Player Characters in 'Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden' - Todd Talks - With Jim Davis
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- Todd Kenreck talks with Jim Davis about creating player characters for Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden and what you can think about if you're preparing to play this adventure.
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This conversation was part of a larger Todd Talks around Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, where they also discussed creating creepy monsters ( • Creating Creepy Monste... ) and what Dungeon Masters can do to prepare for the new book ( • How To Prepare for 'Ic... ).
Todd Kenreck is a host and Creative Manager for D&D Beyond, as well as the Avren in Silver & Steel. Follow him on Twitter: / toddkenreck
WebDM creates original D&D and RPG content to help make games more awesome! Co-host Jim Davis ( therealjimdavis ) offers enthusiastic insight, analysis, suggestions, and live games on Twitch ( twitch.tv/webdm ) UA-cam ( / webdm ) and Patreon ( patreon.com/webdm )
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This conversation was part of a larger Todd Talks around Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, where they also discussed creating creepy monsters (ua-cam.com/video/MMGi91yR-V0/v-deo.html) and what Dungeon Masters can do to prepare for the new book (ua-cam.com/video/XvBL7iC428A/v-deo.html).
In response to the question about running the game for the kids. I would say definitely try to use humor as part of the overall theme intertwined with the scarier elements b/c that can really cut through things and take some of the heaviness away for kids. Additionally, make sure they all survive and they come out with a big win - so it becomes about successfully overcoming fears and scary situations. This is the sort of game scenario where it really can be a teaching moment. Again - this all depends on the age of the participants. Teenagers you can probably run a more typical game, but definitely for younger than teens you really have to be careful when it comes to horror related games - even when (and perhaps even more so) when the horror etc is psychological rather than gorey. B/c to some degree kids can see gore as oooh and ahhhh "oh wow, his arm fell off" type thing - but then when you have the creeping terror things where maybe they are being chased or watched or followed - those kinds of things can really get under the skin of kids and really disturb them (and not in a good way) so you really have to watch out for those elements in horror games for younger players. Those are the types of things that can lead to nightmares etc. But again, as with any game - talking to the players ahead of time and asking if there's anything they really don't want to experience, b/c even younger kids can have and express maybe specific traumatic situations that they don't want to experience in game and its key to be sure to not go there.
But again, I think using plentiful humor and ensuring that the party triumphs in the end as a group over whatever it was that was scary over the course of the game. That could not only be valuable in encouraging the kids in being able to stand up to fears in life in general, but also be fun and could get them into D&D for the longer haul as well possibly. I think using good judgment and taking the necessary precautions could lead to a good time for them - good luck and have fun.
I am intrigued by the little things I could drop in this sort of campaign...
I'd place a TON of snowmen in Ten Towns...and you know that one player is going to smash one (or all) of them into powder.
Then later, I would have the same snowmen, completely re-built, as though nothing had happened to it.
Nobody in Ten Towns knows who keeps building these things.
Then later on, the party notices that these snowmen showing up wherever they go...as though they are following them around.
Depending on how hostile the party is towards these snowmen...they show up closer and closer to the party when they rest.
They aren't particularly threatening...a single hit will smash them.
They just don't go away.
I get a weeping angel vibe from that. Most excellent.
Jim: “here’s how to make things less scary”
Todd: “wow you can make it even scarier like that”
😂
Rangers hopefully are gonna be a lot more useful in this setting.
Rangers are plenty useful any time you make wilderness even slightly relevant. It's usually there, and people just ignore it. But shouldn't be able to.
From the way you describe your Ten Towns artificer in this video I instantly thought of Red Green.
Druid circle of the arctic is perfect for this book
Or circle of wildfires
circle of dreams has a built in tiny hut at level 6
Todds eyebrows are what keep me up at night and are clearly the most terrifying campaign boss.
Love seeing my boy Jim Davis
Todd, I love your content man but please start listening to Jim more. sometimes it seems like you have what you want to say and your replies arent even tied to what Jim is saying. Love the stuff.
Well, it's called "Todd Talks" xD
@@HoaxNess That's still no excuse for being a bad host.
Small gripe here, you can tell that Todd has already decided what he's going to talk about and only half listens to Jim. When Jim is talking about the lighter side of things like the Frosty analog or the comic relief mongrelfolk, he's not talking about ways to disarm the players so that he can freak them out later. He's talking about when to NOT be creepy and how to inject much needed levity into the game.
If you run a horror game that never lets off of the gas and is only always all horror all bad all the time, then your players are likely to become exhausted or worse, depressed.
Todd, to be a better interviewer, take a pause and listen to your guest. Get out of your own head, put your own tendencies aside and really pay attention to what your guests are saying.
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I absolutely agree, I like Todd a lot he has a lot of passion for the game and world. Just try to understand what your guest is saying before reading questions so your audience really gets the most out of the interview. Much love
Yeah right from the very beginning, Jim makes a great point about choosing a character that allows the DM to provide more lore/details so the group can "unlock" more of the adventure - this is an excellent and insightful point that doesn't even get acknowledged because Todd (seemingly) only asked the question so he could answer it, by immediately going into how he'd like to play a monster hunter ranger. Which seems more to me a hazard of enthusiasm than an assholish tendency, but yeah as an interviewer that's something to avoid.
I don’t know if I would call this a guest-show per se... not along the lines of a Conan or Leno at least... or call Jim Davis a “guest appearance” so much as a “series regular”.... but, either way I think that it’s a pretty good segment of two people who are as dedicated to the hobby as anyone arguably can be talking about a product that we are all pretty excited about running & giving some inspiration to DMs on how to run different aspects of the game or module. I love these little collaboration series that Todd’s been doing. I think that his enthusiasm & taste for associating tropes & themes drawn from outside material is as invaluable to the genre as a whole as Jim’s love of describing his take on scenario-hooks or supporting game-mechanics. Sure, like any talk-show, there’s some interjected detours & anecdotes or host personality quirks in the delivery; but, personally I always enjoy both of their takes on content and I think they complement each other’s styles really well whenever they produce these video together. Maybe Todd just reminds you of somebody that you know personally that has that habit that rubs you the wrong way...?
@@tristencovarrubias4950 The fact you ended your comment with you thinking that he is offended by someone personally and as well as what you opened up your comment with is down right idiotic. How in the world does his comment not strike true, he gives great criticism and even gives a solid solution. He didn't make it even remotely personal but you are taking it there.
I'd roll up a Firbolg Oath of the Ancients Paladin, with the Outlander background. I'd place wisdom high up on the stat block and take skills that would work well for survival/nature.
Leather armor, shield, warhammer and spear.
I was thinking the same thing. Not hard to see how the Frost Maiden could provide a good character motivation for this character.
I'm kinda split between playing a character that is at home in the frozen wasteland and someone that is a total "fish out of water."
The false hydra was always a scary concept for me.
A Goliath Druid with the Outlander background sounds fun for this campaign.
Jim Davis Beard Squad- Assemble! 🐻
I am absolutely playing a Triton Monster Slayer ranger in this campaign. Everything it does is so good already but especially for this campaign.
One of my favorite moments where I made my daughter cry (and I say this because she laughs about it a lot now) is when I was running a game for her and some of her cousins. I had a Cloud Giant ask the party to travel into the "cloud tunnels" under its home to take care of the creatures infesting the "basement", taming them if possible.. The giant explained that she had just recovered her home from a mad mage who had controlled it for a while. The mage was known to have done experiments on powerful creatures like displacer beasts and phase spiders, which I allowed them to read about as a group. This caused the appropriate excitement, as they comprehended that those would be too powerful for them to face if they were the issue.
They soon learned is that the mage had crossed the two, and created "Spider Cats" - I then showed them several images I'd found online of "Spider Cats", which i thought were just scary enough to make the kids shiver but cute enough for taming to be an option. My daughter stood up and screamed "I HATE YOU DAD! You took the thing I love most and the thing I hate most and combined them! I'm never playing D&D again!" The game dissolved into lots of hugs but she didn't want to play again for about a year. Now she DMs and I'm pretty sure she's used Spider Cats in her game.
Jim, we have the same mindset! I love making rangers, especially for more exploration based games like Tomb of Annihilation, so I'm hyped for this one. I like Todd's idea of making a Monster Slayer, I might do that!
Wildfire druid sounds perfect for that...
I hope that theres new backgrounds in the book to give me a bit of direction on what to play because tbh I've been hopping around ideas and cannot decide. My current thought is something like Ozen the Immovable from Made in Abyss
I've been sitting on a secretive Circle of Wildfire Druid that would work for the setting and adventure
OMG Jim's talk about doing the right thing at the end was super cool. And it makes me realize that I probably shouldn't trust the players I DM for IRL lol XD
If an NPC so much as inconveniences them they wanna murder them. And these guys don't RP, they power fantasy. Hope I personally become expendable to them...
I'm in the early stages of running Curse of Strahd - I'm kinda keeping it to a 'Young Frankenstein' type vibe and the 'horror' elements are light. Their last long rest there are a few characters that can watch over the group so I just had someone (not even decided who yet!) stand opposite where they were camping and watch them. The Elven-Wizard took the watch shift and saw them, sent Message and I had them not respond - she tried messaging in every language she knew - no response.
Talking about the session later that week the player advised she was properly freaked out by that - just someone watching and literally doing nothing, not even responding was enough to put her and then by extension the rest of the group on edge.
It's always the tiny, unexpected things that scare people - the expected/known isn't scary (in my very little experience lol)
I think your point about doing the right thing even if it isn't always what you want to do is something that people need now more than ever and not just in d&d.
Storm Herald Barbarian!!!
Maximize Vampiric Touch. I think you need to be Hexblade for the armor cause you have to be close. Go pact of the chain and take gift of the ever living ones. Then you always get max possible healing regardless of the damage you do. Use your HBC and Hex with it.
I saw this somewhere else. I think it was The Drow Bard.
i will be playing my Githzerai Knight named Ro´Kin who is my main charakter for 5e, feel i can come up with many reasons why he would travel to icewind dale, don´t know how he will feel about Auril or fey and stuff like that but that is just a fun challenge to figure out in my mind, while on the subject i hope the book give us more info on winter court fey or just fey in general. the Frostmaiden is strongly connected to that in other earlier editions of the game so would be cool to se it getting used for 5e.
I like the Rogue in this sort of environment.
...I would probably take the "Mobile" feat, which is a huge asset for this class, to gain them the ability to ignore difficult terrain with the "Dash" action.
Because rogues get "Cunning Action", they can use their bonus action to "Dash" with impunity...which will let them go through all that thick snow and difficult terrain, which there is sure to be a lot of.
As for subclass...I am really considering the classic "Thief" rogue:
I foresee "Fast Hands" getting a ton of use...interacting with objects throughout this survival-horror themed campaign might be the difference between life and death.
Any advice on what languages to pick to start up?
I have watched many much more "scary" things since, but the movie with scenes that still haunts me at 39 is the Garfield Halloween special. Be careful with young'uns.
One way to maximize vampiric touch- go fallen aasimar [transformation damage/healing deals necrotic damage equal to your character level once on your turn] + death cleric (6+/most levels) [2 uses of Channel Divinity touch of death/short rest, vampiric touch as a domain spell, and your necrotic damage ignores resistance] + divine soul sorcerer (3 or more) [favored by the gods, quickened & empowered metamagic] -if you quicken cast vampiric touch you can make an attack as part of the bonus action casting -and again as your full action, with aasimar transformation already set up, the first hit deals additional necrotic damage equal to your character level and you can add touch of death [2 x cleric level +5] 2 times and you can reroll low dice using Empowered spell metamagic. You can use favored by the gods to add 2d4 to one attack rolls that missed. You're better off focusing on your wisdom DC than charisma as wisdom is the stat used for the melee spell attacks. Since cleric (5) is required to get the spell and it continues to increase your touch of death damage, you are better off focusing your future levels in cleric. empowered metamagic doesn't add a ton to the build and could be skipped for a more useful option.
Jim looks great!
A situation that seems scary but you are helped by a nice yeti... where have I heard that before?
Monsters Inc. : *SNOWCONES!*
This is a good time to put out the reworked ranger.
I can't find this anywhere but for how many players is this book meant??
Standard party rules would go. Combat is balanced for 4 characters
@@Thunder-bw9xm ah thanks
When i run this goodberry will consume its material component. Will make survival be more real
0:4:49
Kids are difficult to read. I would go along the the influence of child-horror(ish?) programming... Think Scooby-Doo or Bunnicula. Elements of the unknown diluted down with campy situational comedy. 10-13 age-range is a pretty big maturity scale to tailor to though... you don’t want to make your older participants feel like you’re playing-down younger than they feel like they fall, but then again every kid’s a dice-roll on that stuff. My wife’s favorite movie at 8-years-old was The Exorcist, ha...
Man I forgot about Bunnicula! I gotta have a vampiric bunny or almoraj to my game.
I love Bunnicula. My wife brought home a beautiful little black/charcoal pigmy angora a few years ago that we named after Bunnicula. We used to let him free-range around our room since our pug loved him too. The little nocturnal shiznit used to love waking me up by hopping on my pillow and eating my hair... ha
Or goosebumps
@Andrew Wright
I only ever read a couple of them, but from what I remember... Goosebumps was only a whole lot of the named characters being scared of coincidental series of events that implied some type of supernatural creature or cursed item without ever actually being introduced with one other than the cover art, ha... but, sure?
I want a wildfire druid but not sure if wildfire druids would be good or dangerous to be around in this setting.
I'm gonna play a shade assassin bounty hunter that's after people that fled the the shadowfell due to icewind dale's susceptibility to shadow crossings.
The wrong assumption here is that it only takes 6 months to go through a pre-written adventure. Playing as adults, who typically can only play once a month for 6 hours total, it takes 2 years to go through an adventure like Tyranny of Dragons. Might be 1.5 for shorter ones that go from level 1 to 10-12. For something like both books of Waterdeep, probably 2.5 years. :P
I had that as well, but once my party transitioned onto Roll20, went from one session a week to 3x/week, doing like 2ish hours at a time after 9pm. Every once in awhile get together but it has helped advance sessions so much.
Yeah, even running it for a bunch of 18-20 somethings, Tomb of Annihilation has taken 2 years. People have lives, and sometimes you can only make so much progress in 4-5 hours of play. I've told my players can look into Rime, because I'm not gonna run it for at least a couple years, I still have to get through Avernus.
Do you think Arctic Rangers will break the survival horror elements a little with Natural Explorer?
I personally do, which is why I'm dropping that feature entirely and swapping it for the UA Class Features Varient
@@Thunder-bw9xm ok boomer
I want to play a bugbear land druid
Please just put stat blocks IN the adventure when they’re needed.
OMG so exite!