Although not as strong as The Sunless Citadel or The Forge of Fury, The Standing Stone mixes a strong premise with some daring design decisions to produce a solid module.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

When it comes to 3rd Edition modules, Wizards of the Coast has established a strong track record with modules such as The Sunless Citadel and The Forge of Fury — each of which, in my opinion, is destined to become a classic. So the only question in my mind when I sat down to read John D. Rateliff’s The Standing Stone, a module for 7th level characters, is whether or not it could stand up to its remarkable predecessors.

The short answer is: No, it couldn’t.

On the plus side, even Mark McGwire can’t hit it out of the park every time. That doesn’t mean you won’t take his singles when they come.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Standing Stone. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

A tiefling sorceror named Dyson has unlocked the ancient druidic magic inscribed upon the stone circles which surround the small town of Ossington. (For those of you familiar with the real world stone circles of England, Ossington is essentially Avebury with the stone circles and the avenue in slightly better condition.) These magics have allowed him to form an alliance with extraplanar forces of evil, and conceive a plan in which the animals of the forest can be transformed into humanoid form – a powerful staging force for a demonic invasion into our world.

Over the past few months, Dyson has killed almost all of the original villagers and replaced them with his faux humans and halflings. His actions have not gone entirely unnoticed, however: He has angered the local wild elves, and he has been forced to slay a visiting paladin who began to suspect the truth. In response, he crippled the wild elves by inviting them to a parley and then treacherously betraying their leaders. The body of the paladin he has dumped in a tarn at the foot of another local monument: Red Horse Hill (based on the ancient mound-building traditions of Native Americans).

Dyson’s murderous actions have taken their toll: The paladin has risen as a member of the undead, and ruthlessly hunts down any faux humans who wander beyond the protection of the ancient stone circles. The remaining wild elves, in turn, ambush any who escape the horseman. As a result, the villagers have been unable to plant their fields or tend their crops – and now, having exhausted most of their larders, they are slowly starving.

Enter the PCs, who are duped by Dyson into believing all the wrong things: After all, there is a ghost hunting down “innocent” villagers, right? And there are a group of wild elves whose atrocities (in the form of dead bodies with elven arrows in them) are well documented. Dyson will do his best to get the PCs to rid him of his enemies, while simultaneously continuing his demonic work. If all else fails, he will attempt to distract them with tales of yet another local fixture: The Great Barrow, where an ancient warlord rests with his undead protectors.

STRENGTHS

I have to admit that, right from the start, The Standing Stone struck a positive note for me: For several months now, I have been wanting to develop an adventure in which the PCs are duped by evil villagers into going after the good guys. And here it is. It’s a good twist on a familiar concept, and forms a solid foundation for an adventure.

Another nice feature here is Rateliff’s mixture of a variety of elements in building his adventure: Demonic pacts, ancient druidic magics, stone circles, burial mounds, lost souls, elven vengeance, even a tinge of The Island of Dr. Moreau thrown in for good measure. Nor does Rateliff overlook the importance of providing a nice selection of adventure hooks for getting the PCs involved in this dynamic scenario and environment.

Although largely an overland adventure, The Standing Stone also features a minor dungeon: The Great Barrow, in which the Warlord Shainath lives on as a member of the undead. Rateliff makes a rather daring choice by rendering this as, essentially, a random dungeon environment. While I was initially skeptical, I was astonished to discover just how well this works. Rateliff succeeds at manipulating a minimal amount of text into a very rewarding dungeon-delving experience. Where other author’s might have ended up compromising the complexity of the Barrow in deference to the space limitations of the module, Rateliff rises to the occasion.

WEAKNESSES

In reading The Standing Stone I am left with the indelible suspicion that it has been seriously compromised by its editors. For example, several pieces of background information are noticeably absent, despite the fact that they are implicitly alluded to elsewhere in the text. Although the result is not crippling to the adventure, its structure appears to be significantly weakened. (Of course, my supposition here may be incorrect. Whatever the case, however, there are things which should be here which aren’t – and that weakens the adventure.)

The boxed text is another weakness here. Quite frankly, it’s horrid. Besides being, in general, a textbook example of poor writing, it actively undermines some of the module’s best qualities by treating objects of ancient mystery and magic with a stunning colloquialism.

There are also some gaps in plausibility to be found here. For example, the conceit that an entire forest has been depopulated by Dyson creating 80 or so faux humans and halflings borders on the absurd. (Perhaps we are meant to assume that a multitude of animals must die for every one success?)

The module also suffers from the simple reality that it’s far too deadly for the 7th level characters it is supposedly designed for. And Rateliff (or his editors) should really know better, considering that the lowest Encounter Level he assigns in the course of the entire adventure is EL 9. My “favorite” bit is when he actually assumes that four 7th level characters can take out four NPC villains ranging from 8th to 16th level, when those NPC villains are accompanied by more than 30 angry villagers.

The worst fault to be found here, however, comes from the module’s conclusion: Although, technically, a mystery in which the PCs are supposed to figure out what Dyson is up to, there is really no way for them to solve that mystery until after the adventure is completed (by reading through Dyson’s notes). This type of thing drives me nuts. You shouldn’t have to wait until after you’ve beaten the bad guy to know why you were trying to beat him in the first place.

CONCLUSION

The Standing Stone is a solid adventure, built on some really great concepts and developed within a locale with an intriguing history and magic about it. Despite its structural weaknesses, I found it to be a more than worthy addition to a D&D campaign – and easily salvageable from its unfortunate weaknesses. If this is the worst that WotC can produce, then I remain confident that they’ll continue seeing my hard-earned cash for years to come.

Style: 4
Substance: 3

Authors: John D. Rateliff
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: Dungeons & Dragons
Price: $9.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1838-1
Production Code: WTC11838
Pages: 32

Hey. Past-Justin. Quick question: Do you think the hill with a horse carved into its side might be inspired by the Uffington White Horse, from the same cultural heritage as the druidic stone circles? And which was clearly the inspiration for the cartographer’s illustration in the book?

“Nope. Definitely Native American mounds.”

Sigh.

This is mostly interesting as a reflection on how every reader (including you!) brings their own POV to what they read. I had visited Avebury. I had visited the works of the Native American “Mound Builders.” I had not visited the Uffington White Horse. (I think I would have at least been aware of it in 2001, but perhaps not.) If past-me had visited the Nazca lines in Peru, perhaps I would have instead confidently assumed they were our shared point of reference.

I was probably also being influenced by my personal predilection for cultural mash-ups as a source for inspiration for fantastical settings. It was more exciting to imagine Native American mound builder traditions and druidic stone circles both being sources of inspiration, rather than just a straightforward copy-paste druidic theme.

In any case, my suspicion that the later D&D Adventure Path modules were being compromised by the limited page count — either due to the designer cutting corners to make stuff fit or editors slashing the text after the fact — only grew to a certainty as the series continued. The scope of high-level adventures tends to expand, and in D&D 3E even the size of the stat blocks would grow significantly and consume more and more space at higher levels. Where this was somewhat worrisome in The Standing Stone, it would become a serious issue for the subsequent installments.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

An excellent module haunted by some unfortunate flaws.

Review Originally Published May 22nd, 2001

The Forge of Fury is the second in WotC’s Adventure Path series of modules for D&D – designed to take the beginning party all the way to 20th level, while still having each module function as an autonomous whole. (In other words, you don’t need to have played The Sunless Citadel – the first module in the series – in order to play The Forge of Fury. There is, literally, no direct connection between the two.)

Like The Sunless Citadel before it, The Forge of Fury demonstrates that WotC is more than capable of competing effectively within the open market they’ve chosen to create for the D&D game: High quality maps (possibly the best on the market today), an exacting attention to detail (even small things, like having the same adventurers pictured on the cover as were pictured on the cover of The Sunless Citadel), and exceptional production values all combine to make this an extremely attractive product.

Warning: From this point forward, this review will contain spoilers for The Forge of Fury. Players who may end up playing in this module are encouraged to stop reading now. Proceed at your own risk.

The Forge of Fury is a location-based module, set within the confines of Khundrukar – a dwarven citadel which fell before an orcish invasion two hundred years ago, and which has, since, become inhabited by the denizens of evil.

Like The Sunless Citadel before it, however, The Forge of Fury is not a “one note” dungeon by any stretch of the imagination. To the contrary, Khundrukar is possessed of a rich, detailed, dynamic history (involving dwarves, orcs, troglodytes, demons, duergar, magic, and a black dragon). Combined with a complex dungeon geography (involving a complicated, but logical, arrangement of five interconnected dungeon sections, ranging from natural caverns to dwarven passages) this provides a delightfully evocative, believable, and entertaining gaming environment.

There are four major sections to Khundrukar (along with a number of minor features, which I won’t take the time to explore in detail here): The orcs who have taken up residence in the Mountain Door (the first barrier the ancient dwarves set up to repel invaders); the troglodyte warren which inhabits the Glitterhame (a network of beautiful, natural caverns); the duergar who have invaded the Foundry in an attempt to discover the ancient secrets of the dwarven forge; and the dragon which has taken up residence in the Black Lake.

It is ironic, however, that a module which draws so many strengths from its attention to detail, should also have its primary flaw be a lack of attention to such details. The most noticeable weakness of this product is the plethora of errors which wander through its pages with wild abandon: Minor map details which don’t match the text, missing italics in a section of boxed text, incorrect and contradictory information regarding the carving of the orcish tunnel on pg. 18, and so forth.

A few other minor problems are also present: I consider the boxed text to be lackluster and, in places, sub-par – needing some definite improvement upon occasion in order to provide the polish necessary to make an otherwise excellent dungeon environment really shine. Similarly, the adventure hooks designed to bring the PCs into Khundrukar are simply lacking (a problem which The Sunless Citadel also possessed). An epic setting such as this needs something with a little more kick to it than “hunt down the orcs” or “I’ll pay you a bounty for magic swords”.

Far more worrisome are the “killer monsters” which lie in wait: A roper and a succubi have both been placed within Khundrukar. Both of these are far too powerful for the 3rd to 5th level characters who are supposed to be going through this adventure, and – although the succubi is given several escape hatches – the roper is a definite problem. Cautious DMs should also be aware that the black dragon, although a reasonable challenge for the PCs, can also be extremely deadly if they encounter it while in non-peak condition.

While these problems are annoying, however, they are only minor flaws which do not serve to noticeably mar in otherwise exceptional adventure. In short: The Forge of Fury, like The Sunless Citadel before it, is a module with an epic quality to it – which will fill many nights with gaming memories which will linger for years to come. Definitely check this one out.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Grade: A-

Authors: Richard Baker
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: D&D
Price: $9.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1644-3
Production Code: TSR11644
Pages: 32

“A roper and a succubi have both been placed within Khundrukar. Both of these are far too powerful for the 3rd to 5th level characters who are supposed to be going through this adventure.”

Oh no. It’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me.

This complaint (that The Forge of Fury included monsters who were “too tough” according to the CR/EL guidelines in the DMG) had quickly become part of the meme-sphere back in 2001. As a reviewer, I either felt pressured to include this “everybody knows” criticism of the module or simply bought into the meme. The only problem? It wasn’t true. First, including these encounters was actually completely in keeping with the DMG encounter guidelines. Second, the entire concept of “every encounter must be carefully tailored for the characters’ precise level” was a toxic concept. (I’ve written about this at greater length in articles like Revisiting Encounter Design. And it’s still relevant to D&D and other RPG adventure design today.)

So, important lesson to take away from my younger self: If you’re going to be a reviewer, your job is not to simply parrot the “common wisdom.” (Nor to reject it as a reactionary.) It’s to develop your own point of view, reflect on that point of view, and present it to others in a way that’s useful and insightful.

The Forge of Fury is one of those modules that’s difficult for me to accurately assess: When I ran it, I did a big expansive remix, adding a bunch of extra levels plus additional factions with conflicts and agendas that were baked into my campaign world. It also played a vital role in the development of adversary rosters. Running the adventure was one of the greatest experiences I’ve ever had at the RPG table. But, perforce, it can be difficult to separate my memories of experiencing the adventure from my memories of the book itself.

What I can say, is that I honestly don’t know if I would be the GM I am today if not for this module. And I highly recommend it. It was adapted to 5th Edition in Tales of the Yawning Portal.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

James Wyatt provides Wizards of the Coast with another high quality adventure module, this time leaving the dungeon behind for the tempestuous problems of the city of Brindinford.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Many adventures of would-be greatness are dealt an Achilles’ heel of crippling proportions through the simple expectation that the PCs will follow a specific course of action – taking them, predictably, from one encounter to another. James Wyatt neatly sidesteps this problem time and time again in The Speaker of Dreams, on his way to presenting the first city-based adventure released by Wizards of the Coast for the 3rd Edition.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Speaker in Dreams. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point. Three Days to Kill (Penumbra) and Death in Freeport (Green Ronin) will also be discussed in general terms.

The mind flayer Ghaerleth Axom has long been laying the groundwork for his plan to establish an empire of slaves upon the surface world, and the starting point for his conquest is the town of Brindinford.

The Speaker in Dreams is an adventure in two parts. In the first part, the PCs are attending a local fair in Brindinford when a troop of wererats begin strewing chaos. As the PCs attempt to track the wererats back to their lair, they will uncover other monstrous groups. And when they finally track the wererats down, they will discover that the rats were acting in the employ of a group of insane sorcerers. Once they’ve gotten rid of the sorcerers, the PCs – and the city at large — will believe that they’ve solved the problem.

The truth, of course, is that the sorcerers were being unwittingly manipulated by the mind flayer through the use of his telepathic abilities. As the PCs leave a feast thrown in their honor, the mind flayer’s remaining forces will launch an assassination attempt, launching the second part of the adventure. The PCs will, hopefully, escape unscathed – but the incident will provide a pretext for the lord of the town (who is also being controlled by the mind flayer) to institute martial law. Over the next few days the situation in the city will deteriorate considerably as the mind flayer’s demonic forces – empowered by the lord’s authority – tighten their grip of terror.

CONCLUSION

The opening of The Speaker in Dreams calls for comparison to Penumbra’s Three Days to Kill (which also opens with a fair). Here I feel that Three Days to Kill comes out on top: Not only by presenting a fair with a history and purpose – giving it a specific character and presence within your game world (instead of being simply “generic fantasy fair” – pun intended), but also by presenting several actual activities which the PCs can take part in while at the fair (something James Wyatt overlooks completely).

The rest of The Speaker in Dreams, on the other hand, calls for comparison to Green Ronin’s Freeport adventures (which also deal with an evil, mystical conspiracy lurking within the walls of a city). Here I feel that Freeport has the advantage when it comes to the conceptual and epic scope behind the conspiracy, but I feel that Wyatt has succeeded in organizing The Speaker in Dreams so that it is a more playable – and perhaps even more memorable – adventure.

My assessment, in short: Although not as memorable as The Sunless Citadel, The Forge of Fury, or the Freeport Trilogy, The Speaker of Dreams manages to avoid committing some of the minor flaws of actual design which tarnish the otherwise impeccable quality of those other adventures. Half a dozen of one, six of the other. James Wyatt has produced a high quality product.

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Authors: James Wyatt
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: Dungeons & Dragons
Price: $9.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1830-6
Production Code: WTC11830
Pages: 32

The Speaker in Dreams was the third Adventure Path module released for D&D 3rd Edition. Although I had slotted the two previous modules — The Sunless Citadel and The Forge of Fury — into my  first 3rd Edition campaign, the same was not true for Speaker. This had nothing to do with the quality of the adventure, but was simply because there was nowhere to slot Speaker into my campaign arc.

Anecdotally, this seemed to be true for a lot of people: They ran Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury, but then parted ways with the loosely connected Adventure Path modules. This may have been because the event-based Speaker was more difficult to slot into a campaign than the site-based adventures, but I think it’s also likely that these adventures were just coming out too slowly. These were being released every other month, so if you started your campaign with The Sunless Citadel in September 2000, it would have been January 2001 before you could pick up this 5th-level adventure.

By contrast, when Paizo began releasing their stand-alone Adventure Paths several years later, the 5th-level installment would be released 30 days after the first installment, making it far less likely that a group could outrun the pace of the campaign, even if they started playing it immediately upon release.

In any case, having neither prepped nor run The Speaker in Dreams, my memories of the module itself are quite dim twenty-five years later. One of the quirks of the “living memory” we have of our RPG adventures.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

Like many of the people drawn back to the D&D for the first time in years by the advent of 3rd Edition, I was initially turned off of the game by the exceptionally poor quality of the 2nd Edition products which were being turned out during the early and mid-‘90s. Sure, there were occasional high points (the original Planescape boxed set comes to mind), but these were overwhelmed by a plethora of crap.

When Wizards of the Coast bought out TSR, the steady degradation of the D&D game was almost immediately turned around. Unfortunately, people like me were still overwhelmed with a healthy dose of skepticism when it came to the D&D product line – plus, we were turned off by the rule system (which was not only the anemic rules of the 2nd edition, but meaninglessly complicated beyond the bounds of sanity by the Player’s Options books).

So a module like The Gates of Firestorm Peak easily fell through the cracks. In no small part because TSR was so eager to advertise it as “the first adventure designed especially for use with the new rules presented in the three Player’s Options books” with “full-color poster maps” and “a sheet of 56 counters”. (Can you see the bright red warning lights twirling about with an accompanying siren?) It looked gimmicky, it looked silly, it looked overproduced.

Which, to a certain extent, it is. Overproduced and gimmicky, that is. (Not so much silly.)

So why did I pick it up? Well, I’ve been taking a greater interest in some of these “latter day 2nd edition” books – produced in the interim between WotC’s acquisition of the game and the release of 3rd edition. Furthermore, my local game store had put a 25% off sticker on it. And, finally, it’s written by Bruce Cordell – and I had been extremely impressed by his work on The Sunless Citadel.

And I’m glad I did, because The Gates of Firestorm Peak is one of those would-be classics which slips through the cracks because no one was paying attention when it was released.

PLOT

Warning: This review will contain spoilers for The Gates of Firestorm Peak. Players who may find themselves playing in this adventure should not read beyond this point.

Long ago, before the races walked the earth as they do today, the Elder Elves were possessed of arcane arts far beyond the ken of the spellcasters of the latter days. One of their projects was the Vast Gate: An immense gateway to distant dimensions, mystically powered every 27 years by the arrival of the Dragon’s Tear comet. Unfortunately for the Elder Elves, their hubris was destined to get the better of them: As they pushed the limits of the Vast Gate further and further beyond this world, they eventually opened a gateway into a dimension so utterly alien to our own that the Elder Elves could comprehend it only in terms of insanity. (Those of you with Cthulhu experience, plug it in here.) The creatures who lived there, like the dimension itself, were vastly beyond the comprehension of the mortals of this world – and when one of the most powerful of those creatures became interested in the Vast Gate and crossed over into our world, its merest thought eradicated nearly all of the Elder Elves in the area before it became bored again and departed.

The Elder Elves who remained alive fled, attempting to seal the Vast Gate and the horrors onto which it opened through an inversion of their own gate technology. Unfortunately, they made a horrible mistake: Instead of permanently sealing the Outer Gates which led into their complex, the Elder Elves had linked them to the Vast Gate itself (in an attempt to draw power from it and shut it down forever). Instead, the Outer Gates became dependent upon the Vast Gate – just as the Vast Gate was dependent upon the power of the Dragon’s Tear. Now, every twenty-seven years, when the Dragon’s Tear appears in the sky, both the Outer Gates and the Vast Gate open once more.

Fast forward several millennia to 81 years ago: The mountain has become known as Firestorm Peak, due to the fact that the top of the mountain literally bursts into flame during the month when the Dragon’s Tear appears (a side-effect of the Elder Elves’ ancient technology). A mad mage by the name of Madreus enters the mountain and discovers the secret of the Vast Gate. He has been working ever since on harnessing the power of the Far Realm to which the Vast Gate links.

Fast forward again to 27 years ago (the last time the Gates opened): An adventuring party (including the father of one of the PCs) ventured into Firestorm Peak to shut down the Vast Gate forever. They failed – thwarted by Madreus and either killed or transformed into his thralls.

Finally, fast forward to today: The gates have opened once more, and Firestorm Peak lays open for 28 days before they will close once more. For the past five years, the area around Firestorm Peak has seemingly suffered from a strange curse – a result of Madreus’ experiments, which will most likely reach fruition during this opening of the gate. If they do, then Madreus will be able to keep the gate open permanently – unleashing the horrors of the Far Realm upon our own dimension, and destroying the world as we know it.

Toss in a tribe of duergar who wandered into the area several decades ago as they followed a vein of nephelium (a rare ore), demonic entities from beyond the gate, goblin slaves, mutated trolls, and a mammoth dungeon complex and you’ve got The Gates of Firestorm Peak.

WEAKNESSES

My biggest disappoint with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that I can’t find anyway to include it in my current campaign. I’ve got a big round hole I’d love to drop it into, but – unfortunately – there’s just a few too many corners here for me to make it fit. That being said, I’m still going to be able to use it as a massive (and invaluable) idea mine for filling that hole.

But that is, in no way, the fault of the module itself (which is actually extremely easy to include in any generic fantasy campaign with a mountain range). So, let’s move onto some actual weaknesses.

First off, I’m pretty leery of the fact that Cordell expects one of the PCs to have a father who ventured into Firestorm Peak 27 years ago. It seems a trifle presumptuous, and too intrusive. That being said, if you can make it work (i.e., convince one of your players to go along with it), then it works out really well – adding some nice areas of pathos to the adventure.

Moving on: There are a couple of places in the text where Cordell gets a little too casual with his reader. It doesn’t intrude upon the boxed text (which is copious and excellent – you can trust Cordell to produce boxed text which you can read without doubt to your players), but its still distracting.

My biggest problem with The Gates of Firestorm Peak is that a group of 4-6 characters of 5th to 8th level (the group the adventure is advertised for) is simply not going to survive. There is, for example, the encounter where the PCs are expected to take on 28 duergar, 12 steeders, four 3rd-level duergar clerics, a 9th-level duergar cleric, and a 9th-level dwarf fighter. Or there’s the fight with 27 trolls (albeit at half strength). Or the final confrontation with a 10th-level wizard, a 6th-level wizard, five duergar, two gibberlings, two myconids, and three trolls. Admittedly, the PCs are supposed to run away from the encounter with 100 gibberlings.

Fortunately, as problems go, that’s the easiest one to fix: Send the PCs through this one at a higher level than advertised and they shouldn’t have any problems.

STRENGTHS

All other things being equal, bigger is better. And The Gates of Firestorm Peak is big. Very big. The dungeon fills an entire poster map and 123 individually keyed encounter areas.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had problems with similarly mammoth dungeons in the past. There is a common flaw to such things: At some point the desire to achieve the size outweighs the need to justify such a size. Fortunately, with The Gates of Firestorm Peak we are in the hands of Bruce Cordell, who doesn’t seem able to design a dungeon which doesn’t make sense.

Admittedly, he has to strain my credulity somewhat in justifying the semi-linear nature of the dungeon – but I’ll swallow the pill that Madreus wants his inner sanctum to be as difficult to reach as possible, and there’s enough branching going on that I don’t think there’s actually a serious problem here.

In short, The Gates of Firestorm Peak delivers exactly what it’s supposed to: A massive dungeon complex, painstakingly designed and detailed, which will provide hours and hours of entertainment for you and your gaming group.

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Authors: Bruce Cordell
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: AD&D
Price: $20.00
ISBN: 0-7869-0435-6
Production Code: 9533
Pages: 96

Back in 2001, I described Gates of Firestorm Peak as a would-be classic that everyone was sleeping on because it was published at a time when D&D was probably at its nadir. (But also, paradoxically, flooding the market with product.) In the years since then, I’m happy to say that it’s achieved the reputation and legacy it deserves, regularly appearing on lists of the Best D&D Adventures of All Time and the like.

Also in the years since writing this review, I have thrice laid the groundwork to plug Gates into a D&D campaign. But in each case the campaign has either ended prematurely or the players have steered it in a different direction. I do hope to have the opportunity to run the adventure in full some day.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Gygax must be chortling in his non-existent grave: Diablo II has come to your gaming table, and it’s brought random dungeons with it!

Review Originally Published May 21st, 2001

When I first cracked open Diablo II: To Hell and Back my first reaction was one of excitement: It looked like Carl, Eckelberry, Quick, and Redman were going to deliver an epic campaign for D&D.

As I read, though, my excitement quickly turned to disappointment, and disappointment turned to boredom. As I look back over what I’ve read, I’m still of a mixed mind over this book.

Diablo II: To Hell and Back is designed to bring the Diablo II computer game to your gaming table, adapting it for use with the D&D rules. To a certain extent, it succeeds. And to a certain extent, it fails. It succeeds in the sense that every location, every dungeon, every NPC, every quest, and every monster from the computer game is to be found between its covers. It fails, however, in the sense that it is so busy attempting to emulate the computer game experience that it never gets around to establishing itself as a D&D supplement.

Or, to put it another way: Playing Diablo II: To Hell and Back is just like playing the computer game… except without the graphics. (And you also have to do all the number-crunching and random generation yourself.)

But why would you want to do that? I mean, what’s the point? If I want to play something just like the Diablo II computer game, why wouldn’t I just play the Diablo II computer game?

At the end of the day, Diablo II: To Hell and Back fails in being a good D&D supplement – which is what it should have been, and needs to be, above all else. In fact, the only thing it truly succeeds at is emphasizing the vast gulf which exists between tabletop RPGs and Diablo-style CRPGs.

What’s frustrating here is that, with just a little more effort, the authors could have used the same basic structure of this product as the foundation for a truly epic D&D supplement. Something which builds upon the basic plot, characters, and villains of Diablo II — but also brings with it the unique strengths of table-top gaming (more realistic character interaction, the ability for the DM to handle more complicated plot dynamics, etc.). The opportunity, however, is wasted… just as your money will be if you make the mistake of dropping it on this book.

To be fair, not everything here is lackluster. As I mentioned above, the structure the authors employ to emulate the computer game is not without merit: They succeed in creating randomly generated adventures which, at the same time, have a structure and purpose. They don’t entirely succeed (I would have actually preferred to seen less left in the hands of the DM – after all, I can always ignore randomness if I want to), but they do explore some interesting ideas. The monsters to be found in this volume are also nice, particularly the demonic creatures with lower CRs. If my understanding is correct, however, these can also be found in Diablo II: Diablerie — so you might be better advised to look there, instead of here. (Without the monsters, I would most likely have given this book a Substance rating of 1 instead of 2.)

While the random structure holds some promise, in one area they drop the ball big time: “Rather than list a specific number of monsters for such Fixed Encounters, we list an Encounter Level. For instance, Corpsefire (a special Zombie boss) has CR 3 Zombies with him. You can use the Dungeon Master’s Guide (Table 4-1) to calculate just how many Zombies that means for the party level when the PCs encounter Corpsefire. That way the game adjusts the challenges the PCs face as they go up in level.”

When I first read that I was incredibly excited – not only as a game player, but also as a freelance writer. What a clever way of building scalability right into the adventure without having any significant amount of hassle for the DM!

And, indeed, it would have been clever… that is, if it actually worked. It doesn’t: First, it’s a misuse of the CR/EL system (because groups of creatures have EL; individual creatures have CRs – they were using terms interchangeably that aren’t interchangeable). Second, because the CR/EL system doesn’t work that way no matter how you look at it. Zombies which have a CR or EL of 3 will always have a CR or EL of 3 – no matter what level the adventuring party facing them is. The XP awarded for defeating a CR 3 creature scales as the party’s level changes… not the CR or EL of those creatures.

When I figured out that it didn’t work (about twenty seconds after reading it), I proceeded to get pissed off: Not only had someone designed a system that didn’t work, they had then – obviously – not even bothered to playtest it.

In short, let me say this again: Don’t waste your money on this book. It had potential, but it was horrendously squandered.

Style: 4
Substance: 2

Authors: Jason Carl, David Eckelberry, Jeff Quick, and Rich Redman
Company: Wizards of the Coast
Line: Dungeons & Dragons
Price: $29.95
ISBN: 0-7869-1831-4
Production Code: WTC11831
Pages: 192

I really don’t envy the design team for this one. Wizards of the Coast had licensed Diablo II and started releasing licensed D&D tie-in books in 1999. The idea of adapting what was, at the time, arguably the most popular fantasy CRPG on the planet to D&D was actually a pretty great way to try to expand a D&D fanbase that had been contracting for more than a decade. The only problem? Wizards was simultaneously getting ready to release a new edition of D&D in the summer of 2000.

So the Diablo II D&D sourcebooks were awkwardly split across editions, and the 3rd Edition books — like this one — were being developed before the core rulebooks had actually been finalized (which is always a difficult position for a designer to be in). Add in all the headaches that come from licensed games (e.g., getting approval from the licensor for everything you do), and, as a designer, you’re being put into an almost impossible situation.

Unfortunately, the result here was an almost perfect example of exactly what NOT to do when adapting a CRPG to the tabletop.

Glass Cannon Unplugged was supposed to be releasing a new Diablo TTRPG in 2024 that was going to be somehow compatible with a Diablo board game. But this currently seems to be vaporware.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.