Attronarch was selling off some adventures and I seized the opportunity - got a bunch of the OSE classics - completely forgetting I had a copy of Winters Daughter on the way as part of my Dolmenwood order. All to the good, I will probably pass on my extra copy as a raffle prize or the like.
I thought I would run it against my Friday night open tables on the 'off weeks' of my dual mode game. This was an experiment on how old school adventures survive contact with 5e players - in short pretty darn well, would solidly recommend.
So what do you actually get in the book?
Winters Daughter - flagged as your better replacement for Rise of the Dragon Queen in Dwiz's "Enough Dweeb Adventures" - comes as a 24-page A5-ish hardback. Six pages are background for DM, players and the world, a page at the back are the magic items found and the rest is the adventure. Within there are four sections/locations - the exterior of the tomb, the tomb, the exterior of the tower and within the tower.
There is tons of great stuff in here - the main encounter outside the tomb, the wierd old stuff within, some rooms with nothing but creepy stuff, others with active threats. Lots to interact with, poke at, and sometimes be dangerously emperilled by. There are a couple of ways through it all and many ways in which parts may never be interacted with.
The maps are on the inside covers for all the four locations and relatively easily referenced with a finger bookmark. There are lots of evocative touches in the room descriptions, some treasures and secrets easily missed unless people really pry and poke at the edges.
Session Report: Winters Daughter
Party of four - Human Druid, Grung Bard, Dwarf Fighter, Elf Rogue
At the request of a local priest the party set out to find and search the lost tomb of Sir Chyde for the magical sword within. After trekking up to the nearby forest plateau and finding monks about their inscrutable business, strange druids were convinced not to sacrifice anyone today and the tomb was found.
Facing down various hazards in a fairly experimentalist way the party ventured through the tomb until the core resting place of Sir Chyde was opened. The quiet made people very jumpy and they marched past quite a few details in places that saved them from engaging with traps. The spooky stillness got to them after a while and they spent a long time engaging with the dancing skeletons trying to figure out what was going on.
They never even came close to finding the clues for disarming the guardians so got into a brutal fight at the entry to the knights tomb. Once within the ghost of the knight requested their aid in bringing his ring to the faerie realm for him to be reunited with his beloved and they needed very little push to decide to help.
[DM Commentary - the 'pry up everything, poke in every corner' mentality of real old-school dungeoneering was absent so traps and treasures were missed as the party remained quite mission focussed on the one thing they had come in to do. Perhaps a party that had come in purely as looters might run into more of the secrets, traps and treasures.]
The party set out to bear the ring to the fey-realm, saw a beautiful reunion of long separated lovers, then laid various hauntings to rest at the tomb and hiked home with their findings, including the sword which was given to a grateful temple.
[DM Commentary - the romance story was gleefully picked up by the players and they were very motivated to see it through - something different to a fetch quest or a raid. People appreciated it.]
Session Report Ends
I found this ran well otherwise and was a great old school dungeon with things to poke at, secrets to find but not one single rail-road through the whole thing. I ran it as a pretty juicy one-shot a five hour session with 3-3.5 hours using the adventure, the rest being the set-up and hex-crawling to the tombs location. The players went in focussed on recovering a single thing but then getting side tracked into the strangeness within. They liked the NPC connections and bought into making their wishes happen for the happy ending.
I've run Winter's Daughter a couple of times, predominantly for 5e players. One party of three lost seven characters (!), almost all of them to an entirely avoidable trap in one of the first rooms. I'd chalk it up to bad Gaming, but after the first two or three you'd think they'd have learnt the lesson. In any case, I'd agree – a good introduction to old school gaming, playable in one session if you move quickly or two if the players are painstakingly comprehensive.
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