Rime of the Frostmaiden: DMs Guide- Chapter 5 Grimskalle

[@tommaddi]

Just want to say I love your work on Rime of the Frostmaiden. A lot of "DM Walk-throughs' on KZbin are literally just people reading the book verbatim, but you give your opinion on pretty much everything you read & constantly provide interesting commentary on what could be done differently. Great stuff, thank you!

[@NoFunAllowed]

Thank you and no problem!

[@katthemage]

Awesome walk thru of the tests, I'm running this in about an hour and was feeling a bit overwhelmed tbh. I feel better after watching this, thank you

[@NoFunAllowed]

No problem and thank you! The trials were a blast for me an my group, and I'm sure they will be for you too!

[@Zr0din]

@20:00 you are the only person on KZbin that liked the tests "as written". I've been prepping for running this adventure. There were a lot of KZbinrs that used the tests as an opportunity to role play stuff to see if the character would betray something for the purpose of survival. Or a variety of Trolley Problems dealing with saving many by the sacrifice of one. I'm still trying to decide how I want to run this.

[@NoFunAllowed]

Haha I don't know if being unique is a good or bad thing here

[@toddgrx]

Fantastic walkthrough. I like how you point out the various pros/cons and options in each of the rooms/areas. I think I’ll be using The Dungeon Coach’s system of The Frost Check for the cold weather. Not yet sure how I’ll have them hear or learn of the location yet.

[@NoFunAllowed]

theres a ton of ways, and there is no one right answer. it all depends on how your game has been set up.

[@PanamaLane]

Hey, thank you so much for all this info. I've been running this campaign for a couple weeks and you've given me a ton of great ideas. For what it is worth, I basically re-wrote the entire opening quest in a way that worked out so well I feel I should share it. In essence, I had Dzaan give the characters the lantern, and I introduced Hlin and that Torgga was going to be in the same place Dzaan was heading, Easthaven. They did foaming mugs pretty much as written and leveled which I'm sure they need given the balance of the module lol. Outside Easthaven, I had the PC's find Torgga's camp, where I introduced some other NPC's along with Sephek that I plan to use later. They picked up on Sephek's guilt and I'm proud of the way I played him as a badass edgelord that defintely made the party concerned that he could wipe them all on his own without having to say much at all. Torgga did most of th talking and ended up buying the PC's off to let the bounty go (evil party) with the items Dzaan sold her from the last adventuring party he murdered but the players didn't know that of course. They headed into Easthaven to find Dzaan getting burned. They pieced together that Dzaan had been setting them up at this point. Avarice was at the burning and I had her share a look with Dzaan and laugh and go to leave. A PC took the hook to follow her and she dropped the hint that should they find anything that belonged to Dzaan, they should bring it to her in Caer Dinveval. Scythion, who I also altered a lot, is soon going to give them a book written in invisible ink that belonged to Dzaan .They won't be able to read it for 10 days which will eventually lead them to the upside down tower in chapter two. At this point Dannika Greysteel (still a terrible name lol) showed up and offered to put up the party for the night at the white lady if they would take her with them to find the fisherman. I altered her character a number of ways so that I knew my PC's would like her (she's a depressing goth poet with purple hair lol). When they finally decided to rest at the White Lady, I had Sephek break down the door and snatch Dannika. He cut her throat in front of the PC's and I ended the session on this epic cliffhanger with her bleeding out on the floor. They hate Sephek at this point with a passion, which just works so much better than it was written in my humble opinion, and if they wipe on him next session as lvl 2's I still think it will be satisfying in a way. I have to say, this last session was by far the best I've ever DM'd, my players loved it and everything just seemed to fall in place without any railroading at all. I owe a huge amount of that credit to you! Thank you so much for all these videos and the work you've put into them!

[@NoFunAllowed]

thank you for showing off that awesome session! you should really show that off in the RotFM discord, its fantastic stuff! I hope that things work out for your party haha

[@RushAss]

I had an absolute hoot with the walrus. Every time the characters emerged from one of the tests he's be doing something different like flopping down the stairs or spinning on his back. It made for some wonderful comic relief.

[@NoFunAllowed]

haha good to hear!

[@damioncastellano5299]

Oh man can't wait for my party to get here. These trials are really dark and gruesome and I like the contrast with the cartoony funny walrus.

[@NoFunAllowed]

I had a blast with it, and I hope everyone does to! it can be a great role playing device to see what the PCs do at the worst of times

[@danvocals123]

These vids are great man

[@NoFunAllowed]

thank you!

[@mugghunter66]

Super cool man!

[@NoFunAllowed]

You're super cool!

[@DJmonkey4444]

Part of me wants to move chapter 5 to the end after chapter 7. Make it so the rime of the frostmaiden is a ancient poem split among the reghed tribes, the party need to find the tribes and figure out a way to learn the poem to open the caves of hunger. They do chapter 6 and 7. In chapter 7 they find that the item need to turn the weather back to normal was taken by auril and it located on an island in the sea of moving ice. Now with the knowledge and the artifacts from chapter 7, they can weaken Auril enough to storm her island, take her out and end the everlasting winter. But after watching your video and just making it a caper and have auril not their at all seems pretty good too. I just like the idea of having the BBEG fight at the end rather than the middle.

[@NoFunAllowed]

that ideas awesome! there is no one right way to do it. if you want Auril to fight the party at the end, then you can have Auril come to the city for one big epic fight. i'll be going over this in my chapter 7 video, but a reason for her needing to go there is because she doesnt want the party activiating the mythalar, hence why she is not staying at home. i cant wait till more people run this module to see which way works best for them. I did it one way and it worked awesomely, but im willing to bet some groups would get a kick out of calling down a comet onto Grimskalle!

[@atomzero1]

Nice video, very helpful

[@NoFunAllowed]

thank you!

[@potatopeople1231]

“The thing is is”

[@NoFunAllowed]

Haha if you had a penny for every mistake I make, you'd he rich!

[@Jbd87]

Great video! Thanks so much. Does anybody have a good idea, how to change the teleportation stuff with the tests? I would like to flavour it otherwise, without teleporting in and out, so to have more a kind of a linear test, where they meet one challenge after the other.

[@NoFunAllowed]

The tests could be on the island itself perhaps!

[@Jbd87]

@@NoFunAllowed Yes something like this. Or maybe Auril teleports them once to the mainland to find all the different clans and they can return afterwards. Anyway thanks so much for your videos. Currently i'm running Curse of Strahd and Icewind Dale at the same time, so I'm so happy to watch your videos and getting inspired. Great work!

[@That_Eriksson]

I kind of misread this chapter. My group went in at night while she was out on her nightly trip. The book makes it seems like her 3 images are still here d during this time. Am I incorrect in that assumption? Either way in a very difficult fight they killed her 3 forms at lvl 8...now I am not sure if I should continue and move to next area and other chapters.

[@NoFunAllowed]

You could always say that she will return, and the only way to stop her is a powerful artifact found in Ythryn!

[@andrewr2x2]

The ability check roles across the whole book are a bit ridiculous I skipped over most for pacing reasons.

[@NoFunAllowed]

Haha fair enough!

[@andrewr2x2]

@@NoFunAllowed running the rest of this chapter tonight will update in disco, i think we had about 8 dex saves in one round in that mephit fight chain exploding ice mephits was hilarious.