’s Gate). It’s quite likely that this business is what brought them to Waterdeep in the first place, but its conclusion is back home.

For example, in my Dragon Heist run one of the PCs needed to raise a large sum of money as a ransom for his mother’s freedom. (The nice thing about Dragon Heist is that literally any goal that requires large sums of money can be trivially tied to the central conceit of the campaign.) That link is part of what led half the group to the Sea of Fallen Stars (where that PC’s mother was being held). If that link had instead pointed back towards Elturel, it would obviously help a transition to Descent Into Avernus.

Check out Running the Campaign – Dragon Heist: Creating the Characters for an in-depth discussion of how to handle this type of character creation.

ASMODEAN CONNECTIONS

If I’m looking for an actual connection between the campaigns — the thing that will drive PCs from Waterdeep to Elturel — then what immediately leaps out are the Asmodeus cultists in Dragon Heist.

If you want to make the transition fairly organic, then you’ll want to seed clues into the Cassalanter faction of Dragon Heist that point the PCs towards either Elturel or Baldur’s Gate. (In the latter case, we’d most likely assume that the Cassalanters have a direct connection to the Vanthampurs. In the former, they would have connections to various Asmodeans heading to Elturel for the “Exodus.” Or you could do both.)

If the players are particularly interested in Cassalanters, finding an opportune time for the Cassalanters to flee Waterdeep and head for Elturel or Baldur’s Gate would also be a big pull. Alternatively, if the PCs are concerned about the kids, the Cassalanters might send them to Vanthampur for “sanctuary” as the noose closes around their own necks (forcing the PCs to chase them down).

For a slightly more focused experience, consider tweaking Dragon Heist to make the Cassalanters Zarielites instead of Asmodean cultists. Either way, you can seed a bunch of Asmodeus/Zariel lore into Dragon Heist (like the Averniad and the Trial of Asmodeus).

A slight risk with the “organic” approach is that the PCs might go haring off to Elturel before the Grand Game of Dragon Heist has reached its conclusion. If the PCs are in possession of the Stone of Golorr or any of its Eyes when they do this, the Grand Game will follow them. (The other factions need that stuff!) We might imagine a scenario where the PCs and a bunch of Dragon Heist-related faction members get sent to Avernus and the Grand Game continues while everyone simultaneously tries to escape Hell… but it’s probably not ideal.

Although the risk of this is, in my opinion, rather low, if you want to avoid any chance of this happening you can take a slightly less organic approach by waiting for Dragon Heist to reach its conclusion, selecting some faction that the PCs have become allied with, and having them dump a bunch of intelligence reports suggesting that those Asmodean cultists the PCs were recently tangled up with are active in Elturel. “Could you check that out for us?” (If the PCs were already heading that way to settle up personal business, all the better.)

On the other hand, if the Grand Game in Avernus sounds amazing to you, have the Cassalanters take their Eye to Elturel before the PCs can get it.

SPLIT THE PARTY

If some of the PCs are naturally interested in staying in Waterdeep to pursue their interests there while other PCs are interested in returning to Elturel to complete their unfinished business… Let them.

The players whose characters remained in Waterdeep simply need to create new PCs who can join the other characters as the other campaign begins. (If your plan is to lead with the Elturian refugee caravan, for example, the other PCs could be members of that caravan or join the other PCs in protecting it. This might also be an ideal time to introduce Lulu as a PC if you haven’t already.)

As I mentioned earlier, this is similar to what happened after my Dragon Heist run: Some of the PCs stayed in Waterdeep. Others went to the Sea of Fallen Stars. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be running both of those as separate campaigns.

THE STONE OF GOLORR IN AVERNUS

If the PCs still possess the Stone of Golorr after the events of Dragon Heist, its legend lore abilities alone offer many cool opportunities for the PCs as they delve into the deep lore of the Descent Into Avernus remix. You’ll want to give some thought to cool legend lore responses to topics the PCs are likely to ask about (like Zariel, Lulu, etc.). What stuff qualifies as “legendary” (so that the spell works) and what doesn’t?

Also decide if the spell’s description of “the more information you already have about the thing, the more precise and detailed the information you receive is” means you can benefit from casting legend lore multiple times (gaining more detailed information each time).

It might also be cool to think about how the backstory of Descent Into Avernus might be tweaked to incorporate the Stone of Golorr. Specifically, is there some big secret of the campaign that the Stone might have been used to erase from common knowledge? (For example, perhaps one of the original Hellriders decided to use the Stone to eradicate the knowledge that Zariel led the Charge of the Hellriders.) Seed some clues to that effect, so that the PCs can use the Stone to their advantage.

The Stone of Golorr might also be an alternative source for the Vision from Torm, pointing the PCs in the direction of the Sword of Zariel.

ADJUSTING FOR LEVEL

I haven’t discussed adjusting the level of challenge in Descent Into Avernus. Broadly speaking, these adjustments should be obvious. (Make the bad guys tougher and/or add more of them.)

In some ways, this will actually be to your advantage: There are wide reports that the beginning of Descent Into Avernus is too difficult for beginning characters. (And I’ve already discussed in the Remix starting the characters at a higher level.)

Speaking in very general terms, I would:

• Cap level advancement in Dragon Heist to 6^th. (It’s possible to get to 7^th in the Remix, just don’t include that final milestone advance.)
• If your group won’t get crabby, you can just hold advancement until they leave Elturel.
• Alternatively, give them a milestone level up to 7^th level when they leave Baldur’s Gate and again when they leave Elturel. (They’ll be a little higher level than they should be in Elturel and when starting out the Avernian hexcrawl, but close enough that you can probably get away without making any adjustments to those sections of the campaign.)

Alternatively, skip the Baldur’s Gate section of Descent Into Avernus entirely: Pull the PCs from Waterdeep to Elturel. Then, as they arrive, have the whole city sucked into Hell with them along for the ride and continue the campaign from there. To make this really work, seed the information and resources the PCs would have received in Baldur’s Gate into the Cassalanter sections of Dragon Heist.

For example, the infernal puzzlebox can be an artifact held by the Cassalanters. Maybe the PCs’ allies come to them and say, “Hey, we found this among the Cassalanters stuff. Sylvira Savikas is an expert on this stuff. She lives in Elturel. Can you take it to her and see if she can open it?” Or maybe they just take it to the Blackstaff and have her crack it open; then, armed with the evidence in side, they head to Elturel to expose the conspiracy… but they’re too late! The city is sucked into Hell just as they arrive!

WATERDEEP IN HELL

Why bother moving the campaign to Elturel at all? Why not just swap in Waterdeep and send the City of Splendors to Hell instead (with the PCs along for the ride)?

First, the City of Splendors is chock-a-block with high level NPCs (including many whom the PCs have been directly interacting with during Dragon Heist). There will be an obvious question of why these NPCs aren’t solving the problem themselves instead of leaving the PCs to do it.

Second, once you make all the fundamental changes to the lore of the campaign necessary to move it from Elturel to Waterdeep (no Companion, no Charge of the Hellriders as a central element, etc.), in practice you’re not really running Descent Into Avernus any more. You’re running a completely new campaign that you’re designing almost entirely from scratch.

Go to Part 1

A few days ago I streamed a session of my Castle Blackmoor open table on Twitch. During that session, my players and I were frequently referring to the player’s reference pamphlet I had assembled for the campaign. The viewers on Twitch were intrigued and one of my patrons requested that this pamphlet be shared, which I’m now doing.

As I described in Reactions to OD&D years ago, when I first started running an open table using the original 1974 rules of D&D, the various groups I played with would frequently start each session by examining the strange gaps and contradictions in the original text and discuss how we wanted to resolve them. This often meant we were playing with different rules from one session to the next! However, after a half dozen or so sessions we came to sort of a collective agreement on what the “right” answers were (at least for us) and these were codified into house rules. Other house rules have slowly accumulated over the years.

Designed to be printed as a booklet at the same size as the original 1974 D&D rulebooks, this pamphlet collects all of these house rules into a convenience reference document. I’ll usually have multiple copies of both Volume 1: Men & Magic and this pamphlet on the table so that my players can easily flip through either one.

This particular version of the pamphlet has been customized for my Castle Blackmoor campaign. It includes:

• Encumbrance By Stone: An alternative encumbrance system which makes tracking encumbrance as easy as writing down your equipment list.
• OD&D House Rulings: The modern version of what was first described in Justin’s House Rules for OD&D. (Also check out Gary Gygax’s House Rules for OD&D, which are not used here.)
• Special Interest Experience: As described earlier in this series.
• Referee Reference: Which include my personal interpolations for both Hirelings and Morale; the Encounter Die (rolled each turn); and the original Underworld & Flight/Pursuit rolls from OD&D. This material has not previously appeared on the Alexandrian.
• Blackmoor Village Map: Also from earlier in this series.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF

Go to Part 12: Lessons Learned in Blackmoor

In Numenera cyphers are one-use items scavenged from the ruined technology of an elder age. Often the utility of these items as perceived by the PCs will be only tangentially related to the item’s original function; the ultra-tech equivalent of ripping a laser out of a CD player and using to signal your squad mates. I’ve talked about cyphers at greater length in Numenera: Identifying Items, but the core concept is that they let the PCs do something cool once and then they’re cycled out for another cypher. Examples of cyphers include stuff like:

• A metallic nodule that can be attached to an item, allowing one to telekinetically manipulate it with a paired rubber glove.
• A disk-like device that shoots out paralyzing beams.
• A set of goggles that can be used to perceive out-of-phase creatures and objects.
• A metal amulet that surrounds the user in a field of absolute blackness.
• A cannister dispensing foam that transforms metal into a substance as brittle as glass.

Now that you know what a cypher is, here’s the tip:

To quickly create a memorable bad guy, roll on the random cypher table in Numenera and have the bad guy do that as “their thing.” When the fight’s done, the PCs will be able to scavenge the matching cypher from their corpse.

For example:

• A synthetic octopodal creature that telekinetically hurls large items at the PCs.
• A slender ungulate with “antlers” that are metallic discs emitting paralyzing beams.
• An invisible assassin droid that launches attacks from the out-of-phase interdimensional space where it lurks.

This technique works particularly well in Numenera because, as I discuss in Numenera: Fractal NPCs, creating NPCs in the Cypher System can be literally as easy as saying, “He’s level 3.” But then you can expand that to whatever level of detail you want (hence the “fractal” in “fractal NPCs”), which in this case would be adding the cypher-based ability.

However, you can achieve a similar effect in almost any system by simply grabbing an existing NPC stat block and slapping on the ability. (The only drawback is that scavenging may not be an assumed part of play in your game of choice, so you may lose that depth of experience unless you make a special effort to incorporate it.)

For example, if you wanted to make a tribe of orcs a little special, you might have them worship Glaubrau, Demon of the Nethershade. Take a standard orc stat block and then have them cloaked in absolute blackness. (The PCs can harvest their black blood to make an oily potion that imbues a similar effect.)

I’ve actually found myself using the Numenera cypher lists to achieve this effect across multiple systems, but there are often local equivalents. For example, random potion lists in D&D are somewhat more limited in their range of effect, but can work in a pinch. (If you’re running 5^th Edition, however, you might just cut to the chase by grabbing a copy of Arcana of the Ancients, which adapts a whole slew of cool stuff from Numenera for your D&D game, including some random cypher tables.)

Go to Part 1

SUNBLIGHT

The biggest problem with Sunblight (and you’re going to be hearing me say this a lot) is that the lore just doesn’t hold together.

To start with, there are a couple weird conspiracies in the fortress.

The first is that Xardorok thinks he’s worshiping and following the commands of Deep Duerra (a duergar goddess), but in reality Asmodeus has punked him and is only pretending to be Deep Duerra!

This doesn’t really make a lot of sense and doesn’t really go anywhere. Further research suggests that 4^th Edition killed Deep Duerra, but Sword Coast Adventurers Guide for 5^th Edition just listed her as an active god again. So maybe this was an attempt to clean that continuity up (Duerra is dead, but Asmodeus has been impersonating her)? But mostly my take-away is that Wizards of the Coast really, really, really, really, really, really likes Asmodeus and needs him to be in every single adventure.

In any case, the conspiracy goes hilariously dumb when we get to this bit:

Infernal Tablets. The barbed devil [pretending to be a priest of Deep Duerra] spends its time chiseling on granite tablets to inscribe them with Infernal runes. Characters who can read Infernal script can learn about the devil’s manifesto, in which Klondorn reveals that Asmodeus, in the guise of Deep Duerra, is using the duergar to further his interests.

There are ninety-two granite tablets stacked about his room. Each tablet weighs 50 pounds and is 1 foot wide, ½ feet long, and 2 ½ inches thick.

“I have infiltrated Xardorok’s fortress. As an infernal spy, I will spend my days carving large stone tablets that say I AM A SPY and stacking them in large, clearly visible piles.”

The other conspiracy involves Grandolpha, a rival duergar despot that Xardorok wants to seduce and marry.

She’s not interested. But rather than marrying Xardorok, slitting his throat, and taking over the joint, Grandolpha has concocted a scheme where she suborns the guards one by one, then slits his throat, and takes over the joint.

Eh. Maybe she just enjoys suborning people.

But where I’m really left scratching my head is that Grandolpha orders her guards to unlock the doors of the fortress and let the PCs in.

The “plan” seems to be a vague hope that the PCs will politely kill Xardorok, but leave Grandolpha and her conspirators alone. But Grandolpha has no way of knowing that the PCs are coming. So is it just a standing order to the guard on the front door? “If anybody shows up, let them in on the off-chance they’re here to kill Xardorok! Boy, that sure would be great!”

This central silliness aside, Sunblight is a well-designed set piece. It has a good map with a lot of strategic interest and a good key with a lot of exploratory rewards. It would probably benefit from an adversary roster, but it would be relatively easy to throw one together.

AURIL’S ABODE

This chapter leaves me scratching my head.

It starts off by saying that the characters “might come to this island on their own, hoping to put an end to Icewind Dale’s everlasting winter.” But there’s no meaningful mechanism for that: Other than one random rumor, the only way for the PCs to discover where Auril lives is for Vellynne the Necromancer Ex Machina to tell them.

When I first heard that Auril was going to have three different forms (which was a major element in the pre-release publicity for the campaign), I girded my loins for an epic confrontation of mythological proportions: You can’t defeat a goddess just once! You’ll have to face her three separate times!

But… no. She’s just a video game boss shouting:

Even the setting of the fight isn’t inspiring. It’s Area G8 below, which is a frost giant’s ruined bedroom:

The way it’s scripted is that the PCs walk into the bedroom and Auril “staggers” out of the side chamber. FIGHT!

It’s a strategically boring space lacking in all gravitas.

(If the PCs don’t defeat Auril here, there’s a kind of half-assed bit later where she shows up at the end of the adventure and is like, “HOW DARE YOU SKIP MY FIGHT SCENE? RAWR!”)

The PCs don’t need to defeat Auril to end her winter curse on Icewind Dale, though: If they kill her roc (which is roosting on the roof), she can no longer fly into the sky to perform the ritual each night and the curse ends.

But… uh… Auril can fly.

And it’s D&D, so there’s like a zajillion work-arounds.

Meanwhile, killing her to end the curse doesn’t really make a lot of sense, either: The book is quite clear that if the PCs kill her, she’ll just re-manifest at the next Winter’s Solstice, restored to her full power. We’re later told that she’ll just decide to give up on the whole plan – so no worries! – but there’s no meaningful reason given for her making that decision.

Okay, but what about what brought the PCs to the island in the first place?

First: They’re looking for Nass Lantomir. They will, as far as I can tell, never find her.

The ship Nass took to the island sunk. She swam to the island and then died of frostbite (despite having multiple spells that would have prevented that from happening). The PCs:

• Have no way of knowing she came to the island.
• Have no reason to search the island.

They will, therefore, never find her corpse, which is in the middle of nowhere and mostly buried in snow.

… it’s a pity she’s carrying a magic item that’s fairly integral (albeit not strictly necessary) to the rest of the adventure.

The second reason the PCs have come to the island is to retrieve the Codicil of White, which is a religious primer for Auril’s worshipers. This mostly calls attention to the fact that the worship of Auril is a big ??? in the book and doesn’t make a lot of sense. But, regardless, the Codicil is locked in Auril’s basement and the security system is…

… well.

It’s triply dumb.

Dumb #1: The authors really want you to play through the security system, so we get some amateur hour railroading.

The door is otherwise unopenable, indestructible, and impassable. Any spell cast with the intent of bypassing the door fails and is wasted.

Cool story, bro.

Dumb #2: “This is a very important vault! Only authorized people should be let in! What’s our security system?”

“Only people who pass four tests can enter.”

Uh huh. Where are the tests located?

“Right outside the door of the vault.”

… uh huh.

Dumb #3: These fucking tests.

Here’s how they work: The PCs walk through a magic door and are teleported to a Raghed tribe which is very conveniently facing a crisis perfectly themed to the test (Cruelty, Endurance, Isolation, Preservation) at the very moment that the PCs arrive.

This is not an illusion or fake-out. The book is VERY INSISTENT that this is REALLY HAPPENING.

So, like, the Preservation test has them arrive in a Raghed camp where everyone has been killed except a nine-year-old kid. The PCs have to save him.

Wow.

Lucky thing that literally happened JUST as the PCs opened the magic door, right?

It gets dumber, though, because the PCs explicitly don’t have to all take the test at the same time. So after the first group goes through the test… what happens when the second group opens the same door?

In multiple places the adventure talks about the logistics of taking tests at different times on the VAULT side of the door, but never once explains what the second or third or fourth pass on a given test will look like for the characters actually taking it.

By the way, if you don’t get the Codicil out of the vault, the entire campaign breaks and you can’t play any more. So if the PCs fail the tests, some NPCs stop by and let them in.

…

All in all, Auril’s Abode is the only part of the adventure that I think is actually straight up crap. (Except for the art, which continues to be fabulous.)

This is a pity because this is THE adventure promised by the cover and title of the book.

When I got to this chapter I was literally rubbing my hands together with glee. HERE WE GO!

And then… Meh.

THE LOST CITY OF YTHRYN

Eighteen hundred years ago, Ythryn was a flying city and part of the Netherese Empire. A strange artifact caused the city’s mythallar to malfunction and it crashed into the Great Glacier. It has remained completely sealed off from the outside world ever since.

On that note, I’ve noticed a weird design tic in WotC adventures: Ancient ruins that have supposedly remained undiscovered and unknown for centuries, but which the PCs nevertheless reach by journeying through cosmopolitan caves filled to the brim with people.

Brief segue while we’re in these caves. This room is one of the funniest things I have ever read in a D&D adventure:

H21. FROZEN FROST GIANT

Entombed in the icy floor of this twenty-foot-high cave is the frozen, well-preserved corpse of a frost giant. Scratch marks in the ice suggest a half-hearted attempt to excavate the remains.

Really fantastic imagery here! Frozen ice cave. The creepy giant corpse. It’s super atmospheric. Memorable. Very cool. (Pun intended.) And enigmatic! How did he get here?

A city fell on him.

…

Not making this up. He was crushed to death when the flying city fell on top of him.

And, as we all know, when a city(!) falls on top of you, what happens is that your perfectly preserved corpse ends up flawlessly preserved in ice.

The best part is that if you look at the map, the city actually ended up directly BELOW him. So the city fell on him, crushed him to death (without mangling his body in any way), and then… phased through him to its final resting place?

In any case, the PCs eventually make their way through the caves and end up in the buried city of Ythryn. The book is a little vague on this, but the intention seems to be for the PCs to enter a huge cavern and be able to look down at the ruined city below them.

At which point you show them the Players’ Map of the whole thing:

Then they can explore the city by basically just pointing at cool stuff and saying, “Let’s go check that out!”

This isn’t the only way to run a ruined city scenario, but it’s a pretty great way to do it.

I do have a couple of quibbles here.

First, the scale of the city is such that you can walk across the whole thing in ten minutes, which seems to sap some of the epic scope. To be fair, this in itself is an attempt to compromise with the harsh realities of the 5^th edition core rules: Slow travel pace is 200 feet per minute in the core rules; here the writers invent a “cautious rate” of 200 feet every 5 minutes. On the other hand, the scale also doesn’t seem to sync up well with the individual building maps, so you could probably double the size of the city to no ill effect.

Second, one of my personal pet peeves is when building floorplans don’t match the picture of the building. But this becomes particularly egregious when the intended interaction of the game is literally “point at picture, then go to that place.” For example, the Spire of Iriolarthas:

The inset on this map actually hides the full extent of the problem here. If you look at the Players’ Map above, you can see that this is just the tippy-top of the central structure in the city. Where the heck is the rest of the building?!

But even just looking at the inset is rife with problems: Where are the missing floors that are clearly depicted between the three floors shown on the map? And did you notice the strut clearly connected to the High Court that leads to the other half of the spire?

THE END OF THE CAMPAIGN

In any case, here in Ythryn we have reached the end of the campaign… and it all just falls apart.

There are three options given in the book for how Rime of the Frostmaiden can end.

ENDING OPTION #1: Activate the Reset Obelisk (a powerful artifact in the city) and save Ythryn.

Here’s how that works:

1. The PCs take Iriolarthus’ staff of power.
2. The PCs use it to activate the Obelisk.

Why is this a problem?

Well, Iriolarthas is actually a Netherse wizard who has spent 1,800+ years trying to solve this problem. Despite his “best efforts” he’s been unable to do so, despite having trivial access to everything he needs. (The staff is literally sitting in his office.)

Now, Iriolarthas is currently a demi-lich and that would probably prevent him from doing this himself. But there are other people in the city who would gladly help (and do). Also, he didn’t become a demi-lich for a long, long time. (Which is why there was time for his “best efforts.”)

Also: He’s only a demi-lich because his phyalactery was buried in the ice when the city crashed, so he wasn’t able to physically access it to feed souls into it. (This is not how phylacteries work. As the Monster Manual says, “The phylactery must be on the same plane as the lich for the [soul-feeding] spell to work.”)

But the BIG problem is that:

• The city is stuck because X needs to be done.
• X could have been done at any time.

And it doesn’t make any sense. Nor is it made to make sense for the players.

Maybe the players don’t realize it and it’s fine. But I still think it’s a problem.

And the solution would be easy: The fix to the Obelisk just needs to be an out-of-context element. This would force the PCs to leave the city, get the thing they need (and which the people trapped in the city lacked), and then come back.

This would also help explain some of the timeline issues the finale struggles with, which brings us to…

ENDING OPTION #2: Use the Ythryn mythallar to cast control weather and end Auril’s winter!

The problem here is that this doesn’t actually work:

You can use the Ythryn mythallar to cast the control weather spell without requiring any components and without the need for you to be outdoors. This casting of the spell has a 50-mile radius. For the duration of the spell’s casting time, you must be within 30 feet of the Ythryn mythallar or the spell fails.

This is actually the second time the book has asserted that a magic item that casts control weather will solve the problem. But it doesn’t really hold up, because the spell only lasts for 8 hours and requires the user’s concentration. So unless the PCs want to spend the rest of their lives in Ythryn perpetually casting the spell three times a day, it won’t help.

Also, the 50 mile radius of the spell isn’t far enough to reach all of Ten-Towns.

On the other hand, it’s nice to have an alternative resolution to the Auril’s Winter plot than just killing Auril…

…except not really, because the adventure says that using the mythallar immediately causes Auril to show up and fight them to the death.

So it’s all pointless.

ENDING OPTION #3: Twenty-four hours after the PCs enter Ythryn, Auril shows up with a loudspeaker and says, “YOU HAVE TAKEN TOO LONG! LET’S FIGHT!”

And then she fights to the death. Or whatever.

Mostly I don’t understand the design decision behind the timeline here:

• The PCs reach Ythryn.
• 12 hours later, competing archaeological teams arrive in the city.
• 12 hours after that, Auril shows up, summarily executes the competing archaeological teams, and triggers the endgame.

This seems like an interesting, dynamic situation for the PCs to interact with. (Think about the cat-and-mouse game between Indiana Jones and Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark.) But it seems as if the timeline has been set up just to punish PCs who take long rests in the city by giving the “bad ending.”

The other problem here is that Auril’s appearance feels arbitrary. You could trigger this, “THE TIME HAS COME FOR THE END OF THIS CAMPAIGN!” encounter at literally any point in the campaign and it would make as much sense as it does here. It doesn’t really proceed from everything the PCs have been doing, so it doesn’t feel like a culmination or a conclusion. It doesn’t resolve the story, because the PCs’ story hasn’t been about Auril.

You might also note that both Ending Option #2 and Ending Option #3 become null and void if the PCs killed Auril back at Auril’s Abode. This is a problem that often blights adventures in which a pseudo-sandbox gets welded onto the side of a railroad: The author (or GM) basically says, “Look at how much freedom you have! You even have the freedom to screw up the plot I’ve prepared!”

But then, if the players do that, the story doesn’t actually move in a new direction, it just continues shambling through the now empty and meaningless scaffolding of the prepared plot.

THE MISCELLANEOUS MISSES

Now that we’ve reached the end, let’s talk about a handful of other problems I had with the book — the smaller details that haven’t really fit into the discussion so far.

For example, three hundred page adventures need indexes. And if you don’t have an index, you’d better make really, really, really sure that the table of contents doesn’t have errors in it.

On a similar note, there’s a lot of basic continuity errors in the book. In one of the most egregious examples, a key piece of information the players need to finish the campaign is given in two contradictory forms on the same page.

REPUTATION SYSTEM: Given the nature of the Icewind Dale sandbox, the designers clearly realized that it would be really cool to have a reputation system. For example, they write:

Once the characters reach 4^th level, they no long [sic] gain levels by completing the quests in this chapter. Even so, completing more than the required number of quests can improve their standing in Ten-Towns (see “Reputation in Ten-Towns” below)…

Unfortunately, two paragraphs later they say, “Eh. Fuck it.”

The adventuring party’s reputation in Ten-Towns improves as the characters gain levels, with the following results:

When the characters reach 3rd level, they [list of stuff].

When the characters reach 4th level, they [list of stuff].

So you keep gaining reputation even when you’re not gaining levels, but the only way reputation is tracked is by what level you are?

C’mon, man.

Furthermore, the only function of “reputation” is to unlock the Chapter 2 rumor table.

So why not just… do that? As written, it would be best to just drop the reputation “system” entirely.

Which is unfortunate, because a solid reputation system could really heighten the story of Icewind Dale and make it viscerally meaningful: The players would really be able to feel themselves becoming heroes of the Dale, and those mechanics would feed back into the narrative of rising up, overthrowing the Frostmaiden, and leading Icewind Dale out of her horrible winter.

IGNORE THE RULES! There are a lot of places in Icewind Dale where the book says, “The rules say this doesn’t work, so the rules don’t apply.”

For example, the chardalyn dragon is allowed to ignore environmental effects so that it doesn’t fall out of the sky. In another place, the authors want to have a very specific haunted house story, so they just arbitrarily declare that the ghost can’t be turned.

This is often just gratuitous. For example, the dragon would fall out of the sky because it doesn’t have a hover speed. But it’s a completely artificial dragon… why not just give it a hover speed? (Given that it’s kind of a steampunk creation made from evil crystals, I argue that giving it VTOL steam jets would just make it more badass.)

You probably won’t be surprised to discover that I’m not a big fan of this. It’s just not that hard to design stuff that works right with the rules.

BREAKING THE FOURTH WALL: I’ve mentioned this briefly above, but there are actually multiple points in the book where an NPC basically says, “Thou art not yet experienced enough! Return when thou hast attained a higher level!”

It’s kind of gauche. Frankly, I find this sort of, “You need to gain 500 XP before you can access this content!” stuff pretty off-putting even in a video game. In a tabletop RPG? It’s completely unacceptable.

BOXED TEXT: Quite a bit of boxed text in Rime of the Frostmaiden is very bad. Take this example from the caves around Yrkyth:

Frost-covered blocks of stone jut from the floor of this ten-foot-high cave of ice. Perched atop the largest stone is an emaciated kobold with glowing red eyes. It bares elongated fangs as it hisses at you, then scampers away.

First, there are too many places where the action (or inaction) of the PCs are assumed. That’s a big no-no.

But the really odd thing I found here was how often the boxed text wasn’t actually describing the thing it was purportedly describing.

It was here in the caves that I finally figured out why, because the boxed text in the caves is constantly telling you the height of the ceiling but absolutely nothing else about the shape or dimensions of the area.

…

Did you figure it out?

The adventure is written exclusively for GMs using virtual tabletops. The assumption is that the GM won’t bother describing the room because the players can just see the map displayed on their computer screens.

Here’s a more egregious example from earlier in the book:

The room is clearly designed for the PCs to investigate the tool-covered table and the bookcase, but the description of the room doesn’t mention that they exist. And, yes, the answer is that you can see the table and the bookcase on the map.

THE STANDOUT MOMENTS

Remember at the beginning of all this that I said I liked the book quite a bit? But I’ve been analyzing its shortcomings for a few thousand words now, and that can leave a somewhat lop-sided impression. So I’d like to close things out by calling out some of the really nice stuff that the book does.

For example, the book introduces domesticated axe beaks which are used as mounts and pack beasts in Icewind Dale. And they’re awesome:

CUSTOMIZED CHARACTER CREATION: Icewind Dale also does a fantastic job of customizing character creation:

• It personalizes the scenario hooks by tying them to specific Backgrounds.
• It includes customized starting equipment appropriate for the setting.
• It includes a new option for a PC race in the Goliaths. (Even if no one picks the option, its availability still sets a tone.)
• It has a cool set of Character Secrets, most of which are tangibly tied to various elements of the sandbox.

There are all fairly minor things, but that’s kind of what makes them great. It really shows how just a few light touches can make character creation feel unique and special; investing the players in the feel and color of the campaign before play ever begins.

Playtest Tip: I’ve found that the Character Secrets tend to be the definitional aspect of character concept/background. So if you’re using them, you’ll probably want to deal them out up front so that people can build their characters around their secret. You can ameliorate this to some extent by dealing two or three secrets to each player and letting them choose.

WEATHER CONDITIONS: The designers use extreme weather conditions (particularly blizzards) to attempt to reintroduce some of the difficulties (or, more accurately, the interesting complications) of overland travel that 5^th Edition’s core design generally stripped out of the game.

Icewind Dale isn’t really exploration-based, so getting lost in a blizzard, for example, doesn’t contribute to the navigational puzzle which would be found in such games. But it DOES create a dramatic tone: it brings Auril’s curse into the narrative at a fundamental level.

NON-COMBAT SUPPORT: Icewind Dale also does a great job of supporting non-combat resolutions and goals.

In Caer-Dineval, for example, the Knights of the Black Sword push hard for an alliance with the PCs, in a way that feels like it could reasonably happen (at least for awhile).

The Caer-Konig quest that takes you to a duergar outpost is primarily framed around “get our stolen stuff back,” which is a sharp contrast to the usual “clear the dungeon” goal found in a lot of published modules. (This pairs well with the xandered entrance to the outpost, which allows the PCs to either assault the main door or attempt to breach the complex through a bunker.)

The book also generally provides this support while avoiding contingency planning (which is the other typical pit trap scenarios can fall into with this).

For similar reasons, I like the Good Mead quest in which the PCs clear the dungeon… but then, after they’ve done so, a different bad guy shows up while they’re still there, likely inverting their relationship with the dungeon (so that they need to defend what they just invaded).

GREAT GRAPHICAL DESIGN: It’s unsurprising to discover that Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden continues Wizards of the Coast’s fantastic graphical design (samples of which you’ve seen throughout this review.)

I’ve already mentioned the fantastic art illustrating even the weaker parts of the adventure, like Auril’s Abode. But this also extends to even the smallest details. For example, I simply adore this magic ring:

I want to own one in real life.

The advantages of Wizard’s graphical design extend beyond the book itself. For example, consider the stunningly beautiful (and incredibly massive!) chardalyn dragon miniature from Wizkids:

These rich graphical resources and other enhancements are a huge value add to your campaign that can be difficult or impossible to replicate otherwise.

These strong graphics are frequently paired to some fantastically flavorful material.

For example, I love the random encounter with Arveiaturace the White Wyrm: “…the dragon is buried under heavy snow. Her [dead rider who she once served and is still strapped to her back] is visible above the surface, looking like a frozen corpse in the snow. If the characters are close enough to touch the corpse, they’re already standing on the dragon’s back.”

That’s so unique, cool, and totally terrifying.

Gotta love it. Can’t wait to run it.

Style: 5
Substance: 3

Story Creator & Lead Writer: Christopher Perkins
Writing Team: Stacey Allan, Bill Benham, H.H. Carlan, Celese Conowitch, Dan Dillon, Will Doyle, Mikayla Ebel, Anne Gregersen, Chad Quandt, Morrigan Robbins, Ashley Warren
Rules Development: Jeremy Crawford, Dan Dillon, Ben Petrisor, Taymoor Rehman
World Building: John Francis Daley, Crystal Frasier, Jonathan Goldstein, Ed Greenwood, Amanda Hamon, Adam Lee, Ari Levitch, Mike Mearls, Christopher Perkins, Jessica Price, R.A. Salvatore, Kate Welch, Shawn Wood

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 320

Go to Icewind Dale Index