the Jester
Legend
That's from Descent Into Avernus. It has been a while since I read it, but I believe she's a night hag.
D&D General (SPOILERS for Vecna: Eve of Ruin) Are My Standards Too High for Adventures?
- Thread starter the Jester
- Start date
DarkCrisis
Let her cook.
WotC bungled another adventure book. What is going on over there?
overgeeked
Open-World Sandbox
They're written more to be read and daydreamed over than actually run. Which is why every time an adventure drops there's thread after thread, blog post after blog post, and YouTube video after YouTube video on how to fix them. I guess it would be fine if it were decent writing. But it's mostly railroading, setting breaking nonsense as you said. The villain doesn't even show up until the final scene.
MonsterEnvy
Legend
I don’t agree, but some things are not to everyone’s taste.
Stormonu
NeoGrognard
High level adventures aren't easy things to put together, I've seen way too many over the years (several being from TSR alumni even) that fail to account for the power and abilities the players have at hand (I've been guilty of it myself - those levels have serious learning curves, and its why I don't play them anymore).
I was very hesitant about this module from the start after listening to the interview, and even from the interview I could sense there were going to be some railroad problems (and rule/lore snags) with the adventure. It really sounded to me like they were falling back into the 2E days of "Epic Storylines" on rails where the characters were more observer than participant (and often would never learn half the story the DM had been fed - Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape were especially notorious for this).
When you're trying to fit a campaign into an X page book there's not much wiggle room beyond the main adventure path, there's probably been several chunks that have been excised just to get it to fit into the page count in the first place. I imagine there's several spots where the characters are just assumed to roll with the plot to the next big scene and there's no space (or attempt) to extrapolate if they don't - they'll just flounder until the DM figures out a way to bridge the gap to the next section.
Also, they've been dinged before for making adventures "too complicated" to run via a convoluted story path or multiple branches - I think that might have been Storm King's Thunder, but I know that probably D&D's most complicated storyline was Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, and it got utterly slammed for how convoluted it was. They don't want to repeat that experience and scare away customers - high level is complicated enough without trying to decipher someone else's storyline and half-notes about how to juggle the storyline(s).
I think what we ended up with was a storyline that could be easily followed and easily run by inexperienced DMs as their first foray into high level as long as the players are onboard for following the primary trail. It's a casual tale, not a meatgrinder. I don't think it was made for the veteran DMs like a lot of us on here who have years under our belt - we're more likely experienced enough we'd prefer to make content that specifically fits our game thus far. They probably expected a lot of groups who attempt to run this have had some game time with lower level characters (maybe up to 8th level or so, if that much) and are going to skip right to this adventure with new PCs or power-leveling current ones.
I was very hesitant about this module from the start after listening to the interview, and even from the interview I could sense there were going to be some railroad problems (and rule/lore snags) with the adventure. It really sounded to me like they were falling back into the 2E days of "Epic Storylines" on rails where the characters were more observer than participant (and often would never learn half the story the DM had been fed - Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Planescape were especially notorious for this).
When you're trying to fit a campaign into an X page book there's not much wiggle room beyond the main adventure path, there's probably been several chunks that have been excised just to get it to fit into the page count in the first place. I imagine there's several spots where the characters are just assumed to roll with the plot to the next big scene and there's no space (or attempt) to extrapolate if they don't - they'll just flounder until the DM figures out a way to bridge the gap to the next section.
Also, they've been dinged before for making adventures "too complicated" to run via a convoluted story path or multiple branches - I think that might have been Storm King's Thunder, but I know that probably D&D's most complicated storyline was Expedition to the Demonweb Pits, and it got utterly slammed for how convoluted it was. They don't want to repeat that experience and scare away customers - high level is complicated enough without trying to decipher someone else's storyline and half-notes about how to juggle the storyline(s).
I think what we ended up with was a storyline that could be easily followed and easily run by inexperienced DMs as their first foray into high level as long as the players are onboard for following the primary trail. It's a casual tale, not a meatgrinder. I don't think it was made for the veteran DMs like a lot of us on here who have years under our belt - we're more likely experienced enough we'd prefer to make content that specifically fits our game thus far. They probably expected a lot of groups who attempt to run this have had some game time with lower level characters (maybe up to 8th level or so, if that much) and are going to skip right to this adventure with new PCs or power-leveling current ones.
This is always a risk though if they do show up throughout the adventure. Particularly at the levels this campaign is, I’m guessing the party would want to do everything in its power to confront Vecna right away.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
You missed my biggest gripe... my buddy bought it both on roll20 and book same day. he planed to run a homebrew from 5-8 then start it a little early. he read it and was like "Never mind this wont work." he asked in theory if... and described the set up and me and another (so 1/3+ of the group) unprompted said "Prepare to be derailed when we don't trust (insert NPC)"
so then he asked 1 or 2 follow ups we all as a group agreed we would 'derail' that by investigating the NPC thourally before we went on the quest... he told us the book takes that into account in fact there is a half page side bar on it...
so we were like "Great, so what's wrong?"
he then told us if we investigated that lead to either a TPK or us jumping right to the end of the mod...
I don't know all the details, (and the ones I do I am leaving vauge) but it feels to me that MOST groups will notice clues if something big is off and dropping said clues is a little weird.
it also reminds me of an old joke I used to make with a long gone buddy about speed running a zelda game... you get to a point where the villain wants this mcguffen, and the only way for you to get it first is to pass three trials... and you just say "Nope, he can't prove himself to be the hero so he can't get it... I win" and just stop playing.
so then he asked 1 or 2 follow ups we all as a group agreed we would 'derail' that by investigating the NPC thourally before we went on the quest... he told us the book takes that into account in fact there is a half page side bar on it...
so we were like "Great, so what's wrong?"
he then told us if we investigated that lead to either a TPK or us jumping right to the end of the mod...
I don't know all the details, (and the ones I do I am leaving vauge) but it feels to me that MOST groups will notice clues if something big is off and dropping said clues is a little weird.
it also reminds me of an old joke I used to make with a long gone buddy about speed running a zelda game... you get to a point where the villain wants this mcguffen, and the only way for you to get it first is to pass three trials... and you just say "Nope, he can't prove himself to be the hero so he can't get it... I win" and just stop playing.
GMforPowergamers
Legend
lets face it... if we as a community were not going to give huge pass after huge pass to WotC for things they did wrong, we wouldn't be here or playing D&D...
