This month I am hosting the Blog Carnival for the RPG Blog Alliance. Our topic: The Icy Embrace of Winter.

How do you incorporate Winter, Snow, Ice, and Frost into your games? What evocative places have your adventurers visited? What terrors lurk our in the snow-covered forests? What alien creatures burrow beneath the glaciers of the polar continent? How do you simulate the effects of the cold season (or the frozen continent) in your game? Is winter somehow strange and unusual in your world? What are the cultural effects of cold climate on your game world, and are there any important holidays or customs related to it? Do wizards make use of cold-related magic? Do vengeful gods terrorize the people with unnatural blizzards?

Winter and snow are a good choice for “Man versus Nature” settings; snow can add isolation and thus a sense of danger and urgency to any adventure. It doesn’t have to be a fantasy setting either; think of the snow planet Hoth in Star Wars, the Wendigo as used in Call of Cthulhu, or The Thing from Another World, which would not be the same story anywhere but the North Pole.

It’s a topic as wide open as the snowy plains of the northern Tundra. Let your imagination run wild, and share your posts on the subject with us throughout the month. Please post a comment with a link, or send me a personal message so I can include your blog and post in the summary post!

Happy Blogging!