Dungeons & Dragons‘ latest adventure, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, has been out for almost a week now, and more players have had a chance to try out the chilling Far North adventure, maybe even planning out a first session or two. Some people may have combed through the adventure book and decided to start with a session zero for their DnD campaign, a practice becoming more and more common as more people recognize its use.
Some players may be familiar with Icewind Dale through the Drizzt Do’Urden books written by R. A. Salvatore, or by playing other adventures in the setting. Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is a full-length, twelve-level adventure that dabbles in modern themes of paranoia and isolation, and one feature in particular plays a big part into making teams not trust each other: character secrets. The book includes over a dozen secrets that players can take, and ties them into the story in various ways so that players can have their characters feel connected. DMs can look into inserting this more into their campaigns, and can take inspiration from the way Icewind Dale approaches secrets.
WARNING: The following section contains spoilers for some of the Icewind Dale campaign, proceed with caution!
Usually, Dungeons and Dragons parties want to have a strong level of trust with each other, even if they don’t know everything about everyone else. After all, when players are going up against anything from a DM’s random encounters to a dragon boss, they want to know they can count on their fellow party members not to stab them in the back. While Icewind Dale doesn’t encourage excessive inter-party conflict anymore than most adventures do, it does explicitly provide for characters to hide things from one another.
The Icewind Dale includes a section called Appendix B: Character Secrets, and it has a list of seventeen potential secrets players can insert into their characters’ backstories to help get them in the mood for a horror-themed DnD game. Like most campaigns, players are encouraged to develop their character’s backstories, although many DMs will know that this can range from a vague one-sentence idea to several handwritten pages, depending on the experience level and style of the player.
The secrets in this adventure’s appendix are designed to be photocopied and cut out, then shuffled like a deck of cards for players to pick in order to accentuate backgrounds. The book adds that players who just can’t see a specific secret fitting with their character should be allowed to redraw, like a low-intelligence barbarian picking the Runaway Author secret, where the Dungeon and Dragons character’s backstory would involve them writing a scandalously famous book.
In Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, players get an explicit way to incorporate their characters into the world of the campaign, which is especially helpful given that a lot of people just aren’t as familiar with Icewind Dale, which is one of the less focused-on locations in the Forgotten Realms. This is a problem players may also face if their DM is homebrewing part or all of the campaign setting and plot, where players can’t just look up what a city is on the Forgotten Realms wiki. DMs who take the time to come up with secrets like this could also take the time to incorporate them into the campaign.
It’s important for DnD players to feel like they have a high level of agency, and good DMs will avoid excessive railroading even in an adventure as unique as Icewind Dale. The randomization factor of the secrets might seem counter-intuitive for DMs who want to give their players as much agency as possible, but every DM has some level of control over what their players bring to the table, even if it’s just veto power. A high-intrigue heist-themed campaign set in the city of Neverwinter might not welcome a player who wants to play a Changeling druid hermit who lives in the forest, for example.
Some of Icewind Dale‘s secrets give the player more story to play with off the bat, but arguably they all have great potential. The Alagondar Scion, for example, explicitly tells the player they’re the last known heir to Neverwinter and are on the run from the city’s power-hungry regent. This could seem at first glance like a railroading secret, but players could go all sorts of directions with a little creativity: maybe one player would play a philandering bard who’s trying to escape the responsibility of rule, while another plays a cunning wizard who’s secretly plotting to amass enough forces to overthrow the evil regent.
Some secrets introduce a certain level of uncertainty into the game, both for the player and for the DM. The Old Flame secret, for example, gives the player the ability to at any time (outside of combat, and one-time-use only) declare that any one NPC within view is actually their long-lost lover, and that ex-lover may have a complicated past but will be friendly toward the player. This could easily lead to hilarity (declaring a cranky old man to be one’s paramour) or work to the player’s advantage (choosing one of the Ten-Towns leaders in a moment when the players need that town’s cooperation). Experienced DMs can give the player what they want but include some sort of catch that means everything isn’t all it seems: “YES, the town leader is your lover, AND she has a child with your rival.”
This is something that will take practice if DMs and players aren’t used to it, but adding in specific secrets tied to the setting can make players feel more included and invested in the story’s events, as well as giving DMs a shortcut to conveying certain information. In Icewind Dale, having a player with the Pirate Cannibal background in the party is an easy way for the DM to give the players directions to a shipwreck, which could save time spent hunting around for an NPC to give them this info. It’s not something that will work with every group of players, but adding in character secrets brings interesting potential to a game that DMs can look into.
Dungeons and Dragons: Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden is available to play now.
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