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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6107500" data-attributes="member: 4937">Because it was always on the Abyss. And it's not a desert.  Hussar originally described it as a 'wasteland' and mentioned the usefulness of the centipede in climbing over obstacles, making me believe that it was some sort of arid canyonlands or badlands.  In fact, once we got context from Hussar, we can look at the published module (yes, it's a published adventure path) and get an exact description.  The 'desert' is actually the decaying remenents of a celestial plane sucked down into the Abyss and manifesting as a planar sized corpse.  Presumably the designer thoughts this trope sufficiently interesting in its own right to need relatively little support.  The designer offers up 5 or so different terrain descriptions, but not a lot in the way of scene.  As written, it's a very challenging scenario for a novice DM to run as anything more than a 'big game expedition' separating 3 smallish puzzle encounters.And there is no city they are going to.  The scenario is a more than a wee bit railroady, but involves the players getting vague directions from a dying NPC to obtain something from the Abyss at a point in which they are trapped by a one way portal and have no choice but to go forward.  I don't feel the module gives solid enough of an explanation for why the PCs would want to do what the dying NPC wanted, but forces a railroad on them to make sure that they do it anyway.  Then a 'helpful' NPC planeshifts them to the Abyss from the clue from the prior module, and guides them across the waste to the first of a series of fairly minor skill challenges.   Lots and lots of railroady devices are used to make sure the players stay on target (like they get a lantern that guides them to the next thing they are supposed to go to) and the module is pretty thin on substance and seems to assume lots of time surviving in the Absymal environment with limited resources (because the PC's didn't know in the intro scene that they'd end up trapped).  However, it does nothing to help the DM prep that as interesting.  There is mention of perhaps needing to have a hunting expedition to slay absymal bison to acquire food, but on the whole the survival scenario is done as 'wing it' with very limited resources provided to the DM.  To me, the wilderness survival feels like padding.One of the really key points to understanding this thread IMO is to note that Hussar's DM did not in fact thwart his plan and make him play out the Abyss travel/survival scenario.And by my standards, signfiicant portions of the setting require alteration and adaptation.  The scenario plays really well with evil aligned NPCs, but potentially plays very poorly with PCs in a more heroic mode and can get anticlimatic at several points with only vague hints of what to do about it.</blockquote>

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