I finished running this adventure about two weeks ago and wanted to gather my thoughts. I wanted to provide a generic review, but I also know that some people on the forums might be interested in specific details of my campaign. The generic review follows, and the specific details are at the bottom.
This adventure was an excellent follow-up to
Scouring, and if I was unsure in any way that I made the right choice running
Burning Sky, this adventure completely vindicated that decision. In fact,
Innenotdar was easily the best adventure I've ever run -- that may sound overblown, but I admit that I have not run too many published adventures. What was most important to me was that I felt that I could not personally top this. I'd like to think that perhaps I could, on a creative design level, at least match some of the material, but the adventure as a whole is just outstanding.
As with my preview review, I'm going to start with the best: the scenario in this adventure is one of the most unique I've ever seen or heard of in DnD. I would not be surprised to see this adventure summary listed in a "best of DnD" list. The premise is that the heroes, having escaped from Gate Pass, must enter the forest of Innenotdar to escape pursuit. The catch is, the forest has been burning non-stop for forty years. Once inside, the PCs find it difficult (but not impossible!) to leave and are drawn into the epic tale that created the situation. It doesn't stop here, however -- no summary can do justice to the variety of interesting, perpetually burning denizens of this undead forest.
As the PCs progress through the forest, each encounter (combat and non-combat) that they experience holds more clues. Reading through the adventure for the first time, I was struck by that fact: nearly every encounter is relevant and provides further clues to the forests mysteries. The adventure really allows players to discover over forty years of complex history, and their understanding of this material, in addition to connecting the dots, brings me to my other favorite part of this adventure.
The PCs are faced with two paths in the final act. Usually this sort of decision-point exists in adventures as a clear-cut choice for PCs. Sometimes it's a choice between good and evil and the path any given party will take is pre-ordained by their alignment. Other times, the choice is given to players and merely changes how the PCs go about a specific task.
Innenotdar takes this branching concept one step further. There is no obvious decision to be made, and what is initially given to the PCs is the "evil" path. Like many story points in
Burning Sky, though, the issue is not quite so black-and-white. It is likely that the PCs may believe this path to be their only choice. Indeed, my players were entirely prepared to do a number of evil acts because they were duped into believing them necessary. They came quite close, in fact, to completing the adventure this way, but during an extremely long and complex RP session, they were able to discover another path.
I can imagine that any DM running this adventure may see a party take wildly different approaches to this adventure. There's a lot of room in the middle and final acts for players to think about the events in the forest and to make a difference on their own terms. That's something that I rarely find in other published adventures. Sure,
Scouring had this angle again, and my readings of the next adventure,
Shelter From the Storm make it obvious that these types of situations are the aim of the EnWorld writers. But I still feel that the isolated forest is an incredible setting that takes all these advantages to an unprecedented high point.
I spoke earlier of not being able to replicate this level of quality on my own, and what I largely meant by that was that a lot of the resources at EnWorld's disposal really shine in this adventure. The adventure is 33% longer than
Scouring by page count, and my group took about 33%-50% longer to finish it, as well. In retrospect, I almost feel that
Scouring was highly padded. The nature of a 20-level-to-30-level conversion means
Innenotdar is padded, too, but it's a lot less noticeable. The skill challenges make a lot more sense here, and overall the conversion to the new system is less transparent.
I don't recall all the issues I had with
Scouring, but in playing
Innenotdar, I was able to make a more strict comparison:
Scouring had a number of unbalanced encounters, such as Dead Rising (hopelessly overpowered) and the final battle (hopelessly underpowered), as well as others, but this adventure doesn't suffer from this, or at least not as obviously. A forum member complained that the final encounter was too easy, and while I might agree that some DMs may choose to make it harder, EnWorld's position is far more easily defensible than before. Partly this is due to the obvious reason: practice makes perfect. At the same time, I think the bigger factor is that the player focus in most encounters is not actually on the difficulty. There were a number of battles that had my PCs sweating, but they were rarely close to death! Instead, these encounters feature situations that the PCs wish resolved in a specific way.
For example, there is one point early in the adventure where the PCs are privy to an experiment by a fellow adventurer to try and dispell the permanence of the flames within a dryad's grove. His efforts go somewhat awry and the PCs suddenly find themselves in a difficult position: one of them has fallen into a pit caused by the ritual and under attack by fungal creatures. While the PCs who did not fall in wish to help, they also need to assist the dryad and her children in getting to water to finish the ritual, while the security measures built into the dryad's grove make all of the above much more difficult to accomplish. None of this was every life-threatening to the PCs (unless they didn't get down into the pit fast enough) but the variety of situations created an interested and tense encounter.
Towards the end of the adventure, the PCs must visit a number of the forest's key players. In many of these cases, they themselves are unsure if combat is the best solution, but may not have any other way to forge ahead. This made some of my PCs uncomfortable, and a number of encounters started as combat but finished as a combination of skill challenges and just straight role-playing.
I don't think any of my players were watching their surge count too closely -- the focus in this adventure was on the story and how the players choose to resolve the situation they are presented with. That is why I think the difficulty of each encounter was not a huge factor.
I spent a lot of my time this review and last writing about the writing and design because those are the key elements to a DnD adventure. I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning that the cartography and art (both full-page and inset) are top-notch. The PDF itself is laid out perfectly, and I saw dozens of little changes and improvements from the last PDF. If
WotC PDFs and art are the pinnacle of the industry, I can easily say that this adventure easily matches them blow for blow. The colors are vibrant, the layout professional and nuanced, and I always feel like all the information I need is easy to find.
My complaints this time around are relatively minor. Probably my biggest complaint is the Travelling the River skill challenge, which is such a key aspect of both the experience gained by the PCs as well as meaningful in their traversal of the forest, that it's s shame more time wasn't spent on making it interesting. This skill challenge is used four times, twice as complexity five, and twice as complexity three. This is an incredible amount of time to spend on a simple skill challenge block! I
redesigned this skill challenge and posted it on the forums because it would have been boring and a lost opportunity to make traveling the forest seem a daunting task.
As for the other skill challenges, most of them are complexity one social challenges that, in my group, are more easily resolved via roleplaying. At a glance, I think they are fine -- they provide an excellent guide to the character in question and are helpful for those either rolling or role playing. The is one other skill challenge, mentioned above, to save the dryad's children. I think this skill challenge is rather unnecessary, but this was mostly a personal choice. I can't think of a way to improve it so I suppose I can't complain.
That's about it! The main point those reading this should take away is that if you have not yet subscribed, I would confidently say that this adventure shows EnWorld capable of providing an absolutely top-notch experience. Even as a stand-alone adventure,
Innenotdar would work very well, as long as your campaign has room for a forest that was burning for forty years. That said, it fits perfectly into
Burning Sky, giving PCs an early look at the primary nemesis of the campaign, without them knowing it, as well as underlining the fire theme quite beautifully.
Specific Notes of Interest
I think those following along would be interested in hearing about how my group tackled this adventure. They had dragged along Haddin and Crystin, and found Haddin to be nearly insufferably annoying. He complained bitterly. At one point after one of the early encounters (dangerous crossing?), he and one of the PCs traded some harsh words and he spitefully mind-controlled them. There was a brief scuffle, during which Haddin surprised the PCs with the power under his control. They also began to suspect his mind-control of Crystin.
They decided to rest in the Cool Cave, and one of the PCs, a minotaur barbarian, woke early and coup-de-gras'ed Haddin. This didn't kill him outright. One of the PCs was tasked with protecting Haddin since he is valuable to the resistance, and he prepared to stop the minotaur, but the player chose to use an action point for a second strike and finished him off.
Obviously this had a dramatic impact on Crystin, who then believed the minotaur was her protector in a way -- that he was responsible for the death of her father had not quite sunk in, and instead only her awakening from the near constant mind control she was under. She followed him around, which he found very annoying (luckily he drew the line at killing innocent little girls).
They encountered Kazyk, but I actually didn't have him be Kazyk. Kurychek from Scouring escaped from the PCs in the middle of the combat. The PCs managed to capture him after securing the Eladrin Hideout, and closed and locked the door to prevent his escape -- the windows were already boarded up, as noted in the adventure. Never-the-less, he escaped up the chimney. I thought it would be interesting to bring him back in an enhanced form. I didn't really work out the details, but I figured Guthwolf was unhappy with his failure and magically enhanced and upgraded him. I realize that one's a devil and the other's an Imp but I don't have a problem creating a connection between those two. Anyway, he made his case about the, er, case. The PCs were VERY conflicted about this. The one that actually held the case was fine with taking out the contents and giving it to him. Several were undecided. But one of the PCs, again, the minotaur Bjorkus, felt slighted by his earlier escape. During the ensuing battle, Kurychek kept Bjorkus busy with his summoned creatures while the willing PC handed over the case. Right as he was using a minor action to take it, one of the players changed their mind and sided with Bjorkus, and asked if they could use the disruptive strike power (which is an interrupt when an enemy attacks an ally, and lowers their chances of hitting on success), and I thought it was an awesome idea -- he hit, knocking Kurychek's hand away. Then he critted on his actual turn, killing Kurychek. More on that later....
The PCs met Khadral and quite enjoyed his company. They had quite a bond going, making his later death quite dramatic, which I liked. But I'm jumping ahead: when the ritual went awry, Crystin wanted to help. She was whipped by one of the vines which instantly brought her to bloodied. She was still learning to weild her power and didn't quite understand the risk she was in. The minotaur asked her to help the PC that fell into the hole. She approached the trees and tried to climb down, was whipped again, which knocked her unconcious, and the fall killed her outright. After the PCs dealt with the situation and got Khadral and Crystin back up, the party was rather steamed at the minotaur (Bjorkus) for his careless misuse of Crystin's trust.
Khadral, while healing up, said he knew of a way to revive Crystin. He was already somewhat aware of the power Crystin held (her trillith link attracting Indomitability's attention). I'm actually surprised this wasn't mentioned in the book, but I had Khadral pick up on it. Obviously he tried to tell the PCs he could revive her but didn't want to say how -- he couldn't think of a polite way to say he would toss her into the flames.
Khadral instructed the PCs to continue into the forest and return for Crystin once they found an appropriate place to do the ritual he would use to save her life. In reality, he wanted them away from him so he could recover and toss her into the flames to revive. They left and went to the elf village, where things went as planned. They felt the willow tree was a good place to do the ritual and figured they'd finish the task of reviving Crystin at the same time as retrieving Torfendar's remains.
They returned to find both Khadral and Crystin's corpse missing and tracked them to the goblin cave. The minotaur and one other PC entered the back part of the cave long before anyone else, making the battle hard. I modified the ritual to instead require two sacrifices: They attempted it with Crystin's corpse, which revived her in Indomitable state, but linked closely to Indomitability via her trillith possession (normally the trillith spirit leaves upon death, but due to Indomitability's link to her within the forest, he is able to ensure that trillith and Crystin remain together). Anyway, the attempt with Crystin failed, and instead revived her -- they shove her to the side and are attempting with Khadral instead when the PCs enter, surprised to find both Crystin, and, later, Khadral alive.
Things went mostly as planned from there. I ran a highly customized River skill challenge that worked VERY well for us, I was very glad I changed it. Kurychek reappeared in his original form -- his death had removed his powered-up guise. Though he didn't say it, he was now indomitable as well and alive only because of Indomitability. He appeared while the PCs were traveling downriver, as they were maneuvering through the shallows. He made his case once more and a similar situation ensued to before -- one PC was fine with him getting the case, and Bjorkus was not. The case was thrown, but the tiny Imp missed the catch and it landed in the water, which he can't touch. The minotaur and the willing PC leapt from the boat and after a number of rolls, Kurychek had the case.
In the village, the PCs weren't too eager to go fact-diving in the village, but one of the PCs was musically-inclined (but not a bard) and sat in a quiet spot in the village and tried to play the Song of Forms. This was quite an interesting event and captured the hearts of the citizens who weren't on shift, and for a few hours, they all gathered in the same area and told stories, sand songs, and socialized -- this was when the other PCs were able to pick up the bits and pieces of various village minutia.
I was dissapointed, though, that none of them were really able to connect the dots in terms of the forest's history. I had Nelle act to explain what he could, though he obviously didn't have all the facts, but he was able to bring the PCs up to speed. I was hoping this would be enough for them to be able to make the last few connections when talking with Gwenvere and Timbre. The PCs were reasonably convinced that Vuhl's path was best and reasonable. They went to Gwenvere to either kill her or convince her to go to Timbre. When Gwenvere asked what they would do with Timbre, they told her straight: they would kill Timbre. Overjoyed, she promised to meet them there.
At Timbre's grove, they tried to convince her to come down while they waited for Gwenvere. What they didn't know was that Gwenvere was already there and listening in a hidden location. Several of them got whispered hints that there was someone else present. Timbre didn't want to talk and mostly ignored the PCs, but when they told her they convinced Gwenvere to come, that got her attention. Cautious and untrusting, Timbre asked if their plan was to kill her, to which they responded not if they didn't have to. Gwenvere, overhearing this, felt betrayed and ran back to her lake.
Now proceeded a very long roleplaying event. From a DM perspective, I was very torn about what I should do. The PCs hadn't mentioned that the Shahalesti burned the forest, and, in fact, were not all that active in searching for a way to heal the fire. The thing that made it difficult for me was that they weren't outright willing to run in and kill Timbre, which I would not have prevented, but at the same time were merely talking to her without actively looking for a way to save her.
It was tough, but I had Timbre play the wise dryad -- she knew what the PCs had to do and saw that it was likely that they could do it. But that they were ready to kill her chilled her opinion of them, and she queried each of them to try and understand their motivations. If given the Living Blade and hence the lives of the Seela, would they act responsibly? Their ease to believe Vuhl and follow his instructions seemed to indicate no.
The PCs insisted that if there was a better solution, they would take it, but did not know of one. I am summarizing this rather quickly. The roleplaying session was probably our longest to date and each character contributed in various ways. Finally I felt that Timbre was convinced, and in any case, felt trusting them with the Seela's lives was better than immediate death.
I'm still unsure if I made the right choice.
If anyone actually read this far, I'd love to hear your thoughts. One puzzle that those of you familiar with the plot might have noticed is that if Crystin is now indomitable, the ending of the adventure spells her death. I had her live and be cured when Indomitability died. The players did not fully understand the nature of why the seela survived and why indomitable creatures died so they didn't question this, but I would love to hear it if someone has an idea as to how I can make this work.
They recieved a communique right before entering the fire forest that Buron is working on reviving her, though... I think they might meet up with her after they've been in Seaquen for a while, but I don't know if she'll rejoin the group from an adventuring perspective...
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