D&D 5E Baldurs Gate CRPG as an intro to Descent into Avernus

[Tales and Chronicles]

I've been saying for a while that not releasing the BG campaign as regional gazetteer + low-level campaign is a weird choice for WotC. The quests, the maps, everything is mostly already done!

I ran two table through the story of Icewind Dale 1 in the past and it also makes for a pretty cool adventure (IMHO better than Rime).

 

[TheSword]

The Wilderness

Anyone who has played this game will know there are hundreds of encounters in the Wilderness. While this works well in the game as you explore 200m x 200m blocks of darkness to find the secrets, it isn’t so simple in a free form TT version.

I’ve therefore decided to slot encounters into three categories

Locations

These include The Friendly Arm Inn or The Excavation Site. They will have an encounter map and be explored normally by moving around and the DM narrating what they see. I don’t include towns like Bereghost, or Baldurs Gate in this as they are too big to fully explore. Nashkell probably will be entirely plotted on a map.

Fixed Encounters

There are some encounters which need to happen for the story to progress or are so iconic you really want them to happen… Saverok’s ambush, meeting Xzar and Montaron for instance. Or Elminster’s various interactions. These will be dropped in as they should occur.

Random Encounters

The majority of encounters on each map are almost random and not keyed to a location. They’re just wandering around the woods or hills. This is best simulated by random encounters I think. Some random encounters may link directly to locations though to provide clues to the wilderness locations. Plenty will be helpful or at least certainly not aggressive. Hopefully it will give an impression of a dynamic world.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

You dont happen to have an open slot at that table? I've been trying to get back to BG 1 this past week, and I find it hard to go back to the simplified 2nd edition rules when playing and most youtubers lose me after a time because they seem to either dont know the game that much (not understanding how THAC0 or AC work) or do stupid min-max stuff.

Anyway, you seem to be set for a splendid time for that campaign. I only fear that the players will have way more fun in the BG1 sandbox than the more structured Descent campaign!

 

[Parmandur]

Sounds really cool.

My understanding is that the low level part was originally going to be Eltruel, with the players getting sucked into Avernus with everyone else, but they wanted a Baldur's Gate tie in so shifter things around.

 

[TheSword]

Sounds really cool.

My understanding is that the low level part was originally going to be Eltruel, with the players getting sucked into Avernus with everyone else, but they wanted a Baldur's Gate tie in so shifter things around.

That’s interesting. Didn’t know that, but it makes a lot of sense.

 

[TheSword]

What do you think the best way of sharing the notes and progress is. It will be a lot of work and it would be nice to get feedback on it.

I have Obsidian Portal so I was thinking of building the campaign on there?