Paths to Adventure > Publications > Game Designer Articles > Into the Wintery Gale

Into the Wintery Gale

A retrospective glance at my first major TTRPG project.


While I’ve contributed to hundreds of game publications over the years, there is one that holds a special place in my heart. Into the Wintery Gale was a massive campaign series I authored in 2015 for AAW Games. It takes place in the northern realm of the Aventyr campaign setting and was designed to be used with Pathfinder RPG.

The core concept of the story (essentially indigenous vikings versus undead ice giants) took root in a series of 27 articles organized as, “The Tale of Oghja (War with the Jǫtunn)” that I had written for the company’s ENnie Award-winning blog a year earlier.

It was a fantastic opportunity—albeit an exceptionally ambitious endeavor—given that the main adventure book, Wrath of the Jötunn, was the first hardcover I had ever been hired to write.

Some original hand-drawn maps I had made as a part of my notes while writing the adventure framework for Wrath of the Jötunn.

It was a trial by fire (ice?) for a new game designer to singularly take the roles of primary author, project manager, art director, and graphic artist all at once. Doing so assured that the adventure adhered to my original vision of the story.

However, writing my first hardcover wasn’t enough. Not for this bullheaded game designer. I pitched the idea of creating an entire line of products that would expand upon telling the story of the clash between Vikmordere raiders and the mighty skeletal ice giants. I was given free reign, and so ran with it… stumbled and tripped clumsily with a somewhat forward trajectory.

The funds raised by the initial Kickstarter that I designed for the project covered most of the art expenses, including the hardback’s fantastic cover painted by Jason Rainville (who I was a fan of by way of his art for Magic: The Gathering).

I had fallen in love with the isometric cartography of Tommi Salama while working with AAW Games on the previous year’s Snow White adventure, and knew I wanted the same perspective for this epic tale.

Some of the original concept sketches done by Mates Laurentiu as I was working on monster designs for Winter’s Roar, the Vikmordere Bestiary.

Lastly, it was also my direction to have Mates Laurentiu as primary artist for the project. In addition to him being a fantastically talented artist, the two of us are good friends and had a long-established history of working well together as peers at AvatarArt where I had been the webmaster for a decade.

By the time the series publication came to a wrap, I had created a 200-page hardcover adventure book, five softcover supplemental books, five more adventures, three decks of supplemental cards, a set of full-size encounter maps with a complete set of encounter tokens, a game master’s screen, and an art book.

In fact, the only part of series that I didn’t get to include was an actual box to make the entire line a self-contained product. Unfortunately, the cost for creating such a box set via the printers utilized by AAW Games at the time would have been prohibitively expensive.

I recently gave the adventure another read. With more confidence now and an additional decade of experience under my belt, I noticed a few places I would have liked a few less rails and a bit more direction for the game master running the campaign. Though, I do think it remains a really solid and fun adventure. It holds up, and remains to be something I’m proud of.

Fun fact: I been asked why I chose the archaic spelling of the word “wintry”, and the reason was keyword marking. After initial testing, the archaic spelling the series title would show up on a search for “winter adventure”, where many contemporary search functions at the time overlooked the modern spelling.

Into the Wintery Gale Products

Thanks for reading! Have some bonus content!

Here are the Into the Wintery Gale themed dice I designed as a potential add-on to the series. Ultimately, it wasn’t within budget to mass produce them, but these fun prototypes did get made.