DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26A: Tor’s Training

After several mournful minutes in which little was said, they quickly decided that someone needed to return to the surface and notify House Erthuo of the death of Faeliel and the others.

Dominic and Ranthir took that heavy task on themselves. Tor left with them, needing to keep an appointment later in the morning.

The walk back to the surface took a little more than twenty minutes. Then they took carriages in opposite directions: Tor back towards Midtown; Ranthir and Dominic towards the Nobles’ Quarter.

In The Art of Pacing, I explain running an RPG for a split party is basically the easy mode for handling pacing as a GM: Because you no longer need to wait for the end of a scene before cutting back and forth between the groups, you not only have a whole bunch of new pacing techniques you can use, you’re also freed up from needing to honor the structure of the current scene (since you’ll be cutting back to it later).

In Random GM Tip: Splitting the Party, I delve a bit deeper into the practical side of splitting the party and share some basic best practices.

But if splitting the party is the easy mode for pacing, then splitting the party in an urban environment is the easy mode for splitting the party.

First, in my experience it’s much easier to convince groups to split up in the first place in an urban environment. Even groups that adamantly profess, “Never split the party!” will often still be comfortable doing it in an urban environment where (a) the risk seems minimal and (b) typical tasks so readily lend themselves to multitasking. (“You sell those mage-touched swords we took from the bandits and I’ll arrange for our rooms while the wizard gets his reagents. We can meet at the Onyx Spider afterwards.”)

WHO FIRST?

When the group splits up, whose scene should you frame first?

In general, what you’re looking for is the group whose scene is most likely to be interrupted the fastest. This might be:

• A complicated decision.
• A skill check.
• Some sort of logistical calculation.
• A dramatically appropriate moment.
• An unexpected rules look-up.

And so forth. Basically, any of the reasons you’d normally cut from one scene to another.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward: You’re dipping your toes in the first scene, and then as quickly as possible cutting away to another group. Not only does this keep everyone engaged, but you’re getting to the time-saving advantage of multitasking as quickly possible (with Group 1 continuing to resolve stuff in their scene while you’ve turned your attention to Group 2).

The slightly more advanced technique here is to first check for effective crossovers (those moments when elements or outcomes from one scene have an impact on another scene) and make sure you line them up.

For example, in this session I knew that the House Erthuo guards were likely going to stumble onto Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra with the corpses of the Erthuo researchers. This suggested a natural sequence in which:

• Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo.
• Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra are discovered by the House Erthuo guards, resulting in a cliffhanger.
• Cut away from the cliffhanger back to House Erthuo, where Cordelia arrives and explains what the guards are doing there.
• Cut back to Ghul’s Labyrinth, to finish resolving the confrontation.

HOW LONG?

As you start juggling multiple scenes playing out across a city, you’ll need to answer the question of how all these scenes relate to each other in terms of time.

First, remember that you don’t have to keep time perfectly synced between the groups. In fact, you’ll almost always want to NOT do that.

For example, maybe the Erthuo guards showed up 30 minutes before Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo and the whole interaction between the guards and the dungeon group “actually” played out before anything of interest happened with Ranthir and Dominic. But that would have been dramatically far less interesting. And, even more importantly, you want to scale time to balance table time.

The key thing is not to push this so far that PCs can’t respond to things they reasonably should be able to respond to. (For example, if Ranthir and Dominic would have been able to warn the other PCs that the Erthuo guards were coming, it wouldn’t have been fair to frame things in a sequence that would prevent them from doing that.) But, generally speaking, you’ve got a fairly large fudge factor and the players will generally support you by not deliberately doing anything that violates established causality.

(And if something does go askew, a minor retcon is rarely going to hurt anything.)

Speaking of the fudge factor, you’re usually going to find it easier to juggle multiple groups doing stuff at the same time if you “chunk” time. You can kinda think of this as establishing ad hoc turns, with each discrete group usually being able to do one thing per “turn.”

I usually think in terms of:

• the hour,
• the watch (4 hours), or
• the half day (morning/afternoon)

Which mental construct I find most useful depends on how “meaty” the PCs’ planned actions are. If someone is planning to gather information down at the Docks, I might think to myself, “That’ll take about half a day.” And so the active question becomes: What is everyone else doing with that half day?

Once you’ve collected those declarations, it’s not hard to become sequencing how things should resolve.

Here’s my final tip: If the group has fractured into three or four or more groups (often in the form of individuals scattering to the winds), write down their declarations. Just jot them down in your notebook. You don’t have to get fancy or specific with this, just a quick one or two word reminder:

• Tee/Agnarr/Elestra: packing
• Tor: training
• R/D: Erthuo

Just enough that you can re-orient yourself with a glance at he end of each scene.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26B – Running the Campaign: Treasure Logistics
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SPIRE

SESSION 26A: TOR’S TRAINING

August 24th, 2008
The 13th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After several mournful minutes in which little was said, they quickly decided that someone needed to return to the surface and notify House Erthuo of the death of Faeliel and the others.

Dominic and Ranthir took that heavy task on themselves. Tor left with them, needing to keep an appointment later in the morning.

The walk back to the surface took a little more than twenty minutes. Then they took carriages in opposite directions: Tor back towards Midtown; Ranthir and Dominic towards the Nobles’ Quarter.

When Ranthir and Dominic arrived at the estate of House Erthuo, they still weren’t sure what they were going to stay. Clambering out of the carriage they approached the two guards on duty at the gate.

“What’s your business here?” The guard had an edgy suspicion in his voice. It wasn’t until that moment that they realized what a dismal sight they must present – dusty and bloody from their delving.

“We bring news for Cordelia Erthuo.”

“News of what?”

“Of Erthuo workers who were retrieving an orrery. She’ll know what we mean.”

The guard nodded to his comrade, who left through the gate. They stood in uneasy silence for several minutes before Cordelia came rushing up.

MEANWHILE…

Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra had remained behind in the bloodwight complex to watch over the bodies.

Agnarr and Tee took the time to go back to the hall where the ghulworg had stacked the more cumbersome treasures from the Laboratory of the Beast, confirming that nothing had been taken by Ribok or the other servants of the Surgeon in the Shadows. Nothing was missing, although it was clear that the items had been rifled through.

The bluesteel door had been smashed open, proving that they were not completely impassable. But in the process, the door had also been rendered useless. There was nothing preventing the Surgeon’s men – or other intruders – from returning to these tunnels. So Tee made the decision to gather up the few remaining items of taint and chaositech from the obsidian temple, intending to take them to the safety of the facility Aoska had mentioned to them on the 12^th. They also took the time to strip the adamantine from the ghulworg’s skeleton, stacking it with the other items in the hall.

A little over forty minutes had passed by the time they returned to where Elestra had been waiting. As they were walking up, Elestra suddenly heard footsteps approaching from the direction of Greyson House.

It was still much too soon for Ranthir or Dominic to be returning, so they quickly moved into defensive positions: Tee kept a watchful eye focused in the opposite direction, while Elestra, Agnarr, and Seeaeti flanked the passage from which the footsteps were approaching.

“Do you want to send your dog down to the stuff we gathered?” Elestra asked. “You know, to guard it?”

Agnarr looked flatly at her. “No. I don’t.”

And then they fell silent, awaiting the approach of whoever – or whatever – was coming…

… they were House Erthuo’s men. Six of them, dressed in the livery of the house mercenaries.

MEANWHILE AT HOUSE ERTHUO…

Cordelia came rushing up. “Master Ranthir! Master Dominic! You’ve come from Greyson House?”

They nodded. “Yes,” Ranthir said.

Cordelia couldn’t help noticing their melancholy. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid… Your men are dead.”

Cordelia gasped. “All of them? What happened? Even the guards I just sent?”

“Yes— Wait… the guards you just sent?”

After several moments of confusion, they quickly realized that they must have crossed paths with the House Erthuo guards. Cordelia had sent them after Faeliel failed to report in.

“Oh dear,” Ranthir said. “I hope nothing unfortunate happens.”

Cordelia asked them to return to the orrery site and help with the recovery of the dead bodies so that they could be given proper rites.

“Of course.”

MEANWHILE AT THE ORRERY SITE…

“What happened here?” The House Erthuo mercenaries, taking in the sight of their dead housemates, were clearly suspicious – if not outright hostile.

Agnarr – his sword still raised above his head – opened his mouth to respond, but Tee quickly stepped forward. “They were killed by a man named Ribok who worked for the Surgeon in the Shadows.”

“Who?”

“He works for the Balacazars.”

They clearly recognized that name. “Why would they want to kill scholars?”

“They were just innocent bystanders,” Tee said.

“We think they were looking for chaositech!” Elestra blurted.

“Back that way,” Tee said. “Beyond a bluesteel door. That’s where we met them.”

“And who are you? What are you doing down here?”

“My name’s Tee,” she said. “This is Agnarr and Elestra. We were the ones who sold the location of the orrery to Cordelia.”

At that, the Erthuo mercenaries finally relaxed and lowered their weapons. Agnarr followed suit.

“What happened to the murderers?”

“We killed most of them,” Agnarr said.

“Except Ribok,” Tee said. “He escaped.”

The Erthuo mercenary grimaced. “Not for long, if I have anything to say about it.”

The three companions helped the Erthuo men gather up the bodies. Ranthir and Dominic arrived during this morbid work. It wasn’t long before the dead were being carried up the passage towards Greyson House.

TOR’S TRAINING

Instead of taking his carriage into Midtown, Tor had it turn aside on Golden Elm Way and pass into the Temple District. When he arrived at the Cathedral, he quickly headed to Sir Kabel’s office.

After a warm and cheerful greeting, Sir Kabel took him back across the Cathedral’s courtyard and up the Godswalk towards the Godskeep.

 “The Godskeep serves as the headquarters and training facilities for the Order of the Dawn,” Kabel explained. “In truth, it is a set of twin keeps which have been joined by the upper towers.” He pointed up to the colossal statue of Crissa atop the western keep and the matching statue of Athor atop the eastern keep, both looking north.

Crossing through the Godskeep gateyard, Kabel led Tor out the far side of the keep. There stood the Statues of the Six Gods – Itor, Itehl, Sarathyn, Sayl, Bahl, and Tohlen. Smaller than the colossi atop the keeps, these statues were nonetheless impressive, standing three times as high as Tor.

“These are the heart of our order, Tor. Only Vehthyl has no statue here at Godskeep, but that should not be considered any slight. We are all sworn to serve the Nine Gods.”

Sir Kabel then led Tor into the Godskeep itself, and began recounting the oral history of the Order.

TOR’S PRIMER – RELIGION IN BARUND

Tor was born in 757 YD at the height of the Twenty Year War between Seyrun and Barund. Among other things, the Twenty Year War triggered a religious schism within the Imperial Church. After Seyrun invaded Barund, the king of Barund refused to acknowledge the Edicts of the Novarch (as those edicts were closely associated with imperial power in Seyrun). An outright refutation of the Novarch, however, would have put the king on somewhat shaky ground: For six centuries, the Line of Kings had been recognized and legitimized as a divine bloodright dating back to the Holy Coronation performed by the Novarch in 127 YD.

So the king declared that the Novarch, while still the Living Voice of the Nine Gods, had no secular or religious authority over the lands controlled by the divine bloodright of the Barundian royal family.

The supreme leader of the Church in Barund had always been the Prelate of Barund. The Prelate of Barund had been appointed by the Novarch and had authority over the regional prelates of the church throughout Barund. Following the religious schism, however, the king of Barund – on the authority of his divine bloodright – promptly appointed his own Prelate of Barund.

Following the end of the Twenty Year War, the schism was at least partly repaired. However, even today, there are still two Prelates of Barund: One appointed by the King and the other appointed by the Novarch.

This is all to say that Tor was born into and grew up during the height of this religious tension.

TOR’S PRIMER – ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD

Any order of knighthood has three things in common:

1. They follow the Code of Law as laid down in the Book of Athor.
2. They adhere to the Martial Code as laid down in the Book of Itor.
3. They honor the Seven Compassions as laid down in the Book of Crissa.

The Code of Law is your bedrock “thou shalt not” stuff: Don’t murder, steal, enslave your brother, and so forth.

The Martial Code is essentially your standard chivalric ideal: Face your opponent fairly and honorably.

The Seven Compassions are a bit more philosophically complex, and are also referred to in some commentaries as the Seven Cares. The compassions are of the self, the companion, the stranger, the task, the thought, the memory, and the true. In other words, care for yourself, for your companions, and for strangers. Take care with what you do, what you think, and it shall be remembered. And if you can do all that, then you will know true compassion. (For most people, the Seven Compassions boil down to “be nice to people” and “think before you act”.)

Collectively these are also known as the Way of Knighthood.

TOR’S PRIMER – THE DEEDS OF HONOR

Although not an official part of the Way of Knighthood, the Deeds of Honor are intimately tied to the popular conception of “what it means to be a knight”.

The Deeds of Honor, as written in the Book of Itor, are a collection of legendary tales of valor, honor, bravery, and faith. In some ways they serve as a kind of “scorecard” or exemplar of heroic actions. “He lives his life by the deeds of honor” is a common saying.

TOR’S PRIMER – THE ORDER OF THE DAWN

The modern city of Ptolus was founded by a man named Shay Orridar, the head of the Orridar merchant family (now defunct). It is said that the inspiration of the city was based on the research of the loremaster Gerris Hin, who was studying the ruins of an ancient city built on the same location.

As a result of Hin’s researches, Ptolus also became one of the early centers for the rejuvenation of Pantheon worship. The Knights of the Golden Cross, founded by Hin on the basis of his research into the old traditions which predated modern history, championed the cause of the Nine Gods.

The Knights of the Dawn were founded perhaps a quarter of a century after the Knights of the Golden Cross. The Knights of the Dawn, like the Knights of the Golden Cross, were dedicated to the Pantheon. The two groups became rivals of a sort, but the Knights of the Dawn became ascendant when they became the official protectors and guardians of the Imperial Church in Ptolus – an official Order of the Church.

The Order of the Dawn is now primarily a defensive knighthood, there to protect the temples, holdings, and interests of the Church. Only occasionally are they sent on quests, and then only with the direct blessing of the Silver Fatar.

The current leader of the order is Sir Kabel Dathim, who answers directly to the Silver Fatar of Athor.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Urban Splits – Campaign Journal: Session 26B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

It’s time for the big finale, but the players just called Elminster and now an NPC is enjoying the end of the story. How did it all go so wrong? And how can we fix it?

After a long hiatus, the Alexandrian Youtube channel is back in action. Last week I filmed raw footage for a dozen new videos and I have a new editor working on the videos now. If all goes well, we’ll have new videos every week (plus a few new surprises, too!).

Good gaming! I’ll see you at the table!

SPOILERS FOR DESCENT INTO AVERNUS

Descent Into Avernus begins by having the PCs stand around doing nothing while the GM describes an NPC doing awesome stuff.

If then proceeds to “if they don’t do what you tell them to do, the NPCs automatically find them and kill them.”

It’s not an auspicious start.

EVERYBODY INTO THE HANDBASKET!

Although titled Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus, this adventure has very little to do with Baldur’s Gate.

It does begin in the city, however, with Baldur’s Gate being overrun by refugees from Elturel, a city further up the River Chionthar which has mysteriously vanished from the face of Toril. The PCs will spend a couple of days investigating Zarielite cultists in the city, discovering that they may have something do with Elturel’s disappearance. They will then be sent to Candlekeep to research an infernal puzzlebox they’ve recovered during their investigation, and Baldur’s Gate is never seen again.

A scholar at Candlekeep opens the infernal puzzlebox for them, revealing that Elturel has been taken to Hell as the result of a pact signed between the High Observer of Elturel and Zariel, the Archduchess of Avernus. The PCs are then sent to a different wizard, further down the road from Candlekeep, who can take them to Hell.

Arriving in Hell, they discover that Elturel is floating above the hellish plains of Avernus and slowly sinking into the River Styx. Jumping through a number of hoops, with NPCs sending them hither-and-yon, they eventually encounter an NPC who tells them that he’s had a vision from the god Torm, and the PCs are supposed to go forth and find the Sword of Zariel if they want to save the city.

So where is the Sword of Zariel?

Well, back in Candlekeep they were also introduced to a small, golden, flying elephant (technically an angelic being known as a hollyphant) named Lulu. Lulu came with them to Hell and it turns out she used to be Zariel’s warmount, but she’s lost all of her memories. She does remember one thing, though: She was at a place called Fort Knucklebones, and she met a couple of kenku there.

So the PCs leave Elturel and journey across Avernus to Fort Knucklebones. It turns out the kenku don’t know anything, but by a stroke of luck the hag who runs Fort Knucklebones has a machine that can restore Lulu’s lost memories. So Lulu gets strapped into the machine, she recovers her memories, and remembers where the Sword is!

… or, at least, that’s what Descent Into Avernus claims will happen. We’ll come back to this, but the reality is that Lulu has no idea where the Sword. Fortunately the PCs can jump through some more hoops and eventually claim it.

With the Sword in hand, they can confront Zariel and either redeem her, make a deal with her, or decide to join her. The last of these is rather unlikely (although good show to the book for considering the possibility), while either of the former two result in Elturel being saved and the PCs escaping from Hell triumphant!

THE REST OF THE BOOK

While the adventure may not be overly concerned with Baldur’s Gate, however, the same is not strictly true for the book. About fifty pages are given over to the Baldur’s Gate Gazetteer, detailing the city as it exists in 1492 DR. (Oddly, the campaign itself is described as taking place two years later in 1494 DR. There have been some recent indications that the campaign is canonically being moved back to 1492 DR in order to maintain continuity with Baldur’s Gate III… so we’ll just mark this down as “thoroughly confused.”)

The Gazetteer itself is quite serviceable, although much like the gazetteer of Waterdeep found in Dragon Heist, it pales in comparison to previous sourcebooks detailing the city. It notably includes a number of player-facing options, including customized backgrounds for characters from Baldur’s Gate.

The oddity here is that the discordance between the focus of the background material and the actual content of the campaign (in which the PCs are likely to only spend 48 or maybe 72 hours in Baldur’s Gate) renders the gazetteer largely useless for anyone actually running Descent Into Avernus.

It can also actively mislead DMs and put them on a bad footing. For example, the gazetteer includes a section on Dark Secrets:

During character creation, once players have developed their characters, they should collectively choose a dark secret shared by the entire party. Every member of the party is entangled in this dark secret, regardless of how new they are to the city or how incorruptible their morals. Maybe they’re merely witnesses, maybe they’re covering for a friend’s crimes, or maybe they’re deep in denial. Regardless, in the eyes of the law, they’re guilty. Each dark secret shares a number of elements. Players should work with you, the DM, to customize these particulars to the group.

These dark secrets include Conspiracy, Murder, Theft, and a Failed Coup. Each type of secret has multiple versions, and also details the PCs’ roles in the secret, the consequences of what they did, and who in Baldur’s Gate knows their secret.

This is a really cool concept and, for any campaign set in Baldur’s Gate, it’s a fantastic way of giving the PCs deep and meaningful ties to the city (and to each other).

The problem, of course, is that Descent Into Avenus ISN’T set in Baldur’s Gate.

So you get the players invested in these connections to Baldur’s Gate and lay down the seeds of what seems like an epic campaign. (For example, you want to overthrow the patriars and lead an egalitarian revolution.) Then, after just a couple sessions, the PCs blow town and leave all that stuff just dangling in the wind.

And some Dark Secrets are completely incompatible with the campaign. For example, the primary campaign hook is the PCs getting hired by the Flaming Fist to investigate some cult-related murders. One of the Dark Secrets is, “The Flaming Fist is corrupt. You turned against your commanding officer, seeking to take the Fist in a new direction. Now you’re branded a traitor.”

AMAZING IDEAS, FAILED EXECUTION

Unfortunately, a lot of Descent Into Avernus is like this: There’ll be an amazing idea, incredibly cool concept, or breathtaking revelation, but then the execution of that idea will be broken or simply lackluster.

For example:

DIA: Do you want to play MAD MAX IN HELL with infernal muscle cars fueled by the souls of the damned?

Me: Fuck yes, I do!

DIA: Just kidding. We’re not doing that.

Me: …

These infernal war machines were actually hyped quite a bit in the pre-launch marketing for Descent Into Avernus. In the book itself, there are two and a half pages which are just straight up the introduction to a Warlords of the Avernian Wastelands campaign. It is straight up cooler than anything else in the entire book.

And then it just… vanishes.

There are a couple of scenes where an infernal motorcycle is parked nearby because that’s how an NPC showed up.

That’s it.

It’s really weird.

My best guess is that this was a really cool idea that somebody had really late in the development of the book and they just couldn’t integrate it?

But maybe not. Because, like I said, this is kind of a pervasive problem for the book.

DIA: Do you want to explore HELL ITSELF ON THE WAR-TORN PLAINS OF AVERNUS?

Me: Fuck yes, I do!

DIA: Just kidding. We’re not doing that.

Me: … stahp.

The book frequently talks about how the PCs are going to be “exploring” Avernus. But then it goes out of its way to stop them from doing that in almost every way possible.

For example, it’s impossible to make a map of Avernus. Apparently the Lawful Evil plane of Avernus is so chaotic and ever-shifting that anyone trying to map it goes insane.

(This is, it should be noted, something that was made up specifically for this adventure. It not only doesn’t make sense — read my lips: Lawful — it explicitly contradicts preexisting lore.)

The reason they don’t want you making a map is because navigation is meaningless. If you want to go somewhere, it’s completely random whether you get there or not:

Using the map to chart a course from one location to another is unreliable at best… When charting a course through Avernus, ask the player whose character is overseeing navigation to roll two dice:

• Roll 2d4 if the characters are traveling to an unvisited destination marked on their map.
• Roll 2d8 if the characters are returning to a destination they’ve visited previously.
• Roll 2d10 if a native guide is leading the characters to their destination.

If the rolls of both dice don’t match, the characters arrive at their destination as intended. If the dice match, they wind up somewhere else: pick one of the other locations.

Despite maps being both impossible and useless, the adventure nevertheless gives the players a poster map. It’s unlabeled and, again, the spatial relationships it depicts don’t actually exist, so it’s utterly useless for literally anything you might actually use a map for. But it is very pretty, so it has that going for it.

(Astonishingly, neither Elturel nor Fort Knucklebones — the two places the PCs would start navigating from — are depicted on the map. The DM is told that they can put them anywhere on the map they want, but — once again! — this is pointless and has no meaning.)

The one thing the map does do is magically talk to the PCs: Every time they go somewhere, the map tells them exactly what it is and where they are before they have a chance to explore and find out.

“Okay, we’ve made sure it’s impossible to run an exploration scenario on Avernus.”

“But what if the players nevertheless accidentally discover something for themselves and feel a momentary frisson of delight at exploring the unknown?”

“Oh shit! We gotta put a stop to that!”

Without actually seeing it in the book, I think it’s difficult to really believe the lengths Descent Into Avernus goes to in order to make sure that the players absolutely cannot explore Avernus in any possible way.

Even the smaller cool ideas in the book are often mucked up. For example, there’s a Zarielite cultist in the first part of the adventure whose dying words are, “See you in Hell!”

Which is so goddamn clever, right? Because the PCs are going to go to Hell later on and then — presto! — there she is.

… she doesn’t show up in Hell.

THE WEIRD RAILROAD

DIA: Do you want to play a nice game of CHOOSE. THAT. RAILROAD?!

Me: Fuck no!

DIA: All aboard! Let’s GO!

Me: Goddammit.

The problem with shouting, “It’s time to explore Avernus!” but then blocking any and all attempts to actually explore Avernus is that you’ll need some other mechanism to move the campaign forward. Descent Into Avernus chooses to do this by presenting the players with the choice of two different railroads they can follow.

It’s difficult to explain how poorly this is done.

We start with Lulu getting her memories back. She wakes up from the procedure and shouts, “The sword! The sword! I know where it is!”

Spoiler Alert: She doesn’t.

Instead, her “dreams lead the characters on a wild goose chase to Haruman’s Hill.”

There are a couple problems with this. First, there’s no clear reason given for why Lulu thinks Haruman’s Hill is where the Sword of Zariel is. Second, given the timeline presented in the book, it’s fairly clear that Haruman’s Hill did not and could not exist when Lulu was in Avernus.

But, OK. Fine. This thing that makes no sense happens.

So the PCs go adventuring at Haruman’s Hill for a little while, they figure out that Lulu took them to the wrong place, and then Lulu says: “I’m so sorry! My memory is a little hazier than I thought! Having pondered my dreams further, I think there are two sites in Avernus that are important to finding the sword! Choose between a place where demons manifest and one where demons are destroyed.”

But, once again, there’s no reason given for why Lulu thinks either of these locations have anything to do with the Sword of Zariel.

And that’s because they don’t.

They have nothing to do with the Sword. They have nothing to do with Lulu’s memories. There is absolutely no reason for Lulu to say that the PCs should go there. And if you do go to either location, it becomes immediately and abundantly clear that this is the case.

Despite Lulu telling the PCs to go to the wrong place and then immediately doing it again, the book assumes that the PCs will just continue blithely along the “path” they’ve “chosen,” even though there’s no discernible reason for them to do so.

This is not the only example of weird scenario structures in Descent Into Avernus. At the beginning of the campaign, for example, the PCs have followed a lead to the Dungeon of the Dead Three. In order to the adventure to continue, they have to speak with a specific NPC. But:

• The NPC is located behind a secret door. (Which the designers bizarrely go out of their way to make difficult to find, even going so far as specifying that a normal rat will absolutely NOT reveal its location if someone randomly casts speak with animals on it.)
• The NPC immediately identifies himself as the serial killer they’re here to kill.
• The NPC, having just confessed that he’s the serial killer they’re here to kill, says, “Hey, can you help me take revenge on the people who tried to kill me?”

Assuming the PCs agree to help this guy for some reason (and, remember, they have to in order for the adventure to continue), he tells them that they should kidnap his brother so that they can use him as leverage while negotiating with their mother.

But negotiating with their mother to do… what?

Descent Into Avernus doesn’t seem to know. And promptly forgets the idea except to briefly tell you it definitely won’t work (because their mother will “happily watch any of her sons die before consenting to ransom demands”).

The failure of the scheme doesn’t bother me. (“Go ahead and kill him, I don’t care,” is a perfectly legitimate moment and builds pretty consistently from her known relationship with her kids.) What bothers me is that there doesn’t seem to BE a scheme.

The PCs are, once again, told to do a thing, but given no coherent reason for doing it.

This happens again when an NPC tells them they should teleport to Hell and save Elturel. They’re 5^th level characters who have no special abilities, knowledge, or resources teleporting to a city which has been established to be filled with high level arcanists, clerics, and warriors who obviously haven’t solved the problem. What are they supposed to do, exactly? And why does that make more sense than investigating the Elturel crater or seeking a cure for Lulu’s amnesia?

Later Lulu tells them that she remembers meeting some kenku at Fort Knucklebones. Maybe they’ll know about her lost memories?

So the PCs go to Fort Knucklebones, they meet the kenku, and the adventure says, “The kenku Chukka and Clonk instantly recognize Lulu, since they’ve met her previously.”

And then… nothing. Literally nothing. The kenku remembering Lulu is never mentioned again.

What is going on here?

It’s a cargo cult.

THE CARGO CULT

Let’s take one step back: RPG adventures are built using scenario structures. A dungeoncrawl is one type of scenario structure. A mystery is another. There are many others, including things like heists, hexcrawls, raids, etc.

A significant problem in RPG design is that these scenario structures aren’t really talked about. DMs and even designers just kind of pick them up (often imperfectly) by osmosis. Most of them are limited to just dungeoncrawls, mysteries, and railroading.

What’s happened with Descent Into Avernus is that the designers have sort of flailed their way into a malformed scenario structure which consists of, “An NPC tells the PCs where to go and then the PCs go to there.”

Once you realize that, you can’t unsee it: The entire campaign is just that one structure repeated infinitely. An NPC tells you where to go, you go there, and you find another NPC who tells you where to go.

Because this malformed structure is apparently the only thing they have, it seems to have become a kind of cargo cult for them: They know that NPC A has to give some sort of “explanation” for why the PCs need to go to NPC B, but they don’t actually care what that explanation is.

And they assume the players won’t care either. The presumption is that the players are onboard and the words coming out of the NPC’s mouth are just, “Blah blah blah Vanthampur Villa blah blah blah.”

So why do they put essential encounters behind secret doors? Because if the PCs haven’t found the NPC to tell them where to go next, clearly the players will know to keep looking until they find them!

Why are the PCs told to go talk to people without being given any coherent reason for doing so? Because the reason is irrelevant. It’s just white noise around the person’s name.

Why does the adventure assume the PCs will plane shift to Hell without having any reason to do so? Because an NPC told them to!

Why doesn’t the adventure tell you what the kenku remember about Lulu? Because the writers don’t care. “The kenku might remember Lulu” was just the blah-blah-blah dropped around “Fort Knucklebones.” Once the kenku tell the PCs that they should “blah blah blah talk to Mad Maggie blah blah blah,” the writers assume that you will no longer care about the previous blah blah blah.

It’s a cargo cult because the designers have seen PCs talking to an NPC and then going where that NPC tells them to go. But this interaction has become ritualistic. The designers repeat the form, but with none of its semantic content. It’s a hollow shell lacking meaning and seemingly ludicrous to anyone seeking to rationally understand it.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

So what is Descent Into Avernus, exactly?

First, it’s a pretty good gazetteer for Baldur’s Gate.

Second, it’s a big ol’ bundle of cool concepts studded with memorable moments, evocative lore, and epic stakes.

• Mad Max in Hell
• The redemption of the Archduchess of Avernus
• The secret history of the Hellriders
• The fall of an entire city into Hell (and its possible salvation)
• Machinations among the dukes and duchesses of Hell
• Thrilling political stakes in both Baldur’s Gate and Elturel

Along with a gaggle of vivid dungeons crammed with flavor and featuring unique gimmicks (sewer temples, ghost prisons for damned souls, floating hellwasp nests, a crashed Avernian warship, etc.).

We should also not discount the huge cast of varied, larger than life characters (broken families, nefarious cultists, magical shields, maniacal scholars, proud leaders, pitiful victims).

Third, it’s a couple of pretty fantastic poster maps.

Unfortunately, all of this is wrapped up in a completely dysfunctional package. The intriguing characters and big ideas are hopelessly morassed in the broken logic of the campaign and crippled by a careless disregard for continuity. The cool set pieces are sapped of meaning, frequently broken by poor execution, and almost universally left as hollow disappointments of unrealized potential.

Would I recommend it?

Unfortunately, no. The amount work required to salvage Descent Into Avernus is, sadly, staggering in its scope. Despite its potential, there are simply so many better adventures out there that do not need to be completely revamped from the ground up to make them work that it’s impossible to say that you should spend your time grappling with this one.

(Unless, of course, some hopeless fool has already done a bunch of that work for you.)

Style: 4
Substance: 2

Story Creators: Adam Lee (lead), James Introcaso, Ari Levitch, Mike Mearls, Lysa Penrose, Christopher Perkins, Ben Petrisor, Matthew Sernett, Kate Welch, Richard Whitters, Shawn Wood
Story Consultants: Joe Manganiello, Jim Zub
Writers: Bill Benham, M.T. Black, Dan Dillon, Justin Donie, James J. Haeck, James Introcaso, Adam Lee, Chris Lindsay, Liane Mersiel, Shawn Merwin, Lysa Penrose, Christopher Perkins, F. Wesley Schneider, Amber Scott, James Sutter
Developers: Jeremy Crawford, Dan Dillon, Ben Petrisor, Kate Welch

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 256

A thousand years ago, we built twelve giant mecha to fight a cataclysmic war. We call them Thrones. Each was unique, a paragon of war…

Down the generations since the Great War, dynasties have formed, each drawing its legitimacy from the ownership of a surviving Throne. These titans are ancient weapons with grand legacies of battle and betrayal, but they are also symbols of dominance and entitlement. Possession of a Throne bestows wealth, power, authority over whole solar systems, and a seat on the Galactic Council.

That’s why you’re going to steal one.

Stealing the Throne is a storytelling game by Nick Bate. It is GM-less, and can be played by 3-5 players in 1-3 hours. (The game I played with four players lasted for one hour and fifteen minutes.)

The core concept of the game is evocatively summarized above, and your reaction to it probably makes this review superfluous: If stealing a giant mecha in a heist with galactic stakes makes you say, “Hell, yeah!” then you should buy this game, play this game, and love this game.

Taking a closer look, we’ll discover that the game is broken down into four phases:

• Building the Throne
• The Heist
• The Getaway
• The Finale

In Building the Throne, the players will follow a simple collaborative process that will establish the scene of the crime (where the heist will take place), the history of the Throne, the look of the Throne, and the major subsystems which define the Throne’s capabilities.

You will also, in a step whose importance may initially slip by you, establish at least three Reasons why you want or need to steal the Throne.

During the Heist, each round of play begins with a player volunteering to be the Throne — a GM-like figure who gets things rolling by establishing the next seeming insurmountable challenge in the Heist. Once the challenge has been established, a different player will take on the role of the Thief by saying, “This is what I’m here for. I’m ________, and I’m the master of ________.”

In creating your Thief, you can specify any area of expertise you can imagine, but examples include cracking impossible locks, precision timing, and forbidden technology. The Throne and Thief roleplay through the challenge, eventually reaching the Pivotal Moment in which you determine the outcome of the challenge.

The Pivotal Moment is fail-forward, with a very clever mechanic that results in one of four results:

• Unqualified success. (Woo-hoo!)
• A call for assistance. (In which one of the other players can offer their assistance to overcome a surprisingly difficult obstacle… but only at the cost of making it more difficult for them to accomplish their own goals and getaway later on.)
• A blaze of glory. (“The Thief throws in their hand and goes out in a suitably spectacular fashion,” describing how they overcome the current obstacle, but are captured or killed in the process.)
• (With the player revealing that their character is secretly a traitor, a truth which will become manifest in the fiction only later.)

In play, this process is tense, exciting, and has just the right amount of mechanical richness wed to narrative truth to relentlessly push your story right to the edge.

Each player gets one turn being the Thief and one turn being the Throne, at which point the Heist draws to a close and the Throne is seized!

But just because you’ve taken control of Throne, doesn’t mean you’ve managed to escape. In the Getaway, players have the opportunity to power up the Throne and then attempt their escape. (This is also when all sudden-yet-inevitable betrayals will play out with, in my experience, usually devastatingly amazing results.)

If any of the Thieves manage to survive the Getaway, then the Finale wraps things up. A secret vote is conducted as everyone indicates what Reason for stealing the throne is obviously the most important and must be pursued first. The almost unavoidable disputes which result inform a brief epilogue. (An alternative structure is given for epiloguing a scenario in which only one Thief escapes.)

The only other thing to mention here is that the rulebook includes several playsets, each describing a Throne. These playsets are optional, but provide a little extra structure and a fodder of creative ideas that can subtly shape and inform play in order to create unique experiences. I’m looking forward to experimenting with these playsets in the future.

There is only thing I would change about Stealing the Throne: As written, you only utter your introductory statement (“I’m ________, and I’m the master of ________.”) when it’s your turn as the Thief. I would tweak this to say that you should utter the introductory statement at whatever point your Thief makes themselves known in the narrative (including when they’re offering assistance during another Thief’s turn).

I mention this mostly because I think this minor (and only!) tweak is actually the strongest indication of just how great Stealing the Throne is. It’s smooth, it’s fast, and it’s satisfying.

(The speed of gameplay here should not be ignored: Being able to pick up a storytelling game and have an experience this rich in just over an hour is phenomenal. My guess is a typical session will be about 90 minutes long, which makes the game incredibly appealing as something you can pick up and play more or less on a whim. Or as a deeply rewarding filler on boardgame night.)

Stealing the Throne will be entering my gaming rotation. I think it should enter yours.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Nick Bate
Publisher: ickbat.itch.io
Price: $10.00
Page Count: 40

Disclaimer: I have worked with Nick Bate previously, having hired him to work on Infinity, Over the Edge, and Feng Shui.

Thanks to Heather, Erik, and Allen for playing this one with me.