This has been a highly requested series from my patrons: a closer look at the player characters in my Dragon Heist campaign and how I (or, more accurately, we) integrated them into the game. I’ve resisted writing it, however, because I wasn’t entirely sure how to make it high-value.

The key thing is that I already wrote a couple posts about creating characters for long-term campaigns — Running the Campaign: Designing Character Backgrounds. The short summary is:

1. Establish the campaign concept.
2. Have the players pitch their character concepts.
3. Collaborate on a public integration, with the GM using their expertise in the setting to take generic archetypes of the character concept (e.g., northern barbarian) and make them specific (e.g., a member of the Tribe of the Red Elk).
4. Have the GM do a private integration of the character, tying them into the larger structure of the campaign (e.g., Is there a major villain? Make it the long-lost brother of one of the PCs).
5. Bring the party together. At least 95 times out of 100, you’ll want to explain why the PCs are all going to generally hang out and do things together — specifically, the usually crazy things the campaign concept is predicated on — before you start your first session. 4 times out of the remaining 5, you’ll probably want to have things pre-arranged so that they all fall in together within the first few scenes.

There are other ways to handle character creation, but this was essentially the same procedure I’d followed for Dragon Heist. It didn’t feel like there was really new territory to explore.

I’ve had a number of recent conversations, however, suggesting that people would like to see more practical examples of what some of this theoretical material actually looks like in actual play. So that’s our primary goal here.

I’d also commissioned some really fantastic art depicting the characters from @BroadfootLenny, so if nothing else you’ll be able to “ooooh” and “aaahh” over some pretty pictures!

THE BASELINE

Let’s start by establishing a baseline understanding of how character creation (and the campaign in general) were set up. You might want to start by reading through those two earlier posts for a more detailed discussion of the general procedure, but it’s probably not strictly necessary.

GAME SESSIONS: We should briefly discuss how we were actually playing the campaign because it has an impact on how character creation played out.

As I’ve discussed previously, we mostly played Dragon Heist in weekend intensives: We would play four hours on Friday night, then 10-12 hours on Saturday, and then another 8-10 hours on Sunday.

We also went from talking about doing this to actually doing it very quickly. This meant that, for our first weekend, we would be creating characters Friday night and then starting the campaign the next day at 10 AM.

This was unusual for me: For a dedicated campaign like this, I’m usually chatting about characters and swapping e-mails weeks ahead of time. There’s often a Session 0 with one or two weeks before we actually start play, allowing further development and refinement of the characters before we get going. In this case, all of this was truncated and there would be very little time (particularly very little awake time) between creating our characters and launching into a long-term campaign with them.

CAMPAIGN CONCEPT: My pitch for the campaign was pretty straightforward: “Would you like to play the new Dragon Heist campaign from Wizards of the Coast? I’ve been remixing it for my website.”

Although brief, this carried with it some key information:

• We were playing D&D 5^th (Just saying “D&D”, as I’ve noted in those previous essays, carries a lot of weight when it comes to campaign concept, in a way that isn’t necessarily true for other RPGs.)
• The campaign would in some way involve a “heist.”

To this, if I recall correctly, I basically added only one additional piece of information:

• The campaign will be taking place in Waterdeep, which is located in the Forgotten Realms.

I had maps of Waterdeep and Faerûn hung on the walls of our game room for handy reference. For players who were not familiar with the source material, I also briefly introduced them to the various sourcebooks we’d be using, including:

• Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
• 3^rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
• 1^st Edition Forgotten Realms boxed set
• 2^nd Edition Forgotten Realms: City System boxed set

This meant literally holding them up and saying, “These exist, feel free to flip through them if you’re looking for inspiration.” We also identified the people at the table who were familiar with the Realms and could serve as sources of expertise. Besides myself, this was Chris and Peter, both of whom were probably more well-versed in Realms lore than I was.

We also talked about our group’s familiarity with D&D, which ranged considerably. Some of us had been playing since the ‘80s. Another had played virtually no D&D whatsoever, but had just started playing in another 5^th Edition campaign a couple months earlier. Another had played one session of 2^nd Edition in 1997, one session of 3^rd Edition in 2003, and a dozen or so sessions of my OD&D open table. Personally my own experience with 5^th Edition was limited — I’d played a couple of sessions in a heavily homebrewed game and hadn’t run it at all yet.

BRINGING THE PARTY TOGETHER: The last thing I said before starting character creation was that:

• The first scene of the campaign would be the five of them walking through the doors of the Yawning Portal to meet a contact who was offering them a job.
• In creating their characters, they needed to figure out how they had ended up there.

Dragon Heist Remix – Addendum: First Impressions discusses how I handled the opening scene of the campaign in more detail, but I basically knew that this moment at the door of the Yawning Portal would bookend character creation: By immediately establishing what I needed them from them, I knew aiming at that specific moment would be hanging in the back of their brains throughout the entire process, ready to opportunistically shape any and all decisions along the way.

Then, at the end, we would return to this beat. I would show them the “Friendly Faces” handout from p. 223 of Dragon Heist and ask them to pick the picture of the NPC they were coming to meet. I knew that combining why they were walking through that door looking for a job together with who they were meeting on the other side of the door to get the job from would provide a final act of creative closure that would shape and personalize the opening of the campaign.

(Spoilers: It did.)

I think the big thing to note here is how simple this all was. I’ve talked about it at length, but it boils down:

• Four or five sentences pitching the campaign concept.
• A one sentence improv prompt for them to build their group dynamic around.
• And, later, pointing at a picture and asking a simple question.

It can be more complicated than that, but it doesn’t need to be.

In any case, that’s basically the whole set up. So now we’re going to look at the specific character backgrounds that we worked up and discuss how the procedure got us to that point.

EDANA

(Created by Sarah Holmberg)

Her father died (at least that is the story her mother told her) when she was still an infant. Her mother fell in with the Shadow Thieves as a way to make best use of her skills to support her young family. When things went south,  Edana was sent to stay with family friends while her mother worked on making plans for them to leave safely and secretly, but her mother never came back. She was told that her mother died, though she still hears rumors that make her suspect her mother is alive.

It’s part of the reason Edana tries to stay connected to, but not part of, the underworld in Waterdeep. Keeping enough distance to not make herself a target when the inevitable drumming out occurs again, but close enough to hear about her mother’s return. Though by this point, she doesn’t expect it to happen, it’s more out of habit and making best use of the skills that she picks up the occasional job from her underworld connections.

When she’s flush, she creates new personas and lives for years as them, spending her time reading, creating art, carousing,  practicing her card tricks and forgery skills. When she’s skint, she sheds those personas and returns to her true self, takes what work she can and builds up enough funds to start a new life for a while.

DESCRIPTION: Edana is a high elf with golden skin and golden hair. High, delicate cheekbones, with usually a faintly amused expression on her face. Her everyday look is hair braided back in two braids around the crown of her head, with hair loose in back. When she’s staying at the tavern she wears deceptively simple looking dresses that in blues and greens that have a lot of detail work in them. When leaving the tavern she wears breaches and a belted tunic. Her cloak has a lot of secret pockets in it.

She’s also very skilled in disguising herself. She can style her hair to cover her ears, apply makeup to make her skin look merely tanned instead of golden. She’s quick to adjust her clothing to either blend in or stand out, as needed. Even when she’s at her most broke she retains one set of very fine clothes.

WHAT EDANA KNOWS – THE ZHENTARIM:

• Zhentarim are a shadow organization of thieves, spies, assassins, and wizards that trades mercenaries and goods (including weapons) for profit.
• Their original base of power was among the Zhent people in the Moonsea region, primarily a place called Zhentil Keep.
• Long sought to gain political influence in Waterdeep, but the strength of the city’s Masked Lords, nobility, and professional guilds makes that difficult.
• In the late 14^th century (about 100 years ago), the founder of the Zhentarim (Manshoon) was killed and Zhentil Keep was razed. Zhentarim power was shattered, with the organization breaking down into many internecine factions.
• Recently the local Zhentarim in Waterdeep were rallied around a mercenary group known as the Doom Raiders. They’d been rising in power. Recently, however, there’s been a schism in the Zhentarim: A second locus of power seems to have risen within the group and is peeling support off from the Doom Raiders. You aren’t sure exactly who this second locus belongs to, but you do know that:
  • They keep an interrogation house in Brindul Alley in the Trade Ward. It was most recently being run by a woman named Avareen Windrivver.
  • Members of the new faction have taken up residence at Yellowspire, a tower in the Castle Ward.
• This schism is not widely known, because the Zhentarim are simultaneously fighting a gang war with the Xanathar Crime League.

WHAT EDANA KNOWS – THE XANATHAR CRIME LEAGUE:

• Xanathar is a beholder. He’s hundreds of years old and has held court over the Waterdhavian underworld for centuries.
• The location of his headquarters is a closely kept secret, but definitely lies somewhere under Waterdeep. Possibly in the vicinity of the underground city of Skullport.

CREATING EDANA

Sarah’s core concept was an elf with criminal connections who had been coasting for a long time. She was already playing a very young elf in another campaign, and here she really wanted to lean into elven longevity. A central image was the endless carousel of identities; each picked up, enjoyed, and then casually discarded.

In play, I think she discovered that the “safety” of Edana’s serial identities was less about comfort and more about fear. This became very interesting to explore as the events of the campaign kept pushing her to put down meaningful roots.

PUBLIC INTEGRATION: The main thing here was pulling the lore of the Shadow Thieves. Connecting the disappearance of Edana’s mother to the height of the Shadow Thieves’ power in Waterdeep (centuries earlier) helped cement just how long Edana had been coasting through her disposable identities.

PRIVATE INTEGRATION: Usually the GM’s private integration is, well, private… at least for a time. In this case, though, I immediately handed Sarah these short cheat sheets of what Edana knew about the Zhentarim and Xanathar’s gang. I framed this as being what she knew about the local criminal scene in Waterdeep, but obviously I knew both of these organizations would be featuring in the campaign. Breaking down exactly what she knew accomplished two things:

First, it let me think very carefully about what information the PCs would just know and what information would need to be discovered through play.

Second, when these topics inevitably came up during play, having the info sheet meant that Sarah could just act as an expert, using the knowledge that Edana had to brief in the other PCs. Instead of asking me what her character knew and then having the information come from the GM, she could just confidently roleplay through the moment.

It also meant that, for example, I could drop some off-hand reference to “Brindul Alley,” and then the player — just like the character — could go, “Wait a minute! I know what that means!” Which is infinitely better than me dropping an off-hand reference to “Brindul Alley” and then calling for an Intelligence check to continue telling them information. (Similar to the Matryoshka search technique.)

MAKING THE PARTY: Edana’s background obviously positioned her as a fixer, and very early on the group decided that she was probably the one who was connecting them with the contact at the Yawning Portal.

In principle, this was pretty straightforward, although it became considerably more convoluted as the other PCs became involved.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: One last thing I’ll note here is how important I think it is for players to think about the physical description of their characters. I think it’s collectively essential for the whole group (and me!) to be able to picture what’s happening in the game world. I also think that the mental construct of a character’s physicality is essential for capturing the psychological gesture of the character. (If you want to delve into that, check out On the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov.)

The advice I’ll give for this is often very similar to that found in the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template.

Go to Part 2: Pashar

Travel times in Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden are somewhat confusing and difficult to reference. Due to the harsh winter conditions of the Dale, the normal rules for overland travel in 5^th Edition don’t apply. Instead:

The speed that characters can travel across Icewind Dale’s rough, snowy terrain is given in the Overland Travel table. Travel is less time-consuming on the snowy roads and trails that connect the settlements of Ten-Towns, as discussed in Chapter 1.

If you look up the equipment entry for dogsleds, there’s also this rule:

Sled dogs must take a short rest after pulling a sled for 1 hour; otherwise, they gain one level of exhaustion.

It’s unclear whether this rule is already calculated into the distance per hour for dogsleds given on the Method of Travel table.

The guidelines for road/trail travel in Chapter 1 are not generalized, but are instead presented in sections like this one (for the town of Bremen):

Heavy snow has obliterated the trail that once guided travelers to Targos. Adventurers determined to make the journey on foot can reach Targos in 2 hours. Using mounts or dogsleds can reduce this travel time by as much as 50 percent.

No specific speed for road travel is given, but if you run the numbers they tend to land somewhere between 1.25 and 2.25 miles per hour.

The book also includes incredibly awesome axe beak mounts… but neglects to give a speed for them.

RECOMMENDED TRAVEL RULES

Dogsleds: These rules assume that dogsleds increase their speed in the same ratio as humans do on the roads. These travel times include 1 hour of rest for every hour of travel. Double the speed if the dogs are not being given rest, but they suffer 1 level of exhaustion per hour (which means after the second hour of being pushed their speed will be halved).

Axe Beaks: I’ve arbitrarily decided they move very well through snow or across trackless tundra, but perform like a normal mount on roads (traveling at the same speed as a humanoid). On roads, this means axe beak mounts can gallop at 6 miles per hour, but at the cost of suffering 2 levels of exhaustion per hour. (This means that after the first hour of a gallop, their speed will be halved.)

On Foot: Snowshoes don’t help on roads.

OPTIONAL: TRAVEL PACE

In modifying the rules for overland travel, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden doesn’t specify how travel pace should be handled. If you assume the table above lists a Normal pace of travel, you can use the table below to calculate Fast and Slow paces.

Fast Pace: -5 penalty to passive Wisdom (Perception) scores

Slow Pace: Able to use Stealth

Design Note: The comparison between dogsleds under snowy conditions and horses under normal conditions gets wonky. This is because Icewind Dale reduces human speed by two-thirds, but then has dogsleds moving at twice that speed. The net result is that you end up with dogs in snow being faster than horses on open ground. However, my research indicates these values are broadly accurate for how dogsleds perform in the real world, so I’m going to let the book values stand.

OPTIONAL RULE: DETERIORATING ROADS

Although the roads between the settlements of Ten-Towns are still kept open and trade is mostly uninterrupted, the Frostmaiden’s eternal winter has pushed the region’s infrastructure to the breaking point. Drifting snow and frequent blizzards can effectively obliterate the road between two towns.

There is a 1 in 6 chance of encountering an obliterated road (check for each section of the road).

It is still possible to follow the track of an obliterated road (due to tall waymarker posts that still manage to rise above the ever-growing snowpack), but characters on an obliterated road cannot travel faster than Slow Pace. Furthermore, the group’s navigator must make a DC 12 Wisdom (Survival) check each hour or veer off the road.

If the check fails, the party wanders off course and gets no closer to their destination in that hour. It takes an additional check to find the road again, with each failure costing the group an additional hour.

REFERENCE TOOLS

I also thought it would be useful to compile the travel data into some easy-to-use references, which you’ll find below.

MAP: TRAVEL TIME

(click for large map)

This map compiles the travel times given in each town’s entry in the Rime of the Frostmaiden. It turns out, however, that these values are inconsistent with each other along the Eastway. They’ve been adjusted for consistency here (which, of course, means that some of these values will be slightly out of sync with the book).

Note: The path between Bremen and Targos has been “obliterated,” which appears to roughly double what would otherwise be the travel time between these towns. If you’re using the optional rules for deteriorating roads, you’ll want to take this into account.

MAP: TRAVEL DISTANCE

This map lists the distance in miles between each settlement. These distances are calculated directly from the poster map that comes with the book, using the included scale and following the precise path of the trail/road indicated.

(Technically I used the D&D Beyond version of the map, and then used Adobe Illustrator to trace each path and then precisely calculate its length.)

If you calculate the travel times from the distances given here, you will not end up with the travel times given Travel Time Map. This is because the travel times given in the book are all radically inconsistent: Routes are referred to indiscriminately as roads, trails, or paths. Some routes are referred to as being blocked or obliterated. But none of these descriptions have any relation, as far as I can tell, to the variances in travel time given.

ICEWIND DALE TRAVEL SPREADSHEET

You can download an Excel spreadsheet with Icewind Dale travel information here. It contains the following sheets:

• Rounded Distance: As noted above, I calculated precise distances from the original map. This sheet rounds those distances to the nearest half mile.
• Travel Time (Foot): This sheet has the travel time in hours between all ten towns. These values are calculated using the values on the Rounded Distance sheet and the recommended travel rules above (not the time values given in the book).
• Travel Time (Dogsled): Same thing, but for dogsleds.
• Travel Time (Dogsled – No Rest): Same thing, but this assumes the party is pushing their mush team to the limits without any rest. These values have been manually adjusted where necessary to reflect that the speed of the dogs’ becomes halved after two hours due to exhaustion. Some journeys will kill the dogs if they are not allowed to rest, and this is also indicated.
• Raw Distance Data: This is the original, raw distance data as directly measured from the original map. It’s included mainly as a curiosity here.

All of these tables include an entry for “Intersection,” which is the intersection between the Eastway and the north-south road running from Dougan’s Hole to Caer-Konig.

Icons by Delapouite. Used under CC BY 3.0 license.

Go to Icewind Dale Index

Go to Part 1

So what does this all look like in actual play? Well, let’s simulate a campaign (with some actual dice rolls for stuff like the campaign’s starting town) and take a look.

For the purposes of this simulated campaign, let’s largely ignore the players being able to define their own scenarios. In actual play, this will almost certainly happen: Ten-Towns is enough of a living environment that the players can, for example, decide to become caravan guards from Kelvin’s Cairn; or re-open an abandoned inn; or buy mead from Good Mead to sell at a high price in a town where the taverns are running dry because trade has been disrupted. But what we’re going to focus on here is primarily just the baseline play that arises directly out of the sandbox structures in the campaign.

INITIAL STARTING QUEST: Cold-Hearted Killer

A dwarf named Hlin Trollbane believes she’s identified the serial killer who’s been plaguing Ten-Towns — it’s a man named Sephek who’s travelling with Torg’s merchant caravan. She approaches the PCs in a tavern and asks them to track the killer down and kill him.

STARTING TOWN: Caer-Konig

The quest in Caer-Konig sees the PCs stumble across Speaker Torvus, the dragonborn leader of the town who is drunkenly patrolling the streets in a vain attempt to capture dwarven thieves who have been sneaking into town. This eventually leads them to a nearby Duergar Outpost (p. 47).

Right off the bat here my instinct is to have the PCs enter Caer-Konig, encounter the drunken Speaker, and get the Duergar Outpost quest. When they get back to town (having leveled up to 2^nd level), Hlin says, “I’m impressed. I think you might be able to help me bring a little more justice to this cold-blighted Dale.”

The success of the first quest diegetically justifies Hlin approaching them for the bigger job. I now roll to see which town Sephek will be found in.

SEPHEK’S TOWN: Easthaven

Alternative: If you wanted to more strictly adhere to the published structure (starting quest first!), the campaign starts in the Hook, Line, and Sinker (p. 46), where Hlin hires them to kill the serial killer. They leave the tavern and immediately stumble over Speaker Torvus, who leads them to the Northern Light tavern on the other side of the town and starts the Duergar Outpost quest.

STRANGE ALLIANCES

Either way, they head down the road and pass through CAER-DINEVAL.

Caer-Dineval is one of the towns without a proactive quest, so the PCs could just pass right through without getting one. But they’re looking for the serial killer, right? So they’re going to head to the local tavern, the Uphill Climb (p. 38), and start asking questions.

The adventure tells us that Roark, the proprietor of the Uphill Climb, won’t explicitly tell the PCs what’s going on in town (most likely out of fear), but he will try to point them at the caer (castle) in the hope that they’ll get involved. So when they start asking questions, he’ll say something like, “If any caravan was looking for permission to set up here, they’d inquire with the Speaker up at the caer.”

So the PCs head up there and knock on the door.

The caer has been secretly invaded by a cult called the Knights of the Black Swords that, among other things, wants to stop the duergar invasion of Ten-Towns: They’ve killed the guards, taken the Speaker hostage, and are ruling the town in his name. The way this quest works is that the PCs can bust up the cult and rescue the speaker, OR they can end up allying with the cult. The cult has some divine guidance which, if the PCs have taken any anti-duergar actions, will have informed the cult that the PCs can be useful allies and that they should go out of their way to accommodate them.

So if the PCs did the Duergar Outpost quest, then the likely outcome here is that the Black Swords form an alliance with them. (“Your coming has been foretold!”) That’s a second quest complete.

Alternative: If the PCs heard about the duergar thieves and said, “Doesn’t seem like our problem,” or if they tried to follow the duergar tracks, got lost, and never found the outpost, then when they go up to the caer to ask questions about Torg’s caravan, they’re simply told, “Nope, no Sephek here,” and turned away.

As the PCs head back down the hill from the caer, they meet Dannika Graysteel, who’s heading back from another disappointing attempt to find a type of fairy called a chwinga. This kicks off the SECOND STARTING QUEST — “Nature Spirits”, p. 25 — when Dannika asks them to look for chwingas in the other towns of Ten-Towns.

Now the PCs head down the road to where it intersects with the Eastway.

The choice of which way to go is now basically random. So, for the sake of argument, I rolled a die and determined that this hypothetical group is heading to GOOD MEAD.

As they approach Good Mead, they encounter a trapper. They ask him about chwingas, but he shakes his head; he hasn’t seen any chwingas around here. (There’s a 25% chance each town has chwingas. I rolled a 47 for Good Mead, so no chwingas here.) But he does tell them that he just discovered five dead bodies out on the tundra. This is the quest hook for the Verbeeg Lair (p. 71).

These players, however, decide NOT to follow the trail from the dead bodies back to the verbeeg’s lair. Tackling a giant all by themselves just sounds too tough. But they want to do the right thing, so they gather up the bodies and take them into Good Mead for a proper burial.

In Good Mead they hear that the verbeeg has stolen the town’s mead supply and killed the Speaker, threatening to ruin the town’s economy. But this mostly just confirms that the giant is going to be too tough for them to handle.

SAVIORS OF GOOD MEAD

One of the PCs, however, decides to rally the townspeople: Alone they can’t stop the verbeeg menace. But together they can triumph!

The stat block for Good Mead conveniently lists what the local militia can muster:

So the PCs make some solid Charisma checks and they rally two veterans and 10 tribal warriors to go giant-hunting. (If they’d rolled better, they could have perhaps gotten ALL the tribal warriors to go with them.)

On the way to the verbeeg lair, I frame a couple of scenes where they’re chatting with other members of the expedition. I use the opportunity to introduce Shandar Froth and Olivessa Untapoor (p. 78) and improvise a couple of new NPCs representing the common folk of Good Mead. During this small talk, the PCs also pick up two more rumors: Dwarves are having trouble bringing their goods to Bryn Shander due to yeti attacks. And Dougan’s Hole, down the road, is being plagued by a couple of dire wolves or awakened wolves or polar wolves or werewolves.

(Depends on who you ask and how tall the tale has gotten.)

Note: I’m deliberately inserting uncertainty and/or broader context into these rumors compared to the default text in the adventure. See also Random GM Tips: Surprising Scenario Hooks.

The giant-hunting expedition is a huge success. Maybe one of the group’s new NPC friends gets killed (a little pathos never hurt anybody). That’s another quest complete, so the PCs are now 3^rd level.

The PCs return to Good Mead. While everyone is celebrating (and mourning), Olivessa Untapoor approaches them: Good Mead needs a new Speaker. A strong speaker. Shandar Froth thinks he should do it, but he’s a jackass. People are asking Olivessa to run against him, but she really doesn’t want the position. She thinks that one of the PCs should stand for the election.

Now, if the PCs want, this could totally happen! They’re the heroes of the hour. They’ve got the support of a major civic leader. There’s a whole thing where Shandar, regardless of who he ends up running against, pulls some shenanigans during the elections (p.78), but the PC candidate can probably end up on top.

This would, of course, change the entire nature of the campaign! Which is great! As the DM you’d need to come up with some civic challenges for the new Speaker (and their closest advisors; i.e., the other PCs) to deal with. You don’t have to completely abandon the existing toybox while you’re doing this, though. For example, you can look at the existing rumor tables and think about how to re-contextualize them to the PCs’ current circumstances.

For example, this rumor:

In Lonelywood, beware the dreaded white moose! It attacks loggers and trappers on sight, and the town’s best hunters can’t seem to catch or kill the beast. They could probably use some help.

We could easily imagine Speaker Huddle of Lonelywood sending a diplomatic mission to the newly ensconced Speaker of Good Mead: Having heard the success they’ve had with the verbeeg raider, she’s hoping they can send help to Lonelywood. In exchange, she promises to give Good Mead a discounted rate on Lonelywood’s lumber.

Or maybe it’s not Speaker Huddle. Maybe local loggers have lost confidence with her and have sent their people to extend a similar offer to the PCs. Maybe the PCs end up conspiring with the loggers to oust Speaker Huddle, with another of the PCs taking her place. Desperate times call for strong men, right? So maybe this whole thing ends with one of the PCs rising to become the new King of Ten-Towns… but at what cost to their souls? Maybe this is what the devil supporting the Knights of the Black Sword wanted to happen all along!

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

However this might turn out, we’ve clearly moved away from the baseline structure of Rime of the Frostmaiden. So, for the sake of argument, let’s say this doesn’t happen: Maybe the PCs just aren’t interested. Or maybe one of the PCs becomes elected Speaker, but the others decide to continue adventuring (with the player of the Speaker starting a new character; maybe picking up one of the NPCs who fought by their side against the verbeeg).

In any case, they continue down the road to DOUGAN’S HOLE. Here we have a scenario hook in which the white wolves plaguing the town meet the PCs on the road and try to lure them back to their lair (p.54). But the PCs, having heard about them in Good Mead, know not to trust them. They kill one of the wolves and the other one runs away (as described in the book).

Reaching Dougan’s Hill they’re told people have been kidnapped by the wolves, so they track the wolf that escaped, rescue the prisoners, and are now 3^rd level. They also hear that there are adventurers in Targos planning an expedition to Kelvin’s Cairn.

But still no Sephek. And (I roll a 35) no chwingas, either. So they head back up towards the Eastway. They come back to the intersection and need to choose between Bryn Shander (where they’ve got a quest rumor) and Easthaven (where the killer has been known to operate).

It’s still a toss-up, in my opinion. Players could rationalize either choice pretty easily. (They might also head all the way back to Caer-Konig to see if there’s any chwingas there, but this seems like a marginal possibility to me at this point.) Rolling randomly, it looks like this hypothetical group is heading to BRYN SHANDER.

As they enter town, they’re approached by three dwarves who would like their help recovering a sled shipment of iron that they had to abandon during a yeti attack (p. 34).

The PCs do that, completing their fourth quest. They also pick up two more rumors at the Northlook Inn: Kobolds have invaded the gem mines of Termalaine. And people are also talking about how no one has seen the town speaker of Caer-Dineval for weeks now…

Huh. That’s weird, actually. The people in the castle were very nice, but now that you mention it, we never actually saw the Speaker did we?

CONCLUSION

At this point, I’m not sure what our hypothetical group will do next. Lots of options, though:

• Maybe they’re running low on coin and decide rescuing a gem mine from kobolds in Termalaine sounds profitable.
• They might double back to Caer-Dineval to check out what’s really going on with their “allies.”
• They might try to backtrack the goblins who stole the dwarves’ iron.
• Before leaving Bryn Shander they might stop by the local shrine to Amaunator and speak to a gnome tinkerer who asks them to check in on his friend who lives in an abandoned cabin north of Lonelywood (p. 33).
• Or they could just continue down the road to Targos, searching for fairies and serial killers.

There are a couple key things to note here:

First, looking over these events, you can see how easy it would be to end up with a completely different campaign. A different starting town; a different decision by the PCs; a different random die roll; a different moment of creative inspiration and everything is transformed. This is not just interesting and exciting, it is also empowering. The players can feel the difference, and it’s intoxicating.

Second, the level of emergent complexity that we see here — the event horizon beyond which you can have no clear vision of what the campaign will be — is inherent to true sandbox play. Do the PCs become political leaders? Run a tavern? Become security guards for a logging consortium? Start a trading company? Mount archaeological expeditions to explore giant ruins? There’s no way to know and only one to find out!

(This is also why Rime of the Frostmaiden collapsing the sandbox of early levels into a more-or-less linear plot at the middle levels is rather disappointing. At the very point that the limitless potential of the sandbox begins to truly explode, the book instead says, “Okay. That was nice, but let’s lock it down.”)

If nothing else, I hope you’ve seen here that there’s nothing magical or even particularly difficult about running a sandbox campaign: After the sandbox has been filled with a selection of simple toys (some NPCs, some dungeons, some bad guys), all you have to do is observe a fairly simple procedure and follow the players’ lead, responding to their actions by picking up the appropriate (or most convenient) toys and actively playing with them.

Go to Icewind Dale Index

Go to Icewind Dale Index

The opening chapters of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden are designed as a sandbox.

And I mean a true sandbox. The term is often abused to just mean any non-linear scenario, but Icewind Dale is the real deal: A campaign in which the players are empowered to either choose or define what their next scenario is going to be.

As such, it’s going to be the first sandbox experience for a lot of new Dungeon Masters and players. And that’s great. Unlike the “hexcrawl” in Tomb of Annihilation — which was so dysfunctional in trying to force a linear plot into a non-linear structure that new DMs running it seem to frequently know less about how a hexcrawl works than they did before they started — I think Icewind Dale will introduce sandbox play to a lot of new players in a really positive way.

Now, I do have some quibbles:

• It’s a little half-assed, collapsing into a linear plot at higher levels.
• The advice given on how to run the campaign is inconsistent and, in some places, simply bad.
• There are a number of places where I think very small adjustments can create very large improvements in the experience at the table.

But the Icewind Dale sandbox fundamentally works for as long as it lasts.

As such, it also offers a great opportunity to see what a sandbox campaign looks like in actual play. And, because the book could be a lot clearer about some of this stuff, I’ve seen a fair number of DMs on social media expressing confusion. So let’s take a closer look.

SPOILERS FOR RIME OF THE FROSTMAIDEN!

SANDBOX STRUCTURE

Here’s how Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden works:

• There are ten towns in Ten-Towns. Each one has a quest associated with it, and these are almost universally proactively triggered — i.e., if the PCs go to the town, they’re supposed to get the quest associated with that town.
• There is a Stage 1 rumor table (p. 18). Each rumor on this table points at one of the town-associated quests.
• There is also a Stage 2 rumor table (referred to as “tall tales” here, p. 102) which is unlocked at either 3^rd or 4^th level (depending on which page you’re looking at). These rumors point to higher level quests located in the wilderness around Ten-Towns.
• Finally, there are two Starting Quests. These are to be given to the PCs at the beginning of the campaign, and each is designed to motivate the PCs to travel to other towns.

For example, the “Cold-Hearted Killer” starting quest instructs the DM to:

1. Randomly generate a town. That’s the starting town for the campaign and will also be where the PCs get the “Cold-Hearted Killer” scenario hook (to track down a serial killer targeting victims throughout Ten-Towns).
2. Randomly generate a different town. This is the town where the serial killer will be found.

Although not explicitly stated in the book (which seems to have caused some confusion), the intention here is fairly clear: In following the starting quest, the PCs will go to another town and investigate to see if, for example, the serial killer is there. In that town they’ll scoop up the quest associated with that town and, in many cases, additional rumors pointing to quests in other towns.

This essentially becomes the default action of the campaign: If in doubt, go to a town and look for your starting quest objective.

The final element here is how the campaign handles milestone advancement:

• The characters advance to 2^nd level after completing their first quest.
• They advance to 3^rd level after completing three Stage 1 quests.
• They advance to 4^th level after completing five Stage 1 quests.

(Advancement gets fuzzier after the PCs reach the Stage 2 quests.)

QUIBBLES & ADVICE

Now, I do have a couple of quibbles here, and I’ll take a moment to call them out:

First, the book instructs the DM to only use one of the starting quests. I disagree. You should use both starting quests. Partly this is logistically superior: Each starting quest ends essentially at a random town. (The other starting quest, for example, has the PCs hunting chwingas — a type of fairy — and there’s a 25% chance that any town they visit has chwingas in it.) Having both quests in play makes it less likely for the PCs to exhaust their starting quests after just one town.

But it’s also just a superior experience: Having both quests in hand will deepen the default interactions with each community. It also breaks the players of the expectation that they’ll be doing a linear set of assigned tasks.

My recommendation is to give one starting quest in the first town visited and the other starting quest in the second town visited. (This creates a motivation for the PCs to potentially backtrack to the first town — either immediately or at some later time — to investigate the second starting quest there.)

My second quibble is how the book handles the rumor tables. Its advice is at best inconsistent (in some places suggesting that rumors should be doled at one at a time; in other places saying that specific taverns can deliver two rumors at a time).

Here’s what it boils down to: The point of a rumor table in a sandbox is generally to give the group LOTS of rumors (i.e., scenario hooks) that they can then choose between and prioritize. (See Juggling Scenario Hooks in a Sandbox.) There’s a much longer discussion to be had here, but briefly I would recommend:

• Delivering 1-2 rumors whenever the PCs investigate a town for their starting quest(s); i.e., tie the rumors into the default action of the campaign.
• Deliver 1-2 rumors any time they’re hanging out in a tavern. (This may already be covered by how they’re investigating their starting quest.)
• Opportunistically drop rumors as part of miscellaneous conversation with NPCs. People gossip about current events, so rumor tables almost always make for good topics of casual chat.

The other key thing here is to make sure that the rumors come from actions the PCs are taking (i.e., chatting in a tavern, canvassing the town for information, etc.). You shouldn’t just arbitrarily say, “Lo! Thou hast heard a thing!”

I’d probably also discard the distinction between Stage 1 and Stage 2 rumors. I don’t think it’s necessary, particularly for players experienced with sandbox play. If your players are conditioned to linear play, though — and might therefore heedlessly plunge into danger they’re not ready to handle — you might want to:

• Keep the proscribed unlock condition.
• Make sure the first 3-5 rumors they get are from the Stage 1 table (which will bias them towards completing those tasks and leveling up first).
• Start by dropping non-actionable versions of the Stage 2 rumors.

For example, one of the Stage 2 rumors points the PCs to the Jarlmoot — a hill where the frost giant leaders once met to settle disputes. What you could do at lower levels is just have an NPC mention the old jarlmoots of the frost giants (without telling the PCs where they can find that hill). Maybe the PCs go hunting specifically for that information, or maybe the foreshadowing just pays off later when they learn the location through another rumor drop. Either way, the depth of the experience makes the game world feel more real and meaningful to the players. (See, also, Random GM Tips: Getting the Players to Care.)

Go to Part 2: A Simulated Campaign

AC writes:

When I first picked up Waterdeep: Dragon Heist I’d already looked at some reviews and I knew the module was a bit wonky. After giving it my own read through I knew I wanted to somehow use all the villains provided and fortunately I found the Alexandrian Remix.

After many, many, MANY hours of reading and prep I started out with our game group. Up to Chapter 1 (Ch1 of the module, so 5B of the Remix) things were going well enough. Of course that’s also only the barest start of the whole thing so that’s not saying much.

Since then it’s been an unmitigated disaster.

Things got badly bogged down trying to refurbish Trollskull Manor, this was due to my attempting to introduce the party to all the faces around the neighborhood so that they’d actually be invested in the place AND so that for the investigation yet to come they’d have some folks to actually talk to that wouldn’t just be random Joe/Jane shop-owner whose been (surprise!) next door all this time.

After slogging through that I thought we’d be able to make some headway… WRONG. I made efforts to establish some timelines, throw in a couple of faction missions, then the Cassalanters introduced themselves and their “problem”, and the parades were about to occur along with the opening of the inn.

Unfortunately I guess I miscalculated what the party would do… like I suppose heroes would, as soon as they found out about the cursed children they took off at a gallop to track down Renaer, get whatever info they could from him… and they were on the verge of taking off for Neverwinter to put the screws to his father!

At that point I shut down the game session as I had no idea how the get the damn thing back on track and I’m on the verge of just giving up on it entirely. No fault of the Remix, it’s the DM to blame here.

I’m not a first time DM, I’ve been running D&D campaigns on and off for years. The last campaign I lead was the two part Horde of the Dragon Queen / Rise of Tiamat. Maybe this time I bit off more than I could chew with the Remix, maybe I expected more from our group as I was trying to give them more of a sandbox and not so much a hack ’n slash railroad. I dunno.

What I’m wondering is if anyone else has had things go so badly wrong that they got to the point where they were seriously considering just giving up.

One side note: Trying to game with everyone locked down and remote has been a huge challenge for me. I find the loss of true interaction you get from being face to face with players in the room has killed much of my ability to improvise and is a serious impediment to building up any sort of momentum on game nights. Constantly having to repeat ourselves, pausing for long moments just in case someone else is about to say something, or just straight up technical difficulties. It’s all conspiring to suck the fun out of getting together for game nights.

First, AC, you are not alone in struggling with remote gaming. I’ve had similar difficulties. Everything takes longer. Sitting at a camera is more exhausting than sitting around a table. The channels of communication between players are limited. Body language is limited. It all translates into an experience where it becomes much harder to set tone and pace.

As a long-time GM across many different systems, I have an engrained sense of what a good session “feels like.” Remote gaming seems to be just different enough to trigger a kind of uncanny valley response; even if the session was, on its own merits, a success, it just feels as if something went wrong.

Perhaps the clearest example of this is just the amount of stuff that gets done during a session. Even if you manage to avoid having any technical glitches, the constraints of the remote experience inherently mean less gets done:

• Referencing common material can be cumbersome, particularly if you’re not using a virtual tabletop or if the material in question hasn’t been integrated into the virtual tabletop. (Think of an action as simple as finding a reference in the book and handing it to another player to look at.)
• Constraints on simple physical demonstrations and body language often mean longer descriptions and explanations.
• At a physical table you can have multiple conversations happening simultaneously. This obviously doesn’t happen constantly, but having only one effective voice channel prevents side-table discussions. In combat this means the wizard and fighter can’t coordinate their attack while you’re resolving the cleric’s turn. It also means that Sarah and Chris can’t quietly figure out what they’re planning to do next while you’re running the scene with Peter spying on Heather’s date.

And so forth.

So even the simple metric of, “Did we get a good amount of stuff done in this session?” is disrupted in remote gaming. And it’s not even that the amount of stuff that you get done is actually a problem; it just feels like a problem because it’s out of sync with what years of experience have subconsciously taught you a “good session” feels like.

Something that may help is doing brief post mortems with your players: Literally just check in with them and find out how they felt the session went. You might find that it works well to do this immediately as the session ends (during the chatting and small talk after the action wraps for the night), or you might find it’s more effective to do it a couple days later by e-mail or text message. Either way, you’ll often find that your players actually really enjoyed sessions that you felt were a struggle, and I find that can help buoy my spirits. If they are having problems, turn the discussion towards solutions: Focus on what you all (as a group) could be doing (or doing differently) rather than simply moping over the rough edges. (If you’re having the initial discussion between sessions with each player separately, you may find it useful to open the next session by discussing the problems and collectively brainstorming solutions.)

But I digress. Let’s chat about where you are in your campaign.

MEANWHILE, IN NEVERWINTER…

I’m not there at the table with you, but while this may feel hopelessly messed up and out of control for you, I’m guessing the same is not true for your players.

First, let’s look at what went “wrong”… although I don’t think it’s actually wrong, per se. I would have waited to have the Casalanters approach the PCs until after the Dalakhar explosion. That way, the players would have known that the way to help the Cassalanters solve their problem (if that’s what they want to do) is by continuing their ongoing investigation.

What’s happened here is that you’ve given the players a clear screnario hook (“help the Cassalanters save their kids!”) before you’ve given them a clear way of pursuing that scenario hook. They’ve responded by creating their own way of pursuing that hook and aggressively going for it.

This is not a problem!

Okay, what’s the first thing you can do?

Go with it.

They want to put the screws on Lord Dagult. Following the principles of active play, pick up that toy (Lord Dagult) and ask yourself what the logical outcome of that would be. What would Lord Dagult’s response be?

(I mean, they’re pretty obviously not going to be able to “put the screws to him.” But when they try, what happens?)

Well, if these random blokes from Waterdeep know about the gold, then it’s more at risk than he thought! (That’s particularly true if the PCs let slip that their knowledge comes from the Cassalanters.)

But these folks also saved his son. So he might think of them as useful cat’s paws in the Grand Game? He might even warn them about the Cassalanters (“you’ve been tricked by devil worshipers!”) before offering them a heap of gold to act as HIS agents. Heck, he might even offer them ALL the gold; then the big revelation would be that Dagult doesn’t seem to think that the gold is the most important thing at stake here: It’s the Stone of Golorr itself that he prizes above all else!

“Bring me the Stone of Golorr with all its Eyes and I’ll tell you where the gold is!” he says. “Then you can give it to the Cassalanters or buy a pirate franchise in Luskan or spend it on the richest gigolos on the Sword Coast. Just bring me the damn Stone!”

If the PCs agree, then he’ll tell them to head back to Waterdeep. He’ll be sending one of his local agents to contact them. (That’s Dalakhar, of course. So, then… ka-boom.)

Alternatively, he might let some information inadvertently slip while trying to figure out what the PCs know. (“Does Manshoon know? What about the rest of the Zhentarim?”)

Or maybe it’s a total dead end and all the PCs have done is add another faction to the Grand Game as Lord Dagult floods Waterdeep with his agents.

The point is to just look at what Lord Dagult knows — not just historically, but about the state of the Grand Game right now and the PCs specifically (if anything) — and then just… let things play out. See what happens.

MEANWHILE, IN WATERDEEP…

On the other hand, an epic segue to Neverwinter may be far enough outside the intended scope of the campaign that you would prefer to avoid all that. That’s OK. Even sandboxes have borders, and Dragon Heist isn’t even a sandbox.

What you need to do here is take a step back, identify the thing the PCs need to be pointed at, and then figure out how to deflect their current vector (“Let’s go question Lord Dagult!”) towards the thing they need.

In some cases it may not be possible to do this without railroading them, in which case I think you should find a different way. But if you’re running a robust, dynamic scenario (which I would argue the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist qualifies as), you’ll often find that the PCs’ vector will end up naturally interacting with that scenario.

That’s the case here: If they’re still talking to Renaer, he can just say, “My father has a number of agents still active in Waterdeep. I know how to contact one of them. Why don’t I set up a meeting? They might be able to tell us what he’s up to.”

Renaer, of course, will then set up a meeting with Dalakhar for them. And then … ka-boom.

You’ll note that many of my solutions here are looking for ways to point the PCs back at Dalakhar so that the explosion can happen. But the other key thing to keep in mind here is that Dalakhar’s death and the fireball are only “essential” to the Remix insofar as they’re designed to be the primary hook into the Grand Game for the PCs. But in your campaign, the PCs are already hooked. So Dalakhar and the explosion are relatively non-essential.

Since the PCs are already in the Grand Game, it’s a good opportunity to review Part 7: How the Remix Works. There’s a simple checklist there for the GM to follow when running the campaign:

(1) Are the PCs looking for a lead to one of the Eyes? If yes, pick a Faction Outpost and point them at it.

(2) Did the PCs just piss off one of the Factions? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs.

(3) Are the PCs floundering and don’t know what to do next? If yes, pick a Faction Response Team and have them target the PCs. (If you’re not sure how they might target the PCs, just have them show up and try to kill them.)

Repeat until the campaign is done.

This list is really just a default algorithm for actively playing the core elements of the campaign.

If you can’t redirect to the Dalakhar assassination in some way, you’ll have to do a little extra lifting to direct the PCs to the stone itself (since their investigation of the fireball won’t lead them to the Gralhunds). But keep in mind, as described in Part 2 of the Remix, that this chain of events already has a default outcome if the PCs get involved which ends with Jarlaxle in possession of the Stone (i.e., one of the Factions that the default algorithm consistently prompts you to pick up and play with).

To come full circle: I don’t think your campaign is as “out of control” as it feels to you right now. In fact, I think your campaign is in a great place. You’ve got a group of players who are clearly heavily invested in what’s happening AND self-motivated enough to create their own plans and aggressively push for the outcomes they want. That’s FANTASTIC.

Follow their lead.

This is an experimental new series for the site. It might end up just being one-and-done. Let me know what you think of it in the comments. If you have any questions you’d like to have considered for future columns, throw those in, too. The goal here is to address specific situations from actual play; the general gist being, “If I were the GM in this situation, what would I do?” (As opposed to more abstract questions about general methodology or theorycraft.)

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #2