Dungeons & Dragons Icewind Dale: Rime of The Frostmaiden (D&D Adventure Book)

I have read or DM'd every 5e adventure published by Wizards of the Coast. I think Icewind Dale is excellent, not quite as good as my favorites, but close. Spoilers below.The basic story: eternal winter has settled on ten towns in a valley called Icewind Dale, caused by an evil goddess of winter named Auril. The first two chapters are a bunch of little mini quests around the towns and the dale, and the best ones are really really good. For example, there is a goblin fortress run by a gnome who has disguised himself as a goblin boss; the PCs can help him escape from his own increasingly restive followers. These quests do a great job of bringing the ten towns to life, as each one has unique little personalities in it and lots of local color (some of it very dark, like human sacrifice). They mostly do not have anything to do with ending winter or anything seriously important. In the third and fourth chapters, the PCs discover that a duergar warlord has built a mechanical dragon that he's going to use to burn down the towns. The PCs have to choose between taking out the warlord versus saving the towns from the dragon, which has flown off to go fry some townsfolk. Excellent warlord lair, excellent theater of the mind stuff to save the towns from the dragon, excellent strategic dilemma. The fifth chapter is a trip to Auril's Island to take her out. The last chapters are a sort of long coda that has nothing to do with ending winter or saving the towns: there is a trip to an ancient, ruined city of mages buried in a glacier; the PCs can enter a time machine there and go back in time a few thousand years--which is a very odd ending to the whole story. There is also a scroll by which one can summon a tarrasque, if so inclined. I haven't DM'd this part of the story yet, so I am less confident in predicting how well it will go.Pros: there are just a hundred little touches that make the ten towns come to life. My players are about halfway thru the story as I write this, and they REALLY care about saving these towns and about their reputation there. This reminds me of other fully imagined worlds in the best WOTC products, such as Waterdeep and Menzoberranzan. And the little quests and even the random encounters (which are the best random encounters I've ever seen) are mostly superb. I also like it that it is less linear than some of the stories; my players feel like they have real choices about what to do next, in fact they're not even sure yet what the major quest is going to be (this is because there are in fact three big quests: save the towns from the dragon, kill Auril, explore the lost city). For the most part, the adventure is easy to DM: the players choose to do X mini encounter, and you can read about X and run it with little preparation, and at least in my case it has gone very well.Cons: for the story to work, the players have to do the warlord first (because he's appropriate for 5th level PCs), kill Auril second (7th level), and go to the lost city (10th level) third--and it turns out it's tough for the DM to make sure they do this in the correct order. The book has NPCs tell the players: "time to go do this," which is a little heavy handed. There are ways for the DM to foreshadow these things to steer them a bit less blatantly, but it is a bit of work. And I'm not sure yet if the lost city part of this is going to feel important, as opposed to kind of an old school dungeon crawl for no better reason than exploration itself. Some players like that, some may not.Verdict: it's not quite as good as my favorite 5e adventures (Strahd and Out of the Abyss) but it is similar in creating a fully imagined world, which is what I value most in these big 5e books. I put it slightly below this top level--it's about as good as Waterdeep, which I loved, and perhaps a little better than Storm King's Thunder, which was inconsistent and clunky but had great moments. And I like it better than Tomb of Annihilation (which for some reason I don't like as well as everyone else), Princes, and Tiamat. Really impressive that Wizards can keep coming up with new & fresh flavors of high fantasy, though I worry what they'll do now that they're running out of fantasy novels to steal from. Great job Chris Perkins & Co.

I adapted this into my AD&D 2nd edition adventures and have had a blast. Best recent DnD purchase in years.

Great book! Looks good. No visible wrongs with it. Perfectly packaged.BUT.........Sweet baby Jesus this thing took 10 years to get here. My grandmother is slow but wow, this thing was snail speed getting here. 😳 I could have walked to Vegas and back to Missouri in the time it took to get here. I know it's not their fault, it's usps. But holy cow I would have paid extra to have it shipped faster. Thank God I wasn't dying and this was my life saving antidote because I would have been barried and my wife would have had another baby with a coworker before it got to me. Thank you for the great book tho! Will buy again.( maybe buy a huge puzzle to do while I wait the 4 years for it to get to me. This package literally has been handled more then a 2 dollar hooker at a truckstop)

There is tons of great stuff in here for a DM. It is great to return to Icewind Dale and the FrostMaiden is an epic threat. Been many a year since the days of the video game.The initial setup gives a very sandbox feel with loose or soft plothooks all over the region depending on where the PCs go and one harder plot in each town or hold. Just enough info to give the DM some structure without bogging down with obsessive details. This means that running the same campaign. With several different DMs will still allow high variation even if they all slavishly followed the text.Definitely keep an eye out for neat stuff to put into any campaign from gnome mutant mindflayers to basically doll/puppet creations to one of my favorites the Chwinga. I already use something almost identical to the professor orb.I am excited that with a water campaign Ghostmarch and now an ice setting we might get a desert sourcebook for Al Qadim or Dark Sun next!There is spelljammer content like several of the most recent books and a netherese secret I don't want to spoil.Speaking of secrets I really like how they used secrets and tied backgrounds to the campaign.I love Charms and Supernatural Gifts in general and well mantles and titles and the like. They are a great way for a DM to do something unique for their players PCs.

This is my new favorite campaign setting. Really enjoy the art and very well developed stories.