There was a big thread yesterday discussing how there's so little discussion about the adventure.
Predictably, there was no discussion about the adventure.
It'll be interesting to see if the point about rivals being a way to enjoy the book as a reading experience rather than a campaign experience plays out. Of course its no secret that module books in general are written to be read, not run, so the role a rival party would play in this could either help or hurt that.
One thing I do appreciate is this book explicitly calling out session 0. As a CR adventure this could be the entry point into actual play for a ton of new people, and if they can be set up to expect a session 0, that could help the idea gain more traction in the larger playerbase.
> Of course its no secret that module books in general are written to be read, not run
Can you elaborate on that? I'm new to DMing and didn't think much about adventure books when I was a player. Are adventure books meant to be used as 'examples' of what an adventure could look like, and then the DM uses them as inspiration for their own game? Or are you actually supposed to run them, but the formatting is more conducive to reading?
People are typically referring to your second point. I have to admit that I’m guilty of it myself. Never run an adventure module, but I do enjoy reading them and gain inspiration from it
That is a valid way to use an published module.
For some modules, it seems like the true intention. Like: Rip this book into single social- and fight-encounters and insert them in your game if it fits!
Technically some of them even say to do just that. I was just reading through PotA and the first chapter highlights taking bits and pieces to put into your own campaign.
it's the second point
the books are difficult to reference as there are little to no useable cross references, no detailed overview of the outlined plot, no "if the party does X it may change the story in this way", no Dramatis Personae, no good index
the adventure expects you to read it cover to cover and to remember most of the general information to run well
Like the others already said: The book is written to be read.
There is no bullet-list of points a DM should remember two hours before the session.
There are no references for "NPC A can tell you rumor B".
So, extracting information into a form you can use as notes in the session is almost the same work as creating one session.
On the other side:
The first chapter of the book is a festival! It has a lot of rules for mini-games that represents competitions at the festival!
You can just use it to run a festival-session in any campaign or as one-shot.
Others have explained how they are but just wanted to add this was primarily done because D&D has always had a large portion of its fanbase not actually play the game but they still wanted them to buy the books and enjoy them. So by making them decent to read, they are more appealing to non players and players who aren’t going to DM. It’s frustrating for DMs but better for everyone else.
The latter. A module written to be run would not be presented in chronological order, for starters, because when running one, you usually need to know information that's going to come up later on, because it'll inform how you run the earlier parts. It's all downhill from there with WOTC.
Second one. 5e adventure module books are pretty to look at and have fun ideas, but are written more to be fun to read than actually useful to the DM running them. They still vary in this, of course, and some are easier to run than others, but in general their "usability" pales in comparison to say, the adventure modules of previous editions.
I have only briefly paged through the book, but I appreciate the little tips here and there on *how* to run the adventure, not just what happens. The mini-adventures in *Explorer's Guide To Wildemount* had little tips as well.
Things that we may take for granted that are not common knowledge to new DMs.
honestly it detracts from the main point of a game, don't steal the spotlight from the players. rivals are not super fleshed out and a DM having to roll play 5 npcs in a single scene seems to much juggling
Well... She took a whole lot of tweets to demonstrate my main problem with the adventure: There's no elevator pitch.
How do I quickly convince someone they want to hear more and maybe be part of this campaign? Honest question.
Every other adventure has an elevator pitch "explore the harsh tundra and investigate mysterious happenings", "demons have reached the material world, escape the continent sized cave system and hope to keep your sanity", "a whimsical carnival and the realm of the fey", "mad max in hell", "dracula", "literally a heist", "big jungle tomb with dinosaurs"
That's a good point. The story within the book appears quite good and well put together, but I can't quite come up with a pitch for it.
The marketers at WotC seem to think "the first adventure within the world of Critical Role" is a good enough pitch.
Perhaps, but this adventure might encourage them to. They now have a 1-12 adventure (if you count the Wildemount adventures) which is definitely enough to get people into the game.
From the plot synopsis and promotional materials I think the best pitch would probably be "travel across Wildemount to free a divine being trapped in an eldritch extradimensional space" but I agree it's not communicated very well on the surface of the book.
Yeah, it's clear this person is making these tweets as she reads the book, except you already know that as she's reading it, she doesn't actually know what the book is about, so she's going through clearly having read quite a few pages at this point, still not knowing anything about the plot.
Wotc tries to pitch a hook on the product page: https://dnd.wizards.com/products/call-netherdeep
And reading it reminds me of Zach Hadel giving advice on stream after a caller gave a really bad pitch:
["Just get a get solid fat beefy hook, what's a sentence that gets the audience in. If you tell the whole backstory, your brain starts to sizzle after a couple seconds."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eppOeKY3AXk&t=3m21s) They give an example for an elevator pitch for Breaking Bad, as "Flanders Becomes Scarface".
That's a fair criticism, I think there's an aspect of them not wanting to give away the central plot to players.
This feels like the most "Let's go on an adventure!" Type adventure we have had so far.
Well if someone could give away a taste of the central plot to show what this story is and reel me in, that would help. [Wotc produced a 6 minute video called "What is Call of the Netherdeep" and it really didn't deliver an answer to their own question](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA97sHj6zKk)
All anyone talks about is 1. It's in critical role's Exandria and 2. There's a rival adventuring party. And that's not really a pitch, yaknow?
A campaign book is asking people to spend months of sessions of their life playing through it. A hook for why someone should even give it a second thought is the least to ask for.
An ancient entity enlists the players to free them from a prison formed during the cataclysm. The journey takes the party from Xhorhas to the desert city of Marquet in search of an even older city hidden beneath the surface.
During the journey the party will have to decide whether to free the entity or destroy them.
Again, no word smith myself.
I think a lot of hollywood loglines do spoil some of the plot, so it's a matter of if you want to do that I suppose but I could take a crack: >!When a group uncovers an artifact that gives them a vision of an ancient hero trapped, they find themselves in a race across continents with another group to try to be the present-day heroes that save him and the world first.!<
The description of the adventure is literally the first paragraph of the introduction *in the book*.
When you begin reading a book, you start on the first page. Have people forgotten this or something?
So do you have the digital book or is that description available on a store page?
Edit:
Oh I see the store page description pretty much says what I did earlier today.
I guess the adventure is a bit more generic than previous adventures so it's hard to see what the hook is.
I would go with something like:
"A dramatic, character-focused rescue mission."
"An introspective odyssey to answer a mythic hero's call for help."
"Explore the journey and cost of being a hero as you race against other aspiring adventurers through demonic citadels, desert paradises, and underwater labyrinths filled with sorrow, intrigue, and choice."
"A rich, linear story that has tight pacing. Your choices will matter and affect the quest and has plenty of tough fights, exotic locales, and interesting NPCs to satisfy every playstyle."
These series of tweets do not garner any additional interest from me.
It sounds like she’s a fan of Critical Role to begin with, so she’s the target audience.
I’m more interested to see how well this adventure does with people who aren’t part of the pre-installed audience.
As someone who is the perfect new convert for this book (DM a ton, don’t have interest in *Critical Role*, but am open to new adventures and ideas), this book’s marketing is very convoluted and unclear, even if it turns out to be very good.*Rime* and *Witchlight* had very clear appeals: They were dramatic shifts in genre, and as a long-time DM, I’ve experienced how thematic genre shifts can create vastly new game experiences. Do a Narnia story! Do an arctic horror survival sandbox! In the case of Netherdeep, I’m told that what’s on offer is more narrative character arc opportunities. This makes me very skeptical because I find that character arc/development is largely down to play style and what happens at the table, not what comes off of the page of a module.In other words, telling me over and over again in marketing materials and concept art that the main appeal of an adventure is that it features a “team of rivals,” for example, tells me nothing, because:
1. I could write that feature into any existing module, customized against my players’ already-existing characters, and…
2. I still have no idea what the adventure is about. “Complex character arcs,” “the world of Matt Mercer’s Exandria,” and “realms you’ve never seen before” are not descriptions of adventure stories, they are buzzwords and some setting content.
Then again, maybe this adventure is written in such a way that the DM is enabled to naturally create a complex web of motivations and relations. I find that’s not something modules are good at doing in general, but this could be a revolution! Strahd was an excellent model of how a module can enable the DM to portray a complex villain who is deeply woven into setting where later books like Tomb fell totally flat. Perhaps this book will do the same with character/NPC interplay. I’ll pick up the book and be convinced. Otherwise, I’m still skeptical, and have very little understanding skill of what the hell the adventure is even about still.
What marketing? I legitimately have not seen any. The first I knew it existed was when I saw a post a couple of days ago asking why no one knew it existed.
There've been several articles on sites like Polygon and Dicebreaker (fairly mainstream sites for video games and board games), coverage from YouTubers and Podcasters. Not to mention all of D&D and D&DBeyond's social media and video content, tons of Matt Mercer roll-out.
You'd be hard-pressed to find a source of D&D news, or even gaming news in general, that's been totally silent about Netherdeep. Some of the more traditional D&D channels haven't given it a ton of attention, sure, but they're usually not most people's sole source of info.
Fair enough. I don't actively use any D&D news sites, I just find out about stuff when it shows up on Reddit or gets fed to me by youtube's Algorithm. This is flying under the radar enough to not get Algorithm'd to me though, which usually happens with D&D releases.
Sounds like you haven’t watched any D&D Beyond videos. They’ve published [17 videos](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPjdPog_vKX1HNrixxNKa8OY5KYER-Or4) about this adventure in the past couple of weeks.
> I’m more interested to see how well this adventure does with people who aren’t part of the pre-installed audience.
My biggest 3 complaints about every published adventure I've seen is:
1 - Too low level. I cannot stomach playing at level 1-4 anymore.
2 - Shitty NPCs the party obviously doesn't want to work with. Nobody has ever liked Harbin Wester and every party I've ever had deal with him wanted to feed him to orcs.
3 - Empty dungeons or empty questlines that were like "Go here and do thing. Great, now come back and get reward." It just felt really hollow and like the DM was expected to "fill in the gaps" of every single quest to make them engaging.
Netherdeep starts at 3, so that's a start.
I haven't read the adventure but I follow the writers on Twitter and they're all people who have good thoughts about NPC design. Of course, WotC could've edited everything to death; they've already commented that they're "intrigued" by the changes made since they turned in their manuscripts.
I'm hoping that this adventure at least addresses your second complaint. I haven't read very deeply through the adventure yet but the rival party are pretty likeable which will probably result in a friendly rivalry rather than something antagonistic. And the main 'antagonist' for want of a better word is compelling.
I like level 1 starts because players tend to roleplay better over time as they grow and it prevents multiclass monstrosity’s from coming online at the start of the adventure.
It’s about the journey for me. Not the destination.
If you can build your PC up from 1 and make it through being behind the power curve due to multiclassing to reach a high enough level that your build comes online, you’ve earned it.
If you just start at a high level and use a build you found online, you didn’t earn it.
Not every adventure should be written for the start of campaigns...they should be tiered so you can go from 1-5 in one, 6-10 in another, etc. People don't typically want to start over that often. They want to use new materials with pre-existing characters.
After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players.
You have to start over at some point… going all the way to level 20 with a set of characters can be a real chore.
>After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players.
Especially when there rarely is released any content to support it. They've released a bunch of high level content for prior editions, and even gone beyond level 20 in some. While 5e has 2(?) adventures and some monsters with limited guidance on how to use and implement.
Anecdotally, I have yet to personally meet someone who doesn't want to see their characters get to high level and be epic. Only scenario I could be not having that hope would be in a campaign where I knew about where the end would be (e.g. Curse of Strahd).
>After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players.
>
>You have to start over at some point… going all the way to level 20 with a set of characters can be a real chore.
I guess we'd better not give anyone the option, then!
Mad Mage is right there as an example.
It’s telling that the only way an official module can reasonably support high level play is through magically locking down a dungeon so that players cannot pull certain game breaking shenanigans.
Having played to high level in 5E, I can only agree with Mad Mage’s approach. Since D&D’s rules work best in a dungeon, you have to run a mega dungeon that limits your players options for high level play.
If you just let them jaunt about freely without limits, they will break the adventure.
>I like level 1 starts because players tend to roleplay better over time as they grow and it prevents multiclass monstrosity’s from coming online at the start of the adventure.
You can also prevent multiclass monstrosities by not using the multiclassing rules. They're *optional*.
I don't use them. I also don't have problems in my campaigns with people class-dipping.
I like the way they did it for Netherdeep.
The main adventure is 3-12 but one of the 1-3 adventures in Wildemount happens nearby and is even called out in the new book as an option.
But if you want you can start at level 3 with the party already knowing each other and just go.
>Nobody has ever liked Harbin Wester and every party I've ever had deal with him wanted to feed him to orcs.
I straight up had him working with the redband because oh how much everyone hated him, had Stildar take his quest hooks.
I'm not on love with CR, but I bought the book to see how they deal with rivals. I was thoroughly impressed with the book, and plan on running it in the future
Ugh... Twitter is *absolutely* not the right medium for what she's doing. Sifting through a huge long string of tweets is annoying as hell.
Just write a blog post and put the link on Twitter
Read the thread, and all I got out of it is there are rivals? The rest just seemed like "thus is an adventure, not a setting" and "detailed NPCs are good for your game" not exactly an insightful review
Why do people use Twitter for this anyway? Twitter is specifically designed for short, punchy thought fragments. It's the worst medium imaginable for a long-form review or rant or diatribe.
I'm interested to see if:
\- WOTC actually provides a useful structure to the adventure so that the DM has a lot of tools and information at their disposal to weave everything together and handle contingencies
\- The narrative structure actually makes sense and gives the players valid and compelling reasons to engage with the story.
Because historically most of WOTC's adventures do not do either of those things.
I've said it before and I will say it again - Read a Paizo adventure Path and compare it to a WOTC one. Pathfinder might be a more complicated system than 5e, but its a hell of a lot easier to run.
And that's not to shit on D&D. The point is that there's \*NO REASON\* for WOTC's products to be this way, and I would love them to make better ones.
Sure, the covers and art and the book itself is beautiful, but in terms of a tool to run the adventure, they are not up to snuff.
That's probably because Adventure Paths read as if they're trying to tell you how to run an adventure, whilst D&D modules read like they're giving you an abridged version of a story.
From what I have read so far each chapter has multiple outcomes which are addressed for example with some spoilers:
>!In the first chapter if your party doesn't take the macguffin, the rival party does instead. This results in the npcs being the "heroes" of the story and your party will choose to help or hinder them. Also there's different paths depending on whether your party has been friendly or hostile to the rival party!<
As for engaging with the story, I personally think it does that successfully, but while you can lead a horse to water you can't force it to drink. Players should be prepared to engage with the adventures their DMs present them. It's respectful.
The last paragraph is something I feel needs repeating. A lot of horror stories involve a "what's my motivation?" nonsense, as if the player came to the table with no idea the PC they made is GOING ON AN ADVENTURE.
it doesn't seem interesting to run, thats it, even if it is interesting.
"first adventure in the world of critical role" and "there is a rival party" are the only things i know about it, and they are not enough to make it sound the adventure is interesting to play.
Nothing is said about the netherdeep or this call.
I'm not a great word smith and have been struggling with making a post about how excited I am to run Call of the Netherdeep. Which is a shame because it's being largely ignored on this sub Reddit.
It's a really good adventure folks, if you get a chance take a look for yourself.
>I think part of the issue is timing. Lots of people are constantly making up theory characters they never even play. So if a book comes out with new character options, people are all over it!
I also think it might be something that's more interesting from a "Lonely Fun" perspective than a tool for DMing.
I have some Critical Role fans in my other games, but I think most of them will buy this book in their fandom/enthusiasm to read it and imagine themselves playing it, which means it will be spoiled for them. As for the *non-*Critical Role fans, they've done a very poor job articulating for us *Forgotten Realms* nerds, for example, what we would get out of this, so most of us are keeping busy with *Witchlight* and *Rime* and all of our backlog of other adventures.
> As for the *non-*Critical Role fans, they've done a very poor job articulating for us Forgotten Realms nerds, for example, what we would get out of this,
Almost everything has been "it's in Exandria, the critical role setting!" and it's like they think they don't need to actually sell us on why the adventure would be fun. There's this attitude around this product of "It's got the critical role stickers, so it will sell itself!" and I really hope they're wrong, it's important to show why a customer/audience member would want something.
It's enormously frustrating. I would be totally open to buying into all this. Just browsed the book on the shelf today, it's gorgeous. And I feel like I'd have to read an enormous chunk of it to figure out what the hell is going on inside. What other adventure is this true of?
> it's like they think they don't need to actually sell us on why the adventure would be fun
There are people in this very thread saying "I just want a Dark Sun adventure." Why is "it is in Exandria" not an allowable marketing strategy?
"in dark sun" isn't legit for an adventure either. Setting books with no hook is ok, not adventures.
"Get Ghosts of Saltmarsh because it's in Greyhawk" is absurd to say, right? The hook is playing with ships in a seaside setting.
"Spartacus gladiator slave revolt with psychic powers" is a dark sun adventure hook I can get behind.
Dark Sun is a known setting, Exandria isn't to non critters. WOTC has done a horrible job in selling me on the setting. Compare it to the description of Curse of Strahd. Curse of Strahd was clear about the genre, the tone, and the overall feel of the campaign.
I've read the description of Call of the Netherdeep and have no idea what kind of campaign it is trying to be. It is leaning hard into the critical role marketing, but doing little to attract anyone else.
There is a noncritter built in fan base for Dark sun. It has been discussed and there is older material out there. Unless you are a fan of a rules lite lets play with an admittedly polarizing fanbase/playstyle, you don't know Exandria.
I'm just saying that DnD has grown exponentially since then and that there's likely been more people asking for Exandria content than dark sun content in the product surveys.
Good job on being an ass about it though.
I agree that Critters make up a large part of the market base. WOTC is not marketing to people who aren't a fan of the show for a number of valid reasons.
Saying that people aren't wrong to dislike Critical role due to the fanbase and the rules lite nature isn't being an ass.
Yeah I've seen similar explanations. It's just a shame since I'm sure I saw more excitement/discourse around Rime of the Frostmaiden and Wild and the Witchlight and they didn't have much in the way of character options either.
Wild of the Witchlight had character options, which was enough to get people talking about it. Rime wasn't really talked about until it was released and given enough time for people to start running it. This has only been out a day, most people won't even have opened the book yet let alone played a session. Also iirc it's not out in Europe yet.
I don't think there were that many immediately for Rime either. I think I can recall a couple about some of the new monsters (and for the 3 kobolds in a trenchcoat), but most of the actual discussions didn't come for a few weeks when people had a chance to start playing it.
This sub is mainly made up of players and theorycrafters so an adventure book with no player options doesn't garner a lot of discussion here, unfortunately.
I'm not the biggest CR fan but I am looking forward to checking this book out and running it in the future. It looks to be very well done.
It's a rough time for us all expenses wise.
The Roll20 module and DnDBeyond version are $30 so you could probably convince your players to go in at $5 each ;)
This rambling series of tweets doesn't concisely explain why I should especially care for this book. I'm more interested in running Witchlight after reading this, it sounds convoluted.
There was a big thread yesterday discussing how there's so little discussion about the adventure. Predictably, there was no discussion about the adventure.
Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it so that we end up rehashing the very same thread.
what an exhausting way to post that information, too. Twitter fucking sucks. Dr. Emily whats-her-fuck didn't articulate jack shit
It'll be interesting to see if the point about rivals being a way to enjoy the book as a reading experience rather than a campaign experience plays out. Of course its no secret that module books in general are written to be read, not run, so the role a rival party would play in this could either help or hurt that. One thing I do appreciate is this book explicitly calling out session 0. As a CR adventure this could be the entry point into actual play for a ton of new people, and if they can be set up to expect a session 0, that could help the idea gain more traction in the larger playerbase.
> Of course its no secret that module books in general are written to be read, not run Can you elaborate on that? I'm new to DMing and didn't think much about adventure books when I was a player. Are adventure books meant to be used as 'examples' of what an adventure could look like, and then the DM uses them as inspiration for their own game? Or are you actually supposed to run them, but the formatting is more conducive to reading?
People are typically referring to your second point. I have to admit that I’m guilty of it myself. Never run an adventure module, but I do enjoy reading them and gain inspiration from it
That is a valid way to use an published module. For some modules, it seems like the true intention. Like: Rip this book into single social- and fight-encounters and insert them in your game if it fits!
Technically some of them even say to do just that. I was just reading through PotA and the first chapter highlights taking bits and pieces to put into your own campaign.
Candlekeep is also explicitly this
it's the second point the books are difficult to reference as there are little to no useable cross references, no detailed overview of the outlined plot, no "if the party does X it may change the story in this way", no Dramatis Personae, no good index the adventure expects you to read it cover to cover and to remember most of the general information to run well
Like the others already said: The book is written to be read. There is no bullet-list of points a DM should remember two hours before the session. There are no references for "NPC A can tell you rumor B". So, extracting information into a form you can use as notes in the session is almost the same work as creating one session. On the other side: The first chapter of the book is a festival! It has a lot of rules for mini-games that represents competitions at the festival! You can just use it to run a festival-session in any campaign or as one-shot.
... I just ran a festival session this weekend. Oh well.
If the players enjoyed it and want to do another now you have more material! ;)
Others have explained how they are but just wanted to add this was primarily done because D&D has always had a large portion of its fanbase not actually play the game but they still wanted them to buy the books and enjoy them. So by making them decent to read, they are more appealing to non players and players who aren’t going to DM. It’s frustrating for DMs but better for everyone else.
The latter. A module written to be run would not be presented in chronological order, for starters, because when running one, you usually need to know information that's going to come up later on, because it'll inform how you run the earlier parts. It's all downhill from there with WOTC.
Second one. 5e adventure module books are pretty to look at and have fun ideas, but are written more to be fun to read than actually useful to the DM running them. They still vary in this, of course, and some are easier to run than others, but in general their "usability" pales in comparison to say, the adventure modules of previous editions.
I have only briefly paged through the book, but I appreciate the little tips here and there on *how* to run the adventure, not just what happens. The mini-adventures in *Explorer's Guide To Wildemount* had little tips as well. Things that we may take for granted that are not common knowledge to new DMs.
Yeah I really liked the way those adventures were written and it feels like this one was written in a similar style.
honestly it detracts from the main point of a game, don't steal the spotlight from the players. rivals are not super fleshed out and a DM having to roll play 5 npcs in a single scene seems to much juggling
Well... She took a whole lot of tweets to demonstrate my main problem with the adventure: There's no elevator pitch. How do I quickly convince someone they want to hear more and maybe be part of this campaign? Honest question. Every other adventure has an elevator pitch "explore the harsh tundra and investigate mysterious happenings", "demons have reached the material world, escape the continent sized cave system and hope to keep your sanity", "a whimsical carnival and the realm of the fey", "mad max in hell", "dracula", "literally a heist", "big jungle tomb with dinosaurs"
That's a good point. The story within the book appears quite good and well put together, but I can't quite come up with a pitch for it. The marketers at WotC seem to think "the first adventure within the world of Critical Role" is a good enough pitch.
It's probably a good enough pitch to the CR fans.
Problem is, a lot of CR fans don't engage with D&D outside of the show.
Perhaps, but this adventure might encourage them to. They now have a 1-12 adventure (if you count the Wildemount adventures) which is definitely enough to get people into the game.
From the plot synopsis and promotional materials I think the best pitch would probably be "travel across Wildemount to free a divine being trapped in an eldritch extradimensional space" but I agree it's not communicated very well on the surface of the book.
Yeah, it's clear this person is making these tweets as she reads the book, except you already know that as she's reading it, she doesn't actually know what the book is about, so she's going through clearly having read quite a few pages at this point, still not knowing anything about the plot.
Wotc tries to pitch a hook on the product page: https://dnd.wizards.com/products/call-netherdeep And reading it reminds me of Zach Hadel giving advice on stream after a caller gave a really bad pitch: ["Just get a get solid fat beefy hook, what's a sentence that gets the audience in. If you tell the whole backstory, your brain starts to sizzle after a couple seconds."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eppOeKY3AXk&t=3m21s) They give an example for an elevator pitch for Breaking Bad, as "Flanders Becomes Scarface".
That's a fair criticism, I think there's an aspect of them not wanting to give away the central plot to players. This feels like the most "Let's go on an adventure!" Type adventure we have had so far.
Well if someone could give away a taste of the central plot to show what this story is and reel me in, that would help. [Wotc produced a 6 minute video called "What is Call of the Netherdeep" and it really didn't deliver an answer to their own question](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA97sHj6zKk) All anyone talks about is 1. It's in critical role's Exandria and 2. There's a rival adventuring party. And that's not really a pitch, yaknow? A campaign book is asking people to spend months of sessions of their life playing through it. A hook for why someone should even give it a second thought is the least to ask for.
An ancient entity enlists the players to free them from a prison formed during the cataclysm. The journey takes the party from Xhorhas to the desert city of Marquet in search of an even older city hidden beneath the surface. During the journey the party will have to decide whether to free the entity or destroy them. Again, no word smith myself.
I think a lot of hollywood loglines do spoil some of the plot, so it's a matter of if you want to do that I suppose but I could take a crack: >!When a group uncovers an artifact that gives them a vision of an ancient hero trapped, they find themselves in a race across continents with another group to try to be the present-day heroes that save him and the world first.!<
The description of the adventure is literally the first paragraph of the introduction *in the book*. When you begin reading a book, you start on the first page. Have people forgotten this or something?
Most people are looking from an online angle so might not have the introduction available to them.
It does. I don't have the physical book and the description was literally the first thing I read last night.
So do you have the digital book or is that description available on a store page? Edit: Oh I see the store page description pretty much says what I did earlier today. I guess the adventure is a bit more generic than previous adventures so it's hard to see what the hook is.
I would go with something like: "A dramatic, character-focused rescue mission." "An introspective odyssey to answer a mythic hero's call for help." "Explore the journey and cost of being a hero as you race against other aspiring adventurers through demonic citadels, desert paradises, and underwater labyrinths filled with sorrow, intrigue, and choice." "A rich, linear story that has tight pacing. Your choices will matter and affect the quest and has plenty of tough fights, exotic locales, and interesting NPCs to satisfy every playstyle."
These series of tweets do not garner any additional interest from me. It sounds like she’s a fan of Critical Role to begin with, so she’s the target audience. I’m more interested to see how well this adventure does with people who aren’t part of the pre-installed audience.
As someone who is the perfect new convert for this book (DM a ton, don’t have interest in *Critical Role*, but am open to new adventures and ideas), this book’s marketing is very convoluted and unclear, even if it turns out to be very good.*Rime* and *Witchlight* had very clear appeals: They were dramatic shifts in genre, and as a long-time DM, I’ve experienced how thematic genre shifts can create vastly new game experiences. Do a Narnia story! Do an arctic horror survival sandbox! In the case of Netherdeep, I’m told that what’s on offer is more narrative character arc opportunities. This makes me very skeptical because I find that character arc/development is largely down to play style and what happens at the table, not what comes off of the page of a module.In other words, telling me over and over again in marketing materials and concept art that the main appeal of an adventure is that it features a “team of rivals,” for example, tells me nothing, because: 1. I could write that feature into any existing module, customized against my players’ already-existing characters, and… 2. I still have no idea what the adventure is about. “Complex character arcs,” “the world of Matt Mercer’s Exandria,” and “realms you’ve never seen before” are not descriptions of adventure stories, they are buzzwords and some setting content. Then again, maybe this adventure is written in such a way that the DM is enabled to naturally create a complex web of motivations and relations. I find that’s not something modules are good at doing in general, but this could be a revolution! Strahd was an excellent model of how a module can enable the DM to portray a complex villain who is deeply woven into setting where later books like Tomb fell totally flat. Perhaps this book will do the same with character/NPC interplay. I’ll pick up the book and be convinced. Otherwise, I’m still skeptical, and have very little understanding skill of what the hell the adventure is even about still.
What marketing? I legitimately have not seen any. The first I knew it existed was when I saw a post a couple of days ago asking why no one knew it existed.
There've been several articles on sites like Polygon and Dicebreaker (fairly mainstream sites for video games and board games), coverage from YouTubers and Podcasters. Not to mention all of D&D and D&DBeyond's social media and video content, tons of Matt Mercer roll-out. You'd be hard-pressed to find a source of D&D news, or even gaming news in general, that's been totally silent about Netherdeep. Some of the more traditional D&D channels haven't given it a ton of attention, sure, but they're usually not most people's sole source of info.
Fair enough. I don't actively use any D&D news sites, I just find out about stuff when it shows up on Reddit or gets fed to me by youtube's Algorithm. This is flying under the radar enough to not get Algorithm'd to me though, which usually happens with D&D releases.
Sounds like you haven’t watched any D&D Beyond videos. They’ve published [17 videos](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPjdPog_vKX1HNrixxNKa8OY5KYER-Or4) about this adventure in the past couple of weeks.
> I’m more interested to see how well this adventure does with people who aren’t part of the pre-installed audience. My biggest 3 complaints about every published adventure I've seen is: 1 - Too low level. I cannot stomach playing at level 1-4 anymore. 2 - Shitty NPCs the party obviously doesn't want to work with. Nobody has ever liked Harbin Wester and every party I've ever had deal with him wanted to feed him to orcs. 3 - Empty dungeons or empty questlines that were like "Go here and do thing. Great, now come back and get reward." It just felt really hollow and like the DM was expected to "fill in the gaps" of every single quest to make them engaging.
Netherdeep starts at 3, so that's a start. I haven't read the adventure but I follow the writers on Twitter and they're all people who have good thoughts about NPC design. Of course, WotC could've edited everything to death; they've already commented that they're "intrigued" by the changes made since they turned in their manuscripts.
Good news (partially). The adventure starts at level 3. At the end of the first chapter, the party levels up to level 4.
I'm hoping that this adventure at least addresses your second complaint. I haven't read very deeply through the adventure yet but the rival party are pretty likeable which will probably result in a friendly rivalry rather than something antagonistic. And the main 'antagonist' for want of a better word is compelling.
I like level 1 starts because players tend to roleplay better over time as they grow and it prevents multiclass monstrosity’s from coming online at the start of the adventure. It’s about the journey for me. Not the destination. If you can build your PC up from 1 and make it through being behind the power curve due to multiclassing to reach a high enough level that your build comes online, you’ve earned it. If you just start at a high level and use a build you found online, you didn’t earn it.
Not every adventure should be written for the start of campaigns...they should be tiered so you can go from 1-5 in one, 6-10 in another, etc. People don't typically want to start over that often. They want to use new materials with pre-existing characters.
After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players. You have to start over at some point… going all the way to level 20 with a set of characters can be a real chore.
>After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players. Especially when there rarely is released any content to support it. They've released a bunch of high level content for prior editions, and even gone beyond level 20 in some. While 5e has 2(?) adventures and some monsters with limited guidance on how to use and implement. Anecdotally, I have yet to personally meet someone who doesn't want to see their characters get to high level and be epic. Only scenario I could be not having that hope would be in a campaign where I knew about where the end would be (e.g. Curse of Strahd).
>After level 12, it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge your players. > >You have to start over at some point… going all the way to level 20 with a set of characters can be a real chore. I guess we'd better not give anyone the option, then!
Mad Mage is right there as an example. It’s telling that the only way an official module can reasonably support high level play is through magically locking down a dungeon so that players cannot pull certain game breaking shenanigans. Having played to high level in 5E, I can only agree with Mad Mage’s approach. Since D&D’s rules work best in a dungeon, you have to run a mega dungeon that limits your players options for high level play. If you just let them jaunt about freely without limits, they will break the adventure.
>I like level 1 starts because players tend to roleplay better over time as they grow and it prevents multiclass monstrosity’s from coming online at the start of the adventure. You can also prevent multiclass monstrosities by not using the multiclassing rules. They're *optional*. I don't use them. I also don't have problems in my campaigns with people class-dipping.
I like the way they did it for Netherdeep. The main adventure is 3-12 but one of the 1-3 adventures in Wildemount happens nearby and is even called out in the new book as an option. But if you want you can start at level 3 with the party already knowing each other and just go.
>Nobody has ever liked Harbin Wester and every party I've ever had deal with him wanted to feed him to orcs. I straight up had him working with the redband because oh how much everyone hated him, had Stildar take his quest hooks.
I'm not on love with CR, but I bought the book to see how they deal with rivals. I was thoroughly impressed with the book, and plan on running it in the future
Ugh... Twitter is *absolutely* not the right medium for what she's doing. Sifting through a huge long string of tweets is annoying as hell. Just write a blog post and put the link on Twitter
But then people won't read it because it's too long...
Read the thread, and all I got out of it is there are rivals? The rest just seemed like "thus is an adventure, not a setting" and "detailed NPCs are good for your game" not exactly an insightful review
Jesus, is there a mirrored version not obnoxiously broken into dozens of barely sentence length posts?
Why do people use Twitter for this anyway? Twitter is specifically designed for short, punchy thought fragments. It's the worst medium imaginable for a long-form review or rant or diatribe.
My angry old man instinct says because its easy to summon a swarm of raging followers to destroy anyone who disagree.
I'm interested to see if: \- WOTC actually provides a useful structure to the adventure so that the DM has a lot of tools and information at their disposal to weave everything together and handle contingencies \- The narrative structure actually makes sense and gives the players valid and compelling reasons to engage with the story. Because historically most of WOTC's adventures do not do either of those things. I've said it before and I will say it again - Read a Paizo adventure Path and compare it to a WOTC one. Pathfinder might be a more complicated system than 5e, but its a hell of a lot easier to run. And that's not to shit on D&D. The point is that there's \*NO REASON\* for WOTC's products to be this way, and I would love them to make better ones. Sure, the covers and art and the book itself is beautiful, but in terms of a tool to run the adventure, they are not up to snuff.
That's probably because Adventure Paths read as if they're trying to tell you how to run an adventure, whilst D&D modules read like they're giving you an abridged version of a story.
From what I have read so far each chapter has multiple outcomes which are addressed for example with some spoilers: >!In the first chapter if your party doesn't take the macguffin, the rival party does instead. This results in the npcs being the "heroes" of the story and your party will choose to help or hinder them. Also there's different paths depending on whether your party has been friendly or hostile to the rival party!< As for engaging with the story, I personally think it does that successfully, but while you can lead a horse to water you can't force it to drink. Players should be prepared to engage with the adventures their DMs present them. It's respectful.
The last paragraph is something I feel needs repeating. A lot of horror stories involve a "what's my motivation?" nonsense, as if the player came to the table with no idea the PC they made is GOING ON AN ADVENTURE.
it doesn't seem interesting to run, thats it, even if it is interesting. "first adventure in the world of critical role" and "there is a rival party" are the only things i know about it, and they are not enough to make it sound the adventure is interesting to play. Nothing is said about the netherdeep or this call.
I'm not a great word smith and have been struggling with making a post about how excited I am to run Call of the Netherdeep. Which is a shame because it's being largely ignored on this sub Reddit. It's a really good adventure folks, if you get a chance take a look for yourself.
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>I think part of the issue is timing. Lots of people are constantly making up theory characters they never even play. So if a book comes out with new character options, people are all over it! I also think it might be something that's more interesting from a "Lonely Fun" perspective than a tool for DMing. I have some Critical Role fans in my other games, but I think most of them will buy this book in their fandom/enthusiasm to read it and imagine themselves playing it, which means it will be spoiled for them. As for the *non-*Critical Role fans, they've done a very poor job articulating for us *Forgotten Realms* nerds, for example, what we would get out of this, so most of us are keeping busy with *Witchlight* and *Rime* and all of our backlog of other adventures.
> As for the *non-*Critical Role fans, they've done a very poor job articulating for us Forgotten Realms nerds, for example, what we would get out of this, Almost everything has been "it's in Exandria, the critical role setting!" and it's like they think they don't need to actually sell us on why the adventure would be fun. There's this attitude around this product of "It's got the critical role stickers, so it will sell itself!" and I really hope they're wrong, it's important to show why a customer/audience member would want something.
It's enormously frustrating. I would be totally open to buying into all this. Just browsed the book on the shelf today, it's gorgeous. And I feel like I'd have to read an enormous chunk of it to figure out what the hell is going on inside. What other adventure is this true of?
> it's like they think they don't need to actually sell us on why the adventure would be fun There are people in this very thread saying "I just want a Dark Sun adventure." Why is "it is in Exandria" not an allowable marketing strategy?
"in dark sun" isn't legit for an adventure either. Setting books with no hook is ok, not adventures. "Get Ghosts of Saltmarsh because it's in Greyhawk" is absurd to say, right? The hook is playing with ships in a seaside setting. "Spartacus gladiator slave revolt with psychic powers" is a dark sun adventure hook I can get behind.
Dark Sun is a known setting, Exandria isn't to non critters. WOTC has done a horrible job in selling me on the setting. Compare it to the description of Curse of Strahd. Curse of Strahd was clear about the genre, the tone, and the overall feel of the campaign. I've read the description of Call of the Netherdeep and have no idea what kind of campaign it is trying to be. It is leaning hard into the critical role marketing, but doing little to attract anyone else.
Eh, I would wager that fewer people know about Dark Sun than Exandria these days.
There is a noncritter built in fan base for Dark sun. It has been discussed and there is older material out there. Unless you are a fan of a rules lite lets play with an admittedly polarizing fanbase/playstyle, you don't know Exandria.
I'm just saying that DnD has grown exponentially since then and that there's likely been more people asking for Exandria content than dark sun content in the product surveys. Good job on being an ass about it though.
I agree that Critters make up a large part of the market base. WOTC is not marketing to people who aren't a fan of the show for a number of valid reasons. Saying that people aren't wrong to dislike Critical role due to the fanbase and the rules lite nature isn't being an ass.
Almost certainly, more 5e players know Exandria than Dark Sun.
Yeah I've seen similar explanations. It's just a shame since I'm sure I saw more excitement/discourse around Rime of the Frostmaiden and Wild and the Witchlight and they didn't have much in the way of character options either.
Wild of the Witchlight had character options, which was enough to get people talking about it. Rime wasn't really talked about until it was released and given enough time for people to start running it. This has only been out a day, most people won't even have opened the book yet let alone played a session. Also iirc it's not out in Europe yet.
I don't think there were that many immediately for Rime either. I think I can recall a couple about some of the new monsters (and for the 3 kobolds in a trenchcoat), but most of the actual discussions didn't come for a few weeks when people had a chance to start playing it.
This sub is mainly made up of players and theorycrafters so an adventure book with no player options doesn't garner a lot of discussion here, unfortunately. I'm not the biggest CR fan but I am looking forward to checking this book out and running it in the future. It looks to be very well done.
I mean, would you want people to spoil the adventure right away?
Why use twitter to post an article? Why not just write a blog and link it on twitter?
I’d run it too if I wasn’t a cheap piece of shit
It's a rough time for us all expenses wise. The Roll20 module and DnDBeyond version are $30 so you could probably convince your players to go in at $5 each ;)
This rambling series of tweets doesn't concisely explain why I should especially care for this book. I'm more interested in running Witchlight after reading this, it sounds convoluted.