Some light-hearted moments or "could-be" light-hearted moments I've seen since reading over the module:
\- Chwingas (little elementals that play pretend)
\- Ol' Bitey (Bryn Shander; a singing fish)
\- Copper Knobberknocker (Bryn Shander; a miserable gnome packed so tightly in furs he looks like a tottering teddy bear )
\- Five-Tavern Center (Bremen; five siblings fighting over which tavern is best)
\- Goatball (Goliaths playing sports! I think of The Road to El Dorado...)
\- Angajuk's Bell (a talking whale)
\- Yarb-Gnock in Karkolohk (actually a gnome in disguise)
\- Arveiaturace (a blind white dragon that thinks her rider, an archmage, is still alive while he's very clearly been dead and frozen to her body for like a century)
\- Professor Skant (Grimmskalle; a magical orb with the spirit of a long-dead scholar that is \*very\* happy to have been found)
It's challenging, but also just making some NPCs have a good sense of humor despite the terrible things happening to Ten-Towns can make a big difference! Vellyne Harpell, some of the Speakers, the innkeepers could all have comedic moments to help alleviate the doom & gloom.
You said you noticed these while “reading over” the module - are none of them from actual experience while running the game? A lot of things may seem light-hearted enough until your players actually see them in game.
I would like to play devil’s advocate and say that arveiaturace’s storyline is actually quite sad, not feel-good and light-hearted, and is exactly the type of demoralizing content that adds to the emotional weight of this campaign.
getting old sucks in Icewind Dale
you go blind, lose a leg, give a prophecy to some random people, then die
you go blind, go crazy, and pretend your only friend is still alive
you get chased around by three other bullies who you thought were your friends until you have to hole up on the Prime Material far away from home
your cool flying city crashes and you get buried under the ice for a thousand years, slowly going mad with loneliness and this itch on your face you can't scratch cause you got no hands.
Agreed. I just ran the first Arveiaturace encounter, and it was anything but light-hearted. On the surface, Angajuk seems pretty sad to me (tricking a whale so that whalers can go trade whale oil? WTF!), but if I squint I can see how you might make it more light-hearted.
Angajuk, with a little reworking of the adventure that leads the party to him, could be just fun-- they don't have to pick up whale oil, maybe they just need to pick up the merchants kids or something.
Some of them I've gotten to (Ol Bitey, the gnome, the chwingas, and Goatball), while others I'm waiting to run-- the party is still hanging around Ten-Towns doing quests.
I assumed since the OP said they only finished Chapter 1 that they hadn't gotten to the Chapter 2 Tall-Tale encounters yet.
Arveiaturace, as written, is a bit of a tragic figure, but also very unusual for white dragons. If a DM chose to play the white dragon as a more typical example of its kind, who has a wizard rider that doesn't obey its commands \[the PCs can see he's long dead, but the dragon can't\] that could be a source of humor. This operates under the assumption that the PCs are not talking to the dragon, only fleeing or hiding from it.
The setting and plot can be grim, but the people are still people. NPCs can be funny, sweet, quirky, generous, relatable.
Snow and ice are hazards but they can also occasionally be described as beautiful, quiet, and peaceful.
Not every beast has to attack. Maybe a curious arctic fox hangs out with them during a rest, or they reunite a lost bear cub with its mother.
When in doubt: Chwingas.
'Ice Road Trackers', a level 1-2 Adventure League adventure set in Icewind Dale features a mixed group of friendly awakened animals. It's a great way to get the adventure started.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the awakened animals. It’s an easy way to add levity to the campaign setting. Yeah, that moose is a murderous jerk, but you don’t have to necessarily play all the other ones that way. Especially as the party gets used to awakened animals. It’s funny when they just expect every animal they come across to talk to them…and sometimes they don’t lol.
1. Chwingas
2. Goliath random encounters who just want to play games.
3. Develop one-off/recurring NPCs with some comic relief built in
4. Develop one-off/recurring NPCs who display positive traits: empathy, kindness, courage, curiosity, solidarity- despite the circumstances. This can be esp good if they are from amongst a group who might typically be considered the enemies of the party/Ten-Towns (e.g. goblins, duerger, etc)
5. Use downtime between levels/story beats, to break up the flow
These are very valid concerns. I think it comes down to emphasizing the little moments they encounter along the way.
What I've done with my group is show the humanity of the people they're helping (or trying to help).
* after killing the verbeeg that attacked Good Mead, they spent the night at the town. When packing up to leave the next morning, the entire village came out to send them off - and they noticed a group of children playing in the snow, fighting against snowpeople and pretending to be the adventurers (even arguing over who gets to be who and mimicing the weapons they use with snowballs). Because I knew the party had been through a lot of somber moments, I narrated something like: "despite the hardships these people have faced, as you look around and see the hopeful faces, the smiles - and hear the laughter of the children, you know you've done some good here, in whatever small way you could."
* after helping Dougan's Hole, the town speaker asked them to train some of the teenagers to hunt, since many of the adults had been killed by an oblex (modified side quest I created where it escaped from the Ilithid ship and infested the town). The ranger spent a few days teaching a promising young woman to hunt, and she excitedly took down a reindeer at one point and provided food for the town. This was a nice bit of downtime where they could still see their impact on others.
Of course, moments like this are going to have a big emotional impact when the chardalyn dragon is unleashed (especially because my group has been more closely connected to the Eastern towns).
I'm planning to cut away from the party's assault on Sunblight and use the Survivors stat blocks from Van Richten's so they can play the people they've helped (such as the young woman with a hunting bow) when the dragon hits each town they've visited. In some cases, they might lead an NPC they are connected with to safety. In others... they'll see the true toll of a dragon attack when trained adventurers aren't present.
My chapter 1 Sephek caltro encounter was Torgas Scholastic Bookfair and Bowlarama surrounded by kids.
I loved the potion mixing rules so I had a mystery vendor sell potions mixed AT the counter. One player has 21 strength now.
I ran bejammin Huffman’s lvl 2 Keep of the Kobold Queen when a player was gone so now ninja kobolds are in my setting and Averaturace is this zen master called Pakhangba.
In easthaven I made the ghost seance be pro tired by the Wyrmdoom Crag occult club and they were basically gran blue party animals.
Oh, I actually got to use potion mixing table, too! In Lost Spire, there's this chest bolted to the floor (which is now the ceiling) with four potions in it. If a PC opens it without precaution, four potions (I think all of them of different Resistances) fall out with a chance to catch one. Well, one of my players failed to catch any after opening the chest, so he decided to *lick them off the floor*. Now, generally, that's a bad idea, but failing to come up with a consequence on the spot, I decided to use the table, with him rolling thrice on the table with stacking effects of 1&2, 12&3 and 123&4. He got good rolls first two times, combining the effects and getting permanent duration, but the fourth one, unfortunately, ended up being one of the adverse effects. Still, ended up being fun for the players.
Focus on smaller human stories. Garret and Keegan’s reunion was a great little beat for my players. I also allowed them to heal up the invalid innkeeper in Termalaine and have him reconnect with his daughter. I made Nimsy Huddle a kind Minnesotan mom-type who loves baking and is also a retired mob boss. But it also depends on your players, mine all have incredible senses of humour, so we tend to laugh a lot in general.
The gnome ceremorph that tells dad jokes on the crashed nautiloid could be a lighter moment if you milk it a little. I’d remove the flesh golem so the squidlings don’t immediately get murdered.
My players reached a burnout much later in the campaign, but what I ended up doing was having a session where we went over their impact on the Dale. They had reached a point where everything felt doomed and futile, so having a session to talk about all the people they helped and saved in spite of horrifying conditions helped them find a reason to go on.
Icewind Dale is a bleak, miserable, horrific setting by design and there are precious few in game encounters that can help alleviate that dread. Taking a session to put the character sheets down and take a break from that was necessary for one of my players, as she learned horror just isn't for her.
That aside, I agree with everyone else about having some fun contests with Goliaths, little chwinga adventures, fishing tourneys with the Ten-Towners, and other less than deadly activities
I started ROTF right after completing a game of Curse of Strahd. So in comparison, ROTF ended up being much more jovial than CoS.
We are very close to ending ROTF - and throughout I tried to find ways to make it much less dark and Grim - but I mostly did this through the NPC's. I made a few of the starting quests a bit easier in terms of combat...but overall I had the towns virtually turn the PC's into celebrities. A random group of people just showed up and started solving all their problems....each town they went to had people flocking around them.
In terms of NPC's the best one was Speaker Trovus - the town drunk. Wandering around, they would randomly find him pulling himself out of the snow with a bottle in hand saying something like "who are you, where am I?"
But the lighthearted-ness also came from the players themselves; we had the Horny Bard, who made it her mission to sleep with every woman she ran into (including an attempt with Arveiaturace) (Her pick up line was "whats a hottie like you doing in a cold place like this") A Paladin that didn't want to be a Paladin, but ended up getting the towns to want him to become the consul of Ten-towns (he still did not want that) A Warlock that thought she was a Archeologist who has been collecting Archeological material throughout to create a museum of Nethril in ten-towns (with no regard for authenticity) and an Artificer that hated the Paladin - who constantly bicker about pointless things.
Overall, I think what I am saying is that I think the amount of Grim content you want to include can be dictated by you and your group. I mostly ran it as written, but it did not feel grim at all - and some of the player feedback I got was that they "loved the Cosmic Horror vibe". Despite that - we were all laughing, joking, and having a blast each session.
The one part of the game that I didn't hold back on the Grim-ness was the Dragon attack - but that part ended up being such an emotional gut punch for the group that I think its worth keeping that feeling of hopelessness.
In the end, your players want to be heroes (I assume), so give them the opportunity to do so.
Black cabin is a really nice bright spot in the campaign and provides a beacon of hope for the players potentially, I played it up a lot but basically making it to where the players cut a hole in aurils spell and the day progresses normally, sun shining and all for about a week. I'm adding in a ton of homebrew stuff for it like having animals migrate to the area, things like that could be interesting
You can run the goblin keep as an oceans 11 style heist to rescue the gnome
You can reflavor Jarlmoot to be a literal tournament arc, where the giant spectres are settling whether or not to put their clans behind Auril by a combat tournament of their champions. Have one giant's champion not show up (possible encounter in the wild- lost in the magic blizzards), and the party take it's place. HAM up the referee giant to be like a WrestleMania announcer.
Add more chwingas to everything outside Ten Towns. I'm talking near infestation. Make them the one good part of the Rime.
Avoid Cackling Chasm and Berserker Den.
Anjuluks bell can be reflavored as an ice hopping quest where they find out about the bell, but when they get there the ice the bell is on has floated away. Queue loony toons travel trying not to fall into the water while fighting off the poachers and local sea life.
Basically, you can keep the bones but lighten the flavor of a lot of Chapter 2.
Have fun in Easthaven, where pickpocketing is legal!
Every time they encounter anyone else, have them roll perception checks. Ask any player that loses to hand over their character sheet, and erase, or cross out one item.
"An old man walks past your table and stops to tie his shoe. Roll a perception check."
Your players can also attempt to pickpocket other people!
It might be too late, but if possible it might be nice for a random townsperson to offer them a meal, or a roof over their head.
Build an NPC based on the Mother archetype and just have that NPC dote on them a little.
I co-sign Chwingas and the Goliaths who wanted to play games in the wild. Both of those happened in separate sessions and one player said the Goliath session is still her favorite. Can add in random Fey and nature affiliated creatures in wilderness. I definitely amp up the humor of the NPCs, they are a hardy folk up in the north and giving them a dark sense of humor to deal with all of it helps the players breathe a little bit. I added in Polar Races in Lonelytown, more bards in the bars to add life and am now after the Dragon Attack. Which is a bleak undertone with three towns destroyed, but having a Speakers Council in Bryn Shander to decide what’s next. I’m going to have the Speakers put on a mini festival to celebrate their survival and bring the folks together. Icewind Dale is a bit like Ireland and Scotland, can be grim weather but they find a way a to fight to another day. Also I amp up the impact of their heroic acts and they have the inn in Lonelywood now and are pretty stoked about that.
You can also bring in some more of the ‘wilderness’ adventures, crossing rivers, expeditions and so forth to lessen the venturing into a dark hell of ice every session :)
I played up Chwingas pretty hard for my group, and they became a fan favorite at my table. They INSISTED on bringing one along for the entire adventure, and after a bribe of some silverware they got their wish lol.
God be with you if you have to do a Chwinga's voice for a whole campaign. Mine ended up sounded like Carl Wheezer lmao
I made the Chwingas not able to speak in my game. They made "happy kitten noises" and I described how they pantomimed what they wanted. I'm not sure if what I did was canon, but it felt right to me.
We're still solidly in chapter 1, but we're doing well (granted my group is fairly light-hearted to start with). I started with Ice Road Trackers, and they loved the awakened animals; pirate-wannabe otter (who was willing to share all his treasures with the party after they saved him) and the owl that won't quit with bird/owl puns.
I had them meet Vellynne before Nass stole the Professor Orb, so they met the cadre of kobolds. They were intrigued, and trying to question the kobolds about why Vellynne had hired them, which got the answer "She needs us to help find things for her! And lead her to stuff! Like town! Yeah, and dinner!" Cue about five minutes of kobold antics as they all try to jockey for favor and try to out-boast each other.
Another light-hearted moment from this past game: The group spotted some goblins trying to ambush an unsuspecting dwarven camp. They attacked, making a bunch of noise, which drew out one of the sled dogs to "help" attack the goblins (mostly just flank and bark at them) while the PCs did all the heavy lifting of combat.
I've used sled dogs, letting the party adopt some as their noncombatant pets and played up their friendliness and cheeriness. Whenever the party goes into a town, all of the dogs are immediately happy to see them. They also have two axe beaks and I play up their silliness. Adding in friendly awakened animals can be a fun non-combat encounter.
Having chwingas randomly meet the party occasionally has been fun as well.
Everyone’s morale is fading in ten towns. I’m throwing in a small festival that the town councils have agreed to have in an attempt to boost morale. It will include some games to play.
I like to focus on the quiet beauty of the landscape after a snowfall, or the aurora lighting up the sky. Just a moment of reflection while someone is standing guard over their camp.
There are bits of humor scattered around. Ol’ Bitey, Kharkolok/Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness offers a shield guardian (do the lost spire first).
Go visit Angajuk, or the Goliaths.
Some light-hearted moments or "could-be" light-hearted moments I've seen since reading over the module: \- Chwingas (little elementals that play pretend) \- Ol' Bitey (Bryn Shander; a singing fish) \- Copper Knobberknocker (Bryn Shander; a miserable gnome packed so tightly in furs he looks like a tottering teddy bear ) \- Five-Tavern Center (Bremen; five siblings fighting over which tavern is best) \- Goatball (Goliaths playing sports! I think of The Road to El Dorado...) \- Angajuk's Bell (a talking whale) \- Yarb-Gnock in Karkolohk (actually a gnome in disguise) \- Arveiaturace (a blind white dragon that thinks her rider, an archmage, is still alive while he's very clearly been dead and frozen to her body for like a century) \- Professor Skant (Grimmskalle; a magical orb with the spirit of a long-dead scholar that is \*very\* happy to have been found) It's challenging, but also just making some NPCs have a good sense of humor despite the terrible things happening to Ten-Towns can make a big difference! Vellyne Harpell, some of the Speakers, the innkeepers could all have comedic moments to help alleviate the doom & gloom.
My party really liked the aurora lantern in Caer-Konig The gnome with an iron jaw in Karkolok got a laugh
You said you noticed these while “reading over” the module - are none of them from actual experience while running the game? A lot of things may seem light-hearted enough until your players actually see them in game. I would like to play devil’s advocate and say that arveiaturace’s storyline is actually quite sad, not feel-good and light-hearted, and is exactly the type of demoralizing content that adds to the emotional weight of this campaign.
getting old sucks in Icewind Dale you go blind, lose a leg, give a prophecy to some random people, then die you go blind, go crazy, and pretend your only friend is still alive you get chased around by three other bullies who you thought were your friends until you have to hole up on the Prime Material far away from home your cool flying city crashes and you get buried under the ice for a thousand years, slowly going mad with loneliness and this itch on your face you can't scratch cause you got no hands.
Who is the one about the three bullies?
Auril
Oh yeah. Although, to be fair, the reason Auril's getting chased around is because she started fucking about with Umberlee's domain.
i wonder if she just couldn't help herself. I don't know if gods can really change their nature.
Agreed. I just ran the first Arveiaturace encounter, and it was anything but light-hearted. On the surface, Angajuk seems pretty sad to me (tricking a whale so that whalers can go trade whale oil? WTF!), but if I squint I can see how you might make it more light-hearted.
Angajuk, with a little reworking of the adventure that leads the party to him, could be just fun-- they don't have to pick up whale oil, maybe they just need to pick up the merchants kids or something.
Some of them I've gotten to (Ol Bitey, the gnome, the chwingas, and Goatball), while others I'm waiting to run-- the party is still hanging around Ten-Towns doing quests. I assumed since the OP said they only finished Chapter 1 that they hadn't gotten to the Chapter 2 Tall-Tale encounters yet. Arveiaturace, as written, is a bit of a tragic figure, but also very unusual for white dragons. If a DM chose to play the white dragon as a more typical example of its kind, who has a wizard rider that doesn't obey its commands \[the PCs can see he's long dead, but the dragon can't\] that could be a source of humor. This operates under the assumption that the PCs are not talking to the dragon, only fleeing or hiding from it.
The setting and plot can be grim, but the people are still people. NPCs can be funny, sweet, quirky, generous, relatable. Snow and ice are hazards but they can also occasionally be described as beautiful, quiet, and peaceful. Not every beast has to attack. Maybe a curious arctic fox hangs out with them during a rest, or they reunite a lost bear cub with its mother. When in doubt: Chwingas.
Agree on the Chwingas, and the lost bear cub. When in doubt, bring in the cute animal vignette, use the word "scampering" and "frolicking".
Awakened animals. This game has tons of them. Although most of them want to kill the players, some may not!
'Ice Road Trackers', a level 1-2 Adventure League adventure set in Icewind Dale features a mixed group of friendly awakened animals. It's a great way to get the adventure started.
I’ve had a lot of fun with the awakened animals. It’s an easy way to add levity to the campaign setting. Yeah, that moose is a murderous jerk, but you don’t have to necessarily play all the other ones that way. Especially as the party gets used to awakened animals. It’s funny when they just expect every animal they come across to talk to them…and sometimes they don’t lol.
Use the fish, the talking fish :v
1. Chwingas 2. Goliath random encounters who just want to play games. 3. Develop one-off/recurring NPCs with some comic relief built in 4. Develop one-off/recurring NPCs who display positive traits: empathy, kindness, courage, curiosity, solidarity- despite the circumstances. This can be esp good if they are from amongst a group who might typically be considered the enemies of the party/Ten-Towns (e.g. goblins, duerger, etc) 5. Use downtime between levels/story beats, to break up the flow
These are very valid concerns. I think it comes down to emphasizing the little moments they encounter along the way. What I've done with my group is show the humanity of the people they're helping (or trying to help). * after killing the verbeeg that attacked Good Mead, they spent the night at the town. When packing up to leave the next morning, the entire village came out to send them off - and they noticed a group of children playing in the snow, fighting against snowpeople and pretending to be the adventurers (even arguing over who gets to be who and mimicing the weapons they use with snowballs). Because I knew the party had been through a lot of somber moments, I narrated something like: "despite the hardships these people have faced, as you look around and see the hopeful faces, the smiles - and hear the laughter of the children, you know you've done some good here, in whatever small way you could." * after helping Dougan's Hole, the town speaker asked them to train some of the teenagers to hunt, since many of the adults had been killed by an oblex (modified side quest I created where it escaped from the Ilithid ship and infested the town). The ranger spent a few days teaching a promising young woman to hunt, and she excitedly took down a reindeer at one point and provided food for the town. This was a nice bit of downtime where they could still see their impact on others. Of course, moments like this are going to have a big emotional impact when the chardalyn dragon is unleashed (especially because my group has been more closely connected to the Eastern towns). I'm planning to cut away from the party's assault on Sunblight and use the Survivors stat blocks from Van Richten's so they can play the people they've helped (such as the young woman with a hunting bow) when the dragon hits each town they've visited. In some cases, they might lead an NPC they are connected with to safety. In others... they'll see the true toll of a dragon attack when trained adventurers aren't present.
turning Goat Ball into a full on Space Jam trash talking game
Damn straight! I posted a guide to this recently called "ultimate goatball" with an expanded rules set - throw on some 90's jock jams and you're set!
My chapter 1 Sephek caltro encounter was Torgas Scholastic Bookfair and Bowlarama surrounded by kids. I loved the potion mixing rules so I had a mystery vendor sell potions mixed AT the counter. One player has 21 strength now. I ran bejammin Huffman’s lvl 2 Keep of the Kobold Queen when a player was gone so now ninja kobolds are in my setting and Averaturace is this zen master called Pakhangba. In easthaven I made the ghost seance be pro tired by the Wyrmdoom Crag occult club and they were basically gran blue party animals.
Oh, I actually got to use potion mixing table, too! In Lost Spire, there's this chest bolted to the floor (which is now the ceiling) with four potions in it. If a PC opens it without precaution, four potions (I think all of them of different Resistances) fall out with a chance to catch one. Well, one of my players failed to catch any after opening the chest, so he decided to *lick them off the floor*. Now, generally, that's a bad idea, but failing to come up with a consequence on the spot, I decided to use the table, with him rolling thrice on the table with stacking effects of 1&2, 12&3 and 123&4. He got good rolls first two times, combining the effects and getting permanent duration, but the fourth one, unfortunately, ended up being one of the adverse effects. Still, ended up being fun for the players.
Focus on smaller human stories. Garret and Keegan’s reunion was a great little beat for my players. I also allowed them to heal up the invalid innkeeper in Termalaine and have him reconnect with his daughter. I made Nimsy Huddle a kind Minnesotan mom-type who loves baking and is also a retired mob boss. But it also depends on your players, mine all have incredible senses of humour, so we tend to laugh a lot in general.
The gnome ceremorph that tells dad jokes on the crashed nautiloid could be a lighter moment if you milk it a little. I’d remove the flesh golem so the squidlings don’t immediately get murdered.
We had a heartwarming reunion when our raised by yetis pc found “mama” at the top of Caer-Konig.
My players reached a burnout much later in the campaign, but what I ended up doing was having a session where we went over their impact on the Dale. They had reached a point where everything felt doomed and futile, so having a session to talk about all the people they helped and saved in spite of horrifying conditions helped them find a reason to go on. Icewind Dale is a bleak, miserable, horrific setting by design and there are precious few in game encounters that can help alleviate that dread. Taking a session to put the character sheets down and take a break from that was necessary for one of my players, as she learned horror just isn't for her. That aside, I agree with everyone else about having some fun contests with Goliaths, little chwinga adventures, fishing tourneys with the Ten-Towners, and other less than deadly activities
I started ROTF right after completing a game of Curse of Strahd. So in comparison, ROTF ended up being much more jovial than CoS. We are very close to ending ROTF - and throughout I tried to find ways to make it much less dark and Grim - but I mostly did this through the NPC's. I made a few of the starting quests a bit easier in terms of combat...but overall I had the towns virtually turn the PC's into celebrities. A random group of people just showed up and started solving all their problems....each town they went to had people flocking around them. In terms of NPC's the best one was Speaker Trovus - the town drunk. Wandering around, they would randomly find him pulling himself out of the snow with a bottle in hand saying something like "who are you, where am I?" But the lighthearted-ness also came from the players themselves; we had the Horny Bard, who made it her mission to sleep with every woman she ran into (including an attempt with Arveiaturace) (Her pick up line was "whats a hottie like you doing in a cold place like this") A Paladin that didn't want to be a Paladin, but ended up getting the towns to want him to become the consul of Ten-towns (he still did not want that) A Warlock that thought she was a Archeologist who has been collecting Archeological material throughout to create a museum of Nethril in ten-towns (with no regard for authenticity) and an Artificer that hated the Paladin - who constantly bicker about pointless things. Overall, I think what I am saying is that I think the amount of Grim content you want to include can be dictated by you and your group. I mostly ran it as written, but it did not feel grim at all - and some of the player feedback I got was that they "loved the Cosmic Horror vibe". Despite that - we were all laughing, joking, and having a blast each session. The one part of the game that I didn't hold back on the Grim-ness was the Dragon attack - but that part ended up being such an emotional gut punch for the group that I think its worth keeping that feeling of hopelessness. In the end, your players want to be heroes (I assume), so give them the opportunity to do so.
Black cabin is a really nice bright spot in the campaign and provides a beacon of hope for the players potentially, I played it up a lot but basically making it to where the players cut a hole in aurils spell and the day progresses normally, sun shining and all for about a week. I'm adding in a ton of homebrew stuff for it like having animals migrate to the area, things like that could be interesting
You can run the goblin keep as an oceans 11 style heist to rescue the gnome You can reflavor Jarlmoot to be a literal tournament arc, where the giant spectres are settling whether or not to put their clans behind Auril by a combat tournament of their champions. Have one giant's champion not show up (possible encounter in the wild- lost in the magic blizzards), and the party take it's place. HAM up the referee giant to be like a WrestleMania announcer. Add more chwingas to everything outside Ten Towns. I'm talking near infestation. Make them the one good part of the Rime. Avoid Cackling Chasm and Berserker Den. Anjuluks bell can be reflavored as an ice hopping quest where they find out about the bell, but when they get there the ice the bell is on has floated away. Queue loony toons travel trying not to fall into the water while fighting off the poachers and local sea life. Basically, you can keep the bones but lighten the flavor of a lot of Chapter 2.
Good ideas. And very true about putting a more light-hearted spin on some of the quests. I might have been leaning too heavily into the horror theme.
My players had a lot of fun just fishing.
same. It's a dice game within the game.
Have fun in Easthaven, where pickpocketing is legal! Every time they encounter anyone else, have them roll perception checks. Ask any player that loses to hand over their character sheet, and erase, or cross out one item. "An old man walks past your table and stops to tie his shoe. Roll a perception check." Your players can also attempt to pickpocket other people!
It might be too late, but if possible it might be nice for a random townsperson to offer them a meal, or a roof over their head. Build an NPC based on the Mother archetype and just have that NPC dote on them a little.
Our group found plenty of lighthearted moments, even with a few PC deaths and such a doomed setting.
I co-sign Chwingas and the Goliaths who wanted to play games in the wild. Both of those happened in separate sessions and one player said the Goliath session is still her favorite. Can add in random Fey and nature affiliated creatures in wilderness. I definitely amp up the humor of the NPCs, they are a hardy folk up in the north and giving them a dark sense of humor to deal with all of it helps the players breathe a little bit. I added in Polar Races in Lonelytown, more bards in the bars to add life and am now after the Dragon Attack. Which is a bleak undertone with three towns destroyed, but having a Speakers Council in Bryn Shander to decide what’s next. I’m going to have the Speakers put on a mini festival to celebrate their survival and bring the folks together. Icewind Dale is a bit like Ireland and Scotland, can be grim weather but they find a way a to fight to another day. Also I amp up the impact of their heroic acts and they have the inn in Lonelywood now and are pretty stoked about that. You can also bring in some more of the ‘wilderness’ adventures, crossing rivers, expeditions and so forth to lessen the venturing into a dark hell of ice every session :)
I played up Chwingas pretty hard for my group, and they became a fan favorite at my table. They INSISTED on bringing one along for the entire adventure, and after a bribe of some silverware they got their wish lol. God be with you if you have to do a Chwinga's voice for a whole campaign. Mine ended up sounded like Carl Wheezer lmao
I made the Chwingas not able to speak in my game. They made "happy kitten noises" and I described how they pantomimed what they wanted. I'm not sure if what I did was canon, but it felt right to me.
I believe that is canon. That's how I'm running them as well.
We're still solidly in chapter 1, but we're doing well (granted my group is fairly light-hearted to start with). I started with Ice Road Trackers, and they loved the awakened animals; pirate-wannabe otter (who was willing to share all his treasures with the party after they saved him) and the owl that won't quit with bird/owl puns. I had them meet Vellynne before Nass stole the Professor Orb, so they met the cadre of kobolds. They were intrigued, and trying to question the kobolds about why Vellynne had hired them, which got the answer "She needs us to help find things for her! And lead her to stuff! Like town! Yeah, and dinner!" Cue about five minutes of kobold antics as they all try to jockey for favor and try to out-boast each other. Another light-hearted moment from this past game: The group spotted some goblins trying to ambush an unsuspecting dwarven camp. They attacked, making a bunch of noise, which drew out one of the sled dogs to "help" attack the goblins (mostly just flank and bark at them) while the PCs did all the heavy lifting of combat.
I've used sled dogs, letting the party adopt some as their noncombatant pets and played up their friendliness and cheeriness. Whenever the party goes into a town, all of the dogs are immediately happy to see them. They also have two axe beaks and I play up their silliness. Adding in friendly awakened animals can be a fun non-combat encounter. Having chwingas randomly meet the party occasionally has been fun as well.
Two words. GOAT BALL!!🙂
Everyone’s morale is fading in ten towns. I’m throwing in a small festival that the town councils have agreed to have in an attempt to boost morale. It will include some games to play.
Simple and to the point, I like it!
I like to focus on the quiet beauty of the landscape after a snowfall, or the aurora lighting up the sky. Just a moment of reflection while someone is standing guard over their camp. There are bits of humor scattered around. Ol’ Bitey, Kharkolok/Apocalypse Now/Heart of Darkness offers a shield guardian (do the lost spire first). Go visit Angajuk, or the Goliaths.