D&D 5E Rise Of The Drow is Three Good D&D Books In One

There are a lot of solid campaigns out for Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast’s strategy of one new campaign a year seems to be working for them. By focusing on campaigns that run through ten levels with just enough information to get through the storyline, the company has given new players a lot of different ways to play in campaigns. Still, there’s a market out there...

1629841256674.png

There are a lot of solid campaigns out for Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast’s strategy of one new campaign a year seems to be working for them. By focusing on campaigns that run through ten levels with just enough information to get through the storyline, the company has given new players a lot of different ways to play in campaigns. Still, there’s a market out there for Dungeon Masters who want more info, more encounters and more everything. AAW Games aimed Rise Of The Drow directly at this market with a 544 page beast of a campaign involving dark elves, the Underdark and everything else that Dungeons & Dragons players who don’t like to come to the surface enjoy. The company sent me a copy of the Collector’s Edition to check out. Upon reading, I discovered it wasn’t one book, but three.

The first book is the titular campaign written by Jonathan G. Nelson and Stephen Yeardley with development by Thomas Baumbach. It begins in the city Rybalka where the drow decide to raid the city for a magical artifact as well as take captives for sacrifices to their dark gods. The drow aren’t surprised by do-gooder heroes rushing to save the innocents; they’re expecting them. A surviving prisoner points them to a besieged dwarven city that’s been taken by the drow. There, they find an entry into the Underdark and the drow city where the armies are growing to spill out and conquer above ground once and for all.

Each of these chapters is well organized. The layout of this book mimics the Monte Cook style of two columns of text with a third for sidebars and reference. I find this style extremely useful for navigating a big tome like this. It lets me slide forward to monster stat blocks, check out a location reference and be back before the next player’s initiative turn is up. These side bars include the general progression of scenes, much like the adventure flowcharts in the latest official releases. This book contains a lot of information but its general organization never made it feel like finding a tidbit was out of my reach.

Each chapter also comes with battle maps for a variety of encounters. This adventure path was also developed for Pathfinder and the amount of encounters shows. The Fifth Edition version includes them all more as a menu for Dungeon Masters to pick and choose which ones suit their players the best, along with advice on how to modify them for pacing and focus on the PCs. They feel much more manageable and modular in size compared to the usual protracted dungeon crawls seen in D&D.

The second book dives into the setting of Rise Of The Drow. The book details the main cities seen in the campaign and fleshes them out for use as side quest locations as well as spin-offs once the main campaign is complete. There’s a Viking/Land of the Midnight Sun feel to the main setting that fits in well with the dwarf cities and drow strongholds that feature into the campaign. These places can be moved to whatever the Dungeon Master prefers but keeping them together in a dark, wintry area seems like a good thematic choice. It seems like it would be a good fit for hooking fans of games like Skyrim or The Witcher into playing some classic Dungeons & Dragons. There’s space for the underdark to get weird, including some underworld themed artifacts and magic but Dungeon Masters looking for some very strange trips are advised to check out the sister books Underworld Races & Classes and Occult Secrets of the Underworld.

The final book is a massive bestiary that contains 200 pages of monsters. This section contains both the common monsters that appear (or at least the ones that can from the 5r OGL) and the ones unique to the adventure. I’ve seen more and more third party products put all the monsters in the back and it’s a move I applaud. I like having them all in one place and since stat blocks in the encounters are not the style of this edition, this is the next best thing than having multiple books and a tablet running D&D Beyond open. There’s only so much room behind my DM screen.

Rise Of The Drow is an excellent campaign choice for tables that want a modular campaign with great setting details where they can battle a classic D&D enemy in a weird setting.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Rob Wieland

Rob Wieland

Voadam

Legend
But what Trapdoor? I can't find any mention of one or the staircase
They seem to only be specified on the map. Same as the unmentioned trapdoors in 23, 25, which go to the unmentioned trap doors in 36, 37 which are on the map, same as the secret doors from 26 on the map leading to 27 and 28 which are not mentioned in the text. The church rooms are very lightly described, 40 rooms covered in one page of text.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


DarkCrisis

Reeks of Jedi
I'm about 3 sessions deep with this and so far I really like it (despite a few minor issues).

One thing I really like is the creators seem to have taken 5th eds normal power level and adjusted the encounters/monsters so there is a certian level of difficulty. IE it's not just a cake walk.

That said, I think they would be having even more or a challenge if one of the players wasn't playing a Gloomstalker in a setting that has no sunlight/star/moon light but whatever. Though it has been fun having them get attacked by monsters that don't need eyes to "see".
 

Voadam

Legend
One thing I really like is the creators seem to have taken 5th eds normal power level and adjusted the encounters/monsters so there is a certian level of difficulty. IE it's not just a cake walk.
That's interesting. It started out originally as a Pathfinder set of adventures (A13-A15 found here) so it is neat to hear how the conversion actually turns out in play. I wonder if that is deliberate or an artifact of the conversion.
 
Last edited:

DarkCrisis

Reeks of Jedi
Being further in and if the DM isn’t expanding things on his own it’s super linear and basically becomes a fight 1-2 battles and gain a level. Like it needs you be level 10+ for the finale and it gets you there the quickest way possible.

Honestly it’s kind of disappointing. I may have just misjudged what this book really is. It’s not an adventure with setting info, it’s a setting book with an adventure.

Adventure is fine but if you want an extra resource with some new interesting ideas to add to an Underdark campaign, it’s even better.

If I was looking for a book to help me craft an UD adventure I’d be more happy with it, as an adventure it’s fine but the DM needs to undarand it’s a framework with a lot of stuff they will need to add in.
 

Tormyr

Hero
Yeah, I think "setting with a campaign" is fairly reasonable way to look at it. The setting is very well fleshed out so a DM is ready no matter what the PCs might want to do. The adventure guides them through the setting, but leaves the middle bit very unscripted. The first 10% is heavily scripted by a sense of urgency in a tight time frame, and there is a lot of hand-holding for what should happen next for the DM. The next 40% starts to spell out things less precisely more and more, in preparation for the next 35% or so, which gives some ideas for goals but is a complete sandbox. It then spells out generally what happens in the final 15% to wrap up the campaign.

I think the campaign is mostly there, but I have heard of several DMs getting caught out in the middle bit, because it is not really advertised as such. The DM has all the tools for the PCs to go in any direction they want, but the DM will definitely have to fill things in a similar way as if the PCs had gone off the rails in a more traditional adventure.
 

DarkCrisis

Reeks of Jedi
Yeah, I think "setting with a campaign" is fairly reasonable way to look at it. The setting is very well fleshed out so a DM is ready no matter what the PCs might want to do. The adventure guides them through the setting, but leaves the middle bit very unscripted. The first 10% is heavily scripted by a sense of urgency in a tight time frame, and there is a lot of hand-holding for what should happen next for the DM. The next 40% starts to spell out things less precisely more and more, in preparation for the next 35% or so, which gives some ideas for goals but is a complete sandbox. It then spells out generally what happens in the final 15% to wrap up the campaign.

I think the campaign is mostly there, but I have heard of several DMs getting caught out in the middle bit, because it is not really advertised as such. The DM has all the tools for the PCs to go in any direction they want, but the DM will definitely have to fill things in a similar way as if the PCs had gone off the rails in a more traditional adventure.

Whats funny is, he PCs would hav to on purpose put on hold the main quest. They have a guide who will take them to the Dwarf City. After that they can get directions to the Drow City. They would have to "leave the path for reasons". I mean sure that reason can be "We want more XP and treasure.", I guess.

I also like that the adventure is low on the treasure scale until you meet the dwarf and his family and they just hand out powerful magic items for free. Which goess with the "give them a level every 2 pages" thing.
 

Tormyr

Hero
Whats funny is, he PCs would hav to on purpose put on hold the main quest. They have a guide who will take them to the Dwarf City. After that they can get directions to the Drow City. They would have to "leave the path for reasons". I mean sure that reason can be "We want more XP and treasure.", I guess.

I also like that the adventure is low on the treasure scale until you meet the dwarf and his family and they just hand out powerful magic items for free. Which goess with the "give them a level every 2 pages" thing.
It's the "gain allies" portion that I feel is more free form. The PCs can beeline to the Drow city, but it would be a difficult trip for their level, and they should realize when they get there that they are hopelessly outmatched. At least, that is what I feel the book is trying to communicate.

I think of it a bit like a Bethesda RPG (Fallout or Elder Scrolls) you follow the main quest line for a bit, but then you inevitably branch out to fulfill the needs of the people around you until you get pulled back in to wrap up the main questline.
 


Remove ads

Remove ads

Top