Ref Tips for Running Midvinter

Midvinter is a short cult-centric holiday adventure that is compatible with OSR games. It features wilderness survival and a lot of NPC interaction to explore and resolve cult kidnappings. The party will have to unravel what is going on and find out how to stop and escape the cult while avoiding their outwardly friendly but sinister machinations. Midvinter has the potential to be immersive, but can also be difficult to manage. Here are some suggestions from my experience running Midvinter, for your winter cult murdering pleasure.

1. Take notes: The adventure is focused in its scope, but not tightly written or easily referenced. Reading through it gives a strong sense of the tone and atmosphere, but to streamline exploration in what is supposed to be a small town and interactions with literal dozens of NPCs you should take some really condensed notes. The adventure is laid out by location and lists the inhabitants of each house in the entry. It’s more beneficial to have a list of the NPCs with their names and personalities easily accessible. I was able to consolidate them into about 3 densely-packed pages of notes rather than the “1 house with inhabitants” per page format it’s presented in.



2: Print Maps and Handouts:
  • Important buildings and Underground (pp. 26-29). You should be able to print them 2 to a page and be able to make out any important details while conserving space.
  • Wilderness Map player handout (p. 48). It’s a nice handout, though not super detailed or helpful. Definitely give it to the players.
  • Ref Wilderness Map (p. 50). This is a nice map so showing it to the players if they have good Bushcraft or take a little time asking about/exploring the area would be a nice touch, though it’s a bit detailed. Maybe edit it to remove the labels if you want.
  • Village Map (p. 51). This is labeled and keyed, which makes it kind of suspicious if players see it. Removing labels would make it good to show the layout of the village.
The art is also quite fantastic, so printing out those to show as NPCs appear or events occur could be good to bring things in. If you’re going to go this far, you might want to follow Kelvin’s suggestion of preparing a fake beard and hat for when Bjorn bursts into the ritual to give gifts.

3. Decide the outcome: As written, the adventure is a campy takedown of mysterious doomsday cults- their beliefs are fake and they are manipulating the PCs into unwittingly murdering them for ultimately pointless reasons. It’s also possible that it’s real- the writing introduces that possibility. What’s vitally important is that whichever you choose, that you infuse it into the roleplaying. Like Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, it will shine through if you have it in mind and have thought it out, regardless of whether it's perfectly conveyed in notes, on the page, or in your Refereeing (or not). I played it as it’s written, with the cultists being misled, well-intentioned fools. It came off really unsettling for the players, who were itching to get in and get out. You won’t need to wink-wink nudge-nudge in every interaction to get the message across- if you’re somewhat consistent and just having fun roleplaying, the players are going to be doing the work for you.

4. Spotlight the best NPCs: The characters of Lars and Patrik, a very chipper father and his delusional, cognitively disabled son (location 8) were probably the most off-putting and fun to roleplay, personally. No matter who you’re playing, keeping in mind the three tiers of roleplaying on page 12. This will really help as players are prodding for information, that you can play off of them and insinuate or “slip” whatever information feels right. Tiers 1 & 2 are great to start, holding #3 back for the most part until the ritual is about to occur is probably the right idea.
  1.  “We strive to prevent the eternal winter.”
  2.  “To prevent eternal winter, sacrifices must be made.”
  3.  “We must sacrifice people to save the world!”
5. Personal Touches: A few things you may want to change depending on your preferences.
  • Will the cultists fight back or not? As written, they pretend to fight to egg the PCs on and are totally incompetent. Would you prefer them to actually challenge the party and make the experience more authentic?
  • Is the cult connected to anything else? Maybe Mount Deathfrost is nearby? It’s at the border of the Frostbitten & Mutilated setting? The cultists have cousins in Scenic Dunnsmouth?
  • Treasure: The cult has basically nothing of value, and the party may or may not actually earn the 642sp of reward from the Geoff side quest. Do they deserve something for their effort?

If you found this post helpful, I have a few others:

Ref Tips for running The Pale Lady

Ref Tips Treasure Checklist for running Tower of the Stargazer 

Ref Tips & Reference Sheet for running Tales of The Scarecrow

Ref Tips for running The Tomb of Black Sand 

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