Dungeons & Dragons RPG: Out of the Abyss Hardcover

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The Underdark is a subterranean wonderland, a vast and twisted labyrinth where fear reigns. It is the home of horrific monsters that have never seen the light of day. It is here that the dark elf Gromph Baenre, Archmage of Menzoberranzan, casts a foul spell meant to ignite a magical energy that suffuses the Underdark and tears open portals to the demonic Abyss. What steps through surprises even him, and from that moment on, the insanity that pervades the Underdark escalates and threatens to shake the Forgotten Realms to its foundations. Stop the madness before it consumes you! Out of the Abyss is a Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition adventure for characters of levels 1-15.

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Abysmal


I've read through the comments on other boards where a lot of people say, "This is for experienced DMs only." I can mostly agree with that.

However, there comes a point in that range of experience as a DM where you realize just how absolutely horrible this adventure is.

1. Trite. True, I've read a lot of modules. I've written a lot of my own modules. I've also played a lot of video games, so I have a pretty wide spectrum of what has been done before, but there are a few things that happen so often in those areas, that they should only be used with great caution. Starting the characters as prisoners falls under this category. So does having just about every NPC encounter for the first half to the book, leading to them being taken prisoner yet again. (For more on this, see point 2.) I'm not saying that this particular mechanic should not be used at all, but if you're going to do it, show a little more creativity than just rehashing the beginning of Elder Scrolls.

2. Do you even know what CR means? There are multiple points, especially in the first half, were you're told that the chapters can take place in any order. Apparently, that meant that the authors got them mixed up on the editing table and you need to match the level of the party with the level of the encounter. Oh wait, you can't do that because at the very beginning, there are NO encounters matched to the party's level. The writers apparently did realize this however, so they suggest multiple times that you just have the characters taken prisoner again. This lack of understanding of a very basic mechanic never showed up more glaringly than in the random encounter tables. It's simply not possible to write a table that will last through six (or more) adventure levels. The encounters will either be too hard or too easy and very rarely at the level they should be.

3. So much to throw out. I can play up to 20 different NPCs at the same time. With a little bit of advanced preparation (making copies of stuff and writing up stuff for the players) I can make sure that all 20 of your NPCs are given time and fleshed out. But to be honest, that's going to make for a very boring game. ("Well, Bupido, needs to stop for a nature break and the whole time he's doing his business, he's muttering to himself, 'someday they'll all worship me" and while that's happening Stool is trying to blow bubbles.'") A truly experienced DM is going to know, that you need to dump about 80% of the NPCs.
Also, I have yet to find a group that wants to have a battle that requires 20 different player controlled characters every single round of combat.
The same can be said about the copious amounts of backstory. It does help you develop the local flavor for the places you're in, but if you're trying to incorporate it all into your campaign at once, you're working too hard. Which brings me to my next point.

4. Paid by the word, were we? While almost all of the information that you may or may not use is at least interesting, there was at least one point in each chapter that I found myself saying, "Why is this even in here?" There's a bunch of information that isn't even relevant to the adventure. I had the feeling over and over that it would have been better suited (and less confusing) to have placed it in an optional supplement. This is yet another thing that experience can easily overcome--you know what to throw out.

5. Total lack of organization. The breaks for chapters make sense (although do read on to point 6 for more on that). Outside of that, there is no organization to how the material is presented. NPC names and descriptions were usually in a totally different place than where they were encountered, area information was usually in the front of the chapter, but a lot of what you needed to know was scattered throughout. Blingenstone was probably the worst for this.

6. Created by committee to be run by a committee. The chapters don't always agree on their information. Without giving any kind of spoiler, I can safely say that something that was required in Chapter 8 made most of Chapter 9 completely pointless. In the exact same area, 20 mercenaries that are supposed to be going with the PCs from Chapter 8, serve little to no purpose in Chapter 9. Chapter 9 barely even mentions them. But somehow, they magically appear again in Chapter 10.

7. Choo choo! Choo choo! The complaint that a campaign is "on rails" often gets unjustly used. The truth is that there needs to be some framework for the story. The areas where you weren't forced to do things (if you did them like the module said, which eventually I gave up on doing), you had no reason to care about. Allow me to hit this dead horse one more time: Chapter 9. Here is detailed in painstakingly fine, moment to moment planning, a subplot that the characters not only have no reason to care about, but if they did what they were supposed to do in Chapter 8, there is no reason for them to run into anything other than the very tail of end of the event. Two and a half hours of carefully plotting out everything only to realize in the end, that the characters could very easily and logically skip most of it and complete the chapter in under 15 minutes, which they did. The last part of this is a slight spoiler. If you have a guide that is supposed to take you to see someone, then chances are, he's going to take you to see someone, and not stop randomly at a totally different quarter of the city so that you can happen to see something that you most likely won't care about anyway. The only way to get Chapter 9 to be played out was to force the players to go a particular direction. When it came to that, I abstained.

8. The prep time to play time is unacceptable. I purchase pre-generated adventures so that I can spend less time worrying about preparation and more time in actual play. Creating my own content usually is about fifteen minutes to a half hour for every hour of play time, depending on complexity and level. I expect at least that for something I pay for and less would be very nice. Have I mentioned Chapter 9 yet? I have? Well that's a surprise. While most of the module was about 1 hour prep to 1 hour play, that particular chapter managed to be 2 and a half hours of prep for 15 minutes of play. And as I mentioned in comment 4 most of that time could have been reduced by giving me a lot less information. I'm running a campaign, not writing one.

9. Tracking tracking tracking, like a ranger. As some other reviews have mentioned, there's a lot to track. This wasn't a problem for me at all. I has a notepad and a pencil and I can does this. I does this very well. If you don't, you can skip it. It was kind of cool, but not 100% necessary.

10. I'll spare you. There is no number 10.

11. In conclusion. A somewhat experienced DM could have fun with this. A less experienced DM will be totally overwhelmed by this. A very experienced DM is just going to find it out and out annoying. Save your money. Curse of Strahd is much better, although they can still use a little help understanding CR in that one too.


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