I always love your videos and I really like how you tie quests together! I've been doing the same thing in my group too to make the random quests feel a bit more related to the overarching story. I did something similar with Maud, although I think my version is a bit darker haha. I'll share just in case anyone is interested. In my version, Maud is actually the daughter of the white lady, who was devoured by a hag (the hag-mother of Maud) while still in the womb. The hag then used her magic to disguise herself as the white lady, kill the husband and take his treasure before returning to her lair to give birth to Maud. Maud eventually becomes a hag herself and the spirit of the white lady, whose spirit is still bound to her wedding ring in Maud's possession, is horrified at what has become of her daughter and cannot rest until the evil she feels she helped to create is put to rest. During the seance, she encourages the party to defeat Maud and bring her wedding ring to the town hall where a ceremony can be done to set her spirit free. This helped tie together most of the Easthaven quests and lore while adding an extra layer of darkness to the story. It also allowed me to keep the encounters with Maud in the cavern the same and still allow them to face off against the white lady as well.
@@BobWorldBuilder wow! Thank you, seriously. I was not expecting that but I really appreciate it! Ive been making a lot of these kinds of changes, and I've gotten into this campaign in a way i haven't before with other modules. I'd actually love to get into content creating but have no idea where to start. You may have just inspired me to look into it though. Thank you!
Bruh. I didnt realize this town was so deadly going into it with my level 2 party. Our moon druid died trying to honest fight the frost giant skeleton. After that i wasnt about to play the hag+willowisp intelligently.
@@BobWorldBuilder He got better. He was a half orc who came to ice winddale looking for his human druid mom. So Ravisin found his dead body late that night and was able to reincarnate him. Sadly that used up her level 5 spellslot for the day, so she wont be able to push Auril's influence off onto an animal (awakening it), and will become semi brainwashed until the defeat the demigod. The player wanted some concequences but to also keep using his character. Race being redecided by a d100 and losing a friendly npc to the frost maiden sounded reasonable.
I'm amazed at how different of an opinion you have on the town of Easthaven compared to me. I added to the town by having Dzaan participate in the seance with the PCs. If you want to change up the Toil in Trouble quest, I suggest moving it to Targos. Targos doesn't actually have a quest (it's quest sends you to the other side of Ten Towns). When the PCs get the Cauldron they sell it to Speaker Naerth rather than the Zhents stealing it. So when they find out he's running the Zhentarim, they're like "oh, dude was cool with us".
This was the starting town in one of my Frostmaiden campaigns and it worked out pretty great as a starting town. I toned down the Brew quest final fight a bit for 2nd level party (they started at level 2) but added some very hungry harpies to those caves. They also enjoyed hunting down the duergar and got a quest from Speaker Danneth to carry letters to all the other speakers warning them of the duergar quest (this was their incentive to visit other towns). Now the other group arrived in Easthaven much later in the campaign, and then they promptly tried to rescue Dzann from a burning. They succeeded but now they are really wanted in Easthaven (they killed a guard, injured Imdra, set the town hall on fire, and started a mass panic)! In that campaign I made Easthaven this paranoid place where Danneth and Imdra have been corrupted and turned paranoid by the chardalyn statue, and now the whole town is like Salem, hunting for witches and mages (which to be fair - there's the hag, Dzann, and the invisible duergar causing mischief!).
Fantastic video. My party just got to East haven. I love the tip changing Maude to the White Lady. Curious on how to transition to chapter 2. My party still has to go to lonely wood in order to help a friend who's lumberjack grandpa went missing in the woods and was found handless. Thinking I'll end chapter 1 when they come back to explore the ferry.
I had to heavily nerf the vanilla Maud Chiselbone fight, because if this is the first or second town your level 1 or 2 party comes in, the frost giant skeleton is going to wreck them.
I'm about to finish off Toil and Trouble with my group on Wednesday and I'm really excited to see if they try to take the cauldron back. They went to investigate the ferry after we started the campaign in Caer Konig so the thread of the Duergar menace is really strong right now. I think they want to go to sunblight after finishing this quest, so I'll have to find a good thing to put in their way if that's the case. One of my favorite things about this book is how replayable it is. Depending on the towns your party visits or the quests they take, they could have vastly different narrative experiences in the first 2 chapters which I think is really neat. I'm struggling a little bit looking forward to the transition between chapters 3/4 and chapter 5. The NPC just dumping the chapters 5-7 information on them doesn't feel great. What do you think about getting the players to Auril's island after dealing with Xardorak and his ilk?
The map seems somewhat too large. There's easily 500-600 houses there, while the whole town is supposed to have 850 inhabitants. Unless half of them are supposed to be sheds and barns, but there's hardly any agriculture going on in such climate.
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This is where my party is heading next session. Impeccable timing!
I do my best! haha :)
Final town! Nice! I’m currently preparing for my first Icewind Dale session and your videos have been a great help!
Woo! Thanks for your support, Bob! :)
I always love your videos and I really like how you tie quests together! I've been doing the same thing in my group too to make the random quests feel a bit more related to the overarching story. I did something similar with Maud, although I think my version is a bit darker haha. I'll share just in case anyone is interested. In my version, Maud is actually the daughter of the white lady, who was devoured by a hag (the hag-mother of Maud) while still in the womb. The hag then used her magic to disguise herself as the white lady, kill the husband and take his treasure before returning to her lair to give birth to Maud. Maud eventually becomes a hag herself and the spirit of the white lady, whose spirit is still bound to her wedding ring in Maud's possession, is horrified at what has become of her daughter and cannot rest until the evil she feels she helped to create is put to rest. During the seance, she encourages the party to defeat Maud and bring her wedding ring to the town hall where a ceremony can be done to set her spirit free. This helped tie together most of the Easthaven quests and lore while adding an extra layer of darkness to the story. It also allowed me to keep the encounters with Maud in the cavern the same and still allow them to face off against the white lady as well.
Amazing!! You should seriously just change the names and publish that on DMs Guild :)
@@BobWorldBuilder wow! Thank you, seriously. I was not expecting that but I really appreciate it! Ive been making a lot of these kinds of changes, and I've gotten into this campaign in a way i haven't before with other modules. I'd actually love to get into content creating but have no idea where to start. You may have just inspired me to look into it though. Thank you!
Bruh. I didnt realize this town was so deadly going into it with my level 2 party. Our moon druid died trying to honest fight the frost giant skeleton. After that i wasnt about to play the hag+willowisp intelligently.
Oof losing a druid is a big blow in this campaign!
@@BobWorldBuilder He got better.
He was a half orc who came to ice winddale looking for his human druid mom. So Ravisin found his dead body late that night and was able to reincarnate him. Sadly that used up her level 5 spellslot for the day, so she wont be able to push Auril's influence off onto an animal (awakening it), and will become semi brainwashed until the defeat the demigod.
The player wanted some concequences but to also keep using his character. Race being redecided by a d100 and losing a friendly npc to the frost maiden sounded reasonable.
I've been looking forward to this one!!!
The wait is finally over! :)
I'm amazed at how different of an opinion you have on the town of Easthaven compared to me. I added to the town by having Dzaan participate in the seance with the PCs.
If you want to change up the Toil in Trouble quest, I suggest moving it to Targos. Targos doesn't actually have a quest (it's quest sends you to the other side of Ten Towns). When the PCs get the Cauldron they sell it to Speaker Naerth rather than the Zhents stealing it. So when they find out he's running the Zhentarim, they're like "oh, dude was cool with us".
Haha that's a great twist!
This was the starting town in one of my Frostmaiden campaigns and it worked out pretty great as a starting town. I toned down the Brew quest final fight a bit for 2nd level party (they started at level 2) but added some very hungry harpies to those caves. They also enjoyed hunting down the duergar and got a quest from Speaker Danneth to carry letters to all the other speakers warning them of the duergar quest (this was their incentive to visit other towns).
Now the other group arrived in Easthaven much later in the campaign, and then they promptly tried to rescue Dzann from a burning. They succeeded but now they are really wanted in Easthaven (they killed a guard, injured Imdra, set the town hall on fire, and started a mass panic)! In that campaign I made Easthaven this paranoid place where Danneth and Imdra have been corrupted and turned paranoid by the chardalyn statue, and now the whole town is like Salem, hunting for witches and mages (which to be fair - there's the hag, Dzann, and the invisible duergar causing mischief!).
Ooh, I love the witch-trial paranoia idea!
I recently started this campaign... And am so thankful for all your guidance. Thanks Bob
Easthaven is a busy little town. I do think it is one of the best towns of the ten to expose the players to early on.
You could probably get by on just using this town! :P
Was the town I chose. So much to do. Gave players plenty of hooks with white lady and hag was a lot of fun.
Awesome!
Fantastic video. My party just got to East haven. I love the tip changing Maude to the White Lady. Curious on how to transition to chapter 2. My party still has to go to lonely wood in order to help a friend who's lumberjack grandpa went missing in the woods and was found handless. Thinking I'll end chapter 1 when they come back to explore the ferry.
Ooh I like what you're doing with Lonelywood!
When will this dm guide become a pdf on your patreon?
One week after the video was published!
You're the best Bob :D these guides are so awesome and have helped me with running my RotFM campaign!
These are outstanding
Thank you for your support! :)
I had to heavily nerf the vanilla Maud Chiselbone fight, because if this is the first or second town your level 1 or 2 party comes in, the frost giant skeleton is going to wreck them.
If there's ever a video without Bardy McFly, then I'll know I've crossed into another timeline.
I honestly can't remember if he's in this one! lol I think I've used him less often lately
Nice content m8
I'm about to finish off Toil and Trouble with my group on Wednesday and I'm really excited to see if they try to take the cauldron back. They went to investigate the ferry after we started the campaign in Caer Konig so the thread of the Duergar menace is really strong right now. I think they want to go to sunblight after finishing this quest, so I'll have to find a good thing to put in their way if that's the case.
One of my favorite things about this book is how replayable it is. Depending on the towns your party visits or the quests they take, they could have vastly different narrative experiences in the first 2 chapters which I think is really neat. I'm struggling a little bit looking forward to the transition between chapters 3/4 and chapter 5. The NPC just dumping the chapters 5-7 information on them doesn't feel great. What do you think about getting the players to Auril's island after dealing with Xardorak and his ilk?
The map seems somewhat too large. There's easily 500-600 houses there, while the whole town is supposed to have 850 inhabitants. Unless half of them are supposed to be sheds and barns, but there's hardly any agriculture going on in such climate.
will u do the other chapters in the book?
I will!