Monthly Archives: May 2022

The Inspirations for Battle Walker From the Abyss Could Also Inspire You

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My first DMs Guild adventure, Battle Walker From the Abyss is out and you should get it. The adventure draws inspiration from countless sources. Either another D&D creator offered guidance that inspired my thinking, or another author’s adventure achieved something that I wanted to attempt in my own creation. While crediting my influences, this post includes minor spoilers.

When Mike “Sly Flourish” Shea distills his Lazy DM preparation method to a minimum, his method includes just three essential steps:

  • Develop fantastic locations
  • Create a strong start
  • Define secrets and clues

As I wrote, all three steps guided me, but nothing inspired me as much as developing fantastic locations. D&D allows an unlimited special effects budget and I wanted to spend it all. My adventure hops from a ruined city in the sands of Anauroch, across multiple levels of the Abyss, to battle in an iron fortress standing over a lake of molten metal.

The adventure Dead Gods (1997) by Monte Cook inspired me to imagine wondrous adventure sites in a plane-spanning adventure. Dead Gods brings the party to the astral plane where they battle atop the 4-mile-long corpse of a demon lord. Battle Walker also includes a nod to Queen of the Demonweb Pits (1980), a classic by David Sutherland.

The strong start proved a little harder. Originally the adventure started with a battle where the characters tumbled down a gate to the Abyss, but playtesting showed that players needed more context to start. Now that battle comes later. In the published version a simulacrum asks the players for help stopping his chaos-tainted original from gaining a weapon capable of leveling cities. I hope the situation’s novelty and mystery captures the players’ attention.

Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the AbyssA few years ago, when I prepped Blood in the Water by Ashley Warren, I felt charmed by how deeply Ashley drew from the Sea of the Fallen Stars (1999) sourcebook to add richness to her adventure. The Forgotten Realms ranks as one of the most documented fictional worlds, and the DMs Guild allows authors to borrow from it all. I drew ideas from Netheril: Empire of Magic, the Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss, and from the adventure The Wells of Darkness by Eric L. Boyd in Dungeon issue 148. Only a few D&D superfans will recognize my nods, but I think my research lends an extra depth to my adventure.

I aimed to write an adventure that I could run to a satisfying conclusion at a convention, but I also wanted one that didn’t feel linear, where players chose their destinations from options. The Howling Void by Teos Abadia offered a model. In an elemental node, Earth motes float like aerial islands. Players must choose which to visit. Teos explains that some players left the adventure disappointed because they could not explore every location.

Battle Walker doesn’t lay out options quite so plainly. Instead, much of the scenario works as an investigation where players uncover secrets and clues that lead to more investigation. The principles of node-based design explained by Justin Alexander provide the engine that makes the adventure work. Each location, encounter, or “node” unlocks multiple clues leading to other locations. I aimed to drop enough clues to ensure players never feel stuck, and to create some choices.

The Lich Queen’s Begotten by M.T. Black ends with the sort of fascinating dilemma that reveals character. An innocent youth in the adventure seems destined for evil. Should the characters let her live? My adventure ends with a dilemma a bit less thorny. Should the simulacrum of the Abyss-tainted wizard be spared? The construct is just ice and snow and magic, but it still feels like a living thing. Does the duplicate share guilt or have the same potential to be snared by demons?

No one knows more about high-level D&D adventures than Alan Patrick, so I interviewed him seeking help for DMs running tier 4 games. Even though top-level characters can play like demigods, Alan looks for ways to ground them with an emotional connection to the adventure. For my creation, I couldn’t bring the character’s back to their roots, but I worked to create some emotional resonance with the ordinary characters snared in the plot.

To create more compelling foes for top-level characters, Alan raises the monsters‘ damage output until it matches the proportions of the damage low-level foes inflict on low-level characters. For groups interested in facing stronger combat challenges, I include “Scaling the Adventure” notes that mostly suggest increased damage, and then I invented game-world reasons for the extra punishment.

Designers tout the value of letting other gamers playtest an adventure, so I dutifully recruited playtesters. But I started the process with laughable overconfidence. After all, I ran the adventure twice myself. How much more polish could it need? I came from the process with a greater appreciation for playtesting. Feedback drove me to work harder to improve bits of the adventure that seemed good enough before. The adventure became much stronger.

Battle Walker From the Abyss and Why I Took a High Dive Into the Shallow End of the D&D Pool

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For my first DMs Guild adventure, I turned a rough start into a high dive into the shallow end of the D&D pool. Don’t try this at home. Read on for the story, but first I’m excited to introduce Battle Walker From the Abyss, my fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure for 17th to 20th level characters. In the adventure, a wizard’s simulacrum asks for help stopping his demon-corrupted original from gaining a walking weapon capable of leveling cities. The quest takes characters across the Abyss, from the market town of Broken Reach, to the demon goddess Zuggtmoy’s fungal plane, and then to a confrontation in an iron fortress over a lake of molten iron. The adventure mixes roleplaying and senses-shattering combat encounters in a plane-hopping mission that tests epic level characters. It typically takes 6-8 hours to play.

The adventure’s rough start came when I opted to create an entry for the D&D Adventurers League open design call for potential tier 4 adventure authors. I wrote about creating for tier 4 and shared my entry. However, my entry failed to interest the judges. When I played my submitted encounter, I learned that it overreached. Blame that on the same creative mindset that leads a player to write a 12-page backstory for new character. For a one shot.

As I created my entry, I imagined it as the slam-bang start to an adventure, which led me to weigh the encounter with details that went nowhere outside my imagination. I suspect the result felt cluttered. Later playtesting also revealed that the encounter included too many moving parts, distractions that I trimmed from the final version.

My encounter featured a magic gate tunneling from a ruined city down to the Abyss—a fantastic location appropriate for legendary heroes. I hoped the setting would create a sense of wonder while enabling mighty characters to flaunt their abilities, but the location proved hard to visualize without an abstract map. The final version includes a map.

The Adventures League team probably needed new tier 4 authors for two reasons:

  • Tier 4 adventures can prove difficult to write, especially for a random party of league characters. A table might include all martial types or all spellcasters with wish. Accounting for the possibilities means more work for authors. I’ve learned this first hand.
  • Very few D&D players participate in such high-level games. Data from D&D Beyond suggests that 90% of Dungeons & Dragons games stop by level 10. That means level-17-and-up adventures sell far less to comparable low-level outings.

Despite the lack of interest in my encounter, despite the extra effort, and despite the slight rewards of creating a tier 4 adventure for sale, I pressed on to create a complete adventure. More work for fewer sales? Sign me up! Why? Because once I started the story behind the encounter, my imagination failed to let it go. You’re a D&D fan; you know how that goes.

I love the plane-shifting heroics of tier 4. At the highest levels, Dungeons & Dragons lets super-powered characters travel otherworldly realms and battle threats that approach the power of gods. That grand scale lets dungeon masters enjoy the fun of stretching our imaginations’ unlimited special effects budgets, and of pitting the characters against any threat we can dream while feeling confident the players will win.

Battle Walker From the Abyss captures all that, plus a bard’s tale that some playtesters said provided the best part of the adventure. Plus color digital battle maps for some legendary locations.

As for the rough edges in that one encounter, they’re gone. Credit feedback from more than 30 playtesters for a far better adventure than I drafted.

The adventure makes a great tier 4 one shot and also works as a side-quest that fits easily into a high-level campaign. So grab a copy for yourself or as a gift for your favorite dungeon master.

Related: All the Troubles That Can Make High-Level D&D a Bitch To Run, and How To Solve Them

Making High-Level D&D Click: Advice from Alan Patrick, the DM Who Has Run More Tier 4 Than Anyone

Challenging High-level Characters Without Breaking the Dungeon Master

How to Bring Player Character Backstory Into Campaigns Without Overstepping

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The Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook tells players to create backstories for new characters. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything adds pages of tables to help players invent their characters’ backstories. The books‘ support for backstory makes sense: Such imagined histories help roleplay and when dungeon masters connect the characters’ backstories to their campaign, the game feels more personal to players.

Like any creative collaboration, using character backstory in a campaign proves harder than it seems. When a DM adapts or elaborates on a character’s backstory to fit the campaign, the additions might not fit the player’s vision. In a game, players only enjoy full creative control over their own characters. They deserve to keep that control without unwanted meddling, and that goes beyond not seeing people in their character’s backstory killed for dramatic effect. When a DM tinkers with backgrounds, player characters may stop feeling familiar and the players may lose a sense of owning their characters. I’m always hesitant to introduce important NPCs from PC backgrounds because I’m worried I won’t do the characters justice or portray the relationship the way the player envisioned it.

One method of incorporating character backstory works without ever returning to the people or places in a character’s history. Create new situations or characters that resemble the events from the character’s history. So if character left magic school after being falsely accused of stealing a valuable tome, put them in situations where other folks face false accusations or face exile from their home. If a character lost someone, don’t try to kill more of their family, but do create new situations that recall those memories. Such rhymes with the past help players reveal their characters.

Of course, most DMs want to go beyond mere rhymes. For a more powerful use of backstory, visit people and places from the characters’ histories. Reappearances highlight a player character’s unique importance to the campaign and follow the Small World Principle, but using characters from backstories takes more care.

I once played in an Adventurers League scenario that the DM started by asking everyone to name someone beloved from their character’s background. I named my monk’s master teacher. Later my teacher and the other beloved non-player characters appeared as prisoners to be rescued by the bad guy. The master my monk idolized died. Although I felt comfortable with the twist, this wasn’t the story I imagined.

Back when few players invented a backstory for characters because new characters died so often, I ran a campaign that included a paladin, and I invented an anti-paladin twin for the character. I liked the drama and failed to notice how trite and campy evil twins would eventually seem. I got lucky. My contribution to the character’s backstory worked. The player liked his character’s special importance as the brother of the group’s arch enemy. And no one mocked the evil twin trope. That was a different time.

Both those examples of DMs meddling in backstory ended fine, but either could have ended with hard feelings because the riskiest method for including character backstory is when DMs surprise players by plundering their histories for cheap motivation or lazy pathos. The motivation comes when, say, a character’s teacher just happens to be kidnapped for human sacrifice. The pathos comes when villain murders your character’s parents. Both combine when the DM opts to make a loved one into a villain. This I’m-your-father twist starts with a backstory that includes kind grandmother, and then ends when the DM turns her into a cult leader spilling blood for Orcus. Surprise!

Such surprises can sink a campaign even though similar twists can work fine in fiction. Writers of fiction create their characters and make them suffer as parts of the same job. In a D&D campaign such tricks can feel like the DM has forced a character into certain choices or trashed the creative work a player invested in backstory. A player could see Nana wielding the sacrificial blade and think not in my world and check out of the game. Early in D&D’s history, such stunts proved so irresistible to some DMs that many players felt most comfortable imagining their characters as orphans without a single attachment to their past.

Finding victims and villains from backstory works in D&D when the DM and player settle which parts of the backstory should be preserved in history and which parts a DM can revisit and elaborate for the campaign. Some players would welcome villains from their backstories as ongoing foes. Some might happily see Nana leading the cult of Orcus and the teacher they idolize captured despite his deadly fists of fury.

Collaborative planning does lose a potential surprise, but only to the one player behind the backstory. You can surprise the other players, the biggest audience for their story.

So, discuss ways to bring backstory into the game before play. As a DM, look over a character’s backstory and ask questions like these:

  • What characters and places from your backstory would you like to revisit in the game?
  • Based on your background, what unfinished business does your character have?
  • What sorts of situations would give your character a chance to resolve those loose ends, and how do you imagine the outcome?

None of this discussion means that you need to let players script situations and outcomes. D&D remains a game with dice, where unplanned twists can add to the fun, but the players‘ answers to these questions can inspire your preparation.