It's Tricky to Rock a Rime: Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden Review (D&D5e)
You won't know this, reading this after the fact, but sitting down to write this post took forever. Aside the fact that I'm reviewing a book that came out 2 years ago. I'm specifically talking about when I finished reading Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden and started working on this post. As you can tell from the title, I can't see "Rime" and not think about "It's Tricky" from Run DMC. Now, the song came out around when I was born, but *my* first exposure to the song was when I was about 15 playing SSX Tricky. And now I'm super nostalgic for that game, as it was one of my favorite PS2 games. So I'm flipping windows every paragraph or so re-watching the intro to that game.
Ok, back to D&D. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden came out in September of 2020. It's a hefty book - at 300+ pages for $49.99, there's a lot in here. Even when you pick up the book, it *feels* like there is a lot to it. Put it this way: there's almost 100 pages of extra material after the end of the adventure. This is where all the monster stats are located, but there's also bonus material like "player secrets" that DMs can use to add some extra flavor to their games.
If having secrets in your party seems kind of cold, well then you've nailed the theme of this book. Icewind Dale is a location in the North of the Forgotten Realms. A god known as Auril the Frostmaiden has cast an "Everlasting Rime" (that's right on time…ok sorry) that keeps Icewind Dale in eternal winter. A collection of settlements known as "Ten-Towns" are the bit of civilization in this part of the world, but won't exist much longer if Auril's Rime isn't stopped. That's where the PCs come in…eventually. This adventure plays from Level 1 to Level 11, so there's a lot of adventure before the characters take on this frozen god.
I Think It's Very Vital
If the "cold" theme doesn't come through enough from the cover and introduction to the story, the adventure begins with a "Cold Open". Considering that I've never seen another D&D book use the words cold open to start their introduction to the players, the Dad in me appreciates the pun there. The book "starts" with a series of quests to get the players used to the various parts of Ten-Towns. I put starts in quotations because this section of the book is technically the first third of the adventure, taking the characters up to level 4.
Especially when compared to some of the "on-rails" type adventures that D&D5e has put out in the past, the open world nature of this piece of the campaign is very refreshing. When you get to the later aspects of the adventure, you realize even more how important this early part of the game is. I won't give a bunch of spoilers, but I will say that the more invested you can get your players in the people of Ten-Towns, the more impactful the later storylines will get.
It's like that y'all, but we don't quit
A lot of adventures really start to bog down in the middle of the campaign. I feel like this comes from trying to stretch an ongoing challenge across multiple levels and making each piece of the adventure just as impactful. Icewind Dale takes a different approach to this. It continues the "open-world-ness" of the first portion of the adventure and kicks the players out into the wilderness to tackle various problems and rumors that they've heard back in Ten-Towns. At first, it makes you think "ok, when are we getting to the point", until you realize that this *is* the point. This portion of the adventure helps drive the point home about the cold environment and the impacts that it is having on everyone. It helps make the world "feel" more real.
Plus, these side-quests can provide some needed randomness and variety to your D&D games. These are not straightforward adventures for your characters to churn through. One takes you to an area with a bunch of goliaths - some of which will challenge you to "Goat-ball" (their version of dodgeball). Another one takes you to an abandoned pirate ship in the ice - but players might regret trifling with the "booty" here! My favorite of these adventures involves a bunch of "Gnome Ceremorphs", which are mind-flayers who have absorbed gnomes and are SOOOO CUTE! It's a good thing this adventure isn't extremely horrifying, because it would be hard to make these anything but adorable.
They really hawk but we just walk because we have no time
Once you get to the "meat" of the adventure, it plays out very similar to your standard D&D adventure. As I mentioned previously, some of these aspects will play out better if you get your players invested early into the people of Ten-Towns. One aspect that I thought was interesting to me was that in one of the big encounters, the book provides a list of non-combat related activities happening at the same time. Meaning, while your party is doing the fighting, there are background tasks that players could choose to help with if they aren't as effective in this particular combat.
Another weird note is that you might think that the final confrontation is against Auril to take out the everlasting rime. You actually end up doing this around level 8 or so. There's an option for her to fall back and attack players at another time, but the book makes it seem like this is not the most likely scenario. However, the defeat of Auril quickly flows into the final few levels that definitely keeps the party involved. At the very end of the adventure, there's a small twist that can happen if the players aren't careful enough that ends the adventure on a very interesting (but timey-wimey) note.
Conclusion
I really like this book! It is probably one of my favorite D&D5e pre-written adventures. You might even say it's…..pretty cool.
We've had fire with Descent into Avernus, Ice with this book, Water with the Critical Role adventure. Is there a wind based adventure coming soon? What about Heart - or is that The Wild Beyond the Witchlight? That's next on my list of reviews to catch up on.
It's tricky to write a rime, to write a rime that's right on time…..but I'm almost caught up on D&D book reviews!
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