u/GanonFodder

I'm gonna mail my players the flyers. They get the tickets during session 1. I have wings for them to wear too.

Art lovingly stolen. Found it in a post here on reddit somewhere. I printed it at staples and covered the using some holographic laminate self-adhesive sheets.

I have one remote player so I'm gonna send his stuff with him when I see him next but it'll be wrapped and numbered so I tell him when to open which one.

Running the session 0 lost things one shot.

Just finished rotfm yesterday. My first campaign to DM. 

6 players, ended at level 8 (I underleveled them somewhat because of the number of players). 2 fighters, 2 clerics, warlock, wizard

2.5 years, 57 sessions.

I changed a lot of the details but kept the general design of the campaign the same. Biggest change was Auril slowly shifting the Icewindale to a pocket plane which removed a lot of the "why don't y'all just leave" questions. Gave a sense of urgency.

Really tried to tie my characters into the plot. Some had secrets, a couple did not. One character had amnesia which was a cornerstone of the campaign (she was looking for her parents, and they on am expedition 2 years prior entered the glacier and were killed by Auril who started the Rime then)

Had a cleric switch gods approx 25% of the way through, from peace domain to death domain. Other cleric worshipped his own ice god (homebrew God) which caused some nice tension and motivation for killing Auril.

Used the well recommended Dungeon Masters Guide companion supplement and the Towers Expanded supplement (this was my favorite). My group preferred a linear story so I picked and chose a subset of the chapter 1 & 2 quests to give them hooks for rather than presenting every hook.

Final battle took place at the Mythallar. I suck at battle and my dice hated me (7 nat 1s!), so everyone survived. Took about 3.5 hours for the final battle.

Ask me anything!

Image from final battle: https://imgur.com/a/9720nZs

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A bit more about my player-characters:

• Cleric - switched to Raven Queen who tasked him to stop Auril. The other gods where having a hard time communicating in the pocket dimension but the Raven Queen could as she is death and you cannot remove death.

• ice cleric - I turned grimskalle into a desecrated former temple of Shor (his ice god). The ife giants inside where crupted by Auril and he made it his mission to return Grimskalle to its rightful God.

• pirate fighter - was on the dark Dutchess and survived (no cannibal bit because that wasn't the vibe). She survived because Auril stepped in to mark her as a potential champion of Auril. She kept tempting her with power because I had it so that Auril wanted the Mythallar to complete her control over the pocket dimension but needed a humanoid to attune to it. When the pirate fighter refused, Auril turned to Averice.

• hunter fighter - just wanted to hunt interesting monsters. Died at the black cabin but was revived by Lathander. She became a follower of Lathander, but in her own way.

• wizard - player had to miss a bunch of sessions so his story became that he was from a time before the netherese cities fell. He randomly and uncontrollably would disappear. This power came from a fey god, the Violet Lady.

• Warlock to the violet lady - illithid ship muddled her brain and she had amnesia but eventually got some memories back where she was an agent raised by the Violet Lady and she was searching for her parents. She attuned to the Mythallar. The Mythallar, broken, started absorbing souls and the magic from the obelisk. You should see the souls of the people who died nearby it repeating their deaths over and over and over again. When she attuned to the Mythallar, she obtained some of the magic from the obelisk and tried to fix the timeline (stopping her parents from dying) but that kep breaking the timeline so she instead starting nudging things. She's the one who accidentally cause the wizard to start jumping through time. She nudged fate (occasionally I gave advantage on certain rolls where the characters would see flashes of violet). She basically Dr. Strange'd the timeline and got all the characters here. She was her own patron and though herself everything she needed to know. She had no powers left once she released the souls, returned the plane to material plane, ended the rime.

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I went rogue with a lot of stuff that wasn't in the book because, to me, it was more fulfilling for my players. A lot of the lore was tweaked to fit my players better.