Session 0

Welcome everyone and thanks for your interest in this play test!

I have written down the rules for this system here so have a look around and let me know what needs some clarification!

In the mean time, you can start thinking about your character concepts as we slowly go through the character sheets. A sentence or two is enough to start since the game suggests rolling some secrets for each character.

A few things before we start ...

1. So the Rime of the Frostmaiden is advertised as an horror game. The idea is that the characters find themselves in an hopeless situation and you play their fears and paranoias. Though, being originally D&D5e, this is basically down to the players since you're the heros xD I don't think it has anything particularly bad that can trigger anyone, but I can keep the gory stuff to a minimum if I notice anything.

2. Being an "horror game" we can make it dark and gritty, but we can also be a bit more relaxed and have some fun cinema-like heroics. Yes, maybe the yeti is covered in blood from slaughtering a village, but when its claw lands next to you, you can still climb its arm and run up the gigantic creature to chop its head off with a dramatic spin. Given that you have some freedom to narrate how these things go, we probably should set the tone from the start.

3. I was thinking about running the game as episodes, so "down-time" will be skipped as a quick flashback summary at the start of the episodes. We can run the game as a regular D&D game, but given how long the adventure is for PbP, should we focus on the action?

4. I'm going to use private messages, so you can't be sure what you read is the same as the other players. The idea is to stimulate RPing the communication (or suspicion) between characters instead of the usual assuming "I told them".This is something GP allows us to do but we can have it all in the open if you prefer.

Thanks for the invite! In response to your questions:

1). I am okay with horror elements. I would prefer to have more general descriptions than visceral ones but I by no means need everything censored.

2). I am comfortable with dark and gritty too. I have not played a campaign exclusively with that tone yet but I'm happy to give it a go. My preference here would be to have the ability to have the freedom for lighter moments but an overall more serious and somber tone. I am flexible though.

3). My favorite parts of roleplay are the small moments so I would love to see those fostered. I am okay with episodic, though my preference is to include more than just the "action" elements.

4). I love the idea of the private message. In my mind this allows for even better roleplay! I'm not sure what you mean by the examples that you gave though. I'm assuming we would be using notes between particular people to pass along this information. Please let me know if I've misunderstood.

Also, should we begin with our character concepts here in this thread?

Cool 👌 let’s wait to see what the others think.
Sure, just a basic sketch is fine for now. You can check the setting and rules and let me know what you’d think would fit

Character concept
As stated in recruitment,
Dwarven Übermensch or ÜberZwerg? a Jack of all trades / McGuyver like character knows a little about most things and a lot about a few. Very much into doing things for himself. Abilities would be a couple of cantrips, maybe a few spells, any weapon, any armor, any craft. Not everything will be perfect, might break after 1 use but it'll probably work at least once, well.... maybe 🫣 kind of I've seen it done and I understand the concept so I will try it till I get it right.

Character Concept:

Dwarven Skywatcher - Born in the belly of earth, in love with the heavens above. I'm envisioning an outcast of sorts who watches the moon, stars, and, most interestingly, the auroras of the Great North. He'd be skilled in wilderness survival and magic as a literal hedge mage. He would probably be a somewhat reliable navigator as well as he studies the stars so closely.

1. Horror elements sound great to me. I enjoy vivid descriptions even if they're unpleasant, so no worries on my account. Of course, I'm happy to tone it down based on what everyone's comfortable with.

2. My preference would be to lean hard into the dark and gritty. A hard winter is coming, there's not enough supplies to go around, the travel routes are impassable and desperation is starting to sink in. I like fights to be dangerous and hard-won - nothing is unfair, take every advantage you can get and so on.

3. I'd like to check, do you mean things like recovering from wounds, purchasing goods, crafting tools and the like? In that case, skimming past them in favour of survival and exploration sounds great.

4. Private messages are unusual, but I'm down to try it out. Sounds very interesting! Though I'm not quite sure what you mean by this part:

1. Ok so it looks like horror elements are ok, but maybe a bit more general overall descriptions than exercise details, which I think is more or less what one can expect from a D&D adventure.

2. I think the best way to go is probably for me to be serious and point out how desperate the situation is getting, while letting you start any lighter banter when you'd like.

3. Episodes is ok, but I'm getting the sense of avoiding simple "dungeon crawls". So skipping routine things is fine, but we should preferentially keep the roleplay potential
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4. Private messages is exactly this. Everything working, only testlum and meseszovo see this random message in different colors and it just looks like regular text. The difference compared to a note (below) is that no one can tell it's there, so you can't be sure the others players are reading the same text you are.

Whoa! I definitely saw that text earlier but now it's gone. I had no idea the private message function existed.

So, meseszovo hasn't accepted the invitation yet, but his profile says he didn't log in for 2 days. Probably busy these days and didn't see it yet :D

So far we have two dwarves, one jack of all trades and one hedge wizard. Any idea you'd like to run with @testlum?

@RAAMtentacles, I'm getting the feeling of a ranger/druid hermit type. Could either fit a scholar reading and studying the skies and stars or a faithful or acolyte of some sky, nature or maybe beauty deity. Any preference here?

@Eyes this looks like you probably want to spread your skill level and keep them around level 3 at the start. Sort of does everything ok, but nothing really good. To me, this sounds like someone who had to improvise a lot, probably because it had to struggle to make it most time, maybe an urchin, criminal or a spy sort of character? It could also be the average Joe who just got caught up in something bad. Though the ÜberZwerg idea could also suggest some sort of elite special chosen one, though I'm guessing something like that shouldn't break with the first use :D

ahah yes, I needed the players to be invited for it to work and you joined before I could edit the post :D

I thought private was a secret secret note but it works more like a note hidden in regular text. This means I can say "you see a spider on the ceiling" just to one player and they don't even notice it was just for them!

Perhaps a combination of some kind. I don't think my character is an acolyte but I do like the idea of him being inspired by beauty. Especially in such a dark and terrible place as the Icewind Dale. I also don't feel strongly that he's a traditional academic type as a scholar would be. He has learned more from experience and knows much about how the way things actually work, even if he doesn't know what their name might be in a book.

Where can I get the character sheet?

I'm still tossing a few ideas around. Are you open to us modifying the example racial traits, or do you prefer we stick to them?

Customising races and classes should be ok. I can’t promise they are balanced as they are though I tried 😅

Both me and bowl can help with that as we have a bit of experience with the system.
On the rules sub-threat, there’s a thread about the character sheet that hopeful what things mean. You can quote the first post and copy it into a custom sheet to make a character.

There’s a lot of formulas there so it looks complicated but it should print something easier 😁

Can't quote, thread locked

knew I'd find it, if you go edit that post and add

(Square open bracket)charsheet=Homebrew(Square close bracket)

before and

[/charsheet]

after we can use it

Ah right! I forgot locked threads can’t be quoted. The charsheet is a good suggestion. Should work now

Dang now I have to think of a name....