D&D Beyond Releases Free Forgotten Realms Adventure

D&D Beyond has a new Forgotten Realms-focused adventure that focuses on battling the forces of Orcus. Today, D&D Beyond released The Tenebrous Stone, a new adventure that will appear in the upcoming Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun book. The adventure is a Level 3 "Deity Adventure" set in Helmsdale and sends players into a basalt quarry to track down an evil artifact. Players will battle several undead creatures before a final encounter at the hidden location of the artifact.

The adventure is one of many in the book and is similarly structured as the quick adventures found in the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide. There's a map, three encounters, and a brief overview of the adventure, but otherwise The Tenebrous Stone is relatively light. D&D Beyond has also loaded up the adventure on its Maps VTT, complete with both maps and monsters pre-loaded for the DM.

Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun will be released on November 11th.

 

[Parmandur]

This is a slightly upgraded Orc and Pie. "Adventure" implies a lot of content that isn't there.

For what it is, it's fine. Pretty cool map, and a unique little vision encounter. There isn't a lot of room for thematic resonance or compelling character moments or whatever, but it's not aiming for that. It's a building block. It's a perfectly cromulent building block.

If the adventure book has a bunch of these, that's an interesting choice. Maybe not a super great one -- it's a little monolithic. But I can see where they're going and I don't hate it.

Overall, I like the format, and I'm MUCH more likely to run this than to run a 100-page hardcover adventure, that's for sure.

There are 50 of these, 10 each for each of the 5 Gazateers to bring characters from Level 3 to Level 13...PLUS one more detailed traditional Level 1-3 Adventure that can work for all 5 starting areas. Based on the pages we have seen, they get at least a little more complex for the higher Level modules.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It could be, like I suppose that it once was, short for "Modular Adventure".

I believe the idea was a "module" could be dropped into an ongoing campaign, which was at least how I was playing in the 80s.

 

[Reef]

As much as I love fully fleshed out adventures, with motivated NPCs, stories, etc, a whole lot of interesting single-session encounters like this would be very useful. Like, when I’m trying to think of something to space out important plot points. Or, if I have a quest idea, but need an actual location to host the story mcguffin.

 

[Amphytrion]

It’s sadly very bland. I say this despite finding the adventure seed interesting.

The map is fun, but the adventure doesn’t make full use of it.

There are no NPCs. Just some statblocks.

I don’t find this sort of minimalist design very useful, to be frank. If I’m using pre-written adventures, the value in it is that there’s a lot within to inspire/cushion play. This adventure offers none of it; it could have been rolled up on a few random tables.

If the other 49 are like this, I’m afraid it’s a bit of wasted space. I’d rather have ten well-fleshed out adventures than 50 in this style.

 

[dave2008]

It’s sadly very bland. I say this despite finding the adventure seed interesting.

The map is fun, but the adventure doesn’t make full use of it.

There are no NPCs. Just some statblocks.

I don’t find this sort of minimalist design very useful, to be frank. If I’m using pre-written adventures, the value in it is that there’s a lot within to inspire/cushion play. This adventure offers none of it; it could have been rolled up on a few random tables.

If the other 49 are like this, I’m afraid it’s a bit of wasted space. I’d rather have ten well-fleshed out adventures than 50 in this style.

I am just the opposite - I find little vignettes like these much more useful than a traditional published adventure. If I buy a premade adventure I have to tear it apart in encounter nuggets like these and throw away all the story and NPCs. So a lot of wasted space. This is quick, efficient, and gives me what I want.

I wasn't planning to get the FR books, but if it has 50 of these I may change my mind. These would be very useful to me.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I believe the idea was a "module" could be dropped into an ongoing campaign, which was at least how I was playing in the 80s.

Right! And this is how these work, so I think the word is appropriate.

Call them Adventures and you have the confusion we are seeing in this thread.

Myself, I think that these are great, and I welcome this increased variety to the way DM material is presented.

We have plenty of fully presented Campain books already, and I am sure that they haven't abandoned that format.

I'm honestly excited for these books and for what they have cooking for the future.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I find little vignettes like these much more useful than a traditional published adventure.

I especially like them as part of a campaign setting. One of my remarks on Spelljammer and Planescape was that a bunch of little adventures would have shown off the setting a lot better than the bigger adventure we got for each. This adventure, simple as it is, does bear that out. We get a hook for a unique FR diety, Ilmater, and the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, which has appeared in video games and novels. And we get a plot point for a cult of Orcus, which has some pretty deep cut connections to the Damara region via the 1e FR Bloodstone adventures (from what I can tell). So even if you just casually play it as a pick-up thing, you get a sense of the kinds of adventures that FR can tell, of the stories that FR has in it. Which is part of what a setting book should do!

It sounds like they went pretty whole-hog on this "brief adventure" design in the book, and I'll be curious to see if there's some arcs hiding within them (is there a level 8 adventure against more Orcus cultists that might reference this one? Another one referencing the Monastery of the Yellow Rose?), too.

 

[Parmandur]

I especially like them as part of a campaign setting. One of my remarks on Spelljammer and Planescape was that a bunch of little adventures would have shown off the setting a lot better than the bigger adventure we got for each. This adventure, simple as it is, does bear that out. We get a hook for a unique FR diety, Ilmater, and the Monastery of the Yellow Rose, which has appeared in video games and novels. And we get a plot point for a cult of Orcus, which has some pretty deep cut connections to the Damara region via the 1e FR Bloodstone adventures (from what I can tell). So even if you just casually play it as a pick-up thing, you get a sense of the kinds of adventures that FR can tell, of the stories that FR has in it. Which is part of what a setting book should do!

It sounds like they went pretty whole-hog on this "brief adventure" design in the book, and I'll be curious to see if there's some arcs hiding within them (is there a level 8 adventure against more Orcus cultists that might reference this one? Another one referencing the Monastery of the Yellow Rose?), too.

This is a pretty chunky book, the DM book is 288 pages: another thing these minibars allow them to do is spread the 40 Monsters fromt he Bestiary around, too. This particular short does seem a bit anemic as a free sample, though

 

[Remathilis]

This is a slightly upgraded Orc and Pie. "Adventure" implies a lot of content that isn't there.

For what it is, it's fine. Pretty cool map, and a unique little vision encounter. There isn't a lot of room for thematic resonance or compelling character moments or whatever, but it's not aiming for that. It's a building block. It's a perfectly cromulent building block.

If the adventure book has a bunch of these, that's an interesting choice. Maybe not a super great one -- it's a little monolithic. But I can see where they're going and I don't hate it.

Overall, I like the format, and I'm MUCH more likely to run this than to run a 100-page hardcover adventure, that's for sure.

I think it fills a couple useful niches.

• Build around. The concept for some of these can be finished into longer adventures if the DM wishes.
• Back pocket: players decided to zig instead of zag? You could pull something like this out to keep the game running until you figure out what to do next.
• Inspiration. Sometimes a small adventure can inspire longer plots.

If nothing else, WotC has figured out that 6-8 encounters isn't needed to run a adventure.

 

[Parmandur]

I think it fills a couple useful niches.

• Build around. The concept for some of these can be finished into longer adventures if the DM wishes.
• Back pocket: players decided to zig instead of zag? You could pull something like this out to keep the game running until you figure out what to do next.
• Inspiration. Sometimes a small adventure can inspire longer plots.

If nothing else, WotC has figured out that 6-8 encounters isn't needed to run a adventure.

I imagine they higher Level quick runs night have a few more Encounters, and from a quick glance, this one sample seems in line wifh DMG guidelines for 4 Level 3 characters to be a little bit dicey.