The PCs just shot the Evil Overlord in the head in the second session. Now what?

People in both the Alexandrian Hangout Club for my Patreon and viewers on Twitch have recommended that I spent some time on Youtube looking at filmic tropes. I think there are some interesting videos to be made along those lines, and it’s certainly a natural fit for the medium.

This video is kind of a beta test, featuring several film clips as I figure out the workflow and pacing for including then. (The short version is that it’s a huge pain in the ass to source the clips, but I think the end result is quite nice.)

Also reminded me that I still need to spend more time with old Hammer horror films.

Desert Orange asks:

I’m trying to use node-based scenario design for the first time. I’m designing a Hangover-style scenario on a superyacht: the PCs wake up on the ship surrounded by corpses and with no memory of how they got there.

If I’m using a funnel design, is it possible to only have two nodes before the first funnel? There’d only be two clues per node. That can’t be right. But what bugs me is that I only have two locations for the PCs to explore: the ship they’re on and the island that’s nearby.

I’m not sure if I should use the locations as nodes or the conclusions that the characters have to reach. The funnel would be figuring out how the previous night ended. After this, they’d begin figuring out how it started.

Easy answer first: If you’re designing a node-based mystery, think of each node as a place where you can investigate for clues.

Each node (other than the starting node) is also a revelation/conclusion because the players have to conclude that they can go to the node and investigate. (The three clues pointing to Node X are basically pointing to a conclusion which says, “You can find more clues at Node X.”)

But in a mystery scenario you can also have conclusions that aren’t nodes – i.e., things that the PCs need to learn that aren’t places they can go to investigate for more clues.

In my more recent writing, I’ve started referring to clues that point to places where you can continue your investigation as leads – they lead you somewhere. In node-based design it’s the leads that need to adhere to the Inverse Three Clue Rule:

If the PCs have access to ANY three clues, they will reach at least ONE conclusion.

Because as long as the PCs have somewhere to continue investigating the mystery, the adventure keeps working. It’s only if they run out of places to investigate that the adventure breaks.

So in your Hangover cruise adventure, for example, you’ll have a list of revelations which consist of Things That Happened To Us That We’ve Forgotten. And you’ll want clues for each of those (and three clues for any that the PCs need to know about). Those probably aren’t leads.

NOT ALL MYSTERIES HAVE NODES

But here’s the thing: I don’t think your mystery is actually a node-based scenario. At least not at first.

The PCs are not trying to figure out where to look for clues: The clues are on the ship.

So what you actually have is a location-crawl in which they explore the ship room by room, finding clues in each room. You’re still using the Three Clue Rule:

For every conclusion you want the PCs to make, include at least three clues.

And you’ll have a revelation list so that the PCs can piece together what happened to them, but the players aren’t really finding clues in the helm station that tell them they should check out the stern deck for clues. They’re just methodically searching the ship for clues (while also potentially dealing with other crises or conundrums).

(This isn’t to say that a location-crawl can’t have clues in Room A that point the PCs to Room B, for example. That’s a great way to make a location-crawl feel cohesive and, if those clues are revealing hidden secrets that the PCs might have missed in Room B the first time they went, can add a lot of depth to the experience. But that’s not really node-based design and doesn’t structurally function as a node-based adventure.)

Now if there are clues on the ship that point the PCs to another location where they need to continue their investigation, that would suggest a node-based design. (Maybe they need to realize that the superyacht was at a different location at some point last night and they need to go there. Or they discover the ritual that opened a gateway to a dark dimension that they need to go back to in order to continue piecing things together.) But I still wouldn’t try to break the ship up into multiple nodes: The superyacht as a whole would just be one node, with that node basically being a mini-location-crawl inside the larger scenario.

You’d mentioned that you wanted the scenario to start with them figuring out how the previous night ended and then, after that, they’d begin figuring out how it started. You can see how this structure would essentially accomplish that: The superyacht has all the clues that let them figure out how the previous night ended, which allows them to figure out where the night started (i.e., the other node where they can look for the clues to figure out what happened there).

In fact, this node-based scenario might consist of just these two nodes: The superyacht and where the night started.

There’s nothing about node-based design that says you have to get super-complicated about it.

REGARDING FUNNELS

Although I don’t think it necessarily applies to this scenario, let’s talk about your specific question regarding funnel design for a moment: The key thing about the Inverse Three Clue Rule is that the PCs should have access to at least three clues at all time.

(This doesn’t necessarily mean they will FIND all those clues. The whole reason you have redundancy is in case they don’t, after all. But they should have ACCESS to them, by which I mean that in locations which the PCs know about, there should be at least three clues pointing to locations that they don’t already know about. Or, in the final scene(s) of a scenario where they’ve almost finished their investigation, three clues that point to all the conclusion(s) they need to bring the scenario to its conclusion.)

In addition, the Three Clue Rule still applies! You still need three clues for each conclusion the PCs need to reach!

So your current structure is:

• Node 0 ➞ A, B
• Node A ➞ B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C
• Node C

We can immediately see that in Node 0 (the opening scene) they only have access to two clues. That’s a structural problem which violates the Inverse Three Clue Rule.

In addition, you basically have three conclusions:

• You need to investigate Node A.
• You need to investigate Node B.
• You need to investigate Node C.

But for each of those conclusions, there are only two clues, which means you’ve violated the Three Clue Rule.

Adding enough clues to satisfy the Three Clue Rule will, conveniently, also satisfy the Inverse Three Clue Rule. Here’s a symmetrical example:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, B
• Node A ➞ B, B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C, C
• Node C

You could also saturate the opening scene:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, B, B
• Node A ➞ B, C
• Node B ➞ A, C, C
• Node C

And other patterns are also possible:

• Node 0 ➞ A, A, A, B
• Node A ➞ B, B, C
• Node B ➞ C, C
• Node C

If you walk through these simple node structures, you can clearly see how the PCs always have access to three clues pointing towards nodes they haven’t investigated yet.

You may also be able to see how different patterns of clues will make certain paths through the adventure more or less likely. For example, in the third arrangement it’s much more likely that the PCs will end up going 0 ➞ A ➞ B ➞ C, but if they DO go from 0 ➞ B, then it becomes likely they’ll never go to Node A.

If you’re dabbling with node-based scenario design for the first time, I recommend doing a couple of symmetric designs first. It will give you more reliable results and a better sense, after running the scenarios, of what node-based scenarios “feel” like.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #4

Go to Part 1

As we discussed in Part 2, this system is designed to be modular, including a large number of advanced rules and supplemental tools that can be optionally used or discarded depending on your personal taste and the specific needs of a particular hexcrawl.

When you’ve decided which options you want to use, you’ll want to create a clean resolution sequence to make running the hexcrawl at the table silky smooth.

Below you’ll find three examples of such resolution sequences: one for an ultra-stripped down version of the rules, a basic version with all four modules implemented in a basic form, and a third loaded up with a lot (but not all) of the bells and whistles. (Not all of the optional rules are compatible with each other, so it’s not possible to have a version with everything we’ve laid out.)

BASIC HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

During each watch, do the following:

1. DETERMINE THE DIRECTION OF TRAVEL. Ask the players what direction they want to travel.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d12. On a roll of 1, roll on the wandering encounter table. On a roll of 12, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered.

3. HEX PROGRESS. The characters move 12 miles per watch, or 6 miles in difficult terrain.

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX. Determine the new hex (based on direction of travel) and reset progress.

FULL HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

1. DIRECTION & TRAVEL PACE.

• Determine the expedition’s navigator.
• Navigator determines intended direction and travel pace.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d12. On a roll of 12, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered. On a roll of 1:

• If in a border hex, check to see which encounter table should be used.
• Roll on the wandering encounter table.
• Check % Tracks.
• Check % Lair.
• If it’s a wandering encounter or lair, make an encounter reaction check.

3. WATCH ACTIONS. Resolve all watch actions.

4. ARE THEY LOST?

• If they are not following a landmark or trail, make a Navigation check.
• If they are lost, determine veer. If they are already lost, veer can be increased but not decreased.

5. HEX PROGRESS

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX:

• Determine new hex (by applying current veer to the expedition’s direction of travel).
• If they were lost, make a Navigation check to see if they recognize it. If they do, they can attempt to reorient. If they do not, veer accumulates. (Note: Using a compass automatically resets veer at the hex border even if they don’t recognize they were off course.)

ADVANCED HEXCRAWL PROCEDURE

1. DIRECTION & TRAVEL PACE.

• Determine the expedition’s navigator.
• Navigator determines intended direction and travel pace.
• Modify expedition’s speed by terrain and travel conditions.

2. ENCOUNTER CHECK. Roll 1d8. On a roll of 1, roll on the wandering encounter table. On a roll of 8, the location keyed to the hex has been encountered.

3. WATCH ACTIONS. Resolve all watch actions.

4. ARE THEY LOST?

• If they are not following a landmark or trail, make a Navigation check.
• If they are lost, determine veer. If they are already lost, veer can be increased but not decreased.

5. DETERMINE ACTUAL DISTANCE TRAVELED

• Roll 2d6+3 x 10% x Average Distance.
• Make a Wisdom (Survival) check to see if they accurately estimated their distance traveled.
• TIP: If their progress would cause them to leave a hex during a watch and that would cause their terrain type to change, calculate progress by hour. When they reach the hex edge, note how many hours are left. Then you can reference the new hex, calculate the new average distance, and continue marking progress.

6. HEX PROGRESS

• It takes 12 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 3 far faces.
• It takes 6 miles of progress to exit one of the hex’s 2 near faces.
• Changing direction within a hex will result in the loss of 2 miles of progress.
• If characters double back, reduce progress until they exit the hex. If they leave the hex by any other route, it requires an additional 1d6-1 miles of progress to exit the hex.

LEAVING A HEX:

• Determine new hex (by applying current veer to the expedition’s direction of travel).
• If they were lost, make a Navigation check to see if they recognize it. If they do, they can attempt to reorient. If they do not, veer accumulates. (Note: Using a compass automatically resets veer at the hex border even if they don’t recognize they were off course.)

Go to Part 7: Hex Exploration

I’ve previously talked about the original 1974 edition of D&D in Reactions to OD&D. I’ve also shared the house rules I used in my own OD&D campaign and later grouped those and some other rules together into the Blackmoor Player’s Reference. Today I want to share my guidelines for handling hirelings.

In OD&D, hirelings were presented as a far more central element of the game. Despite this, the rules and guidelines for running hirelings are scattered, incomplete, and often inconsistent. (This is not unusual for OD&D.) For my OD&D games, I gathered this material together and then added additional guidelines when I needed them.

AVAILABILITY

Roll 1d6 – 1d6 to determine the current number of hirelings available for hire.

For each hireling, roll 1d6 to determine their class:

Roll 1d6 – 1d6 to determine the hireling’s level (minimum 1).

Design Note: These guidelines were developed my OD&D open table, in which the PCs were based out of a small town. In larger communities you might want to increase the number of hirelings available. However, the practical effect was to create a small pool of hirelings who were in specific demand: In some sessions you wouldn’t be able to get a hireling at all, and when they were available you might find yourself in competition with other PCs for their services.

BASE HIRING COST

The base hiring cost for a hireling is 100 gp per level.

If the base hiring price is offered, roll 2d6 on the reaction table on page 12 of Volume 1: Men & Magic to determine the hireling’s response. (Grant a bonus for higher offers; penalize severely for paltry offers.)

DETERMINE LOYALTY SCORE

Roll 3d6 to determine the hireling’s Loyalty, modified by the employer’s Charisma and the reaction to the hiring offer (if they are enthusiastic).

Design Note: This table is an example of how OD&D put hirelings front and center, as it takes up as much space as all the other ability score-related mechanics combined. It also shows why Charisma wasn’t a dump stat in 1974.

DETERMINE MORALE

Roll 2d6 to determine the hireling’s base morale.

Their Loyalty score may modify their effective morale. (List morale adjustments separately – e.g., 8+2 instead of 10 – for clear bookkeeping in case Loyalty or employment changes.)

END OF EXPEDITION

At the end of an expedition, adjust each hireling’s Loyalty:

• Significant Injury/Death: -1 loyalty
• Share of treasure less than 25%: -1 loyalty
• Share of treasure less than 5%: -2 loyalty
• Share of treasure 2x base hiring cost: +1 loyalty
• Share of treasure 10x base hiring cost: +2 loyalty

Then make a morale check by rolling 2d6. Rolling above the hireling’s morale is a failure.

On a success, the hireling will continue adventuring with their employer.

On a failure, roll on the reaction table above, with the following effect:

• Attempts to Attack: Automatically leaves service.
• Hostile: Demands bonus equal to base hiring cost x 2.
• Uncertain: Demands bonus equal to base hiring cost.
• Accepts Offer: Demands bonus equal to half hiring cost.
• Enthusiastic: Treat as a success after all.

The base hiring cost is determined by the hireling’s current level (not necessarily what they were actually paid).

If a demanded bonus is not paid, the hireling leaves their employer’s service. Such hirelings are generally available for hire in the community where they left service.

Design Note: It is possible to simultaneously offer a hireling a share of the treasure less than 25% of the total received by the employer AND more than twice the hireling’s base hiring cost. These loyalty modifiers cancel out. Note that if a hireling has a loyalty of 19+, there is no chance of them leaving their employer’s service.

TIP: RUNNING HIRELINGS

These guidelines are designed by used in concert with a morale system, which I heartly recommend employing for hirelings even if it is otherwise not used in your campaign.

In my campaign status document, I kept a list of all hirelings recording:

• Their name
• Current employer
• Loyalty
• Morale

And any other relevant notes.

This made it relatively easy to make the necessary upkeep checks and track their current loyalty and morale scores. Loyalty and morale scores, it should be noted, were kept secret from the players.

Generally speaking, hirelings were played by the player of the PC who employed them, with the rules for morale and loyalty granting them a sense of independence. Of course, you can also choose to run them yourself as the DM if that’s something you’re comfortable with, or you might employ something like the Sidekick on Your Left system.

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