Rime of the Frostmaiden | Enhanced Survival Campaign
Can you survive the Frostmaiden's endless winter, and bring the sun back to Icewind Dale?
$25.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Saturday - 4:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 2.5–3.5 hours
Campaign Length / 30–45 Sessions
1 / 5 Seats Filled
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One of StartPlaying's top-rated GMs, a player favorite and highly recommended.
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Meet your party members
1/5
About the adventure
In an isolated plain between the Reghed Glacier and the Spine of the World lies Icewind Dale, the inhabitants of Ten Towns have eked out a meager existence for centuries. They're hard people, many of whom came to the end of the world to escape worse fates elsewhere. But as bleak as Icewind Dale has always been, things have been getting worse. Some time ago, Auril the Frostmaiden, the evil goddess of winter, began casting a spell preventing the sun from rising each morning. In the two years since then, life has gone from difficult to barely survivable for the Dale's inhabitants. But not everyone finds the long dark to be a hindrance. The long nights and sunless days are a blessing to Xardorok Sunblight, a duergar warlord who longs to carve out a domain for himself on the surface and enslave the people of Ten Towns in the process. On top of all of this, mages have begun to flock to the region seeking powers lost with the fall of the ancient mageocracy of Netheril, whose collapse nearly brought the age of humanity and magic itself to an end. This adventure will take your party from level 1 up to 10 as you seek fame, fortune, or revenge among the snow and ice. Despite the bleak times, Icewind Dale is a starkly beautiful place, and themes of the campaign will range between survival horror (as you contend with nature's cruelty) and a Ghibli-esque sense of awe and appreciation of the land. WHAT'S NEW? This is a well-loved campaign for many, but anyone who has run part or all of it know that it can also be very inconsistent and major portions are barely connected to the overarching plot. After running the campaign myself a couple of times, I've added and refined certain elements to make the campaign more cohesive, and to ensure that your characters have connections to the plot and setting. The changes will begin at character creation, as I will present a menu of plot hooks—reworked from those presented in the text—which will ensure that your party will have good reasons for undertaking the adventure. In addition to all of that, I will be emphasizing the basic needs of physical survival in this campaign. Food and water will be hard to find and expensive, disease and exhaustion will be a factor, and of course, few characters will easily weather the cold. Eat, or be eaten.
Game style
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(102)
4 years on StartPlaying
709 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Beginner Friendly, Storytelling
About me
My first experience with TTRPGs was two and a half sessions of Rolemaster. If you know that system, you know it's not the greatest starting point for a beginner. Added to that, our GM was trying to run this game while taking care of a newborn and finishing up med school. Despite the rocky start, I was hooked, but I didn't know anyone else at the time who could run a game at all. So I started my own D&D campaign and have been GMing ever since! I run RPGs for the stories, the surprise, and the drama. My goal is always to create an atmosphere where the whole group can explore the stories that interest them. My favorite moments in any game are when things feel cool, cinematic, heartfelt, or badass. That moment when the barbarian leaps through the wall of flame, clothes smoldering, screaming in rage. Or that moment when the Netrunner finally breaks into the top-secret mainframe to loot secrets from the rich and powerful, as a desperate firefight rages around them. But most importantly, the very best moment is when I can tell that the players have forgotten that they're sitting in a chair at a desk, and are having a shared experience that takes them away from their lives and which they'll remember for years. But I've never been satisfied with just a standard D&D campaign or two; I've run games in a dozen or so systems at this point, and I'm always excited to try new ones! I even have experience running custom one- and two-player campaigns, which can be a great way to have a more in-depth, character-driven experience, and also help to alleviate scheduling difficulties. If you're interested in something like that, please feel free to message me or hit the button that says "Book GM," and we can start talking about the specifics!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We will go over character creation during our Session 0, during which I'll introduce you to the setting and make sure each of your characters are well-suited to the challenges that they'll face. The character creation process will be somewhat more restrictive than you might be used to, but this is just to make sure that your characters have a stake and a place in the world. You'll be free to play almost any class or subclass, but expect a narrowed selection of species and backgrounds in order to make sure your character fits into the plot hooks that I've arranged.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
You'll need a microphone and Discord in order to communicate with the group. I recommend using push-to-talk to minimize background and unintentional noise. I expect that most players will want to use D&D Beyond for character creation at least, although I will also want to make sure that you have a reasonably up-to-date copy on Roll20, in case of outages on one site or the other. We'll use Roll20 for maps and dice rolls, but most of my players run their characters from their sheets on D&D Beyond, using a browser plugin called Beyond20 to make sure that the dice rolls show up for everyone!
What Colby brings to the table
I'll set up everything we need in terms of maps, NPCs, tokens, etc. for the campaign. If you find or make character art for yourself, you're more than welcome to use it, or I can find something for you!
Homebrew rules
We will be using expanded survival rules, including changes to how you manage food, disease, and potentially resting. We will discuss the extent of house rules during Session 0, and will use the rule set that the group agrees will be fun!
Equipment needed to play
Computer
Headphones
Internet
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Colby creates a safe table
We will have a detailed Session 0 which will take up the entirety of our first meeting. During that time, we will go over various logistical details, introduce you to my DM-ing style, the tone of the world and plot, house rules that I use, and Safety Tools, in particular a detailed list of Lines & Veils which all players are encouraged to add to. Since the game's setting is mostly cold, dark, and bleak, we'll work to make sure to do justice to those themes. However, we'll make sure there are plenty of moments of light, beauty, and levity to make sure things don't get to be too one-note. Some of my house rules, which players have the option to veto, do make the game slightly more dangerous and deadly. Expect your character to be in real danger at times during the adventure, despite 5e typically giving lots of options for escaping peril.
Content warnings
Safety tools used