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Didn't Jim have a desire to run a game where a Devotion Paladin, War Cleric, Fighter Acolyte, and Zealot Barbarian go to hell once? I think it was in one of the paladin videos. This seems like the time to do that.
I immediately thought of that too. But then I listened to their issues with it in the first 20 minutes and I was like no, I will run my own hell campaign instead.
@@DoctorDocMD A devotion paladin, war cleric, fighter acolyte, and a zealot barbarian walk into a lower plane. The barbarian failed his will save, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.
Very much needed. I had a character I had in mind, was really excited to play, and meshed well with the party comp, then we hit the dark secret. And then the plot hook. And I suddenly realized that my character didn't fit in from an RP standpoint at all. Had to basically scrap the backstory to have better motivations/reasons to be there and take orders etc.
The writers admitted that they had to squeeze in Bauldr's Gate last minute once the Bauldr's Gate video game was announced in an interview with DnD Beyond so it makes sense the beginning was a bit lacking.
Yo Merry. Have you been looking at Magic and Comic books lately? D&D is just the next fandom after the previously mentioned two and video games to be tossed on the chopping block, drawn, quartered and squeezed for as much disposable income as possible.
I have a level 2 party playing the Acquisitions inc module. I’ve already told them if they wipe on this I’m just dropping their screaming souls into Avernus and they smack face first into the plot city
I still cannot BELIEVE the adventure has Elturel fall into hell off-screen. Potentially the coolest, most dramatic session 1s you could possibly have for a campaign-being in Elturel when the Companion goes dark and the city is pulled into Avernus...nah. NAH. Let's just go to Baldur's Gate and fuck around with the Flaming Fist for a while. It's not like we literally all showed up for a hell adventure and are excited for that part.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable adjustment to the module. It would also prevent the necessity of the book saying "if the players don't go along with the story, kill them" if they are inside of a city that planeshifts into a hell dimension. DM's have full control over the story and don't have to tell it exactly as written. Some players may be bummed about not getting to hang out in Baldur's Gate, but you could reuse that section for a different campaign. Or start in Baldur's Gate, put a plot hook in Elturel, and once they get there, everything goes to hell... literally.
Osmium is right, I’m running dragon heist and all my players started at 10th even though it’s made for 1-5. Use the setting, take characters that you like and then doctor it up how you see fit.
@@osmium6832 now that, sounds like a great idea. I still like most of the wotc official books, even though they are flawed most of the time. They usually have something cool and worth while in them, wether it's setting, NPC's, story ideas, mechanics, or maps/dungeons ect. They do usually require work, but I don't expect anyone to produce an adventure that's perfect for everyone. I've seen a 3rd party adventure that had a character that was charmed into a marriage, kinda messed up. Some people have issues with magical mind controled rape. But if you change a few things it can still be salvaged.
@@osmium6832 Yeah! That's 1000% my intention for if/when I run this. I've always been happy to rip apart adventures and modules to suit my wants and needs, but I also have a lot more spare time than a lot of DMs I know. The criticism has more to do with folks in mind who specifically buy the modules so that they don't have to spend a lot of time prepping, and it just really surprises me that wotc passed up this really cool game experience. That said, I don't run in the Forgotten Realms and don't know anyone who does in my personal loop, so it is definitely possible that Baldur's Gate is really cool and special to a lot of people in a way that I don't fully understand/appreciate. It's obvious folks have a lot of affection for it, I might just be missing that key bit of perspective that makes starting in Baldur's Gate really genuinely awesome for folks! Though even in that case, your latter idea still beats the module as-written for me by a landslide.
@@TheHalcyonCalamity I think the allure of the town has to do with the fact that alongside Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are in the top 3 best selling and most critically acclaimed PC D&D games ever made. It was many video gamer's first experience with D&D and brought quite a few people to try TTRPG's for the first time, so I imagine there's a lot of nostalgia for the town. This may have not have any relevance to your particular group, which is fine, but it's kind of a big deal to the customer base as a whole.
I'm actually playing through it as a player. It is an interesting beast but has been super fun thus far. I say this as someone who is relatively new to the hobby and am absolutely dreadful at puzzle solving and directions so probably not the intended audience for it.
Agreed, I started in during AL no less in tier 2 and we're almost to tier 4 now and getting pretty far down. Granted we skipped a bit of content and took a detour to Celestia but I feel the books are what the party and dm make of em.
I’ve been DMing DotMM for several months now, and I love just about everything about it. It has a lot of fun stuff jam-packed into it, and the indented & bolded format that Chris Perkins used makes running it at the table really easy compared to the dense paragraphs of hard-to-find information that Descent Into Avernus uses.
@@michaelmarksman743 I just bought the book. I have not read it yet. My party are currently level 12. Is the book and story easy enough to convert to this higher level play?
Kyle Kopac from having read it, it’s actually IDEAL for high-level play. I’d say get them into Avernus as soon as possible. Once they’re there, LV12 characters are going to have a blast tackling some of the higher-CR devils and demons as an equal 🙂
One reason it might not be super HELL is because there are 8 levels that are worse. If the top layer is for the least awful then it makes sense for it to not be super HELL
"I need the blizzard frost of Hell for only the Void has the power to claim my soul." - Aasimar/Paladin of the Void + all sub-classes in Paladin because the Void is everything and everything is the Void.
I'm running Dungeon of The Mad Mage for my group of 4. So far we have had a Tortle Cleric kill themselves accidentally through magical heart transplant, our Aaracokra Druid being cursed with not being able to restore hit points, and the party almost getting eaten alive by a gigantic Gelatinous Cube. 10/10
Dungeon of the Mad Mage is such a fun adventure. I am a pretty fresh DM and I never run a Mega-Dungeon but this is truly a great Adventure, In my very humble opinion.
I honestly have no idea why they put the "kill the players if they don't go on the quest" thing in the adventure. I actually really like the Dark Secret party background feature of the adventure and I think it gives the DM a great tool to motivate the PCs.
It reminds me of tomb of annihilation, there's a few times the party can come into contact, early on, with NPC's that can destroy them. But that adventure makes it clear that, for most of them anyway, isn't their goal and they'd sooner leave. I think dragon heist has some too. I've seen people argue that the NPC's should just kill the party, regardless of it being written that the NPC's want to use the party and won't kill them, simply because they are -insert cr/power level/monster/undead/dragon/blah blah blah-. "That's not how such and such is! I don't care what the adventure says, it's a monster and acts like every other monster and kills them all" It makes me concerned that someone actually listened to that. Honestly, it's the same feeling I have with some people's interpretation of alignment. If character's alignment can change, then an NPC's can too. I take the DMG or really anything as an example of what is typical of said thing. If a world is full of only typical things it can get uninteresting. I also think of personal alignment as a guide, maybe it's the creature's ideals, some times things might act in away that seems contrary to those ideas to achieve a goal. Though I would personally use that sparingly. if you have every lawful evil thing saving the world it might get a bit confusing, unless thats part of your homebrew somehow. Maybe that's not how the forgotten realms is typically, or supposed to be run but I find it more fun. I should probably just homebrew a setting.
@@danieldosso2455 unlikely if the party has good or neutral aligned members, especially clerics or paladins. Best case scenario, the party gets split up like crazy. Worst case scenario the game ends and you lose your players. Arguably you could send them to hell because plot reasons. But then that first bit of the adventure is useless. It might as well be "a racist comes out of nowhere and shanks you all. There's no time to react, every single one of you is dead. But wait! You wake up and realise you're in hell. Now you gotta save this town and get out, so you can get your revenge on that racist." It's lame, could be funny, but wouldn't really be enjoyable for most people. When DM's pull that kind of thing, people get annoyed because we are essentially playing make believe, but with rules and dice. And that kind of set up removes player agency and the ability to roll against it. It would be better if, like someone else said, he had leverage on the party, like the secret in the baldur's gate bit. Because if something leads to combat, but it's arbitrary that the PC's lose, why even play d&d. That interaction can't lead to combat because it ruins their reason for doing that bit of the story if they manage to survive and kill him.
@@danieldosso2455 that is why I said it could be funny. But I would change it up anyway, like if I was going for over the top cheese or humor I wouldn't use that guy killing them, it'd be better to just say "rocks fall everyone dies". It's just annoying as a product you buy, that the baldur's gate stuff has no narrative connection, it's just arbitrary. it could be pulled out and used better, or added to and made better but it has nothing to do with avernus as is, unless you make it. You can make it work, for sure. But as written, someone who is a newer DM might not easily pick up on that. My point isn't that starting the campaign in avernus is a bad idea, it's just a bad set up. If an NPC tells you to do something and if you don't you die, but both things lead you to the same destination anyway and have no effect on anything, that's called the illusion of choice.
I had Session Zero of Descent Into Avernus last week, and I was very explicit about the fact that the party ends up going to Hell. I even cracked a joke about D&D sending them to Hell, since almost all of my players are old enough to remember the Satanic Panic. A big part of Session Zero was linking character backgrounds and giving me fodder to link them to Avernus. Fortunately, at least three of them have serious beef with the same chromatic dragon. Also, I've decided that Captain Zodge is the one who knows about their collective dark secret, which will make it pretty easy for him to compel them to do the first gopher task.
This is my first campaign as a DM and I may be out of my depth, but I've found that this adventure needs a lot of work to get into an adventuring rhythm. What worked for my table was starting the characters in Elturel. It's the polar opposite of Baldur's Gate and allowing characters to experience the drama of Elturel vanishing and later the jarring contrast with Baldur's Gate motivated the characters more than sending a death squad after them. Side note, starting players at 5th level also empowered my table to exercise agency in the world that led to them adventuring more naturally towards a delve into Hell.
So thinking about the Baldur's Gate part of this: I feel like you have the issue of existing in an Epic High Fantasy world with griffon knights and epic heroes and then there's this very clearly corrupt city and your Epic High Fantasy instincts tell you to save the city and then you go to Hell and have to deal with all the toxic intrigue there. The way you solve this, in my mind, is make this the Planescape adventure it should be, where everyone is already aware of how much wheeling and dealing goes into planar existence.
I'm over half way thru DIA and currently binge-watching The Sopranos. I think the mafia are a great example of lawful evil, and I think I'll style future LE characters that way.
Any book that tells new DMs to kill PCs for trying to explore doesn’t deserve to be printed. The rest of the book could be pure gold and that’d still be a deal breaker.
? publish games if ran the wrong way or the players make bad dice rolls will get the characters killed. Plenty old publish games stated if they try taking the boss down alone, will cause the death of a single player character.
It's time to clearly state that official modules are mediocre and poorly written. I'm tired of seeing everyone tiptoeing around that fact. I realise that there might be conflict of interest and all but If we don't give clear feedback it's never going to get better.
Disagree. I think this campaign is very poorly written. However, I've ran CoS, ToA, SKT, and OotA, those campaigns were all various levels of excellent.
@@karlsma7245 Storm king thunder is very poorly written in many parts with hilariously bad secondary quests and is just some kind of semi sand box game that you simply have to put a ton of work in in order to make it interesting. (seriously there's a bunch of NPCs who literally wants you to be a mailman at level 5). I haven't played Out of the abyss but I've heard multiple times that players lost interest in the main story arc (this channel too, from what I remember they just ditched it). Curse of Stradh and Tomb of Annihilation are just re-edited modules from older editions. It's hard to fuck it up. And almost none of them make any effort to actually properly write atmosphere and NPCs. There are modules for other games out there where you get like 50 pages describing in detail the region your adventure takes place in, how the people talk, what's culture etc. And every time an NPC appears you get almost an entire page about who is, how he behaves, how he talks, what's his goal, how he looks etc. I feel like I'd have about the same amount of work if I were to use random dungeons and side quests generators and write the whole module myself.
@@moiseman . I can't tell you how you should experience the book or what works at your table. For me, I've enjoyed running SKT. I think the sandbox chapter is great and my players had a great time in Citadel Adbar and Luskan. It's one of my favorite parts of the campaign. I love that chapter and it's counter part in ToA. As far as not having enough material in the book, it's set in the Forgotten Realms. You want to know anything about it, just Google it. Why pay for an extended page count? I didn't feel like I needed to put a ton of work into it. I had the basic idea and I handled the rest through improv. This what I want from a book. Give me the stuff that is hard for me to do, populate a large area and build dungeons, and let me do the rest to make it fit my party. I get that the book didn't work for you or your players and that truly sucks. I just experienced it differently.
@@karlsma7245 I gave you some examples of objectively bad stuff present in the book and you just reply to me with "me and my buds had fun" which is very typical and basically tells me nothing except that probably have much lower standards. Then you follow by a mean and silly assumption that my group didn't have fun, as if I'd run fedex quest module without heavily rewriting it.
@@moiseman, I explained to you how I ran it. That we had fun is kind of the point, isn't? Let's try this a different way. What published campaigns, in the 5E period, do you prefer?
17:30 I ripped in to an adventure writer for this, years ago. His adventure, in the character motivations section, had an entry that said "Who cares? They're adventurers, they get involved in this stuff all the time!" That's not good enough. It's why so many play reports I read had players apathetically hanging around with nothing to do at the starting point. Who tried to flee when the first encounter kicked off. There was nothing for the players to be invested in.
There's a balance. The adventure/DM need to present reasonable motivations for the players to have their characters hook on. But the players also need to play their part after all I suspect "screw this I'm going back to farming" is a perfectly reasonable response to goblins attacking level 1 characters, but that doesn't make for a very good game. Feng Shui is great with the rule book itself in the character creation chapter has: "At the beginning of your first adventure, and perhaps at other intervals as the series progresses, the GM expects you to buy in - to find a reason why your character decides to engage with the dangerous situation at hand by going off to do action movie things."
Let me tell you how I fixed this, my players are at level 11 and they are in the middle of Rise of Tiamat and they are known in the land as the “Magnificent Six” who saved the land’s treasure, also they already have a good relationship with Ulder Ravengard. So when they arrived to Baldur’s Gate and the Flaming Fist asked for help, my players did it because of Ulder. The way I did it needs some work, because the adventure was created for 1st level characters but I like to run these adventures like skeletons in my world so I’m changing most encounters and beefing up everything to be challenging for an 11 level party, but it makes more sense for the heroes of the land to save Elturel than just an unnamed party
Yeah really liked this one. It's essentially a 'portal' fantasy adventure set in DnD, and the portal happens to be Hell! It's also quite Edgy for current DnD, dealing with deep themes and sending the players into a warzone between Demons and Devils. I still feel they could maybe structure the 'Middle' bit of the adventure a bit better - in SKT they just gave a few different middle options, and in this they give two different paths, but it would be nice if they tried a more sandboxy mid section, maybe with a map to move around (although the map they gave was pretty fun).
This kind of adventure is super easy to steal for homebrew world. Skipping the BG part. Everything is little disconnected and easy to modify. Running this by the book would drive me insane. Pretty sure that was not what wotc wanted, but it is there.
There are is one reason I can think of for why a devil would not want its True Name to be revealed: It allows a player character to write a contract and bind a devil into service though the terms and conditions stipulated by the player. Sure, the devil gets a contract, but they get the raw end of that deal when they are used to giving it.
There's lots I love about this adventure, but that opening chapter is just bad. The railroading you mentioned to start it off followed by the opening fight that is a TPK waiting to happen right off the bat. I'm not against a tough low-level encounter but railroading them into one when it's the very first encounter doesn't seem right. A hugely dramatic event like Elturel done off screen. The whole idea of what happens to the Companion falls flat because players have never seen it and don't really know or likely care of its significance. And if you want to use XP over milestones you better have some extra encounters ready. It just feels like the events to get the party to Hell is poorly thought out and poorly edited. Yes, yes, as DM I can change lots of this, and I will, but it still doesn't excused the poor writing to start with. If it's true the Baldur's Gate backdrop was only because the upcoming video game that's too bad because it doesn't really play a role in the overall arc. This adventure would be better served starting in Elturel and having the party present as major events happen.
EPISODE IDEA: Hearing you talking about session 0, how about an episode about making groups for specific adventures / campaigns? So usually now DMs allow quite a lot of free form in character creation, but adventures can be quite good if there is more guidance and purpose for a campaign. So maybe the DM asks all the players to be Dwarves as they've discovered the location of the Sacred Hammer of the Dwarven People. Or maybe all the players are good and deity aligned but have to deal with Demons (as you say). Really directing groups, and having themes for parties, can really help everyone involved. Best guys great vids.
You as the DM create freeform gaming by altering the adventure as written as necessary. You don't need the written adventure to be freeform. All that accomplishes is making the module brain damage for the DM to consume. The more thoroughly the DM understands the adventure as written the easier it is to make alterations or adapt to unexpected actions by the players.
This comment is what i was thinking, it keeps things exceptionally simple in the book and if you run it point to point like a railroad youll get just that, I have a few new players in the game im running but I have some good character backstory that im going to run them around Baldur's gate for a while longer just to touch on their backstories, and then link something from their backstories to Avernus to really give them some things off of the beaten path to do
"if they don't go along with it, just kill them" always felt like a writer joke to Me. Akin to, "well, if you're players don't want to play, get other players"
2:50 Heeyy I'm playing Mad Mage =P Tbh I picked it for my group because it's my first time being a full time DM, after our last one got married and moved to NY. I thought that since it was straight up just a bunch of dungeons there was less room for me to screw up and all mechanical work had been done really, I just had to drop players in and run encounters/RP. DotMM seemed kinda like easy mode so I thought it'd be best.
@@LakeVermilionDreams Since its still my first foray into full time DMing I don't have a lot to compare it too, that being said my players and I are having lots of fun in a good ol' fashioned massive dungeon romp. Our last DM did a lot of open-ended sandbox stuff, and it was difficult for the group to find our footing sometimes. We ended up floundering a lot, or just TPKing on a random encounters. That sometimes lead to frustration and the flushing of lots of work on the DMs and PCs sides down the tubes. Surprisingly for a relatively straight up dungeon, not as much murderhoboism as I would've expected but I guess that's on me as well (not making every encounter a strictly kill or be killed affair), but I also got lucky and have a pretty good group of players. We're actually about to "clear" the first level and the players are all excited to level up. My players and I have also decided that since DotMM is sooooo large, with so many levels encompassing basically every tier of play (levels 5 to 20), we're going to do an on again off again kinda thing. Doing 3 or so levels of DotMM, then swapping seats to let one of the players get a chance to run a smaller adventure, then back to DotMM for another handful of levels. I really like the idea of letting everyone get their own chance behind the screen, and I love relaxing a bit and being able to play a character myself.
@@CthulhusDream My players cleared out the Grick nest for the Xanathar, earning themselves the password for the guild's outposts on level two. Now they're down on level three, and Skullport, and using that password to infiltrate Xanathar's HQ (which I borrowed from Dragon Heist.) One of my players keeps mentioning that the guild's under bad leadership. I think he wants to be the next Xanathar.
@@TheodoreMinick My players have been pretty diplomatic with Xan's minions, doing their best to avoid fights. They haven't won their favor but have proven themselves worthy enough not to be directly messed with. However, they "accidentally" tricked the one outpost into getting themselves eaten by the grick alpha, haven't decided what consequences to make out of that yet though.
@@CthulhusDream I will say this: Be careful with Halleth. He can end up dragging the party very deep into level two, or make all the fights until he gets his revenge super easy. My players were halfway through level two in record time, and ended up skipping all the really cool encounters. If I had it to do again, I'd ignore his super tracking trait, and he wouldn't join in on fights unless paid. Or they just find his beaten and mangled corpse in the pit.
I am playing Mad Mage and it’s really great. All the player buy in you need is to tell them what Undermountain is and ask them why they want to adventure there.
I like how Dresden Files deals with True names You can deal in pieces of your name I think in the first book Harry bargains away his middle name to a demon
I hate this book. Hate it. Like the Waterdeep books before it, they might as well retitle it "YOUR CHARACTERS DON'T MATTER". Instead of doing anything relevant in hell you're basically bargaining with creatures that can eat you. You do minor dirty work to earn the favor of the Characters Who Matter so they can do the big things. It's so determined to pay lip service to Joe Manofthejello that it won't even consider maybe the players would want to take the Hand of Vecna, or any other item of Arkhan's or his tryhard crew, for themselves. There's a lot of Development sections and not one considers "What if the players get the Hand of Vecna?".
I can agree with the most of your post, but do we really need to have our hands held (heh heh) for if a player gets the hand of vecna?! We have the item in the DMG.
@@LakeVermilionDreams There's still story-based developments based around the items the characters may have in other characters' presence. You're telling me if the players kill Edgelord Von Dragonsephiroth and take the Hand for themselves that won't change the behavior or bargaining concepts of any other devil or demon in this campaign?
Then they have it. I don't see the issue, they gave Arkhan stats so you can kill him. He has the hand, and some armor, you kill him you get those. They also tell you he's a champion of Tiamatt, and guess what they put her stats in their too, so you kill her boy, consequences, but you can do it. Also by the end you are negotiating or defeating or redeeming a Duke of hell, how much more influential can you get? There's even an option where you try to rule in her place, though as you're just a bunch of punks from Baldur's Gate who managed to get this far, and there are eight other layers worth of devils, good luck. And I mean how would Zariel act if one of the PC's had the hand of Vecna? A) As DM that's kind of your call. B) would it really change anything for her? It has access to some spells that are powerful for adventurers, but largely aren't going to affect her much, it makes the user strong (and evil), she's even immune to the extra cold damage it provides (as are many other demons and devils). She might look twice, but I don't think it's a game changer on its own. The fact that the person wielding it killed a champion of Tiamat might give her (and others) pause, but I think the adventure provides you with enough context to account for that as a DM without holding your hand. In this instance the Hand itself isn't terribly important. I don't get this criticism. You start off as nobodies, and then the fate of not one, but two major cities is in your hands. The book clearly lays out that if the PC's do nothing, Elturel, and Baldur's Gate are doomed. No one else is going to get this done in time. And of course you have to go from power to power negotiating, you enter hell at level 5, the whole point is just like being a devil in hell you start at the bottom and do whatever it takes to get strong enough you don't have to negotiate anymore. Will you be morally compromised along the way, will hell get to you, can you redeem a powerful entity, can you save a city (or two) without losing your soul? These are the questions the adventure is asking, but it also leaves a ton o wiggle room to do other things. What kind of adventure do you want? Would you prefer it if by the end the PC's were directly powerful enough to reshape hell, or send the city back? When saying the PC's don't matter, do you mean that they are not driving the plot, or that if you took them out nothing would change? Because on the first you may have a point, but by the middle third of the adventure they have no one making decisions for them but them, and much of the end is entirely up to them how or if, they save Elturel. And as I've said, if the PC's don't take part the adventure has its own conclusion.
@@Lurklen They statted out Jarlaxle too, a CR16 character in a levels 1-5 adventure. They seem to do that, for some reason, Arkhan is also a CR beyond the adventure's capacity. I guess because the alternative is writing "Arkhan wins lol". Besides, "then they have it" is such a cop out. They have the Hand of Vecna, not a +2 longsword. They have the hand of a literal god, one of the greatest artifacts in the game. How DEVILS and DEMONS would react in the presence of such an item is a thing that SHOULD be noted. Would they try to claim it for themselves? Bargain for it? Report it to Asmodeus? They offer up every other noteworthy item that could be in the players' possession in the Developments section.
@@B.-T. Right, but even Jarlaxle wasn't unbeatable in that adventure. He's got barely over 100hp, it wouldn't be easy and if you are playing him right he's not going to put himself in a bad situation, but it's far from impossible. I mean C.R against solo enemies is kind of a joke, Arkhan wouldn't be that hard to take out for a decent sized, well equipped party of level 10's, he doesn't even have legendary actions, and his Dex is awful. You zerg rush him and have enough damage he will go down pretty fast. (Though him and the literal army at his back would be another matter) They literally tell you his tactics and they include an exit straegy if he gets overwhelmed . He's supposed to be a challenge, but he and his dudes are not unassailable. As I said, the hand is good but not all powerful. I mean Zariel's CR 26, but she's beatable too, though they warn the DM, who should pass it on to the PC's that it's gonna be a hell of a fight and they should bring allies. Both of these characters are presented as challenging so the PC's don't just steamroll them like they do most other things. They are big deal monsters, because we are in hell (Notably Arkhan doesn't have half the abilities he should given his actual classes, because player classes are really tough, multi-classes even more so, and when players fight them they often struggle.) Both of them are also more interesting as potential allies, or enemies to fight later, in the campaign after this one, or in the fall out from this campaign's end. By making you deal with them now, it can help set up further adventures for this party later, ones which can carry on for levels 14-20. Would people even know it was the hand? Maybe if they were especially well read and knew the lore, but otherwise it's just a grotty evil hand. I mean if the PC does something with it it might clue some people in, but as I said, against Zariel it's not even that impressive. Also the items they refer to are all related to the story and specific people in the story, the hand is tangential, and it's not likely that people are going to get it, because if they meet Arkhan it's probably because he's going to be an ally. And nobody seems to be making a big deal of it while it's in Arkhan's possession, I'm not sure the questions you're asking need to be answered by the adventure, the hand isn't relevant to the story itself. None of the major players need it or what comes with it. But I mean sure, some devils and demons would probably try to take the PC's out over it, if they had it, which they would have had to beat a tough enemy and his cohorts, meaning they are a significant threat. But I mean if your party gets an artifact, much of the story centers around that now. Like I said if they have the hand, they have it. Now they get all the problems that come with it. That's on the DM, and is out of the scope of the adventure, which I think gives you enough to follow through with consequences. (I mean you kill Arkhan there's TIamat to deal with, they stat her too, but you wanna take her on I suggest siding with someone bigger. Though I've heard of parties taking her out with a bunch of 10's and 12's.)
"The devil started at her side, Comely, and tall, and black as jet. 'I am Malespina's bride; Has he come hither yet?' ... 'You lie, he died with me to-night.' 'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.' 'My dear, I never lie outright.'" - from A Ballad of Hell by John Davidson
Hmm... sounds like a decent tool box for adventures in Hell but the adventure itself needs work. you shouldn't be ENDING an adventure IN HELL at 13th level, you should be STARTING there. just my opinion. thanks for the informative Review!
A great day to resurrect upon the incarnate when thyn soul manifests upon death because who is to say that you have to be a "still living, still breathing, and still mortal" human/other within Avernus. "If one's soul is willing enough, then it shall manifest into power."
I am planning on using this adventure as a high level quest. I have ran both Tyranny of Dragons with one group and Storm King's Thunder with another. I am going to combine those parties to run through Descent into Avernus as a 12-14th level adventure. The first several encounters are by far the weakest part of this adventure. Overall, I agree with your review of this product. Although I do like the Baldur's Gate section for setting information. Keep up the great work fellows.
26:50 He touches on that and ways to get around it in game. Use a True Name for contracts that is close, but not identical to their actual name. Or a provision that if you attempt to share the name or record it in any way, your soul is immediately forfeit. That could lead to some unintentional "suicide by devil" if someone casts detect thoughts on you when you're thinking about the name. Not sure which person would be killed, if not both, in that situation.
Shame it's only their to tie in baldurs gate. The dead three arent really a big part of the story. But they do have a small quest which is at the very beginning of the book. The statblocks and things that happen when you meet the cultists mean it wouldn't be too hard to tie them into the rest of the adventure with a little work.
Jim's point at around ten minutes underlines a larger issue with morality tales in D&D. In a world where you speak to a god and get their power, go to the plane of Good or Evil, and present the players with creatures generated from them, the moral ambiguity cannot come from these sources. It has to come from the smaller interactions with common races. Angels and Demons leave no space for moral ambiguity. The morally grey is a distinctly human condition. Or dwarf, elf, halfling, whatever.
Not every PC or NPC really knows the full details about the Outer Planes. And if you got characters/ people who feel they have no real choice in their action, then they will make the best deal they can. AD&D2e " Planescape " box set campaign setting covers it in more detail. Most petty bullies working law enforcement or politicians may only end up at the Gate Town that lends to the Lower Planes. Or after some time in the Outlands will get Reincarnate back into a humanoid race that matches their soul's alignment. Now a pimp that get all the whores working for him hook on drugs and beats them bloody. Well, yeah he is going to Hades at the lest and becoming a Larvae farmed by a Night Hag. But they don't " Care."
@@krispalermo8133 Right. So, there is no moral ambiguity. There are things that are "right" and things that are "wrong" And sometimes, it isn't even a question of whether or not you are doing something right or wrong. Take goblins, for instance. They are destined to spend eternity in torment perpetrated by Gruumsh. The point is, the worlds of Dungeon and Dragons all essentially morally absolutist. The only ambiguity comes from interactions between the races, and that is often sullied by a mortal's realization that the world has these moral absolutes.
@@kdolo1887 Morally ambiguity comes from TSR AD&D creative teams and the authors that wrote the Dragon Lance and Forgotten Realms novel. It was normal for lawful neutral/ good dwarves to kill the babies of goblins and orcs. That is a complete evil act for "us" humans it kill infants . But in D&D racial gods are real and they claim the souls of their creation. I look at life as this, we start off as smaller than the point of a pen. Nine months later we weight in between 5lb to 10lbs, and then after 20 years we can end up as 5ft.8in 200lb beasts that can toss around and break a dog's neck as it was nothing but an after though. How much do you remember between the age of three to five years of age ? Between moment of great Fun/ happiness and of great sadness what to you remember of being in grade school ? Most mid 25 year olds barely remember anything about being in High School. Nothing happen worth remembering ? Or they were bullied to such a point they hated being around other teenagers and they didn't pay any attention what was going around them. Is that any different then a fiend from the lower planes ? I won't remember my last life, my pass sins or what I have loss. And I will not even be aware of my own infancy in my rebirth. I had to argue with religious nut jobs to defend my right to play D&D, and my mother was a train paralegal , she knew what is require to having a case to bring before a judge. And she was training us kids this since we were eight years old going to public grade schools. She was also the type of woman to judge you guilty till you are proven to be guilty. If you are proven innocence , you still get punish, just as not as bad. In D&D you really have had to Earn you place in " Hell " by your own freewill. Side note: some of our current New Age Theist, their bull crap goes back to the late 1890's and early 1900's. " Attuned Vibration Wave Frequency " the mental/ emotional intent behind ones' actions dictate the resonates of the soul/ spirit. Balance: Outlands of Neutrality , Reincarnate to a race that closest share your soul's alignment. High Frequency: Higher/ Upper Planes. Low Frequency Vibration Resonates: " Welcome to Hell !" If the frequency raises to a higher level after being strip of the negative charge, it raises to more of a flat line pulse. It is sad that you have the run of the mill murder hobo, compare that to IRL history. Then being told that your short, brief, brutal life you were little more than an animal. Unworthy of Salvation and below the notice of Hell, doom to be reincarnated with no talents to show for in the next life. But when it comes down to D&D, it is all about what type of game the DM runs and what the players want to deal with. For a More " Spiritual " warfare game system just go with White Wolf World of Darkness: Mage, Werewolf, Wraith, and Demon. book " Realms of the Living Dead," written in 1926 covers IRL belief regarding what the Catholic Church Mystics thought they knew what was really going on with " the spirit world " that they kept out of the normal populations hands. I swear White Wolf rip this book off when they wrote the Wraith game core rule book. What it comes down to, the common belief of a given church creates a demi plane," heaven" for the believers. Those who lack a church drift in a state of Purgatory Limbo till their life experiences shake through them like Nightmare as their memories break down and then they a reincarnated. " Some bars feel haunted, senior recreation centers never feel empty even when no one is there." Hell ? It just takes a little longer to strip the soul down for rebirth. And there are " Spirit Courts " by many human cultural names. I had to deal with Southern Baptist when I was younger. It is all about belief and bull shit. But if heaven and hell does not exists as the Christian says it does, then how can they use Eternal Hell Fire as a Punishment for the "unfaithful ?" Then again the unfaithful don't believe in Hell.
There is a section in the book where it says that the players should come together in a session zero and create their characters. Part of this process is choosing a scheme they were part of that brought them together as a group (A Failed Coup, a Heist etc.) Then there are some NPC's who are rolled to have knowledge of this event and its blackmail/leverage to get the players to help. So that whole concern should be taken care of as there are pages of information for making the group for this campaign.
You know, considering that D&D claims to be the "Worlds Greatest Role Playing Game" and has enjoyed SUCH a massive resurgence in popularity, I don't know how excusable it is that we keep getting these poorly put together campaign books from WotC. I realize you guys had some good things to say about this, and i'm sure it has its merits, but this book sounds like an absolute mess and a hugely wasted opportunity. Wasn't one of the biggest complaints of the earliest 5e modules that they were formatted EXTREMELY poorly, and required way too much work for most people to run effectively? How have they not figured this out by now? As someone that has run A LOT of D&D5e, if I want to spend a bunch of time putting the pieces of a campaign together, I just write my own adventure. The content in these books isn't good enough to justify spending all that time fixing it, honestly. It just really says a lot when games written by MUCH smaller teams with way less budget to work with can put out better, more consistent content that you don't have to fix for them.
Hearing about this game has me wondering, does it really break down at all how despicable obliterating a soul for temporary gain is? Because this is a world where, undeniably, people have eternal life through their souls. It is a far worse act than murder to rob them of that.
If we are to think logically about it, we are essentially tormenting or even destroying a person's immortal soul. A person may like 50, 100 or even a few centuries. That is really nothing compared to the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000+ yrs you are stealing away from then when you destroy their soul. In short, it really an incalculable act of evil; where mortal crimes such as murder, torture, stealing, raping, lying etc can't really compare because tampering with someone's soul is on such an entirely different level that any attempt at comparison becomes simply pointless. In short, once you start dealing with souls for anything other than saving them, it is the quickest way for your alignment to immediately drop to evil :P
I 100% agree it's instant Evil aligned transform into a Fiend permanently level consequences from me. And even discussing doing such a thing even to the soul of a genocidal murderer makes my Soul hurt. I can't condone this even being on the table personally. Of course in my head cannon for all media a Soul CAN'T be DESTROYED only scattered to reform and be reincarnated eventually elsewhere in the multiverse.... Still absolutely the most evil thing possible! The book has enough great stuff to pick apart and use but run it as is? No. I would only want to go to hell at high level with a FANTASTIC motivation and difficult but CLEAR options to do so morally and remain good aligned! and perhaps steal and save as many souls while you are there as possible. Or better yet; "break" the corrupt system of Hell itself and rescue these lost souls to forget, be purified and reincarnated elsewhere!!!!
THIS IS WHAT I DID AS A ONE SHOT TO HELP BRING MY CHARACTERS INTO BALDURS GATE FEEL FREE TO USE :) I had two of my players start their adventure by smuggling artifacts into the city under the guise of Ale traders from Waterdeep from The Silver Spectre Tavern (Their previous characters adaptation of Trollskull Tavern) and when they finished their run they got a drink. They watched a few of the “immortal races” (non human races) get bullied by the flaming fist and one of the npc family members of one of the PC’s was arrested! They were looking for connections to break him out and were told if they found Tamiens house and recovered a Scroll for a kingpin in the lower city he would help the party release their friend. They went to tamiens house only to find him murdered and eviscerated by the cult of the dead three. They investigated but did (poorly) haha. They found a half orc woman (Aurayaun i believe is her name from the Blade and Stars) with her intestines splayed on the floor and she was still alive. The party mercy killed her (POSSIBLE DARK SECRET) as I had an invisible imp watching them at all times (which they found at the end as it quickly darted out the window) The next day a detective was investigating the house and with some persuasion roles he allowed them to help. They found that Tamien was a member of the Dead Three as well as Aurayaun and they were both deemed Traitors of Bhaal and were murdered for it. The players then went out to an angry crowd demanding answers and determined announcing the murder had no connection to the dead three would make anyone who was connected to the murder watching in the crowd furious. They were right and he stormed of CHASE INSUED and they captured him. Gave them an in with a City Watch Detective Rylin Holcraft (who was paid by a certain patriar family to look into the murders in the lower city) and he gave them a sending stone to contact him. Then a druid from the park bumped into the characters and revealed a piece of bark with the symbol of bhaal on it and said “Where some wash themselves clean, blood flows underneath” (reference to the bath house) then I explained as they entered the Splurging Sturgeon proud of what they had done, the viewpoint zoomed out and far in the distance the light of The Companion went black. The detective will have to recruit them to aid the flaming fist in investigating more murders and in doing this prequel made them WANT to find the dead three. Even if it means aiding the assholes in the Flaming Fist :) a few of the players also had visions/nightmares of elturel being sent down to a “plane of fire and violence” they also helped a few refugees and are now concerned with helping find out what happened to Elturel ALSO FEEL FREE TO USE THIS! EDIT: Tamien was dead in his apartment completely opened up with intestines hung from the ceiling half orc was laying half conscious in his study clutching the scroll. Both were followers of The Dead Three.
One issue I had with the book is that it starts with the adventure chapters, and all the details about the setting and context are afterwards in the book. Nothing I saw told me I should read the details of Baldur's Gate first (or even that these would be there). I read the first three chapters before I got frustrated and flipped ahead. Then after reading all the stuff that gave me context, I had to go back and reread those chapters. So I wasted a ton of time.
My personal cannon is Souls can't be destroyed at worse scattered and reform elsewhere after a while. Having said that 'destroying' a soul for any reason is an incalculable act of evil to me and would not only instantly shift alignment to Evil. It would instantly make that person a Fiend. 'Destroying' a soul is worse than any other act of evil I can't condone any circumstance where anyone would be okay with even discussing the potential destruction of a soul even the soul of a genocidal maniac!!!! Still the book has great Baulders gate stuff, creatures, items, vehicle rules and more so It's worth getting. Would I run it or play it as is: Absolutely not! However the art and other things in the book and the ability to pick things out to use for homebrew is fantastic. Like you said railroading and "just kill them" is unacceptable from a DM of any skill level and it's appalling to be encouraged in a printed official book. The knowledge it adds to Avernis as a location is also useful for other games. I also can't morally agree with a thing that encourages play as evil characters over good aligned or condones such behavior. Neutral anti heros okay. Discuss and perhaps run an evil campaign among friends sure. But to go to Hell without VERY strong conviction at a reasonably high level and at least OPTIONS to play morally, and escape saving as many souls as possible along the way? Sigh. It also seems like it has many disjointed issues yet overall still has enough great about it to be useful to own. Just be prepared to overhaul or pick it apart RATHER than run as is. That's my review added on personally. Great video as well guys!
To save a " Soul " you will need a Helm of Opposite Alignment, or a Rod of Limited Wish. In D&D once a " soul " has been drain of all of it's energy, it is then absorb into it's Native Plane relating to it's alignment. Or " Reincarnate " back out into the Great Wheel of life, death, and rebirth. All that the infernal machine does is burn off the low frequency waves that keeps the soul attuned to the lower planes. Once the soul is burnt clean, then nothing is grounding it to the lower planes and it just drifts to a more Neutral Plane.
Read through the book and it's... not good? It's really weird, with a bunch of random info dumps and an uneven amount of content, and why does Lulu even exist. You can really tell this book had way too many writers. And you can tell the Avernus stuff is so light because immediately after some writers put up paid content to expand on it. Some of the individual encounters could work outside of it, though.
That part worries me. This module is already compromised to tie into the upcoming video game. But if authors find more value in skimping on the module and saving parts of the book for dmsguild, that's very sad for the consumer.
I’m running an evil campaign, and presenting the players’ time in Baldur’s Gate like Grand Theft Auto. It’s a sandbox where they work their way up from petty criminals to crime bosses. They may end up not even going to The Nine Hells. ...nah, who am I kidding? They’re going to The Nine Hells.
This adventure is basically everything I dislike about modern adventures,it's basically just a railroad for majority of it,to the point where it's absolutely ridiculous and then once the players basically submit to being on rails the game does a full on 180 and becomes bit more free form for a while. That kind of stuff simply does not work because you've been basically threatening to murder the party for the first parts of the adventure if they don't do exactly what the adventure wants them to do and then suddenly it doesn't tell them what to do.
Love the episode as far as food for thought, but I hard disagree with a lot of the critiques. This book is beautiful and though every book has flaws I see it as one of WOTCs best.
Honestly, this is why Malfeas is the most popular RPG Hell in fiction. Only a fool would get involved with any demon at all, those creatures objetive is always malicious, so you either betray then first, smite them as soon as you see them or scape. Serves of Malfeas are a concret and relatively save source of power that even mortal sorcerers can rely on, while Citizens are more worried with their personal goals and obsessions while the Unquestionables are simple things one must avoid at all cost. While getting involved with the Master of Games or the Living Tower are risky even for Exalted they are more personable, goal oriented and interesting due to their idiosyncraties then some randon Balor of Hell that is Evil just because.
My group found this adventure to be too linear for fun. You say that there’s places for the characters to have a sandbox, but without any meaningful consequences for the players other than the single one outlined in the section that really has to be railroaded into... My group has given this a 4/10.
I believe both this module and tomb of annihilation would have benefited from taking more time to get to know the city that is a part of the adventure that way the players have more at stake and more bonds within the place they must defend.
that is cool that they true names is at least a thing. i remember there being a true name mage in 3.0 and now there's a wizard in the new unearthed arcana. itll be cool to see what they do with that
doesnt the character creation appendix say that the characters have lived in baldurs gate for a while and also made an enemy of a baldurs gate noble house?
So going off your idea about the contracts and stuff i kind of want to run a game now where devils, dæmons, and the like have some actual businesses that are in town for their specialties of contracted jobs and stuff, with “your soul after death” being the collateral basically, or trades in “limited” or “restricted” goods and such, maybe making the person do a slightly dark task as payment to slowly corrupt them. Its like if the person pays they get money, enemies to legally kill, or other goods, if the person defaults they get that plus a bonus soul. And if nothing else they would slowly lead honest people toward dark choices due to the ease of doing so. Then have angels and modrons such maybe splitting between offering blessings, teaching classes, more lawful/good type contracts than the devils/dæmons, medic stations, houses for homeless groups, AA... Also love the deathrun race across planes idea you had haha, maybe you need to find a powersource for/from each plane to keep going adding in a scavenger part you need to do between each place, maybe having to decide between getting enough for multiple laps compared to just rushing each section.
One way to get the players to Avernus is to have them be in a tight spot, and a devil comes in offering help, in exchange for having them fight a battle in the Blood War. Either this happens in the middle of an ongoing campaign, or as the backstory for the campaign that starts in hell. The latter having the advantage of potentially having the characters all having been recruited in this way separately, and are put together as part of unit when the time comes for them to honor their agreement. The game starts in media rez, with the party being thrown into a battle (start them at, like, sixth level or the like). Then, when the battle is over, the party informs the devil in charge that they've honored their agreement. The devil agrees, congratulating them on fulfilling their bargain, and then says, "okay, bye!". Because, as it turns out, their contracts didn't say anything about being owed a trip BACK to the Prime Material Plane. Stranding the party in Avernus, and forcing them to find their own way home.
There was a joke back in AD&D " Planescape " days. the difference between a Living Mortal in Hell and a Planar," Living dead Soul." If the Mortal gets killed in Hell and that Soul was not Evil, then that Soul Raise to one of the higher Planes. Planar, you are already dead, good or evil, you are still stuck in Hell. On the other hand, when I am playing wizards, of a " Neutral " alignment. As soon as I can cast " Lesser Planar Binding," I start making " deals." all across the Lower Planes. Dealing with Lolth the Drow Queen Spider Goddess is the worst. Her followers are nearly every where.
old AD&D player here... did you say "sending 3rd or 4th level characters into Hell?" LOL that should last about 5 minutes max. What is this? I am starting to wonder if 5e is an elaborate version of Choose Your Own Adventure. "The breakdown of the path?" Why is there a path? That's not a D&D module... they used to provide a location and let the players explore it. A problem with D&Ds conception of Hell is that it doesn't match Dante and the devils sometimes act like Klingons instead of as devils who only exist to test and punish sinners.
Devil: I can grant you immortality. PC: Great, I have a very difficult quest before I can rest, let's do it. Devil: Turns PC to stone: That is the finest marble I think I've ever made, it is in effect immortal. You'll have a long time to think about it now.
It seems like the actual descent into Avernus is awesome, while the Baldur's Gate part is lacking Honestly, I think tweaking the beginning is the best way to run it. I'm planning my next campaign right now, and I'm going to start with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and basically replace the Baldur's Gate section with that. It'll take a bit of tweaking and peppering in Avernus plot threads, but I think it'll end with a much more enjoyable experience for both me and my players
Regarding treating war machines like animals; my DM decided that because they weren’t truly alive, and weren’t armor they could be targeted by reduce without resistance.
Hey Web DM I went out to game store in Bathurst and just bought the book and it so eye catching really cool. Can i ask some advice in wargaming this adventure.
The time has passed. Join my crusade to destroy existence itself! look for me in the dreaded place that swine and ignorance dwells. Also I do freestyles! ...they are also cursed.
Maybe the distance between any two places in Avernus is determined by the paperwork you are traveling under. If you can get a better contract, you can shorten your travel times.
Asmodeus is the lord of lies. He is a being of law and evil and if you take guide to hell as fact he is the being of law and evil. Those two facts tell me lies are lawful.
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You guys really need to do a Githyanki episode!
"The sandbox freedom can become a kind of paralysis."
That's what happened to me in real life
Well I wasn’t expecting to get called out this early in the morning.
Basically what happens after high school or college.
It's like trying to pick a flavour of ice cream.
Didn't Jim have a desire to run a game where a Devotion Paladin, War Cleric, Fighter Acolyte, and Zealot Barbarian go to hell once? I think it was in one of the paladin videos. This seems like the time to do that.
I immediately thought of that too. But then I listened to their issues with it in the first 20 minutes and I was like no, I will run my own hell campaign instead.
He did and its my favorite idea theyve ever talked about. Because its metal as hell
@@DoctorDocMD A devotion paladin, war cleric, fighter acolyte, and a zealot barbarian walk into a lower plane.
The barbarian failed his will save, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability.
Rip and tear!
Adventure books would benefit greatly, by having a "Session Zero" section, to help the DM (and the group) start the game more smoothly
That is... a good idea, damn
that would be helpful yeah
As in, what pretty much every other publisher considers a basic feature? Yeah, it'd be good if Wizards did more of that.
Very much needed. I had a character I had in mind, was really excited to play, and meshed well with the party comp, then we hit the dark secret. And then the plot hook. And I suddenly realized that my character didn't fit in from an RP standpoint at all. Had to basically scrap the backstory to have better motivations/reasons to be there and take orders etc.
Agreed.
yea, it feels like they rely on dm's guild and the early podcasts/streams for that
The writers admitted that they had to squeeze in Bauldr's Gate last minute once the Bauldr's Gate video game was announced in an interview with DnD Beyond so it makes sense the beginning was a bit lacking.
I hope this doesn't become a trend like how half the video games these days come out unfinished.
Merry good news is there is always way to fix it
That's disappointing since the Baldur's Gate part was what I was most excited about.
@@toshomni9478 the stuff in it about baldur's gate at the back of the book is good, it just has little to do with the adventure as a whole.
Yo Merry. Have you been looking at Magic and Comic books lately? D&D is just the next fandom after the previously mentioned two and video games to be tossed on the chopping block, drawn, quartered and squeezed for as much disposable income as possible.
Players: we refuse!
*flaming fist kill the party*
GM: okay everyone, chapter 2, your dead and in hell.
Enjoy your afterlife as a Lemure.
I'm actually really into this as an idea. I mean the adventure is already a railroad right? Why not just Jonah and the Whale the whole adventure?
@@danieldosso2455 I've been thinking of doing it too
I have a level 2 party playing the Acquisitions inc module. I’ve already told them if they wipe on this I’m just dropping their screaming souls into Avernus and they smack face first into the plot city
@@danieldosso2455 well, the issue I have with that is, why not just start the adventure in hell and avoid the arbitrary flaming fist nonsense.
I still cannot BELIEVE the adventure has Elturel fall into hell off-screen.
Potentially the coolest, most dramatic session 1s you could possibly have for a campaign-being in Elturel when the Companion goes dark and the city is pulled into Avernus...nah. NAH. Let's just go to Baldur's Gate and fuck around with the Flaming Fist for a while. It's not like we literally all showed up for a hell adventure and are excited for that part.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable adjustment to the module. It would also prevent the necessity of the book saying "if the players don't go along with the story, kill them" if they are inside of a city that planeshifts into a hell dimension. DM's have full control over the story and don't have to tell it exactly as written. Some players may be bummed about not getting to hang out in Baldur's Gate, but you could reuse that section for a different campaign. Or start in Baldur's Gate, put a plot hook in Elturel, and once they get there, everything goes to hell... literally.
Osmium is right, I’m running dragon heist and all my players started at 10th even though it’s made for 1-5. Use the setting, take characters that you like and then doctor it up how you see fit.
@@osmium6832 now that, sounds like a great idea.
I still like most of the wotc official books, even though they are flawed most of the time. They usually have something cool and worth while in them, wether it's setting, NPC's, story ideas, mechanics, or maps/dungeons ect. They do usually require work, but I don't expect anyone to produce an adventure that's perfect for everyone.
I've seen a 3rd party adventure that had a character that was charmed into a marriage, kinda messed up. Some people have issues with magical mind controled rape. But if you change a few things it can still be salvaged.
@@osmium6832 Yeah! That's 1000% my intention for if/when I run this. I've always been happy to rip apart adventures and modules to suit my wants and needs, but I also have a lot more spare time than a lot of DMs I know. The criticism has more to do with folks in mind who specifically buy the modules so that they don't have to spend a lot of time prepping, and it just really surprises me that wotc passed up this really cool game experience.
That said, I don't run in the Forgotten Realms and don't know anyone who does in my personal loop, so it is definitely possible that Baldur's Gate is really cool and special to a lot of people in a way that I don't fully understand/appreciate. It's obvious folks have a lot of affection for it, I might just be missing that key bit of perspective that makes starting in Baldur's Gate really genuinely awesome for folks! Though even in that case, your latter idea still beats the module as-written for me by a landslide.
@@TheHalcyonCalamity I think the allure of the town has to do with the fact that alongside Planescape: Torment, Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 are in the top 3 best selling and most critically acclaimed PC D&D games ever made. It was many video gamer's first experience with D&D and brought quite a few people to try TTRPG's for the first time, so I imagine there's a lot of nostalgia for the town. This may have not have any relevance to your particular group, which is fine, but it's kind of a big deal to the customer base as a whole.
A physics professor of mine actually said he was playing Mad Mage, top to bottom. So it got some mileage with some people, certainly.
LoopDeLoop it was made for a very certain player for sure.
I'm actually playing through it as a player. It is an interesting beast but has been super fun thus far. I say this as someone who is relatively new to the hobby and am absolutely dreadful at puzzle solving and directions so probably not the intended audience for it.
Agreed, I started in during AL no less in tier 2 and we're almost to tier 4 now and getting pretty far down. Granted we skipped a bit of content and took a detour to Celestia but I feel the books are what the party and dm make of em.
I’ve been DMing DotMM for several months now, and I love just about everything about it. It has a lot of fun stuff jam-packed into it, and the indented & bolded format that Chris Perkins used makes running it at the table really easy compared to the dense paragraphs of hard-to-find information that Descent Into Avernus uses.
I'm DMing a group going through DOTMM. We're currently on the third level, and the players are about to topple the Xanathar guild.
I forsee this adventure being the center of multiple threads on r/rpghorrorstories.
Tony Voegtle
I’ve read through the book, and it is not really good for Tier 1 or Tier 2 parties. 😅
@@michaelmarksman743 I just bought the book. I have not read it yet. My party are currently level 12. Is the book and story easy enough to convert to this higher level play?
Kyle Kopac from having read it, it’s actually IDEAL for high-level play.
I’d say get them into Avernus as soon as possible. Once they’re there, LV12 characters are going to have a blast tackling some of the higher-CR devils and demons as an equal 🙂
why?
@@georgeryan8267 in the beginning where the book instructs the DM to basically kill the party if they don't immediately go on the given quest.
One reason it might not be super HELL is because there are 8 levels that are worse. If the top layer is for the least awful then it makes sense for it to not be super HELL
"I need the blizzard frost of Hell for only the Void has the power to claim my soul." - Aasimar/Paladin of the Void + all sub-classes in Paladin because the Void is everything and everything is the Void.
Wow I can't believe Pruitt said the N word
N U M E N E R A
Yes, totally uncalled for. 😀
I'm running Dungeon of The Mad Mage for my group of 4. So far we have had a Tortle Cleric kill themselves accidentally through magical heart transplant, our Aaracokra Druid being cursed with not being able to restore hit points, and the party almost getting eaten alive by a gigantic Gelatinous Cube. 10/10
Dungeon of the Mad Mage is such a fun adventure. I am a pretty fresh DM and I never run a Mega-Dungeon but this is truly a great Adventure, In my very humble opinion.
Ah, that magical heart swap. Gotta love it.
I remember that cube! It had a dwarf's skull in it!
And that's all just on the first level!
I honestly have no idea why they put the "kill the players if they don't go on the quest" thing in the adventure. I actually really like the Dark Secret party background feature of the adventure and I think it gives the DM a great tool to motivate the PCs.
It reminds me of tomb of annihilation, there's a few times the party can come into contact, early on, with NPC's that can destroy them. But that adventure makes it clear that, for most of them anyway, isn't their goal and they'd sooner leave. I think dragon heist has some too.
I've seen people argue that the NPC's should just kill the party, regardless of it being written that the NPC's want to use the party and won't kill them, simply because they are -insert cr/power level/monster/undead/dragon/blah blah blah-.
"That's not how such and such is! I don't care what the adventure says, it's a monster and acts like every other monster and kills them all"
It makes me concerned that someone actually listened to that.
Honestly, it's the same feeling I have with some people's interpretation of alignment. If character's alignment can change, then an NPC's can too. I take the DMG or really anything as an example of what is typical of said thing. If a world is full of only typical things it can get uninteresting. I also think of personal alignment as a guide, maybe it's the creature's ideals, some times things might act in away that seems contrary to those ideas to achieve a goal. Though I would personally use that sparingly. if you have every lawful evil thing saving the world it might get a bit confusing, unless thats part of your homebrew somehow.
Maybe that's not how the forgotten realms is typically, or supposed to be run but I find it more fun. I should probably just homebrew a setting.
If you kill the party, they're already in hell (assuming) when their souls awaken
@@danieldosso2455 unlikely if the party has good or neutral aligned members, especially clerics or paladins. Best case scenario, the party gets split up like crazy. Worst case scenario the game ends and you lose your players.
Arguably you could send them to hell because plot reasons. But then that first bit of the adventure is useless. It might as well be "a racist comes out of nowhere and shanks you all. There's no time to react, every single one of you is dead. But wait! You wake up and realise you're in hell. Now you gotta save this town and get out, so you can get your revenge on that racist." It's lame, could be funny, but wouldn't really be enjoyable for most people.
When DM's pull that kind of thing, people get annoyed because we are essentially playing make believe, but with rules and dice. And that kind of set up removes player agency and the ability to roll against it. It would be better if, like someone else said, he had leverage on the party, like the secret in the baldur's gate bit.
Because if something leads to combat, but it's arbitrary that the PC's lose, why even play d&d. That interaction can't lead to combat because it ruins their reason for doing that bit of the story if they manage to survive and kill him.
@@Nildread isn't the point of D&D to have fun? What if there's a beer&pretzels game that lives and breathes on dumb shit from both the GM and PCs?
@@danieldosso2455 that is why I said it could be funny. But I would change it up anyway, like if I was going for over the top cheese or humor I wouldn't use that guy killing them, it'd be better to just say "rocks fall everyone dies". It's just annoying as a product you buy, that the baldur's gate stuff has no narrative connection, it's just arbitrary. it could be pulled out and used better, or added to and made better but it has nothing to do with avernus as is, unless you make it. You can make it work, for sure. But as written, someone who is a newer DM might not easily pick up on that.
My point isn't that starting the campaign in avernus is a bad idea, it's just a bad set up. If an NPC tells you to do something and if you don't you die, but both things lead you to the same destination anyway and have no effect on anything, that's called the illusion of choice.
I had Session Zero of Descent Into Avernus last week, and I was very explicit about the fact that the party ends up going to Hell. I even cracked a joke about D&D sending them to Hell, since almost all of my players are old enough to remember the Satanic Panic. A big part of Session Zero was linking character backgrounds and giving me fodder to link them to Avernus. Fortunately, at least three of them have serious beef with the same chromatic dragon. Also, I've decided that Captain Zodge is the one who knows about their collective dark secret, which will make it pretty easy for him to compel them to do the first gopher task.
Crovan I feel like the flaming fist angle only works if Zodge knows the dark secret. otherwise my party will just dip out
Same, Captain Zodge said them the Duke could give em an un-official way to pay for their crimes...
This is my first campaign as a DM and I may be out of my depth, but I've found that this adventure needs a lot of work to get into an adventuring rhythm. What worked for my table was starting the characters in Elturel. It's the polar opposite of Baldur's Gate and allowing characters to experience the drama of Elturel vanishing and later the jarring contrast with Baldur's Gate motivated the characters more than sending a death squad after them. Side note, starting players at 5th level also empowered my table to exercise agency in the world that led to them adventuring more naturally towards a delve into Hell.
So thinking about the Baldur's Gate part of this: I feel like you have the issue of existing in an Epic High Fantasy world with griffon knights and epic heroes and then there's this very clearly corrupt city and your Epic High Fantasy instincts tell you to save the city and then you go to Hell and have to deal with all the toxic intrigue there. The way you solve this, in my mind, is make this the Planescape adventure it should be, where everyone is already aware of how much wheeling and dealing goes into planar existence.
I love the thought of devils being a sort of evil HR employee. Very clever idea! :D
Hope of Spades : haha that’s great! In our home brew setting they are all lawyers
I'm over half way thru DIA and currently binge-watching The Sopranos. I think the mafia are a great example of lawful evil, and I think I'll style future LE characters that way.
Any book that tells new DMs to kill PCs for trying to explore doesn’t deserve to be printed. The rest of the book could be pure gold and that’d still be a deal breaker.
? publish games if ran the wrong way or the players make bad dice rolls will get the characters killed. Plenty old publish games stated if they try taking the boss down alone, will cause the death of a single player character.
It's time to clearly state that official modules are mediocre and poorly written. I'm tired of seeing everyone tiptoeing around that fact. I realise that there might be conflict of interest and all but If we don't give clear feedback it's never going to get better.
Disagree. I think this campaign is very poorly written. However, I've ran CoS, ToA, SKT, and OotA, those campaigns were all various levels of excellent.
@@karlsma7245 Storm king thunder is very poorly written in many parts with hilariously bad secondary quests and is just some kind of semi sand box game that you simply have to put a ton of work in in order to make it interesting. (seriously there's a bunch of NPCs who literally wants you to be a mailman at level 5). I haven't played Out of the abyss but I've heard multiple times that players lost interest in the main story arc (this channel too, from what I remember they just ditched it). Curse of Stradh and Tomb of Annihilation are just re-edited modules from older editions. It's hard to fuck it up.
And almost none of them make any effort to actually properly write atmosphere and NPCs. There are modules for other games out there where you get like 50 pages describing in detail the region your adventure takes place in, how the people talk, what's culture etc. And every time an NPC appears you get almost an entire page about who is, how he behaves, how he talks, what's his goal, how he looks etc. I feel like I'd have about the same amount of work if I were to use random dungeons and side quests generators and write the whole module myself.
@@moiseman . I can't tell you how you should experience the book or what works at your table.
For me, I've enjoyed running SKT. I think the sandbox chapter is great and my players had a great time in Citadel Adbar and Luskan. It's one of my favorite parts of the campaign. I love that chapter and it's counter part in ToA.
As far as not having enough material in the book, it's set in the Forgotten Realms. You want to know anything about it, just Google it. Why pay for an extended page count? I didn't feel like I needed to put a ton of work into it. I had the basic idea and I handled the rest through improv. This what I want from a book. Give me the stuff that is hard for me to do, populate a large area and build dungeons, and let me do the rest to make it fit my party.
I get that the book didn't work for you or your players and that truly sucks. I just experienced it differently.
@@karlsma7245 I gave you some examples of objectively bad stuff present in the book and you just reply to me with "me and my buds had fun" which is very typical and basically tells me nothing except that probably have much lower standards. Then you follow by a mean and silly assumption that my group didn't have fun, as if I'd run fedex quest module without heavily rewriting it.
@@moiseman, I explained to you how I ran it. That we had fun is kind of the point, isn't?
Let's try this a different way. What published campaigns, in the 5E period, do you prefer?
“I’M GONNA SAY THE N-WORD!”
"THATS RACIST YOU CAN'T SAY THE N-WORD!"
Just release a book of tons of art and all random tables. I’ll buy it. Don’t care about their story I got it.
17:30 I ripped in to an adventure writer for this, years ago. His adventure, in the character motivations section, had an entry that said "Who cares? They're adventurers, they get involved in this stuff all the time!" That's not good enough. It's why so many play reports I read had players apathetically hanging around with nothing to do at the starting point. Who tried to flee when the first encounter kicked off. There was nothing for the players to be invested in.
There's a balance. The adventure/DM need to present reasonable motivations for the players to have their characters hook on. But the players also need to play their part after all I suspect "screw this I'm going back to farming" is a perfectly reasonable response to goblins attacking level 1 characters, but that doesn't make for a very good game.
Feng Shui is great with the rule book itself in the character creation chapter has:
"At the beginning of your first adventure, and perhaps at other intervals as the series progresses, the GM expects you to buy in - to find a reason why your character decides to engage with the dangerous situation at hand by going off to do action movie things."
Let me tell you how I fixed this, my players are at level 11 and they are in the middle of Rise of Tiamat and they are known in the land as the “Magnificent Six” who saved the land’s treasure, also they already have a good relationship with Ulder Ravengard. So when they arrived to Baldur’s Gate and the Flaming Fist asked for help, my players did it because of Ulder. The way I did it needs some work, because the adventure was created for 1st level characters but I like to run these adventures like skeletons in my world so I’m changing most encounters and beefing up everything to be challenging for an 11 level party, but it makes more sense for the heroes of the land to save Elturel than just an unnamed party
Yeah really liked this one.
It's essentially a 'portal' fantasy adventure set in DnD, and the portal happens to be Hell!
It's also quite Edgy for current DnD, dealing with deep themes and sending the players into a warzone between Demons and Devils.
I still feel they could maybe structure the 'Middle' bit of the adventure a bit better - in SKT they just gave a few different middle options, and in this they give two different paths, but it would be nice if they tried a more sandboxy mid section, maybe with a map to move around (although the map they gave was pretty fun).
UA Onomancy Wizard would fit the bill so well for "the power in a name" type character in this setting
YES IM BUILDING THIS CAMPAIGN IN WORLD ANVIL RIGHT NOW AND NEEDED THIS VIDEO
Hope you find it helpful!!
This kind of adventure is super easy to steal for homebrew world. Skipping the BG part. Everything is little disconnected and easy to modify. Running this by the book would drive me insane. Pretty sure that was not what wotc wanted, but it is there.
I got this module for Christmas. I've been reading through it and am planning on running it as my first ever campaign as a DM.
How’s that going?
OH GOD NO PRUITT DON'T SAY THE N WORD
Nnnnnnnnnnneutral
He said it
He almost had a Heated Gamer Moment™ there
So a group of lawful good paladins are going to have a grand old time.
There are is one reason I can think of for why a devil would not want its True Name to be revealed:
It allows a player character to write a contract and bind a devil into service though the terms and conditions stipulated by the player. Sure, the devil gets a contract, but they get the raw end of that deal when they are used to giving it.
There's lots I love about this adventure, but that opening chapter is just bad. The railroading you mentioned to start it off followed by the opening fight that is a TPK waiting to happen right off the bat. I'm not against a tough low-level encounter but railroading them into one when it's the very first encounter doesn't seem right.
A hugely dramatic event like Elturel done off screen. The whole idea of what happens to the Companion falls flat because players have never seen it and don't really know or likely care of its significance. And if you want to use XP over milestones you better have some extra encounters ready. It just feels like the events to get the party to Hell is poorly thought out and poorly edited.
Yes, yes, as DM I can change lots of this, and I will, but it still doesn't excused the poor writing to start with. If it's true the Baldur's Gate backdrop was only because the upcoming video game that's too bad because it doesn't really play a role in the overall arc. This adventure would be better served starting in Elturel and having the party present as major events happen.
EPISODE IDEA: Hearing you talking about session 0, how about an episode about making groups for specific adventures / campaigns?
So usually now DMs allow quite a lot of free form in character creation, but adventures can be quite good if there is more guidance and purpose for a campaign.
So maybe the DM asks all the players to be Dwarves as they've discovered the location of the Sacred Hammer of the Dwarven People.
Or maybe all the players are good and deity aligned but have to deal with Demons (as you say).
Really directing groups, and having themes for parties, can really help everyone involved.
Best guys great vids.
One of the games I'm running went very fast from "heroes" to "morally ambiguous kleptomaniacs" really fast
Most people I met just stick with playing as Murder Hobos.
You as the DM create freeform gaming by altering the adventure as written as necessary. You don't need the written adventure to be freeform. All that accomplishes is making the module brain damage for the DM to consume. The more thoroughly the DM understands the adventure as written the easier it is to make alterations or adapt to unexpected actions by the players.
This comment is what i was thinking, it keeps things exceptionally simple in the book and if you run it point to point like a railroad youll get just that, I have a few new players in the game im running but I have some good character backstory that im going to run them around Baldur's gate for a while longer just to touch on their backstories, and then link something from their backstories to Avernus to really give them some things off of the beaten path to do
"if they don't go along with it, just kill them" always felt like a writer joke to Me. Akin to, "well, if you're players don't want to play, get other players"
2:50 Heeyy I'm playing Mad Mage =P
Tbh I picked it for my group because it's my first time being a full time DM, after our last one got married and moved to NY.
I thought that since it was straight up just a bunch of dungeons there was less room for me to screw up and all mechanical work had been done really, I just had to drop players in and run encounters/RP. DotMM seemed kinda like easy mode so I thought it'd be best.
How have you found it to stack up to your expectations?
@@LakeVermilionDreams Since its still my first foray into full time DMing I don't have a lot to compare it too, that being said my players and I are having lots of fun in a good ol' fashioned massive dungeon romp. Our last DM did a lot of open-ended sandbox stuff, and it was difficult for the group to find our footing sometimes. We ended up floundering a lot, or just TPKing on a random encounters. That sometimes lead to frustration and the flushing of lots of work on the DMs and PCs sides down the tubes.
Surprisingly for a relatively straight up dungeon, not as much murderhoboism as I would've expected but I guess that's on me as well (not making every encounter a strictly kill or be killed affair), but I also got lucky and have a pretty good group of players. We're actually about to "clear" the first level and the players are all excited to level up.
My players and I have also decided that since DotMM is sooooo large, with so many levels encompassing basically every tier of play (levels 5 to 20), we're going to do an on again off again kinda thing. Doing 3 or so levels of DotMM, then swapping seats to let one of the players get a chance to run a smaller adventure, then back to DotMM for another handful of levels. I really like the idea of letting everyone get their own chance behind the screen, and I love relaxing a bit and being able to play a character myself.
@@CthulhusDream My players cleared out the Grick nest for the Xanathar, earning themselves the password for the guild's outposts on level two.
Now they're down on level three, and Skullport, and using that password to infiltrate Xanathar's HQ (which I borrowed from Dragon Heist.)
One of my players keeps mentioning that the guild's under bad leadership. I think he wants to be the next Xanathar.
@@TheodoreMinick My players have been pretty diplomatic with Xan's minions, doing their best to avoid fights. They haven't won their favor but have proven themselves worthy enough not to be directly messed with. However, they "accidentally" tricked the one outpost into getting themselves eaten by the grick alpha, haven't decided what consequences to make out of that yet though.
@@CthulhusDream I will say this: Be careful with Halleth. He can end up dragging the party very deep into level two, or make all the fights until he gets his revenge super easy.
My players were halfway through level two in record time, and ended up skipping all the really cool encounters.
If I had it to do again, I'd ignore his super tracking trait, and he wouldn't join in on fights unless paid. Or they just find his beaten and mangled corpse in the pit.
I am playing Mad Mage and it’s really great. All the player buy in you need is to tell them what Undermountain is and ask them why they want to adventure there.
I like how Dresden Files deals with True names You can deal in pieces of your name I think in the first book Harry bargains away his middle name to a demon
I hate this book. Hate it. Like the Waterdeep books before it, they might as well retitle it "YOUR CHARACTERS DON'T MATTER".
Instead of doing anything relevant in hell you're basically bargaining with creatures that can eat you. You do minor dirty work to earn the favor of the Characters Who Matter so they can do the big things.
It's so determined to pay lip service to Joe Manofthejello that it won't even consider maybe the players would want to take the Hand of Vecna, or any other item of Arkhan's or his tryhard crew, for themselves. There's a lot of Development sections and not one considers "What if the players get the Hand of Vecna?".
I can agree with the most of your post, but do we really need to have our hands held (heh heh) for if a player gets the hand of vecna?! We have the item in the DMG.
@@LakeVermilionDreams There's still story-based developments based around the items the characters may have in other characters' presence.
You're telling me if the players kill Edgelord Von Dragonsephiroth and take the Hand for themselves that won't change the behavior or bargaining concepts of any other devil or demon in this campaign?
Then they have it. I don't see the issue, they gave Arkhan stats so you can kill him. He has the hand, and some armor, you kill him you get those. They also tell you he's a champion of Tiamatt, and guess what they put her stats in their too, so you kill her boy, consequences, but you can do it. Also by the end you are negotiating or defeating or redeeming a Duke of hell, how much more influential can you get? There's even an option where you try to rule in her place, though as you're just a bunch of punks from Baldur's Gate who managed to get this far, and there are eight other layers worth of devils, good luck. And I mean how would Zariel act if one of the PC's had the hand of Vecna? A) As DM that's kind of your call. B) would it really change anything for her? It has access to some spells that are powerful for adventurers, but largely aren't going to affect her much, it makes the user strong (and evil), she's even immune to the extra cold damage it provides (as are many other demons and devils). She might look twice, but I don't think it's a game changer on its own. The fact that the person wielding it killed a champion of Tiamat might give her (and others) pause, but I think the adventure provides you with enough context to account for that as a DM without holding your hand. In this instance the Hand itself isn't terribly important.
I don't get this criticism. You start off as nobodies, and then the fate of not one, but two major cities is in your hands. The book clearly lays out that if the PC's do nothing, Elturel, and Baldur's Gate are doomed. No one else is going to get this done in time. And of course you have to go from power to power negotiating, you enter hell at level 5, the whole point is just like being a devil in hell you start at the bottom and do whatever it takes to get strong enough you don't have to negotiate anymore. Will you be morally compromised along the way, will hell get to you, can you redeem a powerful entity, can you save a city (or two) without losing your soul? These are the questions the adventure is asking, but it also leaves a ton o wiggle room to do other things. What kind of adventure do you want?
Would you prefer it if by the end the PC's were directly powerful enough to reshape hell, or send the city back?
When saying the PC's don't matter, do you mean that they are not driving the plot, or that if you took them out nothing would change? Because on the first you may have a point, but by the middle third of the adventure they have no one making decisions for them but them, and much of the end is entirely up to them how or if, they save Elturel. And as I've said, if the PC's don't take part the adventure has its own conclusion.
@@Lurklen They statted out Jarlaxle too, a CR16 character in a levels 1-5 adventure. They seem to do that, for some reason, Arkhan is also a CR beyond the adventure's capacity.
I guess because the alternative is writing "Arkhan wins lol".
Besides, "then they have it" is such a cop out. They have the Hand of Vecna, not a +2 longsword. They have the hand of a literal god, one of the greatest artifacts in the game. How DEVILS and DEMONS would react in the presence of such an item is a thing that SHOULD be noted. Would they try to claim it for themselves? Bargain for it? Report it to Asmodeus? They offer up every other noteworthy item that could be in the players' possession in the Developments section.
@@B.-T.
Right, but even Jarlaxle wasn't unbeatable in that adventure. He's got barely over 100hp, it wouldn't be easy and if you are playing him right he's not going to put himself in a bad situation, but it's far from impossible.
I mean C.R against solo enemies is kind of a joke, Arkhan wouldn't be that hard to take out for a decent sized, well equipped party of level 10's, he doesn't even have legendary actions, and his Dex is awful. You zerg rush him and have enough damage he will go down pretty fast. (Though him and the literal army at his back would be another matter) They literally tell you his tactics and they include an exit straegy if he gets overwhelmed .
He's supposed to be a challenge, but he and his dudes are not unassailable. As I said, the hand is good but not all powerful. I mean Zariel's CR 26, but she's beatable too, though they warn the DM, who should pass it on to the PC's that it's gonna be a hell of a fight and they should bring allies. Both of these characters are presented as challenging so the PC's don't just steamroll them like they do most other things. They are big deal monsters, because we are in hell (Notably Arkhan doesn't have half the abilities he should given his actual classes, because player classes are really tough, multi-classes even more so, and when players fight them they often struggle.)
Both of them are also more interesting as potential allies, or enemies to fight later, in the campaign after this one, or in the fall out from this campaign's end. By making you deal with them now, it can help set up further adventures for this party later, ones which can carry on for levels 14-20.
Would people even know it was the hand? Maybe if they were especially well read and knew the lore, but otherwise it's just a grotty evil hand. I mean if the PC does something with it it might clue some people in, but as I said, against Zariel it's not even that impressive. Also the items they refer to are all related to the story and specific people in the story, the hand is tangential, and it's not likely that people are going to get it, because if they meet Arkhan it's probably because he's going to be an ally.
And nobody seems to be making a big deal of it while it's in Arkhan's possession, I'm not sure the questions you're asking need to be answered by the adventure, the hand isn't relevant to the story itself. None of the major players need it or what comes with it. But I mean sure, some devils and demons would probably try to take the PC's out over it, if they had it, which they would have had to beat a tough enemy and his cohorts, meaning they are a significant threat. But I mean if your party gets an artifact, much of the story centers around that now. Like I said if they have the hand, they have it. Now they get all the problems that come with it. That's on the DM, and is out of the scope of the adventure, which I think gives you enough to follow through with consequences. (I mean you kill Arkhan there's TIamat to deal with, they stat her too, but you wanna take her on I suggest siding with someone bigger. Though I've heard of parties taking her out with a bunch of 10's and 12's.)
I love Descent into Avernus and I love Web DM, so this should be good.
"The devil started at her side,
Comely, and tall, and black as jet.
'I am Malespina's bride;
Has he come hither yet?'
...
'You lie, he died with me to-night.'
'Not he! it was a plot' ... 'You lie.'
'My dear, I never lie outright.'"
- from A Ballad of Hell by John Davidson
Hmm... sounds like a decent tool box for adventures in Hell but the adventure itself needs work. you shouldn't be ENDING an adventure IN HELL at 13th level, you should be STARTING there. just my opinion. thanks for the informative Review!
>"Go and do this!"
>Party goes offtrack
>Sends reminders
>Party continues to go off track
>Kill them
>*Surprised Pikachu face*
A great day to resurrect upon the incarnate when thyn soul manifests upon death because who is to say that you have to be a "still living, still breathing, and still mortal" human/other within Avernus. "If one's soul is willing enough, then it shall manifest into power."
20:00 "Now i don't want to say the N Word..." xD
Nut Butter?
Nosferatu
Notification squad, represent
I am planning on using this adventure as a high level quest. I have ran both Tyranny of Dragons with one group and Storm King's Thunder with another. I am going to combine those parties to run through Descent into Avernus as a 12-14th level adventure. The first several encounters are by far the weakest part of this adventure. Overall, I agree with your review of this product. Although I do like the Baldur's Gate section for setting information. Keep up the great work fellows.
Devils don’t give their True Name out because you have near total power over them if you have it.
This, they don't want their name out because you can summon *then* bind them.
That is just numerology 101.
26:50 He touches on that and ways to get around it in game. Use a True Name for contracts that is close, but not identical to their actual name. Or a provision that if you attempt to share the name or record it in any way, your soul is immediately forfeit. That could lead to some unintentional "suicide by devil" if someone casts detect thoughts on you when you're thinking about the name. Not sure which person would be killed, if not both, in that situation.
Any chance that you guys are going to do a Pathfinder 2e review?
if you have to fill in so many blanks, maybe you're better served by your own homebrew
Oh shit, that symbol on the cover! One of my character’s worships that god!! I am suddenly VERY interested!
Shame it's only their to tie in baldurs gate. The dead three arent really a big part of the story. But they do have a small quest which is at the very beginning of the book. The statblocks and things that happen when you meet the cultists mean it wouldn't be too hard to tie them into the rest of the adventure with a little work.
The war machines could mix well with Eberron. Driving through the magical wastes on a magitech contraption at break-neck speeds.
Jim's point at around ten minutes underlines a larger issue with morality tales in D&D. In a world where you speak to a god and get their power, go to the plane of Good or Evil, and present the players with creatures generated from them, the moral ambiguity cannot come from these sources. It has to come from the smaller interactions with common races. Angels and Demons leave no space for moral ambiguity. The morally grey is a distinctly human condition. Or dwarf, elf, halfling, whatever.
Not every PC or NPC really knows the full details about the Outer Planes.
And if you got characters/ people who feel they have no real choice in their action, then they will make the best deal they can.
AD&D2e " Planescape " box set campaign setting covers it in more detail.
Most petty bullies working law enforcement or politicians may only end up at the Gate Town that lends to the Lower Planes. Or after some time in the Outlands will get Reincarnate back into a humanoid race that matches their soul's alignment.
Now a pimp that get all the whores working for him hook on drugs and beats them bloody. Well, yeah he is going to Hades at the lest and becoming a Larvae farmed by a Night Hag. But they don't " Care."
@@krispalermo8133 Right. So, there is no moral ambiguity. There are things that are "right" and things that are "wrong"
And sometimes, it isn't even a question of whether or not you are doing something right or wrong. Take goblins, for instance. They are destined to spend eternity in torment perpetrated by Gruumsh.
The point is, the worlds of Dungeon and Dragons all essentially morally absolutist. The only ambiguity comes from interactions between the races, and that is often sullied by a mortal's realization that the world has these moral absolutes.
@@kdolo1887 Morally ambiguity comes from TSR AD&D creative teams and the authors that wrote the Dragon Lance and Forgotten Realms novel.
It was normal for lawful neutral/ good dwarves to kill the babies of goblins and orcs. That is a complete evil act for "us" humans it kill infants .
But in D&D racial gods are real and they claim the souls of their creation.
I look at life as this, we start off as smaller than the point of a pen. Nine months later we weight in between 5lb to 10lbs, and then after 20 years we can end up as 5ft.8in 200lb beasts that can toss around and break a dog's neck as it was nothing but an after though.
How much do you remember between the age of three to five years of age ?
Between moment of great Fun/ happiness and of great sadness what to you remember of being in grade school ? Most mid 25 year olds barely remember anything about being in High School. Nothing happen worth remembering ? Or they were bullied to such a point they hated being around other teenagers and they didn't pay any attention what was going around them.
Is that any different then a fiend from the lower planes ?
I won't remember my last life, my pass sins or what I have loss. And I will not even be aware of my own infancy in my rebirth.
I had to argue with religious nut jobs to defend my right to play D&D,
and my mother was a train paralegal , she knew what is require to having a case to bring before a judge. And she was training us kids this since we were eight years old going to public grade schools.
She was also the type of woman to judge you guilty till you are proven to be guilty. If you are proven innocence , you still get punish, just as not as bad.
In D&D you really have had to Earn you place in " Hell " by your own freewill.
Side note: some of our current New Age Theist, their bull crap goes back to the late 1890's and early 1900's.
" Attuned Vibration Wave Frequency " the mental/ emotional intent behind ones' actions dictate the resonates of the soul/ spirit.
Balance: Outlands of Neutrality , Reincarnate to a race that closest share your soul's alignment.
High Frequency: Higher/ Upper Planes.
Low Frequency Vibration Resonates: " Welcome to Hell !"
If the frequency raises to a higher level after being strip of the negative charge, it raises to more of a flat line pulse.
It is sad that you have the run of the mill murder hobo, compare that to IRL history. Then being told that your short, brief, brutal life you were little more than an animal. Unworthy of Salvation and below the notice of Hell, doom to be reincarnated with no talents to show for in the next life.
But when it comes down to D&D, it is all about what type of game the DM runs and what the players want to deal with.
For a More " Spiritual " warfare game system just go with White Wolf
World of Darkness: Mage, Werewolf, Wraith, and Demon.
book " Realms of the Living Dead," written in 1926 covers IRL belief regarding what the Catholic Church Mystics thought they knew what was really going on with " the spirit world " that they kept out of the normal populations hands.
I swear White Wolf rip this book off when they wrote the Wraith game core rule book.
What it comes down to, the common belief of a given church creates a demi plane," heaven" for the believers.
Those who lack a church drift in a state of Purgatory Limbo till their life experiences shake through them like Nightmare as their memories break down and then they a reincarnated.
" Some bars feel haunted, senior recreation centers never feel empty even when no one is there."
Hell ? It just takes a little longer to strip the soul down for rebirth.
And there are " Spirit Courts " by many human cultural names.
I had to deal with Southern Baptist when I was younger. It is all about belief and bull shit.
But if heaven and hell does not exists as the Christian says it does, then how can they use Eternal Hell Fire as a Punishment for the "unfaithful ?"
Then again the unfaithful don't believe in Hell.
There is a section in the book where it says that the players should come together in a session zero and create their characters. Part of this process is choosing a scheme they were part of that brought them together as a group (A Failed Coup, a Heist etc.) Then there are some NPC's who are rolled to have knowledge of this event and its blackmail/leverage to get the players to help. So that whole concern should be taken care of as there are pages of information for making the group for this campaign.
This isn't even a Baldur's Gate adventure. It just has the name slapped on it because muh marketing.
You know, considering that D&D claims to be the "Worlds Greatest Role Playing Game" and has enjoyed SUCH a massive resurgence in popularity, I don't know how excusable it is that we keep getting these poorly put together campaign books from WotC. I realize you guys had some good things to say about this, and i'm sure it has its merits, but this book sounds like an absolute mess and a hugely wasted opportunity.
Wasn't one of the biggest complaints of the earliest 5e modules that they were formatted EXTREMELY poorly, and required way too much work for most people to run effectively? How have they not figured this out by now? As someone that has run A LOT of D&D5e, if I want to spend a bunch of time putting the pieces of a campaign together, I just write my own adventure. The content in these books isn't good enough to justify spending all that time fixing it, honestly.
It just really says a lot when games written by MUCH smaller teams with way less budget to work with can put out better, more consistent content that you don't have to fix for them.
mad max in Hell sounds fun
Hearing about this game has me wondering, does it really break down at all how despicable obliterating a soul for temporary gain is? Because this is a world where, undeniably, people have eternal life through their souls. It is a far worse act than murder to rob them of that.
I don't know if the book does but a DM should! I'll try to remember to do something like that. My players are religious, shouldn't be too hard
If we are to think logically about it, we are essentially tormenting or even destroying a person's immortal soul.
A person may like 50, 100 or even a few centuries. That is really nothing compared to the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000+ yrs you are stealing away from then when you destroy their soul.
In short, it really an incalculable act of evil; where mortal crimes such as murder, torture, stealing, raping, lying etc can't really compare because tampering with someone's soul is on such an entirely different level that any attempt at comparison becomes simply pointless.
In short, once you start dealing with souls for anything other than saving them, it is the quickest way for your alignment to immediately drop to evil :P
I 100% agree it's instant Evil aligned transform into a Fiend permanently level consequences from me. And even discussing doing such a thing even to the soul of a genocidal murderer makes my Soul hurt. I can't condone this even being on the table personally. Of course in my head cannon for all media a Soul CAN'T be DESTROYED only scattered to reform and be reincarnated eventually elsewhere in the multiverse.... Still absolutely the most evil thing possible! The book has enough great stuff to pick apart and use but run it as is? No. I would only want to go to hell at high level with a FANTASTIC motivation and difficult but CLEAR options to do so morally and remain good aligned! and perhaps steal and save as many souls while you are there as possible. Or better yet; "break" the corrupt system of Hell itself and rescue these lost souls to forget, be purified and reincarnated elsewhere!!!!
@@SinerAthin super agree!!!!
THIS IS WHAT I DID AS A ONE SHOT TO HELP BRING MY CHARACTERS INTO BALDURS GATE FEEL FREE TO USE :)
I had two of my players start their adventure by smuggling artifacts into the city under the guise of Ale traders from Waterdeep from The Silver Spectre Tavern (Their previous characters adaptation of Trollskull Tavern) and when they finished their run they got a drink. They watched a few of the “immortal races” (non human races)
get bullied by the flaming fist and one of the npc family members of one of the PC’s was arrested! They were looking for connections to break him out and were told if they found Tamiens house and recovered a Scroll for a kingpin in the lower city he would help the party release their friend. They went to tamiens house only to find him murdered and eviscerated by the cult of the dead three. They investigated but did (poorly) haha. They found a half orc woman (Aurayaun i believe is her name from the Blade and Stars) with her intestines splayed on the floor and she was still alive. The party mercy killed her (POSSIBLE DARK SECRET) as I had an invisible imp watching them at all times (which they found at the end as it quickly darted out the window) The next day a detective was investigating the house and with some persuasion roles he allowed them to help. They found that Tamien was a member of the Dead Three as well as Aurayaun and they were both deemed Traitors of Bhaal and were murdered for it. The players then went out to an angry crowd demanding answers and determined announcing the murder had no connection to the dead three would make anyone who was connected to the murder watching in the crowd furious. They were right and he stormed of CHASE INSUED and they captured him. Gave them an in with a City Watch Detective Rylin Holcraft (who was paid by a certain patriar family to look into the murders in the lower city) and he gave them a sending stone to contact him. Then a druid from the park bumped into the characters and revealed a piece of bark with the symbol of bhaal on it and said “Where some wash themselves clean,
blood flows underneath” (reference to the bath house)
then I explained as they entered the Splurging Sturgeon proud of what they had done, the viewpoint zoomed out and far in the distance the light of The Companion went black.
The detective will have to recruit them to aid the flaming fist in investigating more murders and in doing this prequel made them WANT to find the dead three. Even if it means aiding the assholes in the Flaming Fist :) a few of the players also had visions/nightmares of elturel being sent down to a “plane of fire and violence” they also helped a few refugees and are now concerned with helping find out what happened to Elturel ALSO FEEL FREE TO USE THIS!
EDIT: Tamien was dead in his apartment completely opened up with intestines hung from the ceiling half orc was laying half conscious in his study clutching the scroll. Both were followers of The Dead Three.
This is a really necessary video, because this is a particularly difficult to run campaign.
I see Coriolis on the table. A review would be killer.
This adventure pales in comparison to Out of the Abyss, which does 'Hellish' better than an adventure set in the actual Nine Hells
Mrs Obama, get down!
Notification Sqaud
AYYYY
Play a devil like an unscrupulous attorney before a judge.
" your Honor , it is clearly written in this simple bu'sin'ess contract the terms of the agreement here states....etc,etc, etc."
One issue I had with the book is that it starts with the adventure chapters, and all the details about the setting and context are afterwards in the book. Nothing I saw told me I should read the details of Baldur's Gate first (or even that these would be there). I read the first three chapters before I got frustrated and flipped ahead. Then after reading all the stuff that gave me context, I had to go back and reread those chapters. So I wasted a ton of time.
My personal cannon is Souls can't be destroyed at worse scattered and reform elsewhere after a while. Having said that 'destroying' a soul for any reason is an incalculable act of evil to me and would not only instantly shift alignment to Evil. It would instantly make that person a Fiend. 'Destroying' a soul is worse than any other act of evil I can't condone any circumstance where anyone would be okay with even discussing the potential destruction of a soul even the soul of a genocidal maniac!!!! Still the book has great Baulders gate stuff, creatures, items, vehicle rules and more so It's worth getting. Would I run it or play it as is: Absolutely not! However the art and other things in the book and the ability to pick things out to use for homebrew is fantastic. Like you said railroading and "just kill them" is unacceptable from a DM of any skill level and it's appalling to be encouraged in a printed official book. The knowledge it adds to Avernis as a location is also useful for other games. I also can't morally agree with a thing that encourages play as evil characters over good aligned or condones such behavior. Neutral anti heros okay. Discuss and perhaps run an evil campaign among friends sure. But to go to Hell without VERY strong conviction at a reasonably high level and at least OPTIONS to play morally, and escape saving as many souls as possible along the way?
Sigh.
It also seems like it has many disjointed issues yet overall still has enough great about it to be useful to own. Just be prepared to overhaul or pick it apart RATHER than run as is.
That's my review added on personally.
Great video as well guys!
To save a " Soul " you will need a Helm of Opposite Alignment, or a Rod of Limited Wish.
In D&D once a " soul " has been drain of all of it's energy, it is then absorb into it's Native Plane relating to it's alignment. Or " Reincarnate " back out into the Great Wheel of life, death, and rebirth.
All that the infernal machine does is burn off the low frequency waves that keeps the soul attuned to the lower planes. Once the soul is burnt clean, then nothing is grounding it to the lower planes and it just drifts to a more Neutral Plane.
kris palermo good interpretation.
Read through the book and it's... not good? It's really weird, with a bunch of random info dumps and an uneven amount of content, and why does Lulu even exist. You can really tell this book had way too many writers. And you can tell the Avernus stuff is so light because immediately after some writers put up paid content to expand on it. Some of the individual encounters could work outside of it, though.
That part worries me. This module is already compromised to tie into the upcoming video game. But if authors find more value in skimping on the module and saving parts of the book for dmsguild, that's very sad for the consumer.
I’m running an evil campaign, and presenting the players’ time in Baldur’s Gate like Grand Theft Auto. It’s a sandbox where they work their way up from petty criminals to crime bosses. They may end up not even going to The Nine Hells.
...nah, who am I kidding? They’re going to The Nine Hells.
This adventure is basically everything I dislike about modern adventures,it's basically just a railroad for majority of it,to the point where it's absolutely ridiculous and then once the players basically submit to being on rails the game does a full on 180 and becomes bit more free form for a while. That kind of stuff simply does not work because you've been basically threatening to murder the party for the first parts of the adventure if they don't do exactly what the adventure wants them to do and then suddenly it doesn't tell them what to do.
Would love a video where you share some thoughts on heist of waterdeep!
Love the episode as far as food for thought, but I hard disagree with a lot of the critiques. This book is beautiful and though every book has flaws I see it as one of WOTCs best.
Honestly, this is why Malfeas is the most popular RPG Hell in fiction. Only a fool would get involved with any demon at all, those creatures objetive is always malicious, so you either betray then first, smite them as soon as you see them or scape. Serves of Malfeas are a concret and relatively save source of power that even mortal sorcerers can rely on, while Citizens are more worried with their personal goals and obsessions while the Unquestionables are simple things one must avoid at all cost. While getting involved with the Master of Games or the Living Tower are risky even for Exalted they are more personable, goal oriented and interesting due to their idiosyncraties then some randon Balor of Hell that is Evil just because.
My group found this adventure to be too linear for fun. You say that there’s places for the characters to have a sandbox, but without any meaningful consequences for the players other than the single one outlined in the section that really has to be railroaded into... My group has given this a 4/10.
Evil campaigns have so many long-term sustainability issues, but I'll be damned if I don't want to run a campaign in Avernus to free Tiamat.
okay
but surely... shouldn't it be aVERNus?
"I don't wanna say the 'n' word" Good lord I laughed so hard
I believe both this module and tomb of annihilation would have benefited from taking more time to get to know the city that is a part of the adventure that way the players have more at stake and more bonds within the place they must defend.
that is cool that they true names is at least a thing. i remember there being a true name mage in 3.0 and now there's a wizard in the new unearthed arcana. itll be cool to see what they do with that
doesnt the character creation appendix say that the characters have lived in baldurs gate for a while and also made an enemy of a baldurs gate noble house?
You guys really need to do a Githyanki episode!
33:05 You just got done saying the main thing is that they don't say "please" or "thank you"!
I definitely think this adventure could benefit from starting the player characters at a higher level.
So going off your idea about the contracts and stuff i kind of want to run a game now where devils, dæmons, and the like have some actual businesses that are in town for their specialties of contracted jobs and stuff, with “your soul after death” being the collateral basically, or trades in “limited” or “restricted” goods and such, maybe making the person do a slightly dark task as payment to slowly corrupt them. Its like if the person pays they get money, enemies to legally kill, or other goods, if the person defaults they get that plus a bonus soul. And if nothing else they would slowly lead honest people toward dark choices due to the ease of doing so.
Then have angels and modrons such maybe splitting between offering blessings, teaching classes, more lawful/good type contracts than the devils/dæmons, medic stations, houses for homeless groups, AA...
Also love the deathrun race across planes idea you had haha, maybe you need to find a powersource for/from each plane to keep going adding in a scavenger part you need to do between each place, maybe having to decide between getting enough for multiple laps compared to just rushing each section.
regard it as a " spelljamer " on wheels.
One way to get the players to Avernus is to have them be in a tight spot, and a devil comes in offering help, in exchange for having them fight a battle in the Blood War. Either this happens in the middle of an ongoing campaign, or as the backstory for the campaign that starts in hell. The latter having the advantage of potentially having the characters all having been recruited in this way separately, and are put together as part of unit when the time comes for them to honor their agreement. The game starts in media rez, with the party being thrown into a battle (start them at, like, sixth level or the like).
Then, when the battle is over, the party informs the devil in charge that they've honored their agreement. The devil agrees, congratulating them on fulfilling their bargain, and then says, "okay, bye!". Because, as it turns out, their contracts didn't say anything about being owed a trip BACK to the Prime Material Plane. Stranding the party in Avernus, and forcing them to find their own way home.
There was a joke back in AD&D " Planescape " days. the difference between a Living Mortal in Hell and a Planar," Living dead Soul."
If the Mortal gets killed in Hell and that Soul was not Evil, then that Soul Raise to one of the higher Planes.
Planar, you are already dead, good or evil, you are still stuck in Hell.
On the other hand, when I am playing wizards, of a " Neutral " alignment.
As soon as I can cast " Lesser Planar Binding," I start making " deals." all across the Lower Planes.
Dealing with Lolth the Drow Queen Spider Goddess is the worst. Her followers are nearly every where.
old AD&D player here... did you say "sending 3rd or 4th level characters into Hell?" LOL that should last about 5 minutes max. What is this? I am starting to wonder if 5e is an elaborate version of Choose Your Own Adventure. "The breakdown of the path?" Why is there a path? That's not a D&D module... they used to provide a location and let the players explore it.
A problem with D&Ds conception of Hell is that it doesn't match Dante and the devils sometimes act like Klingons instead of as devils who only exist to test and punish sinners.
Devil: I can grant you immortality.
PC: Great, I have a very difficult quest before I can rest, let's do it.
Devil: Turns PC to stone: That is the finest marble I think I've ever made, it is in effect immortal. You'll have a long time to think about it now.
It seems like the actual descent into Avernus is awesome, while the Baldur's Gate part is lacking
Honestly, I think tweaking the beginning is the best way to run it. I'm planning my next campaign right now, and I'm going to start with Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and basically replace the Baldur's Gate section with that. It'll take a bit of tweaking and peppering in Avernus plot threads, but I think it'll end with a much more enjoyable experience for both me and my players
Regarding treating war machines like animals; my DM decided that because they weren’t truly alive, and weren’t armor they could be targeted by reduce without resistance.
Hey Web DM I went out to game store in Bathurst and just bought the book and it so eye catching really cool. Can i ask some advice in wargaming this adventure.
The time has passed. Join my crusade to destroy existence itself! look for me in the dreaded place that swine and ignorance dwells. Also I do freestyles! ...they are also cursed.
Maybe the distance between any two places in Avernus is determined by the paperwork you are traveling under. If you can get a better contract, you can shorten your travel times.
Yeah, fuck this adventure. Curse of strahd and storm kings thunder are the only adventures made by WotC that ive enjoyed so far
Numenera xD I felt your soul say "oh sh*t, its not what it sounds like" when you first said that previous sentence lol
I went to hell and all i got for it was this +1 t shirt
I think I'm gonna skip this one.
Asmodeus is the lord of lies. He is a being of law and evil and if you take guide to hell as fact he is the being of law and evil. Those two facts tell me lies are lawful.
in regards to the Art, who the FUCK was the art director for the hollyphant, that is not what they look like, has the artist ever seen an elephant?
Wait....I thought I clicked on Web DM, not an episode of "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell" ^_^
Cant persuade a devil with a charisma check? Rolls persuade with int