Another comment: in the promo video, Amanda Hamon says the player-facing maps aren’t always 100% accurate. In this case, I can’t see anything “wrong“ with the map. Have I missed anything?
I don't think she is talking about the specific map for this adventure. The comment was about the overall book and some maps have missing parts or are unreliable. I could be mistaken, but I don't think that is the case with the map for Prisoner 13.
What bugs me with this sort of thing is when the worldbuilding implications aren't taken into account. All the magitech is very fine, but tech is tech - is this tech that the PCs can use, or learn, or make themselves, or is it just lazy arbitrary 'it's magic!' handwaving? If the whole thing was put together by wizards using the magic item creation and spell permanency rules, who were these wizards and why did they devote such a horrifying amount of their time and energy into making something like this? Can my PCs find them and bribe them into giving up the secret entrances? Why aren't all these precautions standard in every prison/vault/dragon hoard/evil lair in the world?
This is the major problem, and frankly people denying it's an issue are being a bit silly.
Particularly in the Forgotten Realms. The design and approach and reason-to-exist would all fit for the 1920s-ish-themed Eberron. They're a terrible fit for the 1600s-ish-themed Forgotten Realms. Magitech is absolutely present in the FR - but it's almost exclusive from the past, or associated tightly with Gond, neither of which is the case here.
The other big issue is that it's really tonally discordant for the FR on a number of levels, not least:
1) It's controlled by the Lords' Alliance, which is pretty wacky, because them working together on something like this seems pretty unusual and worthy of further examination. But no real reasoning is given, despite it obviously having to have been a hell of a thing to build.
2) It's run by someone "Lawful Good" but seems to basically be an appalling "black site" with absolutely no access to justice or law, which whilst perhaps free of physical torture, is being fed prisoners by a bunch of corrupt and dodgy cities with very contrary laws, and some of which don't even have laws really allowing them to imprison people. Waterdeep, for example, is both deeply corrupt (with laws essentially meaning that any non-citizen is basically going to be convicted of whatever the hell they feel like - not atypical in history, but also obviously not something compatible with Lawful Good), and explicitly has no laws permitting imprisonment for over a year (if I'm reading correctly), so we can safely assume all the people here via Waterdeep were imprisoned extrajudicially (more severe punishments are death, maiming, exile, and so on).
Now, let's be real, adventurers are an extrajudicial bunch. That's not the issue, they're breaking in, anyway - but portraying this place as a sort of Lawful Good thing is absolutely psychotic stuff.
Especially as it's a panopticon, which, without delving too deep into philosophy, is essentially a form of torture. It's pretty funny that the person who wrote this knew enough about panopticons to use the name in describing the place, but little enough not to realize that. That's got to be pretty rare!
To me what this says is that they've actually done a little world building using the D&D rules and haven't decided that wizard hats should all have the letter D painted on them.
If we look at the spells Arcane Lock and Continual Flame we find the duration "Until Dispelled" on both of them. In literally any controlled environment in D&D 5e where money isn't an issue these two spells should be staples. A cheap lock costs 10GP and is DC15 to pick for anyone proficient in thieves' tools, while adding Arcane Lock is 25GP in reagents and raises that to DC 25 while increasing the break DC by 10. Not going for arcane locks for anything significant (or even interesting) is simply penny pinching. The lack of a canon cheap permanent method of heating (either for heating buildings or cooking) feels more like an oversight than anything else.
And Anti-magic fields are a D&D staple - and holding prisoners is absurdly hard in D&D without.
Yes it's a magi-tech system. It's D&D magic.
As for "a small staff of wizards using scrying and a crystal ball for surveillance"? The prison itself is based on Bentham's Panopticon so it doesn't need it. Having wizards continually casting and dispelling their arcane locks at 25GP a throw when they are explicitly able to be opened under set conditions would be silly and unjustifiable. Scrying offers saving throws - and things that shut down magic as you might want to do to prisoners also shut it down.
As for D&D moving into science fiction without lasers people have mentioned Barrier Peaks and I'd add to that the sheer reproducible and consistent nature of D&D magic with no backlash is a science fiction thing. But that line was crossed with a vengeance with 3.0 in 2000 definitively putting the enchantment of reliable magic items under the control of the players. 3.0 wasn't just trying to be science fiction but hard science fiction, ensuring that almost everything was a feat or a spell-like ability. 4e and following it 5e walked that back. This isn't trying to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted. The horses have not only bolted, but bolted long ago some of them have grandchildren.
The trouble with this entire post is that it utterly decontextualizes Revel's End.
But WotC put it in a context. And that context is the FR, and a specific part of the FR even.
Decontextualized, Revel's End could fit well into some people's D&D games, for sure. It could fit well into Eberron, where spellcasters actually operate in the way described. Spellcasters in Eberron, are practical, not mystical. Not so the FR. The FR is an explicitly mystical setting, which has very limited magitech, and most of which, as I noted above, is either ancient, or associated with Gond. You can sneer all you like about wizards not being dunces for once, but Eberron is the setting where that works well, and the FR is a very different setting, consistently so even in modern incarnations.
So what you're saying is both true, reasonable and imho totally irrelevant, because of the decontextualization. We're not talking about "D&D" in general. We're talking about a specific time and place within the FR.
The reality is simple - the adventure was lazily written and conceptualized. It reminds me of the sort of disconnected thing I might have come up with when I was 14, and not in a good way. It's further evidence that WotC just doesn't hire particularly good writers. For more evidence you can see things like the bizarre overdetail on Prisoner 13's tattoos. It's not a huge issue - the FR has always had some dumb adventures written for it. This is just one of the first to essentially confuse Eberron and the FR.
(I would note Continual Light/Flame is not at all unusual in the FR, but the rest of what's going on is certainly remarkable - and it's further laziness that the common FR convention of having the Light/Flame be inside globes isn't followed.)
Mind you, this is Icewind Dale, which in Rime of the Frostmaiden has at least one town that is specified to be predominately lawful good, and run by lawful good people - and which still practices human (/elven/dwarven/whatever) sacrifice to appease the evil goddess of winter.
WotC has had a teeeeny bit of a consistency problem with alignment in that part of the world historically.
Mind you, this is Icewind Dale, which in Rime of the Frostmaiden has at least one town that is specified to be predominately lawful good, and run by lawful good people - and which still practices human (/elven/dwarven/whatever) sacrifice to appease the evil goddess of winter.
Jesus wept WotC. Absolutely demented. Some real having their cake and eating it there lol.
Honestly the worst thing about the entire Prisoner 13 adventure is that the warden of this extrajudicial gulag is not only LG, but a bloody Harper. Which like, whilst technically possible is both hilariously cheap and conforms to the "everyone is a Harper" trope, is totally and completely irrelevant to the adventure (more overdetail/wank on the part of the adventure writer - WotC loves to show how not to write an adventure), and just seems tonally completely off. It's like having a Harper running a CIA black site. What's next, a "You can't handle the truth!" speech from Elminster?
This is the major problem, and frankly people denying it's an issue are being a bit silly.
Particularly in the Forgotten Realms. The design and approach and reason-to-exist would all fit for the 1920s-ish-themed Eberron. They're a terrible fit for the 1600s-ish-themed Forgotten Realms. Magitech is absolutely present in the FR - but it's almost exclusive from the past, or associated tightly with Gond, neither of which is the case here.
The problem with this entire post is that you are the one decontextualising the Forgotten Realms - or rather trying to retro-contextualise it to be what it was in the 1990s. The first and most basic fact of the Forgotten Realms is that The Forgotten Realms is the default setting of Dungeons and Dragons and has been for the majority of the lifetime of Dungeons and Dragons. The second fact is as D&D changes so do the Forgotten Realms. To the point that they literally rewrote the cosmology with every single new edition (except 3.5) in order to fit that setting.
Most of the Magitech being complained about, in particular, the Continual Flame and Arcane Lock spells are second level spells. They are fundamentally a part of the Forgotten Realms because its core identity is that of the default D&D setting, and they are Magitech. And when you say that the Realms magicians wouldn't use explicitly common second level spells for their intended purposes you're saying that they are all aescetics or possibly even all Diogenes. Certainly you're implying a uniformity of thought and purpose among mystics in that they all choose to eschew the use of common and easily accessible spells in favour of either being miserly or the virtue of physical/magical works.
Also the presence of a one-of-a-kind prison based on philosophical lines (the Panopticon) doesn't say "not mystics". Mystics aren't all people who sit round with their thumbs up their backsides contemplating their own navels and for a more active mystic to have thoughts on crime and punishment and want to put their ideas into practice I see as entirely on brand. As for it being a panopticon, Jeremy Bentham (who came up with the idea) thought the panopticon was a fine design not just for prisons but for hospitals and schools. And it being possibly a form of torture? Solitary confinement absolutely is a form of torture, but the people who came up with it were lawful good Quakers interested in rehabilitation and who thought leaving people alone with just a Bible would help. And realised very quickly that that had been a really bad idea.
And getting to a couple of your specific critiques:
1) It's controlled by the Lords' Alliance, which is pretty wacky, because them working together on something like this seems pretty unusual and worthy of further examination. But no real reasoning is given, despite it obviously having to have been a hell of a thing to build.
This is the only good point I can see you have made. That doesn't mean there won't be - or that the Lords' Alliance built it themselves rather than inherited it from a powerful mystic or group of mystics. Would that have been a nice but irrelevant sidebar? Yes. Is it necessary for the adventure? No.
2) It's run by someone "Lawful Good" but seems to basically be an appalling "black site" with absolutely no access to justice or law, which whilst perhaps free of physical torture, is being fed prisoners by a bunch of corrupt and dodgy cities with very contrary laws, and some of which don't even have laws really allowing them to imprison people. Waterdeep, for example, is both deeply corrupt (with laws essentially meaning that any non-citizen is basically going to be convicted of whatever the hell they feel like - not typical in history, but also obviously not something compatible with Lawful Good), and has no laws permitting imprisonment for over a year (if I'm reading correctly), so we can safely assume all the people here via Waterdeep were imprisoned extrajudicially.
And this appears to be entirely your invention. From the adventure:
"To be imprisoned in Revel’s End, one must have committed a serious crime against one or more of the member cities and been sentenced to a lengthy period of incarceration (typically a year or more).
Each member of the Lords’ Alliance assigns one representative to Revel’s End, and together the representatives form a parole committee called the Absolution Council."
Or to sum up it's explicitly not a black site but a maximum security prison (something I'm sure you can see the need for) and there is access to a parole board. And all people there were, directly contrary to your assertions, explicitly imprisoned judicially. I see no problem here with a lawful good prison governor.
Or to sum up it's explicitly not a black site but a maximum security prison (something I'm sure you can see the need for) and there is access to a parole board. And all people there were, directly contrary to your assertions, explicitly imprisoned judicially. I see no problem here with a lawful good prison governor.
It's absolutely extrajudicial. The "Absolution Council" meets irregularly with random numbers of members (I guess they don't need a quorum), and seems to act based on whim and with no representation, no legal guidelines, and so on. Logically one would say they're always going to do what is going to please their superiors back in the cities they work for, which will be release people who are trouble for cities they don't like, and keep imprisoned anyone who their city doesn't like. There's no justice, law or "parole" there. Just a a group of people who explicitly don't even want to be there making self-interested decisions.
As for "imprisoned judicially", that's something you've made up. There's no real indication of that, and certainly none that the imprisonment was just, and the city-states involved are deeply corrupt ones with extremely dodgy judicial systems. As I pointed out, Waterdeep's legal code doesn't even have a provision for imprisoning people for more than a year, and it's a corrupt legal system in the first place.
Pretending that it's fine because some corrupt council members in Waterdeep railroaded a person and gave them a made-up sentence which doesn't even fit their own legal code is a great illustration of why this isn't an LG-acceptable situation.
The problem with this entire post is that you are the one decontextualising the Forgotten Realms - or rather trying to retro-contextualise it to be what it was in the 1990s. The first and most basic fact of the Forgotten Realms is that The Forgotten Realms is the default setting of Dungeons and Dragons and has been for the majority of the lifetime of Dungeons and Dragons. The second fact is as D&D changes so do the Forgotten Realms. To the point that they literally rewrote the cosmology with every single new edition (except 3.5) in order to fit that setting.
Most of the Magitech being complained about, in particular, the Continual Flame and Arcane Lock spells are second level spells. They are fundamentally a part of the Forgotten Realms because its core identity is that of the default D&D setting, and they are Magitech. And when you say that the Realms magicians wouldn't use explicitly common second level spells for their intended purposes you're saying that they are all aescetics or possibly even all Diogenes. Certainly you're implying a uniformity of thought and purpose among mystics in that they all choose to eschew the use of common and easily accessible spells in favour of either being miserly or the virtue of physical/magical works.
LOL. The old "bounces off me and sticks to you" schoolyard approach, huh?
But it doesn't bounce off you. You completely failed to address my criticisms on even a basic level. And it's clear you actually know this place is a terrible mismatch for the FR. It doesn't make sense thematically or tonally. You complain about me "not making good points" and then totally fail to make any yourself.
Also, how are you not understanding what tone means? I think you do understand and are making a cheap and not necessarily good faith argument, frankly.
This is the only good point I can see you have made. That doesn't mean there won't be - or that the Lords' Alliance built it themselves rather than inherited it from a powerful mystic or group of mystics. Would that have been a nice but irrelevant sidebar? Yes. Is it necessary for the adventure? No.
Half of the text isn't "necessary for the adventure". Fetish-y descriptions of someone's badass tats, the weirdly self-indulgent description of the hilarious secret Harper (lol is like literally anyone in the FR not secretly a Harper or Zhent?) warden, a whole bunch of the scene-setting and so on.
And it being possibly a form of torture? Solitary confinement absolutely is a form of torture, but the people who came up with it were lawful good Quakers interested in rehabilitation and who thought leaving people alone with just a Bible would help. And realised very quickly that that had been a really bad idea.
It's absolutely extrajudicial. The "Absolution Council" meets irregularly with random numbers of members (I guess they don't need a quorum), and seems to act based on whim and with no representation, no legal guidelines, and so on. Logically one would say they're always going to do what is going to please their superiors back in the cities they work for, which will be release people who are trouble for cities they don't like, and keep imprisoned anyone who their city doesn't like. There's no justice, law or "parole" there. Just a a group of people who explicitly don't even want to be there making self-interested decisions.
This is entirely something you have made up. In order to be extrajudicial it must fall outside the laws of the place given. If the local laws say that walking-while-elf is deserving of life imprisonment then sentencing an elf to life imprisonment for not hopping is not extrajudicial. It may be unfair and unjust but that is an entirely different question to whether it's extrajudicial.
Other than where the module literally says in so many words "To be imprisoned in Revel’s End, one must have committed a serious crime against one or more of the member cities and been sentenced to a lengthy period of incarceration (typically a year or more)." And I quoted this above - but you continue to ignore what was actually written.
It is literally made explicit and not in a way that can be accounted for by an unreliable narrator that someone must have not just been committed a crime but been sentenced - in other words the law must have been followed.
and the city-states involved are deeply corrupt ones with extremely dodgy judicial systems. As I pointed out, Waterdeep's legal code doesn't even have a provision for imprisoning people for more than a year, and it's a corrupt legal system in the first place.
Waterdeep's legal code doesn't have provision for imprisoning people for more than a year - but does for a year. Only the worst according to the legal system go to Revel's End.
Pretending that it's fine because some corrupt council members in Waterdeep railroaded a person and gave them a made-up sentence which doesn't even fit their own legal code is a great illustration of why this isn't an LG-acceptable situation.
Who is pretending the Waterdeep legal system is fine?
However just because a legal system is imperfect doesn't mean that it's impossible for a lawful good person to work within it. Doing one of the things a good legal system does (keeping bad people out of trouble), and either making sure that there aren't political prisoners or if there are making sure they get access to the parole board. And, given it's a prison in the middle of nowhere, making sure that a bad person doesn't take it over and turn it into a nightmare.
The idea that a lawful good person can't engage with flawed systems and try to keep them on the rails as far as is practically possible is ridiculous.
I didn't "address" your criticisms. I pointed out your criticisms are about as relevant as someone purporting to be a Batman fan ranting about how this Tim Drake isn't Robin and Robin must always be Dick Grayson because that's the way it was years ago. (Never mind that the current Robin is Damian Wayne - and Batman has to tell him to lighten up).
The simple fact is that it is no longer the 90s - and the Forgotten Realms haven't been what you still like to pretend they are for over 20 years. The Forgotten Realms are the default D&D setting and were in 3.0 and 3.5 (despite some minor nods towards Greyhawk in the PHB and DMG) and are in 5e. The entire cosmology has been reworked repeatedly; in 3rd edition it was the World Tree and in 4e we got the Spellplague. Then the Second Sundering.
And it's clear you actually know this place is a terrible mismatch for the FR. It doesn't make sense thematically or tonally. You complain about me "not making good points" and then totally fail to make any yourself.
The Forgotten Realms is the most basic D&D setting and the generic setting. Your claim is basically that the existence of any mage that does practical long lasting philosophical experiments destroys the entire tone of the Realms. That all mages must be cookie cutter and act in lockstep.
Also, how are you not understanding what tone means? I think you do understand and are making a cheap and not necessarily good faith argument, frankly.
I understand what tone means. I also understand that you are looking at the tone of a single instrument and saying the entire orchestra must have the same tone. You want to cut the entire brass section out of the orchestra despite most of the music in an eight year period (the entire 3.0/3.5 period) having been dominated by brass players including in the Realms. Yes you're free to prefer the strings - but the brass are still part of the orchestra.
Half of the text isn't "necessary for the adventure". Fetish-y descriptions of someone's badass tats, the weirdly self-indulgent description of the hilarious secret Harper (lol is like literally anyone in the FR not secretly a Harper or Zhent?) warden, a whole bunch of the scene-setting and so on.
I'm just missing one piece of the puzzle - a time machine to reverse the entire last 25 years and bring us back to a time when TSR still existed.
And even then the idea that no wizard could have possibly made something like Revel's End (which by the way was made for the upcoming movie before going into Frostmaiden and now here) would have been gatekeeping.
This is entirely something you have made up. In order to be extrajudicial it must fall outside the laws of the place given. If the local laws say that walking-while-elf is deserving of life imprisonment then sentencing an elf to life imprisonment for not hopping is not extrajudicial. It may be unfair and unjust but that is an entirely different question to whether it's extrajudicial.
Other than where the module literally says in so many words "To be imprisoned in Revel’s End, one must have committed a serious crime against one or more of the member cities and been sentenced to a lengthy period of incarceration (typically a year or more)." And I quoted this above - but you continue to ignore what was actually written.
It is literally made explicit and not in a way that can be accounted for by an unreliable narrator that someone must have not just been committed a crime but been sentenced - in other words the law must have been followed.
Whether the imprisonment was just is entirely irrelevant to whether it's extrajudicial.
Waterdeep's legal code doesn't have provision for imprisoning people for more than a year - but does for a year. Only the worst according to the legal system go to Revel's End.
Who is pretending the Waterdeep legal system is fine?
However just because a legal system is imperfect doesn't mean that it's impossible for a lawful good person to work within it. Doing one of the things a good legal system does (keeping bad people out of trouble), and either making sure that there aren't political prisoners or if there are making sure they get access to the parole board. And, given it's a prison in the middle of nowhere, making sure that a bad person doesn't take it over and turn it into a nightmare.
The idea that a lawful good person can't engage with flawed systems and try to keep them on the rails as far as is practically possible is ridiculous.
I didn't "address" your criticisms. I pointed out your criticisms are about as relevant as someone purporting to be a Batman fan ranting about how this Tim Drake isn't Robin and Robin must always be Dick Grayson because that's the way it was years ago. (Never mind that the current Robin is Damian Wayne - and Batman has to tell him to lighten up).
The simple fact is that it is no longer the 90s - and the Forgotten Realms haven't been what you still like to pretend they are for over 20 years. The Forgotten Realms are the default D&D setting and were in 3.0 and 3.5 (despite some minor nods towards Greyhawk in the PHB and DMG) and are in 5e. The entire cosmology has been reworked repeatedly; in 3rd edition it was the World Tree and in 4e we got the Spellplague. Then the Second Sundering.
The Forgotten Realms is the most basic D&D setting and the generic setting. Your claim is basically that the existence of any mage that does practical long lasting philosophical experiments destroys the entire tone of the Realms. That all mages must be cookie cutter and act in lockstep.
I understand what tone means. I also understand that you are looking at the tone of a single instrument and saying the entire orchestra must have the same tone. You want to cut the entire brass section out of the orchestra despite most of the music in an eight year period (the entire 3.0/3.5 period) having been dominated by brass players including in the Realms. Yes you're free to prefer the strings - but the brass are still part of the orchestra.
Secret Harpers Everywhere? That sounds like a perfect match for the tone of the Realms.
I'm just missing one piece of the puzzle - a time machine to reverse the entire last 25 years and bring us back to a time when TSR still existed.
And even then the idea that no wizard could have possibly made something like Revel's End (which by the way was made for the upcoming movie before going into Frostmaiden and now here) would have been gatekeeping.
I mean, there's no real response to this rant but "LOL". This is not good argumentation imho, but I like most of your posts, so I'm going to mostly leave it at that.
I will say I don't think the FR has changed as much as you're suggesting, but perhaps you'll be proven right by the inevitable FR book for 1D&D? It could happen. If it does I think the FR will have become slightly pointless, but that does happen to settings from time to time.
