Making things a bit more Grimm...


Reign of Winter


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My group are just about to finish MMC. Now I like the look of Frozen Stars but am not a fan of the garden configuration of the hut.

My plan (inspired partly by the fairy tale hut in Book 6) is to create some fairy tale themed encounters (trying to make them creepy where possible)

As far as I can tell the only potentially necessary encounter is with the Cat familiar. Other than that as long as they get the clues and the merchant gem it seems like open season.

I would welcome anyone's ideas for fun fairy tale themed encounters in the CR range (I think it is 8 - 12, the final one as written is actually quite tough)

I was thinking of 4. My ideas:

Red Riding Hood:

PCs can encounter a girl in the mystical wood configuration. Head to the grandmothers house and have it turn out to be 3 werewolves (Red, Wolf and Lumberjack). I'm not certain at the moment how I can lead the group there:

- why would they help (they are really paranoid)
- they will probably work out what is going on quite quickly - especially if i mention anything about the girl visiting her grandmother

Three Little Pigs:

2 encounters. I was thinking another werewolf (or perhaps awakened (dire) wolf) and give them druid levels and storm domain so they have the ability to "blow your house down".

Then the final house with 3 Wereboars / Awakened bipedal boars

Goldilocks:

Again either lycanthropes or awakened animals. Thinking having Goldilocks as another Guardian Doll (as they are just creepy)

Also might but the stew thing from MMC in here (as porridge) because i think my group are going to miss that room

Snow White:

Well obviously 7 dwarves/duergar armed with picks. And I am thinking Snow could be undead (probably vampire) to explain the pale skin. Also in this version the huntsman may have succeeded in killing her.

Majority of treasure for all of the above can be here in the form of gems (mined by dwarves), including the one holding the merchant

(Worried about using a vampire because my group don't really have capacity to heal negative levels - i suppose fixed by making her use a weapon rather than slams)

What do people think? Does anyone have any cool ideas?

I am thinking the main driver / hook of this will have to be Zorka telling the group they have to find a door out. And each of the above involve some kind of house or cottage where this door could be (thinking probably the snow white one)


Check out "Tales of the old Margreve" by Open Design/Kobold press. It has lots of ideas loosely linked to fairy tales. It has a little red riding hood adventure (Challenge of the fang), but it is level 4, so you will have to adapt it. But there are also higher-level adventures in this book.


Lanathar, for the Snow White one, perhaps the Dwarves themselves are vampiric and Snow White lies in the coffin until she 'turns'? There are variant vampire templates HERE. There is also a load of other cool templates. As for other ideas, you could mine some ideas from Quoth the Raven Issue 15, under Fairhafen and, if you have some money on hand, Grimm, which is a whole campaign setting about twisted fairytale horror! And yes, Tales of the Old Margreve has a lot of good fairytale stuff as well!


Thanks. I'm concerned that that many vampires might be tough for my party! But i'll look into some builds. Reducing the creatures in the encounter from 8 to 7 might help

And Snow could be a separate one...

Is there a lore way of reversing the process of turning ? Or would a second fight be inevitable?


For Red, it may be possible to play off their paranoia with a red (riding) herring. Have a "wolf" harrying them through the woods as they escort the girl to grandmother's house. Once they get there... whoops, the girl's actually the monster and the thing that's been chasing her is trying to rid the world of its evil. Particularly effective if you can arrange things such that the party kills the "wolf" on the treshold of the cabin, just before Red reveals herself.


Cool idea. I had every intention of making red a werewolf (was just going to have a natural one as the "grandmother" and a werewolf lumberjack as well). Basically being the party got there too late ...

I have already introduced a talking wolf who was after the the 3 little pigs. I had made him a druid with storm powers but I could change him to a shifted monster hunter (or keep him as a druid who wants to rid the place of lycanthropes)

Could work as the pigs were wereboar and one decapitated (lucky crit card) one of the PCs. So I can do a work around. Or something like that ...


Very good ideas! I will adapt them to my campaign, although I will only do two encounters (Red Riding Hood which lures the PC's into an ambush by werewolves and Snowwhite, which is a vampire and her glass coffin is guarded by 7 dwarf ghouls or something like that. She rises during the fight with the dwarves and after the fight the evil stepmother (actually a winter witch) arrives and blames the PC's for the death of her daughter (which will eventually result in another fight).

But I really, really like the idea with the little pigs and the werewolf druid... Hmmm... tempting!

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