Souls objectively exist in D&D. They’re quantifiable, observable, and even consumable.

This turns the question of “soul” from a matter of abstract philosophy to absolute practicality; and one which is of particular importance to D&D adventurers, whether in the form of undead, raise dead spells, or interplanar adventures.

From this practical standpoint, there are several key questions:

• Where do souls come from?
• How can the souls of the living be interacted with?
• Where do souls go after you’re dead?
• And, given the answer to the previous question, what is the actual experience of being raised from the dead?

Over the past few decades, some of these questions have been given clear answers, others have been given partial answers, and some have been largely ignored.

A SOULFUL RETROSPECTIVE

Let’s start by taking a look at how the “soul” (and its disposition) in D&D have developed over the years.

Going back to the original edition of D&D in 1974, we will discover that souls are not explicitly discussed. However, there is the magic jar spell:

By means of this device the Magic-User houses his life force in some inanimate object (even a rock) and attempts to possess the body of another creature within 12” of his Magic Jar.

In Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) we find the first explicit reference to a “soul” in a similar context:

Demon Princes maintain their vital essences in small containers – their souls, so to speak, are thus at once protected and yet vulnerable if some enterprising character should gain the amulet.

In the original AD&D Player’s Handbook (1978) these became known as “soul objects” and the exorcise spell could be used to force souls within those objects to inhabit the nearest material body. (As a random bit of lore, in the Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) we are told that jet is a suitable material for making soul objects.)

These references may seem quite slight, but they actually tell us several important things: First, the soul objectively exists and, although it exists within a mortal body, it is separate from that body. Furthermore, magic can be used to control and even physically move a soul.

This theme is developed through the trap the soul spell, which is “similar to magic jar, except that the trap the soul spell forces the subject creature’s life force (and its material body, if any) into a special prison magicked by the spell caster.” This is referred to as a “soul prison,” and notably implies that souls can exist entirely separate from any material form or container (“material body, if any”).

Meanwhile, the mind blank spell and amulets of life protection will guard their users against trap the soul, fleshing out the vision of a magical struggle over souls. The Void card from the Deck of Many Things indicates that the “body functions, but soul is trapped elsewhere,” revealing that animate bodies can continue to function in a soulless state. Undead are similarly defined as “soulless monsters.”

One last mention of the soul in the Dungeon Master’s Guide indicates that an artifact or relic can be destroyed by causing “it to be seared by the odious flames of Geryon’s destroyed soul.” From this we learn that souls are not necessarily eternal; they can be destroyed.

These scant references to the soul, you may note, do not include any of the various magical spells and effects which can return the dead to life. These spells do not, in fact, discuss the soul’s role in this. The closest we get to such a discussion is the reincarnate spell, which doesn’t explicitly mentions souls, but does say:

Druids have the capability of bringing back the dead in another body if death occurred no more than a week before the casting of the spell.

The new body is created randomly by the spell, but the key insight in all this is that a person’s entire personality and memories are housed in their soul. Who you are as a person? That is absolutely and completely your soul. Your body is just a meat shell that houses it.

Similar material along these lines can be found in the early monster books. (For example, in the Monster Manual II (1983) nereids have shawls which contain their souls.) But we also find that phantoms are “soulless shells left behind,” which means that even ghost-type undead are soulless, not disembodied souls, and also reminds us that undead often retain the memories and (often warped) personalities of their mortal selves, even though the soul is gone.

So is there also some form of “memory” in the flesh that is separate from the soul? As a non-undead example, shades have “traded their souls or spirits for the essence of shadowstuff,” which is metaphysically fascinating: Did the soul get displaced? Destroyed? Transformed? It’s rather vague.

A TANGENT ABOUT LICHES

In terms of monsters, liches are particularly interesting when it comes to analyzing souls.

These days, the more or less defining trait of a lich is that they have a phylactery, which houses their soul, and they can only be permanently killed if their phylactery is destroyed. But this was not originally the case.

When liches first appeared in Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975) they didn’t have phylacteries at all, and this appears to have remained true in Basic D&D.

In AD&D, the Monster Manual (1977) says, “The lich passes from a state of humanity to a non-human, non-living existence through force of will. It retains this status by certain conjurations, enchantments, and a phylactery.”

But the exact function of the phylactery is not detailed and no mention of it holding the lich’s soul (or preserving their immortality until its destruction) is made. The Dungeon Masters Guide actually defines a “phylactery” as “an arm wrapping with a container holding religious writings, thus a form of amulet or charm,” and there are other phylacteries given in the list of magical items: A phylactery of faithfulness will alert the wearer of actions that would violate its alignment; a phylactery of long years slows the aging process; and a phylactery of monstrous attention is a cursed item which draws supernatural creatures to its wearer.

I’m not completely certain when our modern understanding of the lich’s phylactery was introduced, although it appears as such in the 2^nd Edition Monstrous Compendium (1989).

In the Monster Manual II, the lore of the lich is also developed into the demilich:

[The lich] has taken the steps necessary to preserve its life force after death. Ultimately, even the undead life force of a lich begins to wane. Over centuries the lich form decays, and the evil soul roams strange planes unknown to even the wisest sages. This remaining soul is a demilich.

Note that this means that a lich, unlike other forms of 1^st Edition undead, has a soul.

The demilich also has a trap the soul ability, but it can notably use those souls as fuel to create magical effects. This also permanently destroys the soul. (We’ve seen a brief reference to souls being destroyed before, but here we learn that it can be done through magical means and also that souls can be used as a resource.)

In the Fiend Folio (1981) there are also skeleton warriors, which were “forced into a lich-like state ages ago by a powerful and evil demi-god who trapped each of their souls in a golden circlet. A skeleton warrior’s sole reason for remaining on this plane is to search for and regain the circlet which contains its soul.”

A PLANAR COSMOLOGY

Other references in the early monster books begin to hint at what happens to a soul after death. For example, in the Monster Manual “larvae are the most selfishly evil of all souls who sink to lower planes after death” and quasits are “larva turned into a minor demon form.” We also learn that quasits who are deemed worthy can advance into type I or II demons.

One of the ways in which quasits can prove their worth is by stealing souls from the Material Plane. Similar motivations are ascribed to Erinyes (who are sent forth to “garner more souls”) and, from the Fiend Folio, styx fiends (who search for souls to take back to Geryon).

Devils have a similar progression, with lowly lemures potentially advancing to become spectres or wraiths. (This would later shift to the lemures becoming higher forms of devils.)

Demons are often described as stealing souls by murdering them, but for devils “it also typically requires a contract for the soul of the creature commanding the infernal power to obey.” Notably, chaotic evil quasits are described as targeting lawful evil mortals for destruction, stealing souls which would otherwise be claimed by the devils.

From this we learn that in the Outer Planes there is some form of competition over mortal souls.

Nor is this limited to demons and devils. From the Manual of the Planes we learn that lanterns are “the lowest form of archons. They are the spirits of the newly dead (the equivalents of larvae in the lower planes).”

But what are the Outer Planes?

In July 1977, Gary Gygax published the article “Concepts of Spatial, Temporal, and Physical Relationships in D&D” in Dragon #8. No information is given in this article about souls (either their movements or their final fate), but it’s significant because it lays out a rudimentary version of the Great Wheel cosmology for the first time.

For those unfamiliar with the Great Wheel cosmology, here’s the quick version:

• The mortal world is the Prime Material Plane. (There are generally understood to be an infinite number of these existing as parallel realities.)
• The Prime Material Plane is surrounded by the Ethereal Plane and various elemental planes, collectively known as the Inner Planes.
• The Inner Planes are connected, via the Astral Plane, to the Outer Planes.
• The Outer Planes are associated with the nine alignments – Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Good, Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, and Chaotic Evil. (Most of these planes are composed of multiple layers – for example, the Nine Hells have nine layers, one for each of the Hells – and there are usually a number of intermediary planes, too.)

In the AD&D Players Handbook, a revised version of this article with improved diagrams was included as “Appendix IV: The Known Planes of Existence.” It notably provided the definitive list of Inner and Outer Planes that would dominate D&D cosmology for most of its history.

The 1977 article also suggests that creatures which have immunity to non-magical weapons have the immunity because they simultaneously exist on multiple planes of existence and only weapons which similarly exist on multiple planes of existence can affect all their forms simultaneously. Some creatures exist not just on two different planes, but three or four (requiring +2 or +3 weapons, respectively). By similar logic, magical weapons can strike creatures on the Ethereal or Astral Planes because the weapon is co-linear with those planes. There’s also a suggestion that special materials (silver, cold iron, etc.) can also strike in both planes simultaneously (and I was struck by the idea that each such material could be associated with a specific plane).

This idea was dropped, but I think it’s rather interesting. It probably has a minimal impact on the subject of souls, although if we were to combine it with the concept that the soul and body are separable, we could certainly postulate that Outer Planar creatures who are summoned to the Material Plane only appear there in the form of their physical body; with their soul remaining safely in the Outer Planes. We could further refine this idea by suggesting that the magical weapons do not actually strike all the way to the Outer Planes, but rather can affect the connection between the Outer Planar entity’s manifestation and their soul (something akin to the silver cord which connects mortal souls to their bodies when traveling through the Astral Plane).

This would provide a more detailed metaphysical principle for why, as described in Deities & Demi-Gods (1980), gods, demons, and so forth cannot be permanently slain on the Material Plane:

If any servant or minion of a deity (or even the deity itself) is slain on its home plane, that being is absolutely and irrevocably dead. No power in the multiverse can restore that being, including action by other deities. In one’s own plane a being is figuratively backed into a corner, with nowhere for the spirit to go upon death.

Go to Part 2: The Final Frontier

We’ve reached the end of combat and the last bad guy is down to the dregs of his hit points. One of the players makes an attack roll… He hits!

And the Game Master says, “Don’t bother rolling damage! He’s dead!”

Don’t do this.

Before we delve into why this is a bad idea, let’s first talk about why the impulse exists: The combat is clearly coming to a conclusion and the remaining combatant poses no meaningful threat to the PCs, so there’s no longer any tension or meaningful stakes in the scene; it’s been reduced to a rote resolution. Heck! The bad guy might only have one or two hit points left, so the outcome really IS predetermined here, so why bother rolling the damage dice?

This is pointless! Let’s wrap it up!

This impulse is not necessarily wrong. It’s just mistimed.

The key thing here is the ownership of the win. When a player rolls a successful attack, deals damage, and the bad guy dies, that’s something that THEY did. They own that moment.

If you, as the GM, interrupt that process, and declare a fiat success, you take that moment away from them: They didn’t kill the monster; you did.

It’s a subtle distinction, and it won’t always result in the moment getting deflated, but it’ll happen often enough that it’s worth steering clear of this technique. Particularly since the benefit you’re getting is so minor: You’re saving… what? Fifteen seconds by having them skip the damage roll?

OTHER OPTIONS

The obvious alternative it to just let them roll the damage and then announce the result.

That works if the damage kills the bad guy anyways. But what if the attack doesn’t quite deal enough damage to finish the job? This fight is boring! It’s time to be done with it!

First, double-check to make sure that’s actually true. As the GM, the fight has become boring because you can see the numbers and the outcome has become certain. In your role of playing the bad guys, you have lost meaningful agency and that’s boring. But your experience here may not mirror the players: they haven’t lost agency. In fact, they’re about to reap the rewards of their agency! They’re going to win! Winning is exciting!

Second, if it IS time for the fight to be done, the next easiest option is to fudge the bad guy’s hit points. I’m generally not a big fan of fudging, but it’s probably just fine here. You aren’t actually changing the ultimate outcome here (which is where all the various problems with fudging come from); you’re just speeding it up.

Another option is to not initiate the attack roll. When the player says, “I attack the monster with my sword!” you immediately assume they have successfully done that and describe the outcome. This is, in fact, in keeping with the Art of Rulings: The player has announced an intention to kill the monster. You know that this will definitely succeed. So the appropriate ruling is actually default to yes.

You might not think this would make a difference. It seems virtually indistinguishable from interrupting the damage roll! And there is still some risk here (from the declaration of intention, the player has a mental momentum reinforced by the rhythms of the combat system that’s driving them towards the attack roll, and interrupting that momentum can be disruptive), but in my experience it’s much less likely to cause a problem.

And you can enhance this technique by empowering the player’s agency: When they say, “I attack the monster with my sword!” you can ask the players to describe the coup de grace. “Agnarr’s mighty blow finishes off the goblin! What does that look like?”

Another alternative, if the combat is lagging and you’re concerned the current PC’s attack may not deal enough damage to end it if they roll poorly on the damage dice, is to tell them how many hit points the monster has left before they roll the damage dice. This is almost the exact opposite of fudging the monster’s remaining hit points, effectively blocking you from using that technique.

The reason this works is that knowing the damage needed puts the table’s intense focus on the damage roll: Everyone knows exactly what needs to be rolled, the tension will build as the dice are picked up, and then explosively release (either in triumph or failure) as the result is revealed. If the bad guy dies: Great! You’ve injected that moment with a little extra oomph!

If the bad guy doesn’t die? That’s okay! You’ve still clearly framed that this is the Final Countdown (so to speak) and that focus will tend to carry forward to the next player’s attack.

Yet another option is to remove the moment entirely by training your players to roll attack and damage simultaneously (as described in Fistfuls of Dice).

END IT EARLIER

Taking a step back, it can also be useful to consider how we got to this specific moment: How could we have avoided getting to the point where a combat encounter is ending on a whimper?

The obvious answer here is to end the combat sooner.

One option is to have the bad guys run away! The PCs take out the Big Boss and that’s the sign for the all the mooks to hightail it! Or, alternatively, the PCs take out a bunch of mooks and the Bandit King decides discretion is the better part of valor.

(Check out The Principles of RPG Villainy for a lengthier discussion of how and why having your bad guys run away is a good idea in any case.)

Surrender is another option, although that can have its own issues.

Alternatively, pursue the Default to Yes solution more aggressively: You don’t have to get down to the very last bad guy’s very last hit points to recognize that the encounter has reached its conclusion (and the end of the fight is now foreordained)! At that moment, a nice, clean option is to ask each player to describe what they do finish things up. (You can do this in initiative order to provide a little structure if that’s useful.)

A key thing here, though, is to make sure that there has actually been a conclusion! And that the players can feel ownership of that conclusion! (The example of the PCs taking down the Bandit King and then the mooks panicking is a good example: The combat ending is a clear result of the PCs doing something decisive and significant.)

I discuss this a bit in GM Don’t List #5, but a GM prematurely ending combats because they routinely get bored with the fights they set up creates a number of other problems:

• Characters built to enjoy their spotlight time during combat are being punished.
• Strategically clever players often spend the first few rounds of combat setting up an advantageous situation, and it’s frustrating if that gets prematurely negated.
• If players feel that encounters are being summarily dismissed (in a way that isn’t affected by their agency), their uncertainty about which encounters are actually being determined by their actions will make it difficult for them to determine when and how to spend limited resources. (Burning a one-use potion or once-per-day ability only to have its use become irrelevant is incredibly frustrating. If the use of that ability is what effectively ends the threat of the combat, make sure you emphasize that in framing the end of the scene so that the player’s agency is given its due.)

And, as I mentioned in that earlier essay, “All of these problems only get worse when the GM defines ‘boring’ as ‘the PCs are winning,’ while remaining fully engaged and excited as long as his bad guys have the upper hand.”

With those words of caution in mind, though, the art of knowing when a combat encounter is effectively done (or, perhaps, when a combat encounter is done being effective) is a really important part of your skill set as a GM.

(For a wider discussion of how to effectively end scenes, see The Art of Pacing.)

The key thing is to make sure that the players feel ownership over what happens: That THEY were the ones who won the fight.

If in doubt, have the bad guys run away and let it play out. Player agency can persist through that decision, so you have a much wider margin of error.

Here’s how the Tyranny of Dragons campaign begins:

For the past several days, you have been traveling a road that winds lazily across the rolling grasslands of the Greenfields. Sundown is approaching when you top a rise and see the town of Greenest just a few short miles away. But instead of the pleasant, welcoming town you expected, you see columns of black smoke rising from burning buildings, running figures that are little more than dots at this distance, and a dark, winged shape wheeling low over the keep that rises above the center of the town. Greenest is being attacked by a dragon!

Although the boxed text doesn’t mention this, the dragon is accompanied by an entire army. Greenest isn’t just being attacked by a dragon; it is under siege.

So… what happens next?

The adventure assumes that the 1^st level PCs will head straight into Greenest.

Which… well… It doesn’t really make sense, does it?

It’s not just that it’s difficult for me to imagine any player responding to that scene by saying, “Guess, we head into town then…” It’s that, for whatever reason, the adventure just assumes that this won’t be a problem. It skips directly from “there’s an army and a dragon attacking that town!” to “okay, now that you’re in the town.”

This is bad design.

And the problem here is not just that Tyranny of Dragons is a railroad. I mean, yes, that’s a problem. I’ve told you that prepping plots is a bad idea. And I’ve given a detailed breakdown of why railroads are terrible.

But let’s lay all that aside.

Let’s talk a little bit about what makes a good railroad. Or, more accurately, what makes a railroad work.

THE TRICK OF THE RAILROAD

A good railroad, at a certain level, is like a good magic trick: The players won’t really believe that magic is real, but a good magic trick will let them suspend disbelief just long enough to be amazed.

Players in a railroaded scenario will almost certainly know that they’re being fed a predetermined sequence of events over which they have no meaningful control. (Players are not, by and large, stupid. Even if they’re polite enough not to tell you that they can see you behind the curtain.) But a good railroad will disguise this; it will allow them to suspend their disbelief and get lost in the wonder.

There are a lot of different tricks the railroaded scenario will use to do this: It will use illusionism to make meaningless choices look meaningful. It will give the PCs a lot of control over stuff that is meaningless, but which is nevertheless given the appearance of meaning.

(Illusionism is a technique in which the players only have the illusion of choice. Regardless of which choice they make, they outcome will be the same. A simple example has the PCs come to a fork in the road: If they go left, they end up at the vampire’s castle. If they go right? They end up the vampire’s castle. Because they were always going to go to the vampire’s castle.)

But the most important technique for the railroaded scenario is to frame the meaningful choices in such a way that the players legitimately WANT to make the predetermined choice.

The GM never forces a card on them. In the end, they do the magic trick to themselves.

When a railroaded scenario pulls this off, the suspension of disbelief is perfect: Players never feel as if they were forced to do something. They’re able to remain completely immersed in their characters, feeling as if the world is unfolding in direct response to their actions.

And this is why the opening scene of Tyranny of Dragons is hot garbage.

BREAKING THE ILLUSION

When you show a group of 1^st level characters that a town is being simultaneously ravaged by a dragon and besieged by an army, the choice you are signaling is, “Don’t go there. Stay away.”

This is true not only logically in the context of real people looking at that situation. It’s also true in the specific context of the entire D&D rule set, which is built around the clear expectation that 1^st level characters DO NOT FIGHT dragons nor armies.

Every rational signifier is saying, “Don’t go there.”

And this would actually be doubly true in a well-designed railroaded scenario, because the well-designed railroad would be using those signifiers – BIG DRAGON, YOU CAN’T SURVIVE THIS – to force the logical choice, not its opposite.

The only context in which running into that town makes sense is, in fact, the one where a DM says, “This is a railroad. Get on the fucking train.”

And even if the DM doesn’t have to literally say that, the implication is absolutely crystal clear to everyone sitting at the table.

The illusion has been broken. The suspension of disbelief has collapsed.

It’s the very first moment of the campaign and the book has already set you up to fail. They have dug a hole and now you’re going to have to dig yourself out of it.

Now, the reality of a railroaded scenario is it’s quite likely you will be forced into this situation at some point. The complex web of choices and relationships and emotions of your PCs will eventually force you to push them back onto the tracks. That’s just the nature of a railroaded scenario. (And it’s one of the many reasons why it’s not a good way to prep or run an RPG.)

But this is, in fact, the very first scene of the campaign. There is no baggage. No complex continuity that needs to be impossibly accounted for. Avoiding this moment would be trivial: Just put the PCs in the town before the dragon and the army show up.

A good railroad designer will recognize when a mandatory choice doesn’t make sense and they will restructure the scenario TO REMOVE THAT CHOICE.

That’s not always possible in the convoluted middle of a scenario after the PCs have begun strewing chaos. But in the very first chunk of boxed text?

That’s bad design.

Even if you’re OK designing a railroad.

Which you shouldn’t.

There are two places where tracks (along with the associated concept of tracking) can be found in the Alexandrian Hexcrawl: First, there is the Tracker watch action, in which characters can actively search for and follow tracks.

Second, the encounter system is designed to generate random encounters, lairs, and tracks.

Random encounters provide immediate obstacles and interludes while traveling, lairs spontaneously generate new locations in the hexcrawl (organically building up material along well-traveled routes as the campaign develops), and tracks are a trail that can be followed to a point of interest.

Thinking in terms of “tracks” seem to commonly conjure up the image of hoof prints in the sod, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves to that. In the wilderness exploration of the hexcrawl that sort of physical spoor is most likely very common, but the concept of “tracks” can really be generalized to “clue.”

For example, if we generated a result of “tracks” for bandits, that might mean footprints in the forest. But it could just as easily include a merchant caravan in panicked disarray due to their latest highway robbery; the dead body of a bandit that was critically wounded and abandoned; a bolt-hole containing documents implicating the mayor of a local village in collusion with the bandits; and so forth.

TYPES OF TRACKS

Spoor: What can be thought of as the “classic” tracks we commonly think of. This includes both physical prints and scents (particularly if you have a hound for a familiar or live life as a werewolf). Following a spoor path usually also means looking for and encountering other signs (like broken foliage) that are described below.

Spoor paths can include trails, which are paths used frequently repeatedly by a create. The common image here is the worn rut of a deer or fox path. Runs are similar to trails, but are less frequently used.

Subsurface trails are tunnels. In the real world, trackers frequently look for where small tunnels re-emerge (and will use the diameter of tunnels to identify creatures). In a fantasy world, it’s quite possible the tunnel will be more than large enough for adventurers to follow the spoor path right inside. (Tunnels created by one creature may also be used by other creatures.)

Sounds: The howl of a wolf, the roar of a dragon, the screech of a griffon, or the distant sound of a fireball exploding. Sounds emanating from nearby can be used as an encounter trigger, but distant sounds can (often ominously) indicate the presence (and direction) of creatures.

Smells: The zombie stench of putrefacting flesh, the lingering ozone odor of a beholder’s rays, the sulfurous stench of a hell hound, or the distinctive musk of more mundane creatures can linger in the air long after they have passed.

Moulting: Anything shed by a creature, such as feathers and fur. This can also include skin (like a snake) or an exoskeleton (like a crab, spider, or insect). Some lizards will actually lose their entire tails (a process known as “caudal autotomy”) in order to evade predators, and you could imagine similarly fantastical abilities. Perhaps there are creatures which, when threatened, will spontaneously generate a cloned copy of their “corpse” and leave it behind to slowly decompose into ectoplasmic residue.

Other creatures use parts of their bodies as weapons, which could be left behind in their victims or embedded in the environment, like the spines of a barbed devil being left in a tree.

On a similar theme, there might be body parts lost by animals due to hazard rather than nature (like a dismembered limb or pool of blood).

Food: This might include food that’s been stored (whether squirrels hiding nuts or a cache of the local rangers), but is probably more commonly partially consumed meals. This can include carcasses (including human corpses depending on which predators are active in the area), but also plants or area of foliage which have been grazed by herbivores.

Also consider pellets, which are masses regurgitated by hawks and the like. These include trace remnants of food, but are primarily made up of indigestible remnants from their meals (bones, exoskeletons, fur, feathers, bills, teeth, etc.).

Fewmets: The other end of the digestive track, specifically scat and excrement. Urine is also an option. Don’t be afraid to embrace the fantastical here, ranging from the well-known scale of triceratops poop to, say, the scorching phosphorescence of hell hound pee.

Kill Sites: This includes carcasses, but may just be signs (like blood spatter) left from a kill which a predator later dragged from the site (or consumed whole). This category is also worth calling out specifically because far more dramatic kill sites are frequently left by intelligent creatures (victims of goblin raiders or the rotting corpses left by poachers).

Glyphs: Intentional markings left by intelligent creatures. These might include navigational signs carved into trees, strange runic carvings, odd fetish sculptures, demonic graffiti, or simply a discarded note.

Sleeping Areas: Many sleeping areas will actually be generated as lairs, but there are also transit beds and lays, which are used as less frequent or irregular resting areas. For animals, this often takes the form of crushed vegetation. Intelligent creatures may leave a wide variety of signs (remnants of a campfire, a latrine, discarded food remnants, miscellaneous refuse, etc.).

Marring: The activities of beasts and monsters will often damage or leave their mark on the natural environment. Rubs are produced by an animal rubbing against trees or rocks. Gnaws and chews can give clear indication of the size of a creature’s teeth. (You might similarly find a place where intelligent creatures were practicing with their weapons or using a machete to chop through thick overgrowth.) Scratchings can be both intentional (sharpening your claws or digging for grubs) and unintentional (signs left from climbing or scampering over terrain).

In the realm of fantasy we might add to this things like burns (fire or acid), phase marks (distinct traces left by incorporeal creatures passing through physical objects), ectoplasm, and the like.

Tip: When imagining tracks and other signs, don’t get fixated on the ground. Remember verticality! In the real world, woodpeckers drill in trees above your head. In fantasy, bloated stirges can leave smears of blood up there, too.

SCALE OF TRACKS

Something else to consider is that tracks can vary from the obvious to the almost impossibly obscure. You can use this to provide varied flavor to tracking sequences, or to reward particularly good Wisdom (Perception) or Wisdom (Survival) checks.

Large scale tracks are significant and obvious. You might not automatically notice them, but even untrained people will likely recognize clear pawprints in mud, well-worn trails, significant damage to foliage, big animal carcasses, and the like.

Medium scale tracks are perhaps the most common (being left almost constantly by anyone or anything not intentionally covering their tracks), but are more difficult to notice or may only be significant to those with training. This can be stuff like gnaws and chews, pellets, and subtle vegetation breaks. It can also include more obvious tracks which have been obscured by the passage of time.

Small scale tracks usually require a sharp eye, special training, or both. They include many of the same signs as previous categories, but are subtler, sometimes as the result of extreme age. These are faint pawprints on hard ground, a handful of partially buried bones left from a months-old kill, or an orcish arrowhead buried deep in a tree trunk.

Ghost scale tracks almost certainly require training and experience to spot and interpret. They also frequently disappear quickly. This can include dullings (in which a creature passing through the morning dew leaves a “dull” area by brushing the water off foliage), shinings (later in the day, creatures walking through the grass press it down, revealing its shiny side), and other incredibly subtle tracks (like leaf depressions).

Back to 5E Hexcrawls

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