Princes of the Apocalypse is D&D’s killer appBy Jason LouvPrinces of the Apocalypse is a campaign about clearing dungeons, killing monsters and getting treasure, and the result will satisfy ardent hack-and-slashers to the very core of their being.T here is no more iconic role-playing experience than the dungeon crawl. It’s the DNA of all RPGs, tabletop and electronic: Your party enters a dungeon, kills the monsters, disables the traps and makes off with all of the treasure you can find, hopefully leveling up in the process. Dungeon crawls defined role playing - and while Tolkien may have foreshadowed the dungeon crawl in the Mines of Moria sequence of The Lord of the Rings, exactly one D&D module was responsible for defining and perfecting the dungeon crawl:.
Written by Gary Gygax and Frank Mentzer and released between 1979 and 1985, Elemental Evil began with the players traveling to the Village of Hommlet, where they established a home base and proceeded to adventure into the gargantuan Temple of Elemental Evil itself. Like most 1st Edition AD&D modules, it was heavy on the hack-and-slash, and light on the roleplay.
It’s consistently ranked as one of the best D&D modules of all time, and inspired a novel, a computer game and a 2001 sequel.With Wizards of the Coast now well into their publishing schedule for the triumphant 5th edition reboot of Dungeons and Dragons, it’s only fitting that they would resurrect Elemental Evil. Re-imagined as, the new mega-adventure isn’t a direct translation of the old adventure to 5th Edition rules, but instead builds upon the original ideas and structure of Elemental Evil to create a completely new campaign that improves markedly on its predecessor. While there is a natural progression to the dungeons (characters cycle through dungeons dedicated to each element and then progress onwards to harder and more complex dungeons, again taking them one element at a time) Princes of the Apocalypse is built as a sandbox adventure. This is a massive improvement over the Tyranny of Dragons campaign, which suffered from heavy railroading (the bane of all tabletop role-playing) and single-outcome adventures.Instead of that, we get an open map of the Dessarin Valley that contains not only the main dungeons — which can be taken in any order, although they are designed to be level-specific —but lots of extra locations, random encounters and a whole chapter full of optional side-quests full of role-playing opportunities that can be undertaken if the players get tired of dungeon crawling. This is great, because it allows the Dungeon Master to run the equivalent of a Rock Star game — the construction of Princes of the Apocalypse actually reminds me substantially of Rock Star’s triumphant Wild West sandbox platformer Red Dead Redemption.As the game progresses, the players will be racking up a list of quests and side-quests they can complete in their own order, giving the players a tremendous amount of freedom.
Princes of the apocalypse is one of my best reads in this year for sure. I downloaded it for free here: Yes, This pdf e-book is completely free to download.
More freedom is always good in RPGs, because more freedom makes the game feel more real — like a fully realized world that the players are free to act in as they choose, instead of being hedged where the DM wants them to go. Photo of Jason Louv’s Princes of the Apocalypse session by (a.k.a. Gor the Barbarian).I’m currently running Princes of the Apocalypse for a group of four players in my co-working office. It’s been a steep learning curve for them — because of the sandbox nature of the game, they’ve realized that they have to pay very close, strategic attention to their decisions, because they’ve lost important opportunities or ended up in dungeons that are way over their heads by taking wrong moves. This, in my opinion, is much more exciting and challenging than just assuming the game will carry you along from event to event on its own schedule, because it means every decision and action counts. The sense that your in-character behavior actually matters is an immersive illusion that platform games have struggled for decades to maintain (a la the Mass Effect games), but something that a creative, fast-thinking DM with the right module can always provide, and which is easily provided here. Beyond this massive improvement in mechanics, Princes of the Apocalypse also provides some extra goodies that will keep players particularly happy:.
The adventure proper starts when characters are level 3, which makes it somewhat easy to begin play after finishing the “Lost Mines of Phandelver” adventure that comes with the. Alternately, the book includes early side-quests that can get the players from level 1 to 3, and that serve as excellent, low-stakes “tutorial” sessions for easing new players into the game and the 5th edition rules. I started my campaign this way, with a group of players of all levels of D&D experience, and found that these early adventures worked admirably well for learning the game (or just the new edition).
Wizards of the Coast has provided free supplementary material (as a PDF download) that allows players to choose four new races: the Aarakocra (birdmen), Genasi (elemental genii with sub-races for each element), the Colossus (a giant race built for tank characters) and the Deep Gnomes or Svirfneblin, all drawn from various phases of Forgotten Realms history and lore. While they’re all shiny, they’re also a bit “special snowflake-y” and could be a roleplaying strain for both the players and for the DM, as their presence will consistently raise questions from NPCs. That’s not necessarily any different from the Dragonborn and Tiefling in the main rules, however, who present the same difficulties.
There are also dozens of new element-specific spells. There’s a completely new Elemental Evil-specific season for Wizards of the Coast’s Adventurer’s League system, which goes from now until fall. The League — a very smart creation on WotC’s part as it creates an instant community for D&D fans and vendors—lets players officially register their characters so that they can take them to game stores and conventions, and play in exclusive adventurers that are related to the overall Elemental Evil storyline. While characters made for League play have to be constrained to certain parameters, players also get the option to modify or even wholesale re-create their characters as many times as they want (and also keep their XP and treasure) until they hit 5th Level, at which point they’re locked in. I played this way in the Tyranny of Dragons season, and it worked wonderfully — the result is that nobody feels frustrated with his or her character.Overall, Princes probably won’t win any awards for writing.
The plot depth really doesn’t go beyond “evil cults of evil want to do EEEVIL and must be stopped” — which, uh, was also the exact same narrative that drove Tyranny of Dragons. But, then again, does it really need to be Tolstoy? Like its 1st Edition predecessor, Princes of the Apocalypse is a campaign about clearing dungeons, killing monsters and getting treasure, and the result will satisfy ardent hack-and-slashers to the very core of their being. The book is likely massive enough to keep even a regularly meeting game group going for half a year to a year, and could easily be expanded even further by an industrious DM (particularly with all the Adventurer’s League excursions that Wizards will be introducing).Of course, the real challenge will be keeping a game going that long before busy schedules and electronics pull people away. But over the last year, I’ve been roping my friends back into playing D&D with me — and watching how happy people are when they’re forced away from their phones and computers and actually get to interact around a real-world game has convinced me how much traditional RPGs still have to offer us.
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Princes of the Apocalypse, if you get a committed group together, will keep that fun going for a long, long time. Read the rules you agree to by using this website in our.We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.Boing Boing uses cookies and analytics trackers, and is supported by advertising, merchandise sales and affiliate links. Read about what we do with the data we gather in our.Who will be eaten first? Our forum rules are detailed in the.Boing Boing is published under except where otherwise noted.
Everything announced here is already done by Roll20 (Since last year) and Fantaisy Ground (Since 2 years ago)This seems like Curse Gaming only wanting a part of the pie.as for the PDF thing, the market doesn't make money out of PDF thats the problem. Most authors who sell EBooks literally only do 1$ per buyout. The time spent ont he book is literally not paying off. And thats selling the book at 3$. You also have to pay the plae that sells the books, the software that sells the books. The accounts database that binds the buyer.
Al of that means you literally have to sell the book as much as the physical copy just to get 1/10th of it back. Thats why they keep with physical copy. Because its easier to make money out of physical copies then it is in online copies. How do i know this, because a few authors have started talking on their youtube channels and the likes and they literally have to work 10 times more just to sell online. Thats ridiculous!At this point if they truly want to sell online they need to be using DLC like content. Like make each classes and races separate and people needing to pay for each little thing they want.
But even doing that (Roll20 and Fantaisy Ground both do it already) cost a ton of money pretty much as much as the books themselves. Heck even free PDF like Player Companion is costing 2$ for something i can get free on WotC website. So all that should tell you something as to why they dont want PDF to be a thing.
Everything announced here is already done by Roll20 (Since last year) and Fantaisy Ground (Since 2 years ago)This seems like Curse Gaming only wanting a part of the pie.as for the PDF thing, the market doesn't make money out of PDF thats the problem. Most authors who sell EBooks literally only do 1$ per buyout. The time spent ont he book is literally not paying off. And thats selling the book at 3$.
You also have to pay the plae that sells the books, the software that sells the books. The accounts database that binds the buyer. Al of that means you literally have to sell the book as much as the physical copy just to get 1/10th of it back. Thats why they keep with physical copy. Because its easier to make money out of physical copies then it is in online copies. How do i know this, because a few authors have started talking on their youtube channels and the likes and they literally have to work 10 times more just to sell online.
Thats ridiculous!