Queen of the Demonweb Pits - what's so bad?

[Corathon]

I think that the difference in tone upset some people.

I liked Q1, myself. The spider ship of Lolth didn't bother me, as I like a mix of science-fictional and fantasy elements. When I ran it, the metal of the ship was imbued with the trapped souls of the damned (I can't recall if I made that up or if it was in the module originally).

Also, as David Howery wrote there's a lot of possibility for expansion in the worlds off the web. I added a lot of stuff, but I often do when I'm running a module.

 

[Stormonu]

My biggest issue with Q1 was that it felt incomplete.

While the finale is fully detailed, there are huge swathes that are given a paragraph or two, but no firm details (The DM would have to wing entire demiplanes) and the other fleshed-out encounters don't have much of a point beyond "Let's see what monster they've encountered beyond door #665!" (There's no where near those number of doors, but it is the Abyss...)

A group could easily be flailing about, wondering what they're supposed to do next or where to go. It's presented as a place for pure exploration, without elements of story or plot (beyond "find out where Lolth is, and kill her").

There's no guidance on what to be looking for, clues which doors might lead to her (or where they might go) or guidance/clues about the demonweb and ways to figure out how disturbingly convoluted the webways are without physically spending hours wandering the twisted halls.

In my opinion, the demonweb would have been far better presented as a flowchart showing the relations of important features than the escher-twisted color-coded maps it ended up with (and I think later revisits in Planescape, Dungeon Mag and Expedition did this). While those color-coded maps look pretty, they're worthless for actual use, boring, tedious, as well as more inhibiting to the imagination (we're in the heart of Chaos and looking at a roadmap that neatly conforms to graph paper?)

 

[RainOfSteel]

...the fact that Q1 is objectively a pretty terrible module, and that one person's 'bizarre' is another person's silly, anticlimatic and ridiculous.

Could you please provide the link to this text so I can read and understand the basis of its claims?

 

[Bullgrit]

Could you please provide the link to this text so I can read and understand the basis of its claims?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/310151-seeking-advice-my-first-1e-campaign.html
5th post in that thread. What I quoted is essentially the entire statement.

Bullgrit

 

[RainOfSteel]

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/310151-seeking-advice-my-first-1e-campaign.html
5th post in that thread. What I quoted is essentially the entire statement.

Forgive me, but one poster's unexplained opinion is pretty thin to begin asking questions about what is so bad about a module when the greater than majority actual opinion of the module over the last 30+ years has been that it is fantastic.

 

[Celebrim]

Well, since I have become a thread, I might as well participate in it.

The problems with Q1 are extensive. Basically, I think that if this module had been submitted to Dungeon, it would have been rejected at any point in the magazines history. I also think that had this work been contracted out by Pazio as part of their adventure path, they probably would have taken the virtually unprecendented step of releasing the author once the rough draft came back.

Let's begin with the title: 'Queen of the Demonweb Pits'. Now, this title invokes certain awesome images immediately in the mind. There will be a queen presiding over demons, webs, and pits. But the final module itself comes far short of the grandeur of even the most niave imaginings about what the Demonweb Pits are like. There are few demons, fewer webs, and fewer pits. The idea of an Escher like maze is fine, but the implementation is lacking most especially from the perspective of one within the maze. Ultimately, the Demonweb Pits aren't a place of remarkable terror, but a mundane dungeon maze.

Secondly, all this action is supposed to be taking place within the Abyss - an infinitely deep pit of infinitely hellish planes. This is the 'far realm' before there was a far realm. But Q1 describes the Abyss in terms that feel like a sublevel of Castle Greyhawk and not an infinitely vast and terrible place. The vast and incomprehensible terrors of the Abyss are rendered down to the scale of a demi-plane. The Abyss, suitable for swallowing worlds, is here presented as a narrow basically linear corridor. Any vastness associated with the modules has more to do with its door ways to other worlds, but these are - in point of fact - little more than empty rooms in the dungeon left with just a bare description to be filled in detail by the DM who has the unfortunate job of actually running the module. The supposed place where the action is taking place is relatively empty. You might could do something interesting with chasing the demon spider queen through a bunch of set peice battles set in other universes, but this isn't it. The doorways to other worlds are extraneous to the plot, have nothing to do with the adventure, and are basically throwaway devices better suited as 'suggestions for further adventures'.

Consider also how the dungeon, for that is all it is, is populated. Removed from the context of the adventure, the list of combatants and obstacles would seem normal for a mundane dungeon for a group of mid-level characters. They differ really only in numbers, and sometimes not that. After six modules filled with terrors and increasingly alien and powerful foes, we arrive finally in the dreaded Abyss to find it populated with the same sort of creatures we were facing back before we thought Hill Giants were a particularly dangerous foe. Moreover, its not merely a populated by mundane monsters in a mundane way, but its populated in exactly the sort of haphazard way that we associate with mundane early dungeon design by amateur authors. The structure of the dungeon is similar to a more linear B2 or S4, in that the inhabitants seem to have been chosen without any clear purpose or relationship to each other or the setting in which they are found. For example, a barracks full of 66 Gnolls seems appropriate to an entirely different demon lord and is likely to be a rote dice rolling chore at best by this level of play. Thirty bugbears is little better, and again, we must wonder how Lolth has come to command bugbears rather than their natural lord. The dungeon dressings and features - traps, torches, refuse, etc. - could all have been pulled from any mundane dungeon of the ordinary mortal world. Care to fight 20 ogres anyone?

Finally, after navigating this utterly mundane dungeon which is oddly perhaps less alien and certainly far smaller in scope than what we encountered in the 'Descent' series that preceded it, and less threatening than what we encountered in the G series that preceded that, we get to the grand citidel of the Queen and find it is a spaceship. Why isn't Lolth known as the Captain of the Spider Ship, rather than the Demonweb Pits? What visitor to this place thought to call it the Demonweb Pits? To me, the Outer planes represent a place where ideas become incarnated. So, given what we are presented by the module, what ideas does Loth incarnate? How does this star ship of hers fit mythologically with Loth being the great foe of Corellon Larethian? I mean, I suppose you could do something with Lolth being the rejection of the natural world in favor of artificial environments, and make of Lolth a machine godess, but if that is the case - why didn't it show up more in the culture of the Drow? It might have been cool for the Drow to live in a steam punk city filled with coal smoke and grinding gears, and for the Demonweb Pits to be the ultimate manifestation of that, but neither this module nor the campaign actually develops those themes in any fashion. This is just me brainstorming one of the inifinite number of ways the module could have been better.

Worse yet, the Star Ship is a mostly mundane dungeon as well, filled with the usual collection of mundane and out of place creatures with no apparent connection to Lolth. The science fiction elements of setting aren't even well developed, especially in comparison to work like 'Barrier Peaks'. There is just nothing memorable and iconic here compared to the 6 modules leading up to this 'climax'.

Which brings us to Lolth herself. While she's not as weak as her 88 hit points might lead you to believe, properly playing Lolth to her strengths as powerful spellcaster with an extremely broad ability set is very challenging. You'll need to select the right M-U, cleric, or psionic abilty in each round to minimize the damage she takes and maximize how much she hampers the party. In a toe to toe fight or played badly, she's likely to go down in 2-3 rounds to a party that got this far and has a few spells in reserve, resulting in a very anticlimatic ending to the game (using her heal ability would extend the fight, but if she heals without removing herself from the situation that resulted in needing to heal, this is a losing strategy). On the other hand, if you do play her the way a player experienced with playing spellcasters would play her, you probably would just do everything you can to avoid going toe to toe with the party. If the party makes early saving throws and seems to have the means of penetrating your defenses, you'd probably just opt to make use of one of her many means of evasion and withdraw from the fight. Again, this is likely to be anticlimatic.

I suppose it would be asking too much of a module at this early date to have some semblence of a coherent plot or a proactive antagonist who didn't just wait in her lair for the party to come and kill her, but I don't think it is asking too much of a module from this time period to be as good as what else existed at the time. Instead, this is a regression by a less experienced author to an extremely primitive sort of design, that even by G1 we are seeing superceded. G1 is a far better designed, more coherent, and better written module than Q1. Gygax and his genius is sorely missing from the module. Dave Sutherland would produce a masterpeice collaborating on Ravenloft, but module writing didn't prove to be his strongest point.

The best thing about the module is that it mechanically tries to make the Abyss feel threatening by changing the way that spells work, making clerical spells weaker or not available, and dampening the power of magic items. But even this is not something we ought to be praising without reservation. Ultimately, this is an example of giving a player something and then taking it away - a practice which a DM should not do too often because it leads to player frustration. It's also something of a reoccuring theme in the module, as for example the treasure trove that disappears when you take it home.

 

[Celebrim]

Forgive me, but one poster's unexplained opinion is pretty thin to begin asking questions about what is so bad about a module when the greater than majority actual opinion of the module over the last 30+ years has been that it is fantastic.

I dispute that.

At the time it came out, it was reviewed as "not TSR's best effort" and - aside from the fame it gets from its association with the iconic GDQ adventure path - its generally been negatively reviewed since that time and as far as I know, is widely considered the low point of the GDQ series.

 

[billd91]

Forgive me, but one poster's unexplained opinion is pretty thin to begin asking questions about what is so bad about a module when the greater than majority actual opinion of the module over the last 30+ years has been that it is fantastic.

I think that's gilding the lily a bit. Q1 is the red-headed step child of the G and D series. That said, there are some things going for it.

The behavior of the plane and its effect on magic was very interesting when we first got our hands on the module. My memory is that it was the first to really delve into how a plane and its relationship to the others may limit magic in ways the prime material plane does not.

The upper level of the Demonweb, with gates to other worlds where Lolth's forces were at work, was also pretty cool. It was a gateway to other tangents the PCs could get involved with... or not.

In the end, running a classic module campaign, I'm going to cut Q1 when the PCs finish D3. It's just not compelling enough to want to run and experience as much as the real classics of 1e modules like the A series, G and D series, I6, and so on.

 

[Stormonu]

.snip..

A very thorough and apt analysis of the modules faults. On the converse, I'd love to see folks take a stab at giving a summary of what/how they would change the module. (Personally, I wasn't fond of Exedition to..., it struck me as too convuluted).

 

[Celebrim]

A very thorough and apt analysis of the modules faults. On the converse, I'd love to see folks take a stab at giving a summary of what/how they would change the module.

Theme: Each of the prior modules succeeds by picking a theme and doing it well. Q1 has no theme. Now, we could give it lots of different themes and there is no one 'right' choice, but it should have one. If the space ship isn't to be abandoned, than lets run with Lolth as the evil incarnation of industry and technology theme. It could work, and it fits well enough to Lolth as a spider, albiet we'd need to change the Drow - but they badly need a makeover anyway. Lolth subtly protrayed as greedy evil CEO is a bit too anachronistic for my taste, but at least it is a theme. Alternately, you could dump the space ship and run with Lolth as the evil incarnation of cunning, deception, and trickery with layers and layers of webs of illusion that have to be pierced before reaching her inner sanctum. Or maybe both. But some thought and care should be given to actually having a coherent theme.

Scope: The original portrays the outer planes on too small a scale. Borrowing a page from how Gygax portayed the underdark, I'd make the first part of the journey to the citidel have a more wilderness exploration feel. Only, here the wilderness is miles long 50' wide spider threads with the occasional asteroid trapped within. There is an infinite universe of these threads suspended in an infinitely deep pit which is catching things as they fall on their infinitely long journey down the abyss. Whole societies of unfortunate souls try to eke out an existance suspended in the intersections of several threads. Spiders from the size of the garden variety to monterous collossal 1000' across things that less notice of you than you would an ant abound, each spinning webs anchored to the webs of the greater. In the distance, 80 or so miles away from your starting point, is Lolth's mountainous fortress. The whole point of such a scale is: "What the heck are you doing here? You are trying to kill a goddess? Are you insane or what?" If such thoughts aren't entering your mind, you are muddling around a mundane dungeon.

Foes: The set peices against the Vrock is one of the better ones in the module, and shows better what a party at 14th level should be facing rather than 66 gnolls (wrong demon lord!) or 33 bugbears or 20 ogres or (wait for it) 10 trolls. By no means should this be a place dressed like a mundane dungeon, but rather should reflect positively on Lolth's status as a sovereign and a deity. Lolth herself should not be a passive foe sitting back waiting for the PC's, but some one who has tormented them actively every step of the way since the PC's invaded her realm. Whenever any foe comes to interpose itself, they should see her hand at work. Every difficulty and obstacle, from the thread they are walking on snapping to the violent thunderstorm that threatens to blow them into the infinite pits or other entrapment, should be Lolth trying to kill them. She should - perhaps literally - haunt the background of the abyssmal plane as a giant, shadowy and fearsome foe who is clearly personally offended by the PC's and taking personal interest in them. Give them players something to hate, and a reason to really relish their ultimate triumph.

Climax: As long as you are going to have alternate planes you are going to have to chase Lolth into to utlimately kill her, then you need either a Q2 describing such a chase (including likely Lolth as the literal CEO in an office at the top of a skyscraper in a modern earth like world, imagine D&D meets the Matrix) or to include the details of such a chase in the module. Don't just throw out these ideas, "Oh yeah, instead of an empty room for you to populate, there is an entire universe for you. Have fun with that."

UPDATE: Ok, after a bit of thought. Here is what I would do. "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" would be broken up, like the G and D series before it, into three modules: Q1: The Demonweb Pits, Q2: Palace of the Demon Queen, and Q3: The Queen of the Endless Nets

Q1: Arriving in the abyss, the players see the scene I've described above of the incomprehensibly vast and infinite web. Fortunately, the can also see Lolth's Palace, a mountain sized fortress city of towers and smoke stacks bound together by webs in the distance. A wilderness jouney ensues, with the PC's having to deal with the spirits of dead Drow (possibly including some vengeful ones they slew in life), the hazards of an alien plane, and the Meddling of the Queen of this place in a 400' high wraithlike form.

Q2: Arriving at the gates of Lolth's Fortress, the PC's must make their way through Lolth's slave pits, where the souls of dead drow labor in endless drudgery to maintain her huge smoke belching machines. There they learn that Lolth's kingdom is enternally at war with itself, in a vast never ending and ultimately hopeless slave revolt. Profitting from the confusion and backstabbing, the PC's enter the heart of the fortress and make their way through Lolth's minions in an increasingly magi-tech world where the webs are made of wires, living souls, and illusion. Finally, reaching the throne of Lolth, they must fight through Lolth's last gaurds and illusions. Lolth however, now fearing the PC's rather than despising them, in desparation jumps through a portal to an alien world.

Q3: Now pursuing the desparate spider Queen through her strongholds across space and time, the PC's enter a series of 6 mini-modules each with a different theme. In each mini-module, Lolth has hidden herself. The PC's must find and identify and unmask the real Lolth with in the environment that they find her. Finally, at the end of the sixth interlude, the PC's awake to find that they have may never left Lolth's throne room after all, but are now bound to webs strung between pillars and are only now awaking from coma and bondage. With no other options left, Lolth turns and fights her pursuers in an Epic battle while the threads that sustain her fortress snap and come unwound, and the Drow she dominated rise up and slay their taskmasters. With Lolth slain, the PC's find themselves dangling from the end of a thread, while Lolth's fortress and all its inhabitants collapse into the Abyss beneath them.