The prize for best Dungeons & Dragons 5e adventure is a close race between Curse of Strahd and Rime of the Frostmaiden, with the latter taking the lead by a small margin. If, like me, you loved leading a party of adventurers in the frigid tundra of Icewind Dale, then you’ll be happy to know that you can finally go back thanks to Adventures in Faerûn.
Part of the recent Forgotten Realms bundle campaign setting, Adventures in Faerûn is a book tailored for Dungeon Masters who want to run games in D&D’s most famous world. While its companion book, Heroes of Faerûn, gives a decent overview of the continent, Adventures focuses on five specific locations: the Dalelands, Calmishan, the Moonshae Islands, Baldur’s Gate, and last but not least, Icewind Dale. As I wrote in my review, these chapters were not made equal. Some of them are a little disappointing, but to me, the Icewind Dale section alone is almost worth the price of the book.
Rather than simply presenting a condensed version of the information contained in Rime of the Frostmaiden, the chapter in this book functions as a sequel of sorts that takes place 12 years later (Rime takes place in 1489 of the Dalereckoning calendar, while the new books set the current year at 1501). It also expands on locations and subplots that were left underdeveloped in the original campaign.
There are new villains, a new threat, possibly even worse than Auril, the deadly goddess of winter, hanging over Ten Towns, and new horrors lurking in the cold darkness. So, thanks to Adventures in Faerûn, you can go back to Icewind Dale and pick up straight from where your Rime campaign left off. And if you haven’t played that, then this is the best time to grab it and experience one of the best 5e products. But what’s so great about Rime of the Frostmaiden?
The brainchild of Chris Perkins, credited as both story creator and lead writer, this adventure has a distinct survival horror vibe. Perkins stated in the afterword that his main inspirations were John Carpenter’s The Thing and H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. Isolation and hidden and psychological horror are indeed big themes, and they are well-conveyed by the art and the story. The main appeal, however, is that Rime of the Frostmaiden offers a rare blend of a sandbox setting with a focused adventure. Players can freely explore Icewind Dale through a plethora of locations, but there’s also a strong main plot driving the story forward.
This was possibly the culmination of 5e’s blueprint of adventure modules that actually work as campaign books. Wizards of the Coast didn’t publish “campaign settings” for 5e like it did in previous editions: big books that described a world (such as Faerûn, Eberron, or Krynn) in as much detail as possible, leaving to the DM the job to build adventures in it. Instead, 5e focused on limited locations of Faerûn by setting a big campaign-like adventure in each of them. This allowed great flexibility: As a DM, you could just pick up one of these and run it for your group, use it as a source of information to create your own campaign, or a mix of the two. Rime of the Frostmaiden shines because the location felt like a true sandbox you could explore and expand at whim, but the major plots were also interesting and well-written.
So, what happened in the 12 years that passed after the end of the Everlasting Rime, Auril’s spell that blocked the sun from rising over Icewind Dale? A lot of things, and none of them are good for the folks of Ten Towns. The main new threat is that the ice beneath Icewind Dale is beginning to melt, unleashing untold horrors that are rising up from the Underdark. This is the work of Zlan, an abomination resulting from the fusion of the seven liches who created the legendary Crenshinibon, a destructive magical artifact that old timers like me will remember for being the catalyst for the plot of The Crystal Shard, the first novel to feature drow ranger and D&D icon Drizzt Do’Urden.
Moreover, the Icewind Dale chapter in Adventures in Faerûn fleshes out some of the locations that felt unfinished in Rime of the Frostmaiden. We finally know what the mysterious circle of stones in Dougan’s Hole is for, and it connects to a new plot characters can follow. Even a big town such as Bryn Shander has been expanded with new locations and an updated map. Unfortunately, the chapter focuses mostly on Ten Towns, but it does provide some interesting hooks for adventures in the wilderness. Small spoiler: If you want to visit the tunnels of the Battlehammer clan, expect a nasty surprise. These dwarves should really have moved to Mithral Hall with their king when they had the chance.
Finally, those who have played Rime of the Frostmaiden will appreciate all the references to that adventure that they can find if they explore Icewind Dale again. The battle with the chardalyn dragon was a big moment in the adventure, and the broken remains of the magical construct are now a permanent feature in Easthaven. Players can even claim them as a bastion, if they want (who has never dreamed of living inside the corpse of a dragon made of cursed metal?). The consequences of the dragon attack on Ten Towns, and of all the other nasty things that happened during the Everlasting Rime, are still visible. This creates a nice sense of continuity that is rare to find in D&D products, which usually tend to ignore or blur anything that happened before.
Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of this chapter is that it provides the only positive example of a feature of D&D 2024 that I can’t help but hate: the one-page adventures. “What Wakes Below,” on page 127, is actually interesting, as it shows the consequences and dangers of the thawing Underdark, dropping the party in the midst of conspiracies, dragons masquerading as prophets, and eldritch horrors frozen underground. It’s a shame that what could have been a great full adventure book is compressed into a half page of encounters, but crafty DMs will be able to draw inspiration and expand it into something good.
I hope that Wizards of the Coast will not abandon the 5e model of big adventure/campaign books. The trend seems to be different for D&D 2024, but at least I now have an excuse to go back to Icewind Dale.
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