Go to Part 1

We’re continuing our series of capsule reviews of Descent Into Avernus-related material on the Dungeon Masters Guild, giving a very high overview of my thoughts/impressions of each book. 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.

A LIGHT IN THE DARK: A Light in the Dark bills itself as tying into the continuity of Descent Into Avernus, but it’s set in Baldur’s Gate while having a suggested level at which PCs in the campaign will have long since left Baldur’s Gate behind. Its purpose, therefore, is somewhat confusing.

The maps are nice and the concept is fine, but the adventure itself is virtually unplayable. It’s more or less written as a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, consisting of literally just pages and pages (and pages!) of horribly executed boxed text. Often this boxed text is outlining literal A or B choices. It repeatedly ends with the refrain, “What do you want to do?” literally scripted in. And it is constantly either telling the players what their characters do or simply leaving them helplessly standing by while entire scenes play out without their input.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this comes when the PCs confront the villain. While the PCs stand unable to act (because the DM is reading), the boxed text has:

• The villain order a zombie girl to go punish her parents.
• The zombie girl leave the room.
• The girl’s parents scream and beg for mercy from the neighboring room.
• The sound of thumping that turns to screams of pain.
• “The noises they make will stay with you for a long time.”

This is one of those times where I wish I had more nice things to say about an adventure. But I don’t.

• Grade: F

BALDUR’S GATE – THE STRUGGLES OF STELMANE: This is another adventure which presents itself as being something you can incorporate into a Descent Into Avernus campaign, but which is nevertheless set in Baldur’s Gate with a suggested level too high to be used in the campaign. (What gives, folks?)

The Struggles of Stelmane is a fairly simple adventure: A mind flayer is attempting to take control of Duke Stelmane. The PCs are told by the Duke’s assistant to investigate some caves. They do so and find a tunnel that leads to Stelmane’s manor. (Which – pet peeve alert! – is incorrectly referred to as a villa.) The mind flayer is in the manor. The PCs kill it.

Unfortunately, the adventure spends a great deal of time spinning its wheels. (It’s about 5 pages of content in a 20 page PDF.) And when it’s not spinning its wheels, it frequently just doesn’t make sense: The mind flayer telepathically read Stelmane’s mind and for some reason this is causing Stelmane’s physical health to deteriorate. The duke’s assistant requests a meeting with the PCs, but the only thing he asks them to do is investigate a murder that doesn’t happen until the PCs show up to meet him. The adventure frequently talks about “following a series of clues,” but there are no clues to follow. And so forth.

• Grade: D-

DANCE OF DEATHLESS FROST: Dylan Ramsey delivers a clever little expansion of Descent Into Avernus, giving the PCs an opportunity to track down the mysterious phylactery of deathless frost. With it they can either control the demon lord Kostchtchie or destroy it and turn him mortal.

My one quibble with the adventure is that it suffers a little from what I call “idea guy syndrome.” A common variant is, “Wouldn’t this encounter be cool?” This often takes the form of the bad guys sending minions to attack the PCs… but the encounter isn’t actually statted up (e.g., “She could send fiendish assassins or a simulacrum to try to steal the phylactery from the characters.”) But you also get stuff like, “It feels like the NPC’s lair should have fiendishly clever defenses… but I couldn’t figure out how to do it, so here’s a couple of vague ideas.”

So, basically, you’re going to have to put some elbow-grease into Dance of Deathless Frost if you want to use it. Nevertheless, Ramsey delivers some cool ideas, memorable locales, and nifty ideas, so it’s probably worth the effort. (I will most likely be incorporating this scenario into the Remix.)

• Grade: C-

FORGES OF AVERNUS: The central conceit of Forges of Avernus is that each Warlord of Avernus maintains their own forge to outfit their warriors, and each of these forges is skilled in the creation of special, themed weapons. I like this a lot: One of the big shortcomings in Descent Into Avernus is that it details the warlords, but not their warbands. I wanted to supplement that lack, and Forges of Avernus does a lot of heavy lifting for me. Not only will the unique weapons make for distinct combat encounters with each warband, but the supplement also details the NPC forge masters (adding extra roleplaying opportunities).

The only drawback here is that the mechanical mastery of 5^th Edition is a little shaky. For example, there are several effects triggered “on a critical failure,” but there are no critical failures in 5^th Edition. This doesn’t appear to be a crippling problem, but when you see a weak grasp of mechanical fundamentals it erodes trust in the rest of the mechanical implementation, so you’ll probably want to double-check these elements as you add them to your campaign.

• Grade: B-

BITTER RIVALS: Bitter Rivals is a slick, professional-grade adventure designed to be seamlessly slotted into Descent Into Avernus. It adds a ton of lore to the warlord Bitter Breath and completely details their warcamp as part of a raid scenario. This is a no-brainer for any GM planning to run Descent Into Avernus, with or without the Remix.

The organization and level of detail, in particular, are fantastic. One example is the formatting of the mission briefing given in the scenario hook. Rather than using traditional boxed text, J.A. Valeur of Eventyr Games uses in-line headings to identify the major bullet points of the briefing while providing the written dialogue associated with that bullet point in plain text behind the in-line heading. I hadn’t seen this technique previously, but it’s best-of-both-worlds stuff.

There’s also a really nifty DM’s Cheat Sheet section of the adventure, which basically presents the entire adventure a second time but with only the essential elements (like encounter rosters, the bullet point version of the mission briefing, etc.). Stripped of the surrounding explanatory text, this is a great document for efficiently running the adventure without flipping back and forth through multiple pages.

• Grade: B

INFERNAL BOUNTY: Another Descent Into Avernus supplement from Eventyr Games, this short 2-page PDF is basically just a random encounter with a pair of bounty hunter devils (using some very lightly customized stat blocks) for $0.50. In addition to being a random encounter, the fiend duo can make a decent response team that can be flexibly deployed at need. But I just don’t see a lot of value in Infernal Bounty even at the fairly cheap price point.

• Grade: D

ENHANCED DEVILS: Another Eventyr supplement, Enhanced Devils looks at a dozen or so devils from the Monster Manual and soups up their stat blocks, giving them extra abilities that don’t necessarily make them more powerful, but do give them more options in combat so that multiple encounters with them stay fresh.

I haven’t playtested these yet, but they look balanced and useful. The important thing here, though, is the word “yet.” I’ve talked in the past about how 4^th Edition’s design philosophy of reducing the breadth of abilities possessed by monsters (which has carried through, albeit to a lesser extent, in 5^th Edition) on the theory that the typical monster only lasts for 3-5 rounds is fundamentally flawed (because, if nothing else, when you build an encounter with 5 of those monsters, the stat block immediately has 15-25 rounds of actions), so it’s probably not surprising to discover that I like what this supplement is doing and I like these stat blocks. I’ll be using them to help keep encounters in Avernus fresh and interesting.

• Grade: C

TEMPLE OF THE BROKEN PRINCE: Yet another adventure that sells itself as a plug-and-play side quest for Descent Into Avernus, but isn’t actually designed to work that way. This time, the adventure is set on Avernus, but the recommended level is too low.

In actual practice, the location is not really designed for Avernus. But it IS a fairly nice location-crawl that could easily be slotted into any traditional D&D setting. (If you still wanted to use Temple of the Broken Prince as part of the Remix, it might work well as the mission that sends the PCs out of Elturel just in time for the whole city to get sucked into Hell.) A demonic temple turned into a demonic sepulcher, the rooms are weird, sinister, and drenched with dread. There’s also a couple new monsters that look like creepy fun.

• Grade: C+

More DMs Guild Capsule Reviews – Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Table of Contents

LULU’S MEMORY MYSTERY

As we’ve discussed, recovering Lulu’s memories is a central pillar of the campaign: It is essentially the only way to recover the Sword of Zariel, and while the Sword of Zariel is not essential (in the Remix) it is certainly positioned as a major goal and resource.

Getting the Sword, it should be noted, is almost entirely procedural: Get the pieces for the dream machine. Strap Lulu into it. Ta-da! You get the location of the Sword of Zariel.

But if we take a step back, the real goal is to get the players invested in the True History of Zariel. The process of piecing together this enigma:

• Provides a tantalizing mystery that will keep the players engaged with the campaign and eager to figure out more.
• Creates a context for their interactions with the denizens of Hell (particularly the former Hellriders and others who participated in those events).
• Builds a relationship (albeit by proxy) with Zariel, creating the emotional foundation for the campaign’s conclusion.
• Elevates the procedural accomplishment of activating the dream machine by providing not only the location of the Sword, but simultaneously a sense of closure on Lulu’s story.

So how do we build this mystery?

Lulu’s Original Memories, the ones that she has when she first appears in the campaign, are our foundation. Structurally, these are the facts that we know the party will have at any given point in the campaign. Ideally, we’ll want enough chunks that the players can begin rampantly speculating about how they’re connected, but vague enough that no definitive answers are really possible. We can think of each chunk as a “catalyst,” in the sense that they give the speculations of the players material to react with (and will likely speed up that speculation, too).

Lulu’s Triggered Memories are the memories that she spontaneously regains, either semi-randomly or in response to specific stimuli. These will primarily be additional catalysts — they’ll be vague enough to mostly raise new questions, providing fresh fodder for the players’ theory-crafting. (The more of these the PCs gain access to, however, the more complete their understanding of Lulu’s history will become, making it easier to figure out how events relate to each other.) Some of these triggered memories, however, can also be rewards, providing definitive answers for some of Lulu’s experiences.

If the PCs follow the Sword of Zariel threads all the way to their conclusion, there will also be four Memory Dives. These are the Vision from Torm, the Dream Machine, Claiming the Sword, and Zariel’s Spark. Each allows the players to actually experience parts of Lulu’s and Zariel’s story.

There will also be Other Sources of information on Zariel’s history. (If we think of the mystery as primarily being the True History of Zariel, then we’ll also recognize that Lulu’s memories are just one way of achieving that goal!) These can include historical records, questioning the “surviving” Hellriders, etc.

Finally, we’ll organize all of this using Revelation Lists.

In doing so we will, of course, observe the Three Clue Rule. But we’ll want to use some special care here.

First, we want to structurally protect the memory dives. These should feel like big, momentous events with significant pay-offs for the effort the players have put into achieving them. We don’t want to “spoil” them because if they don’t reveal anything new, it’ll deflate the moment. Therefore, the memory dives should have:

• Clear, definitive versions of events that could only be imperfectly understood before.
• Lynchpin moments that could NOT have been learned previously.
• Really mysterious, obscure versions of NEW events (i.e., new catalysts that can only be cleared up by future revelations).

This means we need to pace and position our revelation lists (and the clues in those lists) so that they set-up and pay-off the memory dives. We can actually think of each memory dive as a funnel, with certain revelations/clues positioned before the funnel and others generally not available until after the funnel. (It should be noted that the structure of the scenario more or less mirrors these funnels: For example, the PCs will almost certainly have the Vision from Torm before leaving Elturel; they won’t be able to journey to the Scab before the Dream Machine; and so forth.)

LULU’S ORIGINAL MEMORIES

Lulu is suffering from amnesia. Her first memory is of “waking up” in the red sands of the Avernian wastelands. (Although she only later learned that she was on Avernus, the First Layer of Hell.)

• She wandered for an interminable period of time before coming to the River Styx.
• She followed the River Styx out of Avernus, journeying through the Outer Planes.
• After any number of adventures, Lulu passed through a portal and found herself in a place called the Nexus, a seemingly endless gothic castle filled with magical portals. There she met Niveral-Sca, the Mistress of Eternity. Niveral-Sca had iridescent skin that gleamed with serpentine scales, her pupil-less eyes gleamed with a golden light, and her small feet never seemed to touch the ground when she walked. Hearing Lulu’s story, she identified a portal that would return her to the world of the home she dimly remembered (see below).
• Passing through this portal, Lulu emerged in Neverwinter in 1488 DR.
• She made her way south from Neverwinter, eventually returning to the area around Elturel.

Lulu only has a few fragmentary memories of the time before her inexplicable amnesia. (These have returned to her slowly over time since she first woke up without any memory at all.)

• Her strongest memories are of being friends with a beautiful warrior angel. She and the angel came to a city called Elturel and led an army of knights from that city on a charge into Hell itself. (Lulu doesn’t remember the actual battle, but assumes they must have lost and guesses that this is how she lost her memories. Having returned to modern Elturel, she now knows that these events must have taken place a long time in the past.)
• Sometimes this feels like a magician’s trick: She remembers riding through the portals to Hell, seeing the plains of Avernus stretched out in front of her, and then… Everyone is gone and she’s on the Avernian plains all by herself.

Other fragments of memory include:

• A silver beach beneath a pair of blue moons. (Sometimes she remembers her warrior angel being with her there.)
• Flying over a vast, dark ocean. The water reflects a sky filled with diamond-like stars. In the black depths below, a huge whale seemingly made from golden motes of light swims.
• Looking out a window made from gems set into silver and gold, across a verdant landscape where metallic dragons flit through the sky.
• The taste of blood and fur in her mouth.
• A busy marketplace carved from a cliff-face. She was speaking to a winged lion with the kind-yet-stern face of a man.
• Flying over a boundless expanse of black, cracked basalt. A single-file line of strange, polyhedral-shaped creatures marches below, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Design Note: This can be used as either a handy reference for the GM and/or, if Lulu is a PC, given as a handout to her player. I also recommend empowering the player to flesh out any of the events that happened in Lulu’s life after she “woke up” in Avernus. (For example, they could make up any number of stories about her adventures along the Styx.) Check out Running the Campaign: Designing Character Backgrounds and Dragon Heist: Creating the Characters for how this type of player/GM collaboration on character backgrounds can work in practice (although the process is sort of inverted here).

DM’S INFO: The last few fragments of Lulu’s memory are mostly visions from the Seven Heavens of Mount Celestia. They are, in order:

• The beaches of Mercuria.
• Flying over the waters of Lunia (with a celestial whale in the depths).
• Looking out the window of Bahamut’s Palace, also in Mercuria.
• Killing a gnoll during the First Visit to Idyllglen.
• The market of Heart’s Faith in Lunia.
• The Great Modron March. (Not this one, though. The dates don’t line up.)

Go to Part 6D-F: Lulu’s Memories (Triggered Memories)

I have done remixes for both Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and Descent Into Avernus. It’s perhaps not unsurprising that I have been frequently asked how I would connect the two campaigns.

It’s not something that I, personally, had given a lot of thought to. My own run of the Dragon Heist campaign ended with the PCs poised to pursue very different goals: Some had become ensconced as leaders of the Harpers in Waterdeep. Others were heading to the Sea of Fallen Stars to pursue threads from their characters’ backstories. (Although we’re taking a break from those characters, I’m planning to return and run separate campaigns for both of those threads.)

So I guess that would be my first word of caution: It’s quite likely that connecting the two campaigns will actually be a really bad idea. By the time you get to the end of Dragon Heist, your campaign will have built up a lot of momentum, and all of that momentum is likely to be tied to Waterdeep. (The whole function of Trollskull Manor is, in fact, to give the PCs permanent ties to the city.) It probably makes more sense to follow that momentum (continuing to explore the factions and intrigues of Waterdeep) than it does to uproot the whole campaign and head south.

The other thing to note here is that the whole function of the Dragon Heist Remix is to turn the campaign into an active playground. I know where my Remix campaign ended up, but I honestly have no idea where yours did: Who are the PCs allied with? Which enemies survived? Where’s Neverember’s gold? What other resources have the PCs accrued? What enigmas are the PCs most interested in pursuing? Do they have the Stone of Golorr? If not, who does? Did they end up adopting kids or falling in love? The possibilities are almost limitless.

With those provisos in mind, here are some general thoughts on how you might connect the campaigns.

START AT THE BEGINNING

If possible, the first thing I would do is to plant the seeds of the transition from the very beginning. As the players are creating their characters for Dragon Heist, encourage some or all of them to make characters who have a connection to Elturel. This is more or less what I discuss in Remixing Avernus – Part 2: Character Creation, it’s probably just a little more difficult to explain why you’re encouraging the players to do this if the campaign is going to be taking place in Waterdeep.

First, this can easily include having Lulu as a PC in Dragon Heist. This actually fits in well with her revised backstory, in which she returns to Toril via a portal that takes her to Neverwinter before journeying south to Elturel. It might be interesting to explore that connection to Neverwinter — did she meet Neverember? Or perhaps she met Dalakhar? Alternatively, you might just move the portal so that it leads to Waterdeep (and she has likely just come through it as the campaign is beginning).

Second, you’re still going to want a Hellrider for Descent Into Avernus. Could they have been sent to Waterdeep to investigate links to Asmodean cultists who were recently captured in Elturel? Perhaps the cultists were kidnapping people in Elturel, and their interest in looking for similar disappearances in Waterdeep leads them to Volo (looking for people to investigate his missing friend) at the beginning of Dragon Heist? (This link will likely bias your Dragon Heist run towards the Cassalanters. The twist where the friendly nobles looking for help saving their Asmodeus-cursed children turn out to actually BE the Asmodean cult leaders will be great. More on this connection below.)

Third, for any Elturel-connected character the players do create, try to find ways for them to have unfinished business back in Elturel (or perhaps Baldur’s Gate). It’s quite likely that this business is what brought them to Waterdeep in the first place, but its conclusion is back home.

For example, in my Dragon Heist run one of the PCs needed to raise a large sum of money as a ransom for his mother’s freedom. (The nice thing about Dragon Heist is that literally any goal that requires large sums of money can be trivially tied to the central conceit of the campaign.) That link is part of what led half the group to the Sea of Fallen Stars (where that PC’s mother was being held). If that link had instead pointed back towards Elturel, it would obviously help a transition to Descent Into Avernus.

Check out Running the Campaign – Dragon Heist: Creating the Characters for an in-depth discussion of how to handle this type of character creation.

ASMODEAN CONNECTIONS

If I’m looking for an actual connection between the campaigns — the thing that will drive PCs from Waterdeep to Elturel — then what immediately leaps out are the Asmodeus cultists in Dragon Heist.

If you want to make the transition fairly organic, then you’ll want to seed clues into the Cassalanter faction of Dragon Heist that point the PCs towards either Elturel or Baldur’s Gate. (In the latter case, we’d most likely assume that the Cassalanters have a direct connection to the Vanthampurs. In the former, they would have connections to various Asmodeans heading to Elturel for the “Exodus.” Or you could do both.)

If the players are particularly interested in Cassalanters, finding an opportune time for the Cassalanters to flee Waterdeep and head for Elturel or Baldur’s Gate would also be a big pull. Alternatively, if the PCs are concerned about the kids, the Cassalanters might send them to Vanthampur for “sanctuary” as the noose closes around their own necks (forcing the PCs to chase them down).

For a slightly more focused experience, consider tweaking Dragon Heist to make the Cassalanters Zarielites instead of Asmodean cultists. Either way, you can seed a bunch of Asmodeus/Zariel lore into Dragon Heist (like the Averniad and the Trial of Asmodeus).

A slight risk with the “organic” approach is that the PCs might go haring off to Elturel before the Grand Game of Dragon Heist has reached its conclusion. If the PCs are in possession of the Stone of Golorr or any of its Eyes when they do this, the Grand Game will follow them. (The other factions need that stuff!) We might imagine a scenario where the PCs and a bunch of Dragon Heist-related faction members get sent to Avernus and the Grand Game continues while everyone simultaneously tries to escape Hell… but it’s probably not ideal.

Although the risk of this is, in my opinion, rather low, if you want to avoid any chance of this happening you can take a slightly less organic approach by waiting for Dragon Heist to reach its conclusion, selecting some faction that the PCs have become allied with, and having them dump a bunch of intelligence reports suggesting that those Asmodean cultists the PCs were recently tangled up with are active in Elturel. “Could you check that out for us?” (If the PCs were already heading that way to settle up personal business, all the better.)

On the other hand, if the Grand Game in Avernus sounds amazing to you, have the Cassalanters take their Eye to Elturel before the PCs can get it.

SPLIT THE PARTY

If some of the PCs are naturally interested in staying in Waterdeep to pursue their interests there while other PCs are interested in returning to Elturel to complete their unfinished business… Let them.

The players whose characters remained in Waterdeep simply need to create new PCs who can join the other characters as the other campaign begins. (If your plan is to lead with the Elturian refugee caravan, for example, the other PCs could be members of that caravan or join the other PCs in protecting it. This might also be an ideal time to introduce Lulu as a PC if you haven’t already.)

As I mentioned earlier, this is similar to what happened after my Dragon Heist run: Some of the PCs stayed in Waterdeep. Others went to the Sea of Fallen Stars. If all goes according to plan, I’ll be running both of those as separate campaigns.

THE STONE OF GOLORR IN AVERNUS

If the PCs still possess the Stone of Golorr after the events of Dragon Heist, its legend lore abilities alone offer many cool opportunities for the PCs as they delve into the deep lore of the Descent Into Avernus remix. You’ll want to give some thought to cool legend lore responses to topics the PCs are likely to ask about (like Zariel, Lulu, etc.). What stuff qualifies as “legendary” (so that the spell works) and what doesn’t?

Also decide if the spell’s description of “the more information you already have about the thing, the more precise and detailed the information you receive is” means you can benefit from casting legend lore multiple times (gaining more detailed information each time).

It might also be cool to think about how the backstory of Descent Into Avernus might be tweaked to incorporate the Stone of Golorr. Specifically, is there some big secret of the campaign that the Stone might have been used to erase from common knowledge? (For example, perhaps one of the original Hellriders decided to use the Stone to eradicate the knowledge that Zariel led the Charge of the Hellriders.) Seed some clues to that effect, so that the PCs can use the Stone to their advantage.

The Stone of Golorr might also be an alternative source for the Vision from Torm, pointing the PCs in the direction of the Sword of Zariel.

ADJUSTING FOR LEVEL

I haven’t discussed adjusting the level of challenge in Descent Into Avernus. Broadly speaking, these adjustments should be obvious. (Make the bad guys tougher and/or add more of them.)

In some ways, this will actually be to your advantage: There are wide reports that the beginning of Descent Into Avernus is too difficult for beginning characters. (And I’ve already discussed in the Remix starting the characters at a higher level.)

Speaking in very general terms, I would:

• Cap level advancement in Dragon Heist to 6^th. (It’s possible to get to 7^th in the Remix, just don’t include that final milestone advance.)
• If your group won’t get crabby, you can just hold advancement until they leave Elturel.
• Alternatively, give them a milestone level up to 7^th level when they leave Baldur’s Gate and again when they leave Elturel. (They’ll be a little higher level than they should be in Elturel and when starting out the Avernian hexcrawl, but close enough that you can probably get away without making any adjustments to those sections of the campaign.)

Alternatively, skip the Baldur’s Gate section of Descent Into Avernus entirely: Pull the PCs from Waterdeep to Elturel. Then, as they arrive, have the whole city sucked into Hell with them along for the ride and continue the campaign from there. To make this really work, seed the information and resources the PCs would have received in Baldur’s Gate into the Cassalanter sections of Dragon Heist.

For example, the infernal puzzlebox can be an artifact held by the Cassalanters. Maybe the PCs’ allies come to them and say, “Hey, we found this among the Cassalanters stuff. Sylvira Savikas is an expert on this stuff. She lives in Elturel. Can you take it to her and see if she can open it?” Or maybe they just take it to the Blackstaff and have her crack it open; then, armed with the evidence in side, they head to Elturel to expose the conspiracy… but they’re too late! The city is sucked into Hell just as they arrive!

WATERDEEP IN HELL

Why bother moving the campaign to Elturel at all? Why not just swap in Waterdeep and send the City of Splendors to Hell instead (with the PCs along for the ride)?

First, the City of Splendors is chock-a-block with high level NPCs (including many whom the PCs have been directly interacting with during Dragon Heist). There will be an obvious question of why these NPCs aren’t solving the problem themselves instead of leaving the PCs to do it.

Second, once you make all the fundamental changes to the lore of the campaign necessary to move it from Elturel to Waterdeep (no Companion, no Charge of the Hellriders as a central element, etc.), in practice you’re not really running Descent Into Avernus any more. You’re running a completely new campaign that you’re designing almost entirely from scratch.

Go to Part 1

A few days ago I streamed a session of my Castle Blackmoor open table on Twitch. During that session, my players and I were frequently referring to the player’s reference pamphlet I had assembled for the campaign. The viewers on Twitch were intrigued and one of my patrons requested that this pamphlet be shared, which I’m now doing.

As I described in Reactions to OD&D years ago, when I first started running an open table using the original 1974 rules of D&D, the various groups I played with would frequently start each session by examining the strange gaps and contradictions in the original text and discuss how we wanted to resolve them. This often meant we were playing with different rules from one session to the next! However, after a half dozen or so sessions we came to sort of a collective agreement on what the “right” answers were (at least for us) and these were codified into house rules. Other house rules have slowly accumulated over the years.

Designed to be printed as a booklet at the same size as the original 1974 D&D rulebooks, this pamphlet collects all of these house rules into a convenience reference document. I’ll usually have multiple copies of both Volume 1: Men & Magic and this pamphlet on the table so that my players can easily flip through either one.

This particular version of the pamphlet has been customized for my Castle Blackmoor campaign. It includes:

• Encumbrance By Stone: An alternative encumbrance system which makes tracking encumbrance as easy as writing down your equipment list.
• OD&D House Rulings: The modern version of what was first described in Justin’s House Rules for OD&D. (Also check out Gary Gygax’s House Rules for OD&D, which are not used here.)
• Special Interest Experience: As described earlier in this series.
• Referee Reference: Which include my personal interpolations for both Hirelings and Morale; the Encounter Die (rolled each turn); and the original Underworld & Flight/Pursuit rolls from OD&D. This material has not previously appeared on the Alexandrian.
• Blackmoor Village Map: Also from earlier in this series.

DOWNLOAD THE PDF

In Numenera cyphers are one-use items scavenged from the ruined technology of an elder age. Often the utility of these items as perceived by the PCs will be only tangentially related to the item’s original function; the ultra-tech equivalent of ripping a laser out of a CD player and using to signal your squad mates. I’ve talked about cyphers at greater length in Numenera: Identifying Items, but the core concept is that they let the PCs do something cool once and then they’re cycled out for another cypher. Examples of cyphers include stuff like:

• A metallic nodule that can be attached to an item, allowing one to telekinetically manipulate it with a paired rubber glove.
• A disk-like device that shoots out paralyzing beams.
• A set of goggles that can be used to perceive out-of-phase creatures and objects.
• A metal amulet that surrounds the user in a field of absolute blackness.
• A cannister dispensing foam that transforms metal into a substance as brittle as glass.

Now that you know what a cypher is, here’s the tip:

To quickly create a memorable bad guy, roll on the random cypher table in Numenera and have the bad guy do that as “their thing.” When the fight’s done, the PCs will be able to scavenge the matching cypher from their corpse.

For example:

• A synthetic octopodal creature that telekinetically hurls large items at the PCs.
• A slender ungulate with “antlers” that are metallic discs emitting paralyzing beams.
• An invisible assassin droid that launches attacks from the out-of-phase interdimensional space where it lurks.

This technique works particularly well in Numenera because, as I discuss in Numenera: Fractal NPCs, creating NPCs in the Cypher System can be literally as easy as saying, “He’s level 3.” But then you can expand that to whatever level of detail you want (hence the “fractal” in “fractal NPCs”), which in this case would be adding the cypher-based ability.

However, you can achieve a similar effect in almost any system by simply grabbing an existing NPC stat block and slapping on the ability. (The only drawback is that scavenging may not be an assumed part of play in your game of choice, so you may lose that depth of experience unless you make a special effort to incorporate it.)

For example, if you wanted to make a tribe of orcs a little special, you might have them worship Glaubrau, Demon of the Nethershade. Take a standard orc stat block and then have them cloaked in absolute blackness. (The PCs can harvest their black blood to make an oily potion that imbues a similar effect.)

I’ve actually found myself using the Numenera cypher lists to achieve this effect across multiple systems, but there are often local equivalents. For example, random potion lists in D&D are somewhat more limited in their range of effect, but can work in a pinch. (If you’re running 5^th Edition, however, you might just cut to the chase by grabbing a copy of Arcana of the Ancients, which adapts a whole slew of cool stuff from Numenera for your D&D game, including some random cypher tables.)