Rage of Demons: "D&D On Hard Mode"

Out of the Abyss will be available in preferred stores in just two days (and elsewhere 11 days later). In the meantime, the promotion is still coming thick and fast, this time with a Chris Perkins interview over at Polygon. The interview covers a range of general D&D topics which you've probably seen dozens of times before, but there is some new material on Out of the Abyss. "The idea with Rage of Demons was to paint the Underdark as D&D on hard mode".

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The whimsical Alice in Wonderland style is divisive; Perkins describes it as "the Underdark becomes the Wonderland of D&D; this crazy weird place that you have to fall down a hole to enter, and it’s full of crazy deranged characters. The more you hang around them, the more you begin to understand them, and the more you realize you’re going crazy yourself."

The interview also describes some details of the adventure. The PCs start off as prisoners of the drow.

The article also describes the sentient gelatinous cube, Glabbaagool. The demon lord Juiblex's presence causes lots of oozes to gain sentience. Other NPCs include Yuk Yuk and Spiderbait, a goblin tag team. "These guys are your bungee-jumpers, hang-gliders, stuff like that. We encounter them in Out of the Abyss where they help you navigate this gigantic cavern complex full of spiderwebs."

And then there's Xazak, the beholder with ten disintegration eyestalks and an Igor-like servant called Mr. Peebles. And Zelix, a mindflayer who runs an insane asylum because insane brains are more tasty than sane ones.

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Read the whole thing here.

 

[edutrevi]

My hype for this campaign is over 9000!!!

 

[Nemio]

So if I read things correctly there's no direct way to go from the end of the Starter Set (lvl 5) to this adventure.

"About half-way through the campaign, players are on the surface enjoying a respite when King Bruenor Battlehammer, the dwarven king of Gauntlgrym — formerly the king of Mithril Hall and one of R.A. Bob Salvatore’s signature characters. King Battlehammer hears about their exploits in the Underdark, contacts them, and says he wants them to go back down to deal with this demonic threat before it spills up to the surface." That hook, Perkins said, is a great starting point for characters of around the seventh level.

 

[bogmad]

So if I read things correctly there's no direct way to go from the end of the Starter Set (lvl 5) to this adventure.

If it's anything like PotA there may be a chapter somewhere with "sidequests" to help get parties up to the level where the main adventure storyline begins. Which is the best way to do it I think, since it doesn't require you level down your group if you perhaps like to run games outside of a pure adventure path format for the entire campaign... just the end of it.

 

[delericho]

So if I read things correctly there's no direct way to go from the end of the Starter Set (lvl 5) to this adventure.

I'm sure it will be easy enough to adapt some of the material to shift that on-ramp from 7th level down to 5th.

The interview was an interesting read, especially the bit about not wanting to do products that sell "only 100,000 copies" - as I understand it, that's more than even the best-selling supplements of 3e (and presumably 4e) times. So that's ambitious.

I'm definitely looking forward to this adventure. Though Mr Peebles is a terrible name.

 

[Nikosandros]

Interesting piece of data: it appears that so far 5e books have each sold well in excess of 100,000 copies.

 

[Mistwell]

So if I read things correctly there's no direct way to go from the end of the Starter Set (lvl 5) to this adventure.

There is. There is a whole series of quests and challenges that take place before that point, that's just one possible starting point. The King's heard about the PC's exploits in the Underdark, because they had a bunch of smaller exploits in the Underdark leading to that moment.

 

[Ath-kethin]

Interesting piece of data: it appears that so far 5e books have each sold well in excess of 100,000 copies.

It appears where? I'm not questioning the statistic, but what is the source of the information?

 

[Mistwell]

Interesting piece of data: it appears that so far 5e books have each sold well in excess of 100,000 copies.

It appears where? I'm not questioning the statistic, but what is the source of the information?

Yeah. The relevant quote:

"As a consequence of that diligence, we’re enjoying what I would call unprecedented success...."Perkins said that their approach to building the brand back up, after the troubles the fourth edition faced, is translating into commercial success. The proof, he says, is visible in the stellar sales of fifth edition’s physical books.

"It’s staggering," Perkins said. "I don’t know how many reprints we’ve done of the core rules, but at this point it’s a lot. The books have been on the New York Times bestseller lists for eight, nine, maybe ten months. We’ve garnered lots of awards. By every metric, this edition is surpassing previous editions.

"D&D the role-playing game is not going away. It is the heart and soul of your business. But how you see it, the things we create for it, will be much more calculated, because we’re not going to put effort toward a product that’s only going to sell 10,000 or even 50,000 or even 100,000 copies if we can help it.

 

[Saplatt]

What the article said was:

"Fifth edition was and is, in some ways, the people’s D&D," Perkins said. "Great time and effort and care was taken in soliciting feedback from as many D&D fans as possible. We had more than 175,000 of them who directly subscribed to the early fifth edition D&D content, plus all the gamers in their groups. It’s conceivable, although we don’t know the exact number, that half-a-million people helped us playtest and gave feedback on the game over a two-year period.

"The game went out of its way, and we went out of our way, to bring the best of all the previous editions forward, to create a game that while harmonious, also hearkened back to things people loved from past editions. As a consequence of that diligence, we’re enjoying what I would call unprecedented success."

Perkins said that their approach to building the brand back up, after the troubles the fourth edition faced, is translating into commercial success. The proof, he says, is visible in the stellar sales of fifth edition’s physical books.

"We went out of our way to bring the best of all the previous editions forward.""It’s staggering," Perkins said. "I don’t know how many reprints we’ve done of the core rules, but at this point it’s a lot. The books have been on the New York Times bestseller lists for eight, nine, maybe ten months. We’ve garnered lots of awards. By every metric, this edition is surpassing previous editions.

"D&D the role-playing game is not going away. It is the heart and soul of your business. But how you see it, the things we create for it, will be much more calculated, because we’re not going to put effort toward a product that’s only going to sell 10,000 or even 50,000 or even 100,000 copies if we can help it.

So, Mr. Perkins doesn't actually say that each of the 5E books has sold in excess of 100,000. He does say, however, that the sales are "staggering" and have surpassed all previous editions "by every metric."

Edit: Ninja'd by Mistwell. But I'll leave the quote here for context.