Axeholm
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Continuing my thoughts from yesterday about it being a mini-Khazad-dûm, one thing that always stood out to me about the Axeholm quest in Dragon of Icespire Peak is the lack of tone-setting to help build tension for what the characters are walking into. Yes, the Dwarven ruin is briefly (and nicely) described as “a dark,…
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I have always seen Axeholm as a mini Khazad-dûm adventure. Perhaps the game designers did as well, since the abandoned dwarven stronghold is described as “a dark, sullen tomb, full of dust and bad memories.” And, if you’re going to have a mini Khazad-dûm adventure, you need a Book of Mazarbul, right? If you want…
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Trinkets don’t get enough love. Players can choose one from the list in the Player’s Handbook at character creation, but if/when they do select a trinket, the player doesn’t know what to do with it, so it just just becomes some forlorn item on a character sheet for most people. To me, trinkets are a…
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This week, I shared my experience altering Axeholm to be run as a three hour one-shot adventure. Today, I’ll conclude those thoughts by sharing the custom adventure hook I crafted for the Axeholm adventure, as well as an adventure summary. Adventure Hook The characters find themselves at The Dogwater, a roadside inn at the intersection…
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There sure are a lot of banshees around the Triboar Trail. Let’s see, there’s Agatha out by Conyberry. There’s Vyldara haunting the halls of Axeholm. And there’s Miraal at the Tower of Storms. Seems like you can throw a stone in any direction from Phandalin and hit a banshee. What if one of those banshees…
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I recently ran a couple of one-shot adventures for Dungeons & Drafts using the Axeholm side quest from Dragon of Icespire Peak. Since each session was confined to three hours, I found it necessary to pick and choose which of the 30 keyed areas of Axeholm’s map I’d keep in my game. In the end,…