Go to Part 1

The next three adventures – Faces of Fortune, Infernal Insurgency, and The Diabolical Dive – form the Behind Infernal Lines series.

FACES OF FORTUNE – THE STORY OF FAI CHEN (DDAL 09-05): At the end of our last adventure a couple celestials revealed that they had been hiding among Elturian refugees from the very beginning! A mission to Hell is proposed… and apparently the celestials immediately bow out. A conversation which I imagine going something like this:

Celestials: Our work here is done.

PCs: You did nothing.

Celestials And you’re welcome!

PCs: People are dead.

Celestials: Celestials out, bitches!

In any case, the PCs and ten-year-old Dara are heading to Hell to rescue the trapped souls of innocent Hellriders. So they all hop in a cart drawn by a goat and driven by somebody named Fai Chen and somehow they all end up in Hell.

I’m so in the weeds on Fai Chen!

Some research indicates he also showed up in Season 8 of the Adventurers League, but even with this information I’m at a loss: Who is he? What does he want? How did he know to show up in Baldur’s Gate (but then not know anything about Dara or her celestial connections in this adventure)? What power does he possess to bring people to (and from?) Hell?

No idea.

Which seems particularly perverse given the subtitle of this adventure.

This was a frequent malady back in the ‘90s, when RPG supplements were more heavily driven by serialized metaplots which would slowly evolve their worlds over time. Often these metaplots were driven by J.J. Abrams-style mystery boxes and, in order to preserve the sense of enigma, these secrets were even kept from the GM reading the book. Which becomes a problem when the GM lacks the context necessary to understand how they’re supposed to be running the adventure at the table. That’s what happens here: I don’t know what Fai Chen wants, so I don’t know how he’d respond to anything the PCs might do or say. I don’t even know what he is, so if he gets into a fight (with the PCs or anybody else) I don’t even have the tools to resolve it.

But Fai Chen does, in fact, bring everyone to Avernus. At which point, apparently, Dara reveals she has no plan whatsoever. She doesn’t even have a plan to make a plan. So Fai Chen shrugs and says, “Weird. Well, I guess we’re all heading to Mahadi’s Emporium, renting a stall, and joining the flea market!”

Which is what this adventure is all about.

The frankly surreal framing aside, Ted Atkinson carries off the adventure itself adroitly.

The one thing we do discover about Fai Chen is that he’s basically the Han Solo to Mahadi’s Lando Calrissian. As the PCs approach Mahadi’s Emporium they’re attacked by an Avernian warlord gang, and after fighting their way through they discover that this warlord has been regularly harassing travel to and from the Emporium. Mahadi believes that there’s a traitor within the Emporium who’s assisting the warlord and he wants the problem solved.

This “traitor within” plot has a significant similarity to the one found in Hungry Shadows. This creates an interesting thematic resonance (the evils of the Material Plane are echoed in Hell), but the contrast largely just serves to demonstrate how this sort of plot can be handled without making your eyeteeth ache.

Mahadi’s Emporium is detailed and enhanced with a dozen or so colorful and well-rounded inhabitants, there are several side-quests designed to both accent the main quest and draw the PCs further into the social circles of the Emporium, and the whole thing is studded with some flavorful combat encounters.

Faces of Fortune is just solid adventure design, and well worth grabbing for any campaign that will be featuring Mahadi’s Emporium.

• Grade: B

INFERNAL INSURGENCY (DDAL 09-06): Fai Chen can now infinitely duplicate himself and the PCs are suddenly not allowed to leave the Emporium so they need to sneak out. (This will never be mentioned again.)

Would someone please hire a continuity editor for the Adventurers League?

Speaking of poor continuity, the Firesnake Forge from Descent Into Avernus which became Gears of War in DDAL 09-05 is now the Gearbox. Other than that, all the Emporium NPCs and locations which have been previously established are abruptly swapped out for a completely new roster. (The silver lining here is that you can pillage from both scenarios to flesh out your version of the Emporium.)

Weird inter-adventure continuity aside, Infernal Insurgency is a pretty good scenario. The concept is that the PCs need to raid an Avernian munitions dump. Their goal is to wreak enough havoc (i.e., blow stuff up) to pull devils away from a nearby facility (leading into scenario DDAL 09-07). The scenario struggles a bit as it gets awkwardly forced into an inappropriate structure, but a simple adversary roster and just ignoring the scripted elements of the ending will go a long way here.

• Grade: C

THE DIABOLICAL DIVE (DDAL 09-07): Having successfully drawn defenders away from Plagueshield Point in the previous adventure, the PCs are now ready to raid Plagueshield Point and steal the original battleplan used by the Hellriders when they charged into Hell! They then promptly discover that nobody knows where Plagueshield Point is, so they’ll have to start by finding someone who does.

… uhhh. If the people planning this operation don’t know where Plagueshield Point is, how did they know that raiding the munitions dump in the previous adventure would pull defenders away from it?

Seriously. Continuity editor. Look into it.

There’s a number of internal continuity errors and other oddities, too, like a creature without telepathy inexplicably communicating telepathically.

Once again, annoying continuity glitches aside, The Diabolical Dive is a rather nice adventure featuring two modest dungeon crawls. The first, Shadowswimmer Tower, is rather cleverly designed to be handled through either a frontal assault, social maneuvering, or sneaky stealth. It also features some nicely evocative touches of lore which help bring to life its owner’s obsession with studying the arcane properties of the River Styx.

The second location, Plagueshield Point, is starkly memorable in its concept: A drow citadel built around a magical geode which serves as a prison and which has been transported to the bottom of the Styx as part of an infernal bargain gone wrong.

• Grade: B-

Go to the Avernus Remix – Go to Part 4: Interlude at Mahadi’s

Go to Part 1

ESCAPE FROM ELTURGARD (DDAL 09-01): It’s not really surprising that both I (in the Avernus Remix) and Rich Lescouflair in Escape From Elturgard conclude that the best way to start the saga of Elturel’s fall is in a refugee caravan heading from the outskirts of the fallen city to Baldur’s Gate. There’s just no better or more immediate way of introducing the PCs to the crisis and, importantly, the lives most dramatically affected by.

Escape from Elturgard employs a clever design that can be used as four stand-alone, one-hour sessions or one longer, cohesive session with the caravan encountering multiple challenges. Three of the scenarios involve gathering supplies for the caravan before it departs, while the fourth takes place on the road.

The custom illustrations of every significant NPC in the caravan are a particularly nice touch and a great resource for this kind of adventure.

The grit in the wheel here, however, are the continuity errors. None of them are particularly large or fundamentally crippling, but they are everywhere – a constant, pervasive annoyance that never really goes away.

A good example of what I mean is the opening paragraphs of the second interlude/adventure, which has the quest giver say, “See that cart? It belongs to Ippon the Miller. Take it to the mill and gather supplies.” So the PCs walk over to Ippon and he says, “See this cart that definitely doesn’t belong to me? I think we should take it.” You can see how that doesn’t really break anything, but is nevertheless remarkably jarring.

The three “prep the caravan” sections of Escape From Elturgard are the scenario’s best parts and easily scavengable for a Remix campaign, with a couple provisos: First, the wacky “go on a shopping trip for paper and ink for a poet who otherwise refuses to join the refugee caravan” is, in my opinion, tonally inappropriate for the post-apocalyptic setting. Second, some of the adventures include devils roaming the countryside around Elturel as if they had “attacked” the city, but the continuity leading to that is a little hazy. (Elturel was sucked into Hell; it wasn’t attacked by devils.)

The fourth section of the scenario involves a secret cultist in the caravan murdering one of the other refugees and the PCs needing to solve the crime. This section of the adventure is not very good. The mystery is simply not handled very well, in no small part because the murder doesn’t actually make any sense.

• Grade: C-

The next three adventures – Stopped at the Gate, Hungry Shadows, and The Day of the Devil – form the Betrayal in Blood series.

STOPPED AT THE GATE (DDAL 09-02): Like other seasons of the Adventurers Guild, Season 9 reflects the events of that year’s major campaign book, in this case Descent Into Avernus. But this one reflects the campaign book rather more closely than other seasons that I’m familiar with, and, frankly, the effect is rather ludicrous.

Whereas Descent Into Avernus features the PCs being hired by a Flame of the Flaming Fist to investigate a Cult of Zariel in Baldur’s Gate murdering refugees under the instructions of a devil named Gargauth, these Adventurers League scenarios feature the PCs being hired by a different Flame of the Flaming Fist to investigate a different Cult of Zariel in Baldur’s Gate who are also murdering refugees for a different reason while being instructed by a different devil whose name starts with G (Gharizol).

With all the fascinating stories that could be told within the period of upheaval created by the Fall of Elturel in both Elturgard and Baldur’s Gate, the fact that the only thing the Adventurers Guild could think of was, “I dunno… I guess just the exact same story?” is not only incredibly disappointing, but also a huge disservice to anyone playing in both an AL and Descent Into Avernus campaign.

And it’s a millstone that none of the individual scenario writers are really capable of overcoming.

In Stopped at the Gate, the PCs need to investigate the murder of Marcus Hallgate. The poor design of the mystery can be exemplified by the first scene. The PCs can get two clues, both delivered by the victim’s wife:

• There have been other murders. The PCs are not expected to investigate any of these, but they can talk to a city watchman who “knows more.” (He doesn’t.)
• A friend of the Hallgates purchased a gift for the wife several days ago. (The gift has absolutely no connection to the murder, but apparently the PCs are supposed to follow up on this out of desperation.)

So the PCs leave the scene with two clues (sort of), and then this happens:

If the characters choose to see Dovis first, he’s at his post by the Heap Gate (Scene C). If they choose to go to Harwin’s shop first (Scene D), they end up encountering Dovis before they get there.

It’s not just that it’s railroading. It’s that the railroading is both transparent and completely pointless. In any case, they (hopefully) go to Harwin’s shop and his assistant tells them:

A couple of days ago, Harwin left to check on the shearing operations outside of town. This was strange; they had wool and Harwin didn’t like the sheep. Harwin must have left before Zook got to the shop this morning, since the tea in Harwin’s mug was still warm.

So he left a couple of days ago, but the tea in his mug was still warm this morning?

It turns out that Harwin is being controlled by a devil named Gharizol. Gharizol hatched a “brilliant” plan for killing Marcus Hallgate:

• Make a fancy dress for Marcus’ wife so that she would go dancing!
• She will not, of course, take her husband to go dancing with her!
• Then, having gotten his wife out of the way, kill Marcus… while he is walking down a busy street and in no way in a location where his wife’s presence or absence would be meaningful!

Just… astounding.

In my opinion, this scenario is completely unusable.

• Grade: F-

HUNGRY SHADOWS (DDAL 09-03): In Hungry Shadows, the PCs are engaged to investigate another murder related to the Cult of Zariel.

The fundamental problem here is the continuity. Initially, I thought it was just presented in an utterly baffling fashion, but having read backwards and forwards through this thing several times, I’m forced to conclude that the whole thing is, in fact, utter nonsense.

A cultist has been “murdered” in their own home with all the doors and windows locked. How did he die? Well, either some sort of devil broke down his door and killed him (what all the evidence says) OR he was casting a summoning spell, it went wrong, and something appeared in the room with him and killed him (which is what the appendix says).

Who found the body inside the locked house that no one had been inside? No idea. The adventure doesn’t say. What we DO know is that the first members of the Flaming Fist on site are actually moles who are loyal to the cult. So what do they do? Well, first they report the murder to their superior officer and wait for the PCs to be called in. And THEN they arrange a meeting with a cult member at a local tavern to tell them that they need to cover up all the evidence of the cult’s involvement.

Where is the cult located? UNDER THE MURDER VICTIM’S HOUSE.

“Features” of this adventure also include:

• A group of moles working within the Flaming Fists who conveniently self-identify themselves as moles by all wearing black kerchiefs around their necks.
• A dungeon map that not only lacks a numbered key, but also labels of any kind, making it ludicrously and unnecessarily cumbersome to run.
• A serious recommendation that PCs pause in the middle of a six room dungeon to take an eight hour long rest while the cultists in the next room politely wait before starting their ritual to summon a devil to fight the PCs.

I would consider this scenario nigh unusable, and certainly not worth the effort required to salvage something vaguely serviceable out of it.

• Grade: F

THE DAY OF THE DEVIL (DDAL 09-04): I talk about this adventure in Part 3J of the Remix, where I loosely adapt the continuity around Duke Portyr’s assassination. And the reason I wanted to adapt it is because M.T. Black has done a bang up job of it.

The Day of the Devil opens with the PCs listening to Duke Portyr give a speech to a large crowd. Midway through the speech, he’s shot by an infernal arrow that causes his body to explode as several devils leap out of it. The PCs’ first order of business is to deal with the devils in the midst of a panicking crowd. It’s both an explosive opening (pun intended), but also handled with great elegance through a combat complications table that neatly captures the chaotic nature of the scene in an easy-to-run mechanic.

This is followed by the revelation that the cultists are also targeting some of the refugees the PCs have befriended, triggering a great chase sequence across Baldur’s Gate to reach the warehouse where the refugees have been staying in time to stop further tragedy. This is followed by a decent siege scenario (with the PCs defending the warehouse from cultists and devils).

The only real false step with the adventure are the loose ties to the other AL adventures, which mostly crop up in the final scene: Dara, who was the leader of the refugee caravan in Escape From Elturgard, has confusingly de-aged into a ten-year-old girl (this is just a continuity error). Then she reveals that two other refugees have secretly been celestials this whole time, she has just been consecrated as a priestess of Ilmater (as a ten-year-old child?), and they’re all heading to Avernus to rescue some souls.

At which point a character the PCs have never seen before blows up one wall of the warehouse (that the PCs have just bled to defend and which the refugees are still living in) and comes riding in on a mule-drawn cart, offering to give them all a ride to Hell.

All of which I recognize is supposed to elicit a response of, “WTF?” But I suspect not quite in the tone of derision I have for it.

But, honestly, if you just ignore that entire tacked-on ending, it’s a good adventure. (It does not, however, bode well for where the series is heading.)

• Grade: B-

Go to the Avernus Remix – Go to Part 3: Behind Infernal Lines

Avernus Rising, the ninth season of the Adventurers League, featured a bunch of Avernus-related adventures and content. As with my reviews of Avernus-related DMs Guild products, I thought it would be worthwhile to do a survey of these adventures and see what might be useful for the remix. I’ve also written up my impressions in these short capsule reviews.

A few things to keep in mind:

• I was reading these adventures with a specific question in mind: Can I use this in the Remix? That’s not what they were designed for, and although my reviews here are aiming for a wider perspective, it’s probably a good idea to keep in mind my POV here.
• Unless otherwise noted, these are not playtest reviews.
• There’s a guide to how I use letter grades here at the Alexandrian: 90% of everything is crap, and the crap gets sorted into the F category. All the other letter grades are an assessment of how good the non-crap stuff is. Anything from A+ to C- is worth checking out if the material sounds interesting to you. If I give something a D, it’s pretty shaky. And anything with an F, in my opinion, should be avoided.

For better or worse, I also won’t be reviewing these as Adventurers League adventures, per se. I don’t have a lot of AL experience and my primary interest is in home tabletop play, so that’ll be my primary focus.

REVIEW INDEX
Part 2: Betrayal in Blood
Part 3: Behind Infernal Lines
Part 4: Interlude at Mahadi’s
Part 5: Doors and Corners
Part 6: Red Hunt & Season 9 Remix

INFERNAL ENCOUNTERS (DDAL00-12): As with Baldur’s Gate: City Encounters (see my review over here), Infernal Encounters features a bunch of “encounters” which are actually scenario hooks. Bizarrely, several of these do not even remotely resemble an encounter. For example:

An eccentric merchant commissioned the construction of a keep within the Nine Hells and when he died, none of his beneficiaries were willing to claim it. It’s now fallen to one of the characters – his last living relative. If they think that getting to the keep is difficult, wait until they’re forced to clear out the devils that are trying to claim squatters’ rights.

This excerpt also highlights another “feature” of these encounters: Although ostensibly designed as random encounters for use in the Nine Hells (including a table distributing them throughout the Nine Hells), a baffling number of them are clearly designed to be used on the Material Plane and bring people to the Nine Hells. For example:

A local madman claims that his cat is a portal to the Nine Hells.

This largely renders the random encounters unusable, although there are a handful of encounters that can be salvaged (and which I’m using in the encounter tables for the Remix).

Of more use are the Random Devils in Chapter 2, which provide a lot of customization options for making individual devils distinct characters. There’s also the Impaler, a new infernal war machine that you can use to help vary those, too.

The book is rounded out with four “expanded encounters” which are various side quests. These are associated with some of the random encounters (although, bizarrely, NOT the encounters which are structured as scenario hooks). They are something of a mixed bag: One is a pretty decent raid scenario based on a Dyson Logos map, but another, for example, consists entirely of the PCs “distracting” some bad guys by engaging in fifty rounds(!) of combat while standing on a featureless hilltop. A third is a heist without a map (which is problematic, but it’s a micro-heist on a target with only two rooms, so it mostly works).

Overall, there’s some value to be found here, but it’s very inconsistent. You’ll need to sift a lot of chaff to find scant wheat.

• Grade: D

Note: The following epic adventures were sent to me by a patron who thought they might be useful and that they should be included in my reviews here. Unlike the other Adventurers League books we’ll be looking at, they are non-trivial to obtain copies of, so I won’t be directly incorporating elements from them in the Remix.

INFERNAL PURSUITS (DDEP09-01): This is a multi-table event, designed to be run by multiple GMs simultaneously for four or more groups of PCs. I’ve had a great deal of fun with such events in the past, and there are certainly compromises that have to be made in order to make events like this work. But Infernal Pursuits seems particularly stilted, with PCs not even being given the vaguest semblance of meaningful agency as they’re arbitrarily shoved from one combat encounter directly into the next.

Something else I’ve noticed in my (admittedly brief) experience with Adventurers League adventures is that (a) they’re clearly designed to tie in with the current adventure path release, but (b) the “tie-ins” seem to have been written on the basis of someone describing a conversation about the adventure path that they overheard in a noisy bar. So here, for example, characters like Mad Maggie are not so much off-model as they are completely different people with almost unrecognizable motivations and personalities.

There are some interesting resources here: Infernal Pursuits provides a different set of mechanics for handling war machines, including rules for stuff like rams and sideswipes that aren’t found in Descent Into Avernus. There are also two new war machines in the form of the Earth Ripper and Soul Reaper.

• Grade: D

HELLFIRE REQUIEM (DDEP09-02): This is another multi-table event that takes place in the village of Torm’s Hand, an otherwise unknown settlement supposedly “on the outskirts of Baldur’s Gate.” Here the recently deceased paladin Klysandral is being laid to rest and his mortal remains transformed into holy relics. Asmodeus is unamused and has sent agents to suck the whole temple into Avernus so that Klysandral’s remains can be corrupted.

(Grand Duke Ravengard is also in attendance, and frankly I’m going to stop going to places he’s visiting. Get sucked into Hell once, shame on Asmodeus. Get sucked into Hell twice, shame on you.)

Compared to Infernal Pursuits, the interactive elements between the tables are handled quite well and look to be very interesting and dynamic in actual play. The adventure itself, unfortunately, is a fairly mediocre rehash of Monte Cook’s A Paladin in Hell. It is also plagued with sloppy design and confusing continuity. For example:

• The adventure opens with the PCs clearing out Asmodean cultists.
• But then it turns out that the REAL cultists working for Asmodeus are the Cult of the Dragon!
• But not all of the Cult of the Dragon! Some of the Cult of the Dragon are supposed to be your allies!
• There is absolutely no way of telling them apart! But it is mandatory that you rescue some and slay others, with no clear instructions for which are which!
• And then, despite having killed dozens of cultists, it turns out there is only ONE bad cultist! And it was one of the ones you rescued! Oh no! (I mean, the other ones want to free Tiamat from Avernus and bring an age of terror and flame to the world, but… I guess that doesn’t count for some reason?)

One of the weirder elements of this adventure is Grand Duke Ravengard making the PCs honorary Hellriders… which is a little like Queen Elizabeth declaring someone an honorary member of the U.S. Marine Corps. (I’m kind of baffled this adventure wasn’t set in a principality of Elturel. It would take little more than a few name swaps to make this true. Then just ditch all the weird and pointless Cult of the Dragon continuity and you’d have an eminently playable adventure.)

• Grade: D+

FORGED IN FIRE (DDOPEN2019): Forged in Fire is a tournament scenario with pregenerated characters. Three warlocks stole a puzzlebox from Thavius Kreeg. They have been captured by three paladins. But before the paladins can deliver them to justice, they all get sucked into Hell.

(Running into these three paladins and warlocks in Avernus could make for a fun random encounter. They could also be used as new or replacement PCs should the need arise.)

This is an exceedingly well-organized and well-presented adventure. Events are clear, information is presented when and where you need it, and the protocols for running the tournament are clearly communicated. The railroad is a little fragile (potentially being derailed if a single player doesn’t understand a clue or proves obstinate), but mostly serviceable as such things go. Reading this immediately after Infernal Pursuits and Hellfire Requiem was a night-and-day experience.

The opening scene is real humdinger: The characters are literally plummeting out of the sky above Avernus and, if they can’t figure out how to slow down, they’re going to go SPLAT! in the middle of the Blood War.

There’s a bunch of cool Avernian terrain features:

• Craters filled with bones
• Ichor bogs
• Weeping salt flats (the thin layer of salty water is formed from the tears of the damned and filled with howling, ghostly faces).
• Tar pit plains

And if you’re looking for locations to flesh out your hexcrawl, you have:

• Xalzair’s Library (featuring, among other things, a swarm of vampiric tomes!)
• Falgrath’s Forge (built in the middle of one of those tar pit plains)
• Bragacon’s Menagerie (featuring riddles and mazes built into a titanic sword)
• Yaltomec (a volcano formed from the petrified souls of the damned)

The first three are the abodes of the pit fiend patrons of the pregenerated warlock PCs (a quite clever device), but all are quite easy to plug-and-play in any campaign.

In short, Forged in Fire is a truly vivid and memorable tour of some truly unique and creative vistas of Hell. Well worth checking out if you can figure out how to get your hands on a copy of it.

• Grade: B-

Note: Because Forged in the Fire is not widely available, I have not incorporated these locations or terrain features into the Remix. But if you’re lucky enough to have a copy, I encourage you to do so.

Go to the Avernus Remix – Go to Part 2: Betrayal in the Blood

Go to Part 1

Rhodarin Press has published five supplements fleshing out Avernus, presenting a unique vision of the first layer of Hell. The first of these I stumbled across was Tyrants of the Purple City, a brief gazetteer describing an entire infernal city that lies somewhere along the Styx.

TYRANTS OF THE PURPLE CITY: The city is primarily presented through a number of distinct factions, each of which has a barebones quest/job that they want accomplished. This is an interesting lens for viewing the setting, but seems very practical, resulting in a lot of bang for your buck in a relatively short supplement.

The biggest shortcoming of Tyrants of the Purple City is the appalling proofreading. (Although the malapropism of “portuary ward” is almost delightfully evocative.) This is a problem which unfortunately persists throughout the Rhodarin supplements.

• Grade: B-

CHARON’S DROWNED SHRINE: Charon’s Drowned Shrine presents another Avernian city lying along the Styx, but this one was utterly destroyed in a flood forty years ago.

I will just never understand paragraphs like this:

Characters will most likely approach the city through the main course of the river. If they traverse the town to the Temple they should come across the districts in the order Outskirts, New Harbor, Eastern Gate, and then the Inner City, where the Temple resides, but through magic means or other strategies, they might be able to circumvent some wards.

First, there’s a map, so this is immediately obvious and the text is irrelevant. Second, stop trying to force non-linear environments into being linear, plotted experiences. Third, the phrase “if the PCs figure out how to do something, then they can do something” seems to be the #1 favorite way for RPG authors to write “I feel a need to write something, but have absolutely nothing to actually say.”

With that grumpy pet peeve out of the way, the biggest problem Charon’s Drowned Shrine has is that Orinxis, the ruined city, is… mundane. Absurdly so given that it is a CITY IN HELL ITSELF.

For example, the first keyed location is the Old Water Mill. Oooh… A mill churned by the cursed waters of the Styx itself! What alien and infernal purpose could it have been built for?

Grinding flour.

In similar fashion, the adventure just kind of blithely assumes that the PCs will be casually wading (and even diving!) into the waters of the Styx. The whole thing just feels like an adventure designed for the Material Plane that has been awkwardly copy-pasted to Avernus.

This one just doesn’t do it for me.

• Grade: D

ESCAPE FROM THE BLOOD FORTRESS: Originally written as a one-shot that could also be potentially used as part of a longer campaign to bring the PCs to Avernus for the first time (by having them kidnapped and then locked in an infernal prison from which they must escape), the author has hypothetically retrofitted Escape from the Blood Fortress to be used as part of a Descent Into Avernus campaign (although, as far as I can tell, no actual effort has been put towards achieving this goal).

The dungeon from which the PCs are escaping is painfully linear, which is made worse because options ARE given.. it just turns out they’re designed to murder you if you’re stupid enough to take them. For example:

Exiting through this exit is highly inadvisable, as it would probably mean a very complex encounter and almost certainly incarceration or death.

So go back to the Preapproved Exit™ you dummies.

Other design problems include encounters which are… vague. For example:

The denizens of this kitchen are mainly imps and quasits following the orders of Jakll, a blind and very old tiefling (non-combatant) with excellent cooking skills.

How many imps? How many quasits? No idea.

The aforementioned “gonna kill you dummies for picking the wrong door” encounter is similarly undefined. There’s just, like, so many devils out there!

Eventually the PCs follow the linear dungeon up high enough that they can look out a different window and see a huge cut-scene play out which is, despite them having no agency in it whatsoever, the “climactic moment in the adventure.” Oddly, the adventure then continues.

This one is a miss for me, too.

• Grade: F

THE ADMIRAL’S SUCCESS – A GUIDE ON SAILING THE STYX: This supplement consists of two parts. First, a set of alternative mechanics for handling exposure to the Styx designed to moderate the consequences of doing so.

Second, ten scripted random encounters designed for groups traveling along the Styx. These encounters are mostly serviceable, but also fairly pedestrian.

Unfortunately, several of them once again suffer from the “I forgot to put combat stats in this combat encounter” problem seen in Escape From Blood Fortress, which is fairly crippling in a product pretty much exclusively designed to provide ready-to-use encounters.

• Grade: D

VYSIANTER’S GUIDE TO THE RED WASTES OF AVERNUS: This is an example of what I mean when I talk about GMs lacking scenario structures. The author’s concept here is a blasted swath of Avernian wilderness called the Red Wastes, but the only scenario structure he knows is “linear plot.” And so the trackless waste through which the PCs are supposed to “roam” is presented as… a road.

With a sequence of programmed encounters that play out as the PCs walk down the road.

Once again, several of these encounters are vague, with some basically consisting of the author saying, “Here’s an idea for an encounter that might work. Maybe. I dunno.”

The typos also remain on point with this one, producing “bad-reliefs” and a temple to “Armodeus” (who I’m assuming is Asmodeus’ n’er-do-well cousin who’s also a frat boy).

The book is rounded out with the Lost Temple of Dak-Thrael. This dungeon is very atmospheric and evocatively packed with a ton of lore about the Queen of Lilies (who once ruled over the verdant paradise which preceded the Red Wastes). I find the key to be a little muddy – with boxed text that violates the “don’t tell the players what their characters are doing” rule and a presentation primarily based on theorizing about things the PCs might do (instead of just clearly describing the room so that I can run the game) – but it’s serviceable.

If you’re looking to add a little enigma to your version of Avernus – a reminder that its history stretches back through countless aeons beyond human comprehension and its wastes are filled with the lost palimpsest of unknowable epochs – Vysianter’s Guide to the Red Wastes might be worth snagging for Dak-Thrael alone (to which I’d give a grade of C-).

• Grade: D+

After stumbling into Tyrants of the Purple City and being pleasantly surprised, I was really excited to discover that Rhodarin Press had done a whole slate of Avernus-focused supplements. Unfortunately, I was pretty consistently disappointed by the rest of the line. With that being said, I see a lot of potential here, and will be keeping an eye on Rhodarin in the future to see how they develop.

One last thing to note, which may not have been immediately clear from the above, is that all of Rhodarin’s Avernus products are loosely bound together, forming a shared continuity. Each book stands on its own, but they’re also designed to work with each other.

Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Part 1

I thought this would be the last set of these capsule reviews, in which my goal is to give a very high overview of my thoughts/impressions of each book, but I just recently discovered that Rhodarin Press has put out a whole suite of Avernus-related PDFs, so I’ll be taking a peek at those in the near future, too.

These reviews were written as part of my survey of Descent Into Avernus-related material on the Dungeon Masters Guild while working on the Alexandrian Remix of the campaign. Unless otherwise noted, the material has not been playtested.

You may also want to review this Guide to Grades at the Alexandrian. The short version: My general philosophy is that 90% of everything is crap, and crap gets an F. I’m primarily interested in grading the 10% of the pile that’s potentially worth your time. Anything from A+ to C- is, honestly, worth checking out if the material sounds interesting to you. If I give something a D it’s pretty shaky. F, in my opinion, should be avoided entirely.

ENCOUNTERS IN AVERNUS: I’ve previously talked about how I found Baldur’s Gate: City Encounters to be a very disappointing offering in comparison to Waterdeep: City Encounters. I’m pleased to report that Encounters in Avernus – designed by M.T. Black, James Haeck, James Introcaso, Rich Lescouflair, Shawn Merwin, and Ashley Warren – is much closer to the Waterdeep volume in terms of its value and quality.

The book provides four categories of encounters: There are encounters for Avernus in general, encounters for characters near the River Styx, encounters in the city of Elturel, and also a pair of “encounter chains” which are more accurately light sub-plots you can work into your Descent Into Avernus campaign.

The proof is in the pudding here: I’ve incorporated the Elturel encounters into Part 5C of the Remix and you’ll find the Avernus encounters in Part 7H.

The weak point of Encounters in Avernus, for me, is the Styx-related encounters: The tone of these encounters are almost universally comedic. This is just NOT what I’m looking for in Hell, rendering the encounters worthless. (Nor is the humor, featuring stuff like bad puns, particularly good.)

Despite this, you’ll find a ton of value between the covers here and, given its inclusion in the Remix, I’m obviously recommending that every Descent Into Avernus DM snag a copy.

• Grade: B-

DESCENT INTO AVERNUS – FEATHERS OF ZARIEL: Feathers of Zariel is a seven-page PDF with one page of content and six pages of ads.

The basic concept is somewhat interesting: Feathers shed from Zariel before her fall are divine relics, a memory of what Zariel once was. If Zariel can obtain them, she can turn them into dark feathers, corrupting their powers just as she herself was corrupted.

Unfortunately, the execution is completely lacking. The items are ludicrously unbalanced and utterly fail to realize any of the interesting potential of their concept. The bait-and-switch of advertised page count also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Note: If you wanted to run with the concept of Zariel’s lost feathers (possibly they were all shed when she fell and scattered throughout Avernus), I’d combine that with the memory mystery of the Remix: Each feather might hold a shard of Zariel’s memory. If Zariel herself prizes them (either because she can transform them into dark artifacts or simply because she wants to secure her memories), they can give the PCs additional bargaining power if they meet her.

• Grade: F

THE BLOOD OF AVERNUS – EXPANDING THE RIVER STYX: This short “adventure” is simply not very good. The tone is set with incredibly poor proofreading and then continued with a rambling, largely incoherent style.

The central conceit reimagines the Styx into a living, demonic entity. Oaths can be sworn to this entity and if these oaths are broken, the Styx will inflict a curse on you. As far as I can tell, the general idea is that one or more of the PCs will swear such an oath and then break it. (How you’re supposed to arrange for that to happen is… vague.)

The avatar of the Styx lives in a cave located… somewhere?

The adventure consists of the PCs journeying to this cave, which is handled entirely as a series of random encounters. Once they reach the cave (which is not described), they can negotiate with the Styx to remove their curse.

• Grade: F

BALANCING ENCOUNTERS – DESCENT INTO AVERNUS: This book includes entries for every single encounter in Descent Into Avernus and provides detailed scaling notes for those encounters based on the relative strength of your group.

Fewer players? More players? Lower level? Higher level? Powerful magic items? Stripped naked by a devilish encounter that went awry?

Balancing Encounters will put the encounter you need at your fingertips.

Those of you familiar with the Alexandrian will likely know I don’t put a lot of stock into hyper-precise encounter balancing. But the great range of support given here makes this book useful for far more than just chasing the false idol of the “perfect encounter.” (The introduction of the book actually talks about this.) In addition to providing broad adjustments to radically different groups, the high-powered encounters are also likely to prove useful for anyone wanting to transition to Descent Into Avernus from another adventure, like the approach described in From Waterdeep to Avenus.

• Grade: B+

HELL PRISONS: Filp Gruszcyznski has created a really cool mythology in which Hell creates prisons that “purify” the lowly souls of the damned who would otherwise become lemures through torture so that they will “ascend” into more powerful devils for the glory of the Blood War. (And, since they exist, Asmodeus and Zariel use them for other purposes, too.)

Gruszcyznski then presents the Hell Prison in a modular format: He includes a sample prison for pick-up-and-play utility, but presents a whole bunch of plug-and-play components – rooms with different functions like Lairs, Prison Wings, Summoning Chambers – that can be combined and re-combined into different layouts to rapidly generate multiple prisons.

The presentation reminds me a little of the old Frontier Forts of Kelnore module from Judges Guild, which similarly presented the concept of ancient imperial border forts built to a common, but customizable plan which had also been turned to various uses (or fallen into ruins) over the centuries since the empire’s fall.

If there’s one thing I’d like to see from Hell Prisons it would be for each modular component to have more pre-built variations. A few of the chambers have this (for example, the Prison Wing has a list of different prisoners who might be held there), but it would be great if more or all of the chambers had 4-6 different variants.

But even without that, this is a really great little book that crams a ton of utility and reusability between its covers.

• Grade: B+

WARRIORS OF THE SEHANINE: Warriors of the Sehanine is yet another adventure prominently advertised on the Dungeon Masters Guild as being for use with Descent Into Avernus which (you guessed it) has nothing to do with Descent Into Avernus. I’d ask why creators do this, but obviously it works: They have my money and they’re getting a review out of it.

As a module, this is pretty good: A black dragon with an interesting twist has assaulted the fortress of a druidic order. The PCs encounter refugees from the assault and are asked to journey to the fortress and save children who were trapped in the fortress when it fell to the dragon. When the PCs reach the fortress, they discover that other enemies of the druidic order have seized the opportunity to pursue their own agendas.

However, it’s not without shortcomings.

First, it has what I refer to as a pointless hexcrawl. There’s a hex map with several dozen hexes… only four of which have anything keyed to them. Either the PCs will have a map and the hexcrawl is virtually pointless (they are traveling to the fortress, not exploring the forest… which has nothing to discover even if they were exploring). Or the PCs don’t have a map and the assumed form of play is to… wander around aimlessly with the DM periodically saying “you see more trees” until they finally stumble into the correct hex that has the adventure in it? That seems like a poor experience.

Second, the map of the fortress is confusingly incomplete and also missing entries keyed in the text. It’s not incomprehensible, but you’ll definitely have to puzzle your way through it.

Third, the “I’m too wounded and need to recuperate, so you’ll have to go without me” is a gag that doesn’t work in D&D because the PCs will just cast a cure spell.

Fourth, the PCs have one goal: Rescue the kids. They might also decide that they also want to slay the dragon. Oddly both of these goals are keyed to areas directly OUTSIDE the entrance to the fortress, so the adventure kind of ends before it even begins?

However, these quibbles – while somewhat significant – are fairly easy to triage in practice. And there’s a lot of good, meaty material fleshing things out here.

• Grade: C+

SCIENTIFIC SECRETS OF AVERNUS: This collection of twenty-seven Avernian fiends is built on the gimmick that each monster is inspired by a cool scientific fact, with each entry actually citing a scientific study.

In truth the gimmick is a little thin, with most of the monsters seeming to be only slightly or tangentially related to the scientific source material. (Although it’s a good example of how you can find creative inspiration almost anywhere.) But the actual monsters have a pretty good hit rate, which is, of course, the key measure of value in a monster manual.

Some of my favorites in Scientific Secrets of Avernus include the cranium crabs (soul-devouring devil crabs using skulls as their shells), malebranches (canid devils who gather errant lemures and drag them in chains across Avernus), flesh-eating splendors (swarms born from the cursed flesh of a succubus that seek to destroy beauty), and the screaming ash elementals (which steal the voices of their victims’ screams).

• Grade: B-

More DMs Guild Capsule Reviews – Go to the Avernus Remix