D&D 5E Quests From The Infinite Staircase

[Parmandur]

How do you deal with curious players in the Infinite Staircase?

This may be more of a general DM question, but I'm new to DMing and really intrigued by this model of presenting episodic/anthology quests, and especially this quest-giver model.

The book says the doors tend to be unlocked, and they can go anywhere, but tend to present themselves in ways that indicate (at least generally) what is beyond them. That sounds tempting to my Player brain.

If I were playing, I think I'd want to poke my head in some random doors, but as a potential DM, I'm sweating having a bunch of encounters queued up that are unrelated to the given quest.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

I'd say that Journeys from the Radiant Citadel is a good resource: modular Advebtures thst can plug and play, that by base assume a plane-hoppimg party.

 

[rokville]

Thank you for these ideas! I appreciate it!
I think I may also want some “above the table” guard rails too… at least at first.

 

[razzle]

Oh and their is also an Egyptian God called Saa, so renaming the dead Pharoh Amun Sa did nothing, it's just embarrassing. Honestly I'm thinking of putting together a petition against WotC still doing this nonsense. They are wrecking lore for nothing and in a way that makes them more offensive not less.

You take this way too seriously

 

[razzle]

Oh and their is also an Egyptian God called Saa, so renaming the dead Pharoh Amun Sa did nothing, it's just embarrassing. Honestly I'm thinking of putting together a petition against WotC still doing this nonsense. They are wrecking lore for nothing and in a way that makes them more offensive not less.

Oops double post

 

[pukunui]

I note that this book says to pronounce Tsojcanth as “SAWJ-kahn”. Is the omission of the “th” at the end an error, or is it really meant to be silent?

On a related note, the scale for the Yatil Mts map is 4 miles per hex. That seems way too big to me. The map is ~40 hexes from top to bottom, so that would be 160 miles. That’s crazy! I wonder if it should be 1 mile per hex. Maybe two.

 

[Nikosandros]

On a related note, the scale for the Yatil Mts map is 4 miles per hex. That seems way too big to me. The map is ~40 hexes from top to bottom, so that would be 160 miles. That’s crazy! I wonder if it should be 1 mile per hex. Maybe two.

In the original AD&D module, the scale is 3.5 miles per hex, so quite similar. This should, more or less, match the size of the area in the Greyhawk map.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

When I ran the module back in the 80s I remember the hex crawl being the best bit. I assume the scale was chosen so 1 hex = 1 day's travel. The Yatil mountains are a big range, but not implausibly so. The Himalayas are 1500 miles long.

I think the Sunset Mountains, the Suggested FR location, are too small though (at least if you take the Far Hills into account). I would shift it to The Spine of the World, which is plenty big enough and then some.

I pronounce it So-Canth.

 

[Parmandur]

On a related note, the scale for the Yatil Mts map is 4 miles per hex. That seems way too big to me. The map is ~40 hexes from top to bottom, so that would be 160 miles. That’s crazy! I wonder if it should be 1 mile per hex. Maybe two.

If you look at the main Greyhawk map the scale is 30 miles per hex, 160 miles is just 5 hexes and some change, and the Yatil mountains can easily contain that.

 

[Parmandur]

On a related note, the scale for the Yatil Mts map is 4 miles per hex. That seems way too big to me. The map is ~40 hexes from top to bottom, so that would be 160 miles. That’s crazy! I wonder if it should be 1 mile per hex. Maybe two.

Looking online, found this that shows the location of the Tsojcanth regional map on the Darlene map:

 

[Parmandur]

@pukunui just going off a casual count of the hexes and multiplying for square mileage, it seems that Gygax intended the Howling wilderness area around the dungeon to be around about 24,000 Square miles give or take a few, about the size of Latvia or West Virginia.