Go to Table of Contents

There are several different ways that the PCs can complete the Avernian Quest, but the most immediate (and the one they’re most likely to be pursuing as they leave Elturel for the first time) is the Sword of Zariel. The vision they receive from Torm and the shredded remnants of Lulu’s memories point them towards a pair of kenku at Fort Knucklebones.

THE HISTORY OF FORT KNUCKLEBONES

The kenku Lulu is looking for are long dead. Lulu actually came to Fort Knucklebones hundreds of years ago, shortly after Zariel’s fall (see Part 6D).

See, there has always been a flock of kenku at Fort Knucklebones. For as long as anyone can remember. Longer, actually. The people in charge come and go, but the kenku are always there. The current boss is Mad Maggie, but before that there was:

• Lord Fauxen, a human warlock
• A flock of vrock, who secretly used the fort as a forward supply base in the Blood War
• Xartemug, a pit fiend

And so forth.

Although no one remembers Lulu here and no story of her original visit has been passed down, there is a vestige of her to be found among the local kenku: Kenku speak by mimicking words that they have heard. Flocks of kenku have small, unique collections of word “performances” that are collectively shared and passed down from one generation to the next. One such “word of the foreflock” in the Knucklebones flock is Lulu saying the word “love.” For generations, when these kenku have said that they love each other (or anyone else), they have spoken it with Lulu’s voice.

The kenku will recognize Lulu’s voice and become quite excited about this.

FORT KNUCKLEBONES

Fort Knucklebones is a trading post; a sort of Port Royal for the Avernian warlords where they come for supplies, recreation, and repairs. This also makes it a useful hub of operations for the PCs.

Mad Maggie is the current potentate of the fort. Although not a warlord herself, she is seen by them as an equal and the neutrality of the fort is (generally) respected.

The fort itself, based around an outcropping or red rock shaped like a clawed hand, is somewhat described in Descent Into Avernus, p. 80:

• There’s a rampart of rock, bones, and metal debris with a gatehouse.
• The outer court, roughly the area that lies between the rampart and the knuckle gates.
• There are four courtyards located between each of the knuckles. These courtyards are fronted by the knuckle gates, which can be shut for an additional line of defense, but are generally left open.
• There is a fastness within the outcropping, with access caves from most of the knuckle courtyards. The fastness includes various storehouses and also Maggie’s demesne.

Note: Fort Knucklebones is also likely to be the PCs’ first introduction to soul coins as a form of currency. Take the opportunity to push home the “you’re not in Kansas any more” moment. Check out Addendum: Soul Coins, for a more detailed look at how the coins can be used in Descent Into Avernus.

BETWEEN THE KNUCKLES: There are four courtyards located between the “knuckles” of the outcropping.

• The tinker’s shed, a service station for war machines run by the kenku. A large cave at the back of this courtyard serves as a garage. The kenku live in a number of smaller caves that line the fingers to either side of the courtyard. A number of these caves are quite high, and the kenku have to climb ladders carved into the rock. (According to the flock’s oral tradition, before their entire species was cursed, the kenku of Fort Knucklebones could simply fly up to these caves. That’s how long they’ve been living here.)
• The Well, a bar built up around a rare natural spring of clean water. This spring is the reason Fort Knucklebones has been so constantly occupied. The barkeep at the Well is named Natasha the Dark; she claims to be a “cloned daughter of Baba Yaga.” (This would imply that she’s the clone-sister of Iggwilv. She’s probably making it up. But who knows? Maybe she’s the real Tasha who invented Tasha’s hideous laughter and Iggwilv stole her)
• The arcade is filled with market tents. Maggie’s infernal bank, run by an imp named Sarcasia, can also be found here. (It houses her stockpile of soul coins, acts as a moneychanger, and offers loans of various sorts.)
• The hostel, located in the broad space between thumb and index finger, is more of a public campground. No fees are charged. Anyone can grab a slab of space and pitch a tent. (Maggie figures that if people are staying here, they’ll be spending money at the arcade and that’s where she gets her cut.) The imps love to play practical jokes on people staying here.

Note: “Tinker’s shed” is the generic term on Avernus for war machine repair shops or service stations. They take the name “shed” because they’re usually rather small. The kenku’s facility here at Fort Knucklebones is expansive, but still referred to as a shed.

INHABITANTS: For ease of reference, here’s a list of NPCs at Fort Knucklebones. Also arranged as a random table just in case:

 

d12	NPC
1	Mad Maggie (DIA, p. 83)
2	Mickey (DIA, p. 83)
3	Chukka the Kenku (DIA, p. 83)
4	Clonk the Kenku (DIA, p. 84)
5	Pins & Needles (DIA, p. 84)
6	Barnabas the Flameskull (DIA, p. 84)
7	Redcaps (DIA, p. 84)
8	Wazzik the Madcap (DIA, p. 84)
9	Sarcasia (see above)
10	Natasha the Dark (see above)
11	Elturian Escapee
12	Random Avernian Gang

If the PCs do end up making Fort Knucklebones a hub for their operations in Avernus, I’d recommend adding a few extra characters to this list and working it up with a Tavern Time™ structure. This is a good example of where smart prep means waiting to prep something until the players have started wading into it and you know you’ll need it.

KNUCKLEBONES ENCOUNTERS: Don’t use up all the encounters in the first fifteen minutes the PCs are at Fort Knucklebones. Or even their first visit. This stuff can build over time.

• Chukka & Clonk: Help repair war-machine (DIA, p. 83)
• Mickey: Limping from injury (DIA, p. 83)
• Imps: Play a practical joke (DIA, p. 84)
• Imps: Want PCs to kill Wazzik (DIA, p. 84)
• Barnabas: Find the flameskull’s missing tooth (DIA, p. 84)
• Redcaps: Offer PCs a severed finger as a friendship gift (DIA, p. 84)

If you rework Fort Knucklebones using the Tavern Time™ structure, you can pull these encounters into the NPC “topics of conversation.” (You’ll want 2-3 per NPC.)

Bonus Encounter: Natasha the Dark wants someone to cast hideous laughter on her. It reminds her of her sister.

THE 1-TO-10 SCALE: This is briefly described on DIA p. 80-81. It’s basically a mental shorthand for tracking what an NPC’s attitude is towards the PCs. You can actually track this sort of thing for all NPCs, on your campaign status document if it seems useful to you.

ARRIVING AT FORT KNUCKLEBONES

When the PCs come to Fort Knucklebones for the first time, we don’t want the kenku they’re looking for to be the first thing they see. Looking for the kenku will mean exploring the fort, pushing and pulling them into encounters with the various locations and characters here.

REDCAP WATCHPOST: There’s a watchpost in the fort’s ramparts manned by redcaps. Use the encounter described in DIA, p. 81.

OUTER COURT: As the PCs pass through the watchpost and into the outer court, describe three specific people (or groups of people) doing things around the courtyard. (One of these might be an encounter, but that’s probably not necessary right now.)

Note that you want to be specific. You don’t want to just describe a generic mélange of activity (e.g., “The courtyard is full of strange-looking creatures. There are horns and tails and a faint smell of sulfur.”). You want specific stuff they can choose to interact with.

None of these should be kenku. I recommend including a warlord gang (maybe hanging out around their war-machines outside the Well) as a way of foreshadowing or, if the PCs choose to interact with them, introducing this aspect of the campaign. (More on these gangs in Part 7E.)

FUTURE VISITS

On future visits to Fort Knucklebones I recommend having:

• 1d3 or 1d4-1 NPCs in the Outer Court and the Well.
• Having 1d2 or 1d3-1 NPCs in the other courtyards (plus whatever NPCs would logically be there, like the kenku in the garage).

If you expand the cast of characters here, you can probably bump those numbers up a notch.

Have one or two encounters on each visit. (If you haven’t gone for a full Tavern Time™ structure, in which case they’ll be keyed to the NPCs as you generate them.)

QUEST OF THE DREAM MACHINE

In the published book, Mad Maggie uses her dream machine to unlock Lulu’s memories and then Lulu’s memories guide the PCs as they journey across Avernus (through the twin railroads).

We are more or less going to invert this structure:

• The PCs come to Fort Knucklebones.
• The kenku explain that they can’t help, but maybe Mad Maggie can.
• Mad Maggie is intrigued (in large part due to her obsession with Zariel lore and Lulu’s presence in the rare tapestry she owns, see Part 6D). She has a machine that she thinks could be used to recover Lulu’s lost memories.
• Just one problem: The machine doesn’t work. It’s missing four key components. The PCs will need to find these components in order to make the machine work.

To find these components, the PCs will need to explore Avernus (as described in Part 7). Once they have the components, the dream machine can be repaired and Lulu’s memories recovered (as described in Part 6D-I).

Homework: How did Mad Maggie get the dream machine?

THE FOUR COMPONENTS:

• Nirvanan Cogbox. Used in a variety of infernal machines, these cogboxes come from Mechanus.
• Heartstone. Used by night hags to infiltrate the dreams of their victims. It’s used as a prism or beam-splitter in the dream machine.
• Phlegethosian sand. Obsidian sand pounded from the jagged, rocky plains of Phlegethos, the fourth layer of Hell.
• Astral pistons. Another component used in various pieces of infernal machinery. The pistons are actually extruded into the astral plane, maximizing their mechanical output. It’s an outdated technology and rarely used these days.

MAGGIE’S LEADS

In addition briefing the PCs on the parts she needs, Mad Maggie can provide them with some initial leads on where they may be able to find some of them. The alphanumeric hex references below are map coordinates from the hex map in Part 7B, which you can use to quickly identify where these leads can potentially take the PCs.

Astral Pistons: She’s heard that an oni named Malargan — the forgemaster of Kolasiah, a local warlord — has a set of astral pistons in his forge. (Hex A5)

Astral Pistons: Uldrak the Tinker, whose shop is based out of a titanic helmet located in the western end of the Plains of Fire, had a set of astral pistons in stock a few years back when one of Maggie’s riders (now dead) needed repairs for an antique war machine. It’s possible he might still have a supply. (Hex D5)

Heartstone: Mad Maggie and Red Ruth (Hex B4) were part of a coven along with a third night hag named Gaunt Gella. Mad Maggie believes that Red Ruth killed Gella and stole her heartstone. Maggie suspects that Red Ruth is still located somewhere in Avernus, but she doesn’t know where. However, she has heard rumors that Red Ruth has been seen at Mahadi’s Emporium from time to time, and the PCs might check there for a lead to Red Ruth’s current location.

Note: “Gella” means “the one with the golden hair.” Consider having a quiet, emotional moment for Mad Maggie where she remembers the beautiful hair of her fallen friend. It’s up to you whether or not Red Ruth was actually responsible for Gella’s death.

Alternatively, Gaunt Gella was bald, but collected the heads of blonde mortals. (Maggie can still fondly remember how beautiful the hair was.)

Nirvanan Cogbox: Nirvanan cogboxes are a modronic technomancy. Maggie has heard that a modron ship crashed on the shores of the Styx contra-Dis from Fort Knucklebones. (The ship is located in Hex H5, but it’s actually an elemental galleon from Eberron and does not have a cogbox.)

Design Note: At least three instances of each component have been seeded into the Avernian hexcrawl. (The Three Clue Rule waves hello.) In Part 7I: Avernian Rumor Tables, you will find additional rumors that can lead the PCs to these disparate sources.

Mad Maggie gives four leads, and she should give them all at once. She gives two different sources for one component, one possible source for a second component (although she doesn’t exactly know how to track that source down), and an incorrect location for the fourth component.

This spreads four experiences across these leads:

For one component, the PCs have two leads and can choose one. (Establishing the idea that they have multiple options for finding the components.)

For another, they’ll have to follow up their lead to figure out where they can actually find the component. (Establishing the idea that they’ll need to actively investigate to find these components.)

For the third component, they’ll discover a dead end and need to find a different way.

For the fourth component, they’ll have no lead at all. (Establishing the idea that this isn’t just a “do what Mad Maggie tells you” fetch quest; instead, they’ll be in the driver’s seat for figuring out how to obtain these components.)

With no additional explanation, simply receiving these four leads from Mad Maggie will teach the players a lot about the form, structure, and expectations of the Avernian hexcrawl.

Go to Part 6D: Lulu’s Memories

Go to Part 1

Almost certainly the most famous sequence featuring traps is the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. So, bearing in mind The Principle of Using Linear Mediums as RPG Examples, let’s take a look at what makes the sequence work.

TRAP 1 – COBWEBS. The first trap we see are the cobwebs filling the entrance. This an example of a naturally occurring trap (as opposed to one that was built). It’s also, perhaps surprisingly, a dynamic trap. Rather than simply dealing damage, it instead releases monsters for Indy to deal with. In this case, the monsters are spiders:

In D&D we might imagine swapping these out for giant spiders, but it’s really not necessary: What you have here are a bunch of spiders crawling over the PCs and they need to figure out how to get them off before getting bitten and poisoned.

TRAP 2 – SPIKE TRAP. Next up is a spike trap that shoots out from the wall to impale its unlucky victims. Somehow triggered by interrupting a beam of sunlight, this is clearly a magical trap and you’ll need to use your Intelligence (Arcana) skill to detect it.

Indy “disables” this trap by triggering it in a controlled way. (Player expertise trumps character expertise and bypasses the normal mechanic.)

The spikes contain the corpse of a former explorer, telling the story of what has happened in this dungeon before.

The spike trap also has an ongoing effect: We know it has a delayed reset because Satipo, Indy’s companion, triggers it while running back down the corridor later.

TRAP 3 – PIT TRAP. Next up we have a classic pit trap. This is actually an open pit, demonstrating that a trap doesn’t necessarily need to be hidden in order to pose a dilemma for the PCs to overcome. (This conceit is probably underused in D&D. It’s obviously not a one-true-way thing, but it can also be a self-diagnostic tool: If it would be pointless for a trap to exist if the PCs automatically spotted it, that may be a good indicator that the trap isn’t interesting enough.)

Instead of somehow disabling the pit, of course, Indy solves the problem by using his whip to swing across it. He easily makes his Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, but Satipo flubs his. Rather than immediately dropping him in the pit, however, the hypothetical GM uses fortune-in-the-middle to leave him dangling helplessly. Indy has to leap in with a Strength (Athletics) check to haul him in.

TRAP 4 – DART TRAP. Next we have the (probably poison) dart trap. Indiana Jones succeeds on his Intelligence (Investigation) check to find the trigger. Once he’s identified one trigger (camouflaged with a covering of dirt), he can easily recognize the other triggers in the room. This is somewhat compressed, but still demonstrates a local theme.

Jones once again decides not to disable the trap and instead makes a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to make his way across the room.

TRAP 5 – THE IDOL’S PEDESTAL. Everyone knows this one, right? Even if you haven’t actually seen the movie, I feel like you already know this one: Indiana Jones tries to replace the idol with a sand-filled bag of equal weight to avoid triggering the trap.

(And if you haven’t seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, I really can’t emphasize enough how you should immediately stop reading this article and go do that. Not because of spoilers – we’re just discussing the first scene here – but because you’re missing out on something awesome.)

Something to note here is that Indiana Jones very specifically filled the bag with sand outside the temple. He knew this trap would be here. Remember when I said that you’ll know you’ve gotten the balance right when the PCs start actively trying to collect intel on the traps they might encounter? And the pay-off will be memorable problem-solving (that, in this case, will resonate through a bajillion homages)?

Yeah. Like that.

The idol’s pedestal also features a delayed onset. This is another technique you can use for fortune-in-the-middle resolutions.

This is also the first trap-related skill check Indiana Jones has failed. Notice that the failure doesn’t zap him for damage!

Instead, we then have one of the greatest dynamic traps of all time as the entire temple begins to collapse! A whole new problem that prompts both Satipo and Indy to flee back out of the temple, retracing their steps through the same traps they came through to get here.

This is where the specificity with which the previous traps were detected and dealt with pays off a second time. This is why you want to avoid the simplicity of “a successful Disable check = the trap no longer exists.” For example, if Jones had taken the time to disable the dart triggers as he entered the temple, he’d now have a clear path to exit. But he didn’t, and now he doesn’t have time to carefully pick his way through the traps.

His only option is to try to run out of the room so quickly that the darts can’t hit him. We might model this as a Jones taking a Dodge action (so that the darts make attack rolls at disadvantage). Or maybe it makes more sense for Jones to make a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check at disadvantage to see if he can move fast enough.

(Notice how the same trap can be dealt with in different ways – both in the fiction and in the mechanics – because, once again, the nature of the trap is specific.)

We return to the pit. Because Jones specifically left his whip in situ, Satipo can use it to swing across. This time he makes his Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, but pulls the whip after him.

Now things get interesting, as Satipo demands that Indy throw him the idol before he’ll throw him the whip. This is an example of how traps can be incorporated into non-combat scenes: This is a social dilemma and negotiation which is entirely predicated on the presence of the trap!

(We might ask ourselves how often this sort of thing really happens. But in pulp fiction? It happens all the time. When in doubt, dangle a loved one over a cauldron of boiling oil. Or negotiate a terrible price for the antidote to a poison dart.)

Satipo reneges on the deal, drops the whip, and leaves. “Adios, señor.”

Indy takes a running start and makes a Strength (Athletics) check to just leap across it.

(What’s that? 5th Edition uses flat jump distances instead of making you roll a check for it? Well, that would certainly make this moment incredibly boring. But it’s not like D&D is based on pulp adventure stories, so I’m sure perilous leaps won’t come up that often and it therefore makes perfect sense for that to be the rule… Anyway, I digress.)

Indy fails his check, but the GM once again uses a fortune-in-the-middle technique (possibly prompted by a partial failure) and has him land on the far edge of the pit. He’s going to have to try to climb up by grabbing a vine.

Another partial failure on the Strength (Athletics) check! He manages to grab the vine, but it’s not secure and he nearly slides back into the pit before catching himself!

Here we see multiple traps being brought together for a combinatory effect: Not only is Jones trying to get past the pit trap, but there’s a wall descending that will cut him off from the exit. He’s only got 3 rounds before his exit is cut off, and he’s burning through them with these failed checks!

Indy, of course, finally makes his Strength (Athletics) check and scrambles under the door, managing to grab his whip at the last minute. Running down the corridor he discovers that Satipo has, as we mentioned before, (a) made the strategic decision not to search for traps because the temple was collapsing around him and (b) failed to remember (via player expertise) that the spike trap was there.

(Once again, if they had disabled this trap instead of simply bypassing it on their way in, this would have played out very differently.)

This, of course, brings us to the other great iconic trap from this sequence:

TRAP 6 – BIG-ASS BOULDER. This may or may not be a new trap, actually. It’s quite likely that the boulder is triggered by the idol’s pedestal, being an example of a trap having a non-local effect in the dungeon and just one more step in the trap’s wide-ranging “seal the temple” schtick.

Alternatively, it’s possible that Indy did something to trigger the boulder as he was exiting. If so, this trigger probably only becomes active as a result of the trap on the idol’s pedestal being triggered. (We didn’t specifically discuss triggers that are only conditionally active, but it’s a subset of trigger uncertainty.)

Indy then leaps through the spider webs (which have apparently not reset with more spiders) and hurtles out of the temple.

End of sequence.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Is this an example of a good D&D dungeon?

Probably not. It’s too linear even for a short dungeon, in my opinion. (Although if you do have a relatively linear sequence with a lot of traps that you’re going to force the players through, the fact that so many of the traps are immediately obvious or already known to Jones before he enters the dungeon – the webs, the pit, the idol’s pedestal – may be a good tip: Put the interest on what the PCs do about the traps instead of whether or not they find the traps; and if there’s no interest to be found there, then you probably need to fix that.)

But the point of the exercise, of course, is not the totality of dungeon design. It’s about how we can bring cool traps to our tables. In this, I think, Indy has successfully given us some insight.

Back to the Art of Rulings

Go to Table of Contents

Soul coins are one of the cool ideas bouncing around Descent Into Avernus. The basic concept is that souls damned to Hell are forged into coins on Minauros, the third layer of the Nine Hells, and then “used for goods and services, infernal deals, dark bargains, and bribes.”

This is great worldbuilding both literally and metaphorically: Devils making deals for souls is an epistemological satire of commercial dealings, and the trading of souls as literal currency simply extends that satire. But it also just logically makes sense that devils, having obtained a soul, would want to package it into as convenient and relatively compact a form as possible. And the universal form is such as to dehumanize the victims by establishing that the individual holds no significance to the devil.

The full function of soul coins is described in “Commerce” (DIA, p. 78), “Soul Fuel” (p. 217), and “Soul Coins” (p. 225).

Unfortunately, the book’s handling of soul coins is rather flawed.

First, the actual value and rarity of soul coins is all over the map. They are either very rare and incredibly difficult to find or incredibly common and the basis for all commerce in Avernus. In some places their value is pegged at being roughly equivalent to 6 sp, but elsewhere an NPC will offer 100 gp worth of gems for every soul coin the PCs can find for him.

It seems fairly clear that some of the writers on the book thought the soul coins were meant to be the de facto currency of Avernus, while others thought of them as rare magical artifacts. Or perhaps they started as the former, but then someone along the line got cold feet because… well… they’re souls aren’t they? Wouldn’t they be pretty rare? (Not necessarily. Eternity across potentially infinite planes can make souls as common or as precious on Avernus as you like.)

Second, there are inconsistencies in which functions of a soul coin require charges and/or how many charges it takes to exhaust a soul coin. For example, the stat block of a soul coin says each time you question the soul inside the coin it costs a charge (and each coin only has three charges), but there’s also an NPC with a soul coin collection that they chat with on the daily.

Third, at first glance Descent Into Avernus also does a clever thing by making soul coins the fuel for various infernal machines, creating an ethical dilemma for PCs who have to choose between not using those machines or literally burning up the souls inside the coins.

In practice, though, the only thing it really seems to do is actively discourage any non-evil character (and, realistically, prohibit any good character) from riding kick-ass war machines across the Avernian plains. And, I’m going to be honest, the war machines are a lot fucking cooler than the ethical dilemma.

Fourth, there’s some metaphysical vagueness, which is fortunately fairly easy to clear up. Are the coins forged exclusively from evil souls or are some good souls illegitimately captured? And, similarly, do the lowest order of evil souls sent to Hell end up as lemures or forged in soul coins? In both cases: Why not both? In the latter case, it’s easy to imagine that there all manner of Hellish intakes for new souls. (You could perhaps even imagine a different one for each of the Nine Layers.)

COINS AS FUEL

I’d make two adjustments to the coins:

• Talking to the soul inside doesn’t require charges.
• Expending all the charges in a coin (or using it up as fuel for an infernal machine) burns out the coin, but doesn’t destroy the soul inside. (Such coins need to be taken back to Minauros to be reforged, with the soul being transferred to a new coin.)

My goals here are twofold:

First, it’s interesting to talk to the souls inside the coins, so I don’t want to discourage it. Similarly, NPCs with collections of coins that they chat with or regularly consult/torment are cool.

Second, I want to dull the ethical conundrum for PCs using soul coins. There are still plenty of ethical conundrums here: Should you free them? The souls, uh… scream when you use them as fuel. But it’s not just an instant no-brainer for anyone who isn’t evil.

ALTERNATE FUEL: Devils need soul coins to fuel their war-machines because they’re not mortal. Mortals like the PCs, however, can directly fuel the war-machines. The mortal suffers 1d10 points of damage and fuels the war-machine for 24 hours. This damage cannot be healed by normal means, but returns at a rate of 1 hit point per day. A greater restoration instantly restores these lost hit points.

This also means that you can have devils riding across the Avernian plains with screaming prisoners strapped to their war-machines Mad Max-style.

Design Note: My goal, obviously, is to give PCs the option to drive war-machines without exploiting trapped souls. You might require them to track down (and install) a converter to do so, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

COINS AS COMPANIONS

Every soul coin is a unique NPC. I recommend leaning into this.

WHO THEY ARE: Check out 51 Soul Coins as a good source for random soul coin characters. The collection is a limited in its range (featuring almost exclusively average people who got gulled by a devil), so you may want to broaden its scope (with, say, historical figures, those who damned themselves to Hell without the help of a devil’s contract, good souls who were captured and forced into a coin, and so forth).

WHAT THEY KNOW: Soul coins are constantly aware of their surroundings, making them a potentially valuable source of information. Let’s give them a 1 in 6 chance of having useful information (i.e., roll on the Avernian rumor tables).

COIN MADNESS: Being locked up inside a coin for eternity is not conducive to a sane mind. Many soul coins have had their sanity shredded to the point that they are no longer coherent or intelligible (see table below), and even those who are capable of conversing may display strange tics of behavior and distress.

d8	Madness
1	Hysteria
2	Amnesia
3	Hallucinations
4	Mania
5	Logorrhea
6	Paranoia
7	Echopraxia
8	Catatonia

COINS AS CURRENCY

If you want soul coins to be prized as fuel for the war-machines, then they can’t be common enough to serve as coinage in Avernus. Which is a pity, because the use of an alternate currency would be an excellent opportunity to alienate and disorient the players (and their characters). “What do you mean I can’t pay with gold?”

As I describe in Random Worldbuilding – Coins & Currency, money can be a powerful channel for conveying information about the world to the players. And this would be a powerful one: Not only clearly signaling that “you’re not in the Realms any more,” but also viscerally signaling how Hell is fundamentally built upon the suffering and exploitation of mortal souls.

So here’s my recommendation:

• Soul coins are worth roughly 50 platinum pieces in purchasing power. They are rarely used in actual commerce, and instead serve primarily as a coin of account.
• Spent soul coins are more common, accumulating over millennia of soul coins being used up that aren’t important enough to reforge. They have a purchasing power roughly equivalent to 1 platinum piece.
• Obsidian chits are the common currency of Avernus, with a purchasing power of 1 gold piece. These chits are issued by various Dukes and warlords and backed by stockpiles of soul coins. Mad Maggie, for example, has a small stockpile and issues her own chits, as does the Wandering Emporium.

You can generally issue about 1,000 chits per soul coin. (That’s more than the strict conversion rate, but welcome to the wonderful world of being a banker.) If you want to get more complicated, you could postulate cheap chits or bull-chits — chits which were circulated by Avernian powerbrokers who no longer exist or whose soul coin stockpile was lost. These are still perceived as having some value and could be used as the equivalent of copper pieces.

Design Note: Such cheap chits could also be a window into Avernian history. Or just easter eggs. For example, the PCs might find cheap chits that were issued by Gargauth when he was Treasurer of Hell.

COINS AS SOULS

As described in Descent Into Avernus, p. 226, the soul within a soul coin can be freed by casting a spell that removes a curse. A freed soul is released to whatever planar afterlife it belongs in… which means that for most soul coins the soul is just churned back through Hell’s intake for new souls.

USING THE SOUL: A soul coin can also be used in conjunction with animate dead or create undead to bind the soul to the undead created. Such undead can be controlled by anyone holding the soul coin they were created from. If the undead are destroyed, the soul is released to whichever planar afterlife it belongs in (see above).

If you are in Hell, you can similarly cast infernal calling (from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, p. 158) in conjunction with a soul coin to transform the soul within the coin into a lemure. The soul coin is destroyed in the process. (You’ve more or less just created the lemure the soul would have become if it had entered Hell through Avernus rather than Minauros.)

Go to the Avernus Remix

There are, broadly speaking, three ways to handle PC wealth in an RPG:

• Don’t track it or worry about it in any way
• Use an abstract wealth system
• Manage it in character (most typically by counting every coin)

All of these can work well, depending on what the game is focusing on and what effect you’re looking for. For example, when I’m running Feng Shui 2 the individual wealth of each PC is, at best, window-dressing to the pulse-pounding action.

A properly designed abstract wealth system, on the other hand, can be a valuable channel for communicating setting information. In Infinity, for example, I designed a system in which a character’s Earnings (an abstract value indicating how much income they have) can be used to provide a similarly abstract Lifestyle, with the Lifestyle you live determining your Social Status (which feeds back into the Psywar system for resolving social conflicts).

The cool bit is that instead of just one Lifestyle, there are four: Clothing & Fashion, Entertainment, Food & Drink, and Housing & Property. I could then provide short descriptions for each Lifestyle at each rating. For example:

Entertainment for the Elite and richer includes custom-designed experiences, niche happenings, and expensive participatory events: AR experiences mapped onto orbital insertions; pop-up nightclubs inside hollowed-out asteroids; recreation masques using morphing flesh-masks of historical figures; and other similarly unique opportunities.

This very light layer of structure let me really dig into what the panoply of day-to-day life was really like in this strange, almost alien setting existing on the transhuman cusp in a way that could still be easily accessed by the GM (what is this hyper-elite NPC wearing? where is the demogrant NPC living?) and also provide simple hooks for players looking to come to grip with their characters without needing to absorb the totality of every social class and circumstance.

On the other hand, consider Trail of Cthulhu: Here the emphasis of the game is on solving Mythos mysteries in the 1930’s. The game uses a single Credit Rating score which (a) has a very brief description to orient the reader to the historical epoch and (b) can be mechanically used to glean clues. Because that’s what the game is about.

COUNTING COINS

Which brings us to counting coins.

This is, of course, how D&D handles wealth. Which means that, like a lot of things D&D does, it has become an often unexamined default. Recently I’ve seen a number of designers and GMs decide that they don’t like tracking every copper piece, and their solution has been to count only a single, universal currency (i.e., only Gold or Credits or Cash).

Here’s my two bits (pun intended): If you’re tracking currency at all, then it’s worth tracking at least 3-4 types to give roleplaying flavor and logistical variation. If you’re NOT interested in currency-based flavor or logistics, then you shouldn’t be counting coins at all (and should instead use one of the other two methods I talked about above).

Flavor is ineffable, but there’s a difference between silver pocket change and coffers filled with gold; between the dive bar where people are sliding copper pieces across scarred bars and the high-class joint where people pay in gold. The noble who recompenses you with a small stack of platinum in a black velvet bag just feels different from the drug lord who pays you off with a coffer full of silver.

Note from My Player: I still remember that payment. My character kept that bag. It’s good stuff.

Logistics can include the encumbrance difficulties of lugging 10,000 cp out of a dungeon vs. 100 gp (prompting tough choices and ingenuity in problem solving). But it’s also stuff like currency conversions.

Such conversions can be nation-to-nation stuff that makes long distance travel visceral in its details, but it can also be the barmaid who bites the gold coin you tossed her, looks at your suspiciously, and says, “I can’t make change for this.”

Speaking of currency conversions: Many world-builders are drawn to the idea of having different currencies for different nations, but often these aspirational goals are abandoned due to the metagame logistics of tracking all that extra data: The players need to track all the different types of coins they receive, while the GM needs to both (a) stock the dungeon hordes with them and (b) figure out what each local market/merchant’s relationship with each type of currency is.

If this is an idea that appeals to you, however, you might try achieving the same effect WITHOUT increasing the number of coinage types being tracked by having each nation use a different metal standard of coinage.

For example, the Trade Federation uses silver coins; the Young Kingdoms prefer gold; and the Old Empire uses electrum. Copper is the common coin, used interchangeably by everybody. Platinum coins are mostly a currency of account (they don’t physically exist), but the ancient Draconic Empire used them and the richest cities/neighborhoods of the Old Empire use them occasionally.

HOW MANY COINS?

So why track three or four currencies instead of two or ten or forty?

In my experience, that’s generally the sweet spot where you get the benefits of flavor and logistics before hitting diminishing returns.

What you’re generally looking for is:

• A poor currency
• One or two currencies in the range of what the PCs typically use
• A rich currency denoting unusual wealth or power

With those relative values, you’ve gained the bulk of the semantic/narrative meaning to be milked from currency.

In D&D that’s copper, silver, gold, and platinum.

In a campaign where the PCs are drug dealers, it’s the scale from garbage bags full of dirty $1 bills that need to be laundered to flashing Benjamins at the club.

In Firefly it’s bulky trade goods that need to be fenced, credits, and immunization ration bars.

Of course, if you’ve got player buy-in and you think it’ll be useful to break Firefly credits into platinum, ivoprovalyn, propoxin, and hydrozapam… great! Go for it! Complicated exchange rates between credits and Browncoat scrip used on the black market? Hard coin exchange rates based on the planet? Sure! I can see cool scenarios coming out of that!

But if it’s just one scenario, you can probably go one level up in the abstraction. If the players are just tracking silver pieces, you can still dip in at any time and say that these specific silver pieces – the ones they found on the would-be assassin – are Turcan chits, and that’s really weird because you’re in the Lasartian Dominion where they typically use Stantian roundels. I mean, you might occasionally see a Garsian slat, but a chit? No way.

That’s significant in the moment, but you don’t have to start tracking chits and slats and roundels forever after just because it was important to this specific situation.

The point, of course, is that even when you’re counting specific coins, you’re usually still looking at those coins through a layer of abstraction. The abstraction to choose (as well as when and how you choose to break that abstraction) is as much a channel for information about the game world as the Lifestyles from Infinity. So think about what information you’re choosing to communicate and to what effect.

Go to Part 1

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: LOCAL THEMES

The traps in a particular complex (or in one section of a larger environment, like a megadungeon) should follow certain patterns/themes/principles: The kobolds cover their pit traps with woven grass mats. The archmage painted rooms in his sanctum containing magical traps purple so that his servants would know to avoid them. Traps throughout the Storm Lord’s stronghold can be bypassed using the current passphrase. The smell of gas warns of the risk of explosion.

In terms of the game world, this obviously makes sense: The kobolds use the materials they have available. The archmage and the Storm Lord have practical considerations. The threat of gas usually threatens an entire mine or cave complex.

In terms of game design, these patterns allow the players to learn from their experiences. As they learn the patterns, the players are gaining expertise which they can then use (either to activate their character’s expertise or to trump it). “Do I see any black rubies inset into the walls? No? Okay, we’re probably fine.”

When executed well, this technique can shape the entire experience of a dungeon, creating interest even in areas WITHOUT traps. For example, I had a dungeon filled with sideways-gravity pit traps (that looked just like side corridors until you walked in front of them and then— Ahhh!). Once the PCs knew they existed, they had to (a) figure out how to get people out of them, (b) figure out how to get across them safely, and (c) spent the rest of the dungeon paranoid about every side corridor they came to. This particular group figured out that they could tie a weight to a rope and throw it into an intersection to see what would happen. Later, when they were running from a monster, they saw an unexplored side corridor up ahead and suddenly had a unique dilemma to grapple with.

Once you set these patterns, you can also play with them through variations and red herrings: We know that rooms with black rubies set into the walls are dangerous, but now there’s a room with red rubies. Is it safe? Will the red rubies have some different effect?

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: FORTUNE-IN-THE-MIDDLE

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about how traps can be detected and disabled, but what happens when they actually get triggered?

Design traps that are more interesting than “single mechanical interaction = damage or no damage.”

Framing trap interactions using fortune-in-the-middle techniques can be useful here:

• “You hear the click of a pressure plate under your boot, what do you do?”
• “Suddenly arrows start shooting out of the walls! What do you do?”
• “There’s a sharp hiss and green gas begins shooting out of nozzles in the ceiling. What do you do?”

Even if the ultimate outcome is still damage-or-no-damage (as with the arrow trap), giving the players a chance to actively react to the trap as it’s being triggered makes the trap more interesting and engaging.

I find this to be true even when 95% of the possible reactions are likely to end up being mechanically modeled the same way: Drop to the floor, dive for cover, raise your shield, try to grab the arrow out of the air… It probably all boils down to a Dodge action that gives me disadvantage when making the attack roll for the arrows, right? Despite this, the player is actively engaged with the game world and a vivid picture is being collaboratively painted.

Random Tip: In situations like this, have the player roll the disadvantage d20 they’ve created. I’m indifferent to doing this in actual combat and it’s statistically irrelevant, of course, but it’s another way of getting the player engaged in the trap’s resolution.

This technique can often be particularly effective if the player has incomplete information on what they’re reacting to: They hear a click or a hiss; or there’s a sudden change in air pressure; or the sound of clockworks ticking down behind the wall. Do they freeze? Do they turtle? Do they run? Which way?

You might notice that any trap is resolved using a fortune-in-the-middle technique when it’s found before triggering: You’ve found a pressure plate in the floor… how do you disable it or bypass it?

Fortune-in-the-middle is also one of the reasons why the classic pit trap remains so popular: If you trigger the trap and fall into the pit, you are immediately faced with the question of how you’re going to get out of the pit. (And this can range from a relatively simple solution to a fiendishly difficult one depending on the nature of the pit.)

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: DYNAMIC TRAPS

Any trap that presents the PCs with a new situation or dilemma is gold, and you can extend that response/problem-solving interaction beyond a single resolution point with dynamic traps.

Pay particular attention to traps that create or change the environment. Classic examples include flooding rooms (which you can extend to flooding an entire dungeon), confusion gas that turns friend against friend, or a trap that releases monsters that the PCs now have to fight. The trap is merely the instigation for a larger and more involved interaction.

Another example are the old school traps that teleport the entire group (or a single PC) to a different location: Not only do they create the immediate, ongoing, short-term complication of needing to figure out where you are (and how to get out!), but in the long-term such a trap can actually turn into a resource (with the PCs using it to quickly move around the dungeon).

Also: Traps that result in one of the PCs getting stuck immediately compel the group to figure out how to solve the problem. Consider a trap that causes anyone walking within a 10-foot square to fall into a magical coma. Somebody walks in and falls unconscious. Somebody goes to help them: BAM! Also unconscious. Can the rest of the group figure out how to get them out of there without succumbing themselves?

(You’re thinking of solutions right now, aren’t you?)

A variant of this is the trap wall that slides down and seals off a room or corridor. This one is interesting because its effect can vary greatly depending on how the PCs trigger it (and combines well with trigger uncertainty): If the scout triggers it, they’re now trapped on the far side. Or it might split the group in half. Or the whole group might get through and the net effect is that they can no longer backtrack (unless they reverse the trap or tear down the wall).

On that note, clearly triggering something and then not knowing what the trigger did is a great away to get the players engaged in paranoid speculation and anxiety. Maybe it’s just a broken trap. Maybe it caused walls to shift positions throughout the dungeon. Maybe it was an alarm summoning monsters from afar.

On the other hand, a non-obvious trigger with a non-local effect can create satisfying puzzles for the PCs. It may take them a long time to figure out that the walls are shifting every time they walk across the cartouche of the Grey Emperor.

So, to briefly sum up, think about traps that:

• Create new situations/dilemmas.
• Change the environment or create a new environment.
• Can also be a resource for the PCs once they figure it out.
• Endanger or imprison the victim of the trap.
• Have varied effect depending on position/circumstance.
• Have non-local (possibly wide-ranging) effects when triggered.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: ONGOING EFFECTS

GMs often fall into thinking of traps as bang-bang interactions. (Pun intended.) You hit the tripwire, an arrow fires from the wall, and the trap is done.

But it’s also possible for a trap to pose an ongoing threat or hazard. For example, if a non-drow enters the sacred hall, the statues of Lloth in the entryway activate and begin filling the entrance with webs while an alarm sounds. Or the turret of spinning blades that rises up into the room, once activated, continues  spinning for an hour.

Obviously such traps are often dynamic ones, with the ongoing effect creating the new situation or dilemma for the PCs to solve.

This can also include traps that reset. Traps that instantly reset (and can trigger every time someone walks over the pressure plate, for example) are fun, but traps that take 2-3 rounds to reset (so that you might think it was a one-shot trap only for it to reactivate and zap you again) can be devilish puzzles for the players to figure out.

Longer reset intervals are also possible, but are generally only meaningful in xandered dungeons where the PCs are likely to come back to the trap later. Longer intervals might also mean a trap that needs to be manually reset (i.e., the monsters have to come by and do it), and this can even include traps that have been disabled by the PCs (i.e., the monsters find their sabotage and repair it).

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: TRAPS AS COMPLICATION

Traps don’t have to be isolated encounters. They can be incorporated into larger, more diverse encounters to add interest and complexity. For example, fighting an ogre chieftain in a big room is fine. Fighting an ogre chieftain in a big room filled with pit traps (that the chieftain knows the location of, but the PCs don’t!) is a very different and very memorable encounter!

This can be particularly true with dynamic traps and traps with ongoing effects. A trap that can be triggered halfway through an encounter and completely changes the character or tactical situation of that encounter is a great way to spice up a battle. Such trap-like effects can also be deliberately triggered by the bad guys (they don’t have to wait for the PCs to trigger them accidentally!).

Running the dungeon as a theater of operations is great for this technique because any trap can dynamically become part of the tactical situation. Plus, once the players have learned to think of the dungeon like this, they’ll start using the traps they find to their advantage! “Let’s lure them back to the hall of alchemist’s fire and then pull the pin Diego used to jam the triggering mechanism!”

We’ve been talking about traps being integrated into combat encounters, but that’s not the only option. For example, traps can be combined with other traps to create cool, combinatory effects. A simple example I’m particularly fond of are pressure plates on the opposite sides of pit traps: You jump over the pit trap or climb out of it or disable it and walk across it… and then immediately trigger a trap on the far side.

(A Bigby’s hand that shoves them back into the trap they just avoided is always hilarious if used sparingly.)

Keep in mind that such interactions can be themes in a particular dungeon: The players can learn to be cautious of the far side of pits in Leopold’s Lair.

And what about other types of encounters? Could a nobleman lure victims into a charm person effect when negotiating? What about trying to solve a puzzle while an ongoing trap spits fire at you?

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: NATURALLY OCCURRING “TRAPS”

We have a tendency to think of traps as designed mechanisms: Someone intentionally made the trap as a security measure.

But trap-like interactions can also be naturally occurring. Quicksand is the pulp classic, along with giant entangling lianas, spouts of lava, and icy crevasses covered by thin layers of snow.

If you’re having difficulty getting into this mindset, think about how the effect of a designed trap could naturally occur:

• A pit trap might be floor or rock ledge that has become unstable.
• A sleep spell that targets everyone in a room might be a cavern filled with soporific fungus.
• A fireball trap can be a cavern filled with explosive gas

A related technique are dungeon features that were designed for a practical purpose, but which can be traps for the unwitting or unwary. (“What does this lever in the old dwarven forge do? Ahhhhhh! Molten lava!”) You can also have features that have been broken down and become hazards due to neglect and the passage of time.

ADVANCED TECHNIQUE: BROKEN & SPENT TRAPS

Traps themselves can break down over time. The PCs can find their shattered and spent remnants as they explore the dungeon.

If you’re running an open table, this sort of thing is happening organically all the time, with groups coming across the wreckage left by previous expeditions. In any case, these scenes often paint a story of what came before: The skeleton at the bottom of the open pit. The flame spout hacked apart by a magical blade. The arrow hole with a piton spiked through it.

As such, these are cool dungeon details. But more than that, they are an opportunity for the PCs to learn about the types of traps that might be found in the dungeon. They’re an opportunity to gain expertise.

In many cases, traps don’t actually need to be broken in order to contain (or be surrounded with) evidence of the carnage they’ve wrought in the past. (Or, conversely, the absence of any signs of activity in an otherwise busy complex can itself be a clue.)

Go to Part 3: Traps In Practice – Raiders of the Lost Ark