Rime of the Frostmaiden Part One: Ten-Towns

 I've picked up my copy of Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and I'm currently reading through it.

Oh, heads up, if you are planning on playing this, you might want to stop here given spoilers. I'm keeping specific details pretty vague, but the overall arc of the campaign is something I'm discussing.

The initial segment of the campaign takes place across the various settlements known as Ten-Towns (weirdly, it's ten towns, though most of these are more village or hamlet than town.)

The beginning of the adventure is very loosely structured. As things begin, you show up in the Ten Towns of Icewind Dale, and in classic D&D style, you look for work at the taverns. Most of these quests are rather straightforward - you'll encounter some dangers in the frigid wastelands, but until you hit level 4 you're still going to stay mostly around the settled regions of the Dale.

I'll be honest here, the adventures are not particularly "horror" themed, though my understanding is that the intention is to build up a rapport with the people of Ten-Towns. While a couple of these are sizable towns (at least by RPG standards,) some are really tiny villages that are just barely scraping by. Most of the people here are good-natured and just trying to get by in the horrific permanent winter in which they're trapped.

The crisis in the Dale is that Auril, the goddess of winter's fury (and eponymous Frostmaiden), has been casting a spell every night that prevents the sun from rising over Icewind Dale, meaning that "day" is really just a dim twilight, and night is pure darkness. The temperatures have dropped precipitously - it's something like an average of -49 Fahrenheit, so the adventure actually assumes that player characters have cold-weather clothing (though players with frost resistance are all good!)

There are a few signs of how desperate things are getting - once a month, each of the towns makes a sacrifice to Auril to appease her wrath. While the towns that are struggling harder might just go without fires and light, or give up a day's catch of fish, the towns that are doing better (maybe it's why they're doing better?) have gone, well, all Shirley Jackson.

I think as DM you might choose to give the players a stronger overall motivation - clearly, it would be a heroic act to end the endless winter, and so it would make sense to make this an overall goal similar to how in Tomb of Annihilation you're there to end the death curse and in Descent into Avernus, at least past level 5, you're there to save Elturel.

But these early levels, I think, are meant to get you used to what life is like here, and also to develop a reputation amidst the inhabitants.

I've started reading the next chapter, which takes players from level 4 to level 7, and which sends you farther out into the frozen wastes. The monsters one faces certainly get scarier, but we'll see how the story develops. Having skipped ahead a bit, I do know that At the Mountains of Madness certainly appears to be one of the major inspirations for the story, and while I don't know if I'd classify it all as "cosmic horror," there are elements of that genre that play a big role here.