Into the Snow is a hook and a list that are designed to add player-driven rewards to a travel or survival segment. It should be implicitly compatible with whatever your campaign or adventure is doing since it doesn’t introduce story elements, encounters, or NPCs.
It’s untested, but I’d love to share it around anyway.
What’s Inside
Into the Snow gives the players a journal of crafting recipes, a chance to learn the leatherworking toolkit proficiency, and a travel-compatible way to craft on the go. With this, they can turn wintery monsters into parts and the parts into items of their choice from a fairly robust list.
It is my hope that this combination turns an icy wasteland or snowy tundra into a realm of potential magical items. If there’s a Ranger in the party, then it’s my extra hope that their eyes will light ablaze with the opportunity to RP tracking and hunting monsters (with the party’s full support.)
It’s kind of a mini-Monster Hunter mod now that I say that. Haha. Good fun.
Why’d I make this?
As a DM, I constantly make tools for myself. I had an idea for a way to add a game system to an existing campaign segment that doesn’t require me to sew the thing in nor to saddle the campaign with a new giant rules system. It’s just one hook to kick off the snowballl and a printout I can hand to the players. Very simple. Hopefully very fun.
There’s not much more I can say without repeating the PDF’s intro and such. You should just give it a read. Oh, there are charts inside which scale the numbers to match all CR levels of play.
That said, I run very magical campaigns with (Ramsey voice) “big gutsy mechanics” so my idea of what constitutes acceptable numbers to throw around might be a bit higher than what some people are used to. If you’re very sparing of player-power and item budgets, then this might not be for you or you might want to chop my numbers in half.
I’m looking forward to using it. I hope you are too.
Cheers,
-Travis