IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 46A: AMONG MADMEN

December 22nd, 2009
The 25th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

It was mid-afternoon when they left the Necropolis.

“Should we head back to the Ghostly Minstrel or go straight to Mahdoth’s?” Elestra asked.

“Ghostly Minstrel,” Ranthir said. “We need to clean up. Besides, we still have several hours. And the Minstrel is on the way in any case.”

Agnarr grunted. “You need to clean up?”

Ranthir rolled his eyes. “Yes. I seem to be covered in some sort of black ooze. I wonder where it came from? Oh, right! My eyes and my mouth!”

THE BIG PLAN

Once they reached the Ghostly Minstrel they spent a few minutes cleaning up and then gathered back up for a planning session.

Their biggest concern was Mahdoth himself. They knew he was connected with both Wuntad and the Pactlords, which made him an obvious threat. And Ranthir knew enough about beholders from his studies in Isiltur to make them all worried: Eyestalks causing paralysis, searing pain, and even death, combined with a massive antimagic field emanating from its central eye that could unknit their strongest offensive weapons.

They laid out extensive contingency plans for dealing with the various eyestalks – restorative magicks, scrolls to re-enervate their flesh, various potions and enchantments to boost their natural resistances against its powers, and much more of the like. It would be expensive, but it was obviously a necessary expense.

“The ultimate problem, though,” Tor said, “Is that all of these precautions are magical. As soon as he puts the big eye on us, it all becomes useless.”

“We do have some non-magical solutions,” Ranthir said, pulling out the alchemical potions of questionable provenance they’d recovered from Ghul’s Labyrinth. “Who wants to go blind?”

“Do we know if his eyestalks will work in his own antimagic field?” Nasira asked.

“I don’t know,” Ranthir confessed.

“Then we should assume they do.” Tee grimaced.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Elestra said.

From memory they sketched out a small map of the areas they had seen last time they had been at Mahdoth’s. But the truth was they had no idea how extensive the asylum complex was or how deep it might go beneath the streets of Ptolus.

To supplement their limited knowledge they considered using clairvoyance spells again, but they were concerned that defensive measures at the asylum might be triggered by their use.

Elestra tried to figure out how they could use her homunculi’s ability to pass seamlessly through earth and stone to scout out the complex, but since it was incapable of communicating anything of detail back to her that seemed for naught. Nasira, on the other hand, mentioned the possibility of scrying, but the limitations of the techniques available to her made it seem of little use, as well, until Ranthir combined the two plans: By affixing the scrying sensor to Elestra’s homunculi, Nasira would be able to watch the homunculi’s progress.

INFILTRATION BY FIRE

Eventually, feeling as prepared as they could perhaps hope for, they headed for Mahdoth’s around 9 pm.

On the way, however, they had time for further debate: Did they want to wait for the shipment to arrive and then ambush it? Or should they assault the compound immediately so that they wouldn’t have to fight both the asylum personnel and whoever came for the shipment at the same time?

“I think it’s six of one or half a dozen of the other,” Elestra said.

“I’ll take the six to one,” Agnarr said. “I like those odds.”

They all stared at him for a long moment.

“What?”

They settled on the immediate attack, which naturally opened the question of what their specific approach should be. They considered drilling down from street level into the staircase they knew led to the lower level (and which passed beneath the street). They also reopened the practicality of sending Elestra’s homunculi to scout (and, if so, where and when and how he should carry out the scouting).

Keeping the homunculi as an option, Elestra wrapped them in the camouflage of the city’s spirit. Keeping this camouflage-connection through physical proximity, they strung themselves out in a daisy-chain to allow Tee to get close enough to the building to scout the perimeter.

Through the simple expedient of looking through the windows, Tee confirmed that the street-level portion of the asylum (like the tip of the iceberg above its lower levels) was largely abandoned: Only Zairic – the halfling who had ratted them out to Mahdoth when they had come here at Danneth’s invitation – was to be found there, reading a book in a salon-like area towards the rear of the building.

Zairic looked like an easy target. Tee eased open a window at the opposite end of the room, carefully lowered her longbow into place, and… FIRED!

At the last possible moment, Zairic twisted aside so that the arrow lodged in his shoulder instead of his heart. Letting his book drop to the floor, Zairic vaulted over the high arm of his chair and jumped for cover. In mid-leap, he released a fireball through the window. Tee ducked down as the fiery inciting pellet passed over her head and avoided the brunt of it almost completely, but Elestra (standing in the open further down the alley) was caught by the edge of it.

Most of the others – clumped together across the street and still debating how they could (or would or should) use Elestra’s homunculi – missed the flash of the fireball. Fortunately, Ranthir – who was providing the daisy-chained camouflage near the mouth of the alley – recognized it for what it was. “Fireball!” he shouted, hurrying into the alley.

Zairic called out from behind the chair. “Who are you? Do you know who you anger tonight?!”

Tee didn’t bother to answer him. She vaulted herself through the window and skipped across the room, loosing another arrow that thumped into the high back of the chair.

Zairic wrenched her first arrow out of his shoulder, gulped down a healing potion, and made a break for the door. Elestra, cursing the burns from the fireball, threw open another window to the room and fired her dragon rifle at him. The blast missed narrowly, scorching the wall.

Zairic, in mid-stride, ripped a scroll from an inside pocket of his cloak and gestured through the window towards Elestra. The others were just arriving at her side, and they were all caught in a pounding, painful hail of dagger-like ice that plunged down from the sky.

Tee, deciding to fight ice with fire, dipped her hand into her bag of flames and hurled a fire elemental at the Halfling. Distracted by the fiery sprite, Zairic made an easy target for her as she plunged her dagger into his shoulder and re-opened the magically healed wound from her arrow.

Zairic cursed loudly. Wrenching himself free from her blade he cast another spell, sending his body into a rapid, cascading shift between reality and the Ethereal Plane. “You’ll die tonight!”

“You’re the only one dying tonight!” Tee shouted. “We’re happy to speak with the dead!” Her expert eyes were tracking his skittering, shifting, flickering form.

“I’ll speak with your corp—“

The halfling gurgled and collapsed. Tee’s arcing blade had ripped through half his neck. As his body fell forward, his head fell back upon a flap of flesh and landed upright on his back.

“That’s disgusting,” Elestra said, climbing through the window.

Running the Campaign: Ex Post Facto Roleplaying – Campaign Journal: Session 46B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Like many of the people drawn back to the D&D for the first time in years by the advent of 3rd Edition, I was initially turned off of the game by the exceptionally poor quality of the 2nd Edition products which were being turned out during the early and mid-‘90s. Sure, there were occasional high points (the original Planescape boxed set comes to mind), but these were overwhelmed by a plethora of crap.

When Wizards of the Coast bought out TSR, the steady degradation of the D&D game was almost immediately turned around. Unfortunately, people like me were still overwhelmed with a healthy dose of skepticism when it came to the D&D product line – plus, we were turned off by the rule system (which was not only the anemic rules of the 2nd edition, but meaninglessly complicated beyond the bounds of sanity by the Player’s Options books).

So a module like The Gates of Firestorm Peak easily fell through the cracks. In no small part because TSR was so eager to advertise it as “the first adventure designed especially for use with the new rules presented in the three Player’s Options books” with “full-color poster maps” and “a sheet of 56 counters”. (Can you see the bright red warning lights twirling about with an accompanying siren?) It looked gimmicky, it looked silly, it looked overproduced.

Which, to a certain extent, it is. Overproduced and gimmicky, that is. (Not so much silly.)

So why did I pick it up? Well, I’ve been taking a greater interest in some of these “latter day 2nd edition” books – produced in the interim between WotC’s acquisition of the game and the release of 3rd edition. Furthermore, my local game store had put a 25% off sticker on it. And, finally, it’s written by Bruce Cordell – and I had been extremely impressed by his work on The Sunless Citadel.

And I’m glad I did, because The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Gates of Firestorm Peak. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

Long ago, before the races walked the earth as they do today, the Elder Elves were possessed of arcane arts far beyond the ken of the spellcasters of the latter days. One of their projects was the Vast Gate: An immense gateway to distant dimensions, mystically powered every 27 years by the arrival of the Dragon’s Tear comet. Unfortunately for the Elder Elves, their hubris was destined to get the better of them: As they pushed the limits of the Vast Gate further and further beyond this world, they eventually opened a gateway into a dimension so utterly alien to our own that the Elder Elves could comprehend it only in terms of insanity. (Those of you with Cthulhu experience, plug it in here.) The creatures who lived there, like the dimension itself, were vastly beyond the comprehension of the mortals of this world – and when one of the most powerful of those creatures became interested in the Vast Gate and crossed over into our world, its merest thought eradicated nearly all of the Elder Elves in the area before it became bored again and departed.

The Elder Elves who remained alive fled, attempting to seal the Vast Gate and the horrors onto which it opened through an inversion of their own gate technology. Unfortunately, they made a horrible mistake: Instead of permanently sealing the Outer Gates which led into their complex, the Elder Elves had linked them to the Vast Gate itself (in an attempt to draw power from it and shut it down forever). Instead, the Outer Gates became dependent upon the Vast Gate – just as the Vast Gate was dependent upon the power of the Dragon’s Tear. Now, every twenty-seven years, when the Dragon’s Tear appears in the sky, both the Outer Gates and the Vast Gate open once more.

Fast forward several millennia to 81 years ago: The mountain has become known as Firestorm Peak, due to the fact that the top of the mountain literally bursts into flame during the month when the Dragon’s Tear appears (a side-effect of the Elder Elves’ ancient technology). A mad mage by the name of Madreus enters the mountain and discovers the secret of the Vast Gate. He has been working ever since on harnessing the power of the Far Realm to which the Vast Gate links.

Fast forward again to 27 years ago (the last time the Gates opened): An adventuring party (including the father of one of the PCs) ventured into Firestorm Peak to shut down the Vast Gate forever. They failed – thwarted by Madreus and either killed or transformed into his thralls.

Finally, fast forward to today: The gates have opened once more, and Firestorm Peak lays open for 28 days before they will close once more. For the past five years, the area around Firestorm Peak has seemingly suffered from a strange curse – a result of Madreus’ experiments, which will most likely reach fruition during this opening of the gate. If they do, then Madreus will be able to keep the gate open permanently – unleashing the horrors of the Far Realm upon our own dimension, and destroying the world as we know it.

Toss in a tribe of duergar who wandered into the area several decades ago as they followed a vein of nephelium (a rare ore), demonic entities from beyond the gate, goblin slaves, mutated trolls, and a mammoth dungeon complex and you’ve got The Gates of Firestorm Peak.

WEAKNESSES

My biggest disappoint with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that I can’t find anyway to include it in my current campaign. I’ve got a big round hole I’d love to drop it into, but – unfortunately – there’s just a few too many corners here for me to make it fit. That being said, I’m still going to be able to use it as a massive (and invaluable) idea mine for filling that hole.

But that is, in no way, the fault of the module itself (which is actually extremely easy to include in any generic fantasy campaign with a mountain range). So, let’s move onto some actual weaknesses.

First off, I’m pretty leery of the fact that Cordell expects one of the PCs to have a father who ventured into Firestorm Peak 27 years ago. It seems a trifle presumptuous, and too intrusive. That being said, if you can make it work (i.e., convince one of your players to go along with it), then it works out really well – adding some nice areas of pathos to the adventure.

Moving on: There are a couple of places in the text where Cordell gets a little too casual with his reader. It doesn’t intrude upon the boxed text (which is copious and excellent – you can trust Cordell to produce boxed text which you can read without doubt to your players), but its still distracting.

My biggest problem with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that a group of 4-6 characters of 5th to 8th level (the group the adventure is advertised for) is simply not going to survive. There is, for example, the encounter where the PCs are expected to take on 28 duergar, 12 steeders, four 3rd-level duergar clerics, a 9th-level duergar cleric, and a 9th-level dwarf fighter. Or there’s the fight with 27 trolls (albeit at half strength). Or the final confrontation with a 10th-level wizard, a 6th-level wizard, five duergar, two gibberlings, two myconids, and three trolls. Admittedly, the PCs are supposed to run away from the encounter with 100 gibberlings.

Fortunately, as problems go, that’s the easiest one to fix: Send the PCs through this one at a higher level than advertised and they shouldn’t have any problems.

STRENGTHS

All other things being equal, bigger is better. And The Gates of Firestorm Peak is big. Very big. The dungeon fills an entire poster map and 123 individually keyed encounter areas.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had problems with similarly mammoth dungeons in the past. There is a common flaw to such things: At some point the desire to achieve the size outweighs the need to justify such a size. Fortunately, with The Gates of Firestorm Peak we are in the hands of Bruce Cordell, who doesn’t seem able to design a dungeon which doesn’t make sense.

Admittedly, he has to strain my credulity somewhat in justifying the semi-linear nature of the dungeon – but I’ll swallow the pill that Madreus wants his inner sanctum to be as difficult to reach as possible, and there’s enough branching going on that I don’t think there’s actually a serious problem here.

In short, The Gates of Firestorm Peak delivers exactly what it’s supposed to: A massive dungeon complex, painstakingly designed and detailed, which will provide hours and hours of entertainment for you and your gaming group.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Authors: Bruce Cordell
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: AD&D
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 0-7869-0435-6
Production Code: 9533
Pages: 96

Back in 2001, I described Gates of Firestorm Peak as a would-be classic that everyone was sleeping on because it was published at a time when D&D was probably at its nadir. (But also, paradoxically, flooding the market with product.) In the years since then, I’m happy to say that it’s achieved the reputation and legacy it deserves, regularly appearing on lists of the Best D&D Adventures of All Time and the like.

Also in the years since writing this review, I have thrice laid the groundwork to plug Gates into a D&D campaign. But in each case the campaign has either ended prematurely or the players have steered it in a different direction. I do hope to have the opportunity to run the adventure in full some day.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

In Shadowdark, the dark dangers of the dungeon are infamously made tangible at the gaming table by linking the duration of light sources to real time: Have you been playing for an hour? Then your torches, lanterns, and light spells burn out and you’ll need to ready new light sources.

This is a mechanic that streamlines bookkeeping, centers expedition-based play, and encourages fast-paced action. (If you sit around dithering, then you’re literally burning the candle at both ends!) It can also be a controversial mechanic due to its lightly dissociated nature, so it’s ultimately up to you whether the visceral immersion of the real-world time pressure is worth the tradeoff.

DARKER DEPTHS

But we can take this concept even further by embracing the ideal of the Mythic Underworld. Within those strange depths, the darkness does not flee the light, but rather turns upon it. Crawling through those tunnels you can feel it pressing in — little eddies of shadow testing the flickering weakness of your torch until finally the stygian murk literally snuffs out any source of light.

And the deeper you dare? The stronger the darkness becomes.

If you’re on the first level of the dungeon, then torches, lanterns, light spells, and other sources of illumination have a duration of 1 hour. But as you descend to lower levels of the dungeon, light source duration decreases as shown on the table below:

Dungeon Level	Light
1	1 hour
2	50 minutes
3	40 minutes
4	30 minutes
5	25 minutes
6	20 minutes
7	15 minutes
8+	10 minutes

If the PCs switch dungeon levels in the middle of a duration, increase or decrease the end time of the light source appropriately. For example, if a torch was going to burn out at 8:50 pm and the PCs descend from Level 1 to Level 2, the torch should now burn out at 8:40 pm. (Going up a level should always relieve pressure; going down should always increase it, and could even cause a torch to immediately go out!)

Sublevels can be treated as a level of equivalent depth (e.g., Level 3A would have the same light duration as Level 3).

DESIGN NOTES

The rules for darker depths are, obviously, designed to increase the stakes and costs of mounting expeditions to lower (and, in classic megadungeon play, more profitable) levels of the dungeon. In more narrative-driven dungeons (e.g., we must follow the dragon into the depths to recover our comrade’s body!) where the logistics of torch management may not be a primary focus, it will nevertheless push a sense of rising dread and danger.

Big, ten-minute chunks are taken out of the time initially so that the players can immediately feel the difference from one dungeon level to the next. Once the timer reaches 30 minutes, this pace is reduced to five minutes per level in order to sustain the effect for larger dungeons.

Similarly, the progression is ultimately capped at 10 minutes per light source because shorter durations (e.g., 5 minutes or 1 minute) simply become too much of a hassle to implement, serving as more of an annoying distraction than a terrifying reality.

You could experiment with the idea that, beyond Level 8, the stygian depths actually prevent any light source from being ignited, but this would obviously represent a fundamental shift in the paradigm of play rather than simply putting pressure on the existing forms of play.

Did you know that the D&D 5^th Edition core rulebooks don’t include an example of a keyed dungeon map?

This is because D&D no longer teaches you how to prep or run a dungeon.

This is a wild thing to think about, and it actually gets weirder the more you think about it. Back in 2020, in Whither the Dungeon?, I pointed out that this had created an entire generation of Dungeon Masters who had, paradoxically, never learned how to master a dungeon. Even the oral traditions which had once passed this knowledge from one DM to another were breaking down, partly because this was actually the end point of a long-term trendline (the dungeon instruction in D&D 4^th Edition, 3^rd Edition, and even 2^nd Edition had grown increasingly anemic) and partly because of the huge influx of new gamers via channels other than playing in someone else’s game over the past decade.

By the end of the 2010s, you could already see the effects of this manifesting in DMs Guild and other third-party adventures: An ever larger number of dungeon adventures were being published without numbered maps; the contents of those dungeons described in haphazard paragraphs which were often little more than a rambling stream of consciousness.

This was bad in its own right, but this degradation of published books was only a reflection of an even deeper rot at casual gaming tables – a malaise invisible to those afflicted, because they didn’t even know what they were missing.

Then, in 2023, Wizards of the Coast published The Shattered Obelisk. As noted in my review, this campaign book included multiple unkeyed dungeons. This, in my opinion, was a red alert: It wasn’t just that Wizards was neglecting to teach basic dungeon design; it appeared that the design team itself was losing the institutional knowledge to design dungeon adventures. (The call was coming from inside the house!)

But maybe this was just a fluke, right?

In 2024, the new Dungeon Master’s Guide was released. Like the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Giude, it failed to include even an example of a keyed dungeon map, let alone any sort of actual instruction in keying a dungeon map or running dungeon adventures. Except it was even wore than that: The new DMG included multiple sample adventures for new DMs, including three dungeon adventures… none of which were keyed: One just said “there are some monsters in there.” Another tried to vaguely describe through words where each encounter was located on the map (e.g., “in a sidecave to the southeast” or “at the north end of the stream”). A third tried to use a broken method of random encounter checks.

So where the 2014 DMG simply neglected to teach new DMs how dungeons work, the 2024 DMG escalated to only showing examples of exactly how you should not design a dungeon. This, in my opinion, was now a five-alarm fire.

All of which brings us, in 2025, to Borderlands Quest: Goblin Trouble, one of the first official adventures for 2024 D&D, released as introductory adventure to promote the upcoming Starter Set: Heroes of the Borderlands.

It’s a dungeon adventure.

It’s unkeyed.

Something is rotten in the state of D&D.

WHERE, OH WHERE IS THIS ROOM?

At this point, many reading this might be thinking, “Well, so what? What’s the big deal?”

To understand the problem, let’s take a peek at what happens when you try to actually run Goblin Trouble, starting with the PCs following some bandits and “enter[ing] the cave from the eastern edge of the map.” Checking the map, it’s pretty easy to figure out where this is:

It will later turn out that the actual location being described is several hundred feet to the west, but we can let that slide. So far, so good!

But things quickly get more complicated:

From the cave entrance, a passage continues deeper beneath the hills and slopes downward. You travel for several minutes before the passage turns north and leads up a set of natural stone steps. A group of caverns continues out ahead of you.

The ceiling of these caverns is choked with webs, and the footprints you’ve been following continue through these caves. In the center of the floor in the first cave is a human-sized boot.

I’m fairly certain that this is what the boxed text is describing:

But, as you can see, the PCs have moved past a major intersection without the adventure even mentioning that it exists. This is quite strange, but let’s put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it later.

At this point, the adventure describes an encounter with some spider webs and dead spiders… but is this actually where this takes place? It’s unclear. When the PCs went up the stairs, north, and into/through a “group of caverns,” how far did they go exactly? How many caverns are we talking here?

At first it seems like it could be any or all of these caves, but later, after the encounter with the dead spiders is described, we’re told that

The passage continues onwards, taking the characters north for a while, and then switching back south. The caves here are empty, save for some old cobwebs on the ceiling.

Eventually, the characters find themselves on the southeastern side of the map, near some steps that lead into a cavern with an underground stream flowing in it.

So the dead spiders must have been in the southern cave (so that the PCs could leave it going north). Furthermore, there’s only one cave on the southeastern side of the map, so that must mean that the PCs follow this path:

As we can see, the adventure is once again skipping past several more intersections and the PCs end up… in the cave immediately to the left of where they entered? That’s bizarre.

It turns out, though, that this must be a typo. This is supposed to be “near some stone steps that lead into a cavern with an underground stream flowing in it.” The stream is on the other side of the map, so they must mean one of these two locations:

But which one?

I can guess, but there’s no way to actually know.

At this point we’re told that the bandits the PCs are following are “in the cavern ahead” and “trying to summon the courage to peek around the corner and see what the goblins are up to.” But what does this mean, exactly?

They must be somewhere in this area:

But where’s the corner they’re “peeking around”? Reading ahead, we can figure out that the goblins are hiding inside the secret lair, but the bandits don’t seem to know that. Nevertheless, maybe we can play this as “they look around the corner and are confused to discover a blank wall of stone.”

Okay, so “southeast” is probably a typo for “southwest.” And the “corner” must be that outcropping of rock, so the bandits must be standing at the X:

We also know the path the PCs must have taken (which is still bonkers, but let’s stick another pin in that!). We’ve figured it out!

Phew!

…

Just kidding. The bandits can’t be standing there, because several pages later we discover that the goblins have set up a trap in the mushroom patch. This is not, of course, keyed to the map. (Why would it be?) But if the bandits were there, they would have triggered it.

So where ARE the bandits supposed to be?

I have no idea! Good luck, first-time DMs!

CONSEQUENCES

It’s important to understand that this isn’t some fluke. This is what always happens when you try to describe the contents of a dungeon through rambling paragraphs instead of clearly indicating where things are located on the map.

If you think about it, this principle isn’t just limited to dungeon design. It’s a fundamental property of maps. Imagine, for example, if the maps app on your phone just displayed a bunch of unlabeled streets and said, “Turn left somewhere up ahead. I’m sure you’ll figure it out!”

And the problem here isn’t just that you’re being forced to solve a Where Is This Room? puzzle before you can run the adventure. The deeper problem is that, without a proper scenario structure, you’ll end up prepping the wrong stuff. And even if you prep the right stuff, it’ll be organized in ways that make it difficult or even impossible to use at the gaming table.

In truth, what usually happens is that the designer or GM will end up defaulting back to the only structure they have left: A railroad.

And that’s exactly what happens in Goblin Trouble.

The opening advice for the new DM (which is quite good, actually; check out Nerd Immersion’s video that takes a closer look at this) spends a good deal of time talking about the importance of player choice and how players should be driving the action of the adventure. But the very first thing the adventure says is that (a) there’s only one thing the players can do; (b) if they don’t, the DM should tell them what to do; and (c) if that also doesn’t work, the DM should then use their “power to change the world around them to spur them to action.”

Then, as we’ve seen, the rest of the adventure is forced onto a purely linear track: The players can only choose to go forward or backward. Despite a xandered dungeon map, the predetermined narrative simply shuffles them along a track that ignores all opportunities for choice or navigation.

THE KICKER

Goblin Trouble continues in this vein for a while, but then, right near the end, we find this:

The Forge. The makeshift forge in area 4a occupies the spot at the back of the second room.

Area 4a?

This means that, at some point, somebody actually keyed a map. And then somebody else decided to remove the map key and rewrite Goblin Trouble as a nearly incoherent linear railroad.

There’s some nice stuff in Goblin Trouble: The opening GM advice. The texture of the encounters. The roleplaying vs. combat opportunities set up with the bandits.

But it’s fatally sabotaged by a fundamental failure of basic scenario structure and adventure design. I find it particularly alarming that this appears to have been done to an adventure which initially didn’t have these problems, suggesting that there’s something systemically wrong with the development process for adventures at Wizards of the Coast.

It’s a “the call is coming from inside the house” moment and, in my opinion, bodes ill for future Wizards of the Coast adventures.

And, frankly, for the hobby.

Gygax must be chortling in his non-existent grave: Diablo II has come to your gaming table, and it’s brought random dungeons with it!

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

When I first cracked open Diablo II: To Hell and Back my first reaction was one of excitement: It looked like Carl, Eckelberry, Quick, and Redman were going to deliver an epic campaign for D&D.

As I read, though, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment, and disappointment turned to boredom. As I look back over what I’ve read, I’m still of a mixed mind over this book.

Diablo II: To Hell and Back is designed to bring the Diablo II computer game to your gaming table, adapting it for use with the D&D rules. To a certain extent, it succeeds. And to a certain extent, it fails. It succeeds in the sense that every location, every dungeon, every NPC, every quest, and every monster from the computer game is to be found between its covers. It fails, however, in the sense that it is so busy attempting to emulate the computer game experience that it never gets around to establishing itself as a D&D supplement.

Or, to put it another way: Playing Diablo II: To Hell and Back is just like playing the computer game… except without the graphics. (And you also have to do all the number-crunching and random generation yourself.)

But why would you want to do that? I mean, what’s the point? If I want to play something just like the Diablo II computer game, why wouldn’t I just play the Diablo II computer game?

At the end of the day, Diablo II: To Hell and Back fails in being a good D&D supplement – which is what it should have been, and needs to be, above all else. In fact, the only thing it truly succeeds at is emphasizing the vast gulf which exists between tabletop RPGs and Diablo-style CRPGs.

What’s frustrating here is that, with just a little more effort, the authors could have used the same basic structure of this product as the foundation for a truly epic D&D supplement. Something which builds upon the basic plot, characters, and villains of Diablo II — but also brings with it the unique strengths of table-top gaming (more realistic character interaction, the ability for the DM to handle more complicated plot dynamics, etc.). The opportunity, however, is wasted… just as your money will be if you make the mistake of dropping it on this book.

To be fair, not everything here is lackluster. As I mentioned above, the structure the authors employ to emulate the computer game is not without merit: They succeed in creating randomly generated adventures which, at the same time, have a structure and purpose. They don’t entirely succeed (I would have actually preferred to seen less left in the hands of the DM – after all, I can always ignore randomness if I want to), but they do explore some interesting ideas. The monsters to be found in this volume are also nice, particularly the demonic creatures with lower CRs. If my understanding is correct, however, these can also be found in Diablo II: Diablerie — so you might be better advised to look there, instead of here. (Without the monsters, I would most likely have given this book a Substance rating of 1 instead of 2.)

While the random structure holds some promise, in one area they drop the ball big time: “Rather than list a specific number of monsters for such Fixed Encounters, we list an Encounter Level. For instance, Corpsefire (a special Zombie boss) has CR 3 Zombies with him. You can use the Dungeon Master’s Guide (Table 4-1) to calculate just how many Zombies that means for the party level when the PCs encounter Corpsefire. That way the game adjusts the challenges the PCs face as they go up in level.”

When I first read that I was incredibly excited – not only as a game player, but also as a freelance writer. What a clever way of building scalability right into the adventure without having any significant amount of hassle for the DM!

And, indeed, it would have been clever… that is, if it actually worked. It doesn’t: First, it’s a misuse of the CR/EL system (because groups of creatures have EL; individual creatures have CRs – they were using terms interchangeably that aren’t interchangeable). Second, because the CR/EL system doesn’t work that way no matter how you look at it. Zombies which have a CR or EL of 3 will always have a CR or EL of 3 – no matter what level the adventuring party facing them is. The XP awarded for defeating a CR 3 creature scales as the party’s level changes… not the CR or EL of those creatures.

When I figured out that it didn’t work (about twenty seconds after reading it), I proceeded to get pissed off: Not only had someone designed a system that didn’t work, they had then – obviously – not even bothered to playtest it.

In short, let me say this again: Don’t waste your money on this book. It had potential, but it was horrendously squandered.

Style: 4
Substance: 2

Authors: Jason Carl, David Eckelberry, Jeff Quick, and Rich Redman
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: Dungeons & Dragons
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1831-4
Production Code: WTC11831
Pages: 192

I really don’t envy the design team for this one. Wizards of the Coast had licensed Diablo II and started releasing licensed D&D tie-in books in 1999. The idea of adapting what was, at the time, arguably the most popular fantasy CRPG on the planet to D&D was actually a pretty great way to try to expand a D&D fanbase that had been contracting for more than a decade. The only problem? Wizards was simultaneously getting ready to release a new edition of D&D in the summer of 2000.

So the Diablo II D&D sourcebooks were awkwardly split across editions, and the 3rd Edition books — like this one — were being developed before the core rulebooks had actually been finalized (which is always a difficult position for a designer to be in). Add in all the headaches that come from licensed games (e.g., getting approval from the licensor for everything you do), and, as a designer, you’re being put into an almost impossible situation.

Unfortunately, the result here was an almost perfect example of exactly what NOT to do when adapting a CRPG to the tabletop.

Glass Cannon Unplugged was supposed to be releasing a new Diablo TTRPG in 2024 that was going to be somehow compatible with a Diablo board game. But this currently seems to be vaporware.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.