City of the Spider Queen
Endur
First Post
City of the Spider Queen
by James Wyatt
WOTC's epic high level 3e adventure. It is set in the Underdark below the Forgotten Realms. The module is set during the time of R.A. Salvatore's "War of the Spider Queen" novels, but we don't directly interact with the characters in the novel.
The artwork and overall production of the module is excellent. The format is easy to read. The complex plotline and many powers of the NPCs doesn't impact readability.
The story is good. The author did a good job of providing the story with a structure that holds together.
The author also did a good job describing the monsters and providing them with motivations where appropriate.
The module is hard to rate because I was originally expecting it to focus on the characters in the novels. I have pondered giving the module a lower score, but given the state of the industry and how difficult high level modules are to create, I have come to the conclusion to award it a 5.
Tom
by James Wyatt
WOTC's epic high level 3e adventure. It is set in the Underdark below the Forgotten Realms. The module is set during the time of R.A. Salvatore's "War of the Spider Queen" novels, but we don't directly interact with the characters in the novel.
The artwork and overall production of the module is excellent. The format is easy to read. The complex plotline and many powers of the NPCs doesn't impact readability.
The story is good. The author did a good job of providing the story with a structure that holds together.
The author also did a good job describing the monsters and providing them with motivations where appropriate.
The module is hard to rate because I was originally expecting it to focus on the characters in the novels. I have pondered giving the module a lower score, but given the state of the industry and how difficult high level modules are to create, I have come to the conclusion to award it a 5.
Tom
Messageboard Golem
First Post
What "crunchy bites" are provided?
9 new monsters:
Abyssal Ghoul (Med.-size Undead, CR: 10)
Demon, Blood fiend (Large Undead, CR: 14)
Demon, Maurezhi (tanar'ri) (Med. Size Outsider, CR: 9)
Drider vampire (Large Undead, CR: 9)
Golem, Spiderstone (Large constract, CR: 18)
Jade Spider (Gargantuan Construct, CR: 14)
Orb Wraith (Huge Undead (Incorpreal), CR: 19)
Quth-maren (Med.-size undead, CR: 7)
5 new templates:
Arachnoid creature
Half-Dragon, Faerunian
Keening spirit
Revenant
silveraith
It also has several new magic item, maps, and of course all of the stats for the NPC's.
I hope that helps.
9 new monsters:
Abyssal Ghoul (Med.-size Undead, CR: 10)
Demon, Blood fiend (Large Undead, CR: 14)
Demon, Maurezhi (tanar'ri) (Med. Size Outsider, CR: 9)
Drider vampire (Large Undead, CR: 9)
Golem, Spiderstone (Large constract, CR: 18)
Jade Spider (Gargantuan Construct, CR: 14)
Orb Wraith (Huge Undead (Incorpreal), CR: 19)
Quth-maren (Med.-size undead, CR: 7)
5 new templates:
Arachnoid creature
Half-Dragon, Faerunian
Keening spirit
Revenant
silveraith
It also has several new magic item, maps, and of course all of the stats for the NPC's.
I hope that helps.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
I just noticed I forgot one of the monsters. :O
The ninth new monster is:
Wraith spider (Small - Colossal undead, CR: 1/2 -12)
The ninth new monster is:
Wraith spider (Small - Colossal undead, CR: 1/2 -12)
Endur
First Post
I didn't really want to answer the question about what the adventure is about in my review. The module has an excellent story line and I wanted to avoid spoilers.
Obviously Dark Elves are involved and its set in the underdark during the time of the War of the Spider Queen, and that was as far as I am interested in going with discussing the story-line without getting into serious spoiler territory.
From a crunchy bit perspective, between the magic items in the module and the magic items in the web enhancement, your GM will have access to 3e versions of most major Drow magic items from prior versions of D&D. There are also new monsters and templates, as mentioned above. The new monsters are ok, but none of them impressed me as much as the magic items. The new magic items were almost worth the price of the module.
The reason why I made the "state of the industry and in comparison to other modules" comment was because in comparison to other high level adventures (levels 10 - 18), this module is a 5. I don't think its the holy grail of modules (otherwise I would have called it a 5 without temporizing), but its as good as any 3e module I've seen and better than the vast majority.
Tom
Obviously Dark Elves are involved and its set in the underdark during the time of the War of the Spider Queen, and that was as far as I am interested in going with discussing the story-line without getting into serious spoiler territory.
From a crunchy bit perspective, between the magic items in the module and the magic items in the web enhancement, your GM will have access to 3e versions of most major Drow magic items from prior versions of D&D. There are also new monsters and templates, as mentioned above. The new monsters are ok, but none of them impressed me as much as the magic items. The new magic items were almost worth the price of the module.
The reason why I made the "state of the industry and in comparison to other modules" comment was because in comparison to other high level adventures (levels 10 - 18), this module is a 5. I don't think its the holy grail of modules (otherwise I would have called it a 5 without temporizing), but its as good as any 3e module I've seen and better than the vast majority.
Tom
Messageboard Golem
First Post
Okay, here's your spoilers... I've not yet had a chance to run it, but I've read through it and it looks like a very chewy and atmosphere-intensive sort of game. I can already tell that I'll like it better than "Return to ... Elemental Evil"
Spoiler Warning! Spoiler Warning! Spoiler Warning!
The plot, in short, an utterly psycho albino drow -- see the cover -- with a major undead fetish -- also on the cover -- has taken advantage of Lloth falling silent and rampaged a couple of settlements/cities. She's killing everything in sight so she can animate bodies with which to assault both other drow and the surface dwellers (which is presumably where PCs come in, though not necessarily as the drow and other underdark critters probably don't like her much, either [point in favor]). Other thing that's particularly nice is a set timeline of when things happen -- in 90 days, the city closest to the players falls to an undead horde. Horde is beaten back a little while later, but rises again on a monthly basis... as opposed to Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, where the world doesn't ever end, even if the characters run off and join the circus. So that's another point in favor. Encounters appear to be nicely laid out with lots of tactics and contingencies, such that the DM isn't trying to remember all of the creatures capabilities while keeping combat flowing. Point in favor #3. Despite being a FRCS product, it appears to be quite adaptable -- all you need is a campaign setting with an underworld and a bunch of evil subterranian elves who would worship an evil spider-fixated extraplanar except for this homocidal necrophiliac that's rampaging through town. Everything else appears to be pretty flexible. Point in favor #4.
Happy?
Spoiler Warning! Spoiler Warning! Spoiler Warning!
The plot, in short, an utterly psycho albino drow -- see the cover -- with a major undead fetish -- also on the cover -- has taken advantage of Lloth falling silent and rampaged a couple of settlements/cities. She's killing everything in sight so she can animate bodies with which to assault both other drow and the surface dwellers (which is presumably where PCs come in, though not necessarily as the drow and other underdark critters probably don't like her much, either [point in favor]). Other thing that's particularly nice is a set timeline of when things happen -- in 90 days, the city closest to the players falls to an undead horde. Horde is beaten back a little while later, but rises again on a monthly basis... as opposed to Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, where the world doesn't ever end, even if the characters run off and join the circus. So that's another point in favor. Encounters appear to be nicely laid out with lots of tactics and contingencies, such that the DM isn't trying to remember all of the creatures capabilities while keeping combat flowing. Point in favor #3. Despite being a FRCS product, it appears to be quite adaptable -- all you need is a campaign setting with an underworld and a bunch of evil subterranian elves who would worship an evil spider-fixated extraplanar except for this homocidal necrophiliac that's rampaging through town. Everything else appears to be pretty flexible. Point in favor #4.
Happy?
Messageboard Golem
First Post
By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer
*** Warning – Possible Spoilers ***
Sizing Up the Target
City of the Spider Queen is a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® mega-adventure designed by James Wyatt and published by Wizards of the Coast. The adventure is a full-color, 160-page trade paperback that includes a separate 16-page full-color map booklet. The cover depicts the adventure’s principal villain leading a horde of undead drow. The product retails for $29.95.
First Blood
City of the Spider Queen is an epic adventure for the FORGOTTEN REALMS ® setting designed to take a party of 10th level characters as high as 18th level by the conclusion of the adventure. It is based in part on the story line in the War of the Spider Queen series of novels, though the adventure itself takes place in a different location and parallels the action of the novels, rather than replicating it. A tie-in box of miniatures is also available specifically for this adventure, as is an on-line web enhancement.
The entire adventure takes place in the Underdark below the Dalelands of Faerun and provides opportunities for both traditional dungeon-crawling, exploration in the wilderness of Underdark Caverns, stealthy infiltration of drow outposts, and even some political infighting in an underground city.
The adventure begins when the player characters are drawn to investigate drow raids on settlements in Daggerdale. They begin with the investigation of a series of crypts, which eventually lead to a passage to the Underdark near a small Drow settlement that has undergone an internal upheaval. Clever investigation by players can reveal an opportunity to exploit an internal division in the drow, and strike at the heart of their forces far beneath the Dalelands.
This first series of fairly traditional site-based encounters has a number of potentially tough battles, and some in unique locations, including one on a giant web in a massive underground chasm.
While the heroes are investigating, the drow plans for conquest of the surface continue. A timeline for the enemy is provided that runs parallel to the PC’s investigations – careful action by the PCs can disrupt the timeline but may awaken the drow to the threat the PCs pose. The adventure provides a number of strategies to play the villains intelligently – this is not a simple room-by-room, kick-in-the-door style dungeon romp.
Provided the PCs decide to strike against the drow threat, they will travel across the wastes of the deep Underdark, potentially encountering as many as five separate major encounter areas, before reaching the drow city of Maerimydra deep in the earth. The city is in the midst of a civil war between various factions of drow, which provides the opportunity for clever PCs to exploit politics within the city to aid in their infiltration. Eventually, the PCs will infiltrate or assault the main stronghold of the drow faction in control of the city, and after a series of climactic encounters in a structure that bridges the planes of existence, they will either succeed heroically or be destroyed, and the Dales will fall with them.
The adventure material itself is well put together – highlighted read-aloud text is provided for each encounter area, with abbreviated statistics tied to full stat blocks in the appendix. Sidebars provide both background information and hints on running the adventure; full color art is present throughout. Though the adventure requires the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting to run as written, statistics for the necessary monsters from Monster of Faerun are provided in the appendix along with new monsters and templates (a total of 13 in all, including new demons, spiders, undead, and the very useful revenant template). There are also 13 new magic items, including two minor artifacts.
Critical Hits
Drow: you either love them or you hate them. If you’re in the latter category, go ahead and give this adventure a pass – the large scope of the adventure makes it difficult to replace the drow as the primary adversaries without an almost complete rewrite. If you’re in the former category, though, this is a great adventure of epic proportion guaranteed to provide a number of sessions of very challenging gaming – while the enemy are drow, they aren’t your usual spider-loving drow. Played well, this is an adventure both for players who love challenging combats as well as those who like political maneuvering.
The book is absolutely beautiful. While the cost may seem high for an adventure, once you’ve seen the quality of the maps, artwork, and even the individual text pages you’ll see you’re certainly getting what you’re paying for in terms of presentation. It’s almost a shame to have put this much effort into an adventure – the book is so pretty you don’t want to crack the binding.
Critical Misses
The adventure is a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® product, which will certainly be an issue for some. The setup of the adventure assumes a number of significant events in the drow population that make it a little more difficult than your average adventure to port over into another setting. You at least need a stereotypical drow-infested Underdark to pull this one off, as well as some appropriate deities to make the story line work.
The adventure is also fairly linear, at least up to the point that the party reaches the drow city, after which the opportunities for a party to wander about under their own agenda increase. If you need a different hook to get your players interested, as well, you’ll have to make up your own, as only the single one is provided.
A group that likes to tackle all their encounters head-on with cold steel is in for a bit of a rough time, particularly in some of the early sections of the adventure if the party is at the lower end of the recommended level range. The GM may wish to provide some additional opportunities for negotiation early on, especially if players lose patience in dungeon-type environments – though some careful preparation can generate a whole range of schemes once the city is reached.
Coup de Grace
As a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® product, City of the Spider Queen is completely closed content. Though it complies well with the established rules set, particularly for its setting, it is a general theme and enemy that may be familiar. As an adventure it is primarily a GM product – but it is an absolutely beautifully assembled work that can provide a number of gaming sessions of fun if this sort of Underdark adventuring is what your group likes.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
*** Warning – Possible Spoilers ***
Sizing Up the Target
City of the Spider Queen is a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® mega-adventure designed by James Wyatt and published by Wizards of the Coast. The adventure is a full-color, 160-page trade paperback that includes a separate 16-page full-color map booklet. The cover depicts the adventure’s principal villain leading a horde of undead drow. The product retails for $29.95.
First Blood
City of the Spider Queen is an epic adventure for the FORGOTTEN REALMS ® setting designed to take a party of 10th level characters as high as 18th level by the conclusion of the adventure. It is based in part on the story line in the War of the Spider Queen series of novels, though the adventure itself takes place in a different location and parallels the action of the novels, rather than replicating it. A tie-in box of miniatures is also available specifically for this adventure, as is an on-line web enhancement.
The entire adventure takes place in the Underdark below the Dalelands of Faerun and provides opportunities for both traditional dungeon-crawling, exploration in the wilderness of Underdark Caverns, stealthy infiltration of drow outposts, and even some political infighting in an underground city.
The adventure begins when the player characters are drawn to investigate drow raids on settlements in Daggerdale. They begin with the investigation of a series of crypts, which eventually lead to a passage to the Underdark near a small Drow settlement that has undergone an internal upheaval. Clever investigation by players can reveal an opportunity to exploit an internal division in the drow, and strike at the heart of their forces far beneath the Dalelands.
This first series of fairly traditional site-based encounters has a number of potentially tough battles, and some in unique locations, including one on a giant web in a massive underground chasm.
While the heroes are investigating, the drow plans for conquest of the surface continue. A timeline for the enemy is provided that runs parallel to the PC’s investigations – careful action by the PCs can disrupt the timeline but may awaken the drow to the threat the PCs pose. The adventure provides a number of strategies to play the villains intelligently – this is not a simple room-by-room, kick-in-the-door style dungeon romp.
Provided the PCs decide to strike against the drow threat, they will travel across the wastes of the deep Underdark, potentially encountering as many as five separate major encounter areas, before reaching the drow city of Maerimydra deep in the earth. The city is in the midst of a civil war between various factions of drow, which provides the opportunity for clever PCs to exploit politics within the city to aid in their infiltration. Eventually, the PCs will infiltrate or assault the main stronghold of the drow faction in control of the city, and after a series of climactic encounters in a structure that bridges the planes of existence, they will either succeed heroically or be destroyed, and the Dales will fall with them.
The adventure material itself is well put together – highlighted read-aloud text is provided for each encounter area, with abbreviated statistics tied to full stat blocks in the appendix. Sidebars provide both background information and hints on running the adventure; full color art is present throughout. Though the adventure requires the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting to run as written, statistics for the necessary monsters from Monster of Faerun are provided in the appendix along with new monsters and templates (a total of 13 in all, including new demons, spiders, undead, and the very useful revenant template). There are also 13 new magic items, including two minor artifacts.
Critical Hits
Drow: you either love them or you hate them. If you’re in the latter category, go ahead and give this adventure a pass – the large scope of the adventure makes it difficult to replace the drow as the primary adversaries without an almost complete rewrite. If you’re in the former category, though, this is a great adventure of epic proportion guaranteed to provide a number of sessions of very challenging gaming – while the enemy are drow, they aren’t your usual spider-loving drow. Played well, this is an adventure both for players who love challenging combats as well as those who like political maneuvering.
The book is absolutely beautiful. While the cost may seem high for an adventure, once you’ve seen the quality of the maps, artwork, and even the individual text pages you’ll see you’re certainly getting what you’re paying for in terms of presentation. It’s almost a shame to have put this much effort into an adventure – the book is so pretty you don’t want to crack the binding.
Critical Misses
The adventure is a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® product, which will certainly be an issue for some. The setup of the adventure assumes a number of significant events in the drow population that make it a little more difficult than your average adventure to port over into another setting. You at least need a stereotypical drow-infested Underdark to pull this one off, as well as some appropriate deities to make the story line work.
The adventure is also fairly linear, at least up to the point that the party reaches the drow city, after which the opportunities for a party to wander about under their own agenda increase. If you need a different hook to get your players interested, as well, you’ll have to make up your own, as only the single one is provided.
A group that likes to tackle all their encounters head-on with cold steel is in for a bit of a rough time, particularly in some of the early sections of the adventure if the party is at the lower end of the recommended level range. The GM may wish to provide some additional opportunities for negotiation early on, especially if players lose patience in dungeon-type environments – though some careful preparation can generate a whole range of schemes once the city is reached.
Coup de Grace
As a FORGOTTEN REALMS ® product, City of the Spider Queen is completely closed content. Though it complies well with the established rules set, particularly for its setting, it is a general theme and enemy that may be familiar. As an adventure it is primarily a GM product – but it is an absolutely beautifully assembled work that can provide a number of gaming sessions of fun if this sort of Underdark adventuring is what your group likes.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
Messageboard Golem
First Post
I'm running a party through City of the Spider Queen. First, I must confess that I've never run a module before. In my 25 years of gaming, I've always wanted to come up with my own adventure. But I wanted to see how the other half lives and (I'll admit) coming up with adventures for a high level party was getting more and more difficult.
The previous reviews that I've seen of the module focus on the playability of the encounters and the politics of the setting. For a casual observer (in other words, someone who hasn't yet run the thing), both of these seem solidly written and well thought out. In truth, however, I found that the politics don't really come into play (at least they haven't yet. The party doesn't really get much choice but to travel down the dark tunnel until they hit the next encounter. As for the encounters themselves, well, I found it difficult to keep my eye on the Monster Manual, the monster appendix, the map, and the monster description in the book. The abbreviated stat block is riddled with small mistakes. And even when it's not, you have to really work to bring a good encounter.
The monsters aren't, at least to my party, that tough. There are a few encounters that seem balanced. But others seem pretty much a waste of time. I thought, for example, that the new monster, the wraith spider, would make a nice opponent. The damn thing really doesn't seem to be worth a darn.
A particular annoyance to me is the allocation of feats. Rather than take a selection of feats that would impact the game, many monsters (particular the drow) take feats that have little or no impact on the game. I'm willing to throw a little energy into verisimilitude. But I would imagine that characters with scribe scroll and craft wand should, would have the occasional scroll or wand on their person. This particular example might come out of the module's rather scanty application of treasure (the treasure sphincter perhaps does tighten when dealing with high level characters). But I think the criticism is true in general.
The maps are also well thought out. Perhaps too well thought out. Some energy has been put into breaking with the standard 2 dimensional map. But given the strain of having to have 4-5 different pages out to run an encounter properly, the complexity of some of the maps isn't always a good thing.
It isn't that some love didn't go into this product. I really like a signifigant portion of it, particularly when I'm just reading it.
If I were to improve this product, I'd introduce a larger page count or a web supplement that puts each encountered monster onto its own page, spelling out potential strategies and defenses. I use a card based initiative. I found it very helpful to condense each monster's abilities and tactics to their initiative card. But it is a pretty time consuming activity (albeit, one that makes you study each monster and often one that reveals problems in the original stat block).
I'd also, and I by no means know exactly how to do this, spend some more energy creating some role-playing encounters. The module doesn't really focus on this, making it more of a high level "choose your own adventure" than a flesh and blood world.
I would be VERY curious to hear from other GMs to see if their experience is similar or different. And I'd love to learn how to better use this module, which my group still has about 24 hours of game play left in.
The previous reviews that I've seen of the module focus on the playability of the encounters and the politics of the setting. For a casual observer (in other words, someone who hasn't yet run the thing), both of these seem solidly written and well thought out. In truth, however, I found that the politics don't really come into play (at least they haven't yet. The party doesn't really get much choice but to travel down the dark tunnel until they hit the next encounter. As for the encounters themselves, well, I found it difficult to keep my eye on the Monster Manual, the monster appendix, the map, and the monster description in the book. The abbreviated stat block is riddled with small mistakes. And even when it's not, you have to really work to bring a good encounter.
The monsters aren't, at least to my party, that tough. There are a few encounters that seem balanced. But others seem pretty much a waste of time. I thought, for example, that the new monster, the wraith spider, would make a nice opponent. The damn thing really doesn't seem to be worth a darn.
A particular annoyance to me is the allocation of feats. Rather than take a selection of feats that would impact the game, many monsters (particular the drow) take feats that have little or no impact on the game. I'm willing to throw a little energy into verisimilitude. But I would imagine that characters with scribe scroll and craft wand should, would have the occasional scroll or wand on their person. This particular example might come out of the module's rather scanty application of treasure (the treasure sphincter perhaps does tighten when dealing with high level characters). But I think the criticism is true in general.
The maps are also well thought out. Perhaps too well thought out. Some energy has been put into breaking with the standard 2 dimensional map. But given the strain of having to have 4-5 different pages out to run an encounter properly, the complexity of some of the maps isn't always a good thing.
It isn't that some love didn't go into this product. I really like a signifigant portion of it, particularly when I'm just reading it.
If I were to improve this product, I'd introduce a larger page count or a web supplement that puts each encountered monster onto its own page, spelling out potential strategies and defenses. I use a card based initiative. I found it very helpful to condense each monster's abilities and tactics to their initiative card. But it is a pretty time consuming activity (albeit, one that makes you study each monster and often one that reveals problems in the original stat block).
I'd also, and I by no means know exactly how to do this, spend some more energy creating some role-playing encounters. The module doesn't really focus on this, making it more of a high level "choose your own adventure" than a flesh and blood world.
I would be VERY curious to hear from other GMs to see if their experience is similar or different. And I'd love to learn how to better use this module, which my group still has about 24 hours of game play left in.
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