Expected read time: about 12 minutes

I recently put out an article about how to take inspiration from video games and use it at your tabletop game, which you can find here. It laid out some broad concepts and strategies, but in this article we’re going to delve a little deeper into a specific video game’s pockets and nab us some valuable content.

Our target? If you’ve kept up with this blog, you can probably guess. We’re going to steal from one of my all-time favorite games: Black Isle Studios’ Icewind Dale.

(Note: The first half of this article gives some background on the creation of the game. If you’d like to just jump right to the suggestions of things to steal, look for the “Okay, But What Can We Steal?” section!)

A Bit of Technical Background

Icewind Dale, alongside the Baldur’s Gate saga, was created using Bioware’s Infinity Engine, meaning that it features an isometric camera that follows around character sprites on pre-rendered backgrounds. There’s line-of-sight and fog of war, allowing you to explore the eerily beautiful locations, uncovering them bit by bit as you move around on the map.

Another iconic part of the Infinity Engine was the “real-time with pause” combat. Instead of the various combatants each taking individual turns in order, everything sort of happens at once. You can hear the mage and cleric murmuring their spells at the same time that the fighter and paladin charge the baddies, with arrows from the rogue and ranger whistling in between. It makes for dynamic and fast-paced combat, but retains the ability to pause the game at any time to examine the battlefield and issue tactical commands to your party members, then unpause and watch everything happen in real-time.

And all of those attacks and spells? They all play out according to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition. Well, some things are tastefully modified for a computer game to run and adjudicate, but all in all it’s a pretty faithful interpretation of the ruleset.

My Experience

Icewind Dale was my very first experience with anything D&D-related. Well, I suppose I actually started with R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt books, which got me interested in this game because it’s set in the same fantasy world as the books, and some of the same places that the famous drow ranger adventured. So going into the game I had some knowledge of the people of Ten-Towns, some of the monsters of the region, and the overall heroic atmosphere.

But I didn’t know a single thing about dice! No clue about game mechanics, probabilities to hit, or how damage is calculated. I don’t think I even knew that there were attack rolls happening behind-the-scenes and that it was all randomized. I learned the best way that a 10-year-old could: watching my older brothers play, and then jumping into the adventure with both feet and just trying things out. I made my first 6-person party and ventured forth.

Plot In a Nutshell

While it runs on the same technology as Baldur’s Gate, uses the same ruleset, and takes place in the same world, its plot structure is quite different from the zero-to-hero-to-deity story of the Bhaalspawn Saga. Where Baldur’s Gate focuses on the story of the “chosen one” protagonist and its selection of supportive companions, Icewind Dale has no main character. Or, at least no single, named main character. It’s a “party of strangers” that the story follows.

(Note: As far as designing a campaign goes, it’s quite freeing to have the main characters be entirely replaceable! Then you can shape the campaign background elements to the player characters’ backstories as much or as little as you want. When I did this for my play-by-post Icewind Dale campaign, I was able to really dig into the game’s lore and adapt it to the individual party members. For example, I made one of the enemy generals, an elven woman named Ilmadia, the mother of one of the player characters. And that turned out to be awesome.)

The party starts in a tavern (classic!) in the quiet fishing town of Easthaven, and quickly get recruited to join the town’s militia to go help the town of Kuldahar, a village nestled among the roots of a giant oak tree that magically keeps the place warm. The militia gets ambushed by frost giants in a mountain pass and buried in an avalanche, with the party being the only survivors.

When they get to Kuldahar, the archdruid has the party investigate various places in search of a hidden evil that threatens the town, and to recover a lost druidic artifact known as the Heartstone Gem. Eventually the archdruid is assassinated, and the party is off to find the one responsible.

To keep this short, the party travels over and under the Spine of the World mountain range to track down the killer, a mysterious man who masquerades as a goodly priest of Ilmater. They confront him, and he flees. The trail takes them back to the starting town of Easthaven, which has been taken over by the villain and his frost giant minions.

The party storms a magical crystal tower that has appeared in the town, and there’s a cameo of sorts where they see Crenshinibon, the sentient crystal shard of immense power and corruption that shows up at various points of the Drizzt series.

Eventually they once again confront the villain as he tries to open a long-dormant portal to the Lower Planes. He monologues a bit and then reveals himself as a giant fiend named Belhifet and tries to kill the party once and for all.

In one of the best narrative twists seen in a video game (or other epic story), the narrator from the beginning cinematic turns out to be none other than the villain Belhifet himself, and he describes his downfall at the hands of the party and how one day he’ll seek revenge! David Ogden Stiers performed the voice acting, and the transition as he goes from venerable narrator to murderous fiend is nothing short of excellent.

Okay, But What Can We Steal?

Now that we know a bit of what we’re dealing with, let’s get down to the reason you’re here: inspiration for your D&D campaign!

So what can Icewind Dale offer you?

We’re going to talk about a few things, including:

Fantastic locations
Magic items galore
The soundtrack
Non-player characters

Let’s get started!

Fantastic Locations

For a game that takes place in a frozen wasteland, there’s a pretty diverse range of cool locations. Many of these you could place in any campaign setting with just a few adjustments. For our purposes today, we’re going to just list out some of them, but be on the lookout for future articles that really dive into these fantastic places!

Kuldahar itself is a town built into the giant roots of an absolutely ginormous oak tree. It’s right in the middle of an inhospitable mountain range, but has a magical circle of warmth that keeps the town and its outskirts green and balmy year-round. There’s no real system of government, but Kuldahar is always watched over by one or more druids or archdruids who keep the evils in the mountains at bay.

The Vale of Shadows is basically an icy canyon with tombs built into the cliffs on either side. It’s ruled over by Kresselack the Black Wolf and his undead servants, but there are also monstrous shadows that stalk the freezing paths, and numerous yetis hiding in snowdrifts.
The Temple of the Forgotten God serves as a cloistered hideout for a strange sect of druids and their verbeeg guards. It has several levels, and at its center contains an artifact of immense power: the Heartstone Gem.
The Severed Hand might be my favorite location in the game, because it comes with one heck of a story that the party discovers as they explore it. It used to be a beautiful elven citadel called the Hand of the Seldarine. It had five towers (the fingers of the “Hand”) that each represented a member of the elven pantheon. When a horde of orcs swept over the land, the elves desperately tried to raise a crazy powerful magical forcefield (called a mythal) around the city, but the magic went awry and ended up killing or transforming all of the elves and orcs within. Now it’s a cursed, broken place ruled over by an insane elven lich.

Magic Items

Since the video game’s ruleset is based on D&D 2e, converting the plethora of magic items in Icewind Dale is easy so long as you bear a few guidelines in mind:

Due to bounded accuracy, 5e is stingier than 2e when it comes to numerical bonuses to hit, damage, and Armor Class for magic items. Most weapons and armor in 5e cap out at +3, and so high bonuses like in 2e will likely need to be removed or greatly reduced.
Magic items should be simplified and streamlined in order to keep play from getting bogged down in numerical minutia. For example, in 5e it’s better for an item to give resistance to a damage type (which always halves any damage of that type) instead of reducing the damage by 10% or 30%, as is fairly common in Icewind Dale. Just keep the math easy.
5e’s attunement mechanic can be a tool to adjust the power level of converted magic items. Since 5e characters can generally only attune to 3 magic items at a time, an item that doesn’t require attunement is much easier to fit into a character’s equipment load—and is therefore considered to be more powerful or competitive. Many of the most rare and legendary magic items probably should require attunement.

Aside from just being able to nab Icewind Dale’s magic items themselves, be aware that each one also comes with a couple paragraphs of written backstory, if you want it. So if your D&D campaign takes place in the Forgotten Realms setting, you can pretty much just copy and paste that backstory to help widen the players’ knowledge and familiarity of Faerûn and its inhabitants. Even if you’re not playing in the Forgotten Realms, you can just tweak the names of people and locations referred to in the backstories to fit your world.

To illustrate all of this for you, here’s an example of one of my favorite magic items in Icewind Dale: The longsword known as Pale Justice.

In the video game you find this ordinary-looking sword just on a body somewhere. When you identify it, you learn that it’s one of the most powerfully-enchanted weapons in the game, similar in power and purpose to a paladin’s Holy Avenger, with a rich and interesting history. And yet if you try to sell it, even shopkeepers will think it’s just a run-of-the-mill sword, and offer but a pittance for it.

You can read all about its origin and stats here on this Fandom page.

This is one way you could convert it to 5e:

Notice that it’s pretty streamlined. Instead of the variable +4 or +7 bonus depending on the alignment of the creature you’re attacking, I opted to instead give it a static, always-on, very powerful bonus of +4. And yeah, it’s almost unheard of how powerful that bonus is in 5e, but I feel like that fits the lore; this weapon took more than 30 years to craft, and with one casual swipe completely destroyed a lesser enchanted sword, and the +7 it used to get against evil creatures was also crazy and practically unheard of for 2e.

The old version gave immunity to a bunch of specific mind-affecting spells, most of which simply don’t exist in core 5e. Thing is, 5e paladins get features that basically protect them a lot similar effects, so I felt like Pale Justice should have some broader appeal, since that’s the class it’s originally meant for. That’s where the generalized advantage on saves against all mind magic comes in, and I think it’s fitting.

The most controversial thing I did was remove the paladin-only restriction. I wanted this weapon to be more easily usable, and if your group doesn’t have a paladin, then this new item doesn’t do you much good. You could restrict it to characters of a specific alignment or religion, but that’s up for you to decide.

The Soundtrack

Jeremy Soule is possibly my very favorite composer of today, and I was first introduced to his work in this game. If his name sounds familiar, then you may recognize him as the composer of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim—and of Oblivion and Morrowind, actually! He does breathtaking stuff.

If you’re interested in owning the soundtrack (which I highly recommend!) you can purchase it here.

Here’s a list of some of my favorite themes from Icewind Dale, with suggestions on how they might be used in your D&D campaign:

The Tale of Icewind Dale (Movie 1) Those opening clarinets just send me back! It’s a calm theme that varies between serenity and sorrow, with the occasional measure of ominous foreshadowing. It’s used for exposition and background lore in the video game, and it works just as well for that at a tabletop game. Try playing it quietly in the background of a Session 0.

Icewind Dale Theme How many hours have I absently listened to this theme while rolling up hundreds of characters? A ton or three. And even though it’s less than 2 minutes long, I never get tired of it. It’s rhythmically intense, but also so melancholic. Somehow it just works. And at that point about 50 seconds in when the melody really busts out, it always gets me. It could work well as something to listen to while waiting for the tabletop session to start, hyping players up for a strong start to the game.

Kuldahar Theme The gentle choral strains in the background, with the flute melody always rising in the foreground… And that low, warm harp. This one is beautiful and peaceful in its entirety. It’s a great theme to play while the party is safe in a rural town.

Lysan’s Lair Fight music! Rhythmic strings, pounding percussion, and melody in the brass is a classic combination for combat. But then halfway through it changes to this awesome, violent staccato theme in the strings, followed by a key change into this crazy almost Egyptian-sounding melody—which might seem odd coming from a story set in the frozen mountainside tombs of the Vale of Shadows, but it fits perfectly. It’s gotta be that harmonic minor scale it’s built on. Anyway, try playing this in—you guessed it—combat!

The Dragon’s Eye This music is tied to a twisting maze of caverns that extends deep below a section of the Spine of the World mountain range. And it’s full of giant spiders, trolls, reptilian humanoids, and cultists. It’s immediately ominous with the strings’ low eighth notes going up and down, and sounds almost like it was taken from Jurassic Park. It’s a great theme to play when you want the party to clue in that something feels wrong to their characters. It’s particularly effective during exploration to lead into a combat encounter!

Non-Player Characters

Oh boy. There are dozens of great non-player characters that you can steal from Icewind Dale, be they allies, villains, or those who don’t quite fit into either category. I’ll name a handful and link you to their Fandom pages where you can learn about each of them if you’re curious, and also give a suggestion for a D&D 5e stat block you could use to represent them.

(Note: I fully plan to do more detailed articles converting these characters to D&D 5e with unique new stat blocks, as well as some advice on how to use them in your campaign. But that will have to be for another time!)

Hrothgar The mayor of Easthaven and the one who organizes the militia to go to Kuldahar’s aid. He makes for an awesome sort of sheriff of a frontier town. You could probably use a veteran or a gladiator to represent him.
Erevain Blacksheaf A wandering elven warrior with a tragic future. The knight may be a good stat block for him, but you could also use a reflavored bandit captain.
Lysan Disguised as a barmaid in Kuldahar’s Root Cellar Tavern, she’s actually a powerful and ambitious priestess of Auril. I’ve created a custom stat block for her that I’ll include in an article soon, but she can easily be represented with just the priest stat block.
Kresselack - An ancient warlord who was cursed into undeath as penance for his many sins. I definitely plan to do a proper 5e conversion for him at some point! In the meantime, he does well as a death knight.
Mother Egenia - A kindly priestess of the Temple of Ilmater in Kuldahar, who was captured by evil cultists of Talona. The priest stat block works well for her, though I would swap out some of her spells for healing spells such as lesser restoration and revivify.
Malavon Despana - A powerful drow mage, he’s one of Belhifet’s most ‘trusted’ lackeys. He has a fondness for creating simulacra of himself. I’d definitely use the archmage stat block for him.
Pomab Ak'azmhir - This Calishite merchant has a shop in Easthaven. Later on it’s revealed that he’s been in league with Belhifet. I’d either use the mage stat block, or perhaps the warlock of the fiend one if you have access to Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.

Wrapping it Up

There is so much content to be stolen here! I’ve only just scratched the surface of this glacier, and there are all sorts of things still frozen within, just waiting to be dug out and dropped into your D&D game. Be on the lookout for many more articles stealing content from Icewind Dale and other video games!

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If you’ve got any suggestions for subjects we should tackle or video games to steal from, please leave a comment or reach out to us on social media!

Happy gaming, and see you in the Archives!

Why You Should Steal From Icewind Dale For Your D&D Campaign