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 5th 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
Ouch!
Have you had a look at The Wild Beyond the Witchlight? I’m intrigued by the claim that it’s an entire campaign that can be navigated without combat, but I’m wary because of the car crashes that almost all of the official WotC campaigns have been so far.
The ability to navigate the adventure without combat is broadly accurate. (There are a couple exceptions where it’s not true and, because of the hype around this idea, you can’t help but go: “Ah ha! Gotcha!”)
It’s a pretty solid adventure book.
There’s some senseless railroading. (In the purest meaning of “senseless.” For example, there’s one bit where, much like Descent Into Avernus, they declare that navigating by map is impossible and the DM should just force the PCs to go to locations in a specific order. But there’s literally no reason to do that.) But it can mostly just be ignored to good effect.
For me, personally, the book was something of a disappointment because what I wanted was Labyrinth and what I got was Disney’s Alice in Wonderland.
It makes me think of the Terry Pratchett quote from Lords & Ladies:
“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.”
When it comes to the fey, I want that last bit. Witchlight goes the Victorian route, gets distracted after the word “enchantment,” and wanders off to fields filled with butterflies.
“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.”
Dammit! If only someone somewhere had already done that so I didn’t have to! Alas.
Terrible, awful module. After the game I was playing in was derailed due to COVID, I read the rest of the book to get ideas for my home game. I ended up being grateful that our game ended prematurely, because I couldn’t imagine stomaching the “go to this place, talk to NPC, go to the next place they tell you to go” structure over and over again.
@thekelvingreen I played in a WBtW game up until the point where you finally leave the carnival. I found it extremely twee and dull, with no real motivation to be there or to do anything. YMMV, but I felt like the authors didn’t take the adventure seriously, so I couldn’t either.
If it’s not worth it, why spend all that time on the remixes?
After all these modules needing such extensive work to make playable, it’s worth asking why are they so bad. The obvious answer is too many cooks seemingly in different kitchens sending in half baked cakes.
Another seems to be a focus on including all cool ideas from the concept board just for the sake of it. I guess that works at the marketing end?
Thank you for the review, Justin. It sounds like after all is said and done that you didn’t feel that the Remix was worth it. Sorry to hear that. Do you think it’s possible to run a smaller version of the campaign that can be just the “Mad Max in Hell” portion, without having to do ‘staggering’ amounts of work? If so, what sections of the book an/or your remix would you focus on?
I suspect the reason they make such a big deal about the Baldur’s Gate part, aside from them clearly trying to set up a bait-and-switch campaign, is that “Baldur’s Gate” is a strong brand name while “Elturiel” and “Avernus” aren’t.
The end of the review seems to be getting misconstrued, so I’m revising it slightly.
I think DIA can definitely be worth your while if you use it in conjunction with the Remix. Dozens of DMs have told me about the amazing campaigns they’re having with the Remix. I know that hundreds more are using it.
But that, in itself, is an important distinction: I can spend hundreds of hours on the Remix, write almost 200,000 words analyzing and revising the campaign, and have that make sense because I am incredibly blessed to have an audience. When I spend a hundred hours creating the Avernian Hexcrawl, that time is multiplied over thousands of players.
But if that wasn’t the case? If I was just a DM running games for five or six players and was trying to figure out if I should buy and use this campaign? It would absolutely NOT make sense, IMO, to do Remix-level work trying to salvage something this broken.
There’s so much easier fruit to pick.
I gave the book a Substance 2 rating largely because of the gazetteer; for the campaign alone (as published), this would be Substance 1. (In contrast to, say, Dragon Heist, which is a campaign I think could be reasonably salvaged by a solo DM doing it just for themselves.)
Thanks for the clarification. 🙂
I’d link to your Remix AGAIN on the words “bunch of that work” in your final sentence. Just to really hammer it home for dullards like me. 😛
By the way, the humor in this review is especially delicious.
I’d like to echo the thanks above for your amazing work on the Remix, Justin. While I tend to go for way less detailed plots and deep backstory, it’s so useful to have that material to fall back on. I haven’t played Avernus yet, but agree that it sounds like an amazing setting (hell buggies! Infernal machinations!) that lets you down hard on execution.
Which does lead me to a question – sure, the time you put into the Remix gets replayed because dozens or hundreds of DMs can make use of it. But for you personally, it’s still a big investment of time and creativity. What do you get out of it, would you say?
Big thanks for Justin’s work on the remix, and this honest review. Both are excellent work. Yes, it’s a mess, full of cool ideas. Use inly if you need cool ideas and are happy to rework them into something cool for your group to play.
Personally I did run the campaign, with let’s say about 50% of Justin’s remix, then a fair chunk of my own tweaks (some tied it to Luskan not Baldurs gate as I’d used that area successfully in prior campaigns, some because I ended up ahead of Justin’s material, some just my own personal preferences) but most importantly of all pieces changed based on what resonated with my players. For example the ultimate showdown with Zariel never happened, quite simply because the way things played out, they rescued and hung around with her for a while, didn’t like her much, and when a big fight with Bel came about, the group escaped and left her behind. When it came time to wrap up the last few sessions, I asked everyone to name one thing (new or old) they would like to see before the end. I got answers like “dragons”, “Tiamat”, etc, but no-one mentioned Zariel or the other thing I had in mind. So I ditched my plan, and pretty much all of the last chapter, and instead ran a small,home-brew piece, that actually did include everything they hinted at wanting. So rather than dealing with Zariel, the end-game consisted of finding and closing a portal from Avernus to the Sword Coast, guarded by undead etc then Arkhan the Cruel, then of course Tiamat, arrive trying to defend it. This gave my group some epic fights, where in the end ine PC had to sacrifice himself just to close the portal and let everyone else plane shift out, before Tiamat killed them all.
You can’t script stuff like that, especially in a long-running campaign.
Thanks so much for the Remix. It was my first time running a campaign and like you said I noticed a lot of strange stuff in the book, especially related to the whole Baldur’s Gate vs Elturel thing. I was struggling to find a way to fix it but your Remix came out at the perfect time. 🙂
The campaign fell apart because of covid but maybe I’ll get the $50 I spent out of the gazetteer with a Baldur’s Gate campaign.
The sheer number of writers, and story creators is insane. It is pretty clear they had to cut a ton of content to fit their design constraints. It probably could have been a good campaign if they made it longer. By say actually starting at level one then finishing at like sixteen.
I read your remix after purchasing the book and that was helpful for me in designing my own version of the campaign.
For anyone considering buying this book, don’t. You could do better rolling your own.
The gazetteer info is good but you can get all of that info and more on the fandom wiki.
If you are still keen on running this module, I would recommend starting the characters at 5th level and dropping them into hell with Elturel at the beginning and let them discover how to get out.
No matter how you approach it, this module requires A LOT of work if you want any sense of verisimilitude.
I had a similar take on reading it. Fantastically evocative and “epic” ideas, and the most metal 5e D&D adventure by far, but you would basically have to construct your own adventure within it to connect the set pieces in a coherent way.
By the way, what earlier sourcebook would you recommend as the most comprehensive look at Avernus? I took a look at the original Manual of the Planes, and its version of Avernus is basically a rocky wasteland where roughly once an hour the atmosphere near you will explode like a fireball spell.
@Jesse: You’re going to want Planescape, particularly the Planes of Law and Hellbound boxed sets.
The DnD Next adventure “Murder in Baldur’s Gate” also had a lengthy Baldur’s Gate gazetteer; I wonder how much overlap there is between the two? The PDF isn’t too pricey, and I’ve been using it pretty effectively to distract my Candlekeep players.
@Tom H.: I’m not sure how useful the two are in conjunction, but I did double-check to see if the BG gazetteer in DIA was largely a reprint of the MiBG gazetteer (which had been the case with the Icewind Dale gazeteers in Legacy of the Crystal Shard and Rime of the Frostmaiden).
Short version: No. The MiBG gazetteer is set in an earlier time period and appears to be very distinct.
Hi Justin,
Thanks for the great review. You said there are much better Dnd adventures out there that require much less work. I’ve also read your reviews for other DnD modules and you said very similar things there. What would you say are the better adventures by wotc that you can run easier out of the box?
This was incredibly cathartic to read, thank you for this review. I started DIA via Roll20 at the beginning of the pandemic as a pretty new DM, and found it incredibly frustrating. One would expect that a published adventure should be able to be run out of the book without much problem, but honestly it would have been far easier to just homebrew the whole thing and just steal a few cool plot points from the book. I ended up making up a bunch of stuff toward the end of the campaign, with Baphomet usurping Zariel, Fenrir (titan child of Baphomet, imprisoned in Hell) swallowing the Companion, and Tiamat breaking the chains of Elturel and using them to pull the city back to the material plane, claiming it as her new lair.
I didn’t discover your remix until after my party had advanced beyond what you had published at the time, but I’m planning on running it again soon with a different group and I’m excited to utilize your remix to the fullest! Thanks for all the work you put in to this project.
Hi,
I have read your blog and wathed your videos and I love them.
I had one question thoug. Do you have any contacts to the origial disigners? Do they see where they wnt wrong, I mean reading through your review makes me belief they have really bad quality testing. I have never rund any modules but run my own stuff but still.
I also think that nearly all books they publish are a good read but often lack in use for DMs. The best book for me at least was the Wildemount book that gives me all the info I need for the locations compared to the Eberon book which has like not even the most basic information on cities and /or locations besides sharn.
Would love to hear if you ever heard back from one of the official designers…
To understand how WoTC keeps cranking out such awful material for 5e, especially this, look not further than this line from the review:
“These infernal warmachines were actually hyped quite a bit in the pre-launch marketing for Descent Into Avernus.”
The people ultimately in charge want sales, and sales means marketing stuff that sounds really cool. Infernal Mad-Max-in-Hell war machines sound really cool, and no doubt made for some great marketing artwork. How many thousands more copies have sold just due to that?
All of the pressure from corporate overlords will prioritize “cool stuff that markets well” and “meet deadlines”. Put together a coherent story? Naaa… Anything remotely complex or sand-box-ish? naas… all of that takes too much time and talent. Plus a great deal of the GMs & players buying the content have no idea what good content looks like. Their point of reference will be computer RPGs which are mstly the very definition of railroad design and quest givers who spew “…blah blah blah Quest Location B blah blah blah…”, “…blah blah blah Quest Location C blah blah blah …”
Some good designers resign themselves to this for the secure paycheck, and will try to slip in what good design they can. But many will leave, providing openings for much less talented designers. Add in the too-many-cooks phenomenon and the constant pressure of corporate marketing priorities, and you have a recipe for RPG disaster.
Great review. I bought to raid for ideas but it was such a jumbled mess that I didn’t bother as I felt it would be too much work to fix. Was not aware of your remix will I will read now.
Minor quibble for me, I found the kenku in hell didn’t make much sense thematically. That species has not devilish connection and are even from a different method entirely. Maybe a pair is strange, slightly advanced, petitioners instead. You could even keep the bird head, maybe a pidgin.
Once I chucked the railroad showed the players the poster map and asked them where did they want to go, we had a blast. Of course, they skipped two-thirds of the encounters and stumbled onto the sword by dumb luck, but who cares.
Scariest of all, my group enjoys this. Nearing 50 sessions, I’m still baffled. Why they are not thrown off by the structure you mention is beyond me. (Some suspicious rando pops up and says “go there, do that”, the PCs follow blindly and it turns out to be a dud. And again. And again. And again.)
I sometimes blame video games for setting an abysmal standard of freedom, of player agency.
On other days I blame the smarts and patience of my group – the players are just so damn good at recognizing the above pattern and playing along. They keep their eyes peeled for the strange people asking for the strange favor and they feel successful when it happens.
Last but not least, it’s modern d&d with loads of meanies. Combat sessions are not rare and multi-session combats are not unheard of in our campaign. Hours into a combat with all the accounting, even I forget asking why are we risking life and limb again.