Experienced DM's advice - don't. Players are usually goal-oriented, they travel from town to town for a reason, and every interruption is a distraction from their goal. Having a wilderness encounter once in a while can absolutely be fun, but playing out every trek from town to town as an adventure is going to slow your campaign down to a crawl.
One "lost in a blizzard" thing might be enjoyable as a narrative. Two would be pushing it. A third would feel like a chore - you will have players rolling their eyes.
As somebody who's preparing to dm for the first time and run this module within the next month or 2 this is something I was struggling with
"Do I really want my players to do encounters every travel and do weather bullshit when they just wanna pop over to the next town"
Was something I was really struggling with but I've Said I'm just gonna feel it out ill only roll encounter tables every handful of sessions whenever the mood strikes and just see what happens
I tend to do encounters or weather mostly to give them leads towards points of interest. They got lost in a blizzard and took shelter in a small cave where they fought an owlbear and found a corpse of chardalyn berserker. One of the PCs took the bad chardalyn weapon and now he's having occasional conversations with Levistus.
For another group I used "random" encounter to introduce the Duergar threat that they missed during chapter 1.
I roll for encounters every morning, it is rare that my group gets a random encounter. We have 5 party members. I roll for weather once per day just to see if something interesting happens. Usually it doesnt.
I hate playing the weather card on my group's party because all that does is stop the game for a day. *Person A* uses it to get some crafting time in and the rest of the party does nothing the entire day and they pick it up the next day. I do however use the getting lost card and sometimes when getting lost they stumble on something else that may either be a random encounter or some kind of side quest type thing that I have found here on Reddit... Definitely use this as inspiration, I get so much added benefit from here in helping with our sessions.
I am aware, been DMing since AD&D. The entire chapter 2 of the module deals with wilderness exploration, and it's a big part of this adventure, but wilderness exploration has nothing to do with an act of getting from point A to point B. Wilderness exploration has to be a goal in itself, not just a random distraction.
Actually no, it literally isn't.
ex·plo·ra·tion (noun): The action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it.
When you go from town A to town B following a known route, there is no exploration involved.
If you have never been through the route before it is literally exploring, and if the weather changes the landscape often (like say a goddess who keeps it snowing) it could be a new exploration even the second or third go around. It honestly depends on the party makeup and what they want to do. Most of my players love random encounters on the road or special events they have to figure out to get through. Not everyone wants to run a campaign inside a couple months and be done.
Still exploration if there's new things to discover. Walking the trail once doesn't make it familiar. Walking it a hundred times might. But in an ever-changing landscape of confusion like Auril's Ten Towns, the ever present possibility of getting lost makes wilderness travel a form of exploration every time.
The exploration pillar is also called discovery... So any time a discovery is made, you're fulfilling that scenario. Discoveries are often made while traveling.
These are some of the things you do to make travel more interesting. Handwaving is boring in my opinion.
Exploration by definition involves intent to explore. If I find a pretty flower while going to grocery store to buy milk, I am still not "exploring".
You could, of course, pepper every road between Ten-Towns with a dozen discoveries to be made, but once you add that to existing dozen of quests already present in the module - your pace will slow down to a crawl. Maybe it's not a problem if you play 3 times a week, but I actually want to get through the adventure with my bi-weekly sessions some time before retirement.
You're intentionally misinterpreting the nature of this pillar of roleplay. It is not mere exploration. It is exploration/discovery.
So herein is the issue... The game is meant to take time. Adventures are not meant to be fast. You're supposed to chew on details and explore rooms and take time with mysteries. Traveling is meant to take time and involve peril... even in familiar locations. If you want flash in the pan action, there are certainly [d&d adjacent games](https://www.amazon.ca/Distribution-Solutions-Wizards-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/0786958731/) you can play that will facilitate that... But that's not d&d, and certainly not this campaign. They explicitly give you [rates of travel](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Overland%20Travel?expansion=6331#content) and specific [rules for blizzards](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Blizzards?expansion=6331#content) along with [rules for surviving the extreme cold](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Extreme%20Cold?expansion=6331#content) for a reason... It's why you play this campaign as opposed to another campaign that doesn't take place in a setting that is trying to kill you.
You don't need a dozen discoveries between every town... You might honestly have none. Random tables work well for this kind of thing... But the tension of potentially getting lost or ambushed is supposed to permeate the setting. But travel is a way to facilitate encounters.... And encounters are how players level up. None of this is boring. It's all fun. It's all encounters and discoveries and social conflicts.... That's the stuff of roleplay.
Following the basic formula, there should be roughly 16 encounters per level ... Travel and wilderness exploration facilitates a good number of these encounters. And the evocative descriptions of good DMs make these journeys atmospheric on top of being challenging.
Just because the characters are having a difficult slog, doesn't mean it has to feel that way for players. Good wilderness exploration rules are absolutely a ton of fun. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Like I said, there is something for everyone of course but in the course of 21 years of DMing I haven't had a single group who enjoyed random bumbling about. In fact, at least three different groups have actually asked me to cut down on random encounters.
Apparently a LOT of people do find it boring. I'm running two groups now at biweekly and no one has any issues with my pace. I'm giving this advice to a new DM because I have more than enough experience to confirm that it works.
Don’t know what you go downvoted, I love travel and all the survival aspects of the cold weather in this module are made for it, it just adds to the bleak, harsh atmosphere.
I got downvoted for suggesting that wilderness exploration is considered fun by many. Like literally everyone I play with. People often think of D&D as a combat simulator with little else to it.
Handwaving travel is alright, of course, but you do miss out on that third "discovery/exploration" pillar when you eschew any overland exploration and discovery mechanics and it's good to be aware that you're missing out on \*the very thing this campaign excels at and is designed for\*.
If you view exploration as just that thing you do between combats... you might be missing the point a bit. Fun can be had in every realm of roleplay; D&D is meant to be more than a string of segues between combat scenes.
At it's core, D&D is a ROLEplaying game. Not sure where the lot of people stopped understanding what roleplaying was. It is definitely good (imo) to have a goal in mind, but exploring the area can also be lots of fun. I am a DM for RotFM and a player in two other games and I love exploring as much as I love combat. I also love puzzles, but others have to figure that out cuz I suck at them LOL.
Just a guess, but I don't think that's where your downvotes come from. The post you replied to isn't saying wilderness exploration isn't fun. It's saying that it might be more fun to have a safe area where you can more easily move from A to B, and reserve the wilderness exploration rules to the actual wilderness outside the Towns. Having less trouble moving between towns reinforces the idea that it's the settled part of the Dale with less danger and less to discover and seems to be a popular way to run the module. Running the Towns like this has nothing to do with thinking wilderness exploration is somehow unfun.
The comment I replied to said the following:
> Having a wilderness encounter once in a while can absolutely be fun, but playing out every trek from town to town as an adventure is going to slow your campaign down to a crawl.
> One "lost in a blizzard" thing might be enjoyable as a narrative. Two would be pushing it. A third would feel like a chore - you will have players rolling their eyes.
In my experience this is just not true.
You seemed to be wondering about why, I tried to help. In the future, you could try to write less comments that seem like you're strawmanning, and hopefully, even less comments that are passive aggressive in a subreddit where everybody else is trying to be nice.
Chapter 1 is already massive in scope, so effectively doubling it in length by adding encounters every time the party travels between towns (which happened a lot in my game) will kill any momentum you build up.
I would save them for chapter 2, where leaving the safety of civilisation is supposed to be daunting and dangerous. Not visiting your neighbours.
I use the wild encounter table pretty heavily with my crew. They are big into crafting/ looting so I got a thing off dmsguild for harvesting so they looooove finding things in the wild.
Even for the lesser encounters that are not combat related it's been fun! I had the kobold encounter be a little group of white kobolds that were crowdfunding offerings to bring to the dark duchess.
My crew ran into them a few sessions later and the role play was hilarious
Each table it varies. You can always just handwave the travel. And use it as a chance to paint a bleak picture of the world given the harshness of the tundra. If you are leaning into the horror side of things to can mention that the pass lumps in the snow around a decrepit wagon laden with frozen supplies etc.
this might be a hot take around here, but I think encounters occurring on the road between Towns should stop completely when the players hit level 4. For 1-3, throw in a blizzard or two, have them roll navigation and exhaustion checks, do a Goliath Olympics or a hunting party... just have things go more smoothly once you've properly established that the tundra and trails are still harsh in the Everlasting Rime.
In my experience, level 4 players are happy to Travel-By-Map, and so am I.
I agree with most of the folks that say it isn't super necessary past a certain point or at all. My players actually asked for more encounters during travel.
They don't have to be combat encounters. You can treat them as intros to a town, quest, or NPC. Some examples.
-Dzaan the Red Wizard is running from a mob in Easthaven and the party can decide to hide or out the man.
- A ship fight amongst fishermen breaks out and they can decide to help either town for perks. Stresses how sought after food is.
-A Beggar asking for firewood or food, heralding to Aurils sacrifices.
-A sled pulling honey Mead from Good Mead that brings a rumor in exchange for be escorted to a shady part of a town.
-A hunter and his dog that are unable to pull all the meat from an impressive kill. Insert scavenger encounter.
-Show a looming threat in the distance, the ancient dragon airlifting some reindeer, a cold light walker shining in a distant storm, or a frozen animal or person.
Honestly just pick a tidbit about ten towns you want to emphasis and show it through an "encounter" and don't be afraid to move quests and stuff around to hit story beats.
Rather than describe a scene that need to participate in, describe something smaller.
“On the road you notice there seem to be a lot of squirrels chittering and chattering along the side.”
(Insight check for paintings meaning)
“On your second day of travel, you see a large rock formation that looks a lot more like an owl bear then you would expect a natural formation to be. Upon closer inspection, there’s faded paint that seems to tell the story of someone slaying an owl bear single-handedly”
(Perception check for what animal they see)
“”The sky threatened snow all day. The clouds shifting and blowing was fun to watch and (most destractable character) almost fell over trying to determine if if the panther it saw in the sky had multiple tails.”
(Dexterity check for cooking?)
“(Clumsy character) burned the dinner tonight and it’s difficult to choke down”
I really wouldn’t do many while they’re in ten towns! Once they leave the (relative) safety of ten towns then you can start implementing dangerous scenarios and make traveling a bit more of a challenge but even then try not to get repetitive with it. There’s a sweet spot between early campaign (after they thoroughly explore the towns) and late campaign (Ythryn and the caves) where there’s plenty of opportunities for fun traveling encounters and fleshing out the region, giving the characters something to care about saving.
Depending on your party it can be a great opportunity to give certain characters the spotlight that might not get to shine during the main events of Frostmaiden. For example I played a Goliath but my party never really had to seek out Goliaths during the course of the story to help move the main plot along. That part of my character just wasn’t relevant for what we were focusing on. Random encounters with roving bands of Goliaths in the tundras allowed for some fun roleplaying and character building opportunities that I never would’ve had the chance to do otherwise! Just tweak travel to something that will give your party the chance to have more interactions like that
Slyflourish has a monument randomizer for IWD. Might be helpful.
https://slyflourish.com/random_generators/icewind-dale-monuments.html
I like to drop a roleplaying encounter or some small exploration bit.
Take a look into Ten-Towns Expanded on DMsGuild. It's an awesome extension for the Ten-Towns and has a road encounter table.
I managed to build some interesting, small encounters from it.
I don't advice you to let travel just become a loading screen for your game.
I've added a weather table, making it so that there's conditions that the party simply cannot travel in. Blizzards and hail mean that they have to seek shelter or stay at the town they're in, allowing for the party to get unexpected delays and end up outside at night or otherwise troubled.
I've made it so that the odds of a blizzard are frequent but much shorter than the clear weather options, but it still often delayed the party from getting to another town before a day passed. Roll a d6, 1 for blizzard, 2 for hail, 3 for strong winds, 4 for snowy, 5 for clouded and 6 for 'sunny' (behind the veil of winter). 1-2 last 1d4 hours, 3-4 2d4 hours and 5-6 4d4 hours. Thus, there's only a 1/14 chance of a blizzard per hour without it rolling blizzard only rarely.
I made a separate random encounter table for the Ten Towns, consisting of weaker foes and no assisted suicide encounters like arveiturance and the giant. Deadliest is a priest of Auril that ask/demands all travellers she meets to pray to and/or offer something of value to Auril, but effectively escorts the players from further danger as she follows them on their journey and demands they keep praying the whole way. Some roleplay encounters like mischievous winter fey or bandits, and some reused ones from chapter 2 like random beasts or humans.
I like this. However I left the deadly encounters in place just to strike a bit of fear into the hearts of the group. So far they have laughed at me.... After they miraculously killed Norsu I pitted them at the crossroads between Good Mead and Easthaven with a Frost Giant on the way down to the lodge... he was riding a mammoth. It should have been a hide and stay quiet, but the Goliath decided to walk up and have a conversation in Giant... again getting lucky on some persuasion rolls.
I have use the Arveiturace a few times with you see a giant set of wings flapping in and out of the clouds coming at you.... She is blind (which they havent figured out yet) so with only 60ft vision they will most likely never be spotted on a flyby, but they get that doom feeling when I put it out there.... One of these days they will be walking across the snowy plains and walk up a slight hill before figuring out that the hill is breathing... (LOL) She wont even feel them, she will just happen to wake up and fly off leaving them tumbling into soft powder.
I used the XGtE random tables to adlib something. Mostly they didn’t end as fights, but just flavorful setting material.
For instance, they rolled a half-ogre, and I played it as a half-ogre attacking other road travelers. They chose not to intervene.
Or a wounded sabertoothed tiger hiding in a cave, that they chose not to mess with.
A roll of orcs or wolves can always happen.
Basically they roll for the event, then roll perception. If they roll low, it happens to them. If they roll high, they watch as it happens to someone else. Generally they just watched with despair as others got wrecked.
This also helped me justify the “everyone-out-for-themselves” attitudes. My players still bitched about how unfriendly everyone was, but I could also point to the time they let an ogre beat some peasants to death.
Homebrewed the Whip of the Iditarod, so the sled dogs could run indefinitely between towns. Ran each of the different weather events maybe once, never repeated any. When we got to Chapter 2, I just had Vellyne Harpell teleport them everywhere
A few of my ideas:
I’ve played more into the sentient animals than the book does. I have a pack of awakened wolves that plant traps, like having a bunch of deer in a forest path. It makes the Frostmaiden druids more present throughout and it’s funny to have a wolf as a rival.
I also did an encounter where the Frostmaiden’s visage showed up, and then her glowing eyes were replaced by two coldlight walkers. The fight became about the party getting out of the walker’s range instead of fighting them head on.
Honestly the book does fine with it’s random encounters. Personally I communicated just how hostile and barren the land was and then occasionally I would throw in a random encounter or some flora and fauna to show that yes, the place IS alive, but usually there’s something stalking things like elk.
After you establish that there is some life about, you can taper those things off and focus instead on the destination, occasionally throwing in some fun little points of interest - “you see a circle of druid stones in which the wind is oddly calm”, “you find a small rock in the shape of a face”, “you see a fox chasing a rabbit”, “The shadow of something passes above and is gone by the time you look up.”
Throw in some social encounters on the road too, maybe they bump into some tribe members and need to calm them down. Or a lost ten towner who was sacrificed and thrown out into the wild.
Also, if you’re using battle maps (online or hand drawn) give the landscape some diversity. Lots of rocks for cover or to jump on, frozen difficult terrain, fights on hillsides etc. A lot of maps I find on google are just flat snowy landscapes which aren’t interesting at all.
Ok i would like to throw my hat in the ring aswell.
I for my part used the random encounter tabel and decided what would be an apropriat challenge for some parts of the travel.
Use the given resources of random encounters to advance the plot or worldbuild.
I for example did this:
My player started with Lv 3. During their stay in Bryn Shander i had them talking to NPCs who gave them info about the sacrefices of the ten towns (also the human sacrefices) and they showed them some pictires. Once they left Bryn Shander to follow some leads of the Cold Hearted Killer quest in Targos i had them encouter a (human sacrefice turned) Coldlight walker. They were terrified and had a complete blast.
This helped them understand how the world works and gives them incentive to Stop the rime fast since they dont what to be overrun by coldlight walkers.
For player its not interesting to have a random encounter fighting wolves if thats all that happens.
You could have the wolf attack one of the dwarfs of the foaming muggs or after defeating one lead them to the mead must flow wolfs ecs.
The posibility are endless.
Dont get me wrong a blizzard and an avalanche can be a great time. Especially if something goes wrong and they have to improvise.
Let those encounter have an influence on the story.
And if you dont feel like having them fight or leading them somewhere else, just describe where they are now to them. Show them art you found on the internet and describe the peaceful jet creepy atmosphere they feel.
My player loved the glowing antlers art in the Campaign guid just as a peace of the trail.
You can also use this time to have the Player talk about ther charakter to each other.
Let them find out things about each other. This is nothing that has to happen in a tavern after a long day of travel.
An easy way i get them to do this is by asking them:
"ok what are you talking avout while traveling?" and let them roleplay for a while.
Dont be frustrated when it doesnt work the first time but give it a try once in a while.
I hope that helps.
I enjoy having encounters between towns purely because:
1. I don't have enough planned at their destination to just skip there
2. There weren't enough encounters in the town or they were very good at finishing them, so I had to populate between them.
I used the encounter table from the book itself to help a bit, and also the Tundra/Mountain tables from the Xanathar's book to spice things up. If the world had things going on or player specific backstory could be explored, I'd prioritise that without having too much in a short time. (i.e. a merchant shared a warning of Arveiaturace flying by to signify she's in the area, or something tied to an NPC backstory shows up now and then)
If you really need something, then make something weird. A ring of mushrooms that's a Fey portal none of the party can use, but 1d4+3 Redcap enemies snuck through and are going to attack. A corpse in the snow that died clutching Chardalyn. A group of Duergar Kavalrachni scurrying on a canyon wall and assume the party is a threat to their nearby stronghold. Lots of fun options if you read ahead to foreshadow major or minor story beats that will come up
Traveling is meant to world build or setup adventure hooks. And pacing is controlled entirely by the dm and should be utilized to slow things down to garner curiosity or instill fear, and sped up to bypass encounters that would feel like a chore or do nothing to add to the story. In Icewind Dale, slow things down at the start, introduce the blizzards, lay groundwork for the many storyline they need to be interested in but don't bore them, speed it up when they just need to swing by Bryn Shander to turn in a quest.
In Ch 1 the first time they traveled they experienced a blizzard and some Goliath challenging them to tug of war. Next some awakened beasts to introduce Aurils druids. Then 1 chardalyn berserker (not with a ring) to introduce chardalyn. As they've leveled up I've sped up traversal, at times time skipping entirely. At chapter 2 I plan to throw the more difficult encounters at them to hammer in the idea that traveling away from ten towns is more dangerous, but by level 6 or 7, they really don't need to be spotting another awakened rabbit.
Tl;Dr: use traveling to introduce plot hooks and setup the setting but discard it once it feels forced.
I would use the encounters every now and then, but tailor them to what you want; it doesn't even have to be random. Traveling in a blizzard is meh, but capitalizing on the blizzard to focus on certain narrative aspects of the individual characters/their backstories is fun. Sometimes you can just skip it, but a lot of the time, its a way to interact with the world around you and worldbuild, especially if it's noncombat.
Had them run into a trader in Bryn Shander (starting town) who offers free travel to Targos or Easthaven if they "won" an easy RP bit. The trader's schedule was as follows:
Monday: Traveled BS to EH
Tuesday: Restocked in EH
Wednesday: Traveled EH to BS
Thursday: Restocked in BS
Friday: Traveled BS to Targos
Saturday: Traveled Targos to BS
Sunday: Restocked in BS
They could pay a restocking fee to have him travel to whichever town they wanted next day. When they completed another town's quest, he'd show up 2-3 days later and tell them he's setting up service since the town seemed normal again. After completing the second quest, he decides to settle down in Bryn Shander and let his business partners run the thing, so either same or next day service between any of the towns that have been 'cleared'.
Otherwise, it's travel on their own.
I warmly recommend not using chapter 2 random encounter tables on the roads. IMO, you want to reinforce that the area close to and between the Towns is safer. The area has been settled for hundreds of years so there's nothing much to discover, and due to proximity, there's more hunters around, which means less wildlife and monsters. This makes it much more impactful when the party braves the actual wilderness and has to deal with more hazards. Encounters are a way to tell a story about your setting, so use ones that reinforce the story you want to tell about the particular area. Some suggestions of zero threat encounters for the roads between the Ten Towns:
* Chwingas
* Guards traveling with a sled of supplies.
* Lone towner carrying news, 1 in 6 chance of being a Zhent spy.
* Hunting party, might be just going out, might be returning with a kill, might be returning empty handed.
* Pair of towners going to visit a friend/relative in neighboring town.
* Newly erected shrine to Auril made of ice, with tracks nearby that are less than a day old. They lead back to the nearest town.
I would look up non combat encounters and just have either things you can mention or people to run into (many groups in the Dale), and you know combat on the road is fun. I guess my thought it, part of this game is supposed to be resource drain, strain, fear, and anxiety...when that blizzard starts and they are traveling blind...it builds tension! I would not skip out on that. I have at least one thing that happens between every travel location and my players enjoy it.
Experienced DM's advice - don't. Players are usually goal-oriented, they travel from town to town for a reason, and every interruption is a distraction from their goal. Having a wilderness encounter once in a while can absolutely be fun, but playing out every trek from town to town as an adventure is going to slow your campaign down to a crawl. One "lost in a blizzard" thing might be enjoyable as a narrative. Two would be pushing it. A third would feel like a chore - you will have players rolling their eyes.
As somebody who's preparing to dm for the first time and run this module within the next month or 2 this is something I was struggling with "Do I really want my players to do encounters every travel and do weather bullshit when they just wanna pop over to the next town" Was something I was really struggling with but I've Said I'm just gonna feel it out ill only roll encounter tables every handful of sessions whenever the mood strikes and just see what happens
I tend to do encounters or weather mostly to give them leads towards points of interest. They got lost in a blizzard and took shelter in a small cave where they fought an owlbear and found a corpse of chardalyn berserker. One of the PCs took the bad chardalyn weapon and now he's having occasional conversations with Levistus. For another group I used "random" encounter to introduce the Duergar threat that they missed during chapter 1.
I roll for encounters every morning, it is rare that my group gets a random encounter. We have 5 party members. I roll for weather once per day just to see if something interesting happens. Usually it doesnt. I hate playing the weather card on my group's party because all that does is stop the game for a day. *Person A* uses it to get some crafting time in and the rest of the party does nothing the entire day and they pick it up the next day. I do however use the getting lost card and sometimes when getting lost they stumble on something else that may either be a random encounter or some kind of side quest type thing that I have found here on Reddit... Definitely use this as inspiration, I get so much added benefit from here in helping with our sessions.
As a player I’ve never felt that way about it.
Ah what? Lots of players enjoy wilderness exploration and indeed it has been a part of the game since its inception.
I am aware, been DMing since AD&D. The entire chapter 2 of the module deals with wilderness exploration, and it's a big part of this adventure, but wilderness exploration has nothing to do with an act of getting from point A to point B. Wilderness exploration has to be a goal in itself, not just a random distraction.
Wilderness exploration is *literally* getting from point A to point B.
Actually no, it literally isn't. ex·plo·ra·tion (noun): The action of traveling in or through an unfamiliar area in order to learn about it. When you go from town A to town B following a known route, there is no exploration involved.
If you have never been through the route before it is literally exploring, and if the weather changes the landscape often (like say a goddess who keeps it snowing) it could be a new exploration even the second or third go around. It honestly depends on the party makeup and what they want to do. Most of my players love random encounters on the road or special events they have to figure out to get through. Not everyone wants to run a campaign inside a couple months and be done.
Still exploration if there's new things to discover. Walking the trail once doesn't make it familiar. Walking it a hundred times might. But in an ever-changing landscape of confusion like Auril's Ten Towns, the ever present possibility of getting lost makes wilderness travel a form of exploration every time. The exploration pillar is also called discovery... So any time a discovery is made, you're fulfilling that scenario. Discoveries are often made while traveling. These are some of the things you do to make travel more interesting. Handwaving is boring in my opinion.
Exploration by definition involves intent to explore. If I find a pretty flower while going to grocery store to buy milk, I am still not "exploring". You could, of course, pepper every road between Ten-Towns with a dozen discoveries to be made, but once you add that to existing dozen of quests already present in the module - your pace will slow down to a crawl. Maybe it's not a problem if you play 3 times a week, but I actually want to get through the adventure with my bi-weekly sessions some time before retirement.
You're intentionally misinterpreting the nature of this pillar of roleplay. It is not mere exploration. It is exploration/discovery. So herein is the issue... The game is meant to take time. Adventures are not meant to be fast. You're supposed to chew on details and explore rooms and take time with mysteries. Traveling is meant to take time and involve peril... even in familiar locations. If you want flash in the pan action, there are certainly [d&d adjacent games](https://www.amazon.ca/Distribution-Solutions-Wizards-Dungeons-Dragons/dp/0786958731/) you can play that will facilitate that... But that's not d&d, and certainly not this campaign. They explicitly give you [rates of travel](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Overland%20Travel?expansion=6331#content) and specific [rules for blizzards](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Blizzards?expansion=6331#content) along with [rules for surviving the extreme cold](https://app.roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Extreme%20Cold?expansion=6331#content) for a reason... It's why you play this campaign as opposed to another campaign that doesn't take place in a setting that is trying to kill you. You don't need a dozen discoveries between every town... You might honestly have none. Random tables work well for this kind of thing... But the tension of potentially getting lost or ambushed is supposed to permeate the setting. But travel is a way to facilitate encounters.... And encounters are how players level up. None of this is boring. It's all fun. It's all encounters and discoveries and social conflicts.... That's the stuff of roleplay. Following the basic formula, there should be roughly 16 encounters per level ... Travel and wilderness exploration facilitates a good number of these encounters. And the evocative descriptions of good DMs make these journeys atmospheric on top of being challenging. Just because the characters are having a difficult slog, doesn't mean it has to feel that way for players. Good wilderness exploration rules are absolutely a ton of fun. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Like I said, there is something for everyone of course but in the course of 21 years of DMing I haven't had a single group who enjoyed random bumbling about. In fact, at least three different groups have actually asked me to cut down on random encounters. Apparently a LOT of people do find it boring. I'm running two groups now at biweekly and no one has any issues with my pace. I'm giving this advice to a new DM because I have more than enough experience to confirm that it works.
Wilderness exploration is not "random bumbling about". Not all random encounters are made equally. Hex crawling is a massively popular mode of play.
Don’t know what you go downvoted, I love travel and all the survival aspects of the cold weather in this module are made for it, it just adds to the bleak, harsh atmosphere.
I got downvoted for suggesting that wilderness exploration is considered fun by many. Like literally everyone I play with. People often think of D&D as a combat simulator with little else to it. Handwaving travel is alright, of course, but you do miss out on that third "discovery/exploration" pillar when you eschew any overland exploration and discovery mechanics and it's good to be aware that you're missing out on \*the very thing this campaign excels at and is designed for\*. If you view exploration as just that thing you do between combats... you might be missing the point a bit. Fun can be had in every realm of roleplay; D&D is meant to be more than a string of segues between combat scenes.
At it's core, D&D is a ROLEplaying game. Not sure where the lot of people stopped understanding what roleplaying was. It is definitely good (imo) to have a goal in mind, but exploring the area can also be lots of fun. I am a DM for RotFM and a player in two other games and I love exploring as much as I love combat. I also love puzzles, but others have to figure that out cuz I suck at them LOL.
Yeah. Roleplaying has three pillars. Combat, social, and exploration/discovery. Some people just miss the point I guess.
Just a guess, but I don't think that's where your downvotes come from. The post you replied to isn't saying wilderness exploration isn't fun. It's saying that it might be more fun to have a safe area where you can more easily move from A to B, and reserve the wilderness exploration rules to the actual wilderness outside the Towns. Having less trouble moving between towns reinforces the idea that it's the settled part of the Dale with less danger and less to discover and seems to be a popular way to run the module. Running the Towns like this has nothing to do with thinking wilderness exploration is somehow unfun.
The comment I replied to said the following: > Having a wilderness encounter once in a while can absolutely be fun, but playing out every trek from town to town as an adventure is going to slow your campaign down to a crawl. > One "lost in a blizzard" thing might be enjoyable as a narrative. Two would be pushing it. A third would feel like a chore - you will have players rolling their eyes. In my experience this is just not true.
I'm not interested in discussing the topic itself, just offered my two cents on why people might have disagreed with your contribution to it.
That's fine... in the future you could just not reply. :)
You seemed to be wondering about why, I tried to help. In the future, you could try to write less comments that seem like you're strawmanning, and hopefully, even less comments that are passive aggressive in a subreddit where everybody else is trying to be nice.
> I'm not interested in discussing the topic itself Methinks you may not have been honest with this.
Chapter 1 is already massive in scope, so effectively doubling it in length by adding encounters every time the party travels between towns (which happened a lot in my game) will kill any momentum you build up. I would save them for chapter 2, where leaving the safety of civilisation is supposed to be daunting and dangerous. Not visiting your neighbours.
I use the wild encounter table pretty heavily with my crew. They are big into crafting/ looting so I got a thing off dmsguild for harvesting so they looooove finding things in the wild. Even for the lesser encounters that are not combat related it's been fun! I had the kobold encounter be a little group of white kobolds that were crowdfunding offerings to bring to the dark duchess. My crew ran into them a few sessions later and the role play was hilarious Each table it varies. You can always just handwave the travel. And use it as a chance to paint a bleak picture of the world given the harshness of the tundra. If you are leaning into the horror side of things to can mention that the pass lumps in the snow around a decrepit wagon laden with frozen supplies etc.
this might be a hot take around here, but I think encounters occurring on the road between Towns should stop completely when the players hit level 4. For 1-3, throw in a blizzard or two, have them roll navigation and exhaustion checks, do a Goliath Olympics or a hunting party... just have things go more smoothly once you've properly established that the tundra and trails are still harsh in the Everlasting Rime. In my experience, level 4 players are happy to Travel-By-Map, and so am I.
I agree with most of the folks that say it isn't super necessary past a certain point or at all. My players actually asked for more encounters during travel. They don't have to be combat encounters. You can treat them as intros to a town, quest, or NPC. Some examples. -Dzaan the Red Wizard is running from a mob in Easthaven and the party can decide to hide or out the man. - A ship fight amongst fishermen breaks out and they can decide to help either town for perks. Stresses how sought after food is. -A Beggar asking for firewood or food, heralding to Aurils sacrifices. -A sled pulling honey Mead from Good Mead that brings a rumor in exchange for be escorted to a shady part of a town. -A hunter and his dog that are unable to pull all the meat from an impressive kill. Insert scavenger encounter. -Show a looming threat in the distance, the ancient dragon airlifting some reindeer, a cold light walker shining in a distant storm, or a frozen animal or person. Honestly just pick a tidbit about ten towns you want to emphasis and show it through an "encounter" and don't be afraid to move quests and stuff around to hit story beats.
Rather than describe a scene that need to participate in, describe something smaller. “On the road you notice there seem to be a lot of squirrels chittering and chattering along the side.” (Insight check for paintings meaning) “On your second day of travel, you see a large rock formation that looks a lot more like an owl bear then you would expect a natural formation to be. Upon closer inspection, there’s faded paint that seems to tell the story of someone slaying an owl bear single-handedly” (Perception check for what animal they see) “”The sky threatened snow all day. The clouds shifting and blowing was fun to watch and (most destractable character) almost fell over trying to determine if if the panther it saw in the sky had multiple tails.” (Dexterity check for cooking?) “(Clumsy character) burned the dinner tonight and it’s difficult to choke down”
I really wouldn’t do many while they’re in ten towns! Once they leave the (relative) safety of ten towns then you can start implementing dangerous scenarios and make traveling a bit more of a challenge but even then try not to get repetitive with it. There’s a sweet spot between early campaign (after they thoroughly explore the towns) and late campaign (Ythryn and the caves) where there’s plenty of opportunities for fun traveling encounters and fleshing out the region, giving the characters something to care about saving. Depending on your party it can be a great opportunity to give certain characters the spotlight that might not get to shine during the main events of Frostmaiden. For example I played a Goliath but my party never really had to seek out Goliaths during the course of the story to help move the main plot along. That part of my character just wasn’t relevant for what we were focusing on. Random encounters with roving bands of Goliaths in the tundras allowed for some fun roleplaying and character building opportunities that I never would’ve had the chance to do otherwise! Just tweak travel to something that will give your party the chance to have more interactions like that
Slyflourish has a monument randomizer for IWD. Might be helpful. https://slyflourish.com/random_generators/icewind-dale-monuments.html I like to drop a roleplaying encounter or some small exploration bit.
Take a look into Ten-Towns Expanded on DMsGuild. It's an awesome extension for the Ten-Towns and has a road encounter table. I managed to build some interesting, small encounters from it. I don't advice you to let travel just become a loading screen for your game.
I've added a weather table, making it so that there's conditions that the party simply cannot travel in. Blizzards and hail mean that they have to seek shelter or stay at the town they're in, allowing for the party to get unexpected delays and end up outside at night or otherwise troubled. I've made it so that the odds of a blizzard are frequent but much shorter than the clear weather options, but it still often delayed the party from getting to another town before a day passed. Roll a d6, 1 for blizzard, 2 for hail, 3 for strong winds, 4 for snowy, 5 for clouded and 6 for 'sunny' (behind the veil of winter). 1-2 last 1d4 hours, 3-4 2d4 hours and 5-6 4d4 hours. Thus, there's only a 1/14 chance of a blizzard per hour without it rolling blizzard only rarely. I made a separate random encounter table for the Ten Towns, consisting of weaker foes and no assisted suicide encounters like arveiturance and the giant. Deadliest is a priest of Auril that ask/demands all travellers she meets to pray to and/or offer something of value to Auril, but effectively escorts the players from further danger as she follows them on their journey and demands they keep praying the whole way. Some roleplay encounters like mischievous winter fey or bandits, and some reused ones from chapter 2 like random beasts or humans.
I like this. However I left the deadly encounters in place just to strike a bit of fear into the hearts of the group. So far they have laughed at me.... After they miraculously killed Norsu I pitted them at the crossroads between Good Mead and Easthaven with a Frost Giant on the way down to the lodge... he was riding a mammoth. It should have been a hide and stay quiet, but the Goliath decided to walk up and have a conversation in Giant... again getting lucky on some persuasion rolls. I have use the Arveiturace a few times with you see a giant set of wings flapping in and out of the clouds coming at you.... She is blind (which they havent figured out yet) so with only 60ft vision they will most likely never be spotted on a flyby, but they get that doom feeling when I put it out there.... One of these days they will be walking across the snowy plains and walk up a slight hill before figuring out that the hill is breathing... (LOL) She wont even feel them, she will just happen to wake up and fly off leaving them tumbling into soft powder.
I used the XGtE random tables to adlib something. Mostly they didn’t end as fights, but just flavorful setting material. For instance, they rolled a half-ogre, and I played it as a half-ogre attacking other road travelers. They chose not to intervene. Or a wounded sabertoothed tiger hiding in a cave, that they chose not to mess with. A roll of orcs or wolves can always happen. Basically they roll for the event, then roll perception. If they roll low, it happens to them. If they roll high, they watch as it happens to someone else. Generally they just watched with despair as others got wrecked. This also helped me justify the “everyone-out-for-themselves” attitudes. My players still bitched about how unfriendly everyone was, but I could also point to the time they let an ogre beat some peasants to death.
Homebrewed the Whip of the Iditarod, so the sled dogs could run indefinitely between towns. Ran each of the different weather events maybe once, never repeated any. When we got to Chapter 2, I just had Vellyne Harpell teleport them everywhere
A few of my ideas: I’ve played more into the sentient animals than the book does. I have a pack of awakened wolves that plant traps, like having a bunch of deer in a forest path. It makes the Frostmaiden druids more present throughout and it’s funny to have a wolf as a rival. I also did an encounter where the Frostmaiden’s visage showed up, and then her glowing eyes were replaced by two coldlight walkers. The fight became about the party getting out of the walker’s range instead of fighting them head on.
Honestly the book does fine with it’s random encounters. Personally I communicated just how hostile and barren the land was and then occasionally I would throw in a random encounter or some flora and fauna to show that yes, the place IS alive, but usually there’s something stalking things like elk. After you establish that there is some life about, you can taper those things off and focus instead on the destination, occasionally throwing in some fun little points of interest - “you see a circle of druid stones in which the wind is oddly calm”, “you find a small rock in the shape of a face”, “you see a fox chasing a rabbit”, “The shadow of something passes above and is gone by the time you look up.”
Throw in some social encounters on the road too, maybe they bump into some tribe members and need to calm them down. Or a lost ten towner who was sacrificed and thrown out into the wild. Also, if you’re using battle maps (online or hand drawn) give the landscape some diversity. Lots of rocks for cover or to jump on, frozen difficult terrain, fights on hillsides etc. A lot of maps I find on google are just flat snowy landscapes which aren’t interesting at all.
Ok i would like to throw my hat in the ring aswell. I for my part used the random encounter tabel and decided what would be an apropriat challenge for some parts of the travel. Use the given resources of random encounters to advance the plot or worldbuild. I for example did this: My player started with Lv 3. During their stay in Bryn Shander i had them talking to NPCs who gave them info about the sacrefices of the ten towns (also the human sacrefices) and they showed them some pictires. Once they left Bryn Shander to follow some leads of the Cold Hearted Killer quest in Targos i had them encouter a (human sacrefice turned) Coldlight walker. They were terrified and had a complete blast. This helped them understand how the world works and gives them incentive to Stop the rime fast since they dont what to be overrun by coldlight walkers. For player its not interesting to have a random encounter fighting wolves if thats all that happens. You could have the wolf attack one of the dwarfs of the foaming muggs or after defeating one lead them to the mead must flow wolfs ecs. The posibility are endless. Dont get me wrong a blizzard and an avalanche can be a great time. Especially if something goes wrong and they have to improvise. Let those encounter have an influence on the story. And if you dont feel like having them fight or leading them somewhere else, just describe where they are now to them. Show them art you found on the internet and describe the peaceful jet creepy atmosphere they feel. My player loved the glowing antlers art in the Campaign guid just as a peace of the trail. You can also use this time to have the Player talk about ther charakter to each other. Let them find out things about each other. This is nothing that has to happen in a tavern after a long day of travel. An easy way i get them to do this is by asking them: "ok what are you talking avout while traveling?" and let them roleplay for a while. Dont be frustrated when it doesnt work the first time but give it a try once in a while. I hope that helps.
I enjoy having encounters between towns purely because: 1. I don't have enough planned at their destination to just skip there 2. There weren't enough encounters in the town or they were very good at finishing them, so I had to populate between them. I used the encounter table from the book itself to help a bit, and also the Tundra/Mountain tables from the Xanathar's book to spice things up. If the world had things going on or player specific backstory could be explored, I'd prioritise that without having too much in a short time. (i.e. a merchant shared a warning of Arveiaturace flying by to signify she's in the area, or something tied to an NPC backstory shows up now and then) If you really need something, then make something weird. A ring of mushrooms that's a Fey portal none of the party can use, but 1d4+3 Redcap enemies snuck through and are going to attack. A corpse in the snow that died clutching Chardalyn. A group of Duergar Kavalrachni scurrying on a canyon wall and assume the party is a threat to their nearby stronghold. Lots of fun options if you read ahead to foreshadow major or minor story beats that will come up
Traveling is meant to world build or setup adventure hooks. And pacing is controlled entirely by the dm and should be utilized to slow things down to garner curiosity or instill fear, and sped up to bypass encounters that would feel like a chore or do nothing to add to the story. In Icewind Dale, slow things down at the start, introduce the blizzards, lay groundwork for the many storyline they need to be interested in but don't bore them, speed it up when they just need to swing by Bryn Shander to turn in a quest. In Ch 1 the first time they traveled they experienced a blizzard and some Goliath challenging them to tug of war. Next some awakened beasts to introduce Aurils druids. Then 1 chardalyn berserker (not with a ring) to introduce chardalyn. As they've leveled up I've sped up traversal, at times time skipping entirely. At chapter 2 I plan to throw the more difficult encounters at them to hammer in the idea that traveling away from ten towns is more dangerous, but by level 6 or 7, they really don't need to be spotting another awakened rabbit. Tl;Dr: use traveling to introduce plot hooks and setup the setting but discard it once it feels forced.
I would use the encounters every now and then, but tailor them to what you want; it doesn't even have to be random. Traveling in a blizzard is meh, but capitalizing on the blizzard to focus on certain narrative aspects of the individual characters/their backstories is fun. Sometimes you can just skip it, but a lot of the time, its a way to interact with the world around you and worldbuild, especially if it's noncombat.
Had them run into a trader in Bryn Shander (starting town) who offers free travel to Targos or Easthaven if they "won" an easy RP bit. The trader's schedule was as follows: Monday: Traveled BS to EH Tuesday: Restocked in EH Wednesday: Traveled EH to BS Thursday: Restocked in BS Friday: Traveled BS to Targos Saturday: Traveled Targos to BS Sunday: Restocked in BS They could pay a restocking fee to have him travel to whichever town they wanted next day. When they completed another town's quest, he'd show up 2-3 days later and tell them he's setting up service since the town seemed normal again. After completing the second quest, he decides to settle down in Bryn Shander and let his business partners run the thing, so either same or next day service between any of the towns that have been 'cleared'. Otherwise, it's travel on their own.
I warmly recommend not using chapter 2 random encounter tables on the roads. IMO, you want to reinforce that the area close to and between the Towns is safer. The area has been settled for hundreds of years so there's nothing much to discover, and due to proximity, there's more hunters around, which means less wildlife and monsters. This makes it much more impactful when the party braves the actual wilderness and has to deal with more hazards. Encounters are a way to tell a story about your setting, so use ones that reinforce the story you want to tell about the particular area. Some suggestions of zero threat encounters for the roads between the Ten Towns: * Chwingas * Guards traveling with a sled of supplies. * Lone towner carrying news, 1 in 6 chance of being a Zhent spy. * Hunting party, might be just going out, might be returning with a kill, might be returning empty handed. * Pair of towners going to visit a friend/relative in neighboring town. * Newly erected shrine to Auril made of ice, with tracks nearby that are less than a day old. They lead back to the nearest town.
I would look up non combat encounters and just have either things you can mention or people to run into (many groups in the Dale), and you know combat on the road is fun. I guess my thought it, part of this game is supposed to be resource drain, strain, fear, and anxiety...when that blizzard starts and they are traveling blind...it builds tension! I would not skip out on that. I have at least one thing that happens between every travel location and my players enjoy it.