When DnD fans think of horror, their mind naturally strays to Strahd. Curse of Strahd is by far the most popular fifth edition adventure, and its Gothic vampire tragedy brings a unique form of horror to the tabletop RPG. However, as a long-time fan of spooky campaigns, I’d only occasionally call Curse of Strahd scary. If you want to instill maximum fear, paranoia, and despair in your players, there’s another Dungeons and Dragons module that’s far more upsetting.
At first, 2020’s Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden might not look like a horror module. Rather than vampires and zombies, its cover depicts a snowy scene and an owl-like Fey deity. Pay close attention to that corpse in the corner, though – the one half-covered with snow. In that single image lies the real terror of Icewind Dale.
The general gist of the story is that Auril, that looming creature on the DnD campaign‘s cover, has brought a never-ending night. Surviving without sunlight is challenging enough for the settlement of Ten Towns, but it also has a Duergar invasion and the ruins of a Netherese necropolis to contend with.
Where Curse of Strahd goes all-in on the Gothic genre, Rime of the Frostmaiden dances between several horror subgenres. Chestbursters and crashed alien ships appear alongside ghostly possessions, human sacrifices, and bloodthirsty vampires. This variety means that the dreadful feeling of The Unknown haunts the narrative long into the higher levels. Players never really know what Icewind Dale will throw at them next, and there’s no amount of DnD level ups or long rest prep that can dampen a truly nasty surprise.
We witness many kinds of horror in Icewind Dale, but one is more prominent than the rest. At its heart, Rime of the Frostmaiden is a survival horror campaign. This might take your mind to jumpscare-laden shoot-em-up videogames like Resident Evil, but I’m talking about survival horror in more of a cinematic sense.
Think survival movies like The Descent, Eden Lake, Green Room, or The Ritual, where the characters are just as threatened by the unfamiliar landscape as they are by any antagonist. These films are grim, gritty, and often rely on realism. In a world where everything and everyone is against you, surviving the night is the only goal.
In Rime of the Frostmaiden, the true threat isn’t the snowy setting’s serial killers, immortal Barbarians, or necromancers. It isn’t even Auril, the Big Bad Evil you need to get past to end the eternal winter. Instead, the horror is the winter itself, a threat that’s far more real to us than any fantasy monster.
Horror is often difficult to convey in D&D, as the system is designed to facilitate heroic fantasy. Its traditional Sword and Sorcery structure creates spellslingers and sellswords who grow in power quickly. By the end of a campaign, you’re a superhero that can vaporize even the toughest of enemies. When you have so much power at your fingertips, it’s hard to feel afraid.
Icewind Dale’s landscape reminds even the most hardened adventurer that they are mortal. The arctic wasteland is prone to devastating avalanches that can sweep you off your feet and bury you in an instant. Unending night already makes visibility difficult, but when a violent blizzard hits, it’s easy for players to become lost and separated. Falling into frigid water is essentially a death sentence when there’s no way to get warm.
As exhaustion levels mount, your players will be desperate for a safe place to rest. But Icewind Dale’s dungeon crawls can run long, and protection from the elements can be hard to find. In such extreme conditions, players face difficult choices at every turn. What spell slots can be safely used in combat when you also need them to create shelter and food?
Many horror modules actively strain against the power fantasy structure of Dungeons and Dragons, as they have to in order to create that feeling of vulnerability. Curse of Strahd, for example, makes it difficult to trade and acquire powerful items in order to limit the power ceiling of players. This goes some way towards creating a feeling of danger, but it breaks the genre expectations many players have when approaching a D&D game. That can be disappointing in play.
Besides, it’s not nearly enough of a restriction to actually make the players less of a threat. Most of the dread in Curse of Strahd is established at low levels, where the illusion of Strahd’s overwhelming power is at its highest and encounters are most likely to be deadly. After that, the horror diminishes significantly.
Rime of the Frostmaiden actively leans into the one weakness the D&D system gives your magical superheroes: scarcity. Your powers, however impressive, are finite.
It’s tough to convince a D&D player that they’re powerless, but it’s easy to create scenarios where their resources start to dwindle. This is something former fifth edition designer Mike Mearls recently lamented that D&D players aren’t relying on enough. D&D is designed to be a war of attrition, and leaning into the horror of that creates natural tension.
Not everyone wants their games to be a grueling crawl to victory, but it’s certainly suitable for horror campaigns. The only time I’ve ever seen my Curse of Strahd players break a sweat is when character death feels like a reality. They can handle the ghosts, ghouls, and gore, but they only get nervous when they might not have an answer to the threats they face.
Rime of the Frostmaiden is far from a perfect campaign, of course. Its structure is haphazard, and there are as many poorly thought out encounters as there are epic set pieces. Like most official DnD books, it needs a heavy dose of homebrewing to function properly. However, the overall concept is excellent, and there are enough moments of delightful design to make it worth recommending. Many of those moments are classic examples of horror done right in Dungeons and Dragons. Halloween lovers, eat your frozen heart out.
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