D&D 5E Quest From The Infinite Staircase Adventures Revealed

Roll20 has today revealed some information about July's Dungeons & Dragons release, Quests from the Infinite Staircase.

The Infinite Staircase spirals in a dreamlike expanse, with doors leading to fantastic realms. It's home to the noble genie Nafas, who hears wishes made throughout the multiverse and recruits heroes to fulfill them. These pleas summon adventurers to lost caverns suffused with planar energy, fairytale gardens in the Feywild, futuristic spaceships, and other wondrous locales.

This anthology weaves together six classic DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® adventures while updating them for the game's fifth edition. You can run these quests individually or as a campaign that takes characters from level 1 to level 13.

This book includes the following adventures:

• Beyond the Crystal Cave™
• Expedition to the Barrier Peaks™
• Pharaoh™
• The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth™
• The Lost City™
• When a Star Falls™

These are all adventures from previous editions of D&D (in much the same way as Ghosts of Saltmarsh was). All of them are AD&D (1E) adventures except for The Lost City, which was a Basic D&D adventure.

EN World member @pukunui provided a quick summary of each:

For those like myself who are unfamiliar with (some of) these adventures, here are summaries based on info from wikipedia:

Beyond the Crystal Cave: An AD&D 1e adventure set in Greyhawk which sees the PCs hired to save a couple who eloped and fled into the Cave of Echoes. The PCs must resolve the secret of the cave to reach a magical garden where it is always summer. The adventure is noteworthy for rewarding players for resolving encounters non-violently.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks: An AD&D 1e adventure written by Gary Gygax himself. In this adventure, the PCs explore a mysterious spaceship that crashed in Greyhawk's Barrier Peaks mountain range. The ship is filled with robots, laser guns, power armor, and all manner of strange creatures (including vegepygmies and a froghemoth). The adventure also involves collecting colored access cards to open restricted areas and the like.

Pharaoh: An AD&D 1e adventure written by the Hickmans of Ravenloft and Dragonlance fame. This one sees the PCs exiled into a desert after being falsely accused of a crime. They end up encountering the spirit of a dead Egyptian-style pharaoh who implores them to break into his supposedly thief-proof pyramid tomb and steal some things that will enable him to find eternal rest or something.

The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth: Another of Gary Gygax's AD&D 1e Greyhawk modules. This one sees the PCs as treasure hunters seeking the wealth of the archmage Iggwilv. During their search, they encounter a vampire.

The Lost City: This is a Basic D&D adventure written by Tom Moldvay. The PCs get lost in a sandstorm and discover the lost city of Cynidicea, where the inhabitants are degenerate drug addicts. The PCs explore a pyramid and fight an evil monster.

When a Star Falls: An AD&D 1e module in which the PCs search for a fallen star in the moors. They encounter svirfneblin and derro as they seek to give the star to its rightful owner.

 

[Zarithar]

Mulhorand, like Kara-Tur, is a place that isn't talked about any more. And Pharaoh would work perfectly fine in the Anauroch, which is conveniently close to The Sword Coast.

Isn't Mulhorand just the name that the exiled/plane-shifted Egyptians gave the area when they were literally ported over from earth along with the entire ancient Egyptian pantheon? They did much the same with (parts) of the Norse pantheon iirc which is why you have gods like Tyr in the Forgotten Realms canon.

 

[KoolMoDaddy-O]

It occurred to me that for another compilation book, WotC could make "The Book of Sandboxes".

Chapter One: JAKANDOR

 

[Demetrios1453]

Isn't Mulhorand just the name that the exiled/plane-shifted Egyptians gave the area when they were literally ported over from earth along with the entire ancient Egyptian pantheon? They did much the same with (parts) of the Norse pantheon iirc which is why you have gods like Tyr in the Forgotten Realms canon.

No, Mulholland was the name of an area in the Imaskar Empire. The ported over Egyptians just settled there after overthrowing said empire, which was the one that had ported over and enslaved them in the first place.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Well, this definitely sounds like the update will be comparable to Yawning Portal:

Remastering the quests, which were apparently chosen for their “iconic locations, monsters, and encounters” largely involved updating stat blocks and other number-heavy features to fit with D&D 5E’s class math and party compositions.

It will be interesting to see what they do to the Lost City map, in light of this.

 

[Jer]

Well, this definitely sounds like the update will be comparable to Yawning Portal:

It's just a summary of this D&D Beyond post from yesterday. So I don't think it brings anything new to the table one way or the other.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Well, this definitely sounds like the update will be comparable to Yawning Portal:

It will be interesting to see what they do to the Lost City map, in light of this.

They already said they are fleshing out the lower levels.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It's just a summary of this D&D Beyond post from yesterday. So I don't think it brings anything new to the table one way or the other.

It's two different people summarizing the same panel. The D&D Beyond writer doesn't address how the updates work, though.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

It's two different people summarizing the same panel. The D&D Beyond writer doesn't address how the updates work, though.

The video goes into more details.

 

[Jer]

It's two different people summarizing the same panel. The D&D Beyond writer doesn't address how the updates work, though.

That's not how I read the Dicebreaker article - it reads as if they're summarizing the D&D Beyond post:

Mike Bernier, a game designer and market guy for D&D Beyond, recently laid out the contents in a post to the platform’s forums. Groups can tackle the adventures piecemeal or weave them together into a loose campaign that should take characters all the way from their first steps to level 13. Aiding in that narrative conceit is Nafas, a genie who enlists the adventurers to aid in granting the wishes that bounce across the Infinite Staircase and into his ears.

That's the only source of information they seem to cite in the article. (And following journalistic practices that I hate, they don't link to the source that they're summarizing.)

The video goes into more details.

Finally got a chance to watch it - the discussion of how they're dealing with the bottom layers of the pyramid in the Lost City starts around 10:43:

"there's a part in that adventure [The Lost City] where you get to the end and that dungeon had 100 rooms to it. But around 40 or 50 of them it is just loose guidance ... we've taken a bunch of unique rooms and we have just added a layer to that dungeon ... so we've taken similar opportunities essentially anywhere in an adventure where it felt like something was supposed to be there we have put that thing in there."

So it is neither going to be a full fleshing out of the bottom layers nor are they ignoring them. Instead they're adding a final layer that I assume will include Zargon. And my read on what he's saying is that maybe they'll use some of the room ideas from the original adventure and flesh them out for that final level?

 

[Parmandur]

Finally got a chance to watch it - the discussion of how they're dealing with the bottom layers of the pyramid in the Lost City starts around 10:43:

"there's a part in that adventure [The Lost City] where you get to the end and that dungeon had 100 rooms to it. But around 40 or 50 of them it is just loose guidance ... we've taken a bunch of unique rooms and we have just added a layer to that dungeon ... so we've taken similar opportunities essentially anywhere in an adventure where it felt like something was supposed to be there we have put that thing in there."

So it is neither going to be a full fleshing out of the bottom layers nor are they ignoring them. Instead they're adding a final layer that I assume will include Zargon. And my read on what he's saying is that maybe they'll use some of the room ideas from the original adventure and flesh them out for that final level?

I mean, the verbiage is pretty clear that they are fleshing out the lower levels of the Dungeon?