thx for the explanations, i like everything being said. I am going to be honest, i kinda did enjoy black cabin. You do have to work a litle bit as a gm to make it scary, like flying objects and such, spooky ambience/scary noises, but the horror to me comes when the players get killed. Let them despair for a few seconds, slowly explain what they experience and use the same method after you fix the device and activate it (reviving part). I made the wizard spirit slowly dissapear into like a mist and let the same thing happen to the spirit (dead) players, slowly explaining their body changing and slowly feeling like nothing, making them doubt that they get revived and just dissapear. The mission also kinda connects the players again with the everlastingwinter and the threat of the frostmaiden. The sun appearing again in a small portion of the map for 8 hours also creates a nice dynamic to the world, where it has an impact on the people in icewind dale. It kinda reminds everyone, including the party what they missed, i used the situation as well for an atmospheric scene where they get the blessing of the morning lord (bright light on their position). Also its definately fun having players die and make them communicate with the living party members., getting frustrated when they fail, it's a funny spectacle
Thanks for sharing all the work your putting into these! This is gold for a new DM like me. I really like that you not only go through and rank the quests, but also give ideas on how to improve them.
Thank you! Also serves as a tease for when I start doing the weekly Crafting live series again. Can't wait to start discussing all the changes I'm making.
I’m a big fan of the lockdown and prison escape for Revel’s End. Personally my favorite part of dming modules is making it my own and I love that idea.
TBH after reading the book couple of times I can say that locations with no lead are great points to connect to either a character secrets or Personal custom quest. They will likely need a good chunk of reworking tho.
Don't have an exact date since we're not sure how long our current campaign will last, but I'm projecting sometime next Spring! I'll start up the Crafting series a bit before that.
So this is where Wizards really screwed up with the leveling process. They basically want you to skip Chapter Two. Why would I say this? That is really odd. Back in the introduction to the book they have an adventure flowchart with a breakdown on what the average party level ought to be for specific content. Chapter 1: For 1st- to 4th-level characters Chapter 3: For 4th- or 5th-level characters Chapter 4: For 6th-level characters Chapter 5: For 7th-level characters Oh wait! Did I skip Chapter 2? Yes and purposefully. Why? It is built for 4th-level and higher. But your starting intro to this video mentions correctly that Chapter 2 is for levels 4th- to 7th-level. Why would they repeat levels? They want you to pick what content you want: whether you prefer this Chapter 2 content or if you prefer the chardalyn and duergar storylines in Chapters 3 and 4. Pick one and it will get you ready for Chapter 5 with Auril’s Abode. It’s really lame because it rings familiar with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist being that Wizards give you content that it intends you to only use maybe for the sake of replay-ability. Do they explain this clearly? No. Wizards... print your adventure as a complete campaign and if it sucks we will homebrew it to fix it. Don’t kinda write an adventure so we are forced to homebrew it off the bat because you will mess up your party level if you run both without reading ahead. Basically it almost seems they didn’t do random encounters for Chapter 2 because Chapter 2 are the random encounters or almost the additional teased quest content (think Essentials Kit with Dragon of Icespire Peak) that is available alongside Chapters 3 and 4 when you explore the region of Icewind Dale. Your rankings and explanations of the areas are really good and I will chain a few of my favorites together and tease them out as you trade information and/or loot with the players but finding connections between this content and Chapters 3 and 4 and onward would be important.
You're right, the advancement makes no sense if you want to do a decent amount of locations in both Ch. 1 and 2 and still be at the end of tier 1 for Sunblight. Another reason why Milestone leveling is the best! Chapter 2 is almost designed for post-Sunblight, except it doesn't make much narrative sense to get standard side quests after the devestation of Chapter 4. Something I'll be talking about in Crafting is which quests and locations from Ch 2 to introduce before and after that big Ch. 3-4 event.
You are correct, but man if chapter two doesn’t give me the BEST content to use for my Frankenstein-d LMoP/DoIP/ToD/TFtYP campaign. Rise of Tiamat just spits you out on the sea of moving ice with no good explanation or buildup, and sets you into an encounter with the dragons mentioned here, and also cryovain being the child of the two big white dragons also makes sense. This book, in being the least contained and linear feeling book that is still technically an adventure, feels so much like the missing parts of a lot of stories that exist already, if that makes any sense. Doesnt make up for it being a little messy in places, but it makes me personally feel a little better about it all. It may be a pain in the context of only this book, and believe me, I sympathize, but the completely modular, almost NON-adventure nature of this book makes it my absolute favorite 5e book. I don’t think I would ever be able to chop up OoTA or CoS in the same way I did this book, and still be able to sleep at night. 🤣
@@JACKSTAY I get you. This doesn't feel like an adventure book as much as a consolidated set of semi-related Icewind Dale one-shots or Adventurer's League content. The three separate sections or tiers of the adventure barely connect. I have had player's comment in the campaign that it is hard to continue to push through it because of how disconnected the stories are between them. They don't even see the big picture and how much homebrew I have to do in order to connect them at this level! So I 100% agree with you - it is modular. If that is the case, then format the book in that way... make it like a TFtYP or GoS. Really the only thing that connects anything is the setting at this point. The major complaint I had months ago was that beyond Chapter 1, you needed to rebalance all the rest of the content if you wanted to use Chapter 2 at all. More than two-thirds of the adventure needed to be fixed out of the gate. That is poor writing.
thx for the explanations, i like everything being said. I am going to be honest, i kinda did enjoy black cabin. You do have to work a litle bit as a gm to make it scary, like flying objects and such, spooky ambience/scary noises, but the horror to me comes when the players get killed. Let them despair for a few seconds, slowly explain what they experience and use the same method after you fix the device and activate it (reviving part). I made the wizard spirit slowly dissapear into like a mist and let the same thing happen to the spirit (dead) players, slowly explaining their body changing and slowly feeling like nothing, making them doubt that they get revived and just dissapear. The mission also kinda connects the players again with the everlastingwinter and the threat of the frostmaiden. The sun appearing again in a small portion of the map for 8 hours also creates a nice dynamic to the world, where it has an impact on the people in icewind dale. It kinda reminds everyone, including the party what they missed, i used the situation as well for an atmospheric scene where they get the blessing of the morning lord (bright light on their position). Also its definately fun having players die and make them communicate with the living party members., getting frustrated when they fail, it's a funny spectacle
Thanks for sharing all the work your putting into these! This is gold for a new DM like me. I really like that you not only go through and rank the quests, but also give ideas on how to improve them.
Thank you! Also serves as a tease for when I start doing the weekly Crafting live series again. Can't wait to start discussing all the changes I'm making.
This is an outstanding analysis thank you so much
I’m a big fan of the lockdown and prison escape for Revel’s End. Personally my favorite part of dming modules is making it my own and I love that idea.
As a tease for my campaign, I turned Revel's End into LV-426 from Aliens.
When my player picked up the psi crystal and found out they were going mad, they immediately threw it down the hole to break attunement lmao
Ha, oops! Have some Underdark creature find it instead....
TBH after reading the book couple of times I can say that locations with no lead are great points to connect to either a character secrets or Personal custom quest. They will likely need a good chunk of reworking tho.
My players repaired the ship, befriended its crew and now we are playing Spell Jammer. Guess the Dale is doomed :D
Oh wow, haha!
Loving this series! When will your campaign using this module start?
Don't have an exact date since we're not sure how long our current campaign will last, but I'm projecting sometime next Spring! I'll start up the Crafting series a bit before that.
@@RogueWatson Awesome! No hurry, I'm currently working through your Storm King's Thunder campaign and enjoying it immensely.
Thanks!
in thanks and gratitude of all your icewind dale content. its super helpful for me and the campaign you ran
is very entertaining
Yay, thank you very much!
Revel's End is an enormous map, can it even fit on my table I wonder?
So this is where Wizards really screwed up with the leveling process. They basically want you to skip Chapter Two. Why would I say this? That is really odd. Back in the introduction to the book they have an adventure flowchart with a breakdown on what the average party level ought to be for specific content.
Chapter 1: For 1st- to 4th-level characters
Chapter 3: For 4th- or 5th-level characters
Chapter 4: For 6th-level characters
Chapter 5: For 7th-level characters
Oh wait! Did I skip Chapter 2? Yes and purposefully. Why? It is built for 4th-level and higher. But your starting intro to this video mentions correctly that Chapter 2 is for levels 4th- to 7th-level. Why would they repeat levels? They want you to pick what content you want: whether you prefer this Chapter 2 content or if you prefer the chardalyn and duergar storylines in Chapters 3 and 4.
Pick one and it will get you ready for Chapter 5 with Auril’s Abode. It’s really lame because it rings familiar with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist being that Wizards give you content that it intends you to only use maybe for the sake of replay-ability. Do they explain this clearly? No.
Wizards... print your adventure as a complete campaign and if it sucks we will homebrew it to fix it. Don’t kinda write an adventure so we are forced to homebrew it off the bat because you will mess up your party level if you run both without reading ahead. Basically it almost seems they didn’t do random encounters for Chapter 2 because Chapter 2 are the random encounters or almost the additional teased quest content (think Essentials Kit with Dragon of Icespire Peak) that is available alongside Chapters 3 and 4 when you explore the region of Icewind Dale.
Your rankings and explanations of the areas are really good and I will chain a few of my favorites together and tease them out as you trade information and/or loot with the players but finding connections between this content and Chapters 3 and 4 and onward would be important.
You're right, the advancement makes no sense if you want to do a decent amount of locations in both Ch. 1 and 2 and still be at the end of tier 1 for Sunblight. Another reason why Milestone leveling is the best!
Chapter 2 is almost designed for post-Sunblight, except it doesn't make much narrative sense to get standard side quests after the devestation of Chapter 4. Something I'll be talking about in Crafting is which quests and locations from Ch 2 to introduce before and after that big Ch. 3-4 event.
I'm running it as basically Chapter 3 side quests. The thread for chapter 3 has been lain out and it's up to the players which route they pick.
You are correct, but man if chapter two doesn’t give me the BEST content to use for my Frankenstein-d LMoP/DoIP/ToD/TFtYP campaign.
Rise of Tiamat just spits you out on the sea of moving ice with no good explanation or buildup, and sets you into an encounter with the dragons mentioned here, and also cryovain being the child of the two big white dragons also makes sense.
This book, in being the least contained and linear feeling book that is still technically an adventure, feels so much like the missing parts of a lot of stories that exist already, if that makes any sense. Doesnt make up for it being a little messy in places, but it makes me personally feel a little better about it all.
It may be a pain in the context of only this book, and believe me, I sympathize, but the completely modular, almost NON-adventure nature of this book makes it my absolute favorite 5e book.
I don’t think I would ever be able to chop up OoTA or CoS in the same way I did this book, and still be able to sleep at night. 🤣
@@JACKSTAY I get you. This doesn't feel like an adventure book as much as a consolidated set of semi-related Icewind Dale one-shots or Adventurer's League content. The three separate sections or tiers of the adventure barely connect.
I have had player's comment in the campaign that it is hard to continue to push through it because of how disconnected the stories are between them. They don't even see the big picture and how much homebrew I have to do in order to connect them at this level! So I 100% agree with you - it is modular. If that is the case, then format the book in that way... make it like a TFtYP or GoS. Really the only thing that connects anything is the setting at this point.
The major complaint I had months ago was that beyond Chapter 1, you needed to rebalance all the rest of the content if you wanted to use Chapter 2 at all. More than two-thirds of the adventure needed to be fixed out of the gate. That is poor writing.