Rime of the Frostmaiden Campaign Retrospective - Tips, Experiences, Boss Battles, and One Year Later

[@inakia.391]

I absolutely loved this series; the adventure, the way you prep, how you changed the campaign in order to give your players a more personalized experience, etc. I can't wait for another series like this one! Thank you Mike!

[@SlyFlourish]

Glad you liked it!!

[@The_Supervillain]

Fantastic retrospective. My frostmaiden campaign is coming up on session 18 and the players are having a great time. Thanks for all the work you put into the game and this story in particular!

[@Cbryer101]

Nobody doing it better than SF. Follower of yours since 2012 and I have learned more from you than any other top level DM.

[@SlyFlourish]

Thank you so much for your support!

[@Cbryer101]

@@SlyFlourish You are worth more than $2 per month, my friend.

[@Raj-nr8oh]

so sad!!! but also so appreciative! I've been watching these over and over again to help prep my frostmaiden campaign (still on chapter 1 - so yes please on doing more videos about running it)

[@Throgmoyd]

Your players are very fortunate to have such an accomplished DM. Merry Christmas and all my wishes for a happy, healthy & prosperous 2022 for you & yours.

[@SlyFlourish]

Thank you! I was lucky to be able to run a game for them!

[@EricKamander]

I really loved this recap, and all the recaps. (The recaps are always my favorite part.)

[@NashMorrow]

love this retrospective, endlessly inspiring for my own DM prep… thanks a bunch!

[@stephensayers4998]

Have loved following through this campaign. I am running a group of 6 and we are playing session 13 on Tuesday night. your videos have helped pre and inspire my own crazy ideas so far.

[@SlyFlourish]

Awesome!

[@Jauphrey]

Bless you, Mike. Damn are these retrospectives helpful!

[@flexorlamonticus]

WOW. Great end to a great series. I'm kind of sad to see it end! And looking forward to prep videos in the future if you choose to do them. I'm not sure if you know how awesome these videos are for those of us who are too busy to play D&D right now. Prep and recaps are the juice for me (as opposed to actual gaming videos, which I find a bit boring). I understand that the express purpose of these videos is instructional, and they definitely are that for me, but additionally, they let me experience the fun of a campaign vicariously! Thanks!!

[@SlyFlourish]

I’m so glad you enjoy them!

[@ariodemien6150]

Just amaxing! Your prep sessions have been so helpful to my game. I'm currently running a homebrew world campaign that features planar tectonic collisions, so I'm excited to hear how you do that in your WBTW campaign.

[@pb-bx1ll]

I really appreciate all of your work. I find the advice very helpful. Thank you

[@SlyFlourish]

Thank you!

[@MikChaos]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this adventure and the series as a whole. Both my groups are still in the Duergar/dragon chapters at present but we're having a blast.

[@ThriftySteve]

Great series!

[@Zr0din]

Looking at this book plus your advice on how to change this was very usefull information for my own home brew adventure structure. Still working with your books. Thanks for your work. I agree it does feel like there are things that are disconnected that need connections. Czardarock's Dwarves are sunlight sensitive- with an eternal winter one of their main weaknesses are gone for a surface invasion.

[@sandrols7]

I completely rewrote Auril's trials (but I also rewrote Auril as a being) to better reflect her divine nature. And the trials were never about gaining access to the Codacile, but rather about gaining an understanding of Auril herself, so that they may stop her another way. The Codacile was just either on Auril herself, or guarded by a loyal Frost Giant. With that said, I also made it so that her trials could only be taken if a player could reasonably explain why their character would be able to understand this part of Auril's nature. So Auril had a trial depicting her as a vengeful being, and another character who was consumed by vengeance might be able to take that trial. This did mean that maybe there were some holes in the story that would piece together, but that made it all the more interesting to see them try and figure it out.

[@Alrod1377]

Happy Holiday to you Mike! I don't know if this is the place to ask, but did you do a Prep serie on Curse of Stradh? I'm curious to take a look at it for my first run :) Thank you for all that you bring for the Dnd community!

[@jf649]

Amazing cliffhanger 😅

[@oldmandave304]

Please make that follow up video going into customizing RotFM

[@reinpogo4601]

Rime of the Frostmaiden is the best written module made in terms of theme, but one of the worst when it comes to story cohesion. Which makes it the best module in the hands of an experienced DM who is willing to work with it and mold it into the best possible version.

[@zeeeej]

Please tackle Call from the Deep by JVC Parry next! I bought it but decided to run Tomb of Annihilation instead. But I'd still love to watch you whip it into submission. :D

[@SlyFlourish]

I’m pretty sure I already have. Yep! kzbin.info/www/bejne/aqPWdX9mqr-fr5o

[@zeeeej]

@@SlyFlourish Oh, I meant actually make it your next campaign. :)

[@funny1.510]

Yo what program do you use for formatting your notes?

[@SlyFlourish]

Notion! Check the show notes for details.

[@toddgrx]

Any chance to get your modified stat blocks?

[@SlyFlourish]

They were done in my head

[@deejaytee]

Love the adventure, but totally agreed with all of your criticisms, especially how you have to completely tweak the end. In my game the party is going to have to power up Ythryn and fly it to Grimskalle and use the Spindle to magic-EMP Auril and the Rime. Hope it's as fun as the end of your game sounded like!

[@klee329]

Any module where you can say, “You can do away with chapter 3 and 4 completely,” is maybe not the greatest module…lol

[@leonpetrich5864]

Its kinda funny you took 14 sessions for chapter one. My party is going to end chapter one next session in session 14.

[@SlyFlourish]

Crazy

[@dovesk1]

I am not sure you understand Sandbox play to be honest! Chapter 1 is basically a proper sandbox and I have exactly the opposite reaction to it, to you. In a Sandbox, your players should ignore alot of content, and that is fine. Blind alleys and even deadly encounters are there to teach players not to mindlessly follow every hook, because if they do, they will die. Players need to learn to evaluate missions and balance risk and reward. In more old school sandboxes, like West Marches, encounters are not levelled and if the PCs decide to wander into an area with a Dragon, they will not recieve a 'level appropriate encounter'....

[@TheOriginalDogLP]

I think the problem is that Rime of the Frostmaiden didn't sold itself as sandbox. It has a strong story idea, but then starts with a sandbox, which is not very well done. A West Marches campaign or any good sandbox doesn't have a real definied plot, the story emerges from play. This is not the case for Rime of the Frostmaiden.

[@dovesk1]

@@TheOriginalDogLP I agree with you to an extent but neither does Tomb of Annihilation, but it is obviously even more of a sandbox than Rime! The reason these adventures are not billed as sandboxes is because of the confusion about how to DM them, and plenty of misinformation from people who have never tried running them for long. This manifests as active dislike in some quarters because people think 'they are hard to prep for' and 'they are empty and directionless'. Products are made to sell and so most modern stuff just tries to 'dip it's toe' into sandbox without ever properly embracing the idea. The source of this confusion and dislike directed at sandbox play is because DMs keep pushing the kinds of things said above in the video; pretending that TTRPGs are TV shows and conform to stuff like the 3 act rule etc. This is doesn't work; TTRPGs are NOT TV shows and they are NOT movies or computer games, because all the aforementioned media are scripted and prewritten. Treating TTRPGs as scripted events, trains players to just follow the DM's lead and go where the 'plot' dictates. It makes for poor players who don't think, because they assume every encounter is 'level appropriate' when earlier editions of D&D were not based around that assumption. And FYI it's a misnomer that West Marches games have no 'plot' as there is always backstory to events and situations, even if they are player triggered. You can have tons of 'plot' in WM games but the players are the ones who decide if the plot is foreground or background and how much focus it recieves if any. The reason Ben Robbins advised prospective DMs to minimise plot in his write up of his famous West Marches game, is that many players are so conditioned by years of being lead around by the nose, that they cannot turn down any adventure or situation that is presented to them. So he left them out of his game to a large extent. Indeed if you read his blog, the whole reason he started that game was because he was tired of his players 'mindlessly plot following' and so left plots out. But if your players are used to playing in games where THEY decide the direction, you can present them with tons of hooks and plots and they just ignore the ones they don't want to get involved with.

[@TheOriginalDogLP]

@@dovesk1 Thats what I meant with no plot in west marches. Of course there are backgrounds, but you just read in my comment what you wanted to read. I said literally "the story emerges from gameplay and doesn't have a definite plot", meaning it comes from player choices, so exactly what you said. I know what west marches was about, no need to be condescencing. Again: If Rime of the Frostmaiden is a sandbox, its a bad one. Because there are still a lot of plot leaded events, but it still tries to be a sandbox. If you really thinks the guy from this video above thinks TTRPGs are scripted and prewritten like TV-shows you must have seen not a lot of Videos by him. I think the point is, that Rime of the Frostmaiden has a lot of scripts and prewritten plot, but tries merge it with sandbox, which just don't fit at all. Its just a mediocre module with a lot of weaknesses, I don't know why you try to give lectures about sandbox gameplay when the point is a total different one.

[@piens51]

Starting to think that his style of DM is flawed af. As time goes on I have found myself rolling eyes at his "problems" that are not problems like the downplaying town sacrifices that are there to set the mood of despretion by giving it to a obiously evil cult amongst many other things.