My attempt to center the horror element in Icewind Dale continues.
Looking back on my Chapter 2 entry, it occurs to me that we're going to run into some problems leveling according to the book's milestone system. If you run your players up to 7th level on Icewind Dale quests, they aren't going to progress through Chapters 3 and 4, possibly not even 5. That may be a bummer for your players, so think about how much of Chapter 2 you actually want to use. Despite the ranking I did in the last post, you might want to skip it altogether and just power through to this segment. The book says that Solstice can be visited anytime, meaning elements of Chapter 5 can be run anytime.For a horror campaign, my preference is to limit the number of trips players take to Solstice.I don’t want them to stop thinking its a big deal.So I’d rather keep them away from it until after 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 begins with the offer of a quest and then, assuming that the players accept it, the chapter sucker-punches them with what I believe is a false moral choice.Do they uselessly pursue the dragon or stay on mission?Eyeballing the overland travel, using the rules as presented (1/2 mile per hour through the mountains on dogsleds, 1mph on tundra, then dogs need a short rest, survival rolls to keep from getting lost), and the admirably comprehensive timetable they provide for the dragon, we can guesstimate that, with good tracking rolls, it will take them 12-13 hours to get from Sunblight to Dougan’s Hole.Realistically, the first place the players will be able to intercept the dragon is Bremen, and since it will skip to the next city if it takes 30hp damage, they’re just chasing it back to Bryn Shander anyway.They might as well finish the fortress, and then go to Bryn Shander, although they don’t know that.
So, we can either set our players an impossible task and then try to make them feel guilty for failing; we can hand wave away the travel rules that have been such a huge part of the flavor of the setting; OR we can do Chapter 4 first.I submit we should do Chapter 4 first.It gives the players an actual stake in Chapter 3 and a chance to do some good amidst the horror.
Chapter 4 - (4/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - Think Godzilla, Cloverfield, The Wave, Volcano)
If we can give the players a fighting chance, I actually like this chapter a lot.The travel times and the mobility of the dragon provide a natural way to limit rests.The strategic decisionmaking about which towns can be saved adds an unusual element to the game.And in case you ever wonder whether Chris Perkins sweats the details, two chapters after he gives you laser guns, he gives you a monster with resistance to radiant damage to neutralize your laser guns.That’s how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen.Now, I recognize that the players won’t have the benefit of the map located in the fortress, but I think as this chapter unfolds, they’ll be able to pick up on the general idea that the dragon is going counterclockwise and make decisions based on that.
Over the last two chapters, as I’ve played them out in my head, I’ve been substituting Velynne Harpell for quest giver Danika Greysteel.It makes Velynne seem less like a deus ex machina when she shows up and offers to help.If she’s already built that relationship with your players she should be someplace convenient for them.That means that if the players don’t have dogsleds at all, she should be wherever you start them.If they do have sleds, I’d have them catch up with her when they need fresh dogs.
I’d probably start it off in Good Mead.Maybe the characters are circling back and doing the “Nature Spirits” quest from Chapter 1, for Velynne.They notice some lights on the horizon and sounds like thunder.It looks like something strange is happening in Dougan’s Hole.The characters play with some chwingas, the dragon attacks, wrecks some buildings and the characters drop 30 hp on it.It flies off to Easthaven and they pursue.It takes the dragon 1 1/2 hours to get to Easthaven.It takes players 4 1/2 hours, so they catch the dragon in mid-rampage.You can put on the whole show here, Duergar infiltrators, townsfolk driven mad with chardalyn radiation, whatever you like.Decide how much of the town and what NPCs are saved/killed/destroyed.When the characters hit the dragon for another 30hp, it flies to Caer Dineval.
Now the characters have an actual choice.It takes a minimum of 4 1/2 hours for players to get from Easthaven to Caer Dineval, by which time, the dragon has already wrecked Caer Dineval, Caer Konig, and started west.If the players try to get ahead of it now, they can catch it in Termalaine.Maybe Perception checks at the crossroads would tell characters that the flashes and noise are receding away from Caer Dineval towards Caer Konig and help them make the right decision.
At this point, the paths are starting to fill up with refugees and walking wounded, although they aren’t choked with them.The players head for Termalaine, maybe stopping in Bryn Shander to warn about the dragon and change dogs (compliments of Velynne Harpell).In Termalaine, they inflict another 30 hp and the dragon flies to Lonelywood.Now the dragon has taken at least 105 hp damage (15 from town militia and at least 90 from players).They don’t know how many hp it has, but it’s clearly hurting.The characters have another meaningful decision to make: do they pursue the dragon to Lonelywood, hoping to finish it off?If they come up short and it flies away, they’ll never catch it before it reaches Targos, and Bremen is doomed.If they try to keep ahead of it, they can intercept it again in Bremen, but they're turning their backs on Lonelywood. They’ve also done three rounds against this beast without a short rest.What’s the right move?
If they pursue it to Lonelywood and don’t finish it off, the trip back is marked by driving through the flames of Termalaine and the paths are slow and crowded with the desperate and injured.However many hp the dragon has left, we’ll keep it alive until the PCs get to Targos and finish it off.If they get ahead of it, they should probably finish it off in Bremen (though they’ll have to contend with high winds and snowfall).
As you can see, the key to the fight is that it’s going to take place over multiple towns, so characters are going to have to get started right away and keep making quick decisions about their next move.Don’t be a jerk, but don’t let table discussions stretch on forever.Keep a fire under them.The horror element presented here is exactly the kind of thing these characters were made for. D&D characters run towards the dragon.The actually horrified ones are the civilians.So we have to raise the tension for our players another way, by making them appreciate the limited time their characters have to make important decisions.
The dragon’s breath weapon range is 120’, so that’s where it starts the fight.If that leaves one or two players unable to hit it, that’s what the “Town in Chaos” table is for.
Chapter 3 - (2/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - You can do this any number of ways, but I’m thinking of end of Frankenstein, end of Beauty and the Beast, vengeful mob energy)
Now it feels like we’ve earned this.Xardorok has an ass-kicking coming, but good.The Council of Speakers needs someone to not only kill him, but to make sure he doesn’t have any MORE killer dragonbots.And now they DO have something to offer the more mercenary players, the lands of the dead townsfolk.If your characters cleared the devil-worshippers out of Caer Dineval, they’ll pretty much own the whole town, now (though they may have to kill the six invisible Duergar saboteurs).
The fortress itself is okay. It has a forge and a satanic chapel and a torture room, all the things you want. There are too many social elements, though. “Asmodeus vs. Levistus” is tangential enough to this story, “Asmodeus disguised as Deep Duerra” doesn’t seem like it adds anything at all. I wouldn’t get rid of the devil stuff, I want a scene where Klondorn reveals himself to Xardolok and belittles him before the players kill him. I just think I’d decide in advance on one particular archdevil to be working in this theater and use that one for the Knights and the Duergar. And introducing the Muzgardt Conspiracy into all of this for the first time during the assault? What does that look like to the players? The first thing they hear about it is this old lady? It can’t help but let a little air out the tires.
Players will handle it however they want, but if it were up to me, we’d simplify.Don’t worry about the politics.Grandolpha just says whatever she has to, to whomever is in front of her, to stay alive.Just have Levistus be the one devil, as a change of pace from Asmodeus.I’d offer the players a small pitchfork-and-torch wielding mob from Ten Towns and run this chapter like a war movie.If I could think of a plausible way to do it, I’d actually have players put a timer on the dragon heart and blow the whole fortress up like Guns of Navarone.I think the players have earned an explosion at this point.
Chapter 5 - (3/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - Think Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Trollhunter (the Norwegian one, not the cartoon), The Nightmare Before Christmas)
So now, the dragon is beaten and vengeance his been meted out.But, despite the players' heroic efforts, hundreds of people have been killed and hundreds more are homeless in the endless winter.People are ready to grasp at any straw, ready to be taken advantage of by any passing con artist.Enter Velynne Harpell. Velynne’s pitch leans heavily on the promise that the lost city of Ythryn will have Netherese weather-changing technology, she’s just sure of it.The players may have already seen the weather-control device in “The Black Cabin.”It’s not implausible that if a looney gnome in a cabin in the woods could almost crack this, a city of super-wizards could. So this gives even MORE NPCs a reason to pressure their heroes into the quest.
I think Solstice is an opportunity to really switch up the pace of our horror campaign and delve into dark fantasy a bit.Let’s break out the Danny Elfman or Alexandre Desplat’s The Shape of Water score. For starters, let’s circle back to our pal Angajuk, from chapter 2. A whale with a magic boat on its back seemed like a silly character in a straight horror movie. But it's the perfect creature to transport us through the icebergs, past the shipwrecks, up into the mist and then into the eerie blue-green light of the aurora. The island is absolutely silent, even the characters’ own noises are buffered and dulled by the snow cover. This feels strangely isolating and claustrophobic.
Sopo the ice mephit might be worthwhile, but the fact that it only speaks Auran and Aquan limits its appeal to me. It seems like the one and only way for the players to find the professor orb, but I dread trying to convey “the last ship to visit the island crashed off the coast of the island’s northwest arm. One survivor managed to pull herself out of the frigid water and climb to the top of the island, but she died before getting any farther” in charades form. Luckily, even if the players don’t have comprehend languages queued up, Velynne does.
I think the landscape should be strange and wonderful.I might make a distinction between the Garden of Death and the other assorted ice sculptures by having them veer towards abstraction.If there were no wind on Solstice, Auril could make ice sculptures as delicate as spun sugar and clear as glass, like delicate crazy Dale Chihuly ice amoebas.She could create moondogs in the sky, moon bows, light pillars, any kind of optical effect like that.And tons of it should get smashed to shit fighting the ice troll.I wouldn’t do the thing where Auril intervenes, just let the players think that’s what’s going to happen. I like the fortress and I can handle the friendly walrus within the surrealistic Guillermo del Toro-style confines we’ve set.
So here’s the big question:Do they fight Auril?If they want to, they want to, but if they succeed, I’d think it was anticlimactic to run Chapters 6 and 7 afterwards.So I might subtly discourage it.Vellyne would be dead set against it.She doesn’t actually care about saving Ten Towns and why would she risk her life when she’s just gotten the Codicil?Incidentally, if players let her carry the Codicil, I wouldn’t count on her sticking around for the fight.If half of the party is resistant to cold damage and packing radiant-damage laser guns and fireball spells, which seems completely possible, I might just have Auril flying around on her roc when they come to call.But if they really really want it, I think you have to give it to them and try to wipe them out.Remember her lair actions.She can teleport anywhere on the island, she has a roc, eight yetis of various sizes and seven ice mephitis to harry spell casters. If the roc successfully grapples a character, that character is taking 20d6 falling damage next turn.Auril knows how much damage each of them have taken and who has the most levels of exhaustion.Let the dice fall as they may, but this should be a fight they remember.If they win, they can find Vellyne frozen into a block of ice somewhere near the whale pickup point with the orb and the codicil in her grasp.If they lose, Vellyne recruits their replacements to get to the lost city.
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My attempt to center the horror element in Icewind Dale continues.
Looking back on my Chapter 2 entry, it occurs to me that we're going to run into some problems leveling according to the book's milestone system. If you run your players up to 7th level on Icewind Dale quests, they aren't going to progress through Chapters 3 and 4, possibly not even 5. That may be a bummer for your players, so think about how much of Chapter 2 you actually want to use. Despite the ranking I did in the last post, you might want to skip it altogether and just power through to this segment. The book says that Solstice can be visited anytime, meaning elements of Chapter 5 can be run anytime. For a horror campaign, my preference is to limit the number of trips players take to Solstice. I don’t want them to stop thinking its a big deal. So I’d rather keep them away from it until after 3 and 4.
Chapter 3 begins with the offer of a quest and then, assuming that the players accept it, the chapter sucker-punches them with what I believe is a false moral choice. Do they uselessly pursue the dragon or stay on mission? Eyeballing the overland travel, using the rules as presented (1/2 mile per hour through the mountains on dogsleds, 1mph on tundra, then dogs need a short rest, survival rolls to keep from getting lost), and the admirably comprehensive timetable they provide for the dragon, we can guesstimate that, with good tracking rolls, it will take them 12-13 hours to get from Sunblight to Dougan’s Hole. Realistically, the first place the players will be able to intercept the dragon is Bremen, and since it will skip to the next city if it takes 30hp damage, they’re just chasing it back to Bryn Shander anyway. They might as well finish the fortress, and then go to Bryn Shander, although they don’t know that.
So, we can either set our players an impossible task and then try to make them feel guilty for failing; we can hand wave away the travel rules that have been such a huge part of the flavor of the setting; OR we can do Chapter 4 first. I submit we should do Chapter 4 first. It gives the players an actual stake in Chapter 3 and a chance to do some good amidst the horror.
Chapter 4 - (4/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - Think Godzilla, Cloverfield, The Wave, Volcano)
If we can give the players a fighting chance, I actually like this chapter a lot. The travel times and the mobility of the dragon provide a natural way to limit rests. The strategic decisionmaking about which towns can be saved adds an unusual element to the game. And in case you ever wonder whether Chris Perkins sweats the details, two chapters after he gives you laser guns, he gives you a monster with resistance to radiant damage to neutralize your laser guns. That’s how it’s done, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I recognize that the players won’t have the benefit of the map located in the fortress, but I think as this chapter unfolds, they’ll be able to pick up on the general idea that the dragon is going counterclockwise and make decisions based on that.
Over the last two chapters, as I’ve played them out in my head, I’ve been substituting Velynne Harpell for quest giver Danika Greysteel. It makes Velynne seem less like a deus ex machina when she shows up and offers to help. If she’s already built that relationship with your players she should be someplace convenient for them. That means that if the players don’t have dogsleds at all, she should be wherever you start them. If they do have sleds, I’d have them catch up with her when they need fresh dogs.
I’d probably start it off in Good Mead. Maybe the characters are circling back and doing the “Nature Spirits” quest from Chapter 1, for Velynne. They notice some lights on the horizon and sounds like thunder. It looks like something strange is happening in Dougan’s Hole. The characters play with some chwingas, the dragon attacks, wrecks some buildings and the characters drop 30 hp on it. It flies off to Easthaven and they pursue. It takes the dragon 1 1/2 hours to get to Easthaven. It takes players 4 1/2 hours, so they catch the dragon in mid-rampage. You can put on the whole show here, Duergar infiltrators, townsfolk driven mad with chardalyn radiation, whatever you like. Decide how much of the town and what NPCs are saved/killed/destroyed. When the characters hit the dragon for another 30hp, it flies to Caer Dineval.
Now the characters have an actual choice. It takes a minimum of 4 1/2 hours for players to get from Easthaven to Caer Dineval, by which time, the dragon has already wrecked Caer Dineval, Caer Konig, and started west. If the players try to get ahead of it now, they can catch it in Termalaine. Maybe Perception checks at the crossroads would tell characters that the flashes and noise are receding away from Caer Dineval towards Caer Konig and help them make the right decision.
At this point, the paths are starting to fill up with refugees and walking wounded, although they aren’t choked with them. The players head for Termalaine, maybe stopping in Bryn Shander to warn about the dragon and change dogs (compliments of Velynne Harpell). In Termalaine, they inflict another 30 hp and the dragon flies to Lonelywood. Now the dragon has taken at least 105 hp damage (15 from town militia and at least 90 from players). They don’t know how many hp it has, but it’s clearly hurting. The characters have another meaningful decision to make: do they pursue the dragon to Lonelywood, hoping to finish it off? If they come up short and it flies away, they’ll never catch it before it reaches Targos, and Bremen is doomed. If they try to keep ahead of it, they can intercept it again in Bremen, but they're turning their backs on Lonelywood. They’ve also done three rounds against this beast without a short rest. What’s the right move?
If they pursue it to Lonelywood and don’t finish it off, the trip back is marked by driving through the flames of Termalaine and the paths are slow and crowded with the desperate and injured. However many hp the dragon has left, we’ll keep it alive until the PCs get to Targos and finish it off. If they get ahead of it, they should probably finish it off in Bremen (though they’ll have to contend with high winds and snowfall).
As you can see, the key to the fight is that it’s going to take place over multiple towns, so characters are going to have to get started right away and keep making quick decisions about their next move. Don’t be a jerk, but don’t let table discussions stretch on forever. Keep a fire under them. The horror element presented here is exactly the kind of thing these characters were made for. D&D characters run towards the dragon. The actually horrified ones are the civilians. So we have to raise the tension for our players another way, by making them appreciate the limited time their characters have to make important decisions.
The dragon’s breath weapon range is 120’, so that’s where it starts the fight. If that leaves one or two players unable to hit it, that’s what the “Town in Chaos” table is for.
Chapter 3 - (2/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - You can do this any number of ways, but I’m thinking of end of Frankenstein, end of Beauty and the Beast, vengeful mob energy)
Now it feels like we’ve earned this. Xardorok has an ass-kicking coming, but good. The Council of Speakers needs someone to not only kill him, but to make sure he doesn’t have any MORE killer dragonbots. And now they DO have something to offer the more mercenary players, the lands of the dead townsfolk. If your characters cleared the devil-worshippers out of Caer Dineval, they’ll pretty much own the whole town, now (though they may have to kill the six invisible Duergar saboteurs).
The fortress itself is okay. It has a forge and a satanic chapel and a torture room, all the things you want. There are too many social elements, though. “Asmodeus vs. Levistus” is tangential enough to this story, “Asmodeus disguised as Deep Duerra” doesn’t seem like it adds anything at all. I wouldn’t get rid of the devil stuff, I want a scene where Klondorn reveals himself to Xardolok and belittles him before the players kill him. I just think I’d decide in advance on one particular archdevil to be working in this theater and use that one for the Knights and the Duergar. And introducing the Muzgardt Conspiracy into all of this for the first time during the assault? What does that look like to the players? The first thing they hear about it is this old lady? It can’t help but let a little air out the tires.
Players will handle it however they want, but if it were up to me, we’d simplify. Don’t worry about the politics. Grandolpha just says whatever she has to, to whomever is in front of her, to stay alive. Just have Levistus be the one devil, as a change of pace from Asmodeus. I’d offer the players a small pitchfork-and-torch wielding mob from Ten Towns and run this chapter like a war movie. If I could think of a plausible way to do it, I’d actually have players put a timer on the dragon heart and blow the whole fortress up like Guns of Navarone. I think the players have earned an explosion at this point.
Chapter 5 - (3/4 Scatman Crothers Being Hit With An Axes - Think Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, Trollhunter (the Norwegian one, not the cartoon), The Nightmare Before Christmas)
So now, the dragon is beaten and vengeance his been meted out. But, despite the players' heroic efforts, hundreds of people have been killed and hundreds more are homeless in the endless winter. People are ready to grasp at any straw, ready to be taken advantage of by any passing con artist. Enter Velynne Harpell. Velynne’s pitch leans heavily on the promise that the lost city of Ythryn will have Netherese weather-changing technology, she’s just sure of it. The players may have already seen the weather-control device in “The Black Cabin.” It’s not implausible that if a looney gnome in a cabin in the woods could almost crack this, a city of super-wizards could. So this gives even MORE NPCs a reason to pressure their heroes into the quest.
I think Solstice is an opportunity to really switch up the pace of our horror campaign and delve into dark fantasy a bit. Let’s break out the Danny Elfman or Alexandre Desplat’s The Shape of Water score. For starters, let’s circle back to our pal Angajuk, from chapter 2. A whale with a magic boat on its back seemed like a silly character in a straight horror movie. But it's the perfect creature to transport us through the icebergs, past the shipwrecks, up into the mist and then into the eerie blue-green light of the aurora. The island is absolutely silent, even the characters’ own noises are buffered and dulled by the snow cover. This feels strangely isolating and claustrophobic.
Sopo the ice mephit might be worthwhile, but the fact that it only speaks Auran and Aquan limits its appeal to me. It seems like the one and only way for the players to find the professor orb, but I dread trying to convey “the last ship to visit the island crashed off the coast of the island’s northwest arm. One survivor managed to pull herself out of the frigid water and climb to the top of the island, but she died before getting any farther” in charades form. Luckily, even if the players don’t have comprehend languages queued up, Velynne does.
I think the landscape should be strange and wonderful. I might make a distinction between the Garden of Death and the other assorted ice sculptures by having them veer towards abstraction. If there were no wind on Solstice, Auril could make ice sculptures as delicate as spun sugar and clear as glass, like delicate crazy Dale Chihuly ice amoebas. She could create moondogs in the sky, moon bows, light pillars, any kind of optical effect like that. And tons of it should get smashed to shit fighting the ice troll. I wouldn’t do the thing where Auril intervenes, just let the players think that’s what’s going to happen. I like the fortress and I can handle the friendly walrus within the surrealistic Guillermo del Toro-style confines we’ve set.
So here’s the big question: Do they fight Auril? If they want to, they want to, but if they succeed, I’d think it was anticlimactic to run Chapters 6 and 7 afterwards. So I might subtly discourage it. Vellyne would be dead set against it. She doesn’t actually care about saving Ten Towns and why would she risk her life when she’s just gotten the Codicil? Incidentally, if players let her carry the Codicil, I wouldn’t count on her sticking around for the fight. If half of the party is resistant to cold damage and packing radiant-damage laser guns and fireball spells, which seems completely possible, I might just have Auril flying around on her roc when they come to call. But if they really really want it, I think you have to give it to them and try to wipe them out. Remember her lair actions. She can teleport anywhere on the island, she has a roc, eight yetis of various sizes and seven ice mephitis to harry spell casters. If the roc successfully grapples a character, that character is taking 20d6 falling damage next turn. Auril knows how much damage each of them have taken and who has the most levels of exhaustion. Let the dice fall as they may, but this should be a fight they remember. If they win, they can find Vellyne frozen into a block of ice somewhere near the whale pickup point with the orb and the codicil in her grasp. If they lose, Vellyne recruits their replacements to get to the lost city.