Afterword - Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden

Afterword. Isolation is a big theme of this adventure. Little did I know that Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden would be published during a pandemic that would isolate billions of people throughout the world, myself included, trapping us in our dungeons for weeks on end. Only now do I understand how the people of Ten-Towns must feel. Fortunately for us, Dungeons & Dragons is a proven cure for isolation. It empowers us to spend hours upon hours in the company of good friends, doing that thing we've been doing ever since humans gathered around the first campfire: telling stories. Whether it's played around a table or over the Internet, D&D has the power to make us step out of the real world into places that exist on the fringes of our wildest imaginations. Icewind Dale is just such a place. Created by Ed Greenwood, the father of the Forgotten Realms, and brought to life by R.A. Salvatore in the Drizzt novels, Icewind Dale reminds me of a domain of dread. It's cut off from the rest of the world by blizzards, mountains, glaciers, and the stormy sea, and even though it's not a horror setting, I leaned into the horror pretty hard because I wanted this story to be different from previous explorations of Icewind Dale. Inspiration came primarily from two sources: John Carpenter's 1982 film The Thing and H.P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness. This adventure contains homages to both works, as well as a few nods to other works of horror, including Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name, and Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien. When you get a chance, take a look at the credits. As you can see, many people were involved in making this book. I would call your attention to one person in particular, although given her modesty, I suspect she wouldn't want me to. Kate Irwin, a long-time Wizards employee, has been art directing D&D for many years. With help from Jeremy Crawford, Emi Tanji, Bree Heiss, and myself, Kate...