New Campaign: 5e Winter Fantasy

Art by Wayne Reynolds, obviously.

***Slight Spoilers for Robin***

The globetrotting cat burglar campaign came to an end (or, at least, a hiatus) because we just ran out of ideas. That happens in multiple-times-a-week duet campaigns. Personally, I kind of think of it as a feature, not a bug, because I have too many ideas for campaigns and too little time—but this time was bittersweet because we really didn’t want to end it. We just couldn’t think of ways to keep it going.

Because we skipped our quasi-tradition of doing a short horror campaign in October, the successor to Bev Slick’s adventures is a winter holiday-ish, fey-themed D&D 5e campaign. (We’re a little burnt out on Savage Worlds at the moment, and Robin already knows how to play 5e, so we don’t have the growing pangs of learning a new system.) I have this very vague idea in my head that it’s going to have a romance novel plot about Robin’s character unthawing an icy fey lord’s heart as she rises in levels as one of them newfangled Glamour bards, but I’m trying to leave myself room to maneuver.

So far, the game is set in a seemingly low-magic, vaguely Germanic world (specifically not my beloved Forgotten Realms). Halflings and dwarves mix freely with humans but are regarded with suspicion; elves and gnomes exist, but haven’t appeared yet. I suspect both peoples dwell apart from humans, closer to the fey than other mortal races; in fact, that is now officially canon. Elves dwell on the fringes of the equivalent to the Feywild, subject to the archfey; that should actually work pretty well to bolster the relatively sparse fey in the various 5e books (I can at least cannibalize drow stats). Gnomes live closer to the forest edge, trading with human and halfling communities.

Our heroine, the human 1^st level bard Orianna, belongs to a human ethnic group that dwells primarily in the east of the kingdom (the game is set in the west) and which uses Celtic names taken from the Xanathar’s Guide to Everything tables; they are the original inhabitants of the area, and other humans think of them as the “Old People.” The “Young People” use English and Germanic names, but certainly contain their share of dark-haired, dark-complexioned people.

Orianna is on the last leg of her yearly wandering, hoping to make it to a large town or city to while away the winter when the snowdrifts trap everyone inside (it being easier for a minstrel to make a living amid a larger population who won’t all hear her playing the same songs every night). The first game session began in the small village of Hartshold, and she’s trying to make it to Ramsford, where both a duke and a bishop reside.

In Hartshold, she met three traveling companions who are working their way north with her. Hans is probably a 3^rd level Monster Slayer ranger with more than a little of the fairy tale woodsman to him; he’s a burly human that I imagine looking a lot like Joe Manganiello, with a scar above his left eye into his hairline (a scar that presumably has something to do with his left eye being amber-colored and his right eye being blue). He also drinks a suspicious medicine made of wolf’s bane. Corrin and Bree are two married halflings on the run from disapproving parents; they’re shy and cautious, and Orianna has witnessed what was apparently some kind of shapeshifting spell affect them during the night.

(They actually switched genders, each assuming the other’s name the next day in an attempt to keep up the ruse that nothing’s wrong or weird about them. Orianna hasn’t figured out exactly what’s going on yet because she barely saw their faces the previous day; she just knows something is off.)

On their first day of travel together, a sudden winter storm came from the east, driving the characters to seek shelter in the forest beside which the road winds. While huddling around a fire, they witnessed a large, black hare with red eyes bound out of nowhere and watch them for a bit. The hare was chased off by frost sprites (or something similar) that were either blown along the winter winds or were causing/escorting it. When the travelers returned to the road, Orianna saw the black hare eating one of the sprites. (It should be noted that I’m describing the sprites as more like the fairies in Fantasia than their traditional D&D description.)

After rescuing a stranded carter, Orianna and her companions got a lift to the next village and found room at the crowded inn. While Bree and Corrin stayed in their rented room, Orianna and Hans were joined at their table in the common room by Lapin, a mysterious weirdo who resembles a spaced-out version of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (and who also has boundary issues). Clad in black fur and leather, the intensely-curious Lapin invited himself to join their group on the next day’s journey—a journey that will be complicated by heavy overnight snow.

And that’s where we left this barely-begun adventure before going to see Lindsey Sterling in concert last night (the middle act of her show providing renewed inspiration for the “winter fey” theme). I think I’ll probably award Robin a level the next time we play, and then work on getting her whisked off to fairyland so that she can get the proper infusion of fey-ness before she starts getting her college’s abilities.

Right now, the whole of everything is pretty deliberately nebulous. I want to mix the wondrous and the beautiful and the creepy and the weird into something that’s more than an extended remix of Labyrinth. You can’t mandate love interests in a duet game—we know from experience that this robs the game of delight—so I need to set up a few more potential beaus for Orianna. (I don’t plan on Hans being a central love interest, but I could be surprised about that.) I also need some proper villains; the antihero bad boy leads of romance always reveal their true goodness by combatting something worse than them (sometimes pride, sometimes prejudice, sometimes a cult of debauched aristocrat pedophiles). Has anybody done 5e stats for any of those 4e archfey?

Comments and suggestions are welcome!