1/? My challenge with running Rime of the Frostmaiden ** Spoiler alert!

So, the premise is that the characters arrive in the Ten Towns and it has been a frozen hellscape there for over two years. This is obviously a terrible ecological disaster.

2/? Their lakes are mostly frozen and all the roads are buried in snow and ice. So what are a group of plucky first level adventurers to do about it – absolutely nothing. And that is the problem.

3/? Instead, they are presented with a series of well written but utterly disconnected quests that have nothing to do with the actual story line – the perpetual crushing winter and the obvious disastrous impact that it is having on the local populace.

4/? A related problem is that these towns are supposed to be rolling along in a business as usual fashion, selling beer and fishing, but are also taking extreme steps like performing human sacrifice?

5/? The problem is that in heroic fantasy, players have been well trained to step forward and do what no one else can do – Stop Tiamat (RoT), Stop the Death Curse (ToA), Stop a war being raged by Giants against the “small folk” (SKT) etc.

6/? The problem here is that we have PC’s who want to be heroes - help with the clear and present danger of an unrelenting winter - and instead they are supposed to care about missing ingots and are to get excited about rumors of a hike up a mountain.

7/? It is really a problem. And, I believe it is a problem acknowledged by the designers as evidenced by the ridiculously fast level acceleration to level 4, the point where the adventure really begins.

8/? Look. I really get how hard it is to write compelling stuff for low level characters. I just finished a draft of the first 25% of a book I am writing that takes the characters from levels 1 to 4.

9/? It is very difficult to design meaningful encounters for low level characters against a serious backdrop of bad things going on. It has taken me months to finish and I am pleased with the outcome.

But back to Frostmaiden.

10/? If you are going to run this and have serious players, I suggest coming up with a unifying story that makes some sense of these disparate quests. Again, the quests themselves are very well written. They just don’t make sense with this apocalyptic backdrop.

11/? In reality, two years of relentless winter with temperatures that low would have resulted in all of those settlements being abandoned. I am from the north. No way an isolated society can live under those conditions without outside aid. And this is my suggestion.

12/? The outside aid is Clan Battlehammer. (In my game) the only reason why the populace continues to hang on in the face of this ecological devastation is the relief efforts undertaken by Clan Battlehammer.

13/? It is in the process of assisting with these relief efforts that my players encounter these nicely done mini quests.

As an alternative, my other suggestion is to start the adventure at chapter 2 with 4th level characters.

14 - Final

I think the adventure is great, compelling, and well done. The first chapter just seems weirdly appended.