.avatar.yuku.com/okayyourturn "jagdell(d)'s Avatar")
Hi there,
Having had fond memories of DMing Queen of the Demonwebs Pits and having a lot of respect for Wolfgang Baur (I am a patron of Open Design) I happily spent the 35$CDN for Expedition to The Demonwebs Pits and dug right into it.... only to find I hate it! I really do.
I'm not a grouch, I'm willing to find good in everything, I'm not a stat bloc lawyer, nor am I adverse to some severe Hack and Slashing, heck I played through all of Return to the Tempple of Elemental Evil and we loved it! .
But this adventure does not do it for me. On every page, I get stuck on some details that makes my teeth grind. That being said, I love the setting, I really like the new Encounter format and I like some of the NPC's.
But, so far I hate the product (I'm in the 3rd chapter)! It's a lot about what I find to be faulty game mechanics (Cambion anyone?), partly a blatant lack of consistency and also about the obvious railroading to string the events back to back (The worse since the Witchfire Triology, which this product mirrors in many places).
For example:
Spoilers Alert.
Early in the adventure the PCs are sent by a Demon to this Celestial Temple to get a prophecy. You need to use diplomacy to convince the guardians to get the prophecy. But you need to play against sense motive(????). The adventure then indicates that the Players could sneak in and get the prophecy themselves, but the authors give very vague details on how to do it and they stuck a very vigilant celestial 5' away from the prophecy generator! (On top, they describe where 2 of the celestial sleep.... Since when do Outsiders sleep?)
Other example, The characters have an option to get a Demon-Slaying Sword in the Iron Waste layer of the Abyss. The adventure clearly states that after wandering in a Blizzard for some time, they find the forteress where the sword is. But at no time do the players have a map or are told to follow key landmarks (which is what I would need to do as a DM to maintain a level of plot-related verisimilituide that I'm confortable with).
But what irks me the most so far, is that upon getting that sword, the adventure says that it tells the PCs how to get to the next part of the adventure. But nowhere else is it indicated that the Sword is intelligent (no Int, Wis or Cha score given with the mechanics of the sword).
Oh and the continuous reference to books I don't own KILLS me. It would have been nice for unplanned encounters (there are quite a few) to propose SRD replacements for encounters taken from other sources, as Dungeon magazine as done in some adventures.
Am I being to harsh with this adventure? I know that Wolfgang is a great flavour writer while I'm more of a mechanics freak ( I do not know the other author so well). But am I wrong in thinking that this adventure, while based on an excellent idea and an interesting plot, is badly designed?
Anyway, your feedback would be appreciated.
Having had fond memories of DMing Queen of the Demonwebs Pits and having a lot of respect for Wolfgang Baur (I am a patron of Open Design) I happily spent the 35$CDN for Expedition to The Demonwebs Pits and dug right into it.... only to find I hate it! I really do.
I'm not a grouch, I'm willing to find good in everything, I'm not a stat bloc lawyer, nor am I adverse to some severe Hack and Slashing, heck I played through all of Return to the Tempple of Elemental Evil and we loved it! .
But this adventure does not do it for me. On every page, I get stuck on some details that makes my teeth grind. That being said, I love the setting, I really like the new Encounter format and I like some of the NPC's.
But, so far I hate the product (I'm in the 3rd chapter)! It's a lot about what I find to be faulty game mechanics (Cambion anyone?), partly a blatant lack of consistency and also about the obvious railroading to string the events back to back (The worse since the Witchfire Triology, which this product mirrors in many places).
For example:
Spoilers Alert.
Early in the adventure the PCs are sent by a Demon to this Celestial Temple to get a prophecy. You need to use diplomacy to convince the guardians to get the prophecy. But you need to play against sense motive(????). The adventure then indicates that the Players could sneak in and get the prophecy themselves, but the authors give very vague details on how to do it and they stuck a very vigilant celestial 5' away from the prophecy generator! (On top, they describe where 2 of the celestial sleep.... Since when do Outsiders sleep?)
Other example, The characters have an option to get a Demon-Slaying Sword in the Iron Waste layer of the Abyss. The adventure clearly states that after wandering in a Blizzard for some time, they find the forteress where the sword is. But at no time do the players have a map or are told to follow key landmarks (which is what I would need to do as a DM to maintain a level of plot-related verisimilituide that I'm confortable with).
But what irks me the most so far, is that upon getting that sword, the adventure says that it tells the PCs how to get to the next part of the adventure. But nowhere else is it indicated that the Sword is intelligent (no Int, Wis or Cha score given with the mechanics of the sword).
Oh and the continuous reference to books I don't own KILLS me. It would have been nice for unplanned encounters (there are quite a few) to propose SRD replacements for encounters taken from other sources, as Dungeon magazine as done in some adventures.
Am I being to harsh with this adventure? I know that Wolfgang is a great flavour writer while I'm more of a mechanics freak ( I do not know the other author so well). But am I wrong in thinking that this adventure, while based on an excellent idea and an interesting plot, is badly designed?
Anyway, your feedback would be appreciated.
