D&D 5E Out of the Abyss

[cavalier973]

I saw this at the bookstore the other day, and thought the artwork quite evocative.

Is it any good?

I'm unfamiliar with these books, but they look like adventure paths in a book. How high a level so the characters reach by the end?

 

[Uller]

It's very good. I'm running it now as a Play By Post (which is very very slow so we are only on Chapter 3 after a year of playing).

It begins with 1st level PCs. They are captured by drow and must escape into the Underdark as an infestation of demons starts to spread. Every one is crazy and getting crazier. Once they escape it becomes a bit of a sandbox. The PCs can go to several different places and they will probably have a menagerie of NPCs tagging along with them (which can be a bit of a pain but it is fun because you can kill them off over time...it gives you some character deaths without killing PCs). So far we've had 5 NPC and PC deaths and several very narrowly averted. Eventually the PCs escape the Underdark around level 7 only to return at the invite of a dwarven king to deal with the demon problem. That takes them up to 15th level.

It has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland vibe to it. There are lost of reviews and play guides around. Google SlyFlourish Out of the Abyss for a play guide.

 

[KahlessNestor]

I believe it runs levels 1-16 or so.

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[hastur_nz]

I played up to the level 7 break-point, and found it interesting in parts but overall unsatisfactory because spending so long trying to escape became a real drag, as did the fact that most of the inhabitants were at least half-mad and unable to be properly reasoned with, so the whole "madness" thing killed a lot of potential for role-play. The "Alice in Wonderland" inspiration is there, but for me it's not a positive thing - even Alice had the White Rabbit to chase - it felt like our PC's were just on a huge random insane walk until the adventure design finally let us escape.

 

[discosoc]

If you spend a lot of time prepping your adventures (reading ahead, know how to cut the chaff), are very good with managing a lot of NPCs that are supposed to feel important to your players, and don't mind the pretends-to-be-a-sandbox-but-is-really-an-RNG-railroad adventure structure, it *can* be kind of fun.

Otherwise, it will probably not be very compelling for anyone other than "roll players" who just want to move from one combat encounter to the next and level up.

 

[Lancelot]

I was wildly enthusiastic about it as a DM and reader. Huge sandbox! Underdark! Non-linear storyline! Demon lords! Interesting and whimsical NPCs! It seemed a huge improvement after grinding through endless dungeons in Princes of the Apocalypse. The first few sessions bore out my enthusiasm. The players were awestruck and enchanted by many of the encounters. You know it's going well when they risk their lives to try and save a gelatinous cube...

...but it just fell apart around the breakpoint (7th level). It's, to date, the only official 5e WotC campaign that we simply gave up halfway through. It was a learning experience for me, and the key learning was this: sandboxes suck (for me, and my group... your mileage may vary). Anybody can do a sandbox. I've been DM'ing for more than 30 years, and I can throw random encounters at players without a book giving me a bunch of tables and small set-pieces. What I can't do (easily) is make up a well-designed dungeon on the fly, with unique puzzles and traps and riddles, with well-developed NPCs, and a compelling overall plot.

The first half of OotA has some very nice encounter areas that can be strung together to form a kind of plot, although it's pretty simplistic (escape from the Underdark!). The second half is, in my opinion, considerably less compelling. It relies a lot more on random encounter tables, and simply doesn't have the meat to support a full-featured 8th-to-15th level campaign. There needs to be more going on than wandering around tunnels for 10-20 gaming sessions, beating down the occasional monster, finding the McGuffins, and taking out the boss monster.

...would I recommend it to a new DM, knowing nothing about your style or group? Maybe. I think it's a good 1st-7th level campaign (maybe 1st-10th level, tops). There's enough content there for those levels, before getting very flimsy at the top end. There are many excellent and evocative encounter areas to explore. It's very useful having the stats for the demon lords, because 5e suffers from a lack of top-end opponents at this stage. Many of the NPCs are quite novel and interesting, although only a few have a real storyline. It can provide an interesting shock to players to find that the opening session could have their unarmed 1st level characters fighting AC 17, 90 HP elite drow warriors if they try and just slug it out... or their 4th level PCs could be squashed by a demon prince if they get cocky.

But be prepared to do a bit of heavy lifting with the narrative as a DM. You may need to inject your own storylines to punch things up, and the module is *really* lacking in detail and content beyond (say) the 8th-10th level mark.

 

[machineelf]

I saw this at the bookstore the other day, and thought the artwork quite evocative.

Is it any good?

I'm unfamiliar with these books, but they look like adventure paths in a book. How high a level so the characters reach by the end?

It's very good overall but has a few parts that are wonky that you'd want to know about and prepare for.

-- Spoilers Below --

The good parts:

• A very fun beginning with an heroic prison escape. This opening scene is very fun, and sets a nice bit of storytelling conflict as the drow are pursuing your players through the underdark.
• An epic feel overall with the players slowly beginning to realize there are much bigger, demonic problems in the underdark.
• The book is almost a mini-campaign setting of the underdark, giving you a good amount of information and a sense of what the underdark is like.
• Really interesting characters and encounters, and evocative locations that will be a thrill for your players to explore.

The good and bad:

• Huge number of interesting NPCs. This can be good for the varied personalities your characters will meet. But it's a lot to run, and you will have to work to make each of the NPCs have a voice and be meaningful to your players. If you do the work and pull it off, it can be very rewarding to your players who will begin to feel a connection to them. My players loved Stool, and by the end Ront and Jimjar were the only of the original NPCs left alive (Stool and Topsy and Turvy survived too, but moved on earlier), and they felt a kinship to them both. But I had to do a lot of work of constantly roleplaying with all of the NPCs to forge those connections. Very worth it though, just be aware of it.

The bad parts:

• Really huge areas (by square miles) and loooong travel distances. The monotony of those long travels can be broken up with some interesting side-encounters that are included in the book, but once you run out of those, the travel does get monotonous. I've read elsewhere and really recommend allowing your characters to find some teleportation circles here or there to help cut down on travel times.
• The second half of the campaign still has interesting locations, but it begins to get a bit more railroaded.
• There are some locations that could use more explanation or clearer explanation, or better organization of the chapter. For example, The Gravenhollow library is a really cool place, but that chapter is horribly organized, and your characters will ask questions that you might not be prepared for. So spend extra time really understanding how to organize that encounter for your players so that it hopefully goes smoothly. (The whole stonespeaker crystal and researching using the stone tablets/cylindrical tablets/scrolls thing gets muddy and complicated. You may want to give them the stonespeaker crystal right away and just let them use that alone.)
• Some chapters will go by quickly in session (Sloopludop is a fairly brief encounter), and other chapters are looong. Blingdenstone and Gracklstugh have a lot of content to them. Be prepared for multiple sessions in those locations. And while they are interesting and fun, your players may get tired of them after awhile and want to move on -- which is fine but there may be repercussions if they don't handle all the problems in each city.
• Every location has gone mad in some way or another, and there are few places to actually rest and spend money on buying new equipment, or whatever. It almost doesn't matter if your characters get gold, jewels, or other items, because there is no place to use it, for the most part. It's just run, run, run to each new location that is suffering some madness, and the only true cities you run into where you can get a night at an inn or something is Blingdenstone and Gracklstugh, and you may not even visit both of them.
• And my biggest complaint is just a complaint with how a lot of adventure paths are designed these days: Levels 1-16 in the span of about a year (in game time), and all of it in the underdark? I'm a fan of long and varied character development and taking years in the characters' lives to go from a newbie adventurer to level 16. The adventure is fun, but it doesn't lend itself well to the idea of an adventurer having a lifetime of interesting and epic adventurers in a host of different locations around the world or planes.

But overall, yes it is worth a buy if you are aware of the mostly minor hiccups and you prepare for them ahead of time. I would highly recommend that when you get to the second half, cut out a lot of the clutter and speed up the pace to move them along toward the end so it doesn't drag. For example, try to move them along to Mantol Derith, then to the library, then to the wizard's tower, then to the wormwrithings, etc., at a nice quick paceafter the halfway breakpoint. You might need to reduce the later encounter CRs to make that work.

I'm currently running it and nearing the end, and my players are still very captivated by the underdark, but I have a feeling that about the time we are finishing, they will be ready to move on and do something different on the surface world. As we get to the end I am trying to speed up the pacing so that there is no burnout and we end on a high note.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's evocative all right.

You might feel let down by weak encounter design in the latter half, but the overall theme is good.

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[Uller]

One of the complaints mentioned several times above is the monotony of travel involved.

This is a solvable problem, I think. My group wanted underdark travel and the problems involved to be part of the game so from Velkenvelve to Sloobludop we tracked food, water, ammo, getting lost, etc and I stuck to the random encounter tables.

But if a group finds this tedious there is no reason it can't be handwaved a bit. My group will soon be setting off from Sloobludop to Neverlight Grove or Gracklstugh. They should have plenty of food and the cleric and ranger can produce what they lack. So we'll stop worryi g about food and water.

For random encounters I'll still role them but either narrate away the trivial ones and/or combine a few into little mini adventures that add some challenge. The goal of random encounters is to add some roleplay elements and some danger. Not to add tedium.

My players are fantstic roleplayers and fill in the blanks for me on the various NPCs. So even something like Sloobludop goes from a short encounter to one that is very dramatic and game changing. Throughout the whole thing they thought they were in for a TPK on three occasions and now they are hiding under a rock hope Demogorgon will leave...

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[Ralif Redhammer]

I am running it now, over a year after starting the module. It hasn’t always been easy, but it has been fun and rewarding. I’ve enjoyed the sandbox design, as it’s given me plenty of room to make my own additions and changes. I don’t necessarily care for the mob of NPCs at the beginning, but it was easy enough to not use or get rid of them.