D&D 5E Princes of the Apocalypse Retrospective
- Thread starter Zardnaar
- Start date
pukunui
Legend
I wasn't that fond of it as a campaign when it first came out. I was concerned it would end up being too repetitive. However, I have used parts of it in other campaigns to great effect. The "Trouble in Red Larch" starter adventure is my Village of Hommlet. I love it, and I've used it several times to start non-PotA campaigns.
On top of that, I've been rather disappointed with some of the newer adventures and as a result have started regarding the older ones more fondly. Lately I've found myself considering running PotA as an actual campaign ... or, at the very least, tacking it on to the end of my current campaign (which is a mashup of the Acq Inc Orrery of the Wanderer adventure and Storm King's Thunder).
On top of that, I've been rather disappointed with some of the newer adventures and as a result have started regarding the older ones more fondly. Lately I've found myself considering running PotA as an actual campaign ... or, at the very least, tacking it on to the end of my current campaign (which is a mashup of the Acq Inc Orrery of the Wanderer adventure and Storm King's Thunder).
Zardnaar
Legend
That's part of it. A few meh adventures are retroactively making PotA look better.
It's also a great sourcebook for hacking imho.
I've run through most of it (the PCs were in the early parts of the Weeping Colossus level, getting close to facing the final Prophet and Imix, when we put the campaign on hold because we switched to online gaming on account of Covid), and I'm mostly not a fan. There are some cool elements (heh) there, but I think the dungeons are too big, and too connected into a single 9-level megadungeon with four different entrances. Since there aren't really any natural divisions other than stairs, it all feels very much like a long slog.
I'd rather have seen a situation where the different elemental temples were (a) smaller and (b) in different locations, which would create natural breaks in the action (which would then give the DM the opportunity to use the side treks more than I felt would be natural). That would also provide an opportunity to make the path to the temples adventures in themselves. Perhaps you need to ally with a goliath tribe to learn the location of the air temple located on a mountain peak, or do some underwater exploring to find the coastal entrance to the water temple.
Basically, think of how Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time works. The dungeons in the game are certainly the stars of the show, but there's usually a bunch of stuff you need to do before you can get to them. For example, before you can get to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly (the game's third dungeon), you must find Zora's domain, interact with the Zoras, learn that their princess is missing, get the ability to dive deeper via a mini-game, use that to travel through a portal to Lake Hylia, find a message in a bottle there from said princess saying she was stuck in the belly of the giant fish-god Jabu-Jabu, and then show that message to King Zora so he will give you access to the fish-god. Then you can get to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly. That's a lot more fun than teleportation straight from Dodongo's Cavern to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly would have been, which is basically what you have with Princes of the Apocalypse.
Now, Ocarina of Time is certainly more puzzle-oriented than typical D&D campaigns so I'm not suggesting one should use a sequence like this literally. I'm just saying that a bit of breathing in between dungeons is good for the soul. Oh, and the dungeons should be smaller – just as an example, the Temple of the Crushing Wave has about 18 encounters in it, which is at least double and maybe more like four times as many as a dungeon ought to have.
I'd rather have seen a situation where the different elemental temples were (a) smaller and (b) in different locations, which would create natural breaks in the action (which would then give the DM the opportunity to use the side treks more than I felt would be natural). That would also provide an opportunity to make the path to the temples adventures in themselves. Perhaps you need to ally with a goliath tribe to learn the location of the air temple located on a mountain peak, or do some underwater exploring to find the coastal entrance to the water temple.
Basically, think of how Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time works. The dungeons in the game are certainly the stars of the show, but there's usually a bunch of stuff you need to do before you can get to them. For example, before you can get to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly (the game's third dungeon), you must find Zora's domain, interact with the Zoras, learn that their princess is missing, get the ability to dive deeper via a mini-game, use that to travel through a portal to Lake Hylia, find a message in a bottle there from said princess saying she was stuck in the belly of the giant fish-god Jabu-Jabu, and then show that message to King Zora so he will give you access to the fish-god. Then you can get to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly. That's a lot more fun than teleportation straight from Dodongo's Cavern to Inside Jabu-Jabu's Belly would have been, which is basically what you have with Princes of the Apocalypse.
Now, Ocarina of Time is certainly more puzzle-oriented than typical D&D campaigns so I'm not suggesting one should use a sequence like this literally. I'm just saying that a bit of breathing in between dungeons is good for the soul. Oh, and the dungeons should be smaller – just as an example, the Temple of the Crushing Wave has about 18 encounters in it, which is at least double and maybe more like four times as many as a dungeon ought to have.
Tales and Chronicles
Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
Came to say exactly this:
I love this adventure because of the Zelda's elemental temples theme. It is spot on. I just run them with a little more ''fun house'' element taken from things like White Plume Mountain and other gonzo dungeons.
Princes of the Apocalypse, for me, still sits near the bottom of the hardcover Wizards adventures. But it sits well above the line of "would never play again".
There's only one that sits below that line - Descent into Avernus - which I consider unbelievably horrible.
Princes has two basic structural problems:
The first is that it doesn't finish the initial hook well. That hook is "find the missing delegation". And while it starts strongly, it then sort of sits around while you go through encounter after encounter that don't progress that quest. There need to be more clues about the fate of the final few delegates.
The second is that it has too big a level jump between when you might discover the temples and when you can enter the temples. Some groups can find the first of the Keeps, then immediately discover the Temples. Which are written for level 7+, but the PCs are level 4. Story-wise, there's no reason to enter the Temples - in fact, the story demands it. And so getting slaughtered when you try to go in is a bad look.
It's this problem which you can get with a sandbox design while overlaying a structured quest on top of it. You really need to be careful, and Princes doesn't manage that well.
Against that, there is a lot to like in the adventure. I love the Keeps. The Temples have lots of interesting encounters. And I absolutely admire how the cults you don't deal with keep causing problems in the world above as the story progresses. There is so much good material here!
(I just wish I had a better handle for what they're doing when the adventurers aren't disrupting their plans).
I'd happily run the adventure again, and try to ameliorate the problems I have with it, which is more than I'd say for Descent. The problem is that I'm not entirely sure how to fix those problems. I think Dragon Heist has a host of problems, but I can fix those easily by making up more stuff and I have run it several times successfully. Princes? I'm not quite so sure.
(Out of the Abyss? Most of the problems I have with that adventure can be fixed by "rocks fall, the NPCs die"!)
Cheers!
There's only one that sits below that line - Descent into Avernus - which I consider unbelievably horrible.
Princes has two basic structural problems:
The first is that it doesn't finish the initial hook well. That hook is "find the missing delegation". And while it starts strongly, it then sort of sits around while you go through encounter after encounter that don't progress that quest. There need to be more clues about the fate of the final few delegates.
The second is that it has too big a level jump between when you might discover the temples and when you can enter the temples. Some groups can find the first of the Keeps, then immediately discover the Temples. Which are written for level 7+, but the PCs are level 4. Story-wise, there's no reason to enter the Temples - in fact, the story demands it. And so getting slaughtered when you try to go in is a bad look.
It's this problem which you can get with a sandbox design while overlaying a structured quest on top of it. You really need to be careful, and Princes doesn't manage that well.
Against that, there is a lot to like in the adventure. I love the Keeps. The Temples have lots of interesting encounters. And I absolutely admire how the cults you don't deal with keep causing problems in the world above as the story progresses. There is so much good material here!
(I just wish I had a better handle for what they're doing when the adventurers aren't disrupting their plans).
I'd happily run the adventure again, and try to ameliorate the problems I have with it, which is more than I'd say for Descent. The problem is that I'm not entirely sure how to fix those problems. I think Dragon Heist has a host of problems, but I can fix those easily by making up more stuff and I have run it several times successfully. Princes? I'm not quite so sure.
(Out of the Abyss? Most of the problems I have with that adventure can be fixed by "rocks fall, the NPCs die"!)
Cheers!
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jdrakeh
Front Range Warlock
My group and I loved all of the run up to the dungeons. The adventuring in the valley, the hunt for the lost delegation, etc. Even the first keep (or what I presume was a keep) was fun. But once we got into the dungeons, all of our enthusiasm pretty much died. Things just seemed extremely repetitive and most of the combat encounters were not interesting at all. At our DM's urging, we ended up taking a vote whether to carry on or switch to playing a new campaign (Lost Mines). The vote was unanimous for Lost Mines.
