D&D 5E Descent Into Avernus & Mad Max: Why the adventure ultimately failed (to me!)

[Yora]

RPGs are not movies.
Or TV shows. Or novels. Or videogames.

RPGs need their own types of structures to work. Which is something still nobody seems to have figured out yet even after 40 years of trying. A good RPG product should be strucured to create stories from the players' inputs. Not to tell the players a story.
RPGs are not a storytelling medium.

And from what I've heard and read, structure seems to be the main flaw with all of these adventures. Whether they are widely considered good or bad, it's the structure where they fail the most.

 

[Shardstone]

Do you think it can be salvaged? How would you fix it?

The secret lies in the NPCs the adventure and doesn't use.

First off, cut out everything before getting into Hell. We don't need it. And put the players in Elturel when it gets pulled into Hell. Now we're cooking. This is your level 1-5 content, and you have to be attacked immedieatly, and in the distance you need to see Zariel and her armies growing closer to this place (which is swarmed in demons). You don't know what's happening, and all insanity is now on the table, so you got to get out.

So, you get out. Get to the Hag and get your gear somehow. Also at the hag: the last living Hellrider (an NPC in the book) and that holyphant that Zariel used to pal around with. THE HOLYPHANT DOES NOT TALK. IT DOES NOT TALK. IT DOES NOT TALK. uNLESS your group is down for that, whatever.

Anyway, that Holyphant and Hellrider are being chased by Zariel, cuz they know where her sword is, and she can't let anyone get that sword before her. Zariel doesn't remember why she even wants it, but she found the Holyphant, was going to get its info, and it got saved by the Hellrider somehow. Who knows! Point is, you're traveling with the Hellrider, and Zariel is coming after the Hellrider, so now their problems are your problems.

First, you gotta get somewhere else. Literally anywhere else. ANd the sword can maybe help you. So you hit the road. Combine the Path of Demons and the Path of Devils. Take out all the fetch quest or stuff about having to go do something for someone somewhere else. Its all violent, people trying to trick you so they can take advantage of you with violence, and hidden violence you don't even expect. This is where you bust in the Warlords of Avernus, which are NPCs NEVER USED IN THE WHOLE BOOK REALLY WITH STATS AND WARMACHINE. Combine the Warlords with the violent options of the combined Paths, and have the players run through it. All the way to the end.

And at the end, the Scab. It isn't what they expected. They have someone they can ally with here. I suggest you keep the Dragonborn played by Joe and combine the scab with Tiamat's cave. Maybe the sword is buried in Tiamat's "first corpse" (as she's now smaller and inside her old skull) and by ripping it out of her, she'll be forced to answer one prayer for the players. She wisely tells them they could use her to kill something, or they could use her to help free "their city." Regardless, the players get this, this is their first real moment to rest, and then they dive into the scab.

Do the Scab. Get the sword. Now what? Let'ss change the sword a bit. Any creature attuned with the sword can fly out of Hell. Easy! So now the players could choose to leave, but...if they did...Zariel's plan continues, she consumes an entire city, and the Blood War tips in the favor of devils and things get a lot worse in every world for awhile. Plus, Zariel will chase them to any plane. There's no escape. And they have this potential Dragon Goddess miracle to cash in...

So they turn around AND GO BACK. This is an optional decision though. The players could just leave hell like in Out of the Abyss and never return and that's fine. You now have material for a different homebrew adventure! Yay! But, this is also a natural decision, to go back. I mean, they have the NPC (who could be dead by now, doesn't matter), the sword, the reasons to save the day....the Dragon Goddess miracle...

Run them back. Lots of crazy ass fights. Have their dragon and abishai allies be there. Big bloodshed. End by driving up into Zariel's flying fortress, do a bunch of crazy naughty word, I don't know, explosions, Hell, blood, Doom, etc etc etc. Find Zariel. Beat her, and choose to redeem her or not. If not, she'll be destroyed for good, and Eltruel INSTANTLY returns. Otherwise, if you redeem her, you will have to go to Eltruel and finish what you started.

Let's assume they redeem. Fly with Zariel back to Eltruel. Demons everywhere. The destroyed Zariel army has tipped the war in a just-as-bad direction. Big battle, call in Dragon Goddess to melt the chains or whatever, free the city. Zariel maybe dies in Hell to save the city, or ascends with you all and goes to the Heavens to atone for what she's done, or who knows. Fun adventure! Very Mad Max! Easy to run with the book too, you don't need too much fiddling around to set up the chain.

This adventure works better IMO for levels 5-10. 5 high octane levels where the war machines and other OP stuff you find in Hell lets they should-be-dead characters survive all this insanity. Bring in dark secrets and roleplaying and stuff with the devils as you want. Plan on a lot of set piece combats, a lot of evolving combats, or a lot of shenanigans that replace combats because shenanigans are a pillar of play.

Hope this makes sense and helps!

P.S: The book has AMAZING concept art in it at the end. Use that!!

 

[pukunui]

That's pretty much how it goes. I suppose it makes it easy to add your own House Flavour to the adventure, but it doesn't give you much that broadens your scope. All the challenge tends to be in bashing the adventure into shape, not in stretching your DMing skills to new heights.

This sums up my problems with the 3pp Odyssey of the Dragonlords campaign as well.

 

[TheSword]

I’d echo the problems already described and add a couple more.

The idea of vehicle chases just doesn’t work. From a mechanics standpoint the PCs have no good reason not to stop the wagons and just fight whatever is chasing them. It’s almost always better just to target the pilots not the vehicles and the vehicle rules don’t work with D&D turn based initiative. The soul tokens are a red herring.

It just isn’t dangerous enough. There isn’t really anything to be properly scared of in hell. Which seems like a flaw in the way the adventure set difficulty.

The encounters in hell are static, bland and devoid of plot and inter connectivity. Every NPC is useful and relevant for the 10 minutes it takes to move to the next section and then is never heard from again. The rivalry between different factions and the bargaining is non-existent.

The idea was great, the execution was poor. What the adventure needed was Plot that the players could engage with and influence, rather than some meta plot happening in the background that the players only learn about by accident.

RPGs absolutely can tell the PCs a story through a slowly discovered and unraveled mystery. There is no reason why the PCs can’t tell their own along the way. The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[pukunui]

The idea of vehicle chases just doesn’t work. From a mechanics standby the PCs have no good reason not to stop the wagons and just fight whatever is chasing them. It’s almost always better just to target the pilots not the vehicles and the vehicle rules don’t work with D&D turn based initiative. The soul tokens are a red herring.

I've always struggled with chases in turn-based games (not just D&D). 5e's default chase rules are super awkward to use. The closest I've come to chase rules that actually work are the variant chase rules in the AL Season 2 adventure, Cloaks and Shadows.

 

[TheSword]

If I was running it again. I would have have the entire adventure be about Baldurs Gate, not Elturel.

The companion is a construct being crafted by several factions to ward the city against Baalspawn. It’s construction is happening when the PCs arrive.

The first locations are about uncovering the treachery of the Vanthampurs. At the conclusion of which the Party and Baldurs gate gets dragged into hell.

Bring the city to life. Give ways to return to the city when they need.

Have several factions in the city with competing aims and solutions for freeing BG.

Mix in some factions of hell into the mix. Dispater, Mephistopheles, Asmodeus. Give them their own agendas and tasks.

Give the party some actual things to be scared about.

Come up with some working vehicle chase rules.

 

[Derulbaskul]

It would have made more sense as an expedition to a layer of the Abyss - such as the Barrens of Oublivae (4E reference).

Hell is not the place for the chaos needed to make this adventure work.

 

[ECMO3]

Wow, that was a lot. Far too much for me to read all of it.

To start with, I played DIA and I loved it. I played an Arcane Trickster4/BladesingerX

I think if you go strictly along the plot line it can be railroadish, and there is a problem deviating because you are trying to save a city before they all starve to death, so you don't have a lot of time to explore hell or otherwise get involved with the many cool story elements there.

I loved the cars we got and the running battles we had in them and it did feel very mad-maxish driving around in them (perhaps because I was generally the driver because I had land vehicle proficiency). Our DM was so awesome on this and we were constantly thinking up maneuvers to do with the car - I slammed on the brakes and put it in a power slide while our barbarian leaps into the enemies vehicle. Our Monk falling off and using that Monk speed to try and catch us. I failed a check and our scavanger got demolished at one point as I tried to swerve and avoid an enemy that was trying to ram us. As we spilled out of it we were able to run down our adversaries car and ended up taking it.

I think there would be something to be said for a DM to alter the plot a bit. Make it not about saving the people of El Turel but rather something with less of a sense of urgency-maybe the city got sucked into hell but the people didn't and make the people living there warlord types or slavers. Then expand the adventure so the players can explore hell, maybe play a bigger role in the blood war (willing or not), take a side mission on the Stix to another plane (abyss or another layer of hell). It would be some work, but I think the adventure and the "dora the explorer" style map you get has enough in there to expand and do this.

 

[ECMO3]

The idea of vehicle chases just doesn’t work. From a mechanics standpoint the PCs have no good reason not to stop the wagons and just fight whatever is chasing them. It’s almost always better just to target the pilots not the vehicles and the vehicle rules don’t work with D&D turn based initiative. The soul tokens are a red herring.

I think we were better off driving than stopping. As I recall the movement rate on the vehicles was very high. I think we would have been sitting ducks if we stopped.

We attacked vastly superior numbers from the car as we drove away at one point and we would not have survived if we stayed.

The vehicles we had all had weapons on them and afforded cover, so I don't really see what the advantage would have been in stopping. We did ram the enemy and board their vehicles and that kind of stuff, but I think we would have been sitting ducks if we stopped.

 

[TheSword]

I think we were better off driving than stopping. As I recall the movement rate on the vehicles was very high. I think we would have been sitting ducks if we stopped.

We attacked vastly superior numbers from the car as we drove away at one point and we would not have survived if we stayed.

The vehicles we had all had weapons on them and afforded cover, so I don't really see what the advantage would have been in stopping. We did ram the enemy and board their vehicles and that kind of stuff, but I think we would have been sitting ducks if we stopped.

Your DM must have seriously beefed up the encounters then. By a couple of orders of magnitude. Which was probably quite sensible.

I actually like the idea of having to run away from a more powerful foe. It just has to be powerful enough and telegraphed that they can’t defeat the enemy. While at the same time they still need to interact with it otherwise it’s a nameless threat that serves little more than a device. That’s a difficult needle to thread.

Bear in mind that in 5e running away is rare for all the reasons discussed in other threads… and PCs are as like to fight to the death rather than surrender or flee. At least until it is too late. It causes problems.