Everything You Need To Know About The Dragon Of Icespire Peak Adventure For DnD

Like the Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak has been lauded as one of the best introductory adventures in all of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition. This is in large part thanks to the job posting quest mechanism by which players choose their next adventure.

The adventure also features the titular villain in the form of a young white dragon named Cryovain, with whom it’s easy enough to harry players with as they level up, building enmity between your big bad and the player characters. However, like most published modules, you’re going to want to add a little bit of your own personal touch to get the most out of this campaign.

Synopsis

Like Lost Mines of Phandelver, Dragon of Icespire Peak takes place in the small town of Phandalin located just north of the Sword Mountains in the Forgotten Realms setting. The adventure consists of two primary villains: a band of orcs who worship the evil storm god Talos and a young white dragon named Cryovain.

Dragon of Icespire Peak takes around 20 game sessions, each lasting about 3 hours to complete. Set a weekly, biweekly, or monthly schedule with your players after the first game session or your chances of seeing this campaign out to the end will be very low.

During the adventure, the players will unravel how these two villains are intertwined and, if they’re lucky, ultimately defeat them. As mentioned above, quests during the campaign are doled out via job board postings placed in front of the townmaster’s hall. This allows the players the freedom to choose their next adventure assuming the DM (Dungeon Master) plans accordingly. They also are afforded the freedom to skip certain adventures that don’t sound appetizing which is an easy way to give newer players a sense of agency.

Dragon of Icespire Peak is a classic D&D adventure that delivers everything you would expect from the genre. It’s an especially good campaign for new to intermediate players who are still finding their footing in the game and have yet to experience all of the classic tropes that D&D offers. It also only runs from levels one to six, so the mechanics won’t ever get too complicated.

While intended for newer players, Icespire Peak is also a perfectly serviceable adventure for veteran players who want to enjoy a classic fantasy story.

Necessary Materials

As with all D&D modules, you’re going to need the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, and Player’s Handbook to properly run this adventure. That being said, Dragon of Icespire Peak is one of the few adventures that features an alternative and cheaper option for gameplay.

Players who are unsure how much they want to invest in Dungeons & Dragons can instead opt to purchase the D&D Essentials Kit. This box set features everything you need for a DM to run a game for one to five players and comes at a very affordable price of $25. You’ll also need a set of dice ranging from a d4 to a d20 for each player, character sheets, and pens or pencils for players to take notes with.

While not necessary, snacks or other food and drink made available at the table is a surefire way to delight everyone present.

While you can certainly run the adventure with just the Essentials Kit, the Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual, and Player’s Handbook will greatly expound upon the character options available to your players as well as the knowledge needed to become a talented DM. Consequently, we strongly encourage you to purchase and use these books as soon as your players commit to the campaign.

Suggested Additions

As mentioned in the introduction, to get the most out of Dragon of Icespire Peak, you’re definitely going to need to make some additions. First and foremost, you’ll want to add some encounters with the young white dragon Cryovain. This way, the players get to meet the villain of the campaign face to face before facing him at the campaign’s climax.

The goal of these interactions should be to build enmity between the dragon and your players. Any good campaign villain has multiple reasons for the player characters to dislike them: bonus points if the reasons are personal.

The dragon might devour a friendly NPC that your player characters enjoy, demand that the party hand over a magic item or else be frozen solid, or even slay one of the party members and take their body as a trophy.

Other things to consider include replacing magic items in the game with ones more appropriate for your player characters, adding additional enemies from the Monster Manual to combat encounters to increase their difficulty, and putting sidequests in the campaign that have to do with your player characters’ backstories.

A character’s backstory might even tie into one of the main questlines if the DM works with a player to build their backstory. This is one of the easiest and most fluid ways to incorporate character backstories into prewritten modules.

Sequels

One thing unbeknownst to many players and DMs alike is that Dragon of Icespire Peak has three short sequels already written for it. The modules in question are called Storm Lord’s Wrath, Sleeping Dragon’s Wake, and Divine Contention. The reason many people don’t know about them is because they were only published online. You can find them on dndbeyond.

These sequels see the player characters travel to the nearby abandoned settlement of Leilon where the king of Neverwinter plans to renew the village into a new hub of coastal commerce. Unfortunately for the settlers of Leilon, danger lurks around every corner on this section of the Sword Coast as two cults vie for control of the area. It’s the players’ mission to discover the threat these forces pose, protect the town of Leilon, and, eventually, destroy the dangerous cults.

Alternatively, you could always continue a Dragon of Icespire Peak campaign in another of the modules published by Wizards of the Coast. You could place the player characters smack dab in the middle of the Tomb of Annihilation or Descent into Avernus campaigns. However, it would probably be easiest to continue with Dungeon of the Mad Mage as this campaign naturally starts at level five anyway.

Lastly, there’s always the temptation to continue a campaign with your very own homebrew adventure. While this route will require more time and hard work from the DM than any other option, it can also be the most rewarding.

Beginner DMs should stay away from homebrewing their own adventures until they’ve completed a couple of campaigns. Prewritten adventures allow your games a structure that makes it much easier for you to focus on becoming a better DM.