Libertad
Legend
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Edition Note: This book was designed with the updated 2024 5e ruleset in mind.
The onset of 5th Edition D&D was accompanied with the surge of popularity in actual play podcasts. The first episode of Critical Role debuted in the middle of 2015, their popularity eventually turning them into household names in the tabletop fandom and turning the world of Exandria into a full-fledged setting and even a television series. Matt Mercer’s crew were far from the only ones to build passionate followings, such as Not Another D&D Podcast, Worlds Beyond Number, and Dungeons & Daddies.
Faster, Purple Worm! Kill! Kill! is part actual play, part improv comedy show, running a series of adventures with a common theme: a band of fresh 1st-level heroes embark on an exciting adventure way beyond their league, inevitably suffering ignominious deaths at the hands of one or more overpowered monsters. The series ran successfully on various streaming sites, and their 2024 Gen Con session is available for free on YouTube.
Now people can enjoy these same moments in their own games as a series of 15 one-shot adventures. And due to their ties with Wizards of the Coast, various people and settings part of D&D’s IP show up in this book, such as one adventure involving the demon lord Demogorgon attacking a village, or another adventure that takes place on a lightning rail in Eberron.
The book’s Introduction is brief, outlining the common guidelines, expectations, and advice. Each adventure is designed for 4-6 1st level PCs, and while designed to be standalone each adventure has a sidebar called You Saying There’s a Chance? which outlines ways to tone down the difficulty to make the session survivable. Another common sidebar is Keeping It Spontaneous, outlining ways to insert unexpected and interesting twists to liven up a scene or speed up play. Additionally, the Conclusion of every adventure details the aftermath, usually with an NPC reflecting on the PCs’ doomed accomplishments and each player describing in-character how they’re remembered. Additionally, noncore magic items and creatures are provided in Appendices in back, which gives us quite a few stat blocks for some famous figures from various D&D settings.
Everybody Dies at a Costume Ball takes place in the city of Sharn on the world of Eberron. Amahlia d’Lyrander, a powerful member of her namesake Dragonmarked House, learned that one of her three advisors is planning to betray her at an annual masquerade gala. The gala takes place on Reginald Butterbottom XVII, an airship docked up in a fancy neighborhood near the top of Sharn, and Amahlia hires the PCs to search for the traitor.
The reality of the situation is that Cog, Amahlia’s warforged advisor, has fallen under the influence of Dyrrn the Corruptor, one of the daelkyr that was trapped on the Material Plane during Xoriat’s invasion 9,000 years ago. Cog is convinced that the world will become a utopia once everyone is turned into illithids, assimilating all life and wiping away tribalistic and prejudicial divisions. Dyrrn’s agents smuggled barrels full of magical gas onto the airship, primed to drop and erupt over the City of Sharn, turning most of the population into mind flayers.
Despite being hired by House Lyrandar, the PCs are undercover and have to play the part of regular attendants. This means that they’ll have to earn the right to enter the gala via an appropriate group performance skill check, as a valet notes that “only the most fascinating invitees” are allowed onboard, and romance-themed performances are made with advantage as Amahlia is quite fond of those. Once they enter, the three advisors can be located and interviewed, with the adventure recommending that they locate Cog last. One of them, a gnome named Alistair, can give the PCs a dragonshard imbued with a one-use casting of Zone of Truth to aid their investigation. As for Cog, the stress of the operation as well as the inevitable casualties is playing heavily on his conscience, meaning that it will be easy for PCs to get him to spill the beans by playing to his better nature. The warforged will beg the PCs to head to the hold, telling them that something vaguely terrible is bound to happen down there, and gives them a Necklace of Fireballs.
The airship’s lower deck holds the seemingly unmarked gas-filled barrels, along with a bunch of gunpowder barrels labeled XXX. The gas barrels have hidden runes on them in Undercommon that can also be translated via an Arcana check, being the word “assimilation.” Dyrrn is in a locked door far back with two mind flayers, and it will enter the main hold after some time. The daelkyr will not be initially hostile, curious to find out the PC’s intentions. Regardless of how the PCs respond, it will either attack or let the mind flayers handle the PCs.
While the PCs are pretty much doomed, they can prevent Dyrrn’s evil plot by sabotaging the gas barrels. Lighting the gunpowder barrels on fire will trigger a chain reaction, destroying the airship along with the gas barrels and rendering them useless. The airship’s drop hatch is opened via a locked lever, and Dyrrn has the key on its person. For a survivable adventure, the opposition is replaced with a pair of dolgaunts instead.
Thoughts: This adventure’s rather short and straightforward for an intrigue/mystery-based one, which may not be to everybody’s taste. I like the addition of magic item rewards to give the PCs an edge in later encounters and interactions, as well as the pyrrhic victory of dying yet managing to stop Dyrran’s plans. The scenario makes use of several iconic elements of Eberron that make it quite distinct, rather than a generic fantasy adventure that happens to be set in that world. For a 1st-level module it feels very high-stakes, so overall I like it a lot.
Everybody Dies in Barovia takes place in the most popular domain of the Ravenloft setting. Like just about every other Barovian module, the PCs are outlanders transported there via the Mists, with the adventure hook involving a Missing Person important to the party. The players must describe their PC’s relationship to the character, while Keeping It Spontaneous provides more options such as each player giving the NPC a single descriptive physical trait.
Once transported by the Mists, the DM either rolls or chooses from a list of legends about Barovia for each PC to know, being a mixture of three-true and one false tale. The Mists don’t let up, and they must navigate to safety by following the sound of mandolin music. Those with a Passive Perception lower than 10 are unable to make it out of the Mists without a guide and take necrotic damage, but otherwise a decently-perceptive guide can get the group out of the Mists. The party will then find themselves in Madam Eva’s Vistani camp, who will invite them into her tent. She will give the party a Mirror of Insight, a magic item that shows the viewer their deepest desire or fear, and the player must describe what they see. Afterwards, Eva will perform a Tarokka reading, and PCs who honestly answered what they saw in the mirror will gain one of ten possible mechanical boons based on the Tarokka card drawn. The DM can either choose the card or roll randomly, and include a wide range of one-time or limited-duration effects. Summoning a raven that gives a PC advice in the form of advantage on a d20 roll, halving incoming damage and gaining an equal amount of temporary hit points, casting Moonbeam or Misty Step, or igniting a weapon in magical flame to deal bonus fire damage. Most of these boons can be activated as a bonus action or reaction, making them relatively easy to use for most characters.
The final card Madam Eva draws is the Darklord, filling her with fear. She cries out a warning too late as the PCs are teleported into the dining room of Castle Ravenloft, with none other than Strahd von Zarovich! He will answer any questions they have in truthful yet vague ways, although any queries about the Missing Person will have him dodge the question by saying there will be answers later. The vampire count is more in the mood for some evening entertainment, and subtly pressures the characters to come up with something. The specifics of the entertainment are whatever the PCs can plausibly come up with, but regardless it takes the form of an appropriate ability check from each character with a DC 10 to determine the overall success PCs who fail earn scorn from Strahd, inflicting a curse imposing penalties to their AC, but success earns a standing ovation that grants them +1 on attack rolls, ability checks, and saving throws.
Strahd’s “reward” for the party is the revelation of the Missing Person: a recently-reanimated Strahd Zombie who shambles into the room, with the darklord proudly announcing that their loved one is back and “much improved!” The zombie will be hostile to the PCs, and Strahd will join in the slaughter. The sidebar for a survivable portion of this adventure has Strahd summon three zombies instead and watches the fight. Should the PCs survive, Strahd will declare that they won’t make for challenging prey, and has vampire spawn minions escort the party out of his domain.
Thoughts: I’d rate this adventure a 2 out of 5. It’s much more rail-roaded than the first one, and the bonuses gained from the Tarokka Cards are going to be less directly impactful during the dinner scene. Contrast this to the magic items rewarded during the airship gala in Eberron. Additionally, the initial threat of being lost in the Mists is a non-challenge, only being a risk if the PCs split up or everyone somehow has negative Perception modifiers. As someone who ran a modified Castle Ravenloft dinner scene in Curse of Strahd, I know how important it is to have an underlying motivation and goal for social conflict. Normally, one would assume that the PCs can use the opportunity to learn more about the Missing Person, but as Strahd automatically evades the topic it also railroads the dinner scene into hinging entirely on the entertainment skill check challenge.
Everybody Dies In the Eye of the Beholder takes place in the city of Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms. The PCs are prospects for recruitment into the Zhentarim, and their handler Davil Starsong tasked them with stealing a magical item from a private party held by the Xanathar Guild in order to become full-fledged members. As for what that item is, it lets the user open portals between the Material Plane and Feywild. The adventure proper begins in the Yawning Portal, a popular tavern for adventurers, and the Keeping it Spontaneous sidebars suggest that the players give backstories as to their last successful mission and how they were recruited. Davil will outline the mission once everyone agrees to do it: the beholder crime lord known as Xanathar is holding a secret club that looks like an abandoned warehouse on the outside, taking place during the holiday known as Fey Day where the mortal and faerie realms are closest.
As for how the PCs are to infiltrate the party, Davil explains that they must take the sewers and find an entrance to the club guarded by a creature “like a beholder, only stupider.” They’re given a map of the sewers, which requires light sources to see for those without Darkvision and those who fall into the water via a failed Acrobatics suffer disadvantage on Charisma-based ability checks due to smelling horrible. The beholder-like guard is Sam, belonging to a weak species of beholderkin known as a Gazer that has 4 eye rays (charm, fear, frost, telekinesis). Sam floats in front of a grate leading up to the club, and is while not initially hostile he is stupid and paranoid, which the PCs can play on to convince them to pass if they pretend at knowing ulterior schemers in the Guild. Sam will become hostile should the PCs fail to convince him to pass, although they have 1d4 rounds to get his mood back up to indifferent before combat starts. Regardless of the outcome, Sam will relay a silent telepathic message to other Guild members that suspicious characters entered the club.
The club is a large, fancy room packed with costumed guests, and people are passing around the magic item on the dance floor to summon and create various fey-themed effects. A pair of guards using the Bandit stat blocks remain close to the item at all times, and two more guards are up on the balcony as snipers. Nobody will be initially suspicious of the party, and the security is light on purpose. As to why, Xanathar knows that the Zhentarim are planning to steal the item, and wants to be there personally to kill them. Should violence ensue during the theft of the item, the non-Bandit partygoers will get as far away from the fight as possible. The only way out is back through the sewers, and at this point Xanathar is already headed the party’s way, with four hobgoblin minions who block the other way out of the sewers. Xanathar will explain how excited he is to kill the party, but claims that he might change his mind if they beg for their lives. He will hear the PCs out, then announce that anyone who puts their hands on his treasure is a “one-way ticket to disintegrationville.”
Although it might seem that the Zhentarim came out losing, the PCs’ mission was actually a distraction to divert the Xanathar Guild’s attention from the docks. This allowed the Zhents to steal a ship full of contraband items from the Guild, and Davil commemorates the PCs in his journal as “people who were very nearly good enough.” A survivable version of this adventure instead has Sam the Gazer try to ambush the PCs as part of the final encounter, and replaces the hobgoblins with Bandits.
Thoughts: This adventure leans a lot more heavily on social interactions, and has some potential combat as a fail-state with Sam. Combined with the open-ended means of snagging the magic item from the club, this adventure provides some room for leeway and PC creativity despite its linearity. Additionally, the surprise twist of the mission being a distraction feels both in-character for the Zhentarim while also giving a plausible explanation for why mere initiates were entrusted with such an important-seeming task. Overall, I like it, and rate the adventure a 7 out of 10.
Thoughts So Far: The first three adventures in Faster, Purple Worm do a good job of highlighting notable aspects of Eberron, Ravenloft, and the Forgotten Realms which should be easily recognizable to fans of said settings. Of them, Everybody Dies at a Costume Ball is my favorite, with only Barovia rating low for me.
Join us next time as we trigger a TPK in a cemetery, while eating mushroom stew, and trying to rescue a princess from a tower!
