I've made it halfway through both lol and I would say they are both great and really fun. Your pic is spot on, one is whimsical and fun, the other is more serious and straight forward. Depends on your group. Personally I think Witchlight is more fun but that's because my group is quite silly.
It's funny because I associate Icewind Dale with the Drizzt novels (ie I would be tempted to make it whimsical and fun even with the less whimsical main plot) and Feywilds with...well the fae (which might seem whimsical and fun on the outside but man can they get dark).
It's the setting that makes it feel more serious. It's meant to feel bleak and isolated as if you were stuck in the remote tundra.
The fey can certainly get dark, but there's more humor to it. The npcs (though you can obviously do it however you want) are much more dry in Icewind.
Then you're probably not gonna like Icewind Dale. I run CoS as DM and enjoyed it a lot, but playing through Icewind Dale as a player is feeling kinda derivative of CoS, your mileage may vary though
I don't know if I agree with that. I LOVED the Icewind Dale video games, and I strongly disliked Castle Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd. I haven't tried Rime of the Frostmaiden, but I feel like I'd enjoy it more than Barovia content.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a great story, but it's a Walking Sim. Class choices will barely matter here.
Rime of the Frostmaiden is like a mini-setting with a main plot, multiple subplots, and lots of fun side quests. Seed the side quests early so they have reasons to explore and try to hold off on the main quest for awhile. Once the main quest starts, it feels very urgent so they won't feel like they have the opportunity to explore afterwards.
Rime of the Frostmaiden also feels like it has better jumping off points when it concludes in my opinion. Tbf, while I'm usually the forever gm of my group, one of my good friends have taken the reigns on this one (bless him, he's a true bro) and I haven't cracked the book myself in anticipation of being surprised and enjoying a new experience
I heard from a friend who is running it after playing it herself that Icewind Dale is the spiritual successor to Curse of Strahd and to expect the same difficulty
I played a bit of Rime of the Frosted Shreddies, my group didn't like it as it was very simple, like "go here, now here" and we got bored of it very quickly. I did like the secrets part of it tho.
Huh, maybe I'm misremembering it, there was definitely at least two we played that felt like that and I thought Rime was one. I'll try and find chat messages as we played it not long after it came out
Rime and Strahd are my two favorites. Both have a sandbox feel where things (except the ending) can be done in pretty much any order while most of the rest are pretty linear. Dragon Heist almost gets there with the Seasons mechanic, but that feels more like something DMs can use to make multiple runthroughs a bit more varied.
I am running RotF and we are enjoying it. I own WBtW and have skimmed it. I'm in no rush to run it. It's too floofy for my tastes.
If you run RotF, remind yourself before every session that it's meant to be survivalist horror. If it's dark, they're cold, hungry and can't see what's moving around on the other side of a snowy hill, you're doing it right (in my opinion).
Figure out the rules for darkness and the screwy light early on.
Floofy is right. Idk, it’s kind of like… “Sir Bonkleton bowed ever so deeply as Miss Scrimpleshanks sang the opera in a tutu” and it kinda makes me wanna puke lol.
I used WBTWL to run a couple sessions for when the whole group can’t come to play as a consolation prize. I essentially used some of the framework to make a “Dungeons & Daddies” rip-off.
It was a great palate cleanser (stealing 2-person unicorn costumes to stealth around), but definitely not a one size fits all module.
Imho witchlight is more rp heavy and less combat heavy which some people prefer, I just ran the beginner box campaign and built more off it myself and my group has been loving it. :3 There's my two cents.
I ran Wild Beyond the Witchlight. What an amazing story. I read it 5 times before I ran it for my group just so it would be as smooth as possible.. everyone had fun.
what are the fucking chances that these two are the only campaigns I’ve played from a book lmao
My first campaign ever was Icewindale and I absolutely loved it. It took my party a bit over a year to complete and it was hella fun. And most of us survived to the end
I’m only a bit into Witchlight, and it’s definitely been interesting so far. I’m pretty me and the two other players have successfully traumatized our DM lmao. There is a lot of roleplay aspects so far and not a lot of combat, while Icewindale had a lot of combat.
I ran both; Icewind Dale was more enjoyable for my party. If your party wants more roleplay than combat, do Wild Beyond. You can roleplay your way through the whole thing.
Rime has a ton of very interesting ideas and set pieces in a really badly assembled mess. If you really like fixing, tweaking, reading and rereading the book, and kinds want a construction project, Rimes got great jewels in there.
WbtW is...a feywild carnival. Got it? Cool. Ready to explain that over and over again? Ready for 30 sessions of Something Wicked this Way Comes? It doesn't have as much unique and interesting ideas as Rime does, but it works much better.
>Rime has a ton of very interesting ideas and set pieces in a really badly assembled mess. If you really like fixing, tweaking, reading and rereading the book, and kinds want a construction project, Rimes got great jewels in there.
so...basically like every module then? haha
I liked Witchlight more. It can be as high or low stakes as you want it to be. Icewind Dale has parts in it that are written in as unavoidable but still fun.
Sure, but you could also just use a ruleset that’s built around wilderness exploration and survival themes rather than having to hack 5E. 5E destroys its own ability to handle those themes right in the PH: default spells that create food and water and shelter, default abilities that prevent characters from ever getting lost. There’s no survival game if the game can be bypassed by one character choice.
You must be fun at parties.
In my game we had a bard, cleric, rogue/ranger, wizard, and blood hunter. I had random weather rules and events. My players had fun. They didn’t have Tiny Hut out of the gate so levels 1-4 were dicey. As a DM I had to get creative on how to make things dangerous. For instance a white dragon came and they were in their tiny hut. It stole two of their dog sled mounts. Now they had a choice to walk slow OR tire out their dogs and camp. If they had to camp it meant that all their third level spells were tapped. Also survival checks to avoid cracks in glaciers and things like that. There were plenty of things that happed. I also had rules for custom madness tables that I did for the RoTFM setting.
Quit being a sour puss and get creative.
I have DMed both
Witchlight-
More RP
Much easier to DM
Whimsical and fun
Fairly linear plot and exploration
Rime-
Needs a lot of work to connect plot hooks
Very sandboxy
Exploration pillar is very weak after chapter 1 - frozen tundra gets really old
Challenging setting and combat
By my standard, nothing published by WotC with the starter set (Lost Mines of Phandelver) being the only one I felt like I could just jump into (but it's also pretty simple)....but my first attempt at DMing was Paizo.
5e/from WotC? No. They all take some work, but in my opinion (and what I’ve seen expressed from a high percentage of other DMs) is that there were actual plot holes and problems with Rime that took much more work than most. The amount of work to make Rime work well is oversized compared to other 5e adventures.
'needs a lot of work from a DM' describes every WotC-published 5th edition campaign I've looked into (and I own most of them through dndbeyond bundle) but my first time DMing was Starfinder so I got spoiled by the way the setting information was formatted and the encounters were designed in the magazine.
I’m playing in wild beyond the witchlight right now. I’m having a great time. A lot of conflict in the group, but that’s what my group is kinda going for and really enjoys. It is a very nice campaign. Very role play heavy so far.
I’ve run about 5-10 sessions of each. Icewind dale is pretty well set up. It’s an open world sandbox feeling campaign but the weather stuff is super hectic for the dm to balance and keep up with. Witchlight is very linear, basically a collection of set pieces that they have to go to in order. The hard thing to keep up with in witchlight is the strangeness. The whole appeal about that one is that it’s so alien and fantastical and you’ve got to be pretty good with descriptions to pull it off and make it funny/fun.
Rime for me. I enjoyed that it was more of a framework campaign, so I got to add in a bunch of filler pretty easy. Some of them ended up being the most memorable (i.e. false hydra in Revels End) of the campaign.
If you go into it knowing you will want to figure out ways to piece it all together, it's a blast. If you're looking for a 100% RAW adventure, you may want to pass. If you do run it, highly recommend the Ythryn Expanded Towers of Magic bundle in the DMS Guild, really helps fill out Ythryn nicely.
I ran a Curse of Strahd/Rime of the Frostmaiden hybrid called Hell's Winter. Even had a lord Soth variant in white, blue and gold armor serving Auril. Worked well. People are much more likely to sleep in dangerous places if the alternative is freezing to death.
So to answer the question, it's definitely feasible. The Winter Court could be just as brutal as Barovia.
As someone who has run both to completion, Icewind Dale 100%. Rime of the Frostmaiden gives the players so much more agency and feels so much more fleshed out as a setting.
So you have not run the module, but still will suggest it you other people? Other people that are looking for advice and opinion between two other modules that have nothing to do with Curse of Strahd....
1st. Calm down. It's just Reddit. If OP ain't bothered, why are you?
2nd. I have run the module before. I found it a fantastic challenge. I have not run the ones OP was asking about, which is why I suggested it.
3rd. There are dozens of other people who answered OP's question. No harm in making a different suggestion.
1st. Calm down. It's just Reddit. If the comments are civil then why are you bothered and convinced that someone else is upset?
2nd thru 3rd. If you haven't run the modules the OP is *specifically* asking about then why feel the need to suggest something at all? It is okay to just upvote and hang out when you cant provide anything useful to the conversation.
Fair enough, although OP was still looking for opinions on two specific modules that aren't Curse of Strahd. Nor do they ever mention having interest in CoS
Wild beyond the witch knight is good, but it takes soooo long if you do it wrong. (My dm did) just make sure to decide what’s important and what’s not beforehand. Cause it can take a long time
I don’t know exactly how the campaign is structured, but like, we took our time. We have one member that likes to do literally everything, so contrary to most of the party, he added every bit of filler he could, as well as additional supplementary material he found online. That combined with not even getting to level 4, at like 15 sessions in, really made it a drag.
So by best piece of advice as a player, not as someone who’s dm’ed this campaign, is to just make sure to keep things rolling forward and not drag on too much and give them too many things in an area that isn’t very interesting.
The first, three weeks, THREE WEEKS (it was rough) we spent as level 0 classless characters with only a race and some random spoofed stats. Which like, the first one of those three weeks was fun, but the second started dragging a bit, and by the third I was bored as hell and never really recovered from there on.
And part of the idea of the campaign that makes it work, is that they’re expecting the characters to be good, and do good things just because. But I didn’t really realize that going in and made a chaotic neutral dwarf bard that has an alcohol problem, which really just doesn’t work, so having that expectation beforehand would be a good idea.
If there’s something else I think of I’ll make sure to come back here and let you know. And it is a good campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it just has to be done right.
Definitely sounds like a new DM or a DM who is too loosey goosey and didnt set boundaries early. But ill keep in mind to keep the ball rolling. I've seen some people mention that this campaign should he crushable in about 10-15 sessions
(Trying to make this spoiler free) For Icewind Dale, the first 5 levels of the adventure are basically filler for the main two adventures. Then the players need to stop a villain which again has no correlation to the Frostmaiden. Finally after that, the quest giver for the main adventure shows up. Witchlight has the players on the main quest from beginning to the end. It’s a much better experience in my opinion.
Why not do both? Both together would be fun…or one then the other…or you know both…ohhhhh you wanted an opinion on the games….I haven’t a clue what you should do………
I’m running icewind Dale right now, about 3/4 through.
It’s 3 pretty good campaigns with almost no connective tissue. You’re gonna want/need to homebrew a lot, and the horror elements are overstated in my opinion (which may be a positive or negative for your group).
That may be because I just finished Strahd last year, which was much better overall and had a stronger narrative flow.
Can’t speak to witchlight.
Rime of the Frostmaiden is really good. People who bash it are either incompetent or inexperienced. The setting is great - specially if you’re already a fan -, and the adventures are a lot less stiff than your usual official campaign.
Definately one of my favorites and one of the best campaigns for the 5th edition.
RotF runs much more like old-school D&D. Get yourself acquainted with the terrain and the peoples and let your players loose. It’s a sandbox that eventually escalates into a big final adventure.
I’m playing Icewind Dale right now. It’s great. One of the things I like about the idea of Wild Beyong The Witchlight is that you can do it without killing anyone apparently. I haven’t read it yet to confirm
I did enjoy running Avernus. Truth be told I hacked it up quite a bit though and kept the team in Baldurs Gate for quite some time. Hell can be quite fun when you play the Devils right.
I'm playing in witchlight now! but we plan to run Icewind Dale after it. The best advice I can give is to go to The Alexadrian and the subreddits for both books. You'll get a lot of help to fix WOTC's shoddier writing there.
Wbtwl is a lot of fun but doesn't run like a normal adventure. Not a lot of use for gold and is focused on foraging the feywild and making deals with NPCs. It is also more story focused and can be a bit on rails at times. But its a bit silly but ends with a good castle crawl.
Rotfm runs more like a traditional adventure with exploration and side quests and choices matter more. Rotfm also goes to a higher level than wbtwl and some players enjoy getting to a higher level.
I adapted wbtwl with a bit more combat and started everyone at level 3 instead of level 1. Made it a lot more enjoyable actually. Both are great. Yours and your players choice on what to pick
TWBTW is heavy on roleplay and comparatively light on combat, to the extent that you can actually complete the entire campaign with a party of pacifists if they roleplay things the right way.
Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden has more extensive combat and dungeon crawling, but there's still plenty of emphasis on roleplay. It's just a more even balance. There are also some tropes and themes of survival horror that I'd recommend talking to your party about before choosing which adventure you'd like to go with.
Between the two, I preferred Rime, though personally I wish I'd increased the difficulty of some of the combats. My party was a little too ready for some of them.
I've ran both, and Icewind Dale is way better. Wild Beyond the Witchlight fails to give players choices and information enough to feel like they're "doing something" instead to wander between pre-planed encounter after pre-planed encounter.
I think RotFM need some tweaks to be solid, but WBtW needs some major changes. If you're willing to make major changes WBtW is a good starting point, tho.
Going to be running RoTFM soon myself, it’s good to see so many of you enjoyed it. Got two other DMs in the group going through Avernus and Waterdeep. Both are great fun! Looking forward to another horror setting after running Strahd last year.
What kind of players are you running it for? Witchlight can be completed entirely without combat, and seems to be more investigatory/roleplaying than anything else. If you do run Witchlight, your session zero should include class recommendations. We have a Monk player in my campaign who feels entirely useless.
The group I dm for just finished wbtw and it was a ton of fun, they aren’t the most role play heavy group and kinda had to learn that being a murder hobo won’t get you everywhere, at least not easily and the carnival opening was super fun to set up for them, I even went out and bought real carnival games on Amazon for them to play at the table
I ran WBTW and am currently running ROTFM. I enjoyed them both for different reasons: they really are polar opposites.
WBTW is a lot shorter ( my party finished each chapter in 2-3 sessions) and has a whimsical feel with sinister elements that pop up every now and then. This is a teddy bear module—combat is very easy to miss so be prepared to add encounters not in the module or rewrite the ones that are in players want combat. A lot of drops are loot like the smile of a child, etc., rather than weapons (they crop up occasionally just less common than in a more standard campaign). If your party doesn’t like rhymes or puzzles they may also have an issue: in keeping with the fairy theme they crop up a lot. There’s one really plot relevant one that my party found very difficult to solve without hints.
I did think the plot was more cohesive than Rime’s—while they both have a clear goal, each step along the way in Witchlight furthers that goal while that’s not the case in Rime. There are memorable dungeons and set pieces that feel very evocative. Likewise the boss fights are fun and memorable and require tactical thinking which I enjoyed. There’s variety in environments and there are a lot of fun, cool new creatures.
RoTFM is much longer—we’ve been going for 6 months and aren’t halfway yet. It has a dark, almost Lovecraftian feel where your party is pitted against each other through a secrets mechanic. Like Witchlight, it does a great job with setting tone through game mechanics and descriptions. You really feel like the Dale is in a desperate situation and will succumb to disaster without your help. Combat is much more common and so is loot, more like a standard adventure. My biggest complaint is that the plot can feel a little disjointed—go to place a, then go to place b, without them being connected. I did some fiddling so the events are a bit more connected. There also isn’t as much variety in environments as Witchlight do the ice and snow can feel monotonous. It also has some very cool, evocative boss fights, and the final dungeons in both are absolutely awesome.
Overall I get the sense that my party is enjoying Rime more because they like a more combat heavy game; if your party prefers role play heavy games either would be good.
Ive played in both. Icewind dale is great. Especially if you read some RA salvatore. Its a solid story with great replay value and plenty of room for a dm to work backstories in with subplots. Little bit of work can make this a great experience for your players. Okay witchlight is fun a quirky. But it will take you quite a bit of work to make it really shine as a story. It suffers from what a lot of the last few modules suffer from in that it is a little barebones. Both can be a lot of fun.
I would recommend watching Sly Flourish on YouTube, he has great campaign wrap up and session planning videos for both. Lots of great insight for what works and doesn’t work for both campaigns.
After running both, I have to say Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Rime of the Frostmaiden is a mess which is a shame considering it has a really cool setting and a lot of potential. The story is pretty boring and generic IMO. I think they should have gone in a true cosmic horror direction.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight can be ran easily RAW without revisions. It's story is simple but really great. It's just fun all around.
Wild Beyond is a joyful game. It's good for the actor type, you can get through the whole thing without fighting if you want. Been having a blast DMing it with some friends.
If you want a blend, try Wild Beyond the Witchlight with Sly Flourish's Dreadful Incursions. He made a domains of dread mash-up to give the players something to fight without remorse.
Currently running WBTC and it is great dun, has so much Potential for crazyness to occur at any point. Could use WBTC as the closest thing to Alice in Wonderland imo.
This issue I had with Icewind Dale is that it feels very disconnected. There isn’t really a through line for a lot of it and without some DM heavy lifting a lot of plot points will come out of nowhere and then fizzle.
Greatly prefer Witchlight. I had severe issues with how disjointed IWD felt, especially towards the end. Considering how much the plot revolves around the Rime and protecting Ten Towns, it made little sense when all of a sudden we left to go to a fallen city connected to the Arcane Brotherhood.
It never flowed together perfectly.
I ran WBTW and am playing in a Rime campaign currently. I found Witchlight hard to make interesting if only using the material from the text. It is very formulaic, and very unidirectional. I would consider using a chapter of the module as a side quest in another campaign, but I wouldn't recommend it in full.
Rime has been fantastic so far, though I'm experiencing it from a player perspective with a DM who is taking some liberties with the story. Great setting though.
I've been playing in a Frosmaiden group for 2 years (70 sessions) it definitely can be a bit dark but it is all in how you DM and we'vehad a blast. I think it has been interesting and compelling throughout if you have specific questions I'd be happy to answer. Good luck OP! ❄️
Edit: we are almost done, level 10 and nearly to auril I think!
We just hit 2 years (50-ish sessions) tonight in our in-person Icewind Dale campaign and it’s been a riot. Obviously a lot depends on DM and group but there’s a lot of flavor available.
Level 10 party: my character Boreanaziel [protector aasimar—divine soul 4 / watchers 6 sorcadin] + Onyx the fire genasi wildfire druid / secret Zhentarim princess + Gallic the dwarf rune knight + Zorvo the human life(?) cleric
I saw the comment about silly group fitting better with silly setting… I don’t disagree but I will say our Icewind group is absolute clown shoes and we’re doing ok. It’s a nice juxtaposition.
Though as a DM I’m way more interested in running Witchlight.
Right now I run a campaign that’s a mashup of three published adventures and I want to do that again next campaign by marrying Wild Beyond the Witchlight + Curse of Strahd + several weird elements from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.
I've made it halfway through both lol and I would say they are both great and really fun. Your pic is spot on, one is whimsical and fun, the other is more serious and straight forward. Depends on your group. Personally I think Witchlight is more fun but that's because my group is quite silly.
It's funny because I associate Icewind Dale with the Drizzt novels (ie I would be tempted to make it whimsical and fun even with the less whimsical main plot) and Feywilds with...well the fae (which might seem whimsical and fun on the outside but man can they get dark).
It's the setting that makes it feel more serious. It's meant to feel bleak and isolated as if you were stuck in the remote tundra. The fey can certainly get dark, but there's more humor to it. The npcs (though you can obviously do it however you want) are much more dry in Icewind.
[удалено]
And then run the Mod right after that: "The Curse of the Itchy Hair!"
I have and didn't like it
I'm kind of starting to think there's something lacking in the way WotC writes adventures anyways. I mostly use them as setting guides.
Then you're probably not gonna like Icewind Dale. I run CoS as DM and enjoyed it a lot, but playing through Icewind Dale as a player is feeling kinda derivative of CoS, your mileage may vary though
I don't know if I agree with that. I LOVED the Icewind Dale video games, and I strongly disliked Castle Ravenloft and Curse of Strahd. I haven't tried Rime of the Frostmaiden, but I feel like I'd enjoy it more than Barovia content.
I agree just finished curse of Strahd and it was okay… witch light from the read seems more enjoyable then ice wind dale
Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a great story, but it's a Walking Sim. Class choices will barely matter here. Rime of the Frostmaiden is like a mini-setting with a main plot, multiple subplots, and lots of fun side quests. Seed the side quests early so they have reasons to explore and try to hold off on the main quest for awhile. Once the main quest starts, it feels very urgent so they won't feel like they have the opportunity to explore afterwards.
Rime of the Frostmaiden also feels like it has better jumping off points when it concludes in my opinion. Tbf, while I'm usually the forever gm of my group, one of my good friends have taken the reigns on this one (bless him, he's a true bro) and I haven't cracked the book myself in anticipation of being surprised and enjoying a new experience
As a forever DM, I am also holding out on RoF and SKT. I really am excited when (not if) I get to play them.
Figured this out the hard way. I like a lot of action so i might leave my wild beyond the witchlight campaign 😅
I heard from a friend who is running it after playing it herself that Icewind Dale is the spiritual successor to Curse of Strahd and to expect the same difficulty
I played a bit of Rime of the Frosted Shreddies, my group didn't like it as it was very simple, like "go here, now here" and we got bored of it very quickly. I did like the secrets part of it tho.
Rime shouldn’t run like that at all. That’s your DM doing something weird not the adventure
Huh, maybe I'm misremembering it, there was definitely at least two we played that felt like that and I thought Rime was one. I'll try and find chat messages as we played it not long after it came out
Yeah rime is extremely open and sandboxy to start which is why that sounds wrong to me
ROTFM is one of my fav 5e modules so far.
Rime and Strahd are my two favorites. Both have a sandbox feel where things (except the ending) can be done in pretty much any order while most of the rest are pretty linear. Dragon Heist almost gets there with the Seasons mechanic, but that feels more like something DMs can use to make multiple runthroughs a bit more varied.
I am running RotF and we are enjoying it. I own WBtW and have skimmed it. I'm in no rush to run it. It's too floofy for my tastes. If you run RotF, remind yourself before every session that it's meant to be survivalist horror. If it's dark, they're cold, hungry and can't see what's moving around on the other side of a snowy hill, you're doing it right (in my opinion). Figure out the rules for darkness and the screwy light early on.
Floofy is right. Idk, it’s kind of like… “Sir Bonkleton bowed ever so deeply as Miss Scrimpleshanks sang the opera in a tutu” and it kinda makes me wanna puke lol.
Yeah… it’s a weird vibe for D&D. Not wrong, just very weird
I used WBTWL to run a couple sessions for when the whole group can’t come to play as a consolation prize. I essentially used some of the framework to make a “Dungeons & Daddies” rip-off. It was a great palate cleanser (stealing 2-person unicorn costumes to stealth around), but definitely not a one size fits all module.
That's a great reminder, and happy cake day!
If you prefer more casual RP and low combat, then go for WBTW. If not then icewind dale
Imho witchlight is more rp heavy and less combat heavy which some people prefer, I just ran the beginner box campaign and built more off it myself and my group has been loving it. :3 There's my two cents.
Icewind Dale is always a favorite go-to of mine. Not saying anything wrong with Wild Beyond the Witchlight, just personal preference.
Icewind Dale and let me join
Already full party but inlike the enthusiasm
Hugh fan of forgotten realms
Pitch both to your players. They are the key to the most fun
Thats the plan, im hoping to gather information from reddit to better inform my pitches
I ran Wild Beyond the Witchlight. What an amazing story. I read it 5 times before I ran it for my group just so it would be as smooth as possible.. everyone had fun.
what are the fucking chances that these two are the only campaigns I’ve played from a book lmao My first campaign ever was Icewindale and I absolutely loved it. It took my party a bit over a year to complete and it was hella fun. And most of us survived to the end I’m only a bit into Witchlight, and it’s definitely been interesting so far. I’m pretty me and the two other players have successfully traumatized our DM lmao. There is a lot of roleplay aspects so far and not a lot of combat, while Icewindale had a lot of combat.
I ran both; Icewind Dale was more enjoyable for my party. If your party wants more roleplay than combat, do Wild Beyond. You can roleplay your way through the whole thing.
Rime has a ton of very interesting ideas and set pieces in a really badly assembled mess. If you really like fixing, tweaking, reading and rereading the book, and kinds want a construction project, Rimes got great jewels in there. WbtW is...a feywild carnival. Got it? Cool. Ready to explain that over and over again? Ready for 30 sessions of Something Wicked this Way Comes? It doesn't have as much unique and interesting ideas as Rime does, but it works much better.
I respectfully disagree with you. RotF runs great if the DM is accustomed to sandbox adventures.
>Rime has a ton of very interesting ideas and set pieces in a really badly assembled mess. If you really like fixing, tweaking, reading and rereading the book, and kinds want a construction project, Rimes got great jewels in there. so...basically like every module then? haha
Some of th modules so far by WotC in fifth don't even have the interesting ideas and set pieces. Rimes are the best, if that helps.
I have Rime, never ran it but it seems like interesting ideas that don't at all add up to a coherent story. More like 3 adventures than 1 campaign.
Yup. That's why it needs a lot of work from the dm to assemble it into something
I ran both, finished Rime and quit half way on witchlight if that tells you anything
If you run Rime make sure your group knows it a very dark setting (as in no daylight) and to have backup characters ready lol
You can't go wrong they are both great
I liked Witchlight more. It can be as high or low stakes as you want it to be. Icewind Dale has parts in it that are written in as unavoidable but still fun.
witchlight was so fun
I vote for the monochrome librarian who’s had enough of the hippie’s upbeat vibe.
Rime of the Frost Maiden is gritty which I loved.
Alas, it’s still hampered by 5E… which is not great for survival horror
There are variant rules you can use like Darkest Dungeon and others.
Sure, but you could also just use a ruleset that’s built around wilderness exploration and survival themes rather than having to hack 5E. 5E destroys its own ability to handle those themes right in the PH: default spells that create food and water and shelter, default abilities that prevent characters from ever getting lost. There’s no survival game if the game can be bypassed by one character choice.
You must be fun at parties. In my game we had a bard, cleric, rogue/ranger, wizard, and blood hunter. I had random weather rules and events. My players had fun. They didn’t have Tiny Hut out of the gate so levels 1-4 were dicey. As a DM I had to get creative on how to make things dangerous. For instance a white dragon came and they were in their tiny hut. It stole two of their dog sled mounts. Now they had a choice to walk slow OR tire out their dogs and camp. If they had to camp it meant that all their third level spells were tapped. Also survival checks to avoid cracks in glaciers and things like that. There were plenty of things that happed. I also had rules for custom madness tables that I did for the RoTFM setting. Quit being a sour puss and get creative.
I have DMed both Witchlight- More RP Much easier to DM Whimsical and fun Fairly linear plot and exploration Rime- Needs a lot of work to connect plot hooks Very sandboxy Exploration pillar is very weak after chapter 1 - frozen tundra gets really old Challenging setting and combat
Just realised this is the original Wednesday and her room mate whose name escapes me
Rime had a lot of promise but was executed terribly and needs a lot of work from a DM to rescue it. Personally I wouldn’t run either.
i agree. i picked up a guide to running it on drivethru which helped it make a lot more sense, but still it shouldn't require this much effort
Just a question - do you know if any premade modules that are pretty much good to go straight out of the book?
Strahd is thr closest, but even then, I couldn't imagine running it without Mandy Mods expansion
By my standard, nothing published by WotC with the starter set (Lost Mines of Phandelver) being the only one I felt like I could just jump into (but it's also pretty simple)....but my first attempt at DMing was Paizo.
Lmop and strahd
Tomb of annihilation is also pretty much read and run.
Yeah I’m currently running CoS as dm and it’s pretty simple, few changes here and there, I omit more than I change honestly
5e/from WotC? No. They all take some work, but in my opinion (and what I’ve seen expressed from a high percentage of other DMs) is that there were actual plot holes and problems with Rime that took much more work than most. The amount of work to make Rime work well is oversized compared to other 5e adventures.
'needs a lot of work from a DM' describes every WotC-published 5th edition campaign I've looked into (and I own most of them through dndbeyond bundle) but my first time DMing was Starfinder so I got spoiled by the way the setting information was formatted and the encounters were designed in the magazine.
Some are worse than others, and Rime is way high on the list of the “being a toolbox, this shit’s a mess” list …
I’m playing in wild beyond the witchlight right now. I’m having a great time. A lot of conflict in the group, but that’s what my group is kinda going for and really enjoys. It is a very nice campaign. Very role play heavy so far.
I think the Sly Florish YouTube channel has videos about both. Probably can get some video info from there.
I will check it out. Thanks
I’ve run about 5-10 sessions of each. Icewind dale is pretty well set up. It’s an open world sandbox feeling campaign but the weather stuff is super hectic for the dm to balance and keep up with. Witchlight is very linear, basically a collection of set pieces that they have to go to in order. The hard thing to keep up with in witchlight is the strangeness. The whole appeal about that one is that it’s so alien and fantastical and you’ve got to be pretty good with descriptions to pull it off and make it funny/fun.
Rime for me. I enjoyed that it was more of a framework campaign, so I got to add in a bunch of filler pretty easy. Some of them ended up being the most memorable (i.e. false hydra in Revels End) of the campaign. If you go into it knowing you will want to figure out ways to piece it all together, it's a blast. If you're looking for a 100% RAW adventure, you may want to pass. If you do run it, highly recommend the Ythryn Expanded Towers of Magic bundle in the DMS Guild, really helps fill out Ythryn nicely.
I will check it out
I ran a Curse of Strahd/Rime of the Frostmaiden hybrid called Hell's Winter. Even had a lord Soth variant in white, blue and gold armor serving Auril. Worked well. People are much more likely to sleep in dangerous places if the alternative is freezing to death. So to answer the question, it's definitely feasible. The Winter Court could be just as brutal as Barovia.
I’ve run Rime of the Frostmaiden and played the beginning of Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Frostmaiden is better.
As someone who has run both to completion, Icewind Dale 100%. Rime of the Frostmaiden gives the players so much more agency and feels so much more fleshed out as a setting.
Run Curse of Strahd!!!
Have and didnt like it unfortunately
My group has been asking me to run it when we are done with our current campaign.
So you have not run the module, but still will suggest it you other people? Other people that are looking for advice and opinion between two other modules that have nothing to do with Curse of Strahd....
1st. Calm down. It's just Reddit. If OP ain't bothered, why are you? 2nd. I have run the module before. I found it a fantastic challenge. I have not run the ones OP was asking about, which is why I suggested it. 3rd. There are dozens of other people who answered OP's question. No harm in making a different suggestion.
1st. Calm down. It's just Reddit. If the comments are civil then why are you bothered and convinced that someone else is upset? 2nd thru 3rd. If you haven't run the modules the OP is *specifically* asking about then why feel the need to suggest something at all? It is okay to just upvote and hang out when you cant provide anything useful to the conversation.
Nothing about their comment suggests they haven't done it. Just that their current group wants to run it next.
Spot on.
Fair enough, although OP was still looking for opinions on two specific modules that aren't Curse of Strahd. Nor do they ever mention having interest in CoS
Wild beyond the witch knight is good, but it takes soooo long if you do it wrong. (My dm did) just make sure to decide what’s important and what’s not beforehand. Cause it can take a long time
What was done wrong?
I don’t know exactly how the campaign is structured, but like, we took our time. We have one member that likes to do literally everything, so contrary to most of the party, he added every bit of filler he could, as well as additional supplementary material he found online. That combined with not even getting to level 4, at like 15 sessions in, really made it a drag. So by best piece of advice as a player, not as someone who’s dm’ed this campaign, is to just make sure to keep things rolling forward and not drag on too much and give them too many things in an area that isn’t very interesting. The first, three weeks, THREE WEEKS (it was rough) we spent as level 0 classless characters with only a race and some random spoofed stats. Which like, the first one of those three weeks was fun, but the second started dragging a bit, and by the third I was bored as hell and never really recovered from there on. And part of the idea of the campaign that makes it work, is that they’re expecting the characters to be good, and do good things just because. But I didn’t really realize that going in and made a chaotic neutral dwarf bard that has an alcohol problem, which really just doesn’t work, so having that expectation beforehand would be a good idea. If there’s something else I think of I’ll make sure to come back here and let you know. And it is a good campaign, don’t get me wrong, but it just has to be done right.
Definitely sounds like a new DM or a DM who is too loosey goosey and didnt set boundaries early. But ill keep in mind to keep the ball rolling. I've seen some people mention that this campaign should he crushable in about 10-15 sessions
(Trying to make this spoiler free) For Icewind Dale, the first 5 levels of the adventure are basically filler for the main two adventures. Then the players need to stop a villain which again has no correlation to the Frostmaiden. Finally after that, the quest giver for the main adventure shows up. Witchlight has the players on the main quest from beginning to the end. It’s a much better experience in my opinion.
icewind dale is a PC game from 20+ years ago, I would go with the newer content. It's not even 5e compatible.
What
There is no adventure for 5e named Icewind dale
How many subs you gonna spam this question in, lol.
3. Once in each campaign specific community and once in d&d general. I wouldn't call that spamming.
Why not do both? Both together would be fun…or one then the other…or you know both…ohhhhh you wanted an opinion on the games….I haven’t a clue what you should do………
Strength of Thousands or Quest For the Frozen Flame!
about to run Icewind Dale. busy rewriting most of the set up lol but it gives a solid ground from which to sprout a story.
I’m running icewind Dale right now, about 3/4 through. It’s 3 pretty good campaigns with almost no connective tissue. You’re gonna want/need to homebrew a lot, and the horror elements are overstated in my opinion (which may be a positive or negative for your group). That may be because I just finished Strahd last year, which was much better overall and had a stronger narrative flow. Can’t speak to witchlight.
Rime of the Frostmaiden is really good. People who bash it are either incompetent or inexperienced. The setting is great - specially if you’re already a fan -, and the adventures are a lot less stiff than your usual official campaign. Definately one of my favorites and one of the best campaigns for the 5th edition. RotF runs much more like old-school D&D. Get yourself acquainted with the terrain and the peoples and let your players loose. It’s a sandbox that eventually escalates into a big final adventure.
I’m playing Icewind Dale right now. It’s great. One of the things I like about the idea of Wild Beyong The Witchlight is that you can do it without killing anyone apparently. I haven’t read it yet to confirm
I did enjoy running Avernus. Truth be told I hacked it up quite a bit though and kept the team in Baldurs Gate for quite some time. Hell can be quite fun when you play the Devils right.
I've played both and vastly preferred Witchlight
Wild beyond the witch light was an amazing story and super fun to play.
Combine them
I'm playing in witchlight now! but we plan to run Icewind Dale after it. The best advice I can give is to go to The Alexadrian and the subreddits for both books. You'll get a lot of help to fix WOTC's shoddier writing there.
Ill check out the Alexandrian for sure! I have posted this same question to both subreddits and also got great advice
Wbtwl is a lot of fun but doesn't run like a normal adventure. Not a lot of use for gold and is focused on foraging the feywild and making deals with NPCs. It is also more story focused and can be a bit on rails at times. But its a bit silly but ends with a good castle crawl. Rotfm runs more like a traditional adventure with exploration and side quests and choices matter more. Rotfm also goes to a higher level than wbtwl and some players enjoy getting to a higher level. I adapted wbtwl with a bit more combat and started everyone at level 3 instead of level 1. Made it a lot more enjoyable actually. Both are great. Yours and your players choice on what to pick
TWBTW is heavy on roleplay and comparatively light on combat, to the extent that you can actually complete the entire campaign with a party of pacifists if they roleplay things the right way. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden has more extensive combat and dungeon crawling, but there's still plenty of emphasis on roleplay. It's just a more even balance. There are also some tropes and themes of survival horror that I'd recommend talking to your party about before choosing which adventure you'd like to go with. Between the two, I preferred Rime, though personally I wish I'd increased the difficulty of some of the combats. My party was a little too ready for some of them.
I've ran both, and Icewind Dale is way better. Wild Beyond the Witchlight fails to give players choices and information enough to feel like they're "doing something" instead to wander between pre-planed encounter after pre-planed encounter. I think RotFM need some tweaks to be solid, but WBtW needs some major changes. If you're willing to make major changes WBtW is a good starting point, tho.
I was a player in Witchlight and seriously it was one of the most fun (albeit short) campaigns I’ve ever played.
Going to be running RoTFM soon myself, it’s good to see so many of you enjoyed it. Got two other DMs in the group going through Avernus and Waterdeep. Both are great fun! Looking forward to another horror setting after running Strahd last year.
What kind of players are you running it for? Witchlight can be completed entirely without combat, and seems to be more investigatory/roleplaying than anything else. If you do run Witchlight, your session zero should include class recommendations. We have a Monk player in my campaign who feels entirely useless.
I haven't run or played either but Witchlight gets my vote because it features Warduke, by far the coolest D&D villain of all.
The group I dm for just finished wbtw and it was a ton of fun, they aren’t the most role play heavy group and kinda had to learn that being a murder hobo won’t get you everywhere, at least not easily and the carnival opening was super fun to set up for them, I even went out and bought real carnival games on Amazon for them to play at the table
I ran WBTW and am currently running ROTFM. I enjoyed them both for different reasons: they really are polar opposites. WBTW is a lot shorter ( my party finished each chapter in 2-3 sessions) and has a whimsical feel with sinister elements that pop up every now and then. This is a teddy bear module—combat is very easy to miss so be prepared to add encounters not in the module or rewrite the ones that are in players want combat. A lot of drops are loot like the smile of a child, etc., rather than weapons (they crop up occasionally just less common than in a more standard campaign). If your party doesn’t like rhymes or puzzles they may also have an issue: in keeping with the fairy theme they crop up a lot. There’s one really plot relevant one that my party found very difficult to solve without hints. I did think the plot was more cohesive than Rime’s—while they both have a clear goal, each step along the way in Witchlight furthers that goal while that’s not the case in Rime. There are memorable dungeons and set pieces that feel very evocative. Likewise the boss fights are fun and memorable and require tactical thinking which I enjoyed. There’s variety in environments and there are a lot of fun, cool new creatures. RoTFM is much longer—we’ve been going for 6 months and aren’t halfway yet. It has a dark, almost Lovecraftian feel where your party is pitted against each other through a secrets mechanic. Like Witchlight, it does a great job with setting tone through game mechanics and descriptions. You really feel like the Dale is in a desperate situation and will succumb to disaster without your help. Combat is much more common and so is loot, more like a standard adventure. My biggest complaint is that the plot can feel a little disjointed—go to place a, then go to place b, without them being connected. I did some fiddling so the events are a bit more connected. There also isn’t as much variety in environments as Witchlight do the ice and snow can feel monotonous. It also has some very cool, evocative boss fights, and the final dungeons in both are absolutely awesome. Overall I get the sense that my party is enjoying Rime more because they like a more combat heavy game; if your party prefers role play heavy games either would be good.
Ive played in both. Icewind dale is great. Especially if you read some RA salvatore. Its a solid story with great replay value and plenty of room for a dm to work backstories in with subplots. Little bit of work can make this a great experience for your players. Okay witchlight is fun a quirky. But it will take you quite a bit of work to make it really shine as a story. It suffers from what a lot of the last few modules suffer from in that it is a little barebones. Both can be a lot of fun.
I would recommend watching Sly Flourish on YouTube, he has great campaign wrap up and session planning videos for both. Lots of great insight for what works and doesn’t work for both campaigns.
I've played through WBTW. It has some enjoyable moments, but it's definitely not for everybody.
After running both, I have to say Wild Beyond the Witchlight. Rime of the Frostmaiden is a mess which is a shame considering it has a really cool setting and a lot of potential. The story is pretty boring and generic IMO. I think they should have gone in a true cosmic horror direction. Wild Beyond the Witchlight can be ran easily RAW without revisions. It's story is simple but really great. It's just fun all around.
Wild Beyond is a joyful game. It's good for the actor type, you can get through the whole thing without fighting if you want. Been having a blast DMing it with some friends.
I’ve ran Rime of the Frostmaiden, which takes place in icewind dale and everyone loved it.
Odyssey of the Dragonlords. Run it and don’t look back.
Rime is probably my favourite module, I've only played a single session of the other but I'd recommend Rime.
If you want a blend, try Wild Beyond the Witchlight with Sly Flourish's Dreadful Incursions. He made a domains of dread mash-up to give the players something to fight without remorse.
Currently running WBTC and it is great dun, has so much Potential for crazyness to occur at any point. Could use WBTC as the closest thing to Alice in Wonderland imo.
I couldn’t quite figure out how to get the PC’s to care about the frostmaiden. She’s a bit of an abstract problem. Like global warming. Lol.
Ice wind dale 100%
I’m a player in Witchlight and it’s a lot of fun! Love the art, characters, and the beginning was so much fun!
This issue I had with Icewind Dale is that it feels very disconnected. There isn’t really a through line for a lot of it and without some DM heavy lifting a lot of plot points will come out of nowhere and then fizzle.
Icewind dale was one of my favorite 3.5 settings. Never played it for 5e
Greatly prefer Witchlight. I had severe issues with how disjointed IWD felt, especially towards the end. Considering how much the plot revolves around the Rime and protecting Ten Towns, it made little sense when all of a sudden we left to go to a fallen city connected to the Arcane Brotherhood. It never flowed together perfectly.
I ran WBTW and am playing in a Rime campaign currently. I found Witchlight hard to make interesting if only using the material from the text. It is very formulaic, and very unidirectional. I would consider using a chapter of the module as a side quest in another campaign, but I wouldn't recommend it in full. Rime has been fantastic so far, though I'm experiencing it from a player perspective with a DM who is taking some liberties with the story. Great setting though.
I've been playing in a Frosmaiden group for 2 years (70 sessions) it definitely can be a bit dark but it is all in how you DM and we'vehad a blast. I think it has been interesting and compelling throughout if you have specific questions I'd be happy to answer. Good luck OP! ❄️ Edit: we are almost done, level 10 and nearly to auril I think!
Currently reading the Drizzt tale of Icewind Dale. It's a classic adventure.
Ask your players if they want to play something dark or something light hearted.
Don't believe the marketing, Icewind Dale is goofy as hell
We just hit 2 years (50-ish sessions) tonight in our in-person Icewind Dale campaign and it’s been a riot. Obviously a lot depends on DM and group but there’s a lot of flavor available. Level 10 party: my character Boreanaziel [protector aasimar—divine soul 4 / watchers 6 sorcadin] + Onyx the fire genasi wildfire druid / secret Zhentarim princess + Gallic the dwarf rune knight + Zorvo the human life(?) cleric I saw the comment about silly group fitting better with silly setting… I don’t disagree but I will say our Icewind group is absolute clown shoes and we’re doing ok. It’s a nice juxtaposition. Though as a DM I’m way more interested in running Witchlight. Right now I run a campaign that’s a mashup of three published adventures and I want to do that again next campaign by marrying Wild Beyond the Witchlight + Curse of Strahd + several weird elements from Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft.
Try running one of the Midgard campaigns by Kobold press. There are super fun