Pros:
- 255 pages long (longest adventure yet)
- Grants the Dungeon Master a lot of freedom
- Quite a few nice dungeons
- Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition)
- New, seemingly balanced spells
- New, seemingly balanced races
Cons:
- No combat grid resources included
- Requires significant Dungeon Master preparation
- No PDF*
* Denotes nitpicking.
 |
| Front cover of the new Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Princes of the Apocalypse . |
Introduction
Princes of the Apocalypse is an
epic scale adventure set to be released on April 7th,
2015. This time, we see that elemental forces have been chosen over
the dragons seen in the Tiamat focused adventure before it. As part
of my review, I will go over the adventure itself as well as the
general quality of the book, the free materials available as well as
what I felt was missing (to help my fellow Dungeon Master's prepare). I've had a chance to run part of the adventure and will update this review after I finish it.
The Adventure
New Spells and Classes
The first thing I noticed about this
adventure was the new races and spells (partially because the free
material was released before I got a hold of a copy). This is
something completely different than the previous adventures and at
first had me a little worried since there were already some spells in
the core game that I had issues with. Surprisingly, there aren't any
spells I have an issue with at first glance (you can be sure I will
update if this changes). The races in general also seem to be in line
with the rest currently published. If you are curious what they look
like, they are on the Wizards of the Coast website for free.
New Monsters
There are a few
new monsters in this adventure. In general they seem to fit quite
well into the current collection of monsters we have from the basic
rules and Monster Manual. They also cover a wide range of levels and
tend to focus more on the lower levels, just like the current
monsters (the distribution is a little more spread out then the
Monster Manual, though).
What You Need to Play
If you don't have any of the core books
there is a problem as the adventure references creatures that are
only available in the Monster Manual. Personally, this is a bit of a
disappointment after the previous adventures that didn't require
other books to run.
Note: After the release of the supplement and using the basic rules it is still possible to run the adventure.
The Adventure Itself
The adventure is
meant to take players from level 1 to level 15. To jump into the real
meat of the adventure you will need at least a level 3 party but
there are also introduction adventures that can be used to bring the
players up to 3rd level. Though I haven't run the entire
adventure yet, I have run some of the side treks and introduction
adventures and generally found them to be quite enjoyable (they also
seem pretty easy to drop into other campaigns).
In general, the
adventure takes the form of a series of Dungeon Crawls. Coloured maps
for the areas are provided (though there are no battle maps) as
expected. However, there is quite a bit of space devoted to
characters. Out of the 255 pages only about 92 or so are dedicated to
the dungeons that form the core of the adventure. The remaining
chapters cover a bunch of different topics including new monsters,
new races, new spells and new items. There are also quite a few pages
dedicated to characters, factions and the general area (such as the
town and country side) that the adventure takes place in. This gave
me the impression that I was reading more than a simple Dungeon Crawl
and is generally appreciated. Interestingly, there is also a small
section with guidelines for converting the adventure over to settings
such as Dragon Lance, Dark Sun and Grey Hawk (having spent time in
these settings before, this is appreciated even if the section isn't
very long).
The way the
adventure is written does require some work on the part of the
Dungeon Master to make this adventure work and to fill in some of the
holes (these holes usually have to do with character interactions
that aren't covered, but luckily characters are described in the
adventure). My biggest complaint would have to come from the work
needed to make it usable with grids as it is given (this seems to be
a running pattern). In general I have my own tiles I can use, but it
is more difficult for new players to run grid combat without giving
them some kind of resources.
The locations and
encounter design is fairly varied from what I saw (I guess the
different elements allow this to happen quite easily). There are
opportunities written in for different approaches to the same problem
and lots of wiggle room for the Dungeon Master to add their own
flourishes and touches. In general, I seem to recall being less
confused reading this adventure than The Rise of Tiamat
(though that may also be my selective memory kicking in, I'm pretty
sure it isn't judging by the length of the “Other Stuff”
section).
I don't generally
like talking about the plot of an adventure since it comes down to
personal taste. However, the overall plot of this adventure is fairly
wide in scope and allows interaction with many different characters.
If you liked the previous adventures in this editions run, you will
probably like this one. I generally felt it was a solid adventure,
though at the big picture level it wasn't the most original one I
ever played through. Still, it had some neat flourishes in terms of
certain characters and certain events that take place during the
adventure that made it feel quite varied to me.
The Art and Book Build Quality
The art through the book is fairly
decent. I personally prefer the art style used on the cover of The
Rise of Tiamat, but this one isn't terrible either. There is also
some art that plays more to my tastes (the more sketch/painting type
of art on the cover of The Rise of Tiamat I mentioned
previously).
The book itself is nicely bounded and
pages are reasonable quality. The pages are the same type used in the
Monster Manual and other core books instead of the thicker ones used
in The Rise of Tiamat. They didn't ripple the same way my
Dungeon Master's Guide did, though if slightly warped pages
are a concern you should still look for them in the book before you
buy it.
The overall layout of the book, from
the name on the spine to the layout of pages, follows the rest of the
books released so far (it lacks the early core book fake torn corners
just like the “Dungeon Master's Guide”).
Price
This is the costliest adventure Wizards of the Coast has put out for this edition so
far at $50 the States and $58 in Canada. However, as usual, most
places have the book at a lower price. The cost is offset by this
being the longest adventure released so far in this edition of
Dungeons and Dragons. Doing a quick search, it is possible to find
this book at around $33 ($37 at Chapters was the lowest I could find
for the Canadians in the audience).
What I felt was Missing
I also have to give my customary lack
of PDF complaint. I didn't really expect there to be one, but at the
same time having a PDF copy makes searching and flipping easier.
If you plan to run the combat on a
grid, you will have to figure it out yourself. There are no grids
provided with the adventure or in the online materials (as of this
piece being published).
Free Stuff
Wizards of the
Coast were nice enough to provide some material for free through
their website. You can check it out here (if you are interested in
this adventure, I do recommend looking at the free material provided
to help make your choice).
Summary
In general, I think this is a generally
solid adventure. It seems to be at the consistent level of quality
Wizards of the Coast has been at since the start of this edition.
Unlike other adventures so far, this adventure includes new races and
spells as well as the usual new magic items and monsters. However,
this adventure is quite a bit bigger in terms of page count compared
to the earlier adventures in this edition and the price tag tends to
reflect this. It is still missing a PDF copy and doesn't include
resources for grid combat, though this isn't any different from the
previous adventures in this edition. If you liked the previous
adventures in this edition, you will probably get enjoyment out of
this one.
Other Stuff
- The free Player's Companion PDF is here. It contains the new races and spells.
- The “Whirlwind” spell wording confused me at first.
Update: The adventure played out as I expected. In general the design of the locations meant that there were good twists that kept the combat interesting. As expected, I also had to do quite a bit of preparation in regards to the character interaction. If you are the kind of Dungeon Master that is good at making things up on the fly, this won't be that big of an issue. My major complaint in terms of the adventure design comes from the ending which I generally felt wasn't as strong as The Rise of Tiamat without my intervention.
Review copy courtesy of Wizards of
the Coast.
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