I've finally read the whole book, I wrote a guide to it, I even wrote a "How to Run" article... that means that it's time to write a review of the new D&D adventure: Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
First, I'll talk about what I liked, then I'll discuss what I didn't like. At the end, I'll try to sum up my thoughts on this gigantic new adventure.
Spoiler Warning: This is going to have some spoilers, so please don't read this if you plan on playing through the adventure.
I have the same complaints that I always have about the 5e adventures. I'll just put them right here so we can move on without me endlessly repeating myself:- I prefer a linear adventure to a sandbox. These adventures are too broad, giving us a million little things to remember.
- There aren't enough 'badass" moments. We DMs are left to take a general scenario and mold it.
- Despite my complaints, the adventures seem to do very well, so they probably shouldn't change the way they make them.
Page Numbers! I should note that one of my old complaints has been rectified. We are given a lot of page numbers, referring us to different sections of the book when needed. We still don't get page numbers to other books (like the PH, DMG, etc.), but I think I understand why they can't do that.
Tone: Before we start the review, I just want to make a note about the tone of this adventure. When I heard about Rime of the Frostmaiden, I was given the impression that this would have a feel similar to John Carpenter's The Thing. I really like that movie, and I was very excited.
Then I got the adventure... and it's not really like The Thing at all. There's a few parts that are similar. The idea that Icewind Dale is trapped in nearly eternal night is pretty grim like the movie. But almost none of the scenarios in this book have the tone of the film.
This is traditional D&D stuff. It's not bad at all, it just took me a bit to get over my disappointment and adjust my expectations.
The Good
Character Secrets: I really love a lot of the character secrets (see pg 264 of the book). Many of them are really fun. I don't even want to type some of them out because I hate the idea of spoiling them in any way. I can say that there is a good mix - some relate directly to the story of the adventure, and some have almost nothing to do with it.
Chapter 2: Chapter 2 kicks ass. It just does. It is full of great encounters and adventures. You're only meant to run a few of the scenarios, but I'd have a hard time choosing from them. It feels like you'd be nuts not to run the Black Cabin, and I personally would insist on running Id Ascendant.
I read this and it was like... instantly one of my all-time favorite NPCs.
The Purple Pears: I have a thing for magic food. One of the things I really enjoy is going through a new 5e adventure, digging out all of the meals and named beverages, and adding it to my Great List of Food and Drinks.
This book has a bunch of them. But my favorite is definitely the magic purple pears that you can find in chapter 6. If you eat one, you roll on a random chart (another one of my favorite things in D&D) for a magical effect.
They even have art of the purple pear.
Frozen in Ice: In a winter-themed adventure, what should you have? You should have STUFF FROZEN IN ICE. I am proud to report to you that this adventure most certainly does have stuff frozen in ice. Dragon's hoard frozen in ice? Yes. A huge skeleton frozen in ice? Of course. A weird statue in a frozen lake that, if thawed, causes a magic effect? Indeed.
But my favorite is one I don't want to spoil. I do love it, though. Check out page 254: "Red orbs of light dance like fireflies around this thirty-foot diameter octagonal chamber. A large unlit brazier stands in the center of the room, and eight ten-foot-square alcoves line the walls, each filled with ice. The arched ceiling is covered with icicles."
Again, I don't want to say any more. I am dying to see someone run this area, though.
Cave of the Berserkers: A cave full of berserkers. Dull, you say? Perhaps at first glance, my friend. But as always, you must delve deeper. I'm going to have to spoil this one. Auril's magic makes it so the berserkers can't drop below 1 hit point while inside their lair.
How crazy is that? I love this idea, and I love how it can be resolved.
Angajuk the Whale: Want to search the Sea of Moving Ice? Sure, we all do. Travel in style by boarding a ship strapped to a friendly talking whale. When the whale goes under water, you and your fellow passengers will be protected by a magic enclosure that you an breathe safely in.
This is the kind of fun stuff that I really enjoy in the 5e adventures. It borders on the ridiculous, but hey, if it doesn't fit your tone, just don't put it in your game.
Karkolohk: I often find goblins boring. So when I saw that there was a goblin lair in this book, my eyes glazed over. What's there to do with goblins? Another dungeon?
But then I read it. This place is really cool - a perfect setpiece for a wild encounter with goblins on walkways, archers firing arrows from towers, and a big golem-like construct attached to ropes.
The leader's secret is very fun and interesting. Everything is very concise and this one feels like a really great locale for new players to explore. I would love to run this for the kids in the game store back in 2014. I know it would be wild and they'd really enjoy it.
Vlagomir's Spark: Check out page 227. What a hilarious turn of events. This is the fun of D&D right here. This is the kind of thing that players will remember years after they play through it.
The Maps: In some of the more recent books, the maps were in black and white. Those maps were good, but I prefer maps in color. This book is full of great full color maps, really nice stuff.
The one that sticks out is the map Ythryn. What a fantastic piece of art!
The Poster Map: The book comes with a big poster map. On one side is the ten towns, and on the other side is Icewind Dale. When I first gawked at it, I was a bit put off by the vast amount of empty space on the Icewind Dale side. It depicts a vast snowy region devoid of labeled locations.
But hey, it's for players. We DMs need to use the map on page 113. That map in the book shows us where all of the quest locations are.
So yeah, the poster map is perfect. It doesn't spoil anything for the players. Also, I just want you to know that the smaller map that comes with the dice set is very, very handy IMO. I used it constantly while making the guide.
Featured Monster Lair: I don't know if you remember this, but in Out of the Abyss there was a purple worm lair. It was a deluxe look at where purple worms live, where they lay their eggs, just a purple worm jamboree. The purple worm's chance to shine, so to speak.
I really loved that. It only took up a couple pages and it gave DMs who want to use a purple worm everything they need.
In this adventure, they did the same thing with remorhazes (pgs 224-225). We get a lair, a look at how remorhazes raise their young, and one of my favorite pieces of art in the whole book.
I really love the idea that in every adventure, they take one monster and give us a complete look at them in this manner.
The Necropolis: I think this is my favorite thing in the whole book. The necropolis is something that you can easily just pull out run in your home campaign with ease. It's a lost floating city that fell from the sky long ago.
The school-of-magic towers are great. The "chain lightning" game is great. The villain is great. It's just a top notch adventuring location that probably deserves to be a module all on its own. I'd love to see it presented in a booklet like the old classic 1e adventures were.
The one thing that gives me pause is the fact that I just don't feel like it fits in this adventure. I am so thrown by the idea that Auril, who to me is the main villain, has probably already been dealt with by the time the heroes get here. I'll get to that a little further down this review.
The Bad
Before we start, I just want to stress something. This is just my dumbass opinion. My feelings on this adventure will probably change over time. So please, don't take this too seriously.
The very idea that someone who wrote something in this adventure will read this and get upset makes me not even want to post this review. Do your thing! Don't mind me, or anything I write.
The Introductory Adventures: In this book, we are given a choice. There are two introductory adventures to pick from. We are meant to launch the whole campaign with one of these.
In my opinion, the absolute most important thing in any of these books is the very beginning. If the first session sucks, the campaign isn't going to make it. The first scenario should be exciting and offer a promise of epic thrills to come.
Here's our choice:
- Find a serial killer. We'll need to travel to a number of towns to find him.
- Find some chwingas (mischievous frost spirits). When you find them, they are pretending to eat a pinecone with a knife and fork.
Neither of these adventures are bad. To me, they're just too short and don't really set the tone. At least, not in a way that I'd like.
Both of these scenarios are really a tool to get the group searching the other towns. The idea is that the heroes will pick up chapter one side quests along the way.
One of the best introductory adventures I've ever run is from the Hell's Rebels adventure path. The whole campaign starts off with the heroes being smack dab in the middle of a riot in a city run by devil worshipers! The riot is laid out nicely, there are rules, there are a number of events. It's a crazy way to start a campaign.
In comparison, these Icewind Dale intro scenarios are so brief and sketchy. Each one is about 2 pages long. Total!
I also don't like the prospect of sending the group out, searching towns for either the killer or the chwingas, and coming up empty. New groups especially might crash and burn, becoming bored or confused. I've had some players at the game store who would get upset after scouring an entire town and finding out that the target of their search is in a different town altogether.
The Villains: This adventure has a number of villains in it:
- A duergar who is making a dragon that will try to destroy the ten towns of Icewind Dale.
- A lesser god that has plunged Icewind Dale into eternal night, more or less.
- A silent demilich trapped in a necropolis.
- One or more wizards who are searching for the necropolis.
The thing I don't like here is that there is a strong possibility that the group will save Icewind Dale in chapter 5. Then.. they just kind of move on to a necropolis they might not even know about.
It is entirely possible that the lesser god will be slain, and the final battle of the campaign will be with a demilich that hasn't really been foreshadowed or built up at all.
I like the actual villains! I just don't like this structure. It's messy. It's weird. It just doesn't feel right that the lesser god might not be involved in the final encounter.
The adventure does account for Auril still being around. She could show up at the necropolis with a bunch of snow golems. But it just doesn't feel right to me. I really like Auril and I'd have preferred this to be sorted in a different way.
Late Monsters: There is a really weird trend in this book, where the group finishes a dungeon, and then some monster wanders up and attacks the group right when they're leaving. It happens over and over. "Phew, well, let's head to town, friends! Oh no! Bugbears!"
Why? It's not really bad, it's just weird. It happens so much that the heroes are going to expect it. It's like a running joke.
But there are 2 things that I don't like about this.
First off, there is at least one laser pistol. I prefer not to have any "modern technology" mixed in with my mind flayers, though I understand the whole Barrier Peaks thing. I prefer the psionic circuitry angle from the Illithiad.
Why? Because for some players, laser pistols are a deal breaker in D&D.
Second, the gnome squidlings and the ceremorphs are a bit too cutesy for me. As a DM, I know I can fix it, but I just wish they weren't so... well, here's an example from a description of the two gnome ceremorphs from page 133:
"Vorryn is persnickety and exasperated most of the time but also has a dry sense of humor. Dredavex is industrious and tries to ease tension by telling crude jokes it has learned from eating goblin brains."
The mind tickle power is funny. But I just wanted something different from this scenario.
When I was a kid, I went to a D&D convention. It was a smaller event where you didn't pick what scenarios you wanted to play. You just showed up and were placed at a table. I was sure I was going to play through something really cool - fighting a pit fiend, flying through the astral plane, who knows!
The convention scenario I played through was this: Our characters are going to make a pie. We have to work together to do it! Will it be delicious?! Only if we roll well! I wanted to go home so f'ing bad.
Chapter 1: I just don't like chapter one. It's too big. How big, you ask? The adventure itself - 7 chapters - is 262 pages. Chapter one is 99 pages long.
I really worry about new DMs trying to run this. That's way too much information, all scattered about. If a new DM has a group that wants to wander, and they're playing a 5 hour session, that poor DM is really going to have to scramble to keep up.
The scenarios are a mixed bag. I like the Lake Monster and I love the Mountain Climb. I am a little weirded out by how there are all these little extra adventures stuffed in the back of some town's descriptions. The Easthaven Ferry scenario has the most prominent hook to send the group to chapter 3, but it's put in a weird spot. Seems easy to overlook.
The chapter is so unwieldy. It feels to me like a really rough way to start out a campaign. What we DMs have here is a giant book report to do. Quick! Who runs Bremen? How many people live in Good Mead? They don't even ease us into it or anything.
Weirdly enough, the final three chapters are very easy to get a handle on. This book gets easier to run the further your group gets into it. It feels backwards to me.
Talking Animals: In this adventure, there are some frost druids running around "awakening" animals. That means that the animals are smart and can talk. There are a lot of talking animals, and I just can't shake the "Disney" feeling of it.
There is an angry white moose killing loggers. There's a talking woolly mammoth grieving the loss of a frost giant. There are talking wolves that extort a town.
I think that having one talking animal is unique and cool. Going to the Beastlands, a plane where animals talk and you slowly take on traits of the animal that most resembles your personality? Very cool. Talking animals scattered throughout Icewind Dale, with differing agendas? I don't know. It's just weird. I don't really get it.
Overall
So what's the deal? Do I like this adventure? It's OK. Pretty good! There is a TON of cool stuff in here. It's brimming over with fun scenarios, items, and monsters.
That said, I don't like the structure. I don't like the vastness of chapter one. I don't like the "pick 3 out of these 10 awesome adventures to run" aspect of chapter 2. I really don't like the idea of the characters being put in a position where they don't chase the dragon because they don't realize that it is such a vital choice in chapters 3 and 4.
Chapter 5 is great. The caves in chapter 6 are pretty cool. The necropolis in chapter 7 is top notch D&D, in my opinion.
So I guess what I'm saying is that, as a "toolkit" of things to pull out for your campaign, this is a great product. But as far as running it as an adventure from beginning to end, it might be more trouble than it is worth.