Game of Thrones was a story filled with political intrigue, as two continents were dragged into war over the deeds of kings. The conflicts between countries and monarchs were all just a diversion from the true threat, as the White Walkers were gathering beyond the Wall and their army of the dead was poised to overwhelm the realms of men, in order to bring an apocalyptic long night that never ends. Game of Thrones dropped the ball with its treatment of the White Walkers, as they were defeated in a single episode thanks to an anime flash step from Arya, but maybe the DMs at home can do a better job by introducing the White Walkers as a threat in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Undead are a common threat in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, but there are usually restrictions regarding how many can be created at one time through magic. The fact that the common people know undead exist also means that they're better prepared to deal with them and will work to stamp them out if they appear. The best use of the White Walkers in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign is aꩵs the shepherds of a massive undead army.
Where Do They Come From?
The A Song of Ice and Fire book series has yet to establish where the White Walkers (also known as the Others) come from. Game of Thrones established that they wer🍰e created by the Children of the Forest so that they could be u🧸sed as a weapon against humanity.
The Children of the Forest explanation works in many Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, as there are plenty of powerful and vi🎉ndictive fey who wouldn't mind unleashing an undead army to prevent enemies from approaching their forests. There are also plenty of deities who rule over cold & the undead who could act as the creator🅺s of the White Walkers, such as Auril or Vecna.
In terms of place of origin, all the DM needs is a cold location that has human/demihuman settlements. Icewind Dale fits the bill in the Forgotten Realms, as it has the Ten-Towns. There are also nearby cities that could be threatened, like Luskan or Mirabar. The story could also be tied into the award-winning Legend of Drizzt series, by establishing that ༺the Night King was created from a shard of Crenshinibon that still exists somewhere in the fr✨ozen tundra and it has awoken in the fifth edition era.
White Walker Stats
The wider range of magic items and spells in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign means that the DM might be tempted to let the player harm White Walkers through other means. The White Walkers will also likely be immune to turning & similar effects, depending𝔉 on the campaign💎 setting.
The Night King's Stats
The Night King is intended to be the final boss of a campaign and should be treated as such. It's likely that he will be surrounded by White Walker allies (who won't stand around like goobers and let him be shanked, like in the TV show). It's also possible that powerful necromancers and evil clerics will join his cause, to say nothing of liches and dracoliches. If a party tries scry and die tactics (teleporting in and going straight for the Night King with weapons that will instakill him), then they'll find him far better defended than he was in Game of Thrones.
Weakness Substitute
The two substances that can kill White Walkers in Game of Thrones are obsi♛dian (also known as dragonglass) and Valyrian steel. The former would be easy to create using magic, while the latter is tied into the lore of the setting. As such, the DM is encouraged to replace these weaknesses with new substances. One possible switch for Valyrian Steel is mithril, considering how rare and expensive it is. The replacement for obsidian could be an expensive type of gemstone that is difficult to find and valuable, such as diamond. Searching for weapons that can harm the White Walkers could be a quest unto itself.
A Different Threat In A Different World
Like their book/TV show counterparts, the White Walkers and their ruler have some incredible strengths and a few notable weaknesses. Their ability to create u💙nlimited undead means that they could swiftly create an army and overwhelm nearby regions. In a region like Icewind Dale, they could make an army from the barbarian tribes and 𓄧secret enclaves of goblins and orcs, backed up with undead monsters that retain the incredible strength they possessed in life. A campaign could start with a warning being sent out that the Ten-Towns is about to be overrun, prompting calls to action from neighboring locations.
The White Walkers & the Night King are practically immune to damage except for specific materials. Despite this, they don't pose the same threat in a D&D world that they do in Westeros. There are hundreds of dragons in a place like Faerun that would burn an undead army to ashes if they posed a threat to their lairs, to say nothing of the powers possessed by sp൩ellcasters. An alliance of clerics, druids, sorcere🍎rs, and wizards could send a storm of holy fire raining down on the White Walker army if they poised a big enough threat
In o🎀rder to make the White Walkers a threat, they should be treated in the same way as the show. The Night King's power, coupled with the harsh weather of the region, makes their army almost impossible to track through divination magic, so people might not realize they exist until its too late. No one in power is likely to take notice if contact is cut off in a few remote villages, and once winter actually comes, it will be even h🍷arder to maintain communication without the aid of magic. The White Walker threat shouldn't become common knowledge until they are surrounded by a powerful army of undead. The Ten-Towns could be overrun in the space of a few days in the dead of winter, leaving the neighboring cities with the task of preparing for war against an army that doesn't get tired.
A campaign💧 that is centered around fighting endless groups of weak undead would quickly become boring, but there is a lot of sc🐬ope for turning it into an exciting campaign. The point of the campaign is to get all of the nearby regions to band together, which should be no easy task, considering the decades (or even centuries) of unease between them. There are also potential allies for the White Walkers that need to be stopped before they hook up with the undead army, as well as neutral sides that need to be swayed, like dragons. It should all be building up to a war, with the allies of the party forming an army to try and stop the White Walkers in their tracks, as the players are tasked with dealing with the Night King and his defenders.