- Are we thinking lots of
weird artifacts as well?
Magical items, I mean.
- So, without going too
much into the story.
- Yeah.
- Magic is definitely an
important element of it.
There is a selection of magic item and
actually just a small
hand-full of new spells.
Partly because the story demanded it,
but that's not the focus.
That's not the focus.
- That's very good to know.
- Yeah.
Now, I will say, there are some ...
There is a couple of some really amazing,
amazingly powerful and terrifying
magic items in this adventure.
- I can't, I want to spoil it,
but I can't, it's just.
I can't.
- It's gonna be so fun marketing this.
- If the players get their
hands on these things,
their gonna be, it's gonna be so much fun.
Yeah, like I'm really looking forward to
reading the tales of what
happens when characters
actually find these things.
- Why does this make you so happy?
Why does it, 'coz I'm
gitty with excitement.
This feels like a cinematic
event for me for some reason and
I can't quite figure
out in my head, because
it can't just only be,
I do love this stuff.
I love 30 days of night.
I love the ritual.
I like all the stories
that are like this and
then I like to hide after it, but
there is so much creativity of,
you like you have that open wasteland.
Like, you had to,
you must have cut some stuff. Right?
- We ended up, we didn't throw,
we didn't leave much behind.
- [Todd] Okay.
- [Chris] We collapsed one
chapter into another and
so a chapter kinda shrank and
got condensed,
- Right.
- But that was more for structural reasons
than anything else.
I won't be labored to say that it was this
weird case where we had
a very sandboxy chapter,
then a very linear narrative chapter,
then another sandboxy chapter,
then a linear narrative.
We decided to sort of
collapse the sandboxy chapters
upfront and then have
the more linear stuff
trail behind it and that
required some regiggling, but
no we didn't throw much
away in this adventure.
In fact, this adventure
ballooned slightly.
Partly because we had more heart and
partly because we had more
words at the end of it all.
There are 26 discreet adventure locations.
One way to think about it is,
if you're familiar with
the essentials kit and
how it's structured,
basically like a loose
narrative with all of
these discreet locations
that are all individually
pretty small and self-contained.
There's a,
this is kinda the next step beyond that.
It takes the lessons,
the framework of the essentials kit and
just sort of runs with it.
All against the backdrop
of this frozen ...
- It's like a very, very large
dungeon in terms of like.
It's like lots of spread
out locations and then ...
- But there are a couple,
there are a few big
showpiece locations as well.
That was also important and
that everything can't be
a short one night stand.
There's a couple of big
villainous kind of dungeon
locations that I think DMs
will really, really love.
I won't go too much into that except
to say they're not like any,
our normal dungeon locations.
- I have a feeling I'm
gonna miss the days of
Dungeon and The man Madge and
the claustrophobia of that.
- Oh, you know there, I
think that claustrophobia
is a real fear.
Well it is a real fear obviously and
there are, there'll be some
fun little claustrophobic
elements in this one as well.
- Well good. Good
- [Instructor] Yeah.
There's a place called
The caves of hunger.
Which is
- No
- You told me a name of location,
I'm like no!
This being an adventure
level 1 through 12,
I'm concerned you may get to the end, but
will you still like yourself?
Like will you still be okay?
Because this is, there is almost a ....
When you go through that much scariness,
the horror because
psychological even if you
survive all these monsters
or these artifacts that you encounter
or the townsfolk themselves
and their beliefs and
what they want to do to you
'coz you're an outsider.
What are you gonna be at level 12?
When you walk out of the waste?
Or do you decide to stay?
- Well that will depend on
the choices you make and
I mean, there is a good.
There is a happy ending to the story if
you make it all the way and
you do the right things.
I expect they will be in
a much better place, but
as for you personally with
all those sort of horrors
you've seen, well you know,
you can take comfort in
the treasure you've found
and the friends you've made along the way.
- The friends you've eaten along the way.
to survive.
- This adventure, more
than any other I think,
has some interesting and dramatic
conclusions to be had and
I look forward to seeing
how many parties end
up going the one way and
how many end up going the
other and that kinda thing.
- It already feels like a very much,
everyone gets together and
tells how they ended their story.
- I mean chances are your
character is going to end
the same way Jack Nicolson's
character does in The shining.
Just this, you know, frozen
dead corpse in the snow.
But if not, the possibilities are endless.
- That's the tag line, right?
On the book.
- The tag line on the book is
some secrets are worth dying for.
- Oh
- Which I mean is something
that was stuck in my head
actually since before
the project had begun.
- [Announcer] Pre-order Icewind Dale,
Rime of the Frostmaiden
now on D&D Beyond and
get exclusive pre-order
rewards including digital dice.
