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Here’s my random tip for using Idea rolls as a GM:

Don’t.

Let me start by explaining what I’m talking about: In Call of Cthulhu, an Idea roll “represents hunches and the ability to interpret the obvious.” In some of the older scenarios published for the game, this roll would actually be used to prevent players from having their characters take certain courses of action because the character wouldn’t know to do them — sort of aggressively preventing player expertise form trumping character expertise.

There are some obvious problems with that, too, but what I’m interested in right now is the far more common technique of using the Idea roll to tell players what they “should” be doing. For example, if the players are talking about how they can get an audience with a casino owner, the GM might call for an Idea roll and say, “You could disguise yourselves as high rollers.” Or when the PCs stumble onto a bloodstained altar in the center of a stone circle, the GM might call for an Idea roll and then say, “You could try putting that idol you found earlier on the altar!”

Even in games that lack a specific mechanic like this, you may see similar techniques improvised (usually with some form of Intelligence check).

GM-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

The basic function of the Idea roll is essentially like using a walkthrough in a video game: You don’t know what to do, so you have to consult a guide that can get you past the point where you’re stuck. A GM-initiated Idea roll, though, is often more like having an obnoxious friend sitting with you who’s played the game before and simply WILL NOT shut up and let you play the game for yourself.

If you’re a GM prepping a scenario and you come to a place where you think an Idea roll will be necessary, that’s a really clear sign that you need to DO BETTER. Saying, “I need an Idea roll here,” is basically saying, “I have designed a scenario where the players are going to get stuck here.” Instead of prepping an Idea roll, figure out some way to redesign the scenario so that the players won’t get stuck there. (The Three Clue Rule will often help.)

What about run-time Idea rolls? In other words, you’re currently running the session, you can see that the players are irreparably stuck, and you need to fix the problem. Well, there are two possibilities:

First, they’re not actually stuck, in which case you don’t need to use an Idea roll.

Second, they ARE stuck and definitely need help to get unstuck. In which case, you shouldn’t be rolling the dice because failure is not actually an option: You need to give them information. Therefore you should not be rolling to see whether or not they get it.

PLAYER-INITIATED IDEA ROLLS

On the other side of the screen, a player-initiated Idea roll is generally more viable: This is basically the players sending up an emergency flare and saying, “We’re lost! Please send help!” To return to our analogy of the video game walkthrough, this is the player who has been stymied to the point where they’re no longer having fun and just want to be able to move on in the game.

In my experience, it should be noted, what such players are looking for is often not the solution; what they are looking for is an action. They feel stuck because they don’t know what they should be doing. A Matryoshka search technique, therefore, is often a great way to respond to this.

Something else to look for is the clue that they’ve overlooked. Not necessarily a clue they haven’t found, but one which they don’t realize is actually a clue, which they’ve radically misinterpreted, or which they’ve completely forgotten they have. For example:

• “You realize that patent leather can also be used for furniture, not just shoes.”
• “While S.O.S. could be a cry for help, couldn’t it also be someone’s initials?”
• “You suddenly remember that you still have Suzy’s diary in the pocket of your trench coat. Didn’t she mention something about the color purple, too?”

Trail of Cthulhu innovated a cool mechanic along these lines for its Cthulhu Mythos skill: You can use this skill to “put together the pieces and draw upon the terrible knowledge that you have been subconsciously suppressing, achieving a horrific epiphany. The Keeper provides you with the result of your intuition, sketching out the Mythos implications of the events you have uncovered.”

There are two important features to this mechanic: First, it doesn’t require a roll. (Again, if the players need help, then denying it to them on the basis of a dice roll doesn’t make sense.)

Second, it has a cost: The sudden insight into the terrible realities of the universe will cost you Stability and, quite possibly, Sanity. Importantly, this cost is NOT exacted “if the player deduces the horrible truth without actually using [the] Cthulhu Mythos ability.” The cost, in my experience, not only dissuades players from relying on the mechanic instead of their own ingenuity, it also enhances the sense of accomplishment they feel when they solve the mystery or gain the insight without using the mechanic.

The 7^th Edition of Call of Cthulhu has similarly modernized the Idea roll, using a fail forward technique where a failure still gets the PCs the necessary clue/course of action, but also results in some sort of negative consequence: Getting the clue might bring you to the attention of the bad guys; or you might waste weeks of time digging through a library before finally stumbling across the right reference; or, like Trail of Cthulhu, the insight might force a Sanity check.

Another cool technique it suggests, particularly in the case of failing forward, is to aggressively reframe the scene: Jump directly to the point where the PCs have followed the lead and gotten themselves into trouble as a result.

A final interesting variant here is to make the Idea roll concept diegetic instead of non-diegetic; i.e., to make it a decision the character makes instead of the player. In a fantasy setting, for example, the character might literally make a sacrifice to the Goddess of Knowledge in order to receive a divine vision.

GM DON’T LIST #10.1: TELLING PLAYERS THE PLAN

Like an aggressive Idea roll on steroids, some GMs will go so far as to just literally tell the players what their characters will be doing for the entire scenario.

For example, I was playing in a convention one-shot where we were street samurai who got hired to be ringers on a Blood Bowl team in order to rig a high-stakes game. This was a really cool premise, turning the usual expectations of the game on its head and giving us an opportunity to explore how the PCs’ heist-oriented abilities could be used in a completely novel environment.

Unfortunately, the session quickly went completely off the rails. Rather than letting the players make any meaningful decisions, the GM had pre-scripted every play of the game: We were reduced to simply rolling whatever skill had been scripted for us. (It didn’t help that the rolls themselves were essentially pointless since the outcome of every drive and most of the plays had ALSO been planned ahead of time.)

This was an extreme example of something closely related to GM Don’t List #7: Preempting Investigation, but I bring it up here mostly because I’ve seen several GMs who use Idea rolls to similar (albeit usually less absurd) ends. These game are characterized by the players making an endless stream of Idea rolls, with the GM constantly saying things like, “Pierre [your character] thinks he should come back and check out the Le Petit Pont after dark.” Or, “You could probably get a pretty good view from the top of Notre Dame. You’ll need to figure out some way to get up to the top of the towers.” Or even, as literally happened in one game, “Rebecca thinks she should stab the Archbishop in the chest.” (“No, really, she thinks this is really important.”)

Basically: Don’t do this. Present your players with problems, not solutions. Give them the space to mull over a situation and figure out what they want to do (or what they think they need to do) in response to that situation.

Go to Part 11: Description-on-Demand

Go to Table of Contents

We’ve finally arrived at the big moment: The PCs are going to discover what really happened to the holy city of Elturel and then they’re going to descend into the depths of Hell!

(If we were to look at the campaign in terms of three-point plotting, the destruction of Elturel is the DISRUPTION that the characters MUST deal with and the revelations at Candlekeep are the REVERSAL, the moment where the whole campaign becomes an entirely different campaign.)

There are a couple of problems we need to address here.

First, as discussed in Part 3, we lack a clear vision of how the pact that sent Elturel to Hell works. On the one hand, the metaphysics of the pact (literally how it works) is simply underdeveloped to the point where it’s mostly just vigorous handwaving. On the other hand, the historical background on how it happened (who made the pact, what their relationship was with Elturel, when the pact was made, etc.) is riddled with continuity errors (both in terms of Descent Into Avernus itself and also in relation to preexisting continuity).

Second: We’ve reached the point where the PCs plane shift to the Nine Hells!

The book so blithely presents this as the next thing that happens (it’s the name of the book!) that it might take you a moment to realize that the PCs have absolutely no reason to do this.

“But they’ve just learned that the city of Elturel has been transported to Hell!”

Uh huh. So what?

They’re 5^th level PCs. They have no special resources or knowledge that put them in a unique position to solve this problem and we’ve already established that Elturel is filled with high-level paladins, spellcasters, and others that obviously haven’t been able to solve the problem. In fact, since the PCs have no idea how to solve the problem, the solution could just as easily be found in Waterdeep or the Elturian crater or Iriaebor as in Avernus!

Frodo taking the One Ring to Mordor? Sure. He has a unique vector for destroying Sauron’s power that no one else in the world has.

Some random halfling without the One Ring heading to Mordor to “save the day”? It makes no sense. It’s suicide.

Yes, there are some NPCs standing right there who can say, “I have received a message from the Great DM in the Sky! Thou art supposed to get on the train!” if the players haven’t intuited the rails. But we can do better than that.

LORE OF THE PACT OF ELTUREL

Note: As with other “Lore” sections of the Remix, this material should be considered authoritative. Any place where it contradicts the published version of Descent Into Avernus is a deliberate change. Ignore the published version and use the continuity described here.

At this point we’re going to be providing a broad overview for both the metaphysics of Elturel’s fall (providing a framework for how this could be done to any city) and the history of Elturel’s fall (i.e., the specific events for how it actually happened).

As we dive into the history of Elturel, it may be useful to know that a lot of this is based on a mistake: When writing the 4^th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Rich Baker confused Elversult (which had an artificial sun) with Elturel (which now ended up with an artificial sun). See Addendum: A Textual History of Elturel for more details.

THE HISTORY OF ELTUREL’S FALL

In 1439 DR, High Rider Klav Ikaia led an expedition of Hellriders into the High Moor. A feral vampire had begun turning large numbers of orcs, trolls, and ogres into vampire spawn which were threatening the peace of border communities that had been placed under the protection of Elturel’s Guard. The expedition was a success and the feral vampire, along with most of its spawn, was destroyed. Unbeknownst to the rest of the expedition, however, High Rider Ikaia had become infected.

The new vampire lord of Elturel kept his true nature hidden, but the darkness of his curse ate at the city like a cancer. In 1444 DR, the secret was discovered by Naja Bellandi, the High Watcher of Helm. Naja managed to escape from the High Hall before she was turned into a vampire herself, fled through the moonlit shadows of the Garden, and ultimately eluded the vampires hunting her by diving from the Maiden’s Leap into the canal below.

Naja’s discovery and subsequent escape triggered the Night of the Red Coup: High Rider Ikaia and his vampires had already infiltrated the highest ranks of the government; now they swept through what remained, killing or converting dozens. The Hellriders themselves were betrayed, caught off guard, and slaughtered in a vampiric frenzy.

Naja Bellandi, having dragged herself from the canal, returned to Helm’s Shieldhall only to find it an abattoir. She gathered any survivors she could find and sent word to the patrols still operating outside the city. A siege was raised, but the Hellriders were ill-equipped for such an action and their one-time allies had been alienated by High Rider Ikaia’s imperial actions (even before he became a vampire). Inside the city walls, Bellandi ran one of several guerilla resistance groups, but for fourteen days a reign of vampiric terror gripped the city.

THE CULT OF ZARIEL: There was a Cult of Zariel in Elturel at this time, being led by Gargauth. In this chaos Gargauth saw an opportunity. Members of the cult approached High Watcher Bellandi and told her that Zariel could help her… all she had to do was agree to a Pact.

Bellandi initially rebuffed their offer, but then came the High Harvest Slaughter: Vampires broke into High Harvest Home, the temple of Chauntea, and murdered the entire congregation which had taken refuge there. Hundreds of men, women, and children were killed and the worship of Chauntea in the city was virtually wiped out.

The Zarielites came again, and this time Bellandi accepted their offer. She formed a Pact with Zariel, accepting the Archduchess’ help in overthrowing High Rider Ikaia. In return, the entire city would be forfeit to Zariel in fifty years. (Bellandi believed she had bargained well in gaining the fifty years, but in reality Zariel needed that time anyway to secure her grip on the city.)

That night the Companion arrived in the sky above Elturel. The vampires were taken by surprise and most were destroyed by its “holy” light, although High Rider Ikaia himself escaped into the catacombs beneath the city.

Note: The inner mystery of the Cult of Zariel claims that they have been secret puppetmasters in Elturel ever since Zariel first rode into Avernus in the Charge of the Hellriders. Although it is perhaps possible that the local cult dates back that far in one form or another, if they had actually been pulling strings the entire time, the city probably would have fallen to Hell long ago.

AFTER THE COMPANION: High Watcher Bellandi became High Observer Bellandi and began the painful process of reconstruction. Only she and the Cult of Zariel knew of the Pact that had been made, and in her hubris Bellandi believed that in the fifty years she had left that she would either be able to find a way of breaking the Pact or, perhaps, evacuate the city or find some other solution for the people to escape Zariel’s snare.

In 1446 DR, the Cult of Zariel had Bellandi assassinated.

Bellandi was replaced by High Observer Cathasach Restat, one of the founding members of the Order of the Companion. Restat was a good man, completely ignorant of the Pact that had been made. In 1448 DR he converted to the religion of Torm, a god of order and righteousness who was growing popular in a city desperately craving such things. It was under Restat that Elturel became increasingly theocratic, with the Order of the Companion becoming ascendant over the Hellriders, the High Hall reconsecrated as a temple to Torm, and Restat himself becoming not merely the High Observer, but the High Observer of Torm.

The reign of High Rider Ikaia had been a true gift to the Cult of Zariel. With the vampires’ death, all the upper levels of the Elturian government had been stripped away. The cult stepped into the power vacuum, placing their people in key positions throughout the new government. Although High Observer Restat was not a Zarielite, this process only accelerated after Bellandi’s assassination, and they also established auxiliary cults in the cities conquered by the newly christened empire of Elturgard. Eventually they were ready to take the next step.

High Observer Restat’s heir apparent was a popular paladin named Tamal Thent. In 1479 DR, she and her entire retinue mysteriously disappeared near the Boareskyr Bridge. (They were ambushed by a company of Zarielite Hellriders.) When Restat died in 1481 DR, Thavius Kreeg, a member of the Cult of Zariel, became the new High Observer instead. He’s ruled the city for the past thirteen years.

Design Note: If you wanted to keep more strictly consistent with the idea from Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide that Thavius Kreeg has been High Observer for forty years, you can eliminate Cathasach Restat from this timeline: Bellandi is assassinated, it looks like Tamal Thent is going to succeed her, but then she mysteriously vanishes and Kreeg gets the position instead.

Since the continuity is a mess anyway, I felt comfortable making this change, however. Primarily I think it’s more interesting if the person who makes the pact with Zariel ISN’T a cultist, but then that person can’t stick around too long. I also think it’s more interesting if Thavius Kreeg is a younger man and the heir of a decades-long scheme, rather than the mastermind who has orchestrated Elturel’s fall from the beginning. This creates a gap which has to be filled, and I also think Elturgard has a bit more heft as a political entity if there’s an actual succession of rulers (as opposed to it being a one-generation gimmick). I also found it was a lot easier to explain the rise of Torm in Elturel once Restat was in the picture.

I also played with the idea of simply abandoning the city’s unexplained conversion from Helm to Torm, particularly once I realized how natural the High Watcher → High Observer progression was. But the Torm stuff is pretty baked in at this point, and I think this version works well.

THE METAPHYSICS OF ELTUREL’S FALL

The goal of Zariel and Gargauth is to have a mass recruitment of new devils for the Blood War. They do this in two ways:

1. They corrupt the oaths of the Hellriders and the Order of the Companion. When the Pact’s term comes due, any high knights in Elturel are immediately claimed by Zariel. As detailed in Part 3B, this is also true for any of these knights (or their descendants) who die on the Material Plane before Elturel sinks into the Styx (and the Pact is completed).
2. When Elturel sinks into the Styx, the waters of the river will wash over the city. Not only will everyone in the city be drowned, but their minds will be wiped clean. Dying in this immediate state of tabula rasa at the very moment that the Pact completes will allow Zariel to scoop up the souls of everyone in Elturel, giving her 40,000 new foot soldiers to throw into the Blood War.

THE COMPANION: The role of the Companion in Zariel’s scheme is multifaceted. First, of course, it was the price paid to High Watcher Bellandi to form the Pact, and its light was, indeed, malefic to the undead.

Second, the Companion was the source for all the “holy” spells cast by the false clerics and “paladins” of the Cult of Zariel. Although this could only be done within the Companion’s light, it allowed them to infiltrate churches and organizations in Elturgard that would have otherwise been inaccessible to them. (Note that the Companion could be seen as far away as Boareskyr Bridge and Berdusk as a bright star hanging low in the sky.) This effect was achieved due to the planetar trapped within the Solar Insidiator (aka, the Companion): The artifact effectively “borrowed” the planetar’s energy signature, harvesting and manipulating it not only to create the “holy” spells, but also to mask Zarielites from common divinations that would otherwise have exposed them.

Third, transporting an entire city to another plane takes a lot of magical mojo. The Companion’s light, having bathed Elturel for fifty years, slowly infused the buildings, streets, and even people. This created an incredibly huge negative etheric charge. When the Pact came to an end, Zariel flipped the “polarity” of the Companion, snapping the charge back to neutral in an instant and releasing a huge wave of energy that helped propel the entire city into Hell.

Note: This effect, although quite vast, was also quite subtle. It’s possible that various arcanists became aware of something strange in the Ethereal Plane around Elturel, particularly in later years. Some might have even begun researching it. If so, they would have been either assassinated or discredited by the Cult of Zariel.

RELIGIOUS SUBVERSION: There was one last and extremely vital requirement for Zariel’s plan: Elturel had to be stripped of its divine protection. If the forces of Hell just swoop down, kidnap thousands of a god’s followers, and whisk them off to Avernus, they’re inviting the god (and probably a bunch of their pantheonic friends) to intervene. Maybe you can do it in a pinch, but it’s a lot easier if you can first nudge those people out of the god’s column so that the god no longer has divine standing (like legal standing, but more complicated) to come stomp on Avernus.

Of course, you also have to be subtle about all of this. Otherwise, gods like Helm and Torm will send visions to their meddlesome priests and tell them to start looking that second gift sun in the mouth. So Zariel’s plan proceeded gradually across several years:

• Start by sowing confusion about the origin of the Companion. Let every god just kind of assume that some other god must have been responsible.
• Institutionalize and escalate this with the Creed Resolute, which — in the name of Unity — forbids any who take the oath from claiming that the Companion was the gift of any particular god. Let that belief seep into the general populace: The Companion was a gift from all because it was a gift from none. It is simultaneously divine, but not of any god.
• Spend decades infiltrating every major religion in Elturel. Slowly corrupt their religious services (either from the top down or bottom up) so that they are venerating the Companion. (A fairly typical form is to give some form of thanks to the divine gift of the second sun, which “walks beside us every day, a constant companion to us in times of trouble.” Importantly, it’s a divine gift which custom and, increasingly, engrained belief says you cannot ascribe to your own god. So your religious rites are now venerating a “divine” thing which is not your god.)

To seal the deal, three years ago in 1491 DR Thavius Kreeg passed the Unity Laws. These subtly torqued the, by now well-established, Elturian belief that Unity meant not ascribing the Companion to any god so that Unity now meant explicitly giving thanks to the Companion before your god.

Unity Prayers were to be given before any public event. These were initially limited to non-religious events, but, without any explicit government action, the Zarielites within the churches soon added them to most religious services, too. Their forms varied, but were typically something like:

Before all, we give thanks to the Companion, whose light gives us the bounty of the fields and shields us from the dark; whose eternal presence is a constant ally against all those who would threaten Elturgard. Let all those who stand within its blessing remember that it is a beacon of righteousness, which we will follow to our greater glory.

Unity Tributes were erected in various public spaces — small sculptures of the Companion or the emblazoning of the twin sun heraldry of the Order of the Companion. Although labeled “tributes,” it would be more accurate to call them shrines. Coins were often dropped into unity fountains for good fortune. In some cases, people would “pay tribute” by leaving small effigies of themselves under an idol of the Companion — a custom which started with knights leaving Elturel to go on patrol (so that they could symbolically always be within the Companion’s light), was picked up by merchants similarly leaving the city on various journeys, and eventually spread to the population in general even if they weren’t going anywhere. Eventually, these tributes were added outside (or even inside) churches and temples throughout the city.

You can’t quite legislate a requirement that people say things like, “Bless the Companion!” when they receive good fortune; or “We thank the Companion for our refection” before a meal; or “If Sajra agrees to marry me, I swear I’ll never leave the Companion’s light!”, but you can certainly lead the horse to water.

The end result of all this was that the churches of Elturgard were suborned into a form of idolatry aimed at the Companion. To be clear, at the time of Elturel’s Fall there were many people who actually were still true and faithful followers of various gods (and many more who thought they were faithful followers and could probably be guided back onto the true path if given the right leadership). Just not enough of them. Distanced from Elturel so slowly that they didn’t even notice it was happening, none of the gods saw what was coming and none were left with divine standing when the final hour came.

Design Note: The religious subversion stuff is getting a lot more attention here than seems immediately warranted. It doesn’t play an essential role in the Fall of Elturel and, unlike the other metaphysical aspects, the PCs don’t really need to understand any of this to make the scenario work. However, I found it interesting. I think it will also have an impact as the PCs begin exploring Elturel; and I think it also ends up being insightful for roleplaying Elturian characters.

THE PACT

On this, the fifteenth day of Flamerule, in the one thousandth, four hundredth, and forty-fourth year of the Dale Reckoning, I, Naja Bellandi, by my authority as the High Watcher of Helm and the highest surviving mortal authority in the city of Elturel, do swear this Oath to pledge my soul and the entire city of Elturel unto the Archduchess Zariel, to be so passed into her custody at the end of fifty years, the latter to be transported to Avernus and the former to be taken into her service.

In exchange for which, Zariel, the Archduchess of Avernus and faithful representative of Asmodeus, the Archfiend, Lord of the Ninth and Nessus, Supreme Master of the Nine Hells, bestows the Gift of the Companion, a Solar Insidiator which shall be placed in the sky above Elturel for at least the term of this agreement and whose light will scourge the undead from the city. She further swears to render whatever aid may be necessary to end High Rider Klav Ikaia’s reign if the Gift of the Companion prove insufficient to this task.

In consideration and honor of these mutual covenants, we sign in blood upon the day and year first written above,

Zariel, Archduchess of Avernus

High Watcher Naja Bellandi of Elturel

CREED RESOLUTE: The Creed Resolute was the founding document of the Order of the Companions, but in the 1470’s it was also “adopted” by the Hellriders. (This was actually somewhat controversial at the time, and it was more forced on them by the High Observer of Torm than freely taken up. By 1494 DR, however, this controversy is largely forgotten and the Hellriders mostly embrace the Creed enthusiastically.) The full Creed is actually a lengthy document proscribing and prescribing various courses of action that are “right and proper” for a knight. This includes some guidance that’s ethical and moral (mostly chivalric code-type stuff), and other guidance that’s more practical (like codes of dress and the list of arms and armor which any follower of the Creed must maintain). Even Elturians who haven’t sworn the oath to uphold the Creed Resolute will often say things like “recall the Creed.”

The crucial bit in terms of Elturel’s Fall, however, is the oath the knights swear to uphold the Creed:

I solemnly pledge my soul and blood and blade to serve as a knight of Elturel and share the Oath of the High Observer in honoring the Gift of the Companion. I shall guard the realm of Elturgard and all those lands which lie under Elturel’s Shield, upholding the laws of Elturgard and the commands of the High Observer. I shall live my life in strict accord to the Creed Resolute, placing it and this oath above all other doctrines. I shall be bound to all others who swear this oath, declaring them now and forevermore, whether in life or beyond the veil of death, to be my brothers in arms. To ensure the perfect harmony of our brotherhood, I shall permit no difference in faith to come between us, but rather hold the Companion, which I shall never attribute to one god or another, as our common star.

Metaphysically, there are two important things to note:

• They pledge their soul to “share the Oath of the High Observer.” The implication is that this is the oath to uphold the Creed Resolute, but, of course, that’s not the case. It’s actually the oath that High Observer Bellandi made to Zariel in the Pact. Everyone swearing this Oath sells their soul to Zariel, just like Bellandi did.
• They also pledge their “blood.” This is the clause that damns all of their offspring and leads directly to the murders described in Part 3.

Pro tip, kids: Don’t swear to oaths you’ve never seen.

Design Note: I don’t know if this was intentional (I don’t think it was), but in Middle English the word “resolute” also meant “paid,” in the sense that one had paid a debt.

TOME OF THE CREED RESOLUTE

Everyone who swears the formal oath to the Creed Resolute pricks their thumb and places their blood-mark in the Tome of the Creed Resolute. Their signature then magically appears within the book (which also magically gains pages whenever needed). The Tome dates back to the founding of the Order of the Companion and thus contains the signature and blood-mark of every knight who has ever sworn the oath.

The first page of the Tome has the text of the Oath. The next several pages contain the current text of the full Creed Resolute. The particulars of the Creed (but not the Oath) can be modified by the High Observer and the High Knights of Elturel, and has been on several occasions over the last several decades.

What no one living knows is that if you rip the Tome apart, you will find the full text of the Pact between Zariel and Naja Bellandi written in golden ink (actually the blood of a celestial) on the inside of the book’s spine. The Tome of the Creed Resolute is not a true infernal pact, but it is an important focus for binding the soul and blood of those who swear the Oath to the original Pact. Importantly, it prevents anyone who has sworn the oath from forswearing it and, thus, escaping Zariel’s claim to their soul.

If you destroy the Tome of the Creed Resolute, it will not free those who have already been claimed by Zariel. But it will:

• Free the descendants of Elturian knights.
• Stop Elturian knights from turning into devils the moment that they die in Avernus (see Part 5).
• Allow Elturian knights to free themselves entirely by forswearing the oath they swore and receiving the benefit of a remove curse

Pherria Jynks currently has the Tome of the Creed Resolute in the High Hall of Elturel.

Go to Part 4C: At the Threshold of Hell

I’ve talked in the past about how D&D 5th Edition doesn’t teach DMs how to run dungeons. In fact, it doesn’t even teach them how to key a dungeon map (or provide an example of a keyed dungeon map).

(To understand how weird this is, consider that the 5th Edition Starter Set includes a detailed explanation of exactly how a DM should use boxed text, but still doesn’t tell the DM how to run the dungeon that’s included in the sample adventure. Like, there was a perceived need to very specifically explain how you read text out loud, but not a perceived need to explain how you’re supposed to run a dungeon… the thing that’s actually unique to being a GM. But I digress.)

By contrast, the original edition of D&D in 1974 contains very specific instructions for both things: How to prep a dungeon and how to run the dungeon.

This is not some newfangled failure on the part of 5th Edition. It’s the end of a very long trend line (briefly interrupted, but only partially reversed by 3rd Edition) in which the D&D rulebooks have slowly stopped teaching DMs how to run the game at arguably its most fundamental level. 4th Edition, for example, still included instructions for keying a dungeon, but, like 5th Edition, failed to include any instruction for how a DM is supposed to run the dungeon.

Virtually the entire RPG hobby is built on three core structures:

1. Dungeoncrawl (often genericized to location-crawl)

2. Combat

3. Railroad

And virtually every published RPG has assumed that GMs already know to run a dungeon (because they learned it from D&D, right?).

So what happens when D&D stops teaching new DMs how to a run a dungeon?

Well, at that point all you have left is a railroad leading you from one combat encounter to the next.

PAYING THE PIPER

Although I’ve been talking about this problem for several years, it’s always been mostly theoretical and anecdotal: I would run into new GMs who were struggling because they’d never been taught a proper scenario structure; or I’d get e-mails from similar GMs who were thanking me for my essays on game structures or node-based scenario design or the like.

This is partly because, despite D&D no longer teaching these things, there was still a legacy of knowledge in the hobby: First, published scenarios were being designed by people who had learned how to prep and run dungeons decades ago, and new DMs could frequently intuit a lot from the published example. Second, many GMs were first players who learned to play from GMs who had, similarly, learned these things when they were younger.

Of course, these are basically oral traditions. And, like all oral traditions (particularly those which aren’t being deliberately passed on), they’ll degrade over time. Unsurprisingly, the first stuff to get lost are the procedures that were happening only behind the GM’s screen; players learning only from their actual play experiences only saw what those procedures created, not the procedures themselves, and therefore could not learn them.

Nonetheless, this legacy knowledge persisted.

Recently, though, I’ve been digging through stuff on the DM’s Guild and it’s become clear that the problem is no longer theoretical: It’s very real.

EXAMPLE 1: I’m reading through a module. The entire concept is that the PCs are exploring a ruined castle. But there’s no map of the castle. There are room-by-room descriptions of the castle, but no map to show how these areas relate to each other.

It should be noted that there ARE two other maps in the book: Encounter maps depicting specific rooms. So it’s not a budgetary issue. Cartography could have existed.

So I’m just confused, until I remember that… Oh, right. D&D doesn’t teach this any more.

EXAMPLE 2: This time it’s a whole collection of one-page scenarios. The creators have popped over to Dyson Logos’ website and grabbed his Creative Commons maps, and so every single scenario has a map.

None of the dungeon maps are keyed.

In some cases, this is because the locations aren’t designed for exploration (fair enough), but often the adventure features huge paragraphs of text trying to describe the contents of the dungeon room by room in a kind of narrative ramble.

The final kicker? These are 5-star rated products on the DM’s Guild. It’s not just that these particular creators didn’t know any better; the audience doesn’t know any better, either.

CONCLUSION

“How to prep and a run a room-by-room exploration of a place” is solved tech from literally Day 1 of RPGs.

But D&D hasn’t been teaching it in the rulebooks since 2008, and that legacy is really starting to have an impact.

Over the next decade, unless something reverses the trend, this is going to get much, much worse. The transmission decay across generations of oral tradition is getting rather long in the tooth at this point. You’ve got multiple generations of new players learning from rulebooks that don’t teach it at all. The next step is a whole generation of industry designers who don’t know this stuff, so people won’t even be able to learn this stuff intuitively from published scenarios.

UPDATE: This article was written primarily for the existing audience of the Alexandrian and it kind of assumes a shared framework of knowledge; it’s a “here’s an additional thought that builds on those other thoughts I’ve previously discussed” kind of thing. Based on the comments below, it appears that the article has somehow broken out into a MUCH wider audience. Although I did link to its immediate antecedent in the opening paragraph (Game Structures – Addendum: System Matters), that is clearly not getting the job done in terms of orienting new readers. If you’re feeling confused or angry or think I’m hating on 5th Edition here, I do encourage you to check out not only that addendum, but the entire Game Structures essay which discusses scenario structures in detail.

A few specific notes:

(1) A location-crawl structure (which is what the dungeoncrawl structure D&D used to teach is a specific example of) is not limited to old school dungeons. It’s not even limited to dungeons.

(2) Location-crawls are not the only scenario structure, but the argument that D&D has somehow grown beyond them doesn’t make a lot of sense: Every published D&D module from WotC features a dungeon. The fact they aren’t teaching new DMs how to effectively run the scenarios they’re publishing is clearly a problem. Beyond that, the basic skills of a location-crawl are also applied to other scenarios structures like raids and heists.

(3) Even if D&D had grown beyond location-crawls, the D&D core rulebooks don’t include instructions for designing or running any other scenario structures, either.

Go to Table of Contents

In working on the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus, I ended up doing a lot of research into the history of Elturel. It’s rather a tangled mess, and I thought there might be some benefit in briefly summarizing what I found.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 1st EDITION

Elturel’s first appearance in print receives five paragraphs. The year is 1358 DR:

• It is divided between the Dock District and the High District (located on a bluff overlooking the River Chionthar).
• It’s a “huge city,” similar in size and capability to Scornubel and Iriaebor.
• Ruled by the High Rider, currently a cavalier named Lord Dhelt (a former leader of the Hellriders).
• It is a member of the Lords’ Alliance.
• It has a way-base for the Dragoneye Dealing Costers (a merchant company).

The HELLRIDERS are:

• Well-equipped, mounted troops who patrol and provide caravan escorts from Waterdeep to Iriaebor.
• Take their name from the story that a company of Riders had ridden into Avernus. (Note that this is specifically characterized as a story that took place in the apparently legendary past from a current date of 1358 DR.)
• A mixture of warriors and clerics.
• Led by a Marshal.
• They ride in plate armor of crimson and white, marked with an upturned crescent.

FORGOTTEN REALMS ADVENTURES

The city is greatly expanded with a two page entry. Notable new details include:

• Population of 29,000 in winter and about 33,000 in the summer. Warehouses and cellars beneath the city allow it to briefly hold up to 400,000 during times of siege. Note that this means it has actually shrunk. It was previously the same size as Iriaebor (now 81,000 to 119,000) and Scornubel (50,000).
• Lord Dhelt has leveled up and is now a 16^th level paladin of Helm.
• Helm’s Shieldhall is the most powerful church in the city and ruled by a High Watcher.
• The Dragoneye way-base has become the huge Dragoneye Docks.
• The people are “Elturians” (not “Elturelian”).

The city is given its first MAP.

The HELLRIDERS are:

• 2,000 strong.
• Ride in patrols of 30, with guardhouses and regular patrols throughout the Fields of the Dead. There are also warning beacons set across the farmlands north, east, and west of the city.
• Lord Dhelt is no longer described as a former Hellrider and now leads major expeditions himself.
• Berelduin Shondar (“Bereld the Just”), the patriarch of Helm’s Shieldhall, leads as many Hellrider patrols as Lord Dhelt.
• There are additional shrines to Ilmater, Tempus, Tymora, and Waukeen.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 2nd EDITION

The date is now 1367 DR. The short city entry from the first boxed set is expanded with material from Forgotten Realms Adventures and updated with a smattering of new details:

• The Chionthar is narrow and shallow here; it can be crossed with poling barges.
• It is now a “major center” for the Dragoneye Dealing Coster (following in line with the Dragoneye Docks).
• The shrine to Waukeen has become a shrine to Lliira.

The HELLRIDERS:

• Are named “from the story that a company of Riders had in the past ridden into Avernus, first of the layers of the Nine Hells, to rescue a companion.” (emphasis added to the new lore)
• Ride in patrols of 30 warriors accompanied by at least one priest of Helm and led by a Marshal. (Note that the Marshal now leads the patrol, not the whole organization. Also note that they have still not been referred to as knights up to this point.)
• Lord Dhelt is back to being a former leader of the Hellriders, but still leads major expeditions.
• One-tenth of their earnings go directly into Elturel’s coffers.
• The total Hellrider force numbers around 2,000 women and men.

VOLO’S GUIDE TO THE SWORD COAST

The Elturel entry here mostly rewrites material from Forgotten Realms Adventures and then describes two taverns (the Bent Helm and Pair of Black Antlers) and two inns (Gallowgar’s Inn and Phontyr’s Unicorn) at greater length.

There are a few interesting tidbits:

• Lord Dhelt is back to being the current leader of the Hellriders.
• The text diegetically creates a third district: The “more prosperous and orderly homes and shops west of the heights are still part of the Dock District, but are increasingly referred to as Westerly.” (Westerly is never mentioned again in subsequent sources.)
• Raulavin Oregh, who was the Harvestmaster of High Harvest Home in the Forgotten Realms Adventures, has become Baulavin Oregh.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN SETTING – 3rd EDITION

The date is now 1372 DR. Elturel’s entry has been shrunk down to a single paragraph:

• The population has fallen to 22,600.
• Lord Dhelt has leveled up again. He is now a 17^th level paladin.

The HELLRIDERS:

• Are now only 200 strong (instead of 2,000).

If we were to interpret these changes diegetically, clearly some horrific tragedy has struck the city: Thousands are dead and the Hellriders have been reduced to one-tenth their former strength. That does not, however, appear to be the case. These changes are retcons, not updates.

FORGOTTEN REALMS CAMPAIGN GUIDE – 4th EDITION

We have now leaped forward in time to 1479 DR.

It’s probably useful to note that everything from this point forward is based on a mistake: When writing the 4^th Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Rich Baker confused Elversult (which had an artificial sun) with Elturel (which now gained one).

Let’s talk about the city:

• It is now the capital of an imperial theocracy. Elturgard, also known as the Land With Two Suns, has conquered Iriaebor, Scornubel, Triel, and Berdusk.
• There is now a state religion dedicated to Torm.
• The ruler is now the High Observer of Torm.
• Elturel’s population has shrunk again, this time to 17,000. (This might be intentionally diegetic given the Spellplague. But, oddly, the text repeatedly refers to people fleeing to Elturel and the population swelling as a result of its imperial expansion.)
• The Dungeon of the Inquisitor is a vast, subterranean maze that lies deep beneath the streets of Elturel. (Parts of this complex consist of natural caverns, the full extent of which have not been determined. Some of the prisoners work in mines down there. The strong implication is that there’s a connection to the Underdark.)

The HELLRIDERS: Don’t seem to exist. They are not mentioned in the text and appear to have been completely replaced by the PALADINS OF ELTURGARD (who are a knighthood led by the High Observer).

• Despite Elturgard having a state religion, many of the paladins “do not serve the same god.”
• All of the Paladins of Elturgard wear the “blazing insignia of the Companion.”

THE COMPANION: “The heatless second sun is called the Companion or Amaunator’s Gift, though no one but the High Observer knows if the object was truly bestowed by the sun god.”

• Undead cannot “abide its sight.” (Exactly what that means is unclear, but even people suffering from mummy’s curses seem to find respite here.)

Note: Even beyond the Elversult/Elturel mix-up, there’s a lot going on here that I can’t really wrap my head around. Somehow the city has abandoned Helm and become an intolerant theocracy of Torm worshipers while SIMULTANEOUSLY receiving a second sun that reputedly comes from Amaunator. Also the religiously intolerant Torm worshipers wear Amaunator’s holy symbol on their chests and are tolerant of paladins from any old god serving in the Paladins of Elturgard?

SWORD COAST ADVENTURER’S GUIDE

The year is now 1489 DR (or possibly 1490 DR).

• City is still ruled by the High Observer, but he’s no longer referred to as the High Observer of Torm (just “High Observer”). The current High Observer is a cleric of Torm (Thavius Kreeg).
• Elturgard is now known as the Kingdom of the Two Suns (instead of the Land of the Two Suns).
• It is no longer a member of the Lords’ Alliance. (The textual history here is complicated: As far as I can tell, no explicit list of Lords’ Alliance cities was given in 3^rd Edition; Elturel did not appear on the explicitly incomplete lists which did appear. The Lords’ Alliance isn’t mentioned at all in 4^th Edition, with the rather strong implication, in my opinion, that it no longer exists. In the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, however, the Lords’ Alliance is affirmed to have existed continuously since its founding, but Elturgard and several other cities have been explicitly given the boot.)

COMPANIONS OF ELTURGARD: These appear to be the same thing as the Paladins of Elturgard referred to in 4^th Edition.

• Made up of paladins of gods such as Tyr, Torm, Helm, and Amaunator.
• They wear the “symbol of Elturgard.”
• Their heraldry (which may or may not be the same as the symbol of Elturgard, but probably is) is now a pair of suns: The larger sun and a smaller sun with blazing light around it.
• Led by the High Observer.
• They’re also referred to as the “Order of the Companion.”
• Creed Resolute: Created by the first High Observer. A series of oaths and maxims that, among others things, prohibits the Companions from ascribing the Companion to any one god.

HELLRIDERS: They’re back!

• The Hellriders “aspire to join the Companions.” But they are also a separate organization. They are also referred to as “knights” for the first time.
• They wear the same heraldry as the Companions of Elturgard.
• At some point they also began swearing the Creed Resolute.
• They are named Hellriders because “long ago warriors of Elturel literally rode through a gate into the Nine Hells to pursue and destroy devils that had been plaguing their people.” (emphasis added to the lore change).

THE COMPANION:

• A golden orb that gives a warm, golden light. It can be seen as far away as Boareskyr Bridge and Berdusk.
• Vampires “burn away to dust” in its light, while “other undead quailed in its illumination.”
• Still referred to as “Amaunator’s Gift,” but no one knows where it actually came from and it’s “ascribed to one deity or another.”
• Called the Companion because it’s a companion to both the sun and the city.

RISE OF ELTURGARD:

• 1439 DR: Elturel had conquered territory belonging to several neighbors and put them under “Elturel’s Guard.” The High Rider was then revealed to be a vampire.
• Undead swarmed the city.
• The Companion showed up in the middle of the night. High Rider and his vampire spawn were outside at the time and instantly destroyed.
• The first High Observer created the Creed Resolute.
• Modern Elturgard refers to the lands that lie under “Elturel’s Shield” (meaning anywhere the light of the Companion touches; although that includes neighboring kingdoms that aren’t amused by the claim).

RISE OF THAVIUS KREEG:

• The heir apparent to the post of High Observer, a paladin named Tamal Thent, went missing with her entire retinue near Fort Tamal near the Boareskyr Bridge. This cleared the way for Thavius Kreeg to become High Observer.
• 1449 DR: Thavius Kreeg becomes High Observer.
• It’s possible that, after becoming High Observer, Kreeg was assigning paladins who might be a threat to him to Fort Tamal at the Boareskyr Bridge (far from Elturel itself).

Note: The changes between 4^th Edition and 5^th Edition, in my opinion, do not appear to be diegetic. The theocratic elements of Elturel appear to have been deliberately toned down using retcons, particularly the central importance of Torm. To at least some extent, this also appears to be an effort to straighten out the confusing contradictions from 4^th Edition.

DESCENT INTO AVERNUS

There’s a lot of lore pertaining to Elturel to be found in Descent Into Avernus, although it is not as clearly presented as the previous sources we’ve looked at (and I may easily overlook something in this summary). Upon reflection, it is interesting to note that Elturel is probably more thoroughly and usefully described in the two pages of Forgotten Realms Adventures than in all of the blather in Descent Into Avernus.

The current year is 1494 DR. Regarding Elturel:

• It is a holy city.
• The vampire lord now conquered Elturel in 1444 DR instead of 1439 DR. (This is because the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide described it as happening 50 years ago… and apparently it ALWAYS happens 50 years ago, no matter what the current year actually is.)
• The appearance of the Companion did NOT destroy the vampire lord. (It instead “sent the vampire lord scrambling for the shadows and laid waste to his undead army.”)
• The city is now led by the High Overseer instead of the High Observer. (This is not a diegetic change: In contradiction of previous sources, the ruler has been the High Overseer since the Companion first appeared.)
• The list of gods venerated in the city is now Lathander, Torm, Helm, and Tyr. (The Lathander/Amaunator stuff is a wormhole to go down at another time.)

The MAP of fallen Elturel is the first map of the city since Forgotten Realms Adventures. It’s clearly based on the previous map (right down to the outlines of individual buildings, suggesting — somewhat implausibly — that the city has seen essentially no new construction in the past 136 years). Most of the changes appear apocalyptic in nature, but there are a couple of significant exceptions:

• The Grand Cemetery has been added to the west side of the city.
• A ravine has been added to the east side of the bluff. (You may, at first glance, assume this to be an apocalyptic scar, but the text confirms that the bridges of Torm’s Blade and Torm’s Reach crossed a ravine here before Elturel went to Hell. A direct comparison also reveals that the streets around the bridges have been redrawn to accommodate them. If you wanted to explain this diegetically, we could perhaps theorize that the ravine was the result of damage inflicted during the Spellplague.)

THE ORDER OF THE COMPANION: Is not mentioned.

HELLRIDERS: The Hellriders are described in various places as now being followers of Torm. (This may be a diegetic shift, but it appears more likely that the authors have simply retconned the Hellriders and Order of the Companion into a single, muddled organization.)

• In the mid-14^th century, Zariel came to Elturel and trained the original Riders.
• In 1354 DR, Yeenoghu (a demon lord from the Abyss) attacked the village of Idyllglen. The Riders of Elturel stopped the attack and Zariel herself threw Yeenoghu through a portal that sent him back to the Abyss, but not before several villagers had been killed.
• Swearing vengeance against Yeenoghu (again: a demon lord from the Abyss), Zariel and the Riders of Elturel opened a portal to Avernus and rode through to wage a holy war in the… Nine Hells?
• Or, according to a different section of the book, Zariel tracked the demons (still from the Abyss) back to the portal they’d originally came through… a portal which then took the Riders to the Nine Hells!
• Many of the Riders became panicked when they reached the Nine Hells and fled back through the gate, sealing it behind them and trapping Zariel and the other Riders. Those who fled in shame became the famous Hellriders; the others were slaughtered upon the fields of Avernus and Zariel was corrupted into the Archduchess.

Note: None of this, of course, makes any goddamn sense.

THE COMPANION:

• Is actually a Solar Insidiator, created by Zariel (see DIA, p. 153-4 for more details).
• Contains an imprisoned planetar.

RISE OF THAVIUS KREEG:

• Thavius Kreeg was a priest of Torm who appealed to any power to save the holy city. Zariel answered and provided the Companion. Thavius Kreeg took credit for the Companion and became the first High Overseer (presumably in 1444 DR), not an heir to the position.
• Or, according to a different section of the book, Thavius Kreeg was already High Overseer when he struck the bargain with Zariel.

Go to the Avernus Remix

OnRPGs 80: Contastic

In this episode of OnRPGs, I join Donald Dennis and Chris Bell to talk about designing scenarios for cons.