D&D 5E Running Rime of the Frost Maiden

[Reynard]

the problem with that is it sees the quest is catered towards the town you drop them in and could cause you headaches if say you use (2-3 quests options in the same town)

Some of these intro adventures are not fleshed out and feel like outlines of adventures compared to the essentials set which has much more guidance for a DM. Lake monster vs Dwarven excavation is one example that comes to mind. this adventure could probably have used a death house type adventure to also setup the ten town experience (maybe an adventure on an abandoned ship)

Rime is not being marketed as an introductory product. I have seen a lot of people on various fora and social media complaining that a new DM would have trouble running it "out of the box."

Good. They should get heir feet under them with the multiple products geared toward brand new players and GMs. Not every product needs to be designed with the neophyte in mind. Doing so means simplifying things that might otherwise be interesting. Even mildly experienced GMs should be able to make sense of Rime and run it successfully.

 

[jasper]

Reposting this from the Review thread, because this is probably a more fruitful place to have the discussion. Has anyone else planned out which towns and quests they're likely to start their players off with?

I have chosen one so I can snipe the magic item as a DM reward. I have asked my players to consider being from ten towns. Two so far have taken me up on it.

 

[jasper]

I think was here. Total pop of Ten-Towns 4,200. Total generic spell casters 42. Making 14 druids 4th , priests 5th, and mages 9th. So Food spells will not help alot if they all the casters do.

 

[Reynard]

My session 0 got pushed a week so we don't start until October 8 now, but I finally decided what I am going to do with the "human sacrifice" element of Ten Towns: I am going to jettison it completely.

Ultimately, it isn't that hard to eliminate. In my Ten Towns, every town will be sacrificing warmth. It is thematically appropriate and not morally questionable. I'll make Sephek Kaltro one who believes that sacrificing people will sate Auril and so he will believe he is doing good by murdering innocents. That's a "moral quandry" I am much more comfortable with in games I run.

 

[MarkB]

My session 0 got pushed a week so we don't start until October 8 now, but I finally decided what I am going to do with the "human sacrifice" element of Ten Towns: I am going to jettison it completely.

Ultimately, it isn't that hard to eliminate. In my Ten Towns, every town will be sacrificing warmth. It is thematically appropriate and not morally questionable. I'll make Sephek Kaltro one who believes that sacrificing people will sate Auril and so he will believe he is doing good by murdering innocents. That's a "moral quandry" I am much more comfortable with in games I run.

One other option for Saphek Kaltro is for him to be targeting people who violated the sacrifice of warmth and weren't caught by their fellow townsfolk. That keeps it in the spirit of the original - he's targeting those who 'cheat'.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

A question I'd ask: Who did the Ten Towns worship before Auril made her demands/presence known? Why haven't any of those gods intervened?

There's a good chance a PC will be a cleric of a deity, and will want to know this.

 

[pukunui]

A question I'd ask: Who did the Ten Towns worship before Auril made her demands/presence known? Why haven't any of those gods intervened?

There's a good chance a PC will be a cleric of a deity, and will want to know this.

As I said in the other thread, there's a shrine to Amaunator / Lathander in Bryn Shander, according to Rime. Other sources indicate there's also a temple dedicated to the triad of Tyr, Torm, and Ilmater in the town as well. Not sure why it got left out. It even ties into one of the starting plot points in SKT.

Admittedly, SKT seemingly takes place after Rime, so you could say the temple simply hasn't been built yet. However, it is also mentioned in Legacy of the Crystal Shard, which takes place before Rime, so it's absence from Rime is a mystery.

According to LotCS, there's also a shrine to Silvanus near Easthaven.


EDIT: Just noticed a weird character change from LotCS -> Rime. In the former, there's a priestess named Mithann who worships "the Morninglord". The text hints that she worships Lathander rather than Amaunator. She doesn't get a mention in Storm King's Thunder, but she reappears in Rime, renamed "Mishann" and reframed as a hardline devotee of Amaunator who "doesn't like it" when people think Amaunator and Lathander are the same deity.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

So if you were running this, how would you respond?

 

[pukunui]

So if you were running this, how would you respond?

OK so the Sundering ended with Ao recreating the Ten Commandments Tablets of Fate, which made it more difficult for the FR deities to intervene in mortal affairs. It's possible that they've deliberately set Rime so early in the 5e timeline so that they could have Auril evading Ao's dictate that the deities must remain more remote ... and the other gods can no longer directly work against her. As for their champions, I imagine they're concerned but the severe weather means it's virtually impossible to get into Icewind Dale at the moment, so there's not a whole lot they can do.

That's what I would say to start with.

 

[pukunui]

Because it's bothering me ...

This is from Legacy of the Crystal Shard (which is set in 1485 DR, during the Sundering, and is a 4e/5e transitional adventure):

House of the Triad: "Bryn Shander's largest place of worship, and the only one that truly deserves to be called a temple ... When it was first built, it honored the three gods known as the Triad: Tyr, the god of justice; Torm, the god of duty and loyalty; and Ilmater, the god of endurance in the face of suffering. Tyr is said to be dead, though he still has a handful of followers in town, and the holy days most commonly celebrated in the temple are those of Ilmater. The promise of divine aid for those who endure suffering appeals to the people of Ten-Towns."

Shrine of Amaunator: "... a modest gathering place for worshipers of the god of the sun. Considering that the sun vanishes for two months at a time every winter, it's a wonder that Amaunator has any worshipers at all in Icewind Dale. The priest who established the shrine, a retired adventuring cleric from Cormyr named Mithann ... speaks a powerful message of hope and rebirth. She calls Amaunator by old names - the Morninglord and the Glory of Dawn - that evoke a different image from that of the stern, rigid sun god who is worshiped farther south."

[As an aside, it specifically states that Mithann was a former adventuring companion of the famous paladin Isteval, who calls Daggerford home and was one of the big names in the Sundering series, making appearances in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle, Scourge of the Sword Coast, and The Rise of Tiamat, among other things.]



This is from Storm King's Thunder, which takes place sometime after 1489 DR:

House of the Triad: "Bryn Shander's largest place of worship, the only one that truly deserves to be called a temple ... It honors the three gods known as the Triad: Tyr, the god of justice; Torm, the god of courage and self-sacrifice; and Ilmater, the god of endurance in the face of suffering. The temple is attended and maintained by visiting priests and acolytes from Neverwinter and Waterdeep, who usually stay no more than two years ... At present, the temple is home to a priest of Torm from Neverwinter named Dellvon Ludwig and his faithful friend, Sirac of Suzail."

Mithann and her shrine to Amaunator don't get a mention.



Finally, this is from Rime of the Frostmaiden, which is set in between the above two adventures in the timeline:

House of the Morninglord: "... this modest converted house serves as a gathering place for worshipers of Amaunator, a god of the sun known to take both male and female forms. A retired adventurer named Mishann runs the shrine and aspires to see the sun regain its rightful place in the sky over Icewind Dale. She calls Amaunator 'the Morninglord', a name that southerners use to describe Lathander, a god of the dawn and rebirth. Mishann views Lathander as a usurper of Amaunator's light and doesn't like it when people confuse the two deities."

The House of the Triad doesn't get a mention, although, because it appears in adventures set both before and after Rime, it surely must exist. (To be fair, the entry for each of the Ten-Towns in Rime is noticeably shorter what they get in the Legacy of the Crystal Shard Campaign Guide.)