Icespire Peak and How to Design a Mountain Climbing Adventure

In my current campaign (Dragons of Icespire Peak, the dnd Essentials Kit. See my post about it here), the group is quickly aporoaching the final encounter with Cryovain at the top of Icespire Peak inside a small dungeon called Icespire Hold.

While the dungeon itself has some interesting bits (like an epic rooftop battle with an ice dragon!), it falls victim to a common complaint I have with the Essentials Kit: The dungeons are filled with empty rooms! It really sucks, and its probably the only bad thing about the box (I should do a post about this....).

Regardless, this blog post will focus on making that final ice dragon encounter mean more. What I'm talking about is the journey! Icespire peak has no real descriptors or suggestions for modeling the players climbing a mountain, and I think that sucks, so lets make a mountain climbing adventure! And then we might discuss some adjustments that can be made to improve the final dungeon; Icespire Hold.

So Lets Make a Mountain Climbing Adventure!

I guess this is now an instructional article, but I will explain my process when approaching something like creating a dungeon, because that is all we're really doing here. Even though its an outdoor mountain its still beneficial to think of it like a dungeon by thinking of it in terms of rooms and decision points.

I think I got a lot of my ideas for dungeons from The Angry GM's posts on his Mega-Dungeon (which I highly recommend!), but here is a quick rundown.

To make a dungeon, we want

• A series of rooms filled with interesting things.
• Points where decisions can be made (like which way to go)
• We want these things to all follow a theme.
• And we want some kind of structure or order to these rooms and encounters so that when taken together they seem to make sense. An explanation for why all these monsters and encounters are here, even if we make it up on the spot.

Brainstorming Power!

So I like to brainstorm when it comes to dungeon ideas. My theme here is 'mountain climbing' and 'ice' (because dragons). First get a blank notepad (digital or physical) and then start writing down things that come to mind. I'll just wing that right now, like so:

• Goats
• Icicles
• Frozen Lake
• Frost Giants
• Cliffs
• and so on...

So already we have some decent ideas to start with! The next step is to iterate some on each listed item. Try to think of a cool way to make an encounter involving that thing, or even put two together to make a cooler encounter.

• Goats
• A narrow cliff path with an angry goat trying to push one of the players off.
• A herd of goats trying to climb the mountain for mating season.
• Icicles
• Hmm dunno, maybe some kind of trap in an ice cave?
• Sometimes you can't think of more good ideas for bullet points like this, so move on!
• "The Frozen Lake"™
• This idea really resonates with me so its easy to come up with good ideas.
• Penguins on the ice!
• Fish frozen in the ice, or maybe some of them aren't frozen and want to break the ice for a meal?
• (Lets put two together) How about instead of Icicle, we go with "Giant Frozen Waterfall" that falls into the frozen lake. Super cool stuff! Show your players interesting places and amazing scenes! Got em!
• Frost Giant
• Maybe he is friendly? maybe not
• Riding a mammoth could be cool
• Maybe he is on "The Frozen Lake"™ and threatens to break the ice, accidentally or on purpose!
• Cliffs
• How can we make an interesting climbing scenario out of cliffs? Many climb checks doesnt make for an interesting encounter, so we'll touch on this specifically later.

Got that? Maybe I'm crazy, but this method works really well for me. It lets my brain get excited about things it wants to, and skip other things that might not be. Sometimes days later while showering I will get some new idea like "OH YEAH I SHOULD PUT THE GOATS AND THE ICE GIANT TOGETHER!!" and it feels great.

A Bunch of Bullet Points Do Not Make A Dungeon

So we still have to organize things into more of a dungeon shape, so what I like to do is now wrap those bullet points up into "rooms" and label then with a number or letter. Again feel free to throw in more room ideas as you think of them; this part is half re-organizing and half re-brainstorming.

• A: Frozen Lake
• B: Cliffs / Climbing
• C: Narrow Mountain Path
• D: (make some up!) Dark Cave (maybe there are yetis?! or worse?)
• And so on and so forth

Now we have something that looks a bit closer to what we are looking for: a series of rooms filled with interesting things as well as a bunch of interesting bullet-point ideas. We have two more things to do

1. Come up with some decision points (more interesting things than can go between or in rooms)
2. Decide on the dungeon structure (what order will the players encounter the rooms and decisions?)

PSA: read more of the Angry GM, he writes really great articles about dungeon and encounter design.

Decision Points Can Be Harder

The amount of decision points you need really depends on what type of dungeon you are looking for. In my case, this dungeon is more of a path to another dungeon, so I am not really looking for some complex winding structure with unlock-able areas. I really just need a straight path with maybe one or two branches, but there are a lot of cool shapes you can come up with. 

In this case it will stay simple with a few branches but one major path and only one ending, so I only need one or two decision points. Lets come up with some:

• Decision between climbing a cliff face or going through a dark cave filled with monsters
• Helping or harming an NPC.
• Maybe a side quest they can choose to take or skip.

Try to keep the choices equal but different. Maybe one path has combat but the other path requires more skill checks and a chance at exhaustion. Both paths should try to expend player resources but in different ways.

So Lets Put It All Together

I like to draw for this part. I like to draw a series of circled letters and then connect them with lines t build a map of the dungeon

This is going to be the shape of my Mountain Climbing Dungeon! Now we pretty much just have to convert the "Decisions" we came up with above into "Rooms", and then arrange all the rooms into one of the letters. There are a ton of ways to put the rooms in order, and sometimes it great to have things happen throughout multiple rooms.

We can think of the A and the H spots on the map as the "Start" and "End" respectively, and luckily I already know what my A location will be! Earlier in my sessions, the players ran into a snowy ravine near the base of Icespire Mountain where they encountered a frozen ogre (missing a dragon-shaped bite) and some yetis. This will help the players feel like they know where they are.

For the B location, lets start simply. An even though we haven't bullet-pointed or decision'd this before, lets just make something up and keep the creative juices flowing. Location B will be a simply snowy/rocky plain up a gentle slope. We can use this to set the scene and throw in some spooky stuff to foreshadow future events. Maybe a traveler who fell to the cold? 

One thing I'm going to do in room B is the add in a multiple-room decision. What we'll do is have some Winter Wolves show up and start trailing the group.

This will add some tension and an interesting decision. Should the group chase off the wolves or try to fight them, or ignore them?

Moving on, at the end of B we need a decision point (because the map splits to C and D). Lets pick one: a decision between a dark smelly cave and climbing a snowy rock face. We'll make the players choose between a likely combat or some skill checks with chances to fall.

Room C is going to be the Yeti Cave. There will be clear signs of habitation as the players check out the place, and this whole room pretty much boils down to a combat. The descriptions of things and the details are kind of up to you, and thats the best part of the system. Maybe the Yetis need help, and have a need from the players? Or they are just angry and fight. Maybe you can stealth past, or maybe they have found some magical item they cherish? What if the wolves also choose to attack? That sounds sweet.

Room D is going to be the alternative to the Yetis in the cave and will involve climbing to avoid the cave entirely. I've done some research into how to design climbing encounters, and I'll lay out some ideas here.

Actually Climbing a Mountain

So the overall problem is that climb/strength/athletics checks don't necessarily make an interesting encounter. You either make the check and climb the thing or you fail the check and fall/take damage. I've given this some thought and came up with some ways to make it better.

Firstly, split the climb into sections. Its not one big 120ft cliff, its 3x 40ft sections with small rests/encounters in between. This also makes the penalties for falling not as severe (its not fun to take 12d6 fall damage!) We can again think of the climb in terms of structure with small rooms and decision points.

So go back to step 1, brainstorm a list of things that happen during a climb and iterate on them! Maybe some birds are nesting nearby and attack, or the wind gets stronger, or something is chasing them up the mountain. There are a ton of interesting ways to embellish the climb, and remember to use up player resources (the alternative is combat!). Put in some CON checks that give a point of exhaustion if failed.

As much as it sucks, I've been writing this article forever so I'm going to leave the rest to the reader as an exercise. Make up a cool climbing "room".

The Rest of the Rooms