It's that time again where we add a plus to a dragon. You can read the new issue right here.

Real quick, I think this is by far the best issue yet. If you have even the slightest interest in Tales From the Yawning Portal, you should check this out. It is loaded with art and TONS of maps from the adventure.

The cover this month is a peeps diorama. I think I had written about peeps-flavored oreos recently, which I never did buy but I sill sort of want to. I can't imagine it being anything more than brightly-colored ipecac.

This diorama was done by someone who I follow on twitter, which is pretty cool. I don't know Dani Hartel, but I could conceivably declare that I am "loosely affiliated" or "twitter-connected."

Fiction

I'm not big on fiction in general, but this series of stories has some Yawning NPCs you can stick right in your campaign:

• Georgie Two Shoes: Is often drunk.
• Shay: A young female elf ranger. Worships Corellon.
• Snuff: An old dwarf. Wears odd clothing, jewelry and has seen much of the world. Worships Moradin.
• Nibs: Gnome bard. An artist who sells his sketches, knows a lot about the tomb of horrors.
• Mary Greymalkin: A warlock, old and fearsome. She has dull-gray ioun stones in her hair and apparently owns a deck of many things.
• Garret: Tiefling rogue. Various charms hang from his wrists, neck and horns.
• Nameless Ranger: Wears a tattered town banner as a cloak. Member of the Emerald Enclave. Scars and burns on hands and arms.

The Yawning Portal has a stuffed hyenodon head from Tamoachan on a wall.

Heroes Who Died in Tamoachan:

• Hap the Fierce: Was "charmed right out of his pantaloons" by the nereid.
• Sacha the Thief: She made the mistake of looting Tlocques-Popolocas
• Elf Bard: Plucky optimist. Killed in the will-o-wisp sand trap.

Sunless Citadel

An interview with Bruce Cordell! He's done a ton of awesome stuff in D&D, including the Illithiad, probably my favorite D&D sourcebook of all time.

He says that when making this adventure, they sat down and thought up scenes and things they thought should be in the adventure, and made a story around that.

Meepo was put in there to give even experienced players pause. What do you do with a crying kobold?

Forge Of Fury: Interview with Richard Baker

He talks about the beginning of the adventure, where a group who tries to march in the front door is met by a massive horde of orcs. He says that this was done to teach players that arrow slits and strong gates are actual obstacles. The roper was put in there on purpose to teach player that it is OK to run away sometimes.

He talks about playtesting the forge,where a gnome character had levitated and ended up unconscious, hovering in the air and bleeding to death.

The encounter with the dragon was meant to be a situation that spread the group out so that the dragon could pick them off one at a time.

White Plume Mountain

This is an interview with Claudio Pozas, who did the map of White Plume's surroundings. It mentions that he wrote a 4e adventure set in Dead Gnoll's Eye Socket, which I sort of remember. I should definitely check that out.

I didn't realize Claudio did the art for the weapons and the aquarium. Long ago, I had bought these Arcana Unearthed tokens that Claudio drew. He was good then, but he has improved so much it is insane. 

Dead In Thay

An interview with Scott Fitzgerald Gray. He talks about megadungeons and the pitfalls of running them. He always puts teleport circles in them so the group can leave without creeping all the way back the way they came.

Tomb of Horrors

Creighton Broadhurst cooks up some lists of stuff one might hear or find in the tomb of horrors. There are a number of amusing references to NPCs, pregens and real-life characters.

My favorites:

"The mortar around one of the bricks in a wall is in bad repair. The brick can be removed to reveal an empty niche beyond."
and

"Dried spatters of blood mark out a twisting pattern across the floor. After a short distance, the pattern vanishes abruptly, as if the creature that was bleeding disappeared."

Planescape: Torment

We get an article about the enhanced edition of Planescape: Torment. They say that they didn't add content, they just tried to clean the game up. My biggest question is if they tweaked the movement at all, because that was a bit of a pain waiting for the group to run all the way over to the spot you clicked. It works on tablets, too. That's crazy.

If you've never played this game before, all you need to know is that this game involves tons of dialogue and reading. If that is not your thing, then you won't like this game! Anybody else will really like it, I think.

Video Games

Shannon Appelcline gives us a history of D&D video games. He talks about the old gold box games from SSI. As a kid, I had a friend who was really into these. I distinctly remember going over to his house and watching him tear through a dungeon in Pools of Radiance, it was pretty awesome.

Best of the DMs Guild

This time it is Trouble in Waterdeep, an introductory adventure. I have been having trouble downloading these things. I have realized that it is a firefox issue! Come on, firefox, you're killing me.

Tales From Cryptic Developers

We get a bunch of D&D stories from A software engineer. Very amusing stuff, I love hearing this kind of thing. The best one is probably the one about the guy who forgot he gave away his ring of feather falling.

D&D Beyond

There's a big article on D&D Beyond, the digital reference thing. You can make characters and look stuff up real quick. I probably should have reviewed this thing by now, I'll get right on it.

The Virtual Reality Gambit

They're working on a game called "Dungeon Chess" which involves D&D monsters killing each other on a chess board.

This one is a little political, so if you don’t like people making fun of Trump, you should skip this thing.

I went way overboard preparing for this session. I almost always feel like I need more time when planning out an adventure, but I spent way too long on it.

The group was set to go after my Donald Trump NPC, who rules a settlement called Samora in the abyssal realm of Azzagrat. My plan was to parody the real life Trump stuff and fit it into the D&D lore of Samora, which is pretty well-detailed in a number of products.

It can feel overwhelming when you try to figure out how to approach an “investigation” type adventure. I sat down and listed all of the Trump notes I wanted to hit:

• Alex Jones and Infowars.
• Melania in a lonely tower.
• Carter Page as the most nervous suspect of all time.
• Trump getting peed on, and more stuff like that.

Then I looked at Samora concepts and tried to fit the Trump stuff into the existing lore. In the books, Samora is ruled by Marietta, she lives in a counting house, and the place is guarded by 13 alu-fiend (half-succubus) soldiers with lances.

Putin: My big problem was.. who is Putin? I wanted to use a demon lord, but had no idea which one. I looked at my own guide to Grazzt. The main reason I write those guides is so that I have a resource for my campaigns. When I use NPCs like this in my games, I forget all the details if I don’t have a file of some kind on it.

Family of Graz'zt: This led me down a google rabbit hole. I saw that Grazzt has siblings. There’s actually a lot of them not in my guide. I found piles of stuff and I couldn’t tell if it was official or not, but I liked it, so I used it. I picked Vucarik of the Chains, a half-brother of Grazzt. He has these iron worms that burrow into people’s skins. I decided Grazzt had caught a spy of Vucarik’s in his court, so he levied sanctions on Vucarik’s layer of Nethuria that has crippled the people who live there. These people are called “paedions,” I have absolutely no idea what they are.

That’s my Putin. I gleefully realized that the penultimate encounter of this session could have the heroes magically disguised as ladies who have to pee on Trump. I had my plan set.

More Prep: Then I went back and made “downtime” stuff. I love this kind of thing and really dug in. I wanted the group to touch on everybody and everything they are linked to in Sigil, to emphasize that the NPCs are “real people” and to enforce the notion that what the heroes do matters. The decisions that the heroes made with these NPCs had an impact on their lives.

This turned into two pages of notes and I realized that we might not get through everything. I was excited about it though, and I timed my planning perfectly so that I had all of the information “loaded” into my brain right when it was time to go play. If I work on campaign stuff 3 or more days before a session, I find that I have trouble keeping it all straight and can’t remember my intent behind some of the things I had planned.

Also, I just want to note that I went through the 4e Demonomicon and wow, there is a lot of new stuff in there. I saw an abyssal realm that is a slaad breeding ground! How did I miss that? I will definitely be using it ASAP.

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard


Two Goals: We started off with piles of Sigil stuff, much of which is perverted events that I’ll gloss over. That’s how we roll. In the comedy department, I “killed.” The players were laughing through the whole thing. As a DM, I have two primary goals. Make it really fun/funny, and get the “D&D feeling” (which is the reading-a-book-and-can’t-put-it-down feeling). It was a good one!

Theran’s Babies: Zaraga the Hag’s magic told her that Theran had three babies on the way. Hags like to eat babies, so Zaraga offered him money and/or magic items for them. Theran declined. A few sessions back, Theran had to do “employee reviews” of the group’s “jinkskirts” (they own three festhalls now). I rolled for all this randomly. The three mothers: Busty Razzle, Barl Excellence (who has a french accent so I can say her name in it) and uh.. Squirt Cobain. My campaign is stupid.

The Mansion: The group finally investigated a building in their square called the Hall of Keys. Every day, a key appears in it. Someone in the city has a dream about it and comes to get it. The group took the key that was in there on this day, and ultimately figured out that it was for a mansion for sale in the Lady’s Ward.

According to the DMG, mansions are around 25,000 gp. The group is pretty rich. The key actually activates a portal that connects the mansion to the group’s home in the Lower Ward. The heroes made a down payment on it.

The heroes are 13th level now, so I’m trying to establish that they are famous and rich. High level is supposed to be a big deal, right? They earned it and it could lead to all sorts of interesting things. They are Sigil celebrities.

Undersigil

Carousing: The group went carousing with their NPC friends. I dug up info on a tavern in the Lady’s Ward called Twelve Factols. It’s connected to Undersigil and has historical significance. We did a whole bunch of stuff: gambling, Theran impressed the crowd by using mage hand to pour drinks. Fall From Grace got drunk, as did Bidam’s harpy sidekick as determined by die rolls.

I was also able to establish that Feurina the warder devil is like Bidam’s brother. A long time back, they had this weird magical merging and they shared all of their memories with each other.
Plane of Elemental Earth: The group checked in on their holdings there, everything’s fine.

Rival Festhall: There’s a new festhall owner, a corruption devil. It met the group and told their best employees that if the heroes ever treated them bad, they could come work for it for double the pay.
Pazuzu sent the group gifts: Fiendish griffon mounts. I figure at this point, the group should be able to fly around.

New Demon: Bidam’s demon breeders at Allagash made a new demon – a nephropic, which is lobster-demon from the Teratic Tome. It’s perfect for Bazuuma’s realm, which is mostly an ocean full of demonic crustaceans! I don’t know why, but I die laughing every time I see the phrase “demon crustaceans.” It’s so ridiculous. But the art here makes them look pretty cool:

Skyshrine: At Theran’s floating castle, he investigated the damage done. The place had been hit with a meteor swarm courtesy of Iggwilv in a previous session. The damage to floors revealed a secret underground chamber. In it was a sphere that could be used to fly the island around.

The group got a bit excited. Skyshrine has a huge chain that connects to the ground ruined city below. The city is called Tornbend, and it is full of “bloodseep demons,” demons who weep poison blood. Theran cast disintegrate on a chain link.. and realized his mistake too late. The chain is massive, and once it was separated it fell on the city, killed piles of demons and crushed any buildings still partially standing.

Burningwater: In Bazuuma’s layer of the Abyss, another tower had risen out of the water. This layer was ruled by an obyrith named Cabiri long ago. These towers reveal more about him and contain fun little things.

Part of my Google journey took me to notes on Cabiri. Someone wrote up a ton of stuff, and again I can’t tell if it is from an official book or not, but I used it.

One thing I know is official: Cabiri is Pazuzu’s brother! The group just made friends with Pazuzu last session. Pazuzu betrayed Cabiri and stuck him in an abyssal prison-plane called the Wells of Darkness. This document claimed that Cabiri had been working on fusing elementals and demons together, and that his goal was to become an elemental prince of Evil.

The Senseless Court: In the tower, the group found the pit that Cabiri used to merge elementals and demons. They found notes containing all sorts of info, including the fact that Cabiri ruled another layer of the Abyss called The Senseless Court. It is likely that this layer is empty! They want to go check it out, so I’ll add that in next session.

They freed Cabiri’s three demon servants from stasis:

• Korb: An arachnid demon with three heads.
• Haklo: An amphibious, winged demon-dragon.
• MeemGlum: A demon lady. I need to figure out what to do with her, but I am not sure what that will be yet.

These creatures want to free Cabiri from the Wells of Darkness. For now, they’ve agreed to stay peacefully in Bazuuma’s realm. I can do some fun things with Haklo the dragon interacting with Bidam’s kids, who are demon-dragons.

Samora


The goal of this scenario is to expose Flumph as a traitor to Grazzt and Samora. Flumph always stays in the Counting House, which is beneath the city and heavily guarded.

The group had sent 5 spies here a few sessions ago. They are Agonists, a new type of demon from the Teratic Tome. One of the Agonists is Christine Steele, and she compiled a dossier.

There’s all this fake news being spread by this guy Alexi Joams. The Lady’s Lancers have some Russian moles in it, and there’s this mysterious “fancy bear” forging documents and assassinating dissidents.

Flumph had just passed the Samoran Slave Care Act. The price of cure disease in the Abyssal Temple was jacked up to 100 gold. Those who are sick and can’t afford it can get cure disease for free if they agree to be enslaved for six months. This six month time period keeps getting extended.

Agents of Flumph are cracking down on drugs. In Samora, the drug of choice is called Lubix.
Basically, agents of Flumph raid houses of hot women (they have to be “10’s”, according to Flumph). The guards plant Lubix in the house if necessary. The punishment for possession: Six months of slavery.

Flumph’s real goal is to enslave all of the tieflings, who all have devil blood and, to him, are “evil foreigners.” His other goal is to round up all the hot chicks in Samora so they can hang out with him. Remember, Trump once told Howard Stern that he thinks Scarlet Johannsen is a “6”, so these ladies must be extraordinarily beautiful.

Alu-Fiend

Lady's Lancers: The group met with some Lady’s Lancers. Some of the corrupt ones attacked. It turn outs they were infected with those iron worms. Once those iron worms were out of their body, they snapped out of it.

Fake News: Then the group went to talk to Alexi Joams, who was in a theater ranting to an audience of conspiracy buffs. I transcribed a real, actual Alex Jones rant that involved both actual weeping and frothing rage, and modified it with D&D stuff:

“Sometimes when I go out to eat, I don't like make a big deal out of it, but if I see old ladies buying food, I go up and pay for it. I don't like to make a big deal out of it and then I start crying because ten years ago, people weren't able to buy themselves food. (cries) People are so evil! Why can't Samora wake up and.. Gonard Flumph's not perfect, but he doesn't want to hurt you and your family. Marietta and Graz'zt want to make you poor and pathetic they hate you! They hate prosperity, they hate children, and damn them to the Nine Hells! I'm sorry, but Marietta.. I gotta look at her sharp face? That's a frickin devil!”

Players are inherently unpredictable, so they did something I didn’t expect. They set the building on fire. In the chaos, they abducted Joams, removed the iron worms from his body, and intimidated him into luring Flumph out into the open.

Joams wandered off. He never did get to Flumph. He stopped for a drink and fancy bear slipped polonium into it. Joams was done for!

Miss Tradegate: The group visited Miss Tradegate, the wife of the late Gonard Flumph, jr. Theran killed him a few sessions ago. Tradegate wasn’t broken up about it at all. She told the group to go visit Sharter Page (I know) and Mel Narnia, Flumph’s wife, who lurks in a lonely tower far from the counting house.

Fancy Bear: The group set up a meeting with Page in a bar in town. He was super nervous and awkwardly proclaimed his innocence, unprovoked. But that damn fancy bear dropped polonium in his drink and he died.

Fancy bear cackled, leaning against the bar. Fancy bear is a hairy dude with a russian accent. That's not all. He's a werebear! The group beat him to death and moved on.

Mel Narnia: This place was guarded but the heroes were able to magically charm their way in. Mel Narnia told the group that Flumph had declared that she was a “7” and thus he was not interested in her. The heroes agreed to help her escape with her son, Baron Gonard Flumph. His dad gave him the royal title of “Baron” when he was born.

The group learned about Vucarik and she suggested to them that they use alter self to look like “10’s” and get into the counting house. They did.

The beautiful women enslaved just kind of hang out in the counting house and do whatever they want. Flumph just wants to be surrounded by beautiful ladies. The heroes volunteered to pee on him. Again, my campaign is stupid.

They were ushered into Flumph’s bedroom. It wasn’t long before the peeing began. The group rolled to hit, because that’s what you do in D&D. They both rolled extremely high! Once that was done, Bidam grabbed a pillow and began smothering him to death.

Vucarik: Suddenly, a magic mirror in the ceiling flared to life. Three chains shot out, grabbing Flumph and the heroes. The mirror was a portal to Nethuria! Vucarik was trying to drag them all inside! Bidam quickly breathed fire on Gonard, killing him. The group escaped the chains as Vucarik made his case that the sanctions were hurting his people. He pulled Flumph’s corpse into Nethuria and the portal closed.

The group realized that Vucarik might raise Flumph, but for now, he wasn’t going to bother them.
Next time, the group will lead the devil army through the Abyssal Undersump! Should be fun! I might try to work in that Slaad breeding ground if I can. And then I think in the next session, I want to do a big naval battle on some planar sea between demons and devils. I want to use at least one demonic chaos ship. I love those things!

Episode 46: Heartbroken

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

I fell a little behind and I'm getting caught up now! I've been working on this gigantic .pdf for the DMs Guild for many a tenday. It's done, so hopefully I can get back in gear.

The group actually went to a renaissance fair in real life as their characters. I like it when the crew is at the same table, I hope we get to see more of it. Maybe for episode 50 or 75? They should play somewhere fitting, like on a boat or a castle or something. Although if it's a boat, they might get seasick, and come to think of it, their dice would roll all over the place if the seas be turbulent.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sor

Paultin is inside a golem and he was hit with a reduce spell, so he’s child-sized. The rest of the party is fighting fire giants in the assembly hall of a massive, disassembled golem. Evelyn hit one piece of this golem, the heart, with her magic axe, Lightfall. Lightfall got destroyed!

The Duke sees that his hell hounds are dead. He’s despondent.

More people enter the hall. It’s Krak Dragonspore in his magic armor, and the golem. Hmm... so is Krak the dao in disguise? Krak tells the group to help Paultin figure out how to control the golem. Diath rescues the animals, who were in the rubble. He notices that the cranium rat is wounded. He bandages it real quick.

Here comes Duchess Brimskarda, her two kids and some more giants. Evelyn sends the heart crashing to the floor. It actually cracks the floor.

Strix is still super-strong because of the potion of giant strength. Evelyn is up on a gantry above the floor. Brimskarda, the fire giant duchess, jumps and ends up hanging from it. Evelyn hacks at her fingers with Treebane. One finger from each hand comes off! Brimskarda falls 30 feet to the floor with a loud crash. Strix wants to keep those fingers.

The duke chucks a stone brazier full of hot coals at Evelyn. She’s down and dying.

Krak summons an earth elemental. There are big doors in here that lead outside. Krak tells them that they are magically sealed and that a fire giant has to open them by uttering a specific password.

Diath revives Evelyn with a potion of healing. He rolls well: 10 points! Evelyn is so happy that she jumps on Diath and hugs him and makes him uncomfortable with the nuzzling. Juniper, her mouse, is handed from Diath to Evelyn.

Strix wants a severed finger, but it is 60 feet away. How big is that finger? Is it a foot tall? Strix is hit with a thrown giant flagon and drops to 0 hit points. Some of the giants attack the golem, but they do no damage. I think it is immune to nonmagic weapons. Evelyn revives Strix.

Krak is getting pummeled. He strongly urges the group to get the doors open.

A giant picks up Paultin, and Paultin tries to trick him into opening the doors. He offers a reward, but is having trouble figuring out what the reward is. Evelyn tries to persuade the giant, too, but rolls poorly.


The Duchess hits the giant on the head and tells the giant to drop Paultin. He does. Once Paultin plops on the ground, she attacks him. Man, this is not going well!

One thing I am thinking is that Strix could gaseous form each hero one at a time, and they can slip through the cracks of the giant door. If there are cracks, that is. That would require the group surviving in here for 6 or 7 rounds.

Another option is to get one giant down to 1 hit point and hold it hostage (I think this option is actually covered in the adventure).

Krak turns into a pile of sand and bails out. One giant is down, and two are hurt. The golem and the earth elemental are doing all of the damage.

Diath spots a grate. Looks like the group is going to go in. Wow.. they need to get out through those doors. Strix is down, Diath heals her with a potion.

Strix polymorphs into a wooly mammoth. It has black emo hair and moths are flying around it.
Paultin rolls a death save. Natural 20! He’s up! He plays dead. Evelyn runs over, slings Paultin over her shoulder and flies onto the mammoth using her boots.

The golem and the elemental nearly kill the duchess. She turns and hits the mammoth. Strix is down again! She returns to her normal form and is unconscious.

I thought she had more hit points than that, but maybe I missed something. I thought she had 127 and she took about 60..?

Evelyn hits the floor and she’s unconscious. The waffle crew is going down, this is brutal! They need to get out of here.

The iron golem drops another giant. There’s 4 more giants remaining. Diath is right next to the duchess, who is hurt bad. Is an ally adjacent? I hope so.

Diath draws his short sword, intent on holding the duchess hostage. Awesome! He might save the party here.

Diath runs up her body, puts his sword at her neck and tells the giants to let them leave or she dies. Chris wants an intimidate check. Ohhh boy. He rolls a 10. Damn it!

Even though that didn't work, it was a great idea.

Paultin takes what he anticipates to be his last drink. That’s where we stop!

Overall

YIKES. Good show.

Episode 47: Apocalypse Drow

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

I decided to go through the Storm King's Thunder adventure to look some things up, as I couldn't remember much about the story in Ironslag. I put that information at the bottom of this review. It has spoilers!

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Sam Sykes) Kozin Xorlarrin - Drow Fighter

The group is in a fire giant lair and the giants are beating the bejeezus out of them. The group is allied with an earth elemental and an iron golem. A dao disguised as a dwarf is around here somewhere.

Iron Flask

Sam Sykes is playing Kozin, a drow. We start the session off focusing on him. He is with other drow who have arrived at the outside of Ironslag, on that stairway that zigzags all the way up the cliff wall. They find the remains of the chimera that the group killed on their way in. They see a giant bird... that's Harshnagg's bird, I think!

Kozin shoots it with a crossbow bolt. The drow sleep poison kicks in and the bird falls allll the way to the grond. Wow. The drow enter the complex and make their way to the huge room that the group is in. The drow watch what’s going on while lurking in the shadows.

Strix and Evelyn are making death saves. Waffles, the baby owlbear, actually runs over to the drow. The group eventually gets Waffles back.

Diath has a sword at the duchess's throat. He tries to hold her hostage, but his intimidation roll does not inspire fear in Duke Zalto. Zalto is sure that Diath’s tiny little sword can’t do his wife great harm.

Kozin casts a darkness spell to give the heroes cover to escape, which outrages the other drow. Their only task here is to deliver the flask.

Diath stabs the duchess and does a cool 24 points of damage. He springs off of her and tries to find Evelyn and Strix.

The female drow shoots Paultin and now he's down. It's just Diath and Kozin. Oh no, Evelyn failed her second death save. Not good!!

Diath stabilizes Evelyn.

The drow go to hand over the iron flask to the giants. Korin tries to trip him. The drow are furious. Kozin starts running. One of the drow hits him with a lightning bolt.

The group runs into the kitchen. They have been on the brink of death for a few sessions now and they are desperate to get out of this situation. They bump into Jasper the dwarf, who casts a mass healing spell on them. Jasper is the guy that they freed from the duke’s maul.

The group casts a darkness spell to cover their escape, but the giants are nearby and hear the group talking. Strix looks at the chimney and realizes the group can climb up and out.. probably. The giants can’t fit in the chimney.

They roll really well on their climb checks and they ascend safely. They emerge in a cave. Evelyn has an idea to block the chimney with a boulder.

They take a minute to rest... and now Kozin is trying to convince them to go back in! Wow. The group doesn’t like this idea. They need a rest!

Kozin explains that the giants have the flask, and that in the flask is Maegara, a fire primordial. With it, they can put together that big colossus/mech and send it on a rampage (it's called the Vonindod, I believe).

The drow explains that if the flask is opened normally, Maegara will be free, which obviously is very dangerous. But she can also be used to melt that adamantine heart. Destroying the heart will end the threat and the mountain will explode.

Evelyn has a great idea: Steal the heart and blow it up somewhere else. That might not be feasible, because the heart is very big. Kozin says that the explosion might not be instantaneous, they might have time to escape.

Heyyy…. Paultin pipes up and has a great idea. Paultin says that the WAFFLE HUT might protect them from the explosion. Nice.

The drow realizes that Maegara might already be freed down there. That’s where we stop.

Overall

I read Storm King’s Thunder, but I really don’t remember all that much from it. I decided to refresh my memory. This is full of spoilers!!

Lightfall Replacement? I forgot that King Harnoth of Citadel Adbarr will reward each character with a magic item if they complete this mission. That means that Evelyn might get some really cool replacement for Lightfall, or perhaps an item that can bring it back.

The Drow: Duke Zalto's deal with the drow of House Xorlarrin is that if they bring him Maegara, he will use the vonindod to destroy their enemies. These drow once inhabited the underground city of Gauntlgrym, but they were driven off by dwarves. They want the vonindod to go kill the dwarves.

Using Maegara: It says that once Duke Zalto has the flask, he traps Maegara in the adamantine forge. The fire becomes hot enough for the giants to begin reforging the vonindod.

The Adamantine Doors: They are 50 feet tall, airtight and soundproof! So that means the group couldn't use gaseous form spells to seep through the cracks and escape. The doors only open if a fire giant says the passphrase in the Giant language. The passphrase is on page 183.

Kozin and Friends: The drow are detailed on page 186. There is Draac and Taal Xorlarrin, a pair of drow mages, and six elite drow warriors. Each mage can attempt to summon a shadow demon, which is cool. Maybe they will summon shadow demons to track the group.

Timeframe: When Maegara is freed, it is compelled to obey the commands of whoever freed it for one hour. After that, it goes berserk!

Jasper’s Story: Jasper's story is on page 184. It looks like Chris changed him quite a bit.

Maegara is Deadly: Maegara's stats are on page 241. The group should definitely stay far, far, farrrrr away from this thing!

There is no Adamantine Heart: The whole reason I looked in the book was because I couldn’t remember what the heart’s deal was. I didn’t remember anything about it at all. Why did it destroy Lightfall? Why does it blow up?

There is no adamantine heart in this adventure. Chris made it up! That means anything can happen next week.

You can get Emirikol's Guide to Devils here. This is a shill-y post, so put on your lanyard, hit the sales floor with me and don’t forget to upsell batteries.

This Will be Easy!

Corruption Devil by Joseph Vitale

You might remember that I wrote some guides to Hell about 6 months ago. The guides were to the Nine Hells, devils and the archdevils.

I thought to myself, “Hey, it would be cool to make a book out of this material. It could be like the 3e Fiendish Codex II, except for 5th edition!" Sounds fun!

I thought it would be really cool to try to take all of the lore from every edition and fit it into one big continuity. I wanted to explain why erinyes are so different in each edition. I wanted to come up with a cohesive backstory. I wanted to work in Erin M. Evans Brimstone Angels stuff, because it's awesome. I wanted to make a full picture of Hell, everything included.

You don't need to dig up issues of Dragon from 30 years ago. It's all right here, updated and organized and 5th edition-ized.

Then I said to myself, “This will probably take 2-3 weeks.”

6 months later.. it’s done. It was a lot more work than I thought. I had to drop my online games to get this done. That's horrible, because every single player was awesome and I feel like I’m losing out on a good thing. I just didn’t realize what a commitment this kind of thing is.

Hurdles

3rd Edition Erinyes by kagurachi

So I’m just going to talk a little a bit about what I learned about writing a D&D sourcebook.

The thing that ate up the most time was the technical stuff. Learning the arcane functions of libreoffice was maddening. You want to add page numbers? Where’s the page number button? Oh, there is none. Just click Page > Paragraph >Text Flow. Text flow! Very intuitive! So easy to figure out! Text flow, of course!

Formatting a page is very tricky. Once you’ve made a draft and you edit it, everything gets moved around and the images end up in weird places. You can anchor them to a page or a paragraph, and it makes a big difference which you choose.

I had to learn a lot and it took a long time.

Volo's Style

Hell Knight by Wendy Sian-Roberts

I did this book in the style of Volo’s Guide to Monsters. In Volo’s, two ‘famous’ D&D NPCs make comments throughout the book. I decided to do the same, but with different ‘famous’ D&D NPCs. Emirikol the Chaotic and Natasha the Dark, stepdaughter of Baba Yaga and the person who may secretly be Iggwilv the Witch-Queen.

I was trying to figure out the tone. I am very joke-y. So I sat there, literally cracking myself up with the goofy comments I thought of. If you could see me writing these things, you’d probably think I was a crazy person. I find myself hilarious, I'm like my own Will Ferrel.

Should it all be jokes, though? I got to a point where I was reaching and struggling for goofy gags. I decided to delete all of the moderately crappy ones and added in quotes from old products, and ideas I had that I couldn’t fit into the book for whatever reason. That worked much better.

Ordering D&D Art is Fun!

Natasha the Dark by vasiart

By far, the biggest thing I learned from making this product is that I love ordering D&D art. It is so much fun. I send a sketch to some guy in Romania, and a few days later I get a piece of art that I couldn’t have imagined beforehand. I love seeing different people’s interpretations of D&D NPCs and monsters.

Sometimes I’d get one that was not so great. Usually that was due to a miscommunication, as a lot of these artists don’t speak much English. But what I found was that I enjoyed the “bad” ones just as much as the good ones. The whole thing is fun.

I also learned that most artists are better at some types of subjects than others. Some are awesome at magic items, but maybe not as good at monsters. Some do really awesome ladies (almost every artist is good at drawing beautiful women, I found).

I have one guy who is an architecture student. I had him do a city and sent him my crappy sketch. He turned it into something that blew my mind.

One horrific trend I’ve found is that some of these artists will send you art with a photo background. As in, a photo they googled. I ordered a piece of art where a samurai is fighting a bone devil in the mountains, in the rain. I got a samurai fighting a bone devil… on Mars. Mars, the planet.

Worse, some artists try to use photos of faces and they paste them on the characters. It sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s insane.

In the beginning it was a lot of trial and error, and eventually I nabbed a small core group of artists who were just pumping stuff out for me. Some of them were doing one monster per day.

On the images I'm showing in this article, I put links to the artists contact pages. In the credits of this book, I put links to everyone’s online presence. You can get art of your character for an incredibly low sum of money. It’s amazing. I am hoping people will check them out, as I love the idea of getting them more work.

The artists whose name come up over and over in the credits deserve more, in my opinion.

Stat Blocks

Asmodeus by Joseph Vitale

Making stat blocks was another thing that took me time to get competent at. Most of these monsters are high level. I mean, Asmodeus is about as powerful as Demogorgon.

In the beginning I kind of messed up. I didn’t give the devils some of their basic traits and all sorts of other stuff. So, about 1/3rd through the process, I had to go back and fix them all. That ate up some time, too.

The artist above who did Asmodeus is incredibly dependable. He lives in Venezuela, which right now is in tremendous turmoil. He is a great dude and I hope he ends up somewhere safe where he can pump out art and make some good money.

Satanic Panic

Corruption Devil Judge by turtlestance

One thing I’m a little worried about is just the fact that I’m writing about devils and angels. It’s a bit of a controversial thing and there were one or two ideas I had that I actually took out because if you look at it from a Christian context, it’s pretty awful. I decided to try to err on the side of caution.

What Next?
 

Guionne, my favorite 4e NPC, by vasiart

So.. it’s done. It’s quite a relief! It ate up all of my free time. Now I can get back to normal, sort of.

A few weeks ago, this adventure I wrote on the DMs Guild was put in a sale bundle. I didn’t really think too much about it. But when it hit, it was a real shock. That bundle sold thousands of copies! I suddenly got a pile of emails asking me where the sequel was!

The Castle of Corellon is the beginning of an adventure path. When I put it out, it didn’t really sell that well. At least, not in comparison to the guides.

It didn't seem like it was in that much demand, so the path wasn’t a priority. But now it is! I’m going to dive into that and order me some more sweet art of orcs, elves, oozes, displacer beasts, all sorts of cool stuff!

I finally finished Emirikol’s Guide to Devils. I feel so good having it done! It was fun to work on but it was definitely quite a grind. I just didn’t know realize how much time it takes to do these things.

Slimes: When I prepared for this session, I wanted to do an adventure focused on slimes and Juiblex, the demon lord of slimes. There is a pathfinder book that mentions a realm called the Abyssal Undersump, slime tunnels that connect layers of the Abyss. As soon as you hear the words “Abyssal Undersump,” you know you’re going to use that in your campaign in some fashion, right?

Making Up a Dungeon: I was afraid I was going to draw a blank when it was time to make up stuff for this session. It’s hard to come up with encounters from scratch. Worse, I looked at the 4e Juiblex article and there’s really not a lot in there that could help me.

Filth Person: The one thing I had was the Fulsome Queen from Wrath of the Righteous (a pathfinder adventure path I’m looting for this campaign). She’s a slimy woman made of filth! That’s gold where I come from. I’ve been waiting to use her for a long time.

I googled slime adventures and got a little bit of inspiration. For the most part, I made things up. I kept it basic and I though about a D&D sewer and what you could do with that. I came up with this:

• A dark tunnel that had many, many green slimes on the ceiling.
• A tunnel with slime fountains and a yellow statue with a secret compartment in it. The statue is covered in yellow mold.
• A hall with a classic chess board floor. Trapped, of course! But also a distraction from the brown mold on the walls and ceiling.
• A lake of slime, protected by the Fulsome Queen who demanded tribute. The group had to figure out a way how to get a devil army across the lake.
• The final area was this sewer area with lots of pipes crisscrossing for hundreds of feet above them. There were also magic slides/conveyor belts moving gelatinous cubes around. The floor of this place was grating, underneath it was a river of slime.
• The goal in there was to use this magic control device to move three pipes pouring slime out of the way so the group could get the army through the portal to Thanatos.

It worked out great!

The Party

(Jessie) Bidam - Platinum-Scaled Dragonborn Fighter
(George) Theran - Elf Wizard

We started off with some of that sweet downtime activity.

Truename: Theran obtained a devil talisman, which gave Theran the truename of Nin, the heresy devil that serves Bidam. Nin is a real jerk and with the truename, Theran has a lot of power over him. I also used this to remind Theran that he knows the truename of a nascent demon lord trapped in the interior of Azzagrat – Xanthopsia, Queen of Obscenity! She swears a lot.

Mel Narnia: Last session, the group took D&D Trump down. Where will poor Mel Narnia and her son, Baron Flumph, live? The group let her live in the mansion they put a down payment on last session.

Theran’s Spell Quest: George told me last time that he wants to learn almost every spell. So he joined the Society of Luminous Aether in Sigil (membership costs 1,000 gp per year). They have a library full of spells and tomes. He copied down every spell over the course of a few days.

Family Time: Bidam is married to a “good” demon lord, Bazuuma. I made up a ridiculous family skill challenge involving a baby dragon who wouldn’t eat his demon crustacean dinner, a daughter who melted her dessert and cried, stupid stuff like that.

The Lifepearl: Then I had Bazuuma ask Bidam about the lifepearl the group still has. That thing can raise the dead about 20 times, create a plane or a race! She floated the idea of using it in the core of Burningwater, her abyssal realm. She senses that the Abyss is afraid/repulsed by her positive energy. She wants to see if she can transform it into something else. Not now, but down the road.

The Senseless Court: The group visited the abyssal layer that Cabiri ruled. Long story short, it’s full of demon beholders at war with each other.

My version of Zariel

Zariel: The group had told the ruler of the first layer of Hell that they’d bring her a vat of holy water. She needs it for a secret plan. They delivered it. When they arrived at her ruined, burned castle, they could hear her whispering in a back room to her severed angel heads. Last time, they crept around and eavesdropped, and she almost killed them. This time, they stayed where they were.

Zariel was given the holy water, and then she showed the group another plan of hers. Thanks to the heroes, the devils had claimed a layer of the abyss – Onstrakkar’s Nest, formerly ruled by Lamashtu. Zariel is having these massive chains of baatorian green steel made. She is coming to try to pull that layer of the Abyss into Hell! She wants to merge it with her realm, to tame it. She wants to turn chaos into law.

The group was a bit dumbfounded at this plan. I think it will be an epic adventure that we’ll do pretty soon!

Miscellaneous Threats: We did a bunch of other stuff with their businesses. Iggwilv magically threatened Theran again through a sending spell. She is trapped in Graz’zt’s palace, and she wants Theran to convince Graz’zt to let her go.

The Undersump

Bovina - I'm getting art for this campaign now

Once all that stuff was out of the way, it was time for the heroes to lead the devil army through the Abyssal Undersump. Their goal was to get to Thanatos, the abyssal realm once ruled by Orcus (he’s dead in my campaign). Now it is ruled by Lamashtu.

The ultimate goal of this whole Blood War story is to march across Thanatos, Kill Lamashtu, and help their pit fiend friend take over Thanatos. The pit fiend is going to defect from the devils and become a demon lord all his own.

The group was accompanied by Nin the Heresy devil and Bovina the cow lady/minotaur/thief/pirate.
They scouted ahead of the army to clear the path of any obstacles.

Green Slime Ceiling: The group forced Nin to go first. He has a floating throne. He also has a ring of evasion, so once the slimes started dropping, he was making some sweet dodging maneuvers. After a bit of experimentation, the group saw that the green slime was destroyed by fire, so they burned it all away with cantrips.

Yellow Mold Statue: They smartly figured out it was yellow mold and used fire again to destroy it. In the secret compartment of the statue were two vials of powdered gelatinous cube. You add water and throw it a bad guy. It shatters and turns into a gelatinous cube. Pretty sweet, right? Jessie liked that one.

Chess Board: The group prodded the chess board floor and saw that the black squares were trap doors. They dropped you into a big pit full of combined slimes and oozes! The heroes realized it was very cold in here, took a look around, and saw the brown mold.

It took a bit of experimenting, but they finally figured out that cold damage destroys it. Fire makes it expand! They were extremely alarmed after hitting it with a fire bolt.




Slime Lake: My campaign is stupid, so you can probably guess what the Fulsome Queen wanted as payment to cross the lake. You know it. They had to poop on her. And they did. We rolled for it, of course. I’ll spare you the details.

There was this whole thing about tipping over a massive statue to create a bridge across the lake.
I had another room planned, where this slime from the 4e article was going to attack the group, popping in and out of holes in pipes and statues. I like the name of this creature: Darkness Given Hunger. But we had no time so I skipped it.

The Pipes Room: I was worried I’d have a hard time describing this place so I did some sketches. Jessie loves it when I do these, she likes make fun of how she can’t figure out what the hell it’s supposed to be.

There’s three slime waterfalls falling through the grate floor, blocking the portal to Thanatos. The group needs to operate this magic panel and “turn them off.” Theran realized that each of these activities were tied to other pipes above them. A whole lot of shifting was going to take place. So, it went like this:

1. Pipe One: Pipes above turned, spewing black puddings down at the heroes and the grate floor. The heroes made epic dexterity checks to dodge.
2. Pipe Two: A gelatinous cube conveyor belt turned and for a round or two, it dropped cubes on the group! Bidam got hit! He was stuck in the cube as it slowly sluiced through the grate. His armor of invulnerability helped him tremendously and ultimately he got out and was fine.
3. Pipe Three: They set off an ooze sprinkler system! Droplets of grey ooze everywhere!  How do you turn it off? There is a wheel that needs to be turned clockwise on a pipe 60 feet above them.

Nin has a flying throne. He’d been complaining all night. He’s always been shifty, looking for a way to take down Bidam, his “master.” Now he had his chance.

Nin the Heresy Devil

Bidam got on the throne with Nin and they flew up. Nin suddenly turned and dumped Bidam on a gelatinous cube conveyor belt! Bidam plopped right in a cube. To his horror, he saw that the conveyor was going to take him through a hole in a wall into some kind of lime tunnel full of gelatinous cubes.
The group freaked out. Bovina chuck a rope and grappling hook on a pipe. But the slime spray did too much damage and she went down!

Theran Misty stepped up 30 feet and balanced on a slippery pipe. He mage-handed the rope to himself and climbed up some more. He got up there and helped Bidam get out of the cube.

Theran saw Bovina was down. Bidam jumped across a gap and landed on Nin’s throne. Nin slammed him into a wall and Bidam failed a dex save. He fell 50 feet to the floor!

The floor is grating. Bidam is heavy. He’s wearing plate mail. I rolled to see if he crashed through the grating. Nope! He just dented it.

While that was going on, Theran was turning the wheel and turned off the sprinkler system. Bovina rolled a 20 on her death save! She popped up and she was angry. She did a sweet swinging maneuver on the rope and tried to jump on Nin’s throne, but.. she fell. She fell right on Bidam, and the grate gave way! They plunged into the slime river beneath the grate.

Bidam activated his armor so that he would take no damage and did his best to keep Bovina out of the slime.

Theran was quick to find a solution. He levitated Bidam. Bovina was on him, and floated up with him.

The group accosted Nin. The army came in. The pit fiend said it was time to demote Nin. The pit fiend has the power to turn devils into different types of devils. He thought a spined devil would do.
George asked me if he could keep Nin’s flying throne. Sure! I gave him a griffon lat session, they’re 13th level, it’s time to fly around, right? That seems really cool, a wizard on a flying throne.

The army marched through the portal. Drokkarn, the pit fiend general, had a map. It said that they would emerge near the “city of Licus”. Once they got there, they realized that was a typo or bad handwriting. They emerged next to the city of liches!

Yes, in Thanatos, there is a city full of liches. That’s where we stopped!

Very good session! I was very happy that it felt like an “adventure”. It’s cool to do stuff other than combat, but it is hard to pull off without being boring or flat. We did well!

Next time, I think we’ll do a little with the liches and then I want to do a blood war naval battle and use some demonic chaos ships.

OK! Emirikol's Guide to Devils is done! It's out! I can relax. It's doing great and so far, people seem to like it. The whole thing has been really fun and since I put it up for sale, I have felt fantastic.

So I'm done with devils, right? Nope! There's some stuff I haven't been able to get to and I still want to check out. I want to read the rest of the Brimstone Angels series. Apparently there is a lot material in there, especially about Asmodeus, that I really need to know.

I want to read Elminster in Hell. Ed Greenwood is the guy who basically invented D&D Hell, and I am sure there's plenty of stuff to mine from it.

My thinking is that way down the road, I'll do Emirikol's Guide to Demons and Emirikol's Guide to the Blood War. I figure I can put the new stuff I learn about devils in the Blood War book, or I'll just update the devil book.


I've also wanted to look at the Pathfinder version of Hell. They just came out with this monster book, Pathfinder Bestiary 6. In it are their archdevils. I decided I should buy it and check it out.

First off: Paizo doesn't take paypal. That boggles my mind!

Second: The hardcover book is $45.00. How much is the pdf? $10! How crazy is that? That's a great deal. This is a gigantic book!

We'll go over the archdevils, and then I'll talk about some of the other cool stuff in there.

The first observation I have is that Pathfinder art is so great. It has a "badass" quality that D&D art lacks. That might be something that appeals to guys more than anyone else. I'm not saying all D&D art needs to be badass, but throw me a bone once in a while. The art in this book kicks the crap out of D&D, in my opinion.

The biggest problem I see with this book is that there's just too many monsters that are similar to each other. There's a pile of monsters that are half-snake and there's a million bug-monsters, which I've never really been a fan of. And there’s fish. Lots and lots of fish.

They do a cool job of coming with creative monsters, but it feels like they’ve really explored everything. I mean.. starfish monsters, blobs and tumors, all the bases have been covered.

Pathfinder's Hell: The Pathfinder Hell has 8 layers. They are "vast planes of torment." Each archdevil fits in the cosmic chain of corruption and oppression. Each layer of Hell has thousands of smaller subdomains, each being as big as a city or continent (!).

Asmodeus claimed Hell as his realm, and guided the other archdevils to power. He actually created Belial and Mephistopheles. Others pledged their allegiance to Asmodeus during heavenly rebellions.
He has also granted archdevildom to creatures of other races (that’s Barbatos and Geryon).

Baalzebul, Hell's Angel
He was an angel sidekick of Asmodeus who got too big for his britches. Asmodeus transformed him into a living swarm of insects. He craves vengeance and has a big ego.

• When flying creatures attack him, they need to make a saving throw or the attack fails and the attacker is so awed by Baalzebul's majesty that they cannot look at him directly for d4 rounds. 
• He can send some of his swarm of flies into your mouth.. yeargh... to suffocate you.

Barbatos

This is interesting! In D&D, the first layer of Hell is ruled by Zariel. In Pathfinder, it is ruled by a creature called Barbatos.

• Barbatos is not a devil. Nobody knows what he is! He is the "doorwarden of Hell", guarding it from angelic invasions. Barbatos wears a cloak and has a weird, filthy beard.
• Eyjatas: His magic quarterstaff is embedded with many eyeballs. Barbatos can use this staff to rip out people's eyeballs!
• Once per day he can project his consciousness into a statue and talk to people or spy on them.

Belial, The Pale Kiss

D&D Belial is pretty boring. There's not much going on with him. Pathfinder Belial constantly changes shape, making him immune to polymorph, blindness, and critical hits.

• He can make himself incredibly beautiful, causing creatures within 30 feet to run up and try to kiss him. His kiss does damage.
• Only Asmodeus knows what Belial looks like in his true form.
• His default form is one half shining angel, and the other half scarred devil.
• The artistic depiction of him is extremely cool. I like this Belial better than the D&D version. 

Thinking about it... I think D&D Belial should die. Fierna rules his realm and he's not really doing much. The whole incest angle feels like it probably shouldn’t part of 5e.

Dispater

He is a calm ruler who is big on etiquette and decorum.

• The Eclipsing Eye: A magic mace that blinds those that it hits. It is an item given to whomever rules the greatest city of Hell.
• Caustic Wit: He is a master of insults and "flippant dismissals." His insults actually put status effects on people.

Geryon, The Source of Blasphemies

Geryon was an "asura rana" who betrayed his kind to team up with Asmodeus.

• Geryon is a "knot of three 20-foot-long, scaled worms."
• Geryon can speak with the voices of anyone it has devoured.
• Horn of Lies: It's a horn of blasting that messes with your head.

I don’t like the "3 creatures" aspect of Geryon. It doesn’t seem to add much of anything. It just feels weird and pointless. I think they could do cool stuff with it, but they haven’t.

Mammon, Vault Keeper of Hell

Mammon was an angel who died, but refused to move on. His spirit fused with his obscene wealth, and now he is a being made of treasure. His true form is a spirit that can possess objects. His main metallic body reflects light and magic.

A bad guy who inhabits magic items, you could do a lot of cool things with that. Imagine if he merged with a sphere of annihilation!

Mephistopheles 
Asmodeus created Mephistopheles from the ashes and hellfire of Hell itself.

• He is a master of infernal contracts and warden of the prison plane of "Caina" (the D&D version is called "Cania," currently).
• Visinier: He has an adamantine quill pen named Visinier that can create magical marks, magic circles and it can pen infernal contracts. Visinier can store blood from any creature it strikes, which Mephistopheles can use to summon that creature (!). What a great item.
• He can detect lies. Anyone who tries to lie to him must make a saving throw. Fail means you can't speak for 24 hours!

I like this Mephistopheles better. There is shockingly little info on the D&D Mephistopheles and his realm. I think there's more details here on this one page.

Moloch, General of Hell

This guy is nothing like the D&D version.

• He is 24 feet tall and is made of flames and metal. He is a great leader and tactician. He wields two artifacts.
• Goreletch: His vorpal battle axe.
• Ramithaine: His longsword of wounding.
• When Moloch kills a foe with hellfire, they are reduced to ash and they can only be brought back to life via a wish or divine intervention.
• Here's the greatest power of all time: Once per day, Moloch can cause a towering fortress to erupt from the ground at a point within 30 feet. It is up to 90 feet tall and sized for a huge inhabitant. Once created, it is permanent until Moloch uses this ability again. That is so awesome.
• Moloch can swallow people! They fall into his body and burn. The victim must make a save or they can do nothing but shriek in pain and be on fire.

So much good stuff! I am going to rip this off for my campaign, big time.

No Asmodeus in this book! Not sure why.

Here’s some other monsters that I think are cool. Or useful for my campaign, at least.

Charnel God



When a god/demon lord/whatever dies, sometimes fragments of their power scatter into the planes. These fragments are sometimes drawn to places where the creature was worshiped. Sometimes the fragments inhabit a statue of the god and becomes a living thing - a charnel god!

• They don't remember much of their existence and remembering their former lives causes them pain.
• They detest anyone who worshiped them. The charnel god blames the followers for letting it die.
• The charnel gods still long to be worshiped.
• It gains two spells that it used to grant.
• It has the power to cut off the connection that clerics and paladins have to their deities! Meaning.. no spells.

I can use this, too! Orcus is dead in my game and an Orcus charnel god sounds really cool.

Lilitu

The D&D lilitu is kind of lame. The 3e version is pretty goofy-looking. The 4e version is downright weird. Owl heads?! Snake parts?!

When I made the 5e lilitu, I tried to just take the basics and create a calm, elite succubus with four tails and a burning hatred for good religions. That's pretty much the basic idea of a lilitu.

• The Pathfinder version.. first of all, they look cool. They are demons that convince mortals to sin of their own free will.
• Her true form is that of a beautiful human woman with no eyes, horn, and a snake tail.
• They serve specific demon lords and tend to take on traits of that demon lord.
• Lilitu can turn those they slay into a husk - a corpse.
• She can create a bond with these husks and she can magically transform herself to look like the husk looked in life. When she takes damage that would kill her, she doesn't die. The husk is destroyed instead.
• She can grant wishes! But the person who makes the wish must make a saving throw or they become chaotic evil.

OK.. those are awesome. Great ideas!

Yaenit

These guys are important to me and my campaign, because they serve Lamashtu, the main villain of my game.

• They are CR 6 demons. They look like gnolls with sickly flesh. Their duty is to protect Lamashtu's priestesses and their unholy spawn.
• In life they were evil mortals, bullies who were exceptionally cruel.
• When they get a critical hit with their bite attack, you must make a save or have your speed reduced by 10 feet until you are magically healed.
• Hallucinatory Aura: When you get within 20 feet of a yaenit, you must make a saving throw or take penalties to all sorts of things. It doesn't say what the hallucinations are of.
• They can see invisible creatures. They can cast darkness and teleport at will.
• 3 times per day they can cast hold person and vampiric touch.

Pretty cool! I'll have to come up with some hallucinations. Lamashtu is the demon lord who gives birth to monsters, so you could do all sort of weird hallucinations based on that.

Infernal Dragon
These dragons like to have entourages of mortals who debase themselves in exchange for influence. Not a lot of details on them at all.

• Damnation Flames: Those slain by its breath weapon are condemned to Hell!
• Once per day, it can summon a contract devil.
• It can cast fire storm and meteor swarm once per day.

I like what's there and I love the art. I wish there was more detail on its role and stuff like that.

Szuriel, Horseman of War

In D&D, there's devils (lawful evil), demons (chaotic evil), and yugoloths (neutral evil). In earlier editions, yugoloths were known as "daemons." That daemon name was confusing, so they changed it.

In pathfinder, they're still called daemons. They are ruled over by... the four horseman of the apocalypse. Weird, right?

One of these four horseman is a woman who very much resembles D&D's what little we know of D&D’s Zariel. I think we are getting a nice optional version of Zariel here that we can plop into our campaigns if we want to.

• She has blond hair and black eyes that weep blood.
• Lamentation of the Faithless: This is her greatsword, a corrupted blade of "an ancient and forgotten empyreal lord." It has a black blade, and each time it hits an enemy, it heals the wielder a bit. Szuriel can hold up the sword to blind all within 60 feet and instill them with crushing despair.
• She was once a paladin who sinned and left her faith. She became an empress who slaughtered members of her former religion.
• Now as a ruler of the daemons, she mocks angels.
• Her armies are strictly organized, often hired on as mercenaries.
• Her touch contains the essence of fire.
• When she teleports somewhere, it creates a "pyroclastic detonation,” a wave of flame in a 30 foot radius that does 20d6 damage!

There you go! Awesome book, totally worth $10! There’s so many monsters in here that you can use however you like.

Episode 48: The Hero Conundrum

• Watch this episode on Youtube here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

There are some great pictures of the waffle crew in their gear right here. This is my favorite:


The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Sam Sykes) Kozin Xorlarrin - Drow Fighter

Last time, the group met Kozin, a drow with a tattoo of a spider on his face. The heroes fought fire giants and escaped Ironslag.

Kozin wants them to go back down into Ironslag to stop the giants from putting together and activating the vonindod, a massive colossus that will go on a rampage and kill many, many people.

The giants have a flask with Maegara, a primordial, in it. They are going to use it to finish crafting the vonindod.

The group are in some caves, having climbed up in here via a chimney in Ironslag.

The crew asks Jasper, the dwarf, how he got captured by the giants. Jasper says that he and his team of dwarves ran into some giants digging up a relic when they were ambushed by yakfolk and dragged back to Ironslag to serve as slaves.

Jasper says it might be suicidal to go back down into Ironslag.

Kozin points out that drow don't like anyone. Evelyn: "Do you like me?" Kozin winks.

The group spends a lot of time debating what to do next. They need a rest, but they also need to steal Maegara back and time is of the essence.

They consider making a distraction to draw the giants out of Ironslag. As that happens, Diath can sneak in alone and steal the iron flask/Maegara.

Splitting the party! Alarming.

The group had blocked the chimney with boulders. Evelyn hears someone in there - sounds like it is one of the drow. She hears the drow swear when it realizes the exit is blocked. Evelyn is a bit offended by the drow’s potty mouth.

The group decides to remove the rocks and attack the person in the chimney. They open it. Nothing in there. Evelyn throws a boulder down the shaft.

Heyyy Kozin has faerie fire, which will reveal invisible creatures. He casts it. No invisible people. It looks like the drow climber got away.

After more deliberating, the group decides to go with the distraction plan. Evelyn makes up a theme song for the Distraction Force.

The group explores the caves and they find the exit. They want to call on Harshnag's bird. The players are trolling Sam, as they know he shot the bird last session.

Kozin tries to stammer out an excuse. The group gets suspicious of him and Kozin says he's afraid of birds, which the group finds amusing.

Paultin summons Leomund's tiny hut aka the Waffle Hut. It’s resting time!

Diath goes through the burned yakfolk village looking for loot. He runs into the dao, who is wearing the armor of invulnerability. His true name is Kuharik.

Diath makes an insight check and realizes that this dao is evil and not trustworthy. Diath plays it cool and for now, the dao is an ally of the crew.

The heroes quietly talk about the dao while he guards the hut. Diath says they can't let him get the golem. Kozin has a great point: Maegara can melt the golem.

Paultin mentions that the golem was a gift from the Bronzefire clan to cement an alliance with the giants. So that means there’s traitors in Citadel Adbar.

The group takes a long rest.

Fully refreshed, Evelyn, Strix, Paultin and the dao are going to go to the front door and draw out the giants Diath and Kozin will sneak in and get Maegara.

The group convinces the dao to loan Evelyn the armor of invulnerability.

They give Waffles the baby owlbear to Jasper, who is going back to Citadel Adbar.

The group has Jasper cast a divination spell. They learn that Maegara is not in the flask, it's in the forge. The drow have the empty flask and they are apparently nearby.

Kozin knows the command word to activate the flask. He shares it with Diath.

The group realizes that the drow will exit through the caves just like they did. They're going to set up an ambush.

The drow come out and the group gets surprise! Diath does 25 points with a sneak attack. Evelyn ignites her new magic weapon, the Heart of Spinelli, and tears into them.

Strix drop a fireball on the drow that does piles of damage. The drow are still up, but hurt badly.

One drow tries to use the iron flask to suck the dao in. She holds up the flask, utters the command word, and Kuharik makes his save. The drow surrender. That’s where we stop!

Overall

Too much planning on this one for me! It wasn’t bad, but I am ready to move on from Ironslag.

Today we’re going to make ourselves a resource. I’ve collected all of the information I could find on Juiblex, the demon lord of slimes and oozes.

There’s a lot more information on the realm that Juiblex rules rather than Juiblex himself. It seems like nobody is sure what to do with him.

AD&D Monster Manual

Juiblex has got himself some weird art, here. He is known as the Faceless Lord, "the most disgusting and loathsome of all demons." Adventurers can take damage from "the caustic properties of his noisome excretions."

• He can fly! That must look strange. Maybe he turns into a sphere?
• Once every 10 rounds, he can spew forth a slime that is a combination of an ochre jelly and a green slime.
• He can spread himself into a pool of slime or become an 18-foot-tall "column of disgusting ordure."

Monster Manual 2

It says here that on Juiblex's plane there are slimes, deadly puddings, jellies, and various amoeboid monsters.

Throne of Bloodstone

This adventure is nuts. Tons of info on the Abyss!

The Realm of Juiblex: "The nauseating tench of decaying matter greets you…" This place is filled with fungus and rot. It is sometimes known as the Amoebic Sea.

• Every 30 minutes, characters need to make a save or suffer the effects of a stinking cloud spell.
• The layer putrifies all non-magical food. Water is turned into gelatinous cube material (!).  Food becomes black pudding. When that happens, they eat through your stuff and attack you!
• Stepping into the swam causes you to duffer the effects of: Green slime, yellow mold, ochre jelly and black pudding.
• If you fly over the swamp, it spews great columns of muck at you.

There’s some creatures here:

• Giant Obliviax: It drains your memories from the last 24 hours and memorized spells.
• Giant Gelatinous Cube: It's 100 feet to a side!
• Green Slime Colony: Lots and lots of green slimes.

The Palace of Juiblex: The largest heap of decaying garbage in all the planes. It is guarded by an assortment of demons who fight each other. If the group gets inside, Juiblex attacks them.

It actually lists the treasure in Juiblex’s Palace. It includes an alchemy jug, pipes of the sewers and a talisman of ultimate evil.

They changed Juiblex’s stats. In the Monster Manual, he had 88 hit points. Now he has 176.

Monster Mythology


Juiblex is described here as a lesser god. He spreads disease and is beyond mortal comprehension.

Some aboleths revere him, because Juiblex is slowly revealing lost magical secrets to them and the aboleths believe that he keeps their skin moist.

Dead Gods

There’s a mention of quintuplet tieflings who tried to use a building (known as "The Rotting Oracle") to channel information from Juiblex. The building sunk halfway in the mud and the tieflings disappeared.

Faces of Evil: The Fiends

The alkiliths are thought to be the creation of Juiblex.

The Inner Planes

There is a portal to the Para-Elemental Plane of Ooze in Shedaklah. The portal is a gelatinous orb 30 feet across. If you press a platinum disc to it, the portal activates. Weirdly, the person who activates it can't go through.

Juiblex has made an alliance with Bwimb II, the princess of Para-Elemental Ooze.

Planes of Chaos

Shedaklah, the 222nd layer of the Abyss. The Slime Pits:

• Vast expanses of caustic and unintelligent slime.
• Strange organic forms rise from the ocean of molds at Juiblex's whim.
• Juiblex shares the realm with Zuggtmoy, demon queen of fungi.
• According to this, Zuggtmoy is still trapped in the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Dragon Magazine #337

The caverns under Shedaklah are a perpetual battleground of oozes and fungi.

Dragon Magazine #358

You can sail the River Styx between the Slime Pits and the area of Shedaklah that Zuggtmoy rules. On the shore by the Slime Pits, the river jellifies with acidic and predatory slime.

Planar Handbook

Juiblex's Grasp: There is one area of the Slime Pits that is a shallow bay of slime that covers a forest of mushrooms. The flow of slime can create riptides and undertows

Book of Vile Darkness 3e


We learn all sorts of stuff about Juiblex:

• Other demons refer to him as the "Lord of Nothing."
• He does not scheme, he is content to simply exist. He hates everything and revels in destruction.
• There are a lot of hezrous that serve him. They bring victims to Juiblex to feed on.
• Juiblex often takes the form of a 9-foot-tall cone of jelly and slime.
• He is nothing more than a seething pool of animate ooze.
• He has pulsing red eyes that look in all directions.
• If possible, he starts a combat invisible and engulfs a number of foes at once.
• His touch does 50 acid damage to wood and metal per round.
• He can exude a circle of cold, all within 10 feet take 6d6 cold damage per round.
• Once per round he can spew forth a patch of green slime.
• If engulfed, you can actually drown inside of Juiblex.

Follower: We get details on Duvamil, a gnome that worships Juiblex:

• She can spit caustic goo, exudes acidic slime from her hand, and she secretes a smelly ooze from her pores.
• Once per day she can summon a demon.
• She can also summon a patch of green slime, a gray ooze, an ochre jelly or a gelatinous cube.

Darkness Given Hunger: The largest black pudding known to exist, this hezrou fused with a black pudding has become the main servant of Juiblex. It patrols the Slime Pits.

Fiendish Codex I


Some tidbits: 

• Juiblex is the lord of oozes and shapeless things.
• Most weapons can barely harm him. He is immune to bludgeoning damage.
• He can spew green slime at foes and summon both oozes and demons to aid him in battle.
• He is at war with Zuggtmoy.

Tons of info on Shedaklah:

• It has an overcast sky of mud-brown dotted with rotten green clouds. It rains polluted water and everything in the realm is covered in a thin slimy film.
• It says that while Zuggtmoy was trapped in the Temple of Elemental Evil, Juiblex spread throughout her layer. Now she is back and she is trying to drive him and his minions underground.
• Shedaklah is actually infused with life-giving positive energy. All living creatures gain enhanced healing abilities... "fast healing 2" in 3e terms. Maybe in 5e you can spend healing surges as an action, no rest required?

The Forest of Poisoned Dreams: This forest has tree-sized toadstools and its fungal blooms contain phantasmagoric psychotropic plants of legendary potency. When you take those psychotropics, you must make a saving throw or die.

The Ichordeep Entity: A lowly expanding strain of colonial algae that can use giant pseudopods to pull flying creatures down from the sky. Zuggtmoy may have no control over this thing.

The Slime Pits of Juiblex: Five bubbling slime-filled chasms that "erupt onto the surface of Shedaklah like pus from a broken scab."

Xhubhullosk: A mortal settlement! An assortment of lean-tos and rotting stalk structures. It is home to 400 people who became stranded on this layer somehow. Myconid servants of Zuggtmoy guard them and try to convert them into worshipers of Zuggtmoy.

Zuggtmoy's Palace: Her stinking palace is made from the largest fungi in the multiverse. It's four miles high!

Aspect of Juiblex: When he has to make an alliance with another demon prince, he sends an aspect along with a succubus for negotiations. They're guarded by two vrocks and two black puddings.

There are two new spells:

• Oozepuppet: You can telekinetically take control of an ooze.
• Slime Wave: You create a wave of green slime that more or less summons about 6 green slimes. Once the wave hits you, the slimes need to be removed from your body in one round, or else you'll need to burn or freeze them off.

Monster Manual 5

We atually get some major storyline developments.

Zuggtmoy created adamantine plinths and triggered a ritual meant to banish Juiblex to a different plane but it didn't work right. A portion of Juiblex's polluted form was sent to the Elemental Plane of Water.

This polluted a section of the Plane of Water and created the spawn of Juiblex there. Those creatures eventually were banished themselves by denizens of the plane to a demiplane of filth. This demiplane is a forest with ground of pulsating slime and streams and ponds of reeking watery goo. There's a green sun and great clouds of insects in the air.

The Hermit: At the center of the demiplane of filth is a monolith that has a hut on it. That is the home of The Hermit. The Hermit was made from a single shard of Juiblex's essence and he knows a lot about the multiverse. He's an avatar of Juiblex.

When he talks, green slime leaks out of his mouth and devours his body, but he is reborn somehow.

Dungeon Magazine #132 - Caverns of the Ooze Lord


This issue has an an adventure called Caverns of the Ooze Lord We get some details on what a shrine to Juiblex is like.

There is an old cleric named Morbion who lives in the woods and is obsessed with slimes and oozes. He explored the "Sickstone Caves" where he found an olive slime, which turns those who touch it into olive slime. He's been infecting villagers with olive slime, which slowly turns them into slimes.

Olive Slime: An immobile ooze that attacks with tendrils that cause paralysis. It grows in the flesh of those it touches.

• It is immune to nonmagic weapons, lightning, poison, and most forms of magic.
• Olive slime and green slime neutralize each other when they come into contact.
• Secret Shrine: There's a secret shrine to Juiblex under a temple in a town. It has a long stone block fitted with chains and manacles. The cultists burn incense that gives others penalties to rolls. They have a silver urn with an olive slime in it.

The cultists get a victim, stick them on the altar and pour the olive slime in its mouth. Once the victim is infected, the slime exits the body and goes back in the urn.

Second Shrine to Juiblex: The walls glow with silver green radiance. The floor is a mire of ooze and slime. The walls weep a dark green liquid that runs down in rivulets.

The altar is made of glowing green stone. Four black candles burn with lurid green flames.

Dungeon 181: Demonomicon of Iggwilv - Juiblex

Finally! A detailed article.

Titles: He Who Slithers, the Unnameable One, Glistener, Indescribable Darkness, and the Slick of Foulest Humors.

Dagon and Pazuzu think that Juiblex was an obyrith that Tharizdun shattered, but this is not true. Juiblex was an infection in a wound of the Elemental Chaos, a mass of gel stirred into awareness when Tharizdun lodged the seed of evil into the Abyss.

Juiblex witnessed the formation of the Abyss and the battle between Tharizdun and the obyriths. Juiblex knows the true name of each obyrith! Wow, that would include Pazuzu and Obox-Ob.

Juiblex has slimes everywhere, in every realm. He ha so many of them that he cannot command them all. He is slowly accruing power and once he has enough, "the cosmos is doomed to drown in his putrescence."

Juiblex has the ability to possess oozes and transform them into an aspect of Juiblex.

Shedaklah Notes: The pits contain lakes of slime. The oldest of these lakes is called Suppurus. It is 100 miles across.

Juiblex has a sort of throne room. There is a cracked stone pedestal that he perches on. It’s pretty shabby.

Denizens of Shedaklah include hezrous and pod demons.

All of his humanoid servants are touched with disease in some way.

Ooze Scion: A minion. When it is hit, roll a d20. on an 11 or higher, it takes no damage and a new ooze scion appears next to it.

We get stats for Darkness Given Hunger. It is the mightiest ooze next to Juiblex. When it is dropped to 0 hit points, the ooze is destroyed and the hezrou inside of it stands up and attacks!

Demonomicon

Spawn of Juiblex

When these slimes die, they are reabsorbed by Juiblex and are born again. They are living extensions of Juiblex. Aboleths and otyughs are drawn to them.

• Ooze Horror: It has a thousand eyes and it can fire acid globules and cause fear-based psychic damage.
• Plague Hurler: It call forth a rain of effluvia that will blind you. This thing can actually take the form of a humanoid that it has seen. It can shoot virulent pustules as a ranged attack, infecting you with:
• Slime Lord's Rot: As it gets worse, your movement is lessened. Eventually, you die and become a sludge dredge. 
• Sludge Dredge: This is a one hit point minion. When it dies, a dead sludge dredge within 30 feet is restored to life.  That's pretty crazy.

The Plane Below

Wow. There's a whole thing in here. Juiblex has apparently acquired another layer of the Abyss.

Molor, the Stinking Realm: Juiblex is the opposite of Erathis, god of civilization. Juiblex is on the losing end of the struggle with Zuggtmoy.

Thullgrime: A town in the twisted tunnels. It is home to cultist explorers, wererats and "disease-riddled consumptives." In some places, the ground is alive and drags creatures below. Eventually, their bones bubble up to the surface.

The place is ruled by Cullis Heartrend, who is served by a creature known a the Grollog, a huge amorphous beast with dripping pits for eyes. It is somewhat intelligent and can communicate in broken Abyssal and Common. Nobody knows why it serves Cullis.

Dripping Tunnels: Filth of all sorts flows here - stinking waste, diseased refuse, rotting food...

Juiblex's Shrine: Worshipers come here to pay homage. The shrine is said to hold uncounted riches beneath it. Followers have been tossing offerings into the slime for centuries.

The Maw of Eternity: A cavern with a 15-foot-wide hole in its center that is said to be a bottomless pit. When you jump in, you fall for ten minutes and pass through an unpredictable portal that sends you to a random layer of the Abyss. Sometimes it sends creatures beyond the planes entirely.

Molor is linked to Shedaklah through a number of portals.

Out of the Abyss

This 5e adventure has got a lot of Juiblex stuff in it.

The Oozing Temple: This place is a forgotten temple that is home to servants of Juiblex. There is an intelligent gelatinous cube here name Glabbagool and it can speak via telepathy. Juiblex's arrival in the Underdark has granted it sentience. It might join the group as an NPC sidekick.

The Pudding King: A deep gnome who lived among oozes. He named some of them. Princess Ebonmire is a black pudding and Prince Livid is a gray ooze.

When Juiblex arrived in the Underdark, he threw himself down and pledged loyalty. Juiblex gave him the power to command and summon oozes. He summons oozes to The Pudding Court and prepares to overtake the settlement of Blingdenstone.

The Fetid Wedding: In this chapter, Zuggtmoy is going to merge with this thing called Araumycos and become very powerful. Juiblex and the heroes can stop her.

Spies: Juiblex has two black pudding spies, which is weird.

Juiblex Stat Notes:

• Those consumed by Juiblex are obliterated.
• Seeing him might cause you to go mad. Effects include the need to consume everything, and refusing to part with any possessions.
• Juiblex can eject a corrosive slime that does 55 damage! It can pull you into its body. You are obliterated within one minute.

Links

A very handy rundown of Juiblex's history in D&D. 

I know a lot of you are newer players or people returning to the game after many years, so I feel like this might be helpful for some of you.

For some of you newer people learning the rules, I think you might be interested in these action cards (cards with no crop marks here). On top of that, this company is giving away 5e Player Handbooks, one per week. This is all in preparation for their kickstarter for color-coded dice. I am very amused at the idea of having an orange set of 8d6 specifically for fireballs.

So! Today I’m going to take a stab at explaining how you can convert older adventures to 5th edition D&D rules.

Here’s the super-short version:

• Scale the encounters when necessary.
• Re-skin the monsters (Take the numbers from a 5e creature appropriate to your group’s level, and apply that to the old monster’s stats).
• Use the DC and damage guidelines in the DMG on pages 238 and 249.
• Remember that old adventures are way overloaded with treasure and might be a bit much for 5e.

Good Adventures: There are all of these old adventures out there that are really great. I made a list of my favorites a while back.

If you're newer to the game and you see a cool adventure that uses a different version of the D&D rules, you might back off, thinking that converting it is too much work.

It's not! It's worth it! There are a lot of cool old adventures that virtually nobody has played. Converting can take a while, but it doesn’t have to. If you’re a stickler and you want to get every little detail right, it will take forever. But that’s not necessary at all. You can slap stuff together and run it just fine.

Guidelines: There are two very important pages are in the DMG:

• DC guidelines on page 238.
• Damage guidelines on page 249.

Online Tools: Nobody can remember every spell and item in existence. When you need to know 5e stuff, you can ctrl-f and search these lists real quick:

• Magic Items
• Spells
• Monsters

Monsters: A lot of times, when you are converting a monster from an older edition, that monster won’t exist in 5e. In those cases, here’s what I do:

• Google the Monster: The stats for almost any monster from 1e-3e is online. Check out its powers and description.
• 5e Stats: Find a similar 5e monster that is a suitable challenge for your group
• Re-Skin: Apply the 5e monster's numbers (AC, plus to hit, damage expression, save DC) to your monster. Boom. 

Tons of Treasure: In older editions, magic items are handed out by the truckload in published adventures. In 4e, magic items are expected. You have to have them!

In 5e, magic items are rarer. Adventuring groups have less of them and, at least in my games, a +2 item is ridiculously rare. I don't think I've ever given one out! In older editions, +2,+3, no big deal. +5 is usually the big time in the olden days.

I'm going to go through each edition, list some adventures and show how to convert stuff from that edition.

AD&D 1st Edition – Temple of Elemental Evil

Certain 1st edition adventures such as Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain that are reprinted in almost every edition, just like in 5e's Tales From the Yawning Portal.

Low AC: A low armor class is good in 1st edition. Once you get in the negatives, it's very good. AC -2 is fantastic. That’s +4 plate mail you’re wearing, there.

No Balance: The big thing to know as a DM is that most of the time, there's no encounter balance in 1e and 2e adventures! There is no math, they just threw whatever they felt like at you.

So when you're converting 1e adventures, keep that in mind. If there's a room with 20 orcs and your group is 3rd level, you have a choice: Leave it as-is or balance it. I think that kind of depends on your style and the temperament of your players.

Maintaining the Balance: If you want to balance it, go to kobold fight club and enter in your stuff. A medium challenge for four 3rd level characters would be three orcs. So you just change that room to 3 orcs instead of 20.

I converted and ran the Temple of Elemental Evil a few years ago. You might want to check out the computer game. It is buggy, but you will probably end up really excited about running this adventure. I did, anyway.

Modify It: Do not feel weird about changing things or removing sections of the dungeon that seem boring to you. Every DM does it in every edition. In the case of this adventure, this dungeon is very uneven and some of it might be a drag to play through.

Chamber of Statues (page 78, Room 311)

I picked this room because I like it a lot, and it has a lot of examples of the choices you will have to make when converting. The above image doesn't include the whole room. There's all these statues in here, too.

Scaling the Wisps: The lights are four will-o'-wisps. The 5e version of them is on MM page 301. The wisps attack the group as they look at the statues. If the group consists of four heroes that are 5th level, then 4 will-o'-wisps is a hard encounter. You could drop it to 3 wisps to make it a medium encounter.

If two wisps are slain, the others flee, which makes the encounter a bit easier. But it's a tricky choice. I'd go with less wisps, because the fun of this room has nothing to do with them. This room is all about experimenting with the statues.

Beholder Statue: It is protected by a fire trap and it has a scroll of protection from magic.

So.. I don’t see a 5e fire trap. Let's google fire trap from an older edition. It's right here.

Basically, you touch the fire-trapped thing and there's a fiery explosion. For damage and DCs, you can use the guidelines on DMG pages 238 and 249. I usually stick with DCs that are between 10-15, because even high-level characters have a hard time making those rolls.

I'd go with a DC 13 Dexterity save and 2d10 fire damage. Success = half damage. If the group is 5th level here, we're right on the border of 'setback' and 'dangerous' on page 249. I might split the difference and go with 3d10 fire damage.

I think I would have it hit everyone within 5 feet of the object. That’s always tricky because you need to know who is close without tipping the players off that it matters where they’re standing.

I'd replace protection from magic (doesn't exist in 5e) with protection from energy, PH page 270.

Dragon Statue: The box that the dragon statue is admiring has invisible runes on it. They reveal four command words:

1. Shrinks the box to 1/12th normal size.
2. Causes it to function as a Leomund's secret chest spell.
3. Causes the box to go back to full size.
4. Makes the box four times as large! It weighs 1,200 pounds.

Invisible Runes: Invisible runes! How do we decide if they're detected? Who scans every item for invisible text on it?

I would do it like a 5e glyph of warding, where the words are nearly invisible and require a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check to find. So, if the group is smart and cautious, they'll check it for traps.

No DC: In cases like these, I just let the group find it if they say they are looking. I don't like it when the group has the foresight to search something and then don't find anything because of a die roll. If they were clever enough to check, I'd give it to them.

Leomund's secret chest is on PH page 254.

Weaponized Box: One pitfall here. Your players will definitely try to drop the box from a height onto a bad guy and speak the command word so that the 1,200 pound box comes crashing down on them.

That's fun and hilarious once, but it could march into cheesy territory real easily. You might want to say that it takes the box d6 rounds to fully expand and that it makes a stretching, creaking noise when it does so.

Or! The group drops it and expands it. It falls, hits the target and cracks. It doesn’t break, but it is clear if they do it again, the box will fall apart and be useless.

Fire Giant: Has a +2 spear, cursed backbiter.

This item is in Tales from the Yawning Portal, page 229. Let’s assume you don’t have that book. We google it.

Magic Curse: The deal here is that when you roll a natural 1, it damages the wielder. Usually with these kind of items, the wielder will be affected by it magically and won't want to get rid of it. Remove curse will need to be cast to separate the wielder from the item.

In this case, I think it would be funny to say that it is just a faulty spear. The character gets hit with it one time, and they can either throw it in the garbage or maybe use it in a clever way, convincing an enemy to wield it so that they end up killing themselves with it, which would be really funny.

Manticore: It has a crossbow of speed, but the crossbow's string is missing. It says that "enchant weapon" is needed to fix it. Furthermore, the bow's new string will break whenever the wielder rolls a natural 20 to hit.

There's no crossbow of speed in 5e, but there is a scimitar of speed (DMG page 199). It's +2 and it lets you make one more attack with it as a bonus action on each of your turns. That's easy to apply to this, right?

Fixing the String: Enchant weapon isn't in 5e. It seems like the cantrip "mending" (PH page 259) would fix this just fine.

Medusa: Oh boy. Cloak of poisonousness. When you put it on.. you die. No saving throw.

That's brutal! I don't like stuff like this. If you are going to use this item, I think you should warn your players when you start this adventure that there is save or die effects in it. They'll be more cautious and they deserve a heads up, and it might save you some headaches if/when they die from it.

If I was going to use this item, I would make the DC low. DC 10. I'd probably also describe it in an ominous tone, and say that it slithers anxiously like a snake, eager for you to wear it.

Changing It: I think I would change this completely. I'd probably alter it to an effect where the hero is cursed and very slowly turning to stone. Each day, they lose a bit of speed and maybe gain 1 point of AC. They'll be petrified within a week, giving them ample time to remove it if they want.

I'd also love the idea of the character becoming more medusa-like. They start to grow snake hair, and their gaze sometimes turns things to stone, but they can't control it. Eventually they'd start to lose control and they'd need a remove curse before they became an NPC monster.

Players love this kind of thing, and frequently they'll request to keep the effect in some way. They might just like the snake hair. I usually let them keep it, because it's fun. I did this thing in a Blackmoor campaign where some of the heroes turned into slaads in times of stress as if they were the Hulk. They loved it so much, I just let them keep it.

Don’t Worry About It: As long as it doesn't unbalance the game, stuff like this can help get the players more into their character. That character is now utterly unique, and they are rewarded for interacting with the world.

Mummy: The staff has a glyph of warding (blindness) on it. The bottle contains strong acid that can be thrown like a grenade.

Glyph of Warding is on PH page 245, blindness/deafness is on PH page 219. That's a Con save. The blindness spell only lasts a minute, which feels a bit useless. Then again, being blind in a dungeon for a long time sucks.

Timing: I think what I'd do is have the wisps play it cool and wait for someone to be blinded, and then attack. That way the blindness matters without it being too harsh.

Lords of Acid: The acid grenade. I googled a 5e vial of acid. It does 2d6 acid. Since this bottle has "strong acid" let's double the damage! 4d6 acid right in the face!

Ogre Mage: The necklace has a stone that can be thrown to create an Otiluke's freezing sphere.

Otiluke's resilient sphere is on PH page 263. 60 foot radius, 10d6 damage! That's a cool one-shot item for the group to use in times of peril.

Rakshasa: A ring of delusion which performs as a ring of x-ray vision for one turn before becoming false and useless. Ring of x-ray vision is on DMG page 193.

There is no 5e version of a ring of delusion that I know of. I googled it. The user believes the item is what it appears to be and can't be convinced otherwise without a remove curse.

Cursed Items are Weird: I don't like cursed items because it's too much of a middle finger to the group. Also, how exactly did the bad guy get these things without getting cursed? The bad guy collects them? Does the bad guy expect that many intruders??

Altering It: You can have fun with this, though. You could say that the x-ray vision works half the time, and the other half it shows something really weird. So then, if there is a room where there is actually something bizarre going on, the group will have no idea if the ring is messing with them or not.

Also, you could do it in a way where the ring likes the character and deceives them to keep them safe. That might lead to all sorts of fun things.

Wight: The urn is worth 20,000 gold!!! Inside it is dust of sneezing and choking, which "spills out of the vessel if examined." Each creature within 20 feet is disabled for 5-20 rounds and must save vs. poison... or DIE.

How Much Gold? Wow. First, if the group is 5th level, 20,000 gold is a mighty sum. If you google this topic, you get a great enworld post that helps a lot.

According to that, each hero should have around 560 gold each at 5th level. At 6th, they should have 4500 gold.

Dispensing Cash: Handing out gold partly depends on how you run things. If the group can buy magic items in your world, then the amount of gold they have matters a lot. If they are able to pay spellcasters to cast high level spells for them, that matters too.

Don't Sell Your Timeshare: In D&D, characters don't do a lot with gold. What is there to buy? If you look at the prices of buildings, they are incredibly expensive. A fortress is 150,000 gold. If your group is the type to want to buy a place like that, then handing them this gold is fine! They're saving it for their fortress.

Dust of Death: Dust of sneezing and choking is on DMG page 166. DC 15 Con save or become unable to breathe and begin suffocating. They can repeat the save at the end of each turn.

I would use the dust as it is written in the 5e DMG and remove the YOU DIE part from the 1e adventure. The characters might suffocate to death using the 5e rules, but it will be through the suffocation/exhaustion rules. I hate looking those rules up. I googled it, it's right here.

Heimlich: The choking character can last at least a round before it hits 0 and starts making death saves. The only thing I'd plan for is another character trying to help their friend breathe. Medicine check? You could do an amusing heimlich maneuver or mouth-to-mouth scenario, depending on your group’s sense of humor.

AD&D 2nd Edition - The Rod of Seven Parts

Ok.. this adventure is awesome, but it's very high level. My favorite part of this whole boxed set is the third booklet that details the rod and has scenarios that might occur in the campaign, such as: "What if the group is caught by the bad guys?" That whole possibility is written out like an adventure. I love it.

In this campaign, the Queen of Chaos sends her flunkies after the heroes. She wants the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts. The group is collecting them while avoiding her deadly spyder-fiends. Let’s convert the weakest type of spyder-fiend from 2e to 5e. Here's the 2e stat block:

We’ll go down the terms so you have an idea of what matters. Most of it doesn’t:

• AC: Armor class.
• MV: Their speed, which is weird in old editions (they use real-life inches on a real-life map).
• Wb 15: I have no idea what that is. I think it’s the range of the fiend's web power.
• Cl 9: I think that means it makes saving throws as if it were a 9th level cleric?
• HD 4: That's the challenge rating of the monster. "Hit dice" in older editions basically meant the "level" of the monster.
• # AT 1: Number of attacks per round. It has one attack.
• Dmg: Damage
• SA: Spell-like abilities
• SD: Special Defenses
• SW: Vulnerabilities
• MR: Magic Resistance. A lot of monsters in 2e have some amount of magic resistance. When a spell is cast at them, they roll a d100. If they get that number or lower, they resist the spell. If the spell bypasses the resistance, the monster still gets to make a saving throw as normal.
• SZ: Size.
• ML: This is morale, a tool for the DM to figure out if a monster runs away. During a battle when things go bad, you'd make a roll. The lower the morale score, the more cowardly the monster.

THAC0: This is the stuff of legend, the core of the 2e experience. This is 2nd edition's weird way of helping you figure out what you need to roll to hit an armor class. Remember, a low armor class is good in 2e. THAC0 stands for "To Hit AC 0." The lower your THAC0, the better.

If you have a THAC0 of 5, that means you only have to roll a 5 on a d20 to hit a monster with an AC of 0. That’s really good!

So a THAC0 of 17 means you need to roll a 17 on a d20 to hit AC 0. Now, a -1 AC is harder to hit.

If you have a THAC0 of 17, you need to roll an 18 to hit a -1 AC.

If you want to hit a regular dude who has an AC of 10, you only need to roll a 7. It's weird, but once you get it in your head, you never lose it, ever.

Spyder Time: OK. To get these spider-y powers right, we should look at the 5e spiders to see how 5e rules use spiders. If you look, a phase spider (MM page 334) seems to be very close to what we want. It is one level lower than I'd like.

Honestly, I would probably just use these stats and add a few hit points and the bite power. But let’s try and do this thing. Basically, I’m taking the spider abilities and scaling them for a challenge 4 monster.

One thing I noticed is that giant spider poison does a pile of damage. I decided to use that. I also chose to limit the teleport power. Teleport at will seems really a bit much for a low-level monster. I was torn on giving it the phase spider ethereal jaunt ability. I decided not to just to be faithful to the 2e version.

Kakkuu (Demon, Spyder-Fiend): AC 14 HP 65 Bite: +5 to hit, 6 piercing dmg piercing and the target must make a DC 11 Con save, taking 18 poison on a failed save, or half as much on a successful one. If the target drops to 0, it is stable but poisoned for one hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way.

• Immune: Lightning, poison. Resistant: Cold, fire
• Web (recharge 5-6): +5 to hit, range 30/60, the target is restrained by the webbing. DC 12 Strength to escape.
• Spell-like Abilities: (At-will): Darkness, (3/Day) Teleport.

There's a description of how a kakkuu can dangle a web down and swing it so that the heroes get stuck to it. Then it can reel them in at 15 feet per round. I'd make that an encounter or two, not sure how to word it exactly.

One other thing. You should probably change the name of this monster. If you have a goofy group, once they start saying “Kakkuu” out loud, you’re in for many nights full of ribald humor.

D&D 3rd Edition Life's Bazaar (Dungeon Magazine #97)


Let's do a Perkins! Chris Perkins used this adventure to kick off the first big 3e adventure path - The Shackled City. This path is really awesome, but it is a bit disjointed. The adventures don't really connect that well and they don't foreshadow the big final villains, so it comes off a little weird.

This adventure has an awesome level 1 dungeon (called Jzadirune) in it. I actually converted this to 4th edition years ago, and I screwed it up. So, it seems like a good choice to talk about here.

This dungeon has gear doors:

• The doors in Jzadirune are gear-shaped.
• They roll into a nearby wall cavity when properly opened.
• Burned into the center of each door is a glyph representing a letter in the gnome language.
• The doors are locked. Opening one requires a rectangular, rod-shaped key.
• The key fits in a tiny, diamond-shaped slot, and each key bears a tiny glyph at one end.
• The glyph on the key must match the door to open it.
• Opening a gear door without a key (knock spell, lock-picking, etc) activates a trap.
• The DC on this lock is a 30! At first level! Even in 3rd edition, that's really high.

Problem: What happened in my game was that I made the DC high - attainable, but really high. The thief kept failing his attempts to pick the lock. From the text: "The trap continues to function until the door is opened or destroyed."

The thief kept failing and getting hit with the trap effect over and over. It got unpleasant, to say the least.

Converting the Traps: Each of these doors has a different trap, many of which mirrors the effect of a cantrip. There's a shocking grasp, ray of frost, cloud of corrosive gas, fan of magical flames, etc. I'd use the actual 5e cantrips with a DC of 10 where applicable.

For the other traps, I'd use a DC 10 and damage of 1d10 or maybe even 1d6.

Deciding the DC of the Locks: This dungeon is designed in a way where I think you can get through it without opening one gear door. There's secret doors you can use to traverse the dungeon, and some of the gear doors are open. If I could do this again, I’d have lowered the DC by a lot. I think that DC 30 was some 3e thing that went over my head when converting.

1st Level Characters: This adventure is the beginning of a campaign, so if you have new players, you want to really lowball them on damage while they learn the game.

D&D 4th Edition - Siege of Bordrin's Watch (Dungeon #157)

I didn't like that Tales from the Yawning Portal didn't have a 4e adventure in it. I wracked my brain to think of one to replace Forge of Fury (we don't need two 3e adventures from the same path in Yawning Portal, right?). I realized that it should be Siege of Bordrin's Watch. I ran that and my group talked about it for years after. They loved it.

Converting 4th Edition: 4e is different. Very different! It's like D&D tactics. I loved it, but I understand why people wouldn't like it.

4e was all about game balance. In older editions, once characters hit 11th level or so, they were so powerful that they could plow through any adventure. Parties would have some characters who were weak and useless, and others who were godlike.

Players would exploit certain combinations which was fun for them, but not so much fun for the players sitting there twiddling their thumbs while their friend killed everything in one round.

4th edition completely removed that. It is extremely balanced, to the point that every class feels similar. Everyone has "powers" that are roughly equal in strength.

4e Monsters: In 4e, the monsters are streamlined. Each has a few powers that are completely explained right there in their stat block. You don't have to look up any spells. They don't have spells! They'll have a power that is like a spell, but it's described right there in the text.

4e Level Range: This adventure is for 3rd level characters. 4th edition goes from levels 1-30, so normally I'd remove a level or two for 5e. You might want to cut them by a 3rd.

For example, if you have a level 12 4th edition adventure, that would be a level 8 5th edition adventure. It doesn't matter that much, it's just something to keep in mind.

In this case, level 3 is fine.

Shrine to Moradin (page 43)

This room has 8 orcs and a cave troll. Most of the orcs are minions, a 4e type of monster that has one single hit point. I love minions, they're a lot of fun and players like slaughtering them.

Remove Orcs: For the conversion to 5e, I'd get rid of all the orcs. The troll is more than enough! After all, a troll is a deadly encounter for four level 3 characters. A troll is a hard encounter for four level 4 characters.

I like this encounter because the monster has a cool power. It's very memorable. "Improvised Weapon" lets the troll grab a creature and use them as a weapon. If the creature has heavy armor on, it does more damage!

We have some options here. We can re-skin the troll so that it's lower level, or we can use the technique from Yawning Portal/Dead in Thay. It's called "reduced threat monsters."

Reduced Threat Monsters: A reduced threat monster has half its normal hit points and -2 to attack rolls, ability checks, DCs and saving throws. That seems simple to put into effect and should shave down our troll from deadly to hard or medium.

We have to create the grabbing-and-hitting power for 5e. Regular trolls are on MM page 291.

Cave TrollAC 13 HP 42 +5/+5/+5 5dmg/5dmg/9dmg

• Regeneration: Regains 10 HP at start of its turn unless it takes fire or acid.
• (Action) Improvised Weapon: +5 to hit. Hit: Target is grabbed and restrained. The troll uses it as a weapon in a melee attack: +5 to hit, Hit: Both the target and the grabbed creature take 7 damage. If the grabbed creature is wearing heavy armor, the target takes 11 damage. Escaping the grab is an action: Athletics or Acrobatics check DC 11.

There we go. Good enough for a one-off encounter! I'm a little worried about the three attacks. That's a lot of damage. If I were to run this, I'd just spam the improvised weapon power.

You are now a Convert

It might seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Just slap some appropriate numbers on it and run it! Err on the side of caution and you’ll be fine.

Once you know the appropriate numbers that work for your group, it’s a piece of cake. Any creature you’re unsure of, you can model them after existing 5e monsters of the level you need.

Last week, we played some more of the Eberron campaign. I have a 9th level sorcerer who now has a staff of power.

We're on a quest to get three gems from three different Eberron planes. Eberron has its own cosmology and I know absolutely nothing about it. That makes it very fun for me as I have absolutely no idea what to expect.


I googled the Eberron planes just to figure out the name of the place we went to. The DM told us what it was, but I couldn't remember.

We had come to some kind of feywild realm.We were looking at a city with lots of giant birds flying over it. There was a huge tree on top of it with tendrils that shot beams of energy. The birds were trying to snatch these seeds of power from the roof but were getting slaughtered.

It turns out that our gem was there on the roof, too. I had twinned a fly spell. We approached a bird cautiously and befriended it. We ended up with giant bird mounts.

I flew close and used telekinesis to snatch the gem. The party fighter got a seed.

The tree shot me with a laser beam (a sunbeam spell). My bird died! I fell all the way to the ground below.

There were redcaps down there, a volo's monster. I have never, ever encountered redcaps in D&D before. They have steel boots and they started gleefully kicking the crap out of me. They dropped me to 0 hit points.

I have an amulet of life protection that automatically stabilizes me when I drop to 0, so I never have to worry about death saves.

The other heroes flew down, fought the redcaps, and revived me. I cast wall of force using my staff of power and created a protective dome that shielded us from the redcaps.

The others were hurt as well, so we took a few minutes to recover. The fighter's bird was in the dome with us. It wanted the magic seed.

It ate the seed and transformed into some kind of golden ultra-bird that was super-fast. We climbed on it, I dropped the dome and we flew away, free.

We went back through the portal. That was one gem acquired!

We took a long rest and then used my well of worlds to enter another plane. I think the DM is actually rolling on a chart to see which plane we appeared on. Did he cook up a scenario for every plane?

This time, the well brought us to some kind of ocean plane. There was a storm overhead. I think this is Kythri, the Churning Chaos, but I could be wrong.

We went into the city and bought some potions and scrolls of water breathing.

The wizard has this robe with magic patches that create different things. She has one patch that creates two rowboats! Handy!

We entered the realm. In the distance was a floating tower that actually flipped upside-down every so often. As in, the top of the tower swung so that it was underwater. The roof became the basement, and vice versa.

We rowed close. We climbed in through a window and made our way to the roof. The DM began rolling each round to see if the tower flipped. We got extremely lucky. The tower didn't flip once!

There were four slaads messing with the gem we needed. We started dropping magic bombs on them. A few raced forward and attacked.

I used telekinesis to snatch the gem out of their hands. My plan from here was for us to run down the stairs and I'd make a wall of force blocking them from following us.

It didn't quite work out, as the others couldn't get away and one slaad pursued me down the stairs. I used telekinesis to keep the slaad away from me and to clear a path.

The other slaads were killed and the group joined me in the stairs. We fled to the rowboats while I held the slaad back with telekinesis.

We rowed back to the portal and escaped!

We have two gems. We had to stop there.

I really like how the DM comes up with these scenarios that are so different from each other. I don't think I ever would have come up with that flipping tower, that was really cool.

We need one more gem and then something is going to happen. I think we're actually going to connect in some way to the world in our previous 4th edition campaign, which is Nerath/the Nentir Vale, the default 4e setting.

That world got altered in the course of the 4e campaign so that during the day, the world crossed with the feywild and at night, the world crossed with the shadowfell.

I love my staff of power. It's the greatest thing ever. Was a good one!

Episode 49 - Distraction Force

• Watch this episode on Twitch here
• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist 

On June 2nd and June 3rd, the Stream of Annihilation will be up and running. This is an official D&D event where a bunch of different groups will be playing through adventures linked to some mysterious story. It sounds like the waffle crew will be doing something at this thing!

I am going to try and cover it as best I can, and I think I’m going to be tweeting during the whole thing. I’ll do my best to let you know what happens and hit you with the highlights.

This event, I think, launches the new D&D storyline. I have my fingers crossed that it involves Planescape. I think this is the project that included the contributions of Pendleton Ward, the Adventure Time guy.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Sam Sykes) Kozin Xorlarrin - Drow Fighter 

Last Time: The group beat up some drow and forced them to surrender. The heroes are getting ready to draw out the fire giants so that Diath and Kozin can sneak in to Ironslag and steal Maegara, the fiery primordial, so that the giants can't use her to create the rampaging colossus known as the vonindod.


Evelyn politely welcomes the drow to the light, and offers to take their things. The drow had the iron flask, but now it belongs to the Distraction Force.

Strix loots a staff with a spider on it. It is sticky. Strix is very into this thing.

The group learns that this delivery was a test for the drow leader. If she had failed to deliver Maegara, she would have been turned into a drider. But she succeeded, much to the disappointment of Kozin.

The dark elves call Kozin a traitor and inform him that Lolth sees all. He asks them, "Does Lolth see this?" and he kills one of the drow with his dagger.

The group asks the drow for some information about the items.

Then, the drow leader Vireth teleports onto a wall about thirty feet away from the group. She casts fly and starts to take off.

Evelyn hucks a few javelins at her and misses. Strix starts looking through the drow spell book and sees that it has a lot of new spells, including greater invisibility and cloudkill.

Diath flings daggers and rolls well for once! He does a pile of damage to her. The drow is still alive but she’s wounded badly.

Kozin tries to get the dao to help, but the drow gets away.

It is time to execute the plane. Strix casts fly on Diath and he flies down the shaft with Kozin. This dynamic duo creep around, looking for a place to hide until the Distraction Force forces a distraction.

Outside, the dao points out that while he was chasing the drow, he found Harshnagg's axe. Hmmm. The group sets up at the door. Strix creates an illusion of a short frost giant and launches a fireball at the front door. The sound reverberates throughout the complex.

It works. Duke Zalto, a bunch of fire giants and hell hounds emerge from the doors. Paultin gets mauled by the hounds. Strix casts polymorph on the duke. It works! Duke Zalto is now a chicken.

Down in the forge, Diath approaches the furnace. Through the grate, he notes that the fire is so bright that he can't look directly at it. He senses a pair of malevolent eyes in the fire.

Diath speaks the command word to activate the magic iron flask. Maegara gets a saving throw. Jared is freaked out... Maegara fails the save! Maegara is in the iron flask.

Evelyn summons Mourning Glory, her horse, in a dazzling display that includes a speech and a wink. Mourning Glory's job is to distract the hell hounds. It works. The hound are chasing the horse.

Diath realizes that there are a lot of slaves in Ironslag. Kozin doesn't want to bother with them. Diath decides that he needs to go and try to free them. Kozin takes chicken-Zalto and leaves Diath to his fate.

Evelyn activates her armor of invulnerability. The hell hounds breathe fire on her, but it does no damage. Evelyn sarcastically pretends to be hurt. Anna has been hilarious from the first second of this episode.

Kuharik, the dao, wants to go find the golem. The group hates this dude and kind of shrugs it off.

Paultin ends up thunderwaving Evelyn and the hell hounds. Evelyn takes no damage, but goes flying with the dogs.

Diath finds a bunch of prison cells, each affixed with a giant-sized lock. To pick the locks, he'll have to stick his arms in them. This will take a lot of time.

Is there a key around?

Ohh boy. Diath decides to free Maegara. I believe he can control her for one hour. She's gigantic. 50 feet tall! Diath burns and all of the dwarves die. The cells melt. Yeargh!

That’s where we stop.

Overall

Very fun episode! Lots of action, lots of humor, just as I like it.

My Planescape group is going to be exploring this place, so I figured I should read up on it. This is a guide to Thanatos, the 113th layer of the Abyss that is ruled by Orcus, demon prince of undeath.
I’m going to go through each old product and pull out the essential information so that we can use it as a starting point whenever we need to use Thanatos in a campaign.

The Essential Information

• This place is home to hordes of undead.
• Mortals find that this place drains their essence and will kill them if they stay too long.
• If you die here, you rise up as either a zombie or a bodak.
• There are many cities here, full of demons and undead.
• Kostchtchie, demon lord of giants once sent giants to attack Thanato and were repelled.
• A cult of Ahazu the Seier attacked Thanatos and were also repelled.
• Kiaranselee, a drow goddess of undeath, actually killed/drove Orcus out for a time.
• A section of this realm is known as The White Kingdom, home to Doresain, King of the Ghouls.

1st Edition Manual of the Planes

We learn a few things:

• Orcus lives in a great palace made of bones.
• His guards and servants are undead.
• From his many halls, Orcus rules many layers of the Abyss and "Prime Material planes."

Throne of Bloodstone

This adventure has piles and pile of information on the realm of Thanatos. In this module, Thanatos is referred to as layer number 333, but in later editions it is said to be layer 113. The Abyss is chaos so it’s pretty easy to explain – the abyss shifts around.

The Sky Changes: The sky is bright red, then dull crimson, then sickly green. It changes often, and the sky is something of a multicolored light show with roiling clouds.

Flying in Thanatos: Hordes of chasmes attack. There is a 10% chance that the demon lord Pazuzu shows up! He's being paid by Orcus to defend his skies

Creatures in Thanatos: Nabassu, Demiliches, sons of kyuss, spectres, ghouls, babaus, chasmes, shadow demons, dretches, rutterkins, vrocks, wights, mummies, ghosts, vampires, skeletons, and death knights.

Dying in Thanatos: If you die here, you rise up as a bodak. Only a wish spell brings you back to your former state, but a wish in the abyss must be granted by the nearest power.

Valley of the Crypt Things: This place is lined with ornate thrones. On each throne its a pale, solitary skeletal being wearing a brown, hooded robe. There are 24 of them in total. They rise and point fingers at PCs.

Skeletal Mountain: A mountain 4,000 feet high made of bone. It is alive! It forms into strange, skeletal shapes. It forms skeletal creatures that attack intruders every three rounds. The creatures include a giant skeletal fist, skeletal ettins, skeletal t. rexes, skeletal hands, skeletal dragons (!), and skeletal storm giants. I really like that, you could make a really cool adventure out of that.

City of the Zombies: A city of 10,000 zombies, victims of the evil of Orcus who seek a true death. They are ruled by a zombie king - ordinary zombie on a throne. The zombies here would team up with the heroes to take down Orcus.

The Bridge: Two skulls stand guard at the edge of a bridge that spans a moat of fiery lava. The skulls declare: "Let the strongest among you best the champion, ere you may cross." They form a duplicate of the group's strongest fighter and stuff happens! Crazy.

City of the Liches: A great stone wall with a gate of iron. A silent, dead city. Magnificent, but cold. Ruled by “the Lich King.”

The City of Orcusgate: A chaotic metropolis ruled by Glyphimhor, demon lord of orcus gate. Glyphimhor wants the Wand of Orcus for himself. The city is full of dark houses, no sign of life. No light, sounds or smells. Being in the city drains levels! Every d4 hours you lose one.

NPCs in Thanatos:

• Ter-soth, the Brigade commander, a balor.
• The group is spied on by fire mephit named Dimwold in a plaid suit and a derby? Yes, a plaid suit.
• The Trapped Solar: Tied to a burning stake is a solar with skin of molten copper. Ten demons have captured him. The flames can't kill him, but are painful. His magic bonds can only be cut by a magic item. Cutting the bond instantly destroys the sword. The solar’s name is Gabriel and he serves Bahamut. If the group rescues him, he summons a ki-rin to aid the heroes for the rest of the adventure.
• Fyrillicus, the Abyssian Dragon: He is 100 feet long and can cast spells like dimension door. Fyrillicus is not smart.

The Castle of Orcus:

• Bone Guns: The castle is guarded by magic bone cannons/guns operated by demons. They can fire an assortment of spells once per round: Dispel magic, lightning bolt, or magic missile.
• Climbing the Walls: Don’t climb the walls. The walls can form claws or dragon heads that breathe red dragon fire.
• The Moat: If you fall into this moat of lava, it means “instant and irrevocable death for anyone from the Material plane.” It is 5,000 feet deep and it exudes poison gas.
• The Mazes: Inside the castle, you’ll need to navigate really, really complicated mazes. This adventure has diagrams and everything.
• The Prison of Baphomet: This is an open platform. Orcus teamed up with Yeenoghu to capture Baphomet, demon lord of minotaurs. him. Once Baphomet slays a human, he can go home.
• Library: Shelves of scrolls and tomes. All of them deal with Orcus - his conquests, his slaves, all doctored to make him look good.
• Teleportation Room: Anyone exiting through a certain door teleports everyone outside to the bridge.
• Battle Arena: Orcus will fight the heroes in this arena. There are special effects: Dispel magic and a chessboard floor that you fall through… 1000 feet to your doom. This arena is detailed again in 3rd edition, but it doesn’t have these fun details.

Planes of Chaos

Tenebrous

This is a Planescape boxed set that is totally overloaded with ideas. There’s a section on layer 113: Thanatos, the Belly of Death.

Effects of the Realm: Undead regenerate 1 hp every hour in Thanatos. More powerful undead regenerate at faster rates (each round!). The thin air causes you to get exhausted quickly.

Orcus is Gone: In 2nd edition, due to the satanic panic, all demons and devils were downplayed. Orcus had “gone missing.” The story here is that he was slain by a drow goddess named Kiaranselee.

New Ruler: Kiaransalee, drow goddess of vengeance and the undead. She wears a cloak of rattling bones and rules Thanatos from Naratyr, city of the dead.

Naratyr: Cold realm on the surface of a frozen ocean. There are a lot of carpets of hair from former occupants. This city has vampire councilors and spectre generals. Her legions include babau, driders and armanites.

Lachrymosa, the Cauldron of Tears: This is a town around a citadel where rust-red geyser spew steam and water. It is home to undead zombies and ghouls. If you die here, you immediately become an undead servant or a mane/dretch/rutterkin. You can only be reverted back via raise dead/wish/resurrection polymorph.

Kiaranselee, drow goddess of undeath

Servants of Kiaranselee:

Rotting Jack: A babau who perpetually sheds his rotting skin which crawls with maggots. He loses an eye periodically and he wants Thanatos for himself.

Anista of the Eight Eyes: A drider who rules the summer palace. She wears a crown of eyes that gives her 360 degree vision and he can't be surprised. He is high strung and very jumpy.

Sleepless: A molydeus who marshals forces for the Blood War. He seems to be in many places at once (Sleepless is actually twins who pretend to be one person).

There are Dustman guides and visitors. Most undead ignore travelers accompanied by a Dustman.

Naratyr, City of the Dead: Hanged people and ghouls on lines the sides of the streets. This place is home to warring bands of vampires, banshees and spectres. Lots of factoids:

• Ruler: Rauva Cormrael, drow priestess of Kiaranselee
• Surrounded by a moat of River Styx
• The city is silent, and cold. There are few taverns/shops/food.
• The central castle of bone has interior walls of flesh and carpets of hair. This book has a thing for carpets of hair.
• Militia: They are known as the Ivory Mace, a rag-tag gang of ghouls led by ghasts and wraiths. The captains are babaus wielding thighbone clubs who can sing a banshee-like death song once per day.
• The Bottomless Well: An inn/tavern run by Crimson Mol, a constantly muttering wight. He clean mugs obsessively.
• The Last Meal: The city's elite comes here. One frequent patron is Ladislas the Cruel, a bard framed for his spiked flute and sharpened lyre.
• Ally of Kiaranselee: Qaletra, a priestess of Lolth (possibly a lich)who betrayed her goddess for Kiaranselee.

The Book of Lies: In the adventure book of this boxed set, there’s a short scenario about going to Thanatos and stealing a magic book. The Book of Lies is in a Dustman stronghold on Thanatos.

The Book of Lies lists every lie that was ever uttered in all of creation. It is four feet tall and three feet wide, with an infinite number of pages. You need a strength of 14 to carry it. To use it: Call out someone's name, and the book opens to a list of that person's lies in chronological order. It doesn't explain the circumstances, just the statements.

Portal: There is a portal to Thanatos in the graveyard of Sigil. It is in the inner doorframe of a mausoleum.

Dead Gods
 
This adventure is all about Orcus. It says that once, Orcus ruled multiple layers of the Abyss, all filled with teeming cities of undead and demons. He created a secret lair known as Tcian Sumere in case things went bad. It is in the negative material plane. The balor Glyphimhor is here! He’s dead! He’s some kind of shaft of light. Somehow he comes back to life in 3rd edition.

Faction War

We learn that when news broke that Orcus had somehow come back to life, Kiaranselee went "barmy" and closed off Thanatos, barring all traffic.

3e Manual of the Planes

Tombstones of every imaginable type dots the landscape

We are told that the drow deity has disappeared. Rumor has it that Orcus has returned! In Dead Gods, Orcus is a thing known a Tenebrous and at the end, his servant Quah Nomag doe a ritual on hi giant dead body. I guess this brought him back to life!

In later books, it is explained that Tenebrous and Orcus became two separate entities. Tenebrous is now a vestige in the Amber Temple of Curse of Strahd. Orcus was most recently seen in Out of the Abyss, sort of. I guess he was supposed to be in a novel but it never got released. The art from it shows that he was mingling with mind flayers, which is an odd combination.

Planar Handbook

There is a very cool section in this book detailing all sort of fun locales in the planes. One of them is:

The Mausoleum of Icy Fear: In Naratyr, there is a cemetery whose graves are carved into the surface of a frozen ocean. The heroes exploring this place may have to battle. It is home to vrocks, vampires, bodaks and spectres.

Fiendish Codex I

When Orcus was a nalfeshnee, he sat in the Court of Woe (layer 400 of the Abyss). During this era, the gith revolted against the mind flayers

Thanatos Details: We get tons of general information.

• Ash-gray clouds fill the cold, black sky.
• The immense, melancholic moon changes phases at random.
• There are roving hordes of thousands of undead.
• Living mortals take d6 damage per round!
• If you die here, you rise up as a zombie in one hour.
• Thin Air: Save every hour or become fatigued. Those who become exhausted immediately begin to suffocate.
• The dustmen have an outpost in every city.
• Leaders in the order of Orcus call themselves skull lords. Skull lords are tested. Those who fail become liches and are sent to Golmin Thur forever.
• When a Skull King dies, it is reborn as a demon - either a vrock or a nalfeshnee.
• Orcus can manifest himself from place to place throughout the layer at will.
• Chief Diplomat of Orcus: Harthoon: Lich and an embalmer.

Eldanoth: When Kiaranselee took over Thanatos, a demon named Eldanoth fled and took over its own layer, known as the Arc of Eternity. It is a kingdom of snakes and manes with a copper fortress on a rocky plain. Eldanoth wants to be a god of crime and hatred, and he has many adherents on Thanatos. Eldanoth looks like a smiling male tiefling with snakes growing from his fingertips.

Glyphimhor: This powerful balor died shortly after the invasion of Kiaranselee. He was a column of light in Tcian Sumere. When Orcus returned, he brought him back to life. Glyphimhor rules the city of Lachrymosa, the capital. He is willing to betray Orcus.

City of Straight Curves: A frozen-over port city whose streets bend in extra-dimensional ways. It is ruled by a nabassu named Slursidyal, who loves using illusions to mess with visitors.

Everlost: A massive fortress of bones in a sprawling desert of bone meal called Oblivion's End.

The Valley of the Crypt Things: A bewildering maze of natural defiles and canyons that eventually dip below the surface of Thanatos and connect to the Endless maze of Baphomet.

Frozen Sea: Ancient citadels and shipwrecks frozen in ice. One vessel, the Shadow, is home to Kiaranselee-worshiping drow who want to humble Orcus.

Lachrymosa, the Cauldron of Tears: Rust red geysers that spew steam and water into the River Styx. It contains the Forbidden Citadel, once the seat of Kiaranselee's power. It looks like a bust of the goddess herself. Some believe Orcus doesn't have the power to destroy it. It may contain treasures tied to Kiaranselee's ultimate plan for the layer. Later in the book, it is revealed that an armageddon device is in the Forbidden Citadel - a vortex connected to the heart of the Plane of Positive Energy!! In order to use it, you must make a trip to the world of Guldor for an audience with the Banshee Queen's avatar before making a daring raid against the fortified capital.

Golmin Thur: I think this is the City of Liches from pat products. A weeping city of narrow avenues and towering minarets. The liches here are known as the Disgraced. The sorcery of their creation prevents them from harming the skull lords, but they want to rebel.

Lash Embrar, the Flickering City: An enormous spinning helix of borealis-like magical energy dominates the sky about 350 feet above this crumbling metropolis. It may have been here that Orcus enslaved the layer of Thanatos to his will thousands of years ago. All skull lords must make a pilgrimage here. The ruler is skull king Quah Nomag, the cultist who appeared at the end of Dead Gods.

Naratyr: Carved into the Frozen Sea, protected by a frozen moat of the Styx, this is a city of dead vampires, banshees and spectres, as well as reanimated corpses of drow and driders formerly loyal to the Vengeful Banshee. There are also a lot of Quth-maren, skin-stripped corpses who were loyal to Kiaranselee.

Orcusgate: This is the dwelling of demons of Orcus. There is a gate of fire that connects Thanatos to the Pits of Pazunia. The demons here demons thwart visiting skull lords, delighting in the cruelty. Bulky white-skinned winged demons known as zovvuts pass for law-enforcement here. The rulers are the Council of the Riven Ram, a six-member cabal that dictates demonic policy. The council is comprised of balors and mariliths.

The Plains of Hunger: This area is home to countless hordes of undead seeking flesh to consume. Skeletons, zombies, ghouls, mohrgs, hullathoins and wights. Skull Lords come here and try to take control of a horde. Sometimes the Disgraced liches take control of a horde.

Crawling Heads: Long ago, Kostchtchie sent giants here. Orcus fed them to the hordes of the planes of hunger. These giants later reanimated as crawling heads. There I at least one in most hordes. They are brilliant undead behemoths that fall into a deep concentration that allows them to conduct strategic planning for Orcus.

Vadrian: This ruined city was once the stronghold of a balor who betrayed Orcus. The Dustman home is known a the Galendure citadel. Sherenve the Shrewd, half-elf wizard, commands the Thanatos sect of the fallen faction. She studies undead to learn about the multiverse. A burning metal tower is home to Buldinol, a palrethee who serves as Glyphimhor's eyes and ears.

NPCs: There is a Dustman named Eravamont Glask, a wizard and guide. The Ashen Triune is a trio of mute deathbringers who wander the planes looking for enemies of Orcus to kill.

Dungeon Magazine #147

The heroes come across a ship that is a clot of blood and meat made from the remains of 1,000 slaves that is stretched over a bony frame. A cage of dark iron is in the center that holds an angel prisoner. This skiff is operated by two blood fiend agents of Orcus, who are transporting a prisoner who is pretending to be an angel. He is Azael, a spy who was supposed to monitor Demogorgon but got found out.

Dungeon Magazine #148

At one time, the cult of Ahazu the Seizer tried to attack Thanatos. They were repelled. Orcus sent his demons to the Wells of Darkness. They killed the entire cult and destroyed the fortress they lived in.

Dungeon Magazine #149

We learn that the city of Vadrian is all but abandoned except for the Dustmen. Hiring a Dustman guide costs 4,000 gp per person.

Everlost: Most inhabitants are intelligent undead along with with demons and bodaks. Two balors guard the entrance to the throne room, a place where mortals normally aren't allowed in. The balors wear black adamantine armbands that grants them immunity to negative energy.

• The Halls of the Risen Grave: A short tunnel that leads to the center of the palace. The dome inside is the interior of a truly gargantuan skill. At the center is a pile of skulls with a throne of black stone inlaid with mithral. This is the throne of Orcus. Strange black tendrils writhe from the black stone.
• The Throne of Orcus: Approaching the throne is difficult. It is a negative energy conduit that drains strength. The closer you come to it, the more you feel pressed down by an unseen weight. Once within 60 feet you must save each round or be forced to your knees.
• The Arena: The champions include fiendish death giants Lestra and Orbenet and a crawling head named Lertyck Trumbel.

Dragon Magazine #358

Those who sail the Styx through Thanatos must navigate carefully. Bergs of ice and frozen bodies make navigating the Styx slow and treacherous.

Lachrymosa: The portmaster is a bloated zovvut named Sensiner. He has a huge goat eye in the center of his forehead. He must be bribed or their ship will be crippled.

4e Manual of the Planes

Skull lord and Doresain

Those that die in Thanatos rise up as undead in moments

The Plains of Hunger: Frost-rimed flatlands teeming with undead. Hundreds of skeletons, zombies and ghouls.

Lachrymosa: A balor named Glyphimhor governs the town. Glyph makes it through every edition!

Valley of Crypts: Bewildering maze of defiles and canyons. This place connects to the endless maze of Baphomet.

E1 Death's Reach

Ghovran Akti: A lich dedicated to Orcus. He hopes to help an exarch of Orcus named Mauglurien to slay the Raven Queen. Ghovran wants to become an exarch of bitterest winter.

Shonvurru: An undead marilith, member of a cult of Orcus known as the Ashen Covenant. There may be a gate from Thanatos to death's reach, a weird realm right on the edge of the Material Plane.

E2 Kingdom of the Ghouls

Orcus has a sidekick – Doresain, king of the ghouls. Doresain rules a realm inside the realm of Thanatos. It is called The White Kingdom, home to thousands of ghouls. The main palace is situated in a lake of black blood.

I have put together a collection of information on chaos ships, magic vessels that have appeared in many editions of D&D. Chaos ships are used by the demons use to battle the devils in the Blood War.

I feel like I’ve missed some stuff, but I can’t think of where else to look. Google isn’t too helpful on this topic and I would bet that there is cool info in old issues of Dungeon and Dragon. I will keep my eyes peeled.

Essential Information

• Chaos Ships are built in the Abyssal Layer of Twelvetrees.
• They are incredibly hard to make. 
• Chaos ships fly through the Abyss and are usually fitted with extremely powerful weapons.
• Some are powered by soul larvae, others are powered by anarch spheres (which contain the roiling essence of the Elemental Chaos).
• Each chaos ship is unique. Some ships have merged with a demon and are actually alive.
• Select chaos ships have an aura of entropy that causes magical chaos, coercing opponents to turn on themselves.
• Many chaos ships are fitted with are 8 ballistae that fire lightning-charged bolts, and 8 magic cannons that fire off cones of force that actually disintegrate low level targets.

Known Chaos Ships

From what I can tell, there are at least thirteen Chaos Ships out there:

• 7 chaos ships are mentioned in the adventure called In the Abyss. One nameless chaos ship is described extensively. It is alive and has a giant face on each end of it.
• Orcus is said to own three chaos ships. One of them was turned into a platform around the Heart of the Abyss, but that may have been destroyed. Another of them is Shevaithan, the ship powered by anarch spheres that play a huge part in Prince of Undeath.
• Graz’zt is said to have at least two chaos ships in his Bay of Choking Bile. His flagship is called Waukeen’s Tears.
• There is one chaos ship that was trapped in a vortex in the Lake of Shadows in the Underdark.
• I read a mention online of a chaos ship that was destroyed in a battle on the plane of Gehenna (the bridge of Khalas), but I can’t confirm that.

Name Change: One other thing. Up until 3rd edition, they’re called “ships of chaos.” In 4th and up, they are called “chaos ships.”

In the Abyss


I feel like this Planescape adventure is very overlooked. I know I bought it at the game store and it just sat on my shelf after I flipped through it real quick. I think it has something of a bad reputation, but if you read it, it’s not bad at all! It’s pretty awesome, actually.

General Notes:

• In the abyssal layer of Twelvetrees, the demons and the faction known as the Doomguard have made 7 ships of chaos.
• The chaos ships are described as "entropy weapons" intended for the blood war.
• The ship is a sentient entity (a transformed vrock), beholden only to the demon lords.
• 300 feet long, 100 feet wide, 100 feet tall.
• The ship leaves a trail of dead larvae in its wake! It drops the withered shell of a larva about every mile or every hour. They are blackened husks 4 feet long, crumble when touched.
• It has no special plane-traveling capabilities, but it can use any portal that is at least 5-feet square. It actually squeezes through via a process that can strip your magic items of their power.
• The ship is riddled with wormholes that you can climb through to get to other parts of the ship. Gravity pulls you to the walls making climbing easy. Large creatures can't fit.
• Taking control of the ship requires a rod of beguiling, a charm monster spell or similar magic. 

Appearance:

• It has two heads, one facing forward and one facing the rear. Each face has glassy eyes, a protruding nose and a gaping mouth full of teeth the size of tavern doors.
• There is a third skeletal face that looks over the deck, eyeholes sealed with milky lenses and jaws filled with curved fangs the size of small trees.
• The ship is made of thick, ropelike fibers and is an organic mass of pale white. The ingredients are  bone, crushed spirits and thousands of larvae. The ship's flanks are lined with translucent blisters tinted blue. These are portholes.

Senses:

• No minimum speed, can hover.
• The ship can see, but has no sense of touch or smell. It doesn't feel pain. It cannot see its own interior. 
• It is telepathic and can sense the location and emotional state of every creature on board.
• The ship's 'brain' is contained in two nodes set high in the bow and stern.They can loose a cloud of spores that covers the victim vines. Once per hour, the brains can emit a screech that deafens and stuns you for one round.  
• If the two brains are destroyed, the ship stops and begins to crumble. In 2d6 rounds it falls apart and plummets.

Weapons and Defenses:

• When in motion, it is surrounded by an entropy field that defeats most teleportation effects. 
• The field affects creatures differently depending on how powerful they are. 
• If you try to teleport on to the ship, you appear in the brig.
• Trying to damage the ship is near-impossible. It takes 8,000 points of damage to crack it.
• There are 8 ballistae in each mouth. They are magic weapons that do 2d6 piercing and 8 lightning.

The Entropy Field: The ship ha an aura - an entropy field with a 480-yard radius. It does not affect creatures on the ship. It has different effects on creatures of varied levels/challenge ratings:

• Low Level Creatures: Confused as per the spell with no saving throw while in the aura and for 3d4+1 rounds thereafter.
• Middle Levels: Chaos effect hits, but you do get a saving throw.
• High Levels: Save vs. spells or be repulsed each round that they remain in the effect.

Force Projectors: Each head has force projectors that throw cones of force 200 feet long. Effects:

• Low Level: Save or be disintegrated!
• Medium Level: Save or take 3d8 and be knocked prone. If man-sized or smaller, pushed to the end of the beam + 2d20 feet.
• High Levels: Save or take 3d8 and knocked 2d20 prone. If already prone, you can be pinned.

Twelvetrees: This weird plane is where ships of chaos are made. Tortured cries ring out over the plane so loud that you can't hear other people talk.

When you get to this plane, you see huge scaffolds that loom over the land like skeletal giants. Six more ships hover near them. The area is crawling with thousands of demons.

Doomguard Fortress: This is an iron keep 20 feet square and 30 feet high that bears the symbol of a horned skull - the Doomguard. It is a Daern's instant fortress! The doomguard are human/tiefling/dwarf weapon-makers that heroes could hang out with.

Possible Exit: It notes that if you were going to steal a chaos ship, you could leave through the River Styx.

Planes of Chaos

In the Abyss hypes this boxed set up like you’ll learn so much more, but you learn almost nothing new. Ready?

• Making the frame of a chaos ship require necromantic magic and hundreds of larvae.
• Magically disrupts close formation of devils.

Hellbound


We get a few tidbits:

• The ships have powers drawn from the “shifting stuff of chaos.”
• They have yet to be put to use.
• Demons fight over who gets to control them.

Dragon Magazine #360

It is mentioned that Graz'zt keeps planar vessels and "multiple chaos ships" in the Bay of Choking Bile. His flagship is known as Waukeen's Tears.

Extinction and Annihilation

There are a pair of D&D novels that came out in around 2005 that dealt with chaos ships. These stories are set in the Forgotten Realms and involve drow. Here's what we learn:

• One ship of chaos is found in the Lake of Shadows
• It is bone white, has three mats and tattered sails.
• There is a maw in the hold of the ship that you can throw manes (low level demons) into to power the ship. The sails of the ship are made of human skin.
• This chaos ship is driven through mental control. If the ship doesn't accept the pilot, it kills them.

Extinction: In case you are curious, here's a quick summary of the story (spoilers):

• A group of heroes is trying to figure out something about Lolth. They need to get to the Demonweb Pits in the Abyss.
• They learn that they need a ship of chaos to get there.
• They find one stuck in a permanent whirlpool in the Lake of Shadows, a lake in the underdark.
• The group is able to take control of it and its captain, an "uridezu" demon.

I've never heard of those demons before. Kind of goofy.

Annihilation: Not much more information. The heroes take the chaos ship to the Demonweb Pits and they learn that Lolth has actually moved her realm to its own planar space. The group parks the chaos ship and adventures into Lolth's new domain. Sounds pretty cool.

Fiendish Codex I

This book describes them as “titanic vessels” capable of bringing huge numbers of passengers across the planes in an instant. “6 are thought to exist.” Lots of tweaks and details:

• Each ship has unique magical characteristics
• All are composed of stitched flesh, powdered bone, crushed spirits and larvae.
• The engines feed on mortal souls
• They were designed as entropic weapons, but have been used a floating citadels in domestic wars between demon lords and for invasions of the Material Plane.
• A bound demon controls the ship with dull sentience, but a captain is required for complex maneuvers.
• Some captains sell passage on their ship for 500 gp per person, per plane.
• Traveling the Planes: The ship literally erases itself and everything on board, rebuilding itself on the destination plane. If you're on the ship when this happens, you must make a save or go insane.
• The captains of the ships are well-connected in the Abyss.
• Later in the Twelvetrees section, it says that the seventh ship is half-finished. Its deck contains a torrent of flying demons.

The Plane Below

Map of Shevaithan, chaos ship owned by Orcus

We get stats for 4e chaos ships. A chaos ship functions only in the Abyss and the 'elemental chaos', which is a 4e thing that combines the elemental planes, pandemonium and limbo into one uber-plane.

Be a Passenger: There is a sidebar claiming that this is the most dependable way to travel in the lower planes. Only a few chaos ships exist, but you can book passage on one. 

Anarch Spheres: These chaos ships are powered by anarch spheres. There must be someone operating each of the three anarch spheres for the ship to run. The anarch spheres sit in cradles and each of them contains the bottled essence of chaos. 

Prince of Undeath

Agent of Orcus guarding an anarch sphere

In this ridiculously epic adventure, the group has to steal the chaos ship owned by Orcus! It is called Shevaithan. We learn a ton of stuff and this adventure even comes with a poster map of the chaos ship!

Chaos ships are designed to travel through the Elemental Chaos, no two are exactly the same. All require "bottled chaos" to drive them. Containing the essence of the Elemental Chaos into crystal globes is a monumentally difficult secret task.

Teleportation Circles: There are four magic circles on Shevaithan's deck:

1. This is the end point for other rituals. This circle is where you appear when  you magically travel to the ship.
2. This circle connects to the Forge of Four Worlds, a dungeon at the bottom of the Abyss.
3. This circle is a portal that connects to another chaos ship (!).
4. Connects to Everlost, the home of Orcus himself.

In the adventure, stuff happens:

• The captain of Shevaithan is an abyssal rotfiend named Xur.
• In order to steal the chaos ship, the group must remove its mystic moorings that keep it in place.
• These moorings don’t physically connect to the ship. They are glowing tendrils located in Orcus’s palace. You need to go there and destroy them. 
• One of the chaos ships has been rebuilt into something resembling a dwarven mining platform. This thing was built around the Heart of the Abyss at the very bottom of the multiverse!
• Once the group has disengaged the mystic moorings, they can try to take command of the ship. The ship will flare and create weird protections, like clouds and bolts of energy, but the group can overcome them in a.. SKILL CHALLENGE! Roll an arcana check. You made it! You did something to it!

Anarch Sphere: A ten-foot diameter globe that boils and churns. It contains the essence of the elemental chaos.

Links

• They actually put out the 4e chaos ship info out as a free excerpt when Prince of Undeath was released
• Piles of info at rilmani.org
• Forgotten Realm Wiki Chaos Ship info

• Putrescent Zombie: These zombie seep necrotic energy and explode in a burst of necrotic energy when slain.
• Zombie Throng: This is a swarm of zombies that pulls you down and does what zombies do.
• Void Lich: I wanted a lich variant. I'll talk about this more in a second.
• Tombstone Golem: A golem made of tombstones! Come on, how awesome is that?

Void Lich 4e Stat Block

Tombstone Golem

Acererak

• Green Devil Face: Eravamont stuck his hand in a green devil face mounted on a door. It was full of sticky, tar-like goo! It was a pain to clean off and even when he did, you could sort of smell it.
• Misty Archway: Bidam entered an archway full of mist. He failed his Con save. The mist made him sneeze one time!
• Pit Traps: Theran had to traverse a hallway. He flew through it (he has a flying throne now, taken from their traitorous heresy devil minion). Acererak was most impressed! This hallway was pull of one-inch-deep pit traps in which you could very possibly stub your toe! Truly a minor inconvenience!

Nephropic

Vordiklot Krapple, Corruption Devil

This is sort of a placeholder for episode 50, which has yet to air as of this writing.

I'd like to point out that Chris Perkins did an AMA on the Dice, Camera, Action subreddit right here.

I can't believe I forgot about it!

I don't want to spoil everything, but here are the things that I found most interesting from this AMA:

Crossover: The Waffle Crew might run into members of Force Grey and Acquisitions, Inc. in the not-too-distant future.

Favorite Moments: His favorite events of the show so far:

• Evelyn thinking she ate a baby. 
• Diath's nasty encounter with the gallows. 
• Strix falling in the snow or polymorphing Duke Zalto into a chicken. 
• Paultin befriending Simon.

Murderbot: Murderbot/Simon/Pidlwick 2 is one of his favorite NPCs that he has ever run.

Svardborg: Chris says we'll be seeing frost giants before the end of the season. That frost giant lair in the book is very wide open,  I can't imagine what the heroes will do.

Ravenloft NPC: One NPC from Barovia will pop up soon. He says that it is also possible that the group will go back to Barovia. That would be pretty crazy, right?

Episode 50

We are 50 shows in and I'd say it's been very good. I learned a lot about DMing from Chris Perkins. I've probably said it before, and I've never expressed it in a way that I'm happy with, but here it is:

There are no good DMs. I don't mean that literally. Chris is great! What I mean is that it is literally impossible to multitask well enough to handle everything a dungeon master needs to do to run a game correctly. Here's some of the things that Chris and all of us have to do during a session:

• Have an adventure ready.
• Know your material!
• Be prepared for the group to go off on some wacky tangent.
• Give accurate descriptions, which is harder than it sounds.
• Know what your monsters can do, and what certain spells do.
• Monitor the mood at the table.
• Know when to move on and when to zoom in on scenes.
• Make sure nobody's being ignored.
• Avoid being too harsh or too lenient.
• Helping shy players play their way while keeping rambunctious players from stepping on other people's toes.
• And of course, run a game people want to show up for!

For me, the main struggle as a DM is between rules accuracy and pacing. I can't remember every rule. When I see Chris Perkins look a rule up in the Player's Handbook - the book that he helped write - that tells me that it is literally impossible to remember everything you need to run an "accurate" game. You would have to stop and look rules up. That hurts the pacing.

Judging from these online shows, people are choosing to focus on pacing, keeping the game moving. I can tell you that prior to 2012 or so, it was rules accuracy, big time. Most groups that I saw were rules-first, and by gawd you would sit at that table while people flipped through books and quibbled over finer points for a good portion of your evening.

Dungeon Masters: So I think what we have on this show is a great model for DMs, a sort of reality check on how a game can flow. You can learn from Chris's ideas and choices. It's also nice to see a group that plays a lot. It seems like most groups in real life don't really get together that much to play the same game, the same story over months and years.

Players: Players who watch this show can observe how you should behave at the table. To me, this waffle crew is a very good assortment of players because they are, by and large, unselfish. Usually it is the selfish player that ruins the entire campaign and kills groups.

Episode 50: Episode 50 takes place tomorrow on twitch. The group just unleashed a primordial so it should be a pretty momentous occasion. I find Anna to be absolutely hilarious and she's been on fire the last few weeks, so that's what I'm looking forward to the most.

The Stream of Annihilation: This show will lead into the Stream of Annihilation, which is next weekend. This event includes the waffle crew, who apparently will be somehow involved in an adventure linked to the new storyline. We might get some kind of clue tomorrow.

Whats the New Adventure? There is a fair amount of speculation on what the new storyline is. There's a guy named Prakriti in this thread who laid it out really nicely.

I'm going to try to watch and write about as much of that stream as possible. I think I'm going live-tweet my thoughts, so feel free to check out my twitter right here.

This show is live on Twitch right here.

OK! It has begun! I'll be updating this thing all day so check back.

Talks about book and record of The Hobbit, which he says it was his introduction to fantasy.

He found out about the novels. He started reading The Hobbit novel, and a kid who couldn't read would call him every night and ask him what happened in it.

Joe got the red box but had nobody to play with, so he played the same solo game over and over and finally met a group that played Dragonlance. He stopped playing when he went to college.

25 years later, he ended up playing D&D with a studio exec and other actors. He says has 70 pounds of dwarven forge stuff at home waiting for him to unpack it.

He says all of the people in Hollywood honed their creativity through D&D and tabletop games.

Anna of Dice, Camera, Action is hosting and she is wearing her Evelyn gear.

The New Adventure

Tomb of Annihilation! It involves the jungle of Chult and builds on a few old adventures. The main villain is Acererak, from the tomb of horrors. The main story is about how raise dead spells are failing, and those who were raised are decaying.

You will need to hire the right guide or you may end up in a place that is too high level for you.

Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time, is the guest story coordinator.
The feel of this adventure is "Indiana Jones vs. zombies."

Comes out on September 8th.

Meatgrinder Mode: You can run this on "hard mode." In this mode, you need to roll a 15 instead of a 10 for each death save.

This adventure describe what happens to your character's soul when you die

Monsters: Su-Monsters, Zorbors (psychic koalas), Froghemoths, and Zombie T. Rexes that vomit zombies!

Guides: Some might be shady, some might be better than others.

The land is incredibly deadly. The grung, frog creatures from Volo's, have a village. They're evil, but they're under siege by the undead. Do you team up with them and help them? You are strangers in a land that you know nothing about.

They tried to make Chult a location easy to drop into your campaign. You can run it as a sandbox or as a linear path.

Time for...

Dice, Camera, Action: Episode 51 - Storm King's Thunder


The group had just run into Van Richten, from Curse of Strahd here in the Forgotten Realms. He's with priests of the Morninglord.

Episode 51: Bite the Dust

• Buy Storm King’s Thunder here
• Season Two Dice, Camera, Action Episode Guide
• Dice, Camera, Action on Reddit
• The Reddit Dice, Camera, Action Index
• The Dice, Camera, Action Youtube Playlist

Alli is a demon-blooded bard

There is quiche at the table. They're playing in front of a crowd.

The Party

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Alli) Lilith - Demon-blooded Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer 

One of the priests, Sybil, thinks Strix is an abomination. Evelyn asks about Dee. No comment from Van Richten.

Sibyl says they are from Barovia. It has been released from Barovia. She says a demon has been released, and they are hunting it.

Evelyn takes a liking to Borkoth, a tall and strong priest. Van Richten pulls them aside and tells the heroes that the group will actually need to take down Sibyl and the other priest.

A powerful witch told Van Richten about this. There's a million cameras here, we get shots of each player, sort of like on the Acquisitions Inc taped shows.

Lilith got a sending from Gotsaga the witch: "They're coming for you. Wait for the sun-killer. He and his friends can help." Sounds like Van Richten.


Lilith is here in Citadel Adbar. Ahhh.. last week, Paultin was approaching an attractive bard. That bard is Lilith.

It is day two of the D&D super-stream where we get a look at a lot of different groups. Day one was ridiculously good, I don't know if they can top it. Here's today's lineup:

That's 10 AM PST, 1 PM EST. I'll be covering it all day and blabbing away on my twitter.

I think we'll be starting off with Matt Mercer DMng a game for the Girls, Guts, Glory group, a nice way to kick it off!

Maze Arcana kicked ass on day one and I am definitely pumped to see what they do on day two.

For the last two days, we got to watch tons of D&D groups play through adventures related to the new D&D adventure coming out in September: The Tomb of Annihilation.

Today I just want to go over general thoughts on the stream, the groups and the adventures. These are just my goofball opinions, please don't take this too seriously.

I recapped the whole thing right here:

• Day One
• Day Two

I'm going to write about Tomb of Annihilation and Xanathar's Guide to Everything tomorrow. This article focuses on the games that were played on the stream itself.

Overall Thoughts: I thought it was very good. I am guessing they don’t expect people to watch the entire thing in one sitting, but that’s what I did. Two 12-hour days! I was able to get through most of it, but I did take a break on each day to get some real life stuff done.

I think this is a really great way for them to announce their new, big products. I'd like it if they did this twice a year.

Celebrities

I guess I have mixed feelings about using Hollywood-types on these shows. I get that it’s a good way to get people who aren’t familiar with the game to check it out, but in some instances, I felt like it hurt the session a bit. I think it largely depends on the real-life personality of the actor.

Joe Managiello was fantastic and I think he should be a central part of every one of these things. He’s likeable, he knows what he’s doing, and he is fun to watch. He adds to the game. Famous or not, he came off to me like he’s a guy you would want in your group.

Abe Benrubi was an interesting choice. I liked him, too, but I felt like the games he was in had so many players that we didn’t really get the full Abe experience, if you know what I mean.

Fan Picks: As a fan, obviously I have celebrities in mind that I’d love to see. I’m sure that they’re unfeasible for one reason or another.

Vin Diesel plays, it would be cool to get him in. I think he’s actually making a movie about his D&D character.

If there is one person on the planet that I want to see play D&D, it is Alan Moore. He’s got a great voice, he’s definitely a colorful character on his own and he obviously is a very creative guy.

New Players


I’m a little torn on the idea of putting people who don’t know how to play on a stream like this. Hardcore fans are watching and I felt kind of bad for some of the new players, because they were making the mistakes we all made in the beginning, only they are in front of an audience.

It’s an awful lot of pressure to put on someone. Not only are they “performing”, they’re trying to learn a very intricate system of gaming.

I think I would like it if, on future streams (if they do an event like this again), they put the new people together in a few groups. That way, you can have a few sessions of introductory D&D, which I think would be fantastic for people watching who have never played and it would make the players much more comfortable.

No Crowd: I really like that there was no live audience. The players were much more comfortable. When there’s a live crowd, I am very conscious of their reactions and when the crowd is dead it makes the game worse. For me, it does, anyway. I much prefer to see people play free and unfettered as if they were at home.

Meat Grinder Mode

The Meat Grinder event that Chris Perkins ran was really great. It was incredibly fun to watch, and I really would like to see this a few times a year. They could run a few, and then, all of the people who survived can go through a super-meatgrinder.

I also get excited when I think of people daring to use their established D&D characters – from a show – in one of these. Imagine Jim Darkmagic in the meat grinder! Or Diath! If the character dies, they are dead for good.

Maze Arcana Pirates


On day one, the Maze Arcana crew took full advantage of this opportunity and ran a special event, which is how I feel these groups should approach this kind of thing. They pitted two of their groups of players against each other.

I loved it, and I can now say that Captain Stormbrew is one of my favorite active D&D characters out there. I would love to see the captain and his crew invade and attack the groups on other shows, wreaking utter havok.

The DMs put a lot of thought into this. They were aware of how much time they had, and they planned their twists really well. They were totally on the ball and it was awesome to see someone come to this thing with the intention of doing something really special.

Standout Players


I think for the most part they did a great job of picking people and groups to appear on this stream. There were a few that stood out to me:

Dylan Sprouse: He ran the very final session of the who weekend, the Crawl of Annihilation. I really liked his ideas and plotted out some great twists. I never would have come up with something like that. He did things that a lot of DMs talk about, but don’t actually do.

As a player, he’s great. He always brings something distinct to the table, he plays well with others, and he just seems like a great person to play D&D with. He’s there to play D&D! There’s no BS with him. I think that people who have never played the game will watch him and have a good example of how to behave at the table, how to play the game and add to it while being able to enjoy it.

Girls, Guts, Glory: When all is said and done, this is the group that sticks out the most to me. I thought every single one of them was really good. Some of them are funny, and some of them are serious. Each of them has a distinct character and brings something different to the game.

I think it probably helped a lot that Matt Mercer ran this game for them. What I loved about his DMing in this is that he seemed to consciously make sure to give them the spotlight. He was extremely generous, a true team player in a meta-game way. He gave them a solid foundation and kept things running smoothly so that they could focus on showing people what they do and why they are worth watching.

Kim Hidalgo was especially great. She killed me playing that little kid in the Mearls adventure. She was so hilarious, she did a voice I’ve never heard anyone even try to do. I would say that she was a highlight of the entire stream.

It is also very encouraging to see an all-female group. There’s more females playing now than in years past, but I still think there could be more. I especially want to see more female DMs. For whatever reason, they are in very short supply.

I think that Kim and Nadja Otikor are leading the way, and I want to see a lot more females follow their example and step up. DMing is a lot of work, and it can be nerve-wracking and depressing. Despite that, once you start DMing, being a player pales in comparison.

Mike Mearls: Well! Holy crap. I don’t know why this surprises me, but Mike Mearls is one of the best DMs I’ve ever seen. In fact, from what I saw here, he is THE best DM I’ve ever seen.

His adventure was awesome, the pacing was perfect, and the game flowed really nicely. He had all of these custom rules that managed things well and he was very open to wacky player ideas. I was stunned to hear him do those redcap voices. He was tremendous!

I really think that Tower of the Curator is the best session of D&D that I have ever seen.

I think Mike Mearls needs to do a weekly show similar to Dice, Camera, Action. Or at least, a 12-week run or something. He’s an asset and I think D&D would gain a lot from giving us a look at his style. He’s extremely versatile and he’s so sharp.

The Acquisitions, Inc C-Team: People keep telling me to watch this group, but it’s hard to fit these shows into your schedule. They’re so long! I finally got to watch the C-Team, and they are, in fact, pretty great.

It’s very interesting how this entire group is sort of like an expansion of Jerry’s style of humor. They joke around in a very wry way and I’d say that they are some of the funniest D&D people that are out there right now.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Jerry as a DM. I was worried that he might be heavy-handed, but he was not at all. He was along for the ride and it was really good. The dynamic between the players is really great and I’d say they have the best group chemistry out of any of the shows I’ve seen.

Random Observations


Mark Hulmes: I still think that Mark Hulmes is my favorite DM out there. He showed up to this thing really prepared. In fact, I think he might have over-prepared a bit. With these 90-minute sessions, you can’t get that much done.

He’s a guy who has clearly grinded out D&D sessions for years and he’s at a level where DMing is second nature to him to the point that on this stream he was able to experiment with the form a bit, using flashbacks mid-session, which I’ve almost never seen anyone do.

It’s hard to figure out the best way to handle a flashback so that it does not negate the things that will occur, but I think he did some really cool stuff.

Too Many Players: Some of these sessions just had too many players. With 7 or 8 people at the table, usually you end up with one player dominating the whole thing. Basically, the loudest person ends up with the spotlight, and that’s not great in my opinion.

In the Crawl of Annihilation, I think Dylan would have benefited greatly with four players at the table rather than seven or eight. Joe in particular didn’t really get to do much in that session, which is a bummer because I wanted to see him interact with Anna, Satine and Abe.

I think part of the appeal of these things is getting to see players from different shows interact. It’s kind of like Batman meeting Superman. So it sucks when Batman only appears in one panel of the comic and goes home.

Waffle Crew: I would have liked to see Jared and Holly in more events. It would be a lot of fun to see them run different characters. Anna was a force of nature on this stream. She hosted half-hour segments and played in a number of games.

People Who Should Have Been Here: Two of my favorite people to watch are Shattercock and Grimo from Twits and Crits. I know that’s not their real names, but that’s who they are to me. I want to see Shattercock and Grimo come here and wreck shop in a game run by Matt Mercer.

Supergroup: What’s more fun than picking out a group of players that you’d like to run for? If I could run a game and pick from this pool of player, here’s who I would take:

• Joe Managiello– He ran fun characters, he was unselfish and he focused on the game.
• Kim Hidalgo– She’s hilarious and talented. She is willing to make herself “look stupid” if it benefits the game, which is a very rare quality in D&D and I think it is the hallmark of a great player.
• Amy Falcone– I think Amy is one of those special people that you run into every so often, someone gifted with inspired ideas and insight. She generates jokes at lightning speed and she’d be awesome to have at the table. Even if the adventure you run is a flop, she will make the night worth it because she is so entertaining all on her own.
• Taliesin Jaffe– This guy is just awesome. Great voices, great characters. I am instantly a fan of Captain Stormbrew and would stab a dude for the chance to run a pirate game for him. My best campaign ever was Skull and Shackles, the Pathfinder pirate path, and in it was one of the best players/characters I’ve ever got to play with: The Pirate Queen ruler of the Shackles, “Pirahna” Lana Redwater, captain of the Thunderc**t II. If I could get her and Captain Stormbrew in the same session, the Shackles would never be the same again.
• Anna Prosser-Robinson– In my opinion, she’s the ideal D&D player. Unselfish, focused, pleasant, versatile and mindful of the group dynamic. In the Crawl of Annihilation, when a table of 8 players were stumped trying to get into that dome, she was the one who figured it out. It didn’t take long, either. As soon as it was her turn, she took action.

I’m sure your list is different, that’s part of the fun of making these lists and watching shows like this.

Overall: The Stream of Annihilation was definitely worth watching and a great way to introduce the new D&D products. I hope they keep this concept going, at least once a year.

I am going to try and use this page to list the new D&D products coming out soon and what we know about them.

Tomb of Annihilation

Official Information Page is right here.

Comes out on September 8th.
Retails for $50.

Theme: The feel of this adventure is "Indiana Jones vs. zombies." Tomb of Annihilation takes place in the jungle of Chult and builds on a few old adventures. On twitter, Chris Perkins mentions that this includes the feel/elements of the Tomb of Horrors, Dwellers of the Forbidden City, and the Isle of Dread.

Style: This adventures focuses more on the "exploration" style of D&D (from the triad of combat/roleplaying/exploration). This can be run as a free-wheeling sandbox or as a linear adventure path.

Sandboxy: They want groups to 'find' stories by exploring Chult and meeting NPCs.

The Main Thrust: "Can you survive?"

The Death Curse: A wasting disease afflicting everyone who has ever been raised from the dead.  When they die from this, they can't be raised again. Raise dead doesn't work at all.

Goal: You need to save the people who have been cursed.

The Soulmonger: A necromantic artifact  located somewhere in Chult.
 
Villain: The main villain is Acererak, from the tomb of horrors. The overall story is about how raise dead spells are failing, and those who were raised are decaying. A device known as the Soulmonger is somehow involved.

Contributor: Pendleton Ward, creator of Adventure Time, is the guest story coordinator.

Meatgrinder Mode: You can run this adventure on "hard mode." In this mode, you need to roll a 15 instead of a 10 for each death save.


Monsters: This adventure uses "weird" monsters that likely include: Su-monsters, zorbos (psychic koalas), froghemoths, dragon turtles, yuan-ti, goblin tribes that wear insect masks, grung, rust monsters, kenku, four-armed gargoyles winged monkeys, and zombie tyrannosaurus rexes that vomit zombies!

Tools: The DM is given tools to use as they like, including pterafolk, red wizards, and flying locations that you can explore.

NPC Guides: A unique aspect of this adventure is that you will need to hire the right guide or you may end up in a place that is too high level for you. Some of them might be shady, some are better than others.

Traps: The traps in the tomb are more puzzle-based. The new trap rules in Xanathar's Guide to Everything are meant to cover this.

Ring of Winter: It is believed that Artus Cimber is in this adventure. The heroes in Storm King's Thunder seek but don't find him. The original Ring of Winter novel is set in Chult, so it seems like we're gonna find ourselves an extremely powerful ring in this one.

Complete Details on Chult: The book will have a ton of information on Chult, like a gazeteer.


Ras Nsi: One featured NPC in the art is a mummy/yuan-ti named Ras Nsi. He has a moving fortress and an army of undead under his command. Piles of info about Ras right here.

You can read about Port Nyanzaru here.

You can read about Chult here.

Thoughts


Complicated: I am continually surprised at how they keep making adventures that are hard to prepare. I mean, it seems to be working fine, but I know there's a lot of DMs having a hard time running these things.

The fact that this one seems even more wide open than previous ones is interesting. They want groups to "stumble" onto plotlines by exploring? That means that the DM has to have a really good handle on a big section of the adventure, and to be prepared to run up to one of ten scenarios in a given session.

I guess that means I'll be spending a lot of time making a guide to Tomb of Annihilation!

Realms Fatigue: I've never been a Realms guy and wow, do I wish this was set somewhere else. They sort of threw us a bone by working in Acererak, but this adventure is definitely not what I was looking for.

That said, I'm sure it will be worth playing. If nothing else, it screams "fun", and IMO that goes a really long way.

Meatgrinding: In my experience, players hate dying! Hate it! I ran D&D games 2-3 times a week for 6 years at the game store, and I'd say that 25% of the players in those games would have temper tantrums whenever they rolled bad or their character was in grave peril.

I had guys throw their dice, rant and rave, punch walls and go in the bathroom to count down from 10. And I run an extremely soft game!

I really wince when I think about unsuspecting DMs marching into a game store intent on running this on "meatgrinder mode," completely unaware of the headaches, moping, and whining they are likely to have to endure.

Geek & Sundry article

Xanathar's Guide to Everything


Main Details:

• Comes out on November 21st, 2017.
• Retail price is $50.
• Over twenty new subclasses, including the cavalier, the inquisitive, and the horizon walker.
• New ways to expand organized play and shared world campaigns.
• Two covers. One is a limited edition, art by Hydro74.
• Contains new subclasses that were playtested this year. The ones that tested the best are in the book.
• Every class has new options.
• New rules for downtime.
• New trap system that can handle complicated traps like stuff from Indiana Jones. Gives you tools to create your own traps.

Who is Xanathar? Xanathar is an old D&D NPC, a beholder crime lord who lives in Waterdeep. He has a pet goldfish. If it dies, the whole organization will be in upheaval. Tons of info right here.

A lot of the material in this book has already been released in playtest form:

• New Trap Rules
• New Downtime Rules
• Feats for Races
• Feats for Skills
• New Spells
• Wizard Subclasses (apparently only one of these made the cut)
• Monk, Paladin, Ranger Subclasses
• Revised Options for the Druid, Fighter, Paladin and Warlock
• New Class: Mystic
• New Class: Artificer

D&D Adventure Grid

• Comes out on October 17th.
• Retails for $25.
• This is a double-sided grid to use with your minis.
• One side is a stone floor or city.
• The other side has grass/forest.
• You can use wet-erase and dry-erase markers on it.

$25 for one map! Seems a little pricey, especially when you can get the same thing from Paizo for much cheaper and in better variety. You can get two of them right now for $26.

Official product information is right here.

Tomb of Annihilation Dice

• Retail price is $20.
• It has a green tin container with the green devil face on it.
• Comes with a set of dice. Extra d6's and an extra d10.

I like the container. $20 for dice? I don't know. I'll buy it. I guess other people will too.

Official product information is right here.

Character Sheets

• Comes out on June 20th! I don't see it on amazon yet.
• Retails for $10
• Protective folder
• Double-sided character sheets with a few different configurations.
• Spell sheets to keep track of magic stuff.
• Introductory character sheet to help new players out.

I've always loved character sheets. This is just $10! I will definitely get these, might get some for my group, too.

Official product information is right here.

Tomb of Annihilation Miniatures

• 44 minis in the set.
• Minis include goblins wearing facemasks, a four-armed gargoyle, and Acererak! Two versions of Acererak -  A normal version and a clear version of him.
• They have set pieces: Traps! The tomb of horrors Green devil face, a portal, and tiny little potions. There's a stone juggernaut that can really roll.

Tomb of Annihilation Board Game

• This game is in the vein of the very popular Castle Ravenloft board game. 
• This can be linked to those previous games.
• This comes with unpainted minis.
• You can buy a premium version in which the minis are painted.
• This thing looks like it comes with rolling juggernaut and Acererak minis.

Betrayal at Baldur's Gate


This is available to be pre-ordered on amazon right here.

• This boardgame comes out on October 6th.
• There are 50 adventures in this, called "haunts." 10-20% of the adventures are cooperative.
• Monsters include: Minotaurs, vampires, dopplegangers
• Magic items include the sphere of annihilation.
• You can move between buildings and streets. The catacombs are a separate set of tiles.

Neverwinter MMO

• The dungeon is called the Tomb of the Nine Gods
• The Nine Gods are deities of Chult.
• There's more details here.