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

ThinkDM recently wrote a blog post discussing the skill list in 5^th Edition called 5 Skill D&D. His two main points are,

First: The optional rules that allow you to roll any Skill + Ability combination should just be the way that the game works rather than an optional rule. I enthusiastically endorse this: Not only is it basically a no-brainer to take advantage of this flexibility and utility, but if you DON’T use stuff like Charisma (Investigation) checks then there are some glaring holes in the default skill list.

Second: Once you’re using these optional rules, it becomes clear that there are many skills that don’t need to exist. The most clear-cut examples of this, in my opinion, are Athletics and Acrobatics. One of these is Physical Stuff + Strength while the other is Physical Stuff + Dexterity. If you can just combine a “Physical Stuff” skill with the appropriate ability score, then you clearly don’t need two different skills for this.

Concluding that the game, therefore, has a whole bunch of superfluous skills, ThinkDM aggressively eliminates and combines skill to end up with a list of just five skills:

• Fitness (Athletics, Acrobatics, Endurance)
• Speechcraft (Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation, Performance (oration))
• Stealth (Stealth, Deception (passing a disguise))
• Awareness (Investigation, Perception, Insight, Survival)
• Knack (Sleight of Hand, Medicine, Animal Handling, Performance (instrument))

(Note: He eliminates the Knowledge skills – Arcana, History, Religion, Nature, Medicine – entirely.)

While I agree with the general principles here, I have some quibbles with the, in my opinion, overzealous implementation. So let’s take a closer look at some of these decisions.

I’M SOLD

I’m sold on Fitness, Speechcraft, and Stealth.

Stealth is fairly self-explanatory: Most of the conflation here actually happened before 5^th Edition was even published, which – as I’ve discussed in Random GM Tips: Stealthy Thoughts, among other places – is something I’m fully in favor of.

Lumping all the social skills into Speechcraft might initially seem too reductionist, but it’s another good example of how ability score pairings can be used to distinguish different uses of the skill and differentiate characters: Charisma + Speechcraft can be used for making a good first impression, seducing someone through sheer sex appeal, or swaying a crowd’s opinion through an emotional appeal. Strength + Speechcraft can be used for physically threatening someone. Intelligence + Speechcraft can be used for witty repartee. And so forth.

I’ve also found that this kind of conflation can sidestep the conceptual difficult of trying to figure out which skill is appropriate when someone tries to, for example, persuade the local garrison to join them by lying to them about the goblins’ intentions while subtly threatening to expose the garrison captain’s dark secret. (Logically the debate about whether this is Perception, Deception, or Intimidation should just shift to which ability score is the most appropriate; I’m just saying that, in my experience, this doesn’t usually happen. Don’t really know why, but people just seem more willing to let the muddy reality of most social interactions default to any appropriately invoked option when it’s ability scores. This also frequently flows in the opposite direction, with players moving away from one-note presentations of “this is my deception” or “this is me persuading her” to more nuanced portrayals within the broad rubric of a skill like Speechcraft. Your mileage may vary.)

I particularly like the name of Speechcraft. It has a nicely fantasy-esque feel to it; evocative, but not binding.

By contrast, I don’t like Fitness as the name for a skill. Fitness is not an action, but rather a state of being, and I don’t think it clearly captures the spirit of most such tests made at the table. I’d stick with Athletics.

AWARENESS

As I discuss at length in Rulings in Practice: Perception-Type Tests, I think there’s a lot of utility in clearly distinguishing between noticing things and actively investigating things. This becomes even clearer, I think, when you start combining them with different ability scores: Charisma + Investigation is canvassing information and rumor-gathering. Perception + Wisdom/Charisma, on the other hand, is reading body language and the like.

Lumping Survival in here doesn’t make any sense to me at all. The skill is a lot more than just following tracks and, in my opinion, should be important enough to most D&D campaigns to merit its own silo.

KNACK

Knack is all too clearly “here’s a bunch of skills I need to arbitrarily glom together so that I can hit an arbitrary clickbait title.” There’s little reason that the pick-pocket should also be the party’s best healer. Conversely, not everyone who is good at riding a horse should automatically be great at picking pockets.

So split those back out.

KNOWLEDGE

My personal proclivity is that not only should there be at least enough knowledge skills that everyone in the group can have a distinct expertise (which often means more knowledge skills than party members), but that there should be enough knowledge skills that it becomes quite likely that any given group will, in fact, have holes in their knowledge.

(Why? Because that forces them to either work around the gap in their knowledge, do research, seek out an expert, and/or set a personal goal to become the expert they need. And those are all interesting outcomes.)

As I mentioned above, ThinkDM eliminates all knowledge-type skills. He offers a contradictory hodgepodge of reasons for this (for example, “no one knows everything” but also “the GM should always just assume the PCs know everything”) which I could discuss at more length, but honestly I’m tired of explaining why failure is narratively interesting and delayed gratification is satisfying.

What I really want is for a knowledge skill list to completely cover the fields of knowledge in a setting. This doesn’t mean getting super granular in the distinctions (quantum mechanics vs. electromagnetics vs. optics). Often the opposite, in fact. When a question of knowledge arises in the setting, what I want is for there to be a clear skill check that can answer the question.

This is why I really dislike the incomplete fields of knowledge in 5^th Edition’s current skill list and much prefer 3^rd Edition’s comprehensive list. (3^rd Edition was also designed to let people custom-design knowledge categories, although a surprising number of people never understood that.)

If we want to slice down the knowledge-type skills, I’d say start by saying that Backgrounds should grant proficiency in any related Knowledge checks.

And then my list of knowledge-type skills would be:

• Arcana
• Religion
• Lore
• Knowledge: (Specific Location)

With Lore here covering the entirety of mundane knowledge.

Thus we broadly distinguish between mystic shit, god-stuff, and everything else. This gives the opportunity to spread Knowledge around the table (instead of just one guy who’s a smarty-pants) and gives players the ability to flavor their character.

We’ve also given people a chance to say, “I know this city or forest or whatever really, really well.” It’s a skill type I often reach for as a GM (regardless of system) and I think it can be very flavorful for players looking to define their characters or give them a unique niche.

THE BIG LIST

• Animal Handling
• Arcana
• Athletics
• Investigation
• Knowledge: (Specific Location)
• Lore
• Medicine
• Perception
• Religion
• Sleight of Hand
• Speechcraft
• Stealth
• Survival

If you want an even tighter list, you can:

• Merge Investigation with Perception
• Fold Medicine into Lore
• Drop Sleight of Hand into Stealth

To give you a nice, notable number with 10 Skills.

TOOL PROFICIENCIES

In 5^th Edition, of course, skills are only half the story. You’ve also got tool proficiencies.

You don’t have to muck about with these, but I think there’s definitely some conflation here that would be valuable, although it’s a lot more fidgety. (This is somewhat inherent in the decision to use tool proficiencies in the first place.) 5^th Edition already sets precedent for this, however, with things like Vehicle (Land) and Vehicle (Water) proficiencies which cover a multitude of specific tools/vehicles.

The question I have is why other obvious candidates likes Musical Instruments and Gaming Sets weren’t similarly grouped together into a single proficiency.

At a certain point in staring at this, though, you realize it probably makes more sense to just create a list of skills that require tools to use:

• Alchemy
• Art
• Craft
• Gaming
• Music
• Thievery
• Vehicle (Air/Land/Water)

With the following notes:

• Navigator’s and Cartography Tools would be conflated into Survival.
• Forgery Kit would be conflated into Stealth or Thievery.
• Disguise Kit would be conflated into Stealth.
• Herbalism Kit is conflated into Alchemy.
• Poisoner’s Kit is conflated into Thievery (although you could make a case for a separate skill).

To make this actually work, of course, you’ll have to do additional work on how characters gain skills. May not be worth the headache, so keeping this short list in a separate silo (which can be trained) may still make the most sense.

Go to Table of Contents

There are several different ways that the PCs can complete the Avernian Quest, but the most immediate (and the one they’re most likely to be pursuing as they leave Elturel for the first time) is the Sword of Zariel. The vision they receive from Torm and the shredded remnants of Lulu’s memories point them towards a pair of kenku at Fort Knucklebones.

THE HISTORY OF FORT KNUCKLEBONES

The kenku Lulu is looking for are long dead. Lulu actually came to Fort Knucklebones hundreds of years ago, shortly after Zariel’s fall (see Part 6D).

See, there has always been a flock of kenku at Fort Knucklebones. For as long as anyone can remember. Longer, actually. The people in charge come and go, but the kenku are always there. The current boss is Mad Maggie, but before that there was:

• Lord Fauxen, a human warlock
• A flock of vrock, who secretly used the fort as a forward supply base in the Blood War
• Xartemug, a pit fiend

And so forth.

Although no one remembers Lulu here and no story of her original visit has been passed down, there is a vestige of her to be found among the local kenku: Kenku speak by mimicking words that they have heard. Flocks of kenku have small, unique collections of word “performances” that are collectively shared and passed down from one generation to the next. One such “word of the foreflock” in the Knucklebones flock is Lulu saying the word “love.” For generations, when these kenku have said that they love each other (or anyone else), they have spoken it with Lulu’s voice.

The kenku will recognize Lulu’s voice and become quite excited about this.

FORT KNUCKLEBONES

Fort Knucklebones is a trading post; a sort of Port Royal for the Avernian warlords where they come for supplies, recreation, and repairs. This also makes it a useful hub of operations for the PCs.

Mad Maggie is the current potentate of the fort. Although not a warlord herself, she is seen by them as an equal and the neutrality of the fort is (generally) respected.

The fort itself, based around an outcropping or red rock shaped like a clawed hand, is somewhat described in Descent Into Avernus, p. 80:

• There’s a rampart of rock, bones, and metal debris with a gatehouse.
• The outer court, roughly the area that lies between the rampart and the knuckle gates.
• There are four courtyards located between each of the knuckles. These courtyards are fronted by the knuckle gates, which can be shut for an additional line of defense, but are generally left open.
• There is a fastness within the outcropping, with access caves from most of the knuckle courtyards. The fastness includes various storehouses and also Maggie’s demesne.

Note: Fort Knucklebones is also likely to be the PCs’ first introduction to soul coins as a form of currency. Take the opportunity to push home the “you’re not in Kansas any more” moment. Check out Addendum: Soul Coins, for a more detailed look at how the coins can be used in Descent Into Avernus.

BETWEEN THE KNUCKLES: There are four courtyards located between the “knuckles” of the outcropping.

• The tinker’s shed, a service station for war machines run by the kenku. A large cave at the back of this courtyard serves as a garage. The kenku live in a number of smaller caves that line the fingers to either side of the courtyard. A number of these caves are quite high, and the kenku have to climb ladders carved into the rock. (According to the flock’s oral tradition, before their entire species was cursed, the kenku of Fort Knucklebones could simply fly up to these caves. That’s how long they’ve been living here.)
• The Well, a bar built up around a rare natural spring of clean water. This spring is the reason Fort Knucklebones has been so constantly occupied. The barkeep at the Well is named Natasha the Dark; she claims to be a “cloned daughter of Baba Yaga.” (This would imply that she’s the clone-sister of Iggwilv. She’s probably making it up. But who knows? Maybe she’s the real Tasha who invented Tasha’s hideous laughter and Iggwilv stole her)
• The arcade is filled with market tents. Maggie’s infernal bank, run by an imp named Sarcasia, can also be found here. (It houses her stockpile of soul coins, acts as a moneychanger, and offers loans of various sorts.)
• The hostel, located in the broad space between thumb and index finger, is more of a public campground. No fees are charged. Anyone can grab a slab of space and pitch a tent. (Maggie figures that if people are staying here, they’ll be spending money at the arcade and that’s where she gets her cut.) The imps love to play practical jokes on people staying here.

Note: “Tinker’s shed” is the generic term on Avernus for war machine repair shops or service stations. They take the name “shed” because they’re usually rather small. The kenku’s facility here at Fort Knucklebones is expansive, but still referred to as a shed.

INHABITANTS: For ease of reference, here’s a list of NPCs at Fort Knucklebones. Also arranged as a random table just in case:

If the PCs do end up making Fort Knucklebones a hub for their operations in Avernus, I’d recommend adding a few extra characters to this list and working it up with a Tavern Time™ structure. This is a good example of where smart prep means waiting to prep something until the players have started wading into it and you know you’ll need it.

KNUCKLEBONES ENCOUNTERS: Don’t use up all the encounters in the first fifteen minutes the PCs are at Fort Knucklebones. Or even their first visit. This stuff can build over time.

• Chukka & Clonk: Help repair war-machine (DIA, p. 83)
• Mickey: Limping from injury (DIA, p. 83)
• Imps: Play a practical joke (DIA, p. 84)
• Imps: Want PCs to kill Wazzik (DIA, p. 84)
• Barnabas: Find the flameskull’s missing tooth (DIA, p. 84)
• Redcaps: Offer PCs a severed finger as a friendship gift (DIA, p. 84)

If you rework Fort Knucklebones using the Tavern Time™ structure, you can pull these encounters into the NPC “topics of conversation.” (You’ll want 2-3 per NPC.)

Bonus Encounter: Natasha the Dark wants someone to cast hideous laughter on her. It reminds her of her sister.

THE 1-TO-10 SCALE: This is briefly described on DIA p. 80-81. It’s basically a mental shorthand for tracking what an NPC’s attitude is towards the PCs. You can actually track this sort of thing for all NPCs, on your campaign status document if it seems useful to you.

ARRIVING AT FORT KNUCKLEBONES

When the PCs come to Fort Knucklebones for the first time, we don’t want the kenku they’re looking for to be the first thing they see. Looking for the kenku will mean exploring the fort, pushing and pulling them into encounters with the various locations and characters here.

REDCAP WATCHPOST: There’s a watchpost in the fort’s ramparts manned by redcaps. Use the encounter described in DIA, p. 81.

OUTER COURT: As the PCs pass through the watchpost and into the outer court, describe three specific people (or groups of people) doing things around the courtyard. (One of these might be an encounter, but that’s probably not necessary right now.)

Note that you want to be specific. You don’t want to just describe a generic mélange of activity (e.g., “The courtyard is full of strange-looking creatures. There are horns and tails and a faint smell of sulfur.”). You want specific stuff they can choose to interact with.

None of these should be kenku. I recommend including a warlord gang (maybe hanging out around their war-machines outside the Well) as a way of foreshadowing or, if the PCs choose to interact with them, introducing this aspect of the campaign. (More on these gangs in Part 7E.)

FUTURE VISITS

On future visits to Fort Knucklebones I recommend having:

• 1d3 or 1d4-1 NPCs in the Outer Court and the Well.
• Having 1d2 or 1d3-1 NPCs in the other courtyards (plus whatever NPCs would logically be there, like the kenku in the garage).

If you expand the cast of characters here, you can probably bump those numbers up a notch.

Have one or two encounters on each visit. (If you haven’t gone for a full Tavern Time™ structure, in which case they’ll be keyed to the NPCs as you generate them.)

QUEST OF THE DREAM MACHINE

In the published book, Mad Maggie uses her dream machine to unlock Lulu’s memories and then Lulu’s memories guide the PCs as they journey across Avernus (through the twin railroads).

We are more or less going to invert this structure:

• The PCs come to Fort Knucklebones.
• The kenku explain that they can’t help, but maybe Mad Maggie can.
• Mad Maggie is intrigued (in large part due to her obsession with Zariel lore and Lulu’s presence in the rare tapestry she owns, see Part 6D). She has a machine that she thinks could be used to recover Lulu’s lost memories.
• Just one problem: The machine doesn’t work. It’s missing four key components. The PCs will need to find these components in order to make the machine work.

To find these components, the PCs will need to explore Avernus (as described in Part 7). Once they have the components, the dream machine can be repaired and Lulu’s memories recovered (as described in Part 6D-I).

Homework: How did Mad Maggie get the dream machine?

THE FOUR COMPONENTS:

• Nirvanan Cogbox. Used in a variety of infernal machines, these cogboxes come from Mechanus.
• Heartstone. Used by night hags to infiltrate the dreams of their victims. It’s used as a prism or beam-splitter in the dream machine.
• Phlegethosian sand. Obsidian sand pounded from the jagged, rocky plains of Phlegethos, the fourth layer of Hell.
• Astral pistons. Another component used in various pieces of infernal machinery. The pistons are actually extruded into the astral plane, maximizing their mechanical output. It’s an outdated technology and rarely used these days.

MAGGIE’S LEADS

In addition briefing the PCs on the parts she needs, Mad Maggie can provide them with some initial leads on where they may be able to find some of them. The alphanumeric hex references below are map coordinates from the hex map in Part 7B, which you can use to quickly identify where these leads can potentially take the PCs.

Astral Pistons: She’s heard that an oni named Malargan — the forgemaster of Kolasiah, a local warlord — has a set of astral pistons in his forge. (Hex A5)

Astral Pistons: Uldrak the Tinker, whose shop is based out of a titanic helmet located in the western end of the Plains of Fire, had a set of astral pistons in stock a few years back when one of Maggie’s riders (now dead) needed repairs for an antique war machine. It’s possible he might still have a supply. (Hex D5)

Heartstone: Mad Maggie and Red Ruth (Hex B4) were part of a coven along with a third night hag named Gaunt Gella. Mad Maggie believes that Red Ruth killed Gella and stole her heartstone. Maggie suspects that Red Ruth is still located somewhere in Avernus, but she doesn’t know where. However, she has heard rumors that Red Ruth has been seen at Mahadi’s Emporium from time to time, and the PCs might check there for a lead to Red Ruth’s current location.

Note: “Gella” means “the one with the golden hair.” Consider having a quiet, emotional moment for Mad Maggie where she remembers the beautiful hair of her fallen friend. It’s up to you whether or not Red Ruth was actually responsible for Gella’s death.

Alternatively, Gaunt Gella was bald, but collected the heads of blonde mortals. (Maggie can still fondly remember how beautiful the hair was.)

Nirvanan Cogbox: Nirvanan cogboxes are a modronic technomancy. Maggie has heard that a modron ship crashed on the shores of the Styx contra-Dis from Fort Knucklebones. (The ship is located in Hex H5, but it’s actually an elemental galleon from Eberron and does not have a cogbox.)

Design Note: At least three instances of each component have been seeded into the Avernian hexcrawl. (The Three Clue Rule waves hello.) In Part 7I: Avernian Rumor Tables, you will find additional rumors that can lead the PCs to these disparate sources.

Mad Maggie gives four leads, and she should give them all at once. She gives two different sources for one component, one possible source for a second component (although she doesn’t exactly know how to track that source down), and an incorrect location for the fourth component.

This spreads four experiences across these leads:

For one component, the PCs have two leads and can choose one. (Establishing the idea that they have multiple options for finding the components.)

For another, they’ll have to follow up their lead to figure out where they can actually find the component. (Establishing the idea that they’ll need to actively investigate to find these components.)

For the third component, they’ll discover a dead end and need to find a different way.

For the fourth component, they’ll have no lead at all. (Establishing the idea that this isn’t just a “do what Mad Maggie tells you” fetch quest; instead, they’ll be in the driver’s seat for figuring out how to obtain these components.)

With no additional explanation, simply receiving these four leads from Mad Maggie will teach the players a lot about the form, structure, and expectations of the Avernian hexcrawl.

Go to Part 6D: Lulu’s Memories