Thread by @hexcrawl

This adventure launches by having the PCs stand around doing nothing while the GM describes an NPC doing awesome stuff.

It then proceeds to "if they don't do what you tell them to do, the NPCs automatically find them and kill them".

It's not an auspicious beginning.

NPC: "I will help you after this cut scene."

But then you're supposed to make the PCs wait an arbitrary and unspecified amount of time for the cut scene to happen in a location where there's basically nothing for them to do except say, "We wait."

What is happening?!

The PCs level up after the first SCENE of the adventure.

You create your characters and then maybe 20 minutes later you pause the narrative so that they can level them up.

Just create 2nd level characters!

There's 300 words describing an NPC the PCs don't know about, no one mentions, and who is behind a locked door on the second floor of a tavern that the PCs have no reason to ever leave the common room of.

She seems sort of interesting. But what the hell is she doing here?

We've reached the first dungeon.

First, there are a lot of text-to-map mismatches. Area D8, for example, is described as a "dry alcove".

In addition to the coloring, the stairs should be placed north of D8, not east of D8.

The design actually does a good job of having the flooded portions of the dungeon lower than the rest of the dungeon.

Which is why the failure to color in corridor D23 (which is correctly described as flooded in the text) is also an error.

Is it weird that one of the cultists has decided to stand guard in D23 "standing in the water" when he could go up the nearby stair and not have his feet rot off? Yes. But the cultists do all kinds of nonsensical shit down here, so maybe it's just a gimmick I don't understand.

I'm not sure this is an error, but it's certainly a weird missed opportunity. We're going to focus on Room D9 here. There are four passages out of D9: One comes from the entrance, the others lead to cultists/shrines belonging to one of the three Dead Gods (Bhaal, Bane, Myrkul).

The doors in D9 are also themed to the Three Dead Gods:

East: Bane
North: Bhaal
South: Myrkul

Am I crazy? Or should the door to the north actually be to the West so that all the themed doors match the themed content behind them?

It would also mean that PCs would likely come in from the Entrance and be presented with three creepy doors they have to interpret and choose between. Cool moment, opportunity for a meaningful choice.

Instead, there's just a random choice stripped of meaning.

Let's talk about Area D18.

Did you know that the "rotten eggs" smell of natural gas is a chemical called mercaptan that was first added to the gas as odorant in 1880 so that people know when natural gas - which is actually completely odorless - was leaking?

The authors did not.

Also D18 is the lowest point in the complex, so it would have made more sense to go with a heavier-than-air gas that would CONCENTRATE here, rather than a lighter-than-air gas which dissipates.

#sciencefacts

(I have a science teacher in one D&D group and a professional engineer in another. So I think about these things.)

More importantly: D18 is a chokepoint. You have to walk through it to get from one side of the dungeon to the other.

"Bringing a lit torch or other open flame into the gas-filled room triggers an explosion..."

But:

"Followers of the Dead Three carry torches..."

Hmmm...

Why is this important?

Again: Meaningful choice and problem-solving.

If the cultists have to go through this flammable gas, then their light sources would reflect that: Safety lamps or light spells.

PCs, seeing this, could realize the danger of an open flame.

Similarly, if the gas CONCENTRATES in D18, then you could describe the faint smell elsewhere in the complex where the gas is entering the area (D13, D17, and D19 would be good choices).

Again: This would give the PCs a chance to gather information and then use that information.

The adventure kind of does this by saying that any character approaching D18 detects the smell and can make a skill check to recognize its significance. But that's just a bang-bang interaction; not an opportunity to think, analyze, and make meaningful choices.

In addition to problem-solving, this type of thing also gives the dungeon the feeling of a complete environment rather than just a bunch of individual rooms.

Fun: Check out the information on the traditional "damps" miners used to describe mine gases: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_la…

If I was redesigning this dungeon, I'd also consider:

- The risk of an explosion in D15. (Looking at the map, it seems logical that gas flowing down to D18 could also flow down to D15.)

- Have the cultists USING the gas for something. Experiments in the Morgue (D13) seem cool.

This would also explain why the cultists are using a sewage-flooded dungeon instead of... I dunno, literally ANYTHING ELSE as their base of operations (when they're funded by a member of the 1%).

Oh! Bloated zombies filled with corpsedamp that explode when killed!

(Those of you pointing out that there's a gas in the link I provided that matches the properties I've recommended the gas in the adventure should have: My apologies for being unclear. That's one of the reasons I gave the link.)

Looking at the dungeon on a macro-level, we quickly note that's it's fairy linear: Couple of side branches. A couple loops. But the design strongly funnels you through the full dungeon to a Area D29, where the essential encounter that links you to the next scenario is located.

Once you identify D29 as the essential Must Have Encounter(TM) for the adventure to continue, the next thing you'll notice is that the only way to get to Area D29 is through the secret door in D23.

I was initially going to say that this was a weird choice, but I think realistically we can just describe it as a bad choice.

This is something I've talked about before, but you've created a chokepoint here which makes your scenario very fragile.

thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8176…

If they don't find/go through that door, you literally have to toss out the next 232 pages of the book.

So a secret door is a bad choice.

But they've also sort of tripled down on this bad choice.

(1) The secret door is in a weird location: Just sitting in the middle of a hallway. That actually makes it far more likely that the PCs will simply never think to look for a door here.

(2) They've put a cultist guard here who, upon spotting the PCs, runs off to a different area. This will have the effect of making the PCs chase him, making it even more likely that they won't take the time to search this random chunk of hallway.

(3) They go to oddly great lengths at several points in this dungeon to specifically prevent the PCs from learning about this secret door. (Which, again, is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the entire campaign to happen.)

Frex, in D14 there's an ordinary rat. They actually take the time to specifically tell the DM that if the PCs use a speak with animals, it DEFINITELY won't be able to tell them about the secret door.

This stonewalling isn't great in any case, but here it's basically perverse.

My live-tweeting of this adventure continues over here.

https://twitter.com/hexcrawl/status/1234134695195152385