Pros:
- 255 pages long with 215 of the pages directly dealing with the adventure (not counting creatures, items, etc.)
- Grants the Dungeon Master and players a lot of freedom
- Quite a few nice dungeons
- Lots of full colour art (as we have come to expect of this edition)
- Locations in the Underdark, important characters found there and creatures described in detail (quite a few tables)
Could Go Either Way:
- A big cast of characters can end up joining the party in the second half of the adventure (running this, especially in combat, can be a bit of a challenge especially for an inexperienced group)
- Certain parts of this adventure can be quite challenging and may even result in players needing to flee from danger (players should be aware and okay with this)
- It's set in the Forgotten Realms and the Underdark in particular (for you Forgotten Realms haters)
Cons:
- No combat grid resources included
- Requires significant Dungeon Master preparation
- No supplement
- No PDF*
* Denotes nitpicking.
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| Cover art of Out of the Abyss. Who wants to take a shot at him first? |
Introduction
Out of the Abyss is an epic scale
adventure set to be released on September 15th, 2015. In
this adventure, prepare to face demons of awesome power in the depths
of the Underdark. 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 will update this post if new things are
released as well to add my final comments after I finish the
adventure.
Other Information
At the time of
writing this, I have read through the book cover to cover and have
run 3 chapters of the adventure. My group has played D&D for a
while now and generally feels comfortable with the current version.
We usually either play in a home brew setting or the Forgotten
Realms, though all of us have experience from the other classic
settings outside the group. The group in general is really fond of
the Underdark and were very happy to be back.
I have generally
enjoyed running and reading this adventure so far and will do my best
not to spoil much of it. This will mean I will avoid talking about
plot points and the important story elements but will still talk
about locations and other parts of the adventure that don't ruin the
story.
The Adventure
New Monsters
There are a few
new monsters in this adventure and they tend to mostly fill out the
lower levels as well as the really high levels. When possible, this adventure tries to use existing creatures and modify
them if needed. Since a supplement is not provided, it makes running this adventure a little bit more challenging since you will have to find the creature in the Monster Manual and then modify it.
What You Need to Play
The adventures before this one had a supplement that was provided on the website and contained creatures and items needed to run the adventure from the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide respectively. Here, however, there are references made to the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide so you will have to own both of them in order to run the adventure as printed (this is quite a disappointment for me since I saw the ability to run an adventure simply using the basic rules and supplement to be convenient and welcome).
The Adventure Itself
The adventure is
meant to take players from level 1 to level 15 and starts off right
in the thick of it. Players start as drow prisoners and the story
unfolds from there. This particular plot point can be changed if
desired but works really well in the general context of the
adventure. It is best handled with lower level player characters as
well. Out of the gate it was obvious to me that a lot of care went
into the non-player characters of this adventure. Not only is this a
case for the players' enemies but also for their allies who create
some very interesting situations. There is still room to improvise on
top of what is written and I found the cast of side characters to be
one of the most entertaining and interesting in this edition. The total number of non-player characters can get a little difficult to manage especially since they take part in combat.
215 of the 255
pages detail the chapters and story of the adventure. This adventure
in particular seems to focus a lot less on dungeons than Princes
of the Apocalypse. A lot of the
page count is devoted to showing off locations such as cities and
towns as well as their unique characteristics and residents. That's
not to say that it avoids dungeons completely as there are quite a
few rather well planned dungeons. There are a few tricks hidden in
the dungeons that may give less experienced players a hard time but I
feel that it isn't reason enough to avoid running inexperienced
players through this adventure (instead, think of ways to provide
hints if they really need them).
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| Quite a lot of the environments and artwork in this adventure feature darkness. |
The way locations are handled as well as how characters are laid out
is really where this adventure does an amazing job. A lot of freedom
is given to the Dungeon Master to portray the non-player characters
as they wish while still giving a good idea of what they want and are
after, making them that much easier to play. The way locations are
presented, described and play a part in events really does help make
them memorable. There are locations that I can't wait to
Dungeon Master. There were also times where I forgot I was reading an
adventure and instead got lost in it as an Underdark supplement.
There are a few
elements of the adventure that are a little hard to change (the
opening I mentioned earlier is an example) but still possible.
Overall, a lot of control is put into the hands of the players and
what they wish to do. Many parts of the adventure foresee the
possibility of players going a different way and provide advise on
how to handle it. Still, not every situation is mentioned and even
some situations which are acknowledged are not fully described. I
don't see this as too big of a problem since in these cases it seemed
obvious to me that not every situation could be predicted. These possibilities should be considered when preparing and
running the adventure.
The adventure
itself is split into two parts. The first part gives player a lot of
options of where they want to go and provides for some very
impressive scenes. Think demon lord worthy. The second part can be
used to drop a level 7-8 party in. I wouldn't really recommend this if
possible since you'll be missing out on the first half of the
adventure. However, a lot of the material in this book (including the
first half) can be used easily to run other kinds of Underdark
campaigns. I plan to use it as a reference if my players
ever go into the Underdark again.
The adventure has
a lot of random encounter tables that are specific for the regions
they are dealing with. There are also many planned encounters that
help create important, interesting and memorable set pieces. There is
often a lot of emphasis on terrain and location. However, players
need to know that they might not be able to tackle every fight. Poor
planning and bad luck on the players' side can turn planned and
random encounters into difficult situations. Still, there are many
opportunities to avoid conflict through many different ways including
group checks (there are quite a few stealth group checks in this
adventure) so it's not like these situations are unavoidable. There
does seem to be an emphasis on making the Underdark a dangerous place
full of threats that will quickly dispatch the party as well as
threats that will take their sweet time to slowly take them down.
I don't want to
give away too much about the demon lords and how they feature in this
adventure because I liked how they appear and were handled. They are
powerful and they aren't afraid of showing it off in ways players
won't soon forget. However, since we are dealing with demons and
madness, there are rules that deal with madness being used throughout
this adventure that serve to make the adventure even more difficult.
It is one of the main themes of the adventure and I was a fan
of how it touched even supporting role characters.
If there is
anything to really complain about, it is the overall story as
written. Even though it can be run as a truly amazing adventure,
there are certain plot points that may seem a bit overused even if
they have the potential for a twist. I personally didn't have too
much of a problem with it and believe that, even though opinions on
an overall plot are subjective, you can change and make it work using
the freedom the adventure gives you. I'd even go as far as saying
that it is good, but I'm not sure it's so good that it will have no
critics.
The Art and Book Build Quality
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| One of many environment pictures present in the adventure. My pictures really don't do it justice and there are many other great looking ones. |
I found the art throughout this book to
be quite nice. I really liked the images of locations in particular
as they struck that balance between realism and painting aesthetic
that I like. Other images, such as those of characters
have a similar painting-like aesthetic like those we have seen in
other books released in this edition. When comparing it to the cover
of Princes of the Apocalypse,
the art work throughout the book and even the cover feels more in
line with the painting aesthetic I mentioned earlier (while fine, I
found the cover of Princes of the Apocalypse
to be in a style I don't like as much).
The book itself is nicely bounded and
the pages are the same quality we have come to expect. 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. I didn't
notice much rippling either but remember to look for it if it bothers
you. I was happy to see that no pages were stuck to each-other, but
if that is something that bothers you I'd recommend to look for that
if you are buying it from a bookstore.
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”). I also thought that the
layout was effective.
Price
For the suggested retail price of this
product, you can check here.
When I last checked the prices were $50 in the States and $63.95 in
Canada (you poor Canadians). I was able to find it for as low as
31.30 at Barnes & Noble and 40.09 at the Canadian Chapters (I'm sorry Canada).
What I felt was Missing
I also have to give my customary lack
of PDF complaint. I didn't expect there to be one, but at the
same time having a PDF copy makes searching and flipping easier for
me.
If you plan to run the combat on a
grid, you will have to figure it out yourself or buy it from a third
party, as seems to be the pattern in this edition (I usually just do
everything myself so I can't vouch for the quality of the third party
accessories or even if they have everything you'll need). There are
no grids provided with the adventure or in the online materials. The
maps themselves tend to have detailed images or well fleshed out
descriptions making setting up the contents of a room a lot easier
than having nothing at all. Still, in some cases, expect to need to
take some time to furnish rooms or locations if no details are given.
For Inexperienced Dungeon Masters
Out of all the
adventures released so far in this edition, this may be one of the
most challenging to rule for a new Dungeon Master. It is still
possible to do so but the main difficulty comes from the preparation
that will need to go into making this adventure shine as well as
managing all of the characters you will need to play as and interact
as with your players. It will become only worse if your players will
do something very creative and force you to improvise as a new
Dungeon Master. There is a lot that they can do in various situations
and while many of their options and outcomes are mentioned, the
Dungeon Master will still need to flesh them out.
If your players
like using grids, there will be more prep work for you as you will
need to create the important dungeon rooms and populate them. This
isn't that hard if you are experienced, but you should have a rough
idea of what will be in the room (sketches made while reading and
planning help).
I still think a
first time Dungeon Master who is committed can make this adventure
shine. Still, it will require a lot of planning and willingness to
role-play a huge cast of characters as well as possibly improvising.
If this seems like a lot to prepare for at once, consider breaking it
down into chapters or two where you will write full notes for that
chapter (you will need to reference other chapters to make sure
things will fit together at a high level) and then run those chapters
instead of compiling everything at once. It may not fit together as
well as planning everything at once but it's important not to be
overwhelmed so that you can make the current part being played as
good as you can (it's easy to try and railroad players if you plan too much as well).
Summary
At this point this adventure looks to
be one of my favourites of this edition. The Underdark is made into
the dangerous and foreign place it deserves, the demon lords are
showing their muscles and the adventure provides many different
avenues for players to take. The detail and care given to the
Underdark make it almost a supplement in its own right. The major disappointment in the adventure comes from the lack of supplement. This means the basic rules and the adventure are not enough to run this adventure and you will have to own the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master's Guide. The main
issues of this adventure are the same ones that confront any
adventure and that is, “do I need this if I already have a bunch
from every other edition?”, “do I like the story?” and “is it
worth the money?” (the suggest price in particular may be hard to swallow if you already own tons of adventures). As always these are subjective but out of all
the adventures released for this edition of Dungeons & Dragons, Out of the Abyss is certainly one of my favourites.
Other Stuff
- Over the course of my reading of the adventure, I found 10 examples of what I would call errors. None of them were major or impeded my understanding of the material and tending to be extremely minor issues like typos.
- The adventure doesn't provide anything new for players to use during character creation besides a few new background features and some bonds. Because of this there is no risk of tipping character class balance.
- This adventure had a cool trailer.
Review copy courtesy of Wizards of
the Coast.
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