Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Princes of the Apocalypse: New DM bouts about progression and late dungeons
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 8713016" data-attributes="member: 907"><p>I've been running this adventure, nearly to completion before the pandemic hit and we started playing online for a while. It's the adventure I credit with finally killing off my enthusiasm for big dungeons.</p><p></p><p>The early part is fun, when you travel around the Dessarin Valley trying to gather hints about the missing expedition. The Haunted Keeps are also interesting little dungeons, although the Earth one is still too big for my tastes.</p><p></p><p>The problem comes when you hit the actual Temples. Those sections are way too big, and at the same time too small. Let's start with the "too small" bit first. The Temples, collectively, are supposed to be the once-mighty dwarven fortress of Tyar-Besil. Parts of the dungeon are the former city gates in multiple directions, so what we see is the actual extent of the city. And... it covers an area of 860 x 660 ft. Which, coincidentally, is about the geographical size of Red Larch (although granted, Tyar-Besil is significantly more dense). It would have made more sense to have Tyar-Besil itself be a much larger area that is largely ruined and treated as wilderness, and have the temples set up in those ruins but quite far apart. That would have made them feel more like separate dungeons. Even better would have been to actually <strong>make</strong> them separate dungeons, and put them in entirely different locations.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, each individual Temple is too big. Each map covers 430x330 ft, with 20-30 locations. That's huge, and will likely take multiple sorties to deal with, but at the same time there's very limited information on how they deal with incoming attackers. In some cases they say things like "If these guards are slain, the ogre from room X moves here instead", but that's very limited.</p><p></p><p>On the plus site, the Fane and the Nodes are pretty cool. The Water node is a bit confusing though, but having access to <em>water breathing</em> and <em>water walk</em> made it significantly easier to handle.</p><p></p><p>Another problem is that there's too little information about what the elemental cultists are actually up to. There's nothing in the adventure that actually tells the PCs that the Prophets are working to summon the Princes of Elemental Evil, that they are doing so from the Nodes below the Fane, and most importantly, that the way to close a node is to throw the associated weapon into a portal. That's information you probably want to seed somewhere. I eventually had one of the PCs' factions send them to talk to the Dark Lady in Rundreth Manor and had her lore-dump on them, but it would be better to have things seeded in the adventure itself. Perhaps archives in Tyar-Besil describing how they found the Fane and learned of its history.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 8713016, member: 907"] I've been running this adventure, nearly to completion before the pandemic hit and we started playing online for a while. It's the adventure I credit with finally killing off my enthusiasm for big dungeons. The early part is fun, when you travel around the Dessarin Valley trying to gather hints about the missing expedition. The Haunted Keeps are also interesting little dungeons, although the Earth one is still too big for my tastes. The problem comes when you hit the actual Temples. Those sections are way too big, and at the same time too small. Let's start with the "too small" bit first. The Temples, collectively, are supposed to be the once-mighty dwarven fortress of Tyar-Besil. Parts of the dungeon are the former city gates in multiple directions, so what we see is the actual extent of the city. And... it covers an area of 860 x 660 ft. Which, coincidentally, is about the geographical size of Red Larch (although granted, Tyar-Besil is significantly more dense). It would have made more sense to have Tyar-Besil itself be a much larger area that is largely ruined and treated as wilderness, and have the temples set up in those ruins but quite far apart. That would have made them feel more like separate dungeons. Even better would have been to actually [B]make[/B] them separate dungeons, and put them in entirely different locations. At the same time, each individual Temple is too big. Each map covers 430x330 ft, with 20-30 locations. That's huge, and will likely take multiple sorties to deal with, but at the same time there's very limited information on how they deal with incoming attackers. In some cases they say things like "If these guards are slain, the ogre from room X moves here instead", but that's very limited. On the plus site, the Fane and the Nodes are pretty cool. The Water node is a bit confusing though, but having access to [I]water breathing[/I] and [I]water walk[/I] made it significantly easier to handle. Another problem is that there's too little information about what the elemental cultists are actually up to. There's nothing in the adventure that actually tells the PCs that the Prophets are working to summon the Princes of Elemental Evil, that they are doing so from the Nodes below the Fane, and most importantly, that the way to close a node is to throw the associated weapon into a portal. That's information you probably want to seed somewhere. I eventually had one of the PCs' factions send them to talk to the Dark Lady in Rundreth Manor and had her lore-dump on them, but it would be better to have things seeded in the adventure itself. Perhaps archives in Tyar-Besil describing how they found the Fane and learned of its history. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Princes of the Apocalypse: New DM bouts about progression and late dungeons
Top