Well, we prematurely ended our Avernus campaign last night. We, the players, weren't feeling it anymore and the GM asked us point blank if we were having fun anymore, and we just weren't.
A large part of this was because the GM was putting a ton of work scrabbling together remixes and other 3rd party things into the campaign to basically "fix" the campaign, account for plot holes, and generally make things more interesting. So, the rest is Avernus spoilers, but also kinda not? Because as I understand it our campaign was working much differently:
So basically the first part of the campaign, the folks in Baldur's Gate are having the party investigate a cult that's running around the city, and that's fine. We keep hearing reports that Elturel has just fucking disappeared from existence and there's refugees everywhere. We find a shield that has Bel trapped inside it, I promise him I'll put him back on the throne in Avernus, he's happy. Then someone throws a switch, and Baldur's Gate plane shifts into Avernus.
This is where, I am to understand, our campaign diverts from the module greatly. Rather than finding a reason to go into hell constantly and try to do whatever it is the module normally has you do, we are trapped in hell, and there are chains pulling Baldur's Gate and Elturel slowly into the River Styx. Hopefully we have averted the cult's plans sufficiently enough to prevent the same from happening to Waterdeep. But for now, we're all turbo-fucked, the cities are being bombarded by devil siege weapons, etc. We also find out that literally everyone has been pulled into some sort of devilish rules-lawyery bullshit where our souls are bound to hell so if anyone dies, they're fucking irreversibly gone.
This, so far, I was on board with, and thought it was pretty cool. I actually liked this a lot. Where I didn't like it, was when we eventually got to the Mad Max portion of the campaign, and trying to figure out where to go, and trying to decide between 13 bad decisions, and having the campaign repeatedly sound the buzzer and go, "ERR, WRONG!" and punish us for being dumb, I guess? Plus we had a ticking time bomb off to the side, we had a million tumblers we needed to get locked into place in order to escape everything, and it was just over-fucking-whelming. And in the meantime it was just like the campaign gave us nothing in terms of resources or anything. We had war rigs, and that was cool, but they took soul coins, which we had very few of, and no reasonable way of attaining more of them. We never, like, found a cache of soul coins or something like that, the campaign just kept taking and taking and taking and everything cost more than we had.
I think where we all got the wind really knocked out of our sails was when we went to get the sword, and we had apparently not triggered the right number of events in the right order previously, and now Lulu left the party, and Bel hawed about how we had been tricked, so I Cask of Amontillado'd his ass in a crypt in hell that only Good-aligned folks can see. And then we were just fucked. We didn't have our primary ally anymore, we're constantly being reminded that we're outgunned and outmanned and that there's a time bomb and a million things to do and we just hit our breaking point. I feel like the GM did the best he could but I feel like the remixes that he had found online, while making the campaign better in some respects, made the campaign just ultra turbo hard in other respects.
On a personal note, I think the thing that bothered me was how 5E just really makes it pretty obvious, especially early on, just how fucking mortal your ass is. Like you think being a 5th level Fighter makes you tough, but hey there's a pit fiend and now you're fucked. So the campaign did a good job of making clear to us early on that we were no match for the forces at work in the campaign. But the campaign also never really explains or makes clear why we should ever have a single ounce of courage later on to challenge said forces. What happened that caused us to challenge these creatures. What new or strange power did we uncover or unlock? Where did we find the strength? What was our ace in the hole? There was never an answer to this question. Like, we're trapped in hell. Everything is fucking horrible here. We're eating meat fruit to survive and we don't know where the fuck it comes from. We can't perceive time properly and in 13 days we all die forever and we have a million things to do to prevent it. Where is the beacon of hope? Where is the thing the players should latch onto?
I feel like the answer was, "Well it's you, you're the heroes!" and man 5E PC's just don't feel strong enough to me to justify that story-wise.
The thing with avernus is that it really does leave you with the impression that you're creeping around in the corners, trying to stay out of the gaze of giants, and that' certainly cool, but it does make things frustrating from a "where do I go and how do I do perspective, particularly when there is so much side content to play around with.
My go with it was really rough in it's own right because almost everyone in our party was chaotic neutral except for my LG aasimar redemption paladin and a "subtle as a brick in the head" chaotic evil tiefling warlock. Seriously considered dropping from the campaign since I was stuck being "that guy" because I kept pointing out that doing the things and getting the stuff was going to fuck over people super hard.
Falkovia is the one where all the zombies are beelining for one particular immortal NPC right?
Yup. They've noted that the zombies for the most part are just headed straight for the city and often ignored them in favor of moving towards the city, which hould have been a clue that maybe they shouldn't be going there and perhaps hanging around that village and figuring out the dynamic between the captain, his men and "the labours" (basically chain gangs forced to work a wheat field) might be a little more important.
Oh and they're aware that there are inquisitors running around who are determined to free everyone by eliminating all those touched by evil... and a Dulahan called walter who is an absolute murder machine. But hey why not go running off into the open days away from the nearest defensive position.
The thing with avernus is that it really does leave you with the impression that you're creeping around in the corners, trying to stay out of the gaze of giants, and that' certainly cool, but it does make things frustrating from a "where do I go and how do I do perspective, particularly when there is so much side content to play around with.
My go with it was really rough in it's own right because almost everyone in our party was chaotic neutral except for my LG aasimar redemption paladin and a "subtle as a brick in the head" chaotic evil tiefling warlock. Seriously considered dropping from the campaign since I was stuck being "that guy" because I kept pointing out that doing the things and getting the stuff was going to fuck over people super hard.
Yeah, only two of us where good at all when the campaign started, and then because I fed a bad lad to Bel my alignment shifted so we only had one good character, and he kept having medical stuff keeping him from being around.
in the base module you are told by prophecy to go to avernus and nobody should object because your characters should want to save the city
which to me reads about like "Well you want to help Ukraine so why aren't you trying to personally assassinate vladamir putin?" given that you have some cultists and maybe a troll under your belt, collectively, and there is zero reason for anyone involved to believe sending you to hell is anything but a swift death sentence
our GM had us sent as a scouting party, incognito like, in fact we had Nondetection cast on us as did the wizard who took us, they were going to go get Force Grey from Waterdeep to deal with it, but since we were on hand we took a "Safe-ish" job to go see if anyone in Elturel was even still alive. Then our ride home got killed by a random boulder falling from the sky and Zariel did a big thing that blocked planar travel into Avernus, leaving us as the only hope and we got a group patron in hell to give us suggested places to go, but he always had at least 3 options unlike how it's written where it's "go here, then here, then here, then here, etc"
It requires a LOT of DM work to make it coherent and it really feels like multiple groups of writers independently making projects and assembling them into a group project by the due date
in the base module you are told by prophecy to go to avernus and nobody should object because your characters should want to save the city
which to me reads about like "Well you want to help Ukraine so why aren't you trying to personally assassinate vladamir putin?" given that you have some cultists and maybe a troll under your belt, collectively, and there is zero reason for anyone involved to believe sending you to hell is anything but a swift death sentence
our GM had us sent as a scouting party, incognito like, in fact we had Nondetection cast on us as did the wizard who took us, they were going to go get Force Grey from Waterdeep to deal with it, but since we were on hand we took a "Safe-ish" job to go see if anyone in Elturel was even still alive. Then our ride home got killed by a random boulder falling from the sky and Zariel did a big thing that blocked planar travel into Avernus, leaving us as the only hope and we got a group patron in hell to give us suggested places to go, but he always had at least 3 options unlike how it's written where it's "go here, then here, then here, then here, etc"
It requires a LOT of DM work to make it coherent and it really feels like multiple groups of writers independently making projects and assembling them into a group project by the due date
This is very much in line with what our DM told us about the campaign as-written and when we heard this we agreed he had taken the right approach.
I would say that I personally have views on the planes that don't seem to jive with how FR characters view the planes which I think is...odd? Like I view the planes as places representing alignment and elements and shit and there's no changing them from what they are. A bunch of the NPC's + the module seemed to think that I should have the viewpoint that I need to turn hell into heaven or some shit and I don't fucking grokk.
We were supposed to go and find Duke ravenguard who had been in elturel when it got sucked down and ~in the event that we brought him back~ we'd get to be part of the BG council and effect policy to improve the city. Ironically, my character saw the whole thing as an opportunity to perform the ultimate redemption: Finding a way to get Zariel to repent since she could concievably release the city and it's residents if she so wished it which was me the player doing equal parts "Naieve paladin flaw" and "theres no way we can take an archduchess of hell in a fight" player logic.
My paladin picked up the sword not out of a desire for power but because she believed it needed a worthy soul to empower it and that being the closest in alignment to an angel (and part angel on account of being an aasimar) so that the others would have a tool that could redeem Zariel (The theory being that the sword effectively contained the remanants of zariel's celestial nature; her "good") which combined with Lulu would have been enough to redeem her.
Turns out I understood the sword completely backwards; I didn't empower it, it empowered my character, effectively giving them a huge whack of bonuses along with a completely different personality (Which ironically was way more pitiless and judgemental then her previous identity; I described the difference between them being the difference between a willow and an oak). After a fight with a dragon riding Narzugon we got zariels attention by breaking one of the chains and then Effectively pointing out that she was at war with planar order and that no ammount of souls was ever going to give her the victory over the abyss she sought, that Asmodeus knew this and was thus making a mockery out of her very existance and that the only way out of this was to pick up the sword and walk away.
We were supposed to go and find Duke ravenguard who had been in elturel when it got sucked down and ~in the event that we brought him back~ we'd get to be part of the BG council and effect policy to improve the city. Ironically, my character saw the whole thing as an opportunity to perform the ultimate redemption: Finding a way to get Zariel to repent since she could concievably release the city and it's residents if she so wished it which was me the player doing equal parts "Naieve paladin flaw" and "theres no way we can take an archduchess of hell in a fight" player logic.
Yeah we never found him. He was on a flying fortress that we had no method of getting to or on and eventually I was just like, "Fuck him, he's dead, let's go get Lulu's memories back!"
I am thus far really underwhelmed by most 5E modules but Avernus is a fucking mess.
I'm still running the Tiamat campaign and it's going well for the most part, but right now they're in a castle that has, and I thought this was hyperbole but it isn't, over 60 fucking rooms. Plus the map for the 1st floor isn't lined up with NSEW but the 2nd and 3rd floor are, as well as the basement! So trying to match up the rooms when they enter them and figure out what's there is a super pain in the ass!
in the base module you are told by prophecy to go to avernus and nobody should object because your characters should want to save the city
which to me reads about like "Well you want to help Ukraine so why aren't you trying to personally assassinate vladamir putin?" given that you have some cultists and maybe a troll under your belt, collectively, and there is zero reason for anyone involved to believe sending you to hell is anything but a swift death sentence
our GM had us sent as a scouting party, incognito like, in fact we had Nondetection cast on us as did the wizard who took us, they were going to go get Force Grey from Waterdeep to deal with it, but since we were on hand we took a "Safe-ish" job to go see if anyone in Elturel was even still alive. Then our ride home got killed by a random boulder falling from the sky and Zariel did a big thing that blocked planar travel into Avernus, leaving us as the only hope and we got a group patron in hell to give us suggested places to go, but he always had at least 3 options unlike how it's written where it's "go here, then here, then here, then here, etc"
It requires a LOT of DM work to make it coherent and it really feels like multiple groups of writers independently making projects and assembling them into a group project by the due date
This is very much in line with what our DM told us about the campaign as-written and when we heard this we agreed he had taken the right approach.
I would say that I personally have views on the planes that don't seem to jive with how FR characters view the planes which I think is...odd? Like I view the planes as places representing alignment and elements and shit and there's no changing them from what they are. A bunch of the NPC's + the module seemed to think that I should have the viewpoint that I need to turn hell into heaven or some shit and I don't fucking grokk.
WOTC has a few writers who kind of phone it in re: the forgotten realms, some parts of Avernus are flatly nonsensical, even with things that are established in... other parts of the same campaign
To a mortal human person who isn't a super veteran adventurer or an unflappable paladin, even minor creatures from hell are extraordinarily scary. Anything scarier than an imp would have a regular squadron of guards run away in terror. Avernus acknowledges this. They acknowledge how utterly ludicrous marching mortals into hell to fight in the blood war is, it's one of the most important plot points in the entire book. The module continually has the very environment of hell cause havoc on your characters if they aren't protected by a vehicle. There is no drinkable water. A holy site causes the land to create scar tissue and pustules that wrap around it, rejecting it like an immune system would. The very plane rejects goodness and freedom
But yet some other NPCs have this blase attitude like you're a world of warcraft adventurer and unhelling hell is just a thing you do. Curse of Strahd is fairly hopeless seeming at the beginning and does it pretty well? if the DM doesn't skip over the part that says to add small rays of hope to keep people from tuning out, and if Avernus was going for that that would be one thing - but it isn't. Everyone is just like "yeah just get the red key to get the blue key to get the silver key and jump on zariel's head and collect the rings that popout, wham bam thank you maam"
Anybody happen to have a list of the best modules produced for DnD on hand? I've been wanting to put together a little collection for myself but most lists online are pretty dire. The same 8 or so books always make the list and frankly a lot of them are pretty bad. The Temple of Elemental Evil is notoriously bad* and while modules like Homlet have a better reputation that's a very limited style and scope. I want to have more paper books to leaf through when I'm bored and more dungeons and encounters to consider stealing for my homebrew stuff.
*and lets not even mention Tomb of Horrors. Are you kidding me?
The only good one I've ever played was Curse of Strahd, but I think a lot of it was our GM leaning really heavy into Strahd being a real asshole and it made it so fucking hilariously good.
@Thawmus as bad as the plain book campaign is, that sounds way worse, sorry.
I've been using the Alexandrian remix which alter the general plot that much but rather cleans up dungeon maps, fixes NPC motivations and lore, and occasionally moves where the NPCs are to make more sense.
On top of that i made it so almost all the player characters had a direct relationship to Duke Ravengard (one is his son, one is a flaming first sergeant tasked with watching says son, I've is a PI tasked with the same thing, another is a bard friend of said PI, and the last one is a paladin from Elturel) and they had all traveled to Elturel together before the game starts and meet the paladin there. When the event started they were just outside the gate and saw the disappearing act. So the had a personal stake in the rescue from the start.
Last night's session they made it to the basement of High Hall in Elturel and son and father had an emotional reunion (i moved the Duke there from where he is in the book per advice from that Remix).
So my cousin is interested in playing D&D and wants me to run a game for her, her boyfriend, and two of her friends, none of whom have ever played before. I'm thinking of making some kind of introductory mini adventure that could be completed in three or so hours. Any suggestions for making something like that and what kind of things would be ideal for an introduction to D&D?
1) I found Tomb of Annihilation a most excellent 5e Module.
2) I want to run Avernus next, so these discussions are very good for me as I wrap my DM head around this module. What feeling I want to convey to my party when the time comes is that yeah, Hell Sucks, but now that the PC's are here shit is gonna get flipped! I want the party to *enjoy* mad maxing across the wastes and to feel like for every demon they take out then that's one less demon to ruin the lives of mortals on the Prime.
3) I also hold to the Planescape school of thought that belief is what gives the dieties and even the planes themselves power and can even move them along the Great Wheel if the prevailing belief shfts enough. THAT SAID.... the party themselves are in NO WAY enough to move the needle in literal Hell. Enough, maybe, to save the cities and redeem Zariel. But not enough to shift the alignment of the Plane itself.
1) I found Tomb of Annihilation a most excellent 5e Module.
2) I want to run Avernus next, so these discussions are very good for me as I wrap my DM head around this module. What feeling I want to convey to my party when the time comes is that yeah, Hell Sucks, but now that the PC's are here shit is gonna get flipped! I want the party to *enjoy* mad maxing across the wastes and to feel like for every demon they take out then that's one less demon to ruin the lives of mortals on the Prime.
3) I also hold to the Planescape school of thought that belief is what gives the dieties and even the planes themselves power and can even move them along the Great Wheel if the prevailing belief shfts enough. THAT SAID.... the party themselves are in NO WAY enough to move the needle in literal Hell. Enough, maybe, to save the cities and redeem Zariel. But not enough to shift the alignment of the Plane itself.
Part of the nature of Avernus is that as one of the lower planes it is incredibly hostile to anyone and everyone within it; devils can handle it better then others because they're manifestations of the plane itself, but even they are tormented in different ways by them; as such even well equipped and prepared adventurers can get screwed by the lack of potable water, food and half way breathable air altering it's topography to screw with peoples sense of direction to say nothing of how it will begin corrupting players towards a lawful evil alignment and making the potential loss of their souls a more and more real thing.
That having been said, the best thing to do if you want to give the players a little more edge, is to give them an opportunity to gather some gear before they head out; stuff like say... 5k gold to purchase stuff in advance (IE armor, silvered weapons, spell components, food, water ect) so they have *something* going for them. They'll still have to pick their fights and figure out how to save Elturel but they'll have a little more of a chance. Also:
If you want to just drizzle them in goodies you can always introduce them to Mahadi early; guy is always happy to make a deal. Alternately, you could put the pillar of skulls in if the players need answers and are willing to pay steep prices for them.
As to planesliding, it *is* possible, but this is generally a thing that happens to localized areas in the outer planes and as I recall doesn't work with primes so much so it isn't a particularly good solution for elturel.
we just got a free war machine from pledging ourself to Maggie's crew (which meant hunting down her rivals and doing hell road warrior battles), inside it had a bread and water dispenser which we were all told tasted terrible but the devils at the workshop were like "oh my god it's a feast of delicious food and the most sumptuous water"
Maggie insisted we not let her devils eat or drink any of it, they could get their water from the fortress sewage runoff if they were thirsty
Naturally, since I'm a creation bard, I'd just summon a crate of steaks or what the hell ever we wanted to eat (or if we were being chased by Demons, a crate of baby meat "Steaks", everyone eyes forward, if you don't look backward, it isn't happening, the demons are no longer chasing us that's good enough)
For all Avernus' faults got a lot of meat, but the skeleton is crap - I recommend buying it and filleting it like a chef into parts (like candlekeep mysteries is), build a new skeleton, and attach the bits to it
I really like this thing our DM is doing where Zariel is breaking the rules and Asmodeus is letting her to show his other archdevils what happens when they're broken, and double time, gets to torture her by seeing her reaction to the heavens open up... to strike her down... instead of the demons
As utterly fucking stupid and broken as Mythic stuff in Pathfinder is/was, Wrath of the Righteous is top-to-bottom a better campaign that does similar things. I'm very interested to see if it ever gets the 5e translation a lot of other Pathfinder campaigns are getting down the road, but with it having Mythic shit, I'm guessing not? I feel like it could be done, though.
1. You have a clear cut goal right from the start, and you understand the steps needed to achieve that goal.
2. You are dealing with extremely powerful forces, but a thing happened early on in the campaign that has elevated you to their level. Achieving things no mortal has achieved before is now possible, and the players can feel like aiming for big things isn't haphazard or foolish anymore.
3. If you want, you can dive into a bunch of intrigue as you manage support from various nations (which Pathfinder has fleshed out very, very well)
4. You get to do some really, really epic shit. Like:
Fighting Baphomet, or making friends with the first fucking Runelord of Wrath (which we did, and it was cool, he was my homie, he knew what I was about).
I do think that maybe, perhaps, mayhaps, this also colored some of my disappointment with Avernus, is that #2 never happens, and I'm a level 5 Artificer doing a huddle with my party on how to take down forces way above our pay grade and just never grokking why the fuck this was a thing someone thought would be fun.
Honestly to me being elevated to god tier and stomping through avernus like the protagonist of Diablo would just utterly dumpster the tone and emphasis of not just the campaign but the whole of the cosmology of the planes. Because the fact is that the lower planes are actively hostile to life in one form or another; absurd cold, endless screaming winds, acid rain, poisonous plants, nightmarish disease fire storms... the list goes on and on for how much where you are wants you to suffer, submit and die.
But with that having been said, you can absolutely get some OP as shit magic items in the campaign and our party was able to get a few of them; the sword of Zariel is a straight up artifact that massacres fiends
Real spoiler
And basically turns you into a demi-angel permanently
, we had a Dragon orb that would have given us control over red dragons, a +4 shield with various fire related properties and another party member was able to get a rod of lordly might. there were other magic items that we probably could have gotten to, but given how concerned I was about the consequences of our actions I kind of morality blocked those (as a redemption paladin I *really* struggled to both interact with the campaign and also not come across as an asshole to the party. that having been said I was effectively the party's tank and healer so they had to put up with my shit).
That having been said, having a bit more of an understanding of how everything fit together and how to go about doing the thing would have absolutely been of considerable value to our party for how to plan out our adventure because the directionless sandbox nature of the campaign didn't do it any favors when we can't really afford too many fights (Particularly not after we fucked around with a narzugon).
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
As a Gm I would have
Gone ahead and let the most good character pick up the sword. If the alignment doesn't line up then the sword upon remaking the character to be a wielder for it changes their alignment. Really, unless you are doing some truly heinous shit without a hint of guilt someone should be able to get it if they've gone through that much trouble. Also I was carrying the demon shield the whole time but apparently I was too much of a cinamon roll to be corrupted by it? Still wound up having to ditch it by GM decree.
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
There seems to be a weird thing with your bit involving the shield; was it bel that was in there? because that's absolutely not the case in the module.
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
As a Gm I would have
Gone ahead and let the most good character pick up the sword. If the alignment doesn't line up then the sword upon remaking the character to be a wielder for it changes their alignment. Really, unless you are doing some truly heinous shit without a hint of guilt someone should be able to get it if they've gone through that much trouble. Also I was carrying the demon shield the whole time but apparently I was too much of a cinamon roll to be corrupted by it? Still wound up having to ditch it by GM decree.
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
There seems to be a weird thing with your bit involving the shield; was it bel that was in there? because that's absolutely not the case in the module.
Yeah in our campaign it was Bel. He tried talking me into meeting up with his army and going to his forge and stuff. Apparently if we had done different things in a different order, he and Lulu would have become besties and he would have ascended while helping her deal with her pain, as he realizes that hell sucks.
But we didn't! So Bel instead drove Lulu away from the party and gloated about it and I gave him a fate worse than death, which is really the only high point of the campaign for me.
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
As a Gm I would have
Gone ahead and let the most good character pick up the sword. If the alignment doesn't line up then the sword upon remaking the character to be a wielder for it changes their alignment. Really, unless you are doing some truly heinous shit without a hint of guilt someone should be able to get it if they've gone through that much trouble. Also I was carrying the demon shield the whole time but apparently I was too much of a cinamon roll to be corrupted by it? Still wound up having to ditch it by GM decree.
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
There seems to be a weird thing with your bit involving the shield; was it bel that was in there? because that's absolutely not the case in the module.
Yeah in our campaign it was Bel. He tried talking me into meeting up with his army and going to his forge and stuff. Apparently if we had done different things in a different order, he and Lulu would have become besties and he would have ascended while helping her deal with her pain, as he realizes that hell sucks.
But we didn't! So Bel instead drove Lulu away from the party and gloated about it and I gave him a fate worse than death, which is really the only high point of the campaign for me.
That is so... insanely off the rails I don't even know where to start.
Like... for starters they're diametrically opposed to each other on a fundamental level since one is a celestial enitity from Mount celestia and the other is a fiend from the 9hells. Beyond that there is the fact that Bel straight up wants the position of arch duke of Avernus and only that; like his entire set of ambitions is just ruling that layer and fighting demons while Lulu's whole thing is reconnecting with her friend Zariel.
Of course that's in the campaign proper wherein it's Gargauth that's stuck in the shield as opposed to this... thing you're GM seems to have cludged together.
So my cousin is interested in playing D&D and wants me to run a game for her, her boyfriend, and two of her friends, none of whom have ever played before. I'm thinking of making some kind of introductory mini adventure that could be completed in three or so hours. Any suggestions for making something like that and what kind of things would be ideal for an introduction to D&D?
Honestly? Matt Coleville’s Intro to DMing adventure (the knights tomb) is kinda perfect for this.
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
As a Gm I would have
Gone ahead and let the most good character pick up the sword. If the alignment doesn't line up then the sword upon remaking the character to be a wielder for it changes their alignment. Really, unless you are doing some truly heinous shit without a hint of guilt someone should be able to get it if they've gone through that much trouble. Also I was carrying the demon shield the whole time but apparently I was too much of a cinamon roll to be corrupted by it? Still wound up having to ditch it by GM decree.
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
There seems to be a weird thing with your bit involving the shield; was it bel that was in there? because that's absolutely not the case in the module.
Yeah in our campaign it was Bel. He tried talking me into meeting up with his army and going to his forge and stuff. Apparently if we had done different things in a different order, he and Lulu would have become besties and he would have ascended while helping her deal with her pain, as he realizes that hell sucks.
But we didn't! So Bel instead drove Lulu away from the party and gloated about it and I gave him a fate worse than death, which is really the only high point of the campaign for me.
That is so... insanely off the rails I don't even know where to start.
Like... for starters they're diametrically opposed to each other on a fundamental level since one is a celestial enitity from Mount celestia and the other is a fiend from the 9hells. Beyond that there is the fact that Bel straight up wants the position of arch duke of Avernus and only that; like his entire set of ambitions is just ruling that layer and fighting demons while Lulu's whole thing is reconnecting with her friend Zariel.
Of course that's in the campaign proper wherein it's Gargauth that's stuck in the shield as opposed to this... thing you're GM seems to have cludged together.
Well, keep in mind our GM was going off of a lot of advice online on how to fix the module, so Bel being in the shield and having a redemption arc was unlikely to have been his idea, who knows. Our GM had also been playing the WotR video game so who knows, maybe redemption/corruption of celestial and infernal entities jived for him. I dunno.
But yeah, my character was really big on balance, and felt very strongly that Lulu and Zariel didn't belong in hell, and that Avernus needed a ruler right away instead of having a power vacuum that would consume not just hell but the mortal plane as well. He regularly said Zariel was a fool for charging into a plane she had no business being in. Simultaneously, he promised Bel very early on in the campaign that he would seat him back on the throne. And at no time during the campaign did he ever have any intention of welshing on that promise. Devils belong in hell, everyone else get the fuck out, and let's help the old boss become the new boss so that shit stops being sideways.
The module or the remix or whatever just didn't agree with my take, apparently!
Wow we were level 9 and I think we had next to jack and shit. Barely any money to speak of, only a few soul coins.
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
Losing Lulu. Getting a sword none of us could touch without dying. Having Bel gloat to the point where I stuffed him in the wall and mortared that shit up. And then walking out of that place and still trying to have a sense of purpose or direction. The GM told us the campaign would be even harder without Lulu or Bel helping us and I was just fed up at that point. Pretty sure it'd have been within character for me at that point to just go pledge service to Zariel at that point and drive off.
As a Gm I would have
Gone ahead and let the most good character pick up the sword. If the alignment doesn't line up then the sword upon remaking the character to be a wielder for it changes their alignment. Really, unless you are doing some truly heinous shit without a hint of guilt someone should be able to get it if they've gone through that much trouble. Also I was carrying the demon shield the whole time but apparently I was too much of a cinamon roll to be corrupted by it? Still wound up having to ditch it by GM decree.
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
There seems to be a weird thing with your bit involving the shield; was it bel that was in there? because that's absolutely not the case in the module.
Yeah in our campaign it was Bel. He tried talking me into meeting up with his army and going to his forge and stuff. Apparently if we had done different things in a different order, he and Lulu would have become besties and he would have ascended while helping her deal with her pain, as he realizes that hell sucks.
But we didn't! So Bel instead drove Lulu away from the party and gloated about it and I gave him a fate worse than death, which is really the only high point of the campaign for me.
That is so... insanely off the rails I don't even know where to start.
Like... for starters they're diametrically opposed to each other on a fundamental level since one is a celestial enitity from Mount celestia and the other is a fiend from the 9hells. Beyond that there is the fact that Bel straight up wants the position of arch duke of Avernus and only that; like his entire set of ambitions is just ruling that layer and fighting demons while Lulu's whole thing is reconnecting with her friend Zariel.
Of course that's in the campaign proper wherein it's Gargauth that's stuck in the shield as opposed to this... thing you're GM seems to have cludged together.
Well, keep in mind our GM was going off of a lot of advice online on how to fix the module, so Bel being in the shield and having a redemption arc was unlikely to have been his idea, who knows. Our GM had also been playing the WotR video game so who knows, maybe redemption/corruption of celestial and infernal entities jived for him. I dunno.
But yeah, my character was really big on balance, and felt very strongly that Lulu and Zariel didn't belong in hell, and that Avernus needed a ruler right away instead of having a power vacuum that would consume not just hell but the mortal plane as well. He regularly said Zariel was a fool for charging into a plane she had no business being in. Simultaneously, he promised Bel very early on in the campaign that he would seat him back on the throne. And at no time during the campaign did he ever have any intention of welshing on that promise. Devils belong in hell, everyone else get the fuck out, and let's help the old boss become the new boss so that shit stops being sideways.
The module or the remix or whatever just didn't agree with my take, apparently!
I mean... I'm not going to say that the module was without problems but this seems like a personal whim that was going to fuck things up structurally in the campaign.
So my cousin is interested in playing D&D and wants me to run a game for her, her boyfriend, and two of her friends, none of whom have ever played before. I'm thinking of making some kind of introductory mini adventure that could be completed in three or so hours. Any suggestions for making something like that and what kind of things would be ideal for an introduction to D&D?
The various D&D Starter Sets are excellent for this. Lost Mines of Phandelver & Dragons of Icespire Peak.
Both are full of easily digestible, pick and play, adventures that have a link to a larger story.
the dragon orb is actually kind of terrible, it's pretty much a beacon for dragons to kill you and they can use legendary resistances against it
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
with the exception of the plot sword I grabbed, which is a cool lady that doesnt afraid of anybody
the dragon orb is actually kind of terrible, it's pretty much a beacon for dragons to kill you and they can use legendary resistances against it
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
I mean, we gave it to that dude to try and see if we could get Tiamat's help (my thinking was that she'd be concerned about Zariel becoming dramatically more powerful with her new method gathering souls in Bulk) but it turns out that guy is just an assshole and the only thing that kept us from fighting him (or the party throwing my paladin under the table) was me doing a nat 20 with my redemption paladin channel divinity pushing my roll up into the 30s.
Which... It mostly feels like a dumb handshake with matt mercer that he's even in this campaign in the first place so I'm not exactly that sad it turned out to be nothing.
I tried to run Avernus as a follow on from doing Dragon of Icespire Peak with a group that had been having fun. Instead of Elturel, I had instead made it so the capital of a PC's self-created kingdom had been snagged to give a personal touch. Skipped first part in Baldur's Gate as honestly I thought that part was eh, and just sent them straight to Candlekeep to go to Hell.
Getting there was fine, but after that we just stalled out cause something just snapped and suddenly the whole thing didn't seem as fun as before (Which sucked cause I was gonna cross over the encounter with Tiamat to reference our DragonLance campaign as well and a couple other fun gribblies)
I think the problem is I was sold on "Mad Max in hell" and that the adventure as written doesn't feel like that, and I didn't want to take the time at the time to remix things to make it work. At this point, I might go back, find some stat stuff, and then use for one story or other.
As to good D&D adventure modules, it really is a matter of taste, being able to read and smooth things over, and realize what things are meant in the context of rules and timeframe they were written in. Temple of Elemental Evil is cromulent as a megadungeon, you just might have to be more overt about the faction infighting of the temple sects and the fact they are trying to build up armies and the hints of a larger puppet master in play. As written, sure it's just a skeleton that feels static and stale, but that's because the expectation is for you to breathe life into the place.
5e-wsise, best 2 for me hands down are Curse of Strahd, which is mostly on the strength of having an utterly loathsome and capable villain Strahd who's very willing to personally menace the PCs from the word go. The other enemies can be seasoned to taste, but I generally Barovia like Castlevania and players typically get into the spirit of it.
Tomb of Annihilation is pretty good as well. My players were pretty good about getting the right guide and beelining through stuff early, and while that underpowered them later, it definitely made the jungle journey portion more a romp than the death march it can be with bad rolls and a lack of focus (While they didn't engage with a lot of things in town, they did do at least 1 dinosaur race, which they had a blast with and if they didn't feel like they were on the clock, we probably could have done a whole subplot with)
While I like the Tomb of the Nine Gods itself on it's face, it can be a lot for players to chew through, and if I had more time to prep, I'd probably figure out how make some portions more dynamic instead of the traditional 10 ft. pole tap-tap scenario. (This is honestly my criticism of Tomb of Horrors at this point. I like the ideas it has, but it encourages such slow, paranoid play while accomplishing what it sets out to do, makes for a miserable narrative game. I've been slowly working on a remastering that's more action/arcadey in line modern deathtrap designs, but we'll see what can be salavaged)
4e absolutely has at least 1 seminal adventure in the Madness of Gardmore Abbey. An adventure site with multiple factions, subsections, and a large overarching story about restoring lost glory. Plus it uses the Deck of Many Things as it's central macguffin in a way that isn't hackneyed, doesn't break the campaign, and treats it like the terrifying fantasy WMD it actually is. Other honorable mentions include Thunderspire Labyrinth, the Pyramid of Shadows, King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and the Owlbear Run from Dungeon Magazine. While these are vary degrees of looser design than Gardmore, they have interesting ideas, locations, and set pieces that can be reappropriated as you'd like.
3/3.5 I only know of Red Hand of Doom by it's reputation and I think Sunless Citadel for more of an actual dungeon setup.
2e other than the return modules, it's like Rod of Seven Part, Night Below, or the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. First one is somewhat meta heavy as I recall, the 2nd is really if you want to do a lot of Underdark stuff but not necessarily Drow, and the 3rd is weird and trippy, but also has been adapted a few times (Just don't try to read the map!)
In AD&D, there's stuff to learn from a few places, though would require heavy modification if you want to present it to modern audience unless you're running a specifically old style game. Desert of Desolation (Pharaoh, Oasis of the White Palm, and Lost Tomb of Martek) is a solid little mid-level campaign that introduce standardized encounter presentation to module writing. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is the classic "Let's drop sci-fi nonsense into a high fantasy setting" module. White Plume Mountain helps you realize "Wizards don't need to make sense, sometimes they just make weird magic shit that captures their fancy" when making defenses/traps/playrooms. And Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh says "Sometimes, you need almost no magic to have a compelling adventure" And hell, even Castle Greyhawk (The bad comedy version they made to shit on Gygax) is good for showing that you can be funny, you can all sorts of NPCs to interact with, and you can even still the silliest shit to stick in your adventure, just have fun with it.
So, yah hopefully some folks find this interesting to paw through and check some stuff out!
"Go down, kick ass, and set yourselves up as gods, that's our Prime Directive!"
the dragon orb is actually kind of terrible, it's pretty much a beacon for dragons to kill you and they can use legendary resistances against it
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
I mean, we gave it to that dude to try and see if we could get Tiamat's help (my thinking was that she'd be concerned about Zariel becoming dramatically more powerful with her new method gathering souls in Bulk) but it turns out that guy is just an assshole and the only thing that kept us from fighting him (or the party throwing my paladin under the table) was me doing a nat 20 with my redemption paladin channel divinity pushing my roll up into the 30s.
Which... It mostly feels like a dumb handshake with matt mercer that he's even in this campaign in the first place so I'm not exactly that sad it turned out to be nothing.
The module does suggest Tiamat as a potential ally and that guy was a quest giver, but your DM may have not wanted to do that.
the dragon orb is actually kind of terrible, it's pretty much a beacon for dragons to kill you and they can use legendary resistances against it
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
I mean, we gave it to that dude to try and see if we could get Tiamat's help (my thinking was that she'd be concerned about Zariel becoming dramatically more powerful with her new method gathering souls in Bulk) but it turns out that guy is just an assshole and the only thing that kept us from fighting him (or the party throwing my paladin under the table) was me doing a nat 20 with my redemption paladin channel divinity pushing my roll up into the 30s.
Which... It mostly feels like a dumb handshake with matt mercer that he's even in this campaign in the first place so I'm not exactly that sad it turned out to be nothing.
The module does suggest Tiamat as a potential ally and that guy was a quest giver, but your DM may have not wanted to do that.
I meaan, we didn't hand over the loot earlier that was apparently stolen from her? And I can see how she'd be petty enough to not let that slide?
the dragon orb is actually kind of terrible, it's pretty much a beacon for dragons to kill you and they can use legendary resistances against it
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
I mean, we gave it to that dude to try and see if we could get Tiamat's help (my thinking was that she'd be concerned about Zariel becoming dramatically more powerful with her new method gathering souls in Bulk) but it turns out that guy is just an assshole and the only thing that kept us from fighting him (or the party throwing my paladin under the table) was me doing a nat 20 with my redemption paladin channel divinity pushing my roll up into the 30s.
Which... It mostly feels like a dumb handshake with matt mercer that he's even in this campaign in the first place so I'm not exactly that sad it turned out to be nothing.
The module does suggest Tiamat as a potential ally and that guy was a quest giver, but your DM may have not wanted to do that.
I meaan, we didn't hand over the loot earlier that was apparently stolen from her? And I can see how she'd be petty enough to not let that slide?
My players didn't either. But one of them is a black dragonborn, so they have so far been treated mostly with kid gloves (of you consider an assassination squad kid gloves, which Ms. Tiamat certainly does). Well see how it goes when they get there, so far they are still putzing around Hellturel.
I'm incredibly salty because I just spend like 90 minutes ingame in D&D trying to buy a set of efreeti armor, got it, equipped it, attuned it, and someone else asked "what do we know about what kind of offense zariel has?" and the DM said "you guys know from previous research that she does a special kind of fire damage called hellfire that ignores fire resistance and immunity"
like I'm so upset I just kind of want to walk away from the game for the last 4 hours, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
just took it off and threw it on the ground ingame because I guess my character is so fucking stupid they'd blow a campaign's worth of savings on armor that is literally worse than what I was wearing before
for reference, the fight against zariel is the only thing left to do in this campaign
@override367 i just checked, that's not in the book at all, just your DM being s goose.
Reminds me of the DM that required me to track ammunition (xbow bolts) and when i ran out he said there are none to be found out puchased and maybe i should be using a dagger (after 2 xbow related feats). This was an underdark drow campaign btw (and drow love xbows in the lore)
Posts
A large part of this was because the GM was putting a ton of work scrabbling together remixes and other 3rd party things into the campaign to basically "fix" the campaign, account for plot holes, and generally make things more interesting. So, the rest is Avernus spoilers, but also kinda not? Because as I understand it our campaign was working much differently:
This is where, I am to understand, our campaign diverts from the module greatly. Rather than finding a reason to go into hell constantly and try to do whatever it is the module normally has you do, we are trapped in hell, and there are chains pulling Baldur's Gate and Elturel slowly into the River Styx. Hopefully we have averted the cult's plans sufficiently enough to prevent the same from happening to Waterdeep. But for now, we're all turbo-fucked, the cities are being bombarded by devil siege weapons, etc. We also find out that literally everyone has been pulled into some sort of devilish rules-lawyery bullshit where our souls are bound to hell so if anyone dies, they're fucking irreversibly gone.
This, so far, I was on board with, and thought it was pretty cool. I actually liked this a lot. Where I didn't like it, was when we eventually got to the Mad Max portion of the campaign, and trying to figure out where to go, and trying to decide between 13 bad decisions, and having the campaign repeatedly sound the buzzer and go, "ERR, WRONG!" and punish us for being dumb, I guess? Plus we had a ticking time bomb off to the side, we had a million tumblers we needed to get locked into place in order to escape everything, and it was just over-fucking-whelming. And in the meantime it was just like the campaign gave us nothing in terms of resources or anything. We had war rigs, and that was cool, but they took soul coins, which we had very few of, and no reasonable way of attaining more of them. We never, like, found a cache of soul coins or something like that, the campaign just kept taking and taking and taking and everything cost more than we had.
I think where we all got the wind really knocked out of our sails was when we went to get the sword, and we had apparently not triggered the right number of events in the right order previously, and now Lulu left the party, and Bel hawed about how we had been tricked, so I Cask of Amontillado'd his ass in a crypt in hell that only Good-aligned folks can see. And then we were just fucked. We didn't have our primary ally anymore, we're constantly being reminded that we're outgunned and outmanned and that there's a time bomb and a million things to do and we just hit our breaking point. I feel like the GM did the best he could but I feel like the remixes that he had found online, while making the campaign better in some respects, made the campaign just ultra turbo hard in other respects.
On a personal note, I think the thing that bothered me was how 5E just really makes it pretty obvious, especially early on, just how fucking mortal your ass is. Like you think being a 5th level Fighter makes you tough, but hey there's a pit fiend and now you're fucked. So the campaign did a good job of making clear to us early on that we were no match for the forces at work in the campaign. But the campaign also never really explains or makes clear why we should ever have a single ounce of courage later on to challenge said forces. What happened that caused us to challenge these creatures. What new or strange power did we uncover or unlock? Where did we find the strength? What was our ace in the hole? There was never an answer to this question. Like, we're trapped in hell. Everything is fucking horrible here. We're eating meat fruit to survive and we don't know where the fuck it comes from. We can't perceive time properly and in 13 days we all die forever and we have a million things to do to prevent it. Where is the beacon of hope? Where is the thing the players should latch onto?
I feel like the answer was, "Well it's you, you're the heroes!" and man 5E PC's just don't feel strong enough to me to justify that story-wise.
My go with it was really rough in it's own right because almost everyone in our party was chaotic neutral except for my LG aasimar redemption paladin and a "subtle as a brick in the head" chaotic evil tiefling warlock. Seriously considered dropping from the campaign since I was stuck being "that guy" because I kept pointing out that doing the things and getting the stuff was going to fuck over people super hard.
Yup. They've noted that the zombies for the most part are just headed straight for the city and often ignored them in favor of moving towards the city, which hould have been a clue that maybe they shouldn't be going there and perhaps hanging around that village and figuring out the dynamic between the captain, his men and "the labours" (basically chain gangs forced to work a wheat field) might be a little more important.
Oh and they're aware that there are inquisitors running around who are determined to free everyone by eliminating all those touched by evil... and a Dulahan called walter who is an absolute murder machine. But hey why not go running off into the open days away from the nearest defensive position.
Yeah, only two of us where good at all when the campaign started, and then because I fed a bad lad to Bel my alignment shifted so we only had one good character, and he kept having medical stuff keeping him from being around.
our GM had us sent as a scouting party, incognito like, in fact we had Nondetection cast on us as did the wizard who took us, they were going to go get Force Grey from Waterdeep to deal with it, but since we were on hand we took a "Safe-ish" job to go see if anyone in Elturel was even still alive. Then our ride home got killed by a random boulder falling from the sky and Zariel did a big thing that blocked planar travel into Avernus, leaving us as the only hope and we got a group patron in hell to give us suggested places to go, but he always had at least 3 options unlike how it's written where it's "go here, then here, then here, then here, etc"
It requires a LOT of DM work to make it coherent and it really feels like multiple groups of writers independently making projects and assembling them into a group project by the due date
This is very much in line with what our DM told us about the campaign as-written and when we heard this we agreed he had taken the right approach.
I would say that I personally have views on the planes that don't seem to jive with how FR characters view the planes which I think is...odd? Like I view the planes as places representing alignment and elements and shit and there's no changing them from what they are. A bunch of the NPC's + the module seemed to think that I should have the viewpoint that I need to turn hell into heaven or some shit and I don't fucking grokk.
Turns out I understood the sword completely backwards; I didn't empower it, it empowered my character, effectively giving them a huge whack of bonuses along with a completely different personality (Which ironically was way more pitiless and judgemental then her previous identity; I described the difference between them being the difference between a willow and an oak). After a fight with a dragon riding Narzugon we got zariels attention by breaking one of the chains and then Effectively pointing out that she was at war with planar order and that no ammount of souls was ever going to give her the victory over the abyss she sought, that Asmodeus knew this and was thus making a mockery out of her very existance and that the only way out of this was to pick up the sword and walk away.
I am thus far really underwhelmed by most 5E modules but Avernus is a fucking mess.
I'm still running the Tiamat campaign and it's going well for the most part, but right now they're in a castle that has, and I thought this was hyperbole but it isn't, over 60 fucking rooms. Plus the map for the 1st floor isn't lined up with NSEW but the 2nd and 3rd floor are, as well as the basement! So trying to match up the rooms when they enter them and figure out what's there is a super pain in the ass!
WOTC has a few writers who kind of phone it in re: the forgotten realms, some parts of Avernus are flatly nonsensical, even with things that are established in... other parts of the same campaign
To a mortal human person who isn't a super veteran adventurer or an unflappable paladin, even minor creatures from hell are extraordinarily scary. Anything scarier than an imp would have a regular squadron of guards run away in terror. Avernus acknowledges this. They acknowledge how utterly ludicrous marching mortals into hell to fight in the blood war is, it's one of the most important plot points in the entire book. The module continually has the very environment of hell cause havoc on your characters if they aren't protected by a vehicle. There is no drinkable water. A holy site causes the land to create scar tissue and pustules that wrap around it, rejecting it like an immune system would. The very plane rejects goodness and freedom
But yet some other NPCs have this blase attitude like you're a world of warcraft adventurer and unhelling hell is just a thing you do. Curse of Strahd is fairly hopeless seeming at the beginning and does it pretty well? if the DM doesn't skip over the part that says to add small rays of hope to keep people from tuning out, and if Avernus was going for that that would be one thing - but it isn't. Everyone is just like "yeah just get the red key to get the blue key to get the silver key and jump on zariel's head and collect the rings that popout, wham bam thank you maam"
*and lets not even mention Tomb of Horrors. Are you kidding me?
I've been using the Alexandrian remix which alter the general plot that much but rather cleans up dungeon maps, fixes NPC motivations and lore, and occasionally moves where the NPCs are to make more sense.
On top of that i made it so almost all the player characters had a direct relationship to Duke Ravengard (one is his son, one is a flaming first sergeant tasked with watching says son, I've is a PI tasked with the same thing, another is a bard friend of said PI, and the last one is a paladin from Elturel) and they had all traveled to Elturel together before the game starts and meet the paladin there. When the event started they were just outside the gate and saw the disappearing act. So the had a personal stake in the rescue from the start.
Last night's session they made it to the basement of High Hall in Elturel and son and father had an emotional reunion (i moved the Duke there from where he is in the book per advice from that Remix).
1) I found Tomb of Annihilation a most excellent 5e Module.
2) I want to run Avernus next, so these discussions are very good for me as I wrap my DM head around this module. What feeling I want to convey to my party when the time comes is that yeah, Hell Sucks, but now that the PC's are here shit is gonna get flipped! I want the party to *enjoy* mad maxing across the wastes and to feel like for every demon they take out then that's one less demon to ruin the lives of mortals on the Prime.
3) I also hold to the Planescape school of thought that belief is what gives the dieties and even the planes themselves power and can even move them along the Great Wheel if the prevailing belief shfts enough. THAT SAID.... the party themselves are in NO WAY enough to move the needle in literal Hell. Enough, maybe, to save the cities and redeem Zariel. But not enough to shift the alignment of the Plane itself.
they also ended slavery
Part of the nature of Avernus is that as one of the lower planes it is incredibly hostile to anyone and everyone within it; devils can handle it better then others because they're manifestations of the plane itself, but even they are tormented in different ways by them; as such even well equipped and prepared adventurers can get screwed by the lack of potable water, food and half way breathable air altering it's topography to screw with peoples sense of direction to say nothing of how it will begin corrupting players towards a lawful evil alignment and making the potential loss of their souls a more and more real thing.
That having been said, the best thing to do if you want to give the players a little more edge, is to give them an opportunity to gather some gear before they head out; stuff like say... 5k gold to purchase stuff in advance (IE armor, silvered weapons, spell components, food, water ect) so they have *something* going for them. They'll still have to pick their fights and figure out how to save Elturel but they'll have a little more of a chance. Also:
As to planesliding, it *is* possible, but this is generally a thing that happens to localized areas in the outer planes and as I recall doesn't work with primes so much so it isn't a particularly good solution for elturel.
Maggie insisted we not let her devils eat or drink any of it, they could get their water from the fortress sewage runoff if they were thirsty
Naturally, since I'm a creation bard, I'd just summon a crate of steaks or what the hell ever we wanted to eat (or if we were being chased by Demons, a crate of baby meat "Steaks", everyone eyes forward, if you don't look backward, it isn't happening, the demons are no longer chasing us that's good enough)
I really like this thing our DM is doing where Zariel is breaking the rules and Asmodeus is letting her to show his other archdevils what happens when they're broken, and double time, gets to torture her by seeing her reaction to the heavens open up... to strike her down... instead of the demons
but we're spoilin his (and Zariel's) plans
1. You have a clear cut goal right from the start, and you understand the steps needed to achieve that goal.
2. You are dealing with extremely powerful forces, but a thing happened early on in the campaign that has elevated you to their level. Achieving things no mortal has achieved before is now possible, and the players can feel like aiming for big things isn't haphazard or foolish anymore.
3. If you want, you can dive into a bunch of intrigue as you manage support from various nations (which Pathfinder has fleshed out very, very well)
4. You get to do some really, really epic shit. Like:
I do think that maybe, perhaps, mayhaps, this also colored some of my disappointment with Avernus, is that #2 never happens, and I'm a level 5 Artificer doing a huddle with my party on how to take down forces way above our pay grade and just never grokking why the fuck this was a thing someone thought would be fun.
But with that having been said, you can absolutely get some OP as shit magic items in the campaign and our party was able to get a few of them; the sword of Zariel is a straight up artifact that massacres fiends
That having been said, having a bit more of an understanding of how everything fit together and how to go about doing the thing would have absolutely been of considerable value to our party for how to plan out our adventure because the directionless sandbox nature of the campaign didn't do it any favors when we can't really afford too many fights (Particularly not after we fucked around with a narzugon).
I had a +1 cold flail. And a +3 shield. I was handing out infused items so the party could have shit. I think one of them got a +1 weapon eventually, and another had a staff of defense?
We had just recovered the sword but none of us had the correct alignment to use it. Two of our PC's were evil on chargen. I was good initially but I was using that shield and that made me a bad lad. Our only remaining good character wasn't lawful good so when he touched it he dropped.
I think that was just too many punches on our last session:
As a Gm I would have
Also it's important to note that when you pick up the sword you are effectively creating a new character; their is a whole new suite of personality rolls (which I realized immediately was going to be problematic when my flaw was "can not abide the presence of evil" and we had a teenager playing "I'm evil and I love it!" warlock).
Also
But we didn't! So Bel instead drove Lulu away from the party and gloated about it and I gave him a fate worse than death, which is really the only high point of the campaign for me.
That is so... insanely off the rails I don't even know where to start.
Of course that's in the campaign proper wherein it's Gargauth that's stuck in the shield as opposed to this... thing you're GM seems to have cludged together.
Honestly? Matt Coleville’s Intro to DMing adventure (the knights tomb) is kinda perfect for this.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
But yeah, my character was really big on balance, and felt very strongly that Lulu and Zariel didn't belong in hell, and that Avernus needed a ruler right away instead of having a power vacuum that would consume not just hell but the mortal plane as well. He regularly said Zariel was a fool for charging into a plane she had no business being in. Simultaneously, he promised Bel very early on in the campaign that he would seat him back on the throne. And at no time during the campaign did he ever have any intention of welshing on that promise. Devils belong in hell, everyone else get the fuck out, and let's help the old boss become the new boss so that shit stops being sideways.
The module or the remix or whatever just didn't agree with my take, apparently!
I mean... I'm not going to say that the module was without problems but this seems like a personal whim that was going to fuck things up structurally in the campaign.
The various D&D Starter Sets are excellent for this. Lost Mines of Phandelver & Dragons of Icespire Peak.
Both are full of easily digestible, pick and play, adventures that have a link to a larger story.
like nearly every magical item in avernus, our party threw it away assuming it was cursed (well, promptly drove north and gave it to tiamat's guy), we only used magical items purchased from maggie or mahadi since devils tend to honor deals
with the exception of the plot sword I grabbed, which is a cool lady that doesnt afraid of anybody
I mean, we gave it to that dude to try and see if we could get Tiamat's help (my thinking was that she'd be concerned about Zariel becoming dramatically more powerful with her new method gathering souls in Bulk) but it turns out that guy is just an assshole and the only thing that kept us from fighting him (or the party throwing my paladin under the table) was me doing a nat 20 with my redemption paladin channel divinity pushing my roll up into the 30s.
Which... It mostly feels like a dumb handshake with matt mercer that he's even in this campaign in the first place so I'm not exactly that sad it turned out to be nothing.
Getting there was fine, but after that we just stalled out cause something just snapped and suddenly the whole thing didn't seem as fun as before (Which sucked cause I was gonna cross over the encounter with Tiamat to reference our DragonLance campaign as well and a couple other fun gribblies)
I think the problem is I was sold on "Mad Max in hell" and that the adventure as written doesn't feel like that, and I didn't want to take the time at the time to remix things to make it work. At this point, I might go back, find some stat stuff, and then use for one story or other.
As to good D&D adventure modules, it really is a matter of taste, being able to read and smooth things over, and realize what things are meant in the context of rules and timeframe they were written in. Temple of Elemental Evil is cromulent as a megadungeon, you just might have to be more overt about the faction infighting of the temple sects and the fact they are trying to build up armies and the hints of a larger puppet master in play. As written, sure it's just a skeleton that feels static and stale, but that's because the expectation is for you to breathe life into the place.
5e-wsise, best 2 for me hands down are Curse of Strahd, which is mostly on the strength of having an utterly loathsome and capable villain Strahd who's very willing to personally menace the PCs from the word go. The other enemies can be seasoned to taste, but I generally Barovia like Castlevania and players typically get into the spirit of it.
Tomb of Annihilation is pretty good as well. My players were pretty good about getting the right guide and beelining through stuff early, and while that underpowered them later, it definitely made the jungle journey portion more a romp than the death march it can be with bad rolls and a lack of focus (While they didn't engage with a lot of things in town, they did do at least 1 dinosaur race, which they had a blast with and if they didn't feel like they were on the clock, we probably could have done a whole subplot with)
While I like the Tomb of the Nine Gods itself on it's face, it can be a lot for players to chew through, and if I had more time to prep, I'd probably figure out how make some portions more dynamic instead of the traditional 10 ft. pole tap-tap scenario. (This is honestly my criticism of Tomb of Horrors at this point. I like the ideas it has, but it encourages such slow, paranoid play while accomplishing what it sets out to do, makes for a miserable narrative game. I've been slowly working on a remastering that's more action/arcadey in line modern deathtrap designs, but we'll see what can be salavaged)
4e absolutely has at least 1 seminal adventure in the Madness of Gardmore Abbey. An adventure site with multiple factions, subsections, and a large overarching story about restoring lost glory. Plus it uses the Deck of Many Things as it's central macguffin in a way that isn't hackneyed, doesn't break the campaign, and treats it like the terrifying fantasy WMD it actually is. Other honorable mentions include Thunderspire Labyrinth, the Pyramid of Shadows, King of the Trollhaunt Warrens, and the Owlbear Run from Dungeon Magazine. While these are vary degrees of looser design than Gardmore, they have interesting ideas, locations, and set pieces that can be reappropriated as you'd like.
3/3.5 I only know of Red Hand of Doom by it's reputation and I think Sunless Citadel for more of an actual dungeon setup.
2e other than the return modules, it's like Rod of Seven Part, Night Below, or the Dancing Hut of Baba Yaga. First one is somewhat meta heavy as I recall, the 2nd is really if you want to do a lot of Underdark stuff but not necessarily Drow, and the 3rd is weird and trippy, but also has been adapted a few times (Just don't try to read the map!)
In AD&D, there's stuff to learn from a few places, though would require heavy modification if you want to present it to modern audience unless you're running a specifically old style game. Desert of Desolation (Pharaoh, Oasis of the White Palm, and Lost Tomb of Martek) is a solid little mid-level campaign that introduce standardized encounter presentation to module writing. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is the classic "Let's drop sci-fi nonsense into a high fantasy setting" module. White Plume Mountain helps you realize "Wizards don't need to make sense, sometimes they just make weird magic shit that captures their fancy" when making defenses/traps/playrooms. And Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh says "Sometimes, you need almost no magic to have a compelling adventure" And hell, even Castle Greyhawk (The bad comedy version they made to shit on Gygax) is good for showing that you can be funny, you can all sorts of NPCs to interact with, and you can even still the silliest shit to stick in your adventure, just have fun with it.
So, yah hopefully some folks find this interesting to paw through and check some stuff out!
The module does suggest Tiamat as a potential ally and that guy was a quest giver, but your DM may have not wanted to do that.
I meaan, we didn't hand over the loot earlier that was apparently stolen from her? And I can see how she'd be petty enough to not let that slide?
My players didn't either. But one of them is a black dragonborn, so they have so far been treated mostly with kid gloves (of you consider an assassination squad kid gloves, which Ms. Tiamat certainly does). Well see how it goes when they get there, so far they are still putzing around Hellturel.
like I'm so upset I just kind of want to walk away from the game for the last 4 hours, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck
just took it off and threw it on the ground ingame because I guess my character is so fucking stupid they'd blow a campaign's worth of savings on armor that is literally worse than what I was wearing before
for reference, the fight against zariel is the only thing left to do in this campaign
Reminds me of the DM that required me to track ammunition (xbow bolts) and when i ran out he said there are none to be found out puchased and maybe i should be using a dagger (after 2 xbow related feats). This was an underdark drow campaign btw (and drow love xbows in the lore)