I’ve made my feelings on the Avatar Trilogy painfully clear. But one question remains: if I hate the adventures, why do I know so much about them? Well, I did it to myself.

Years ago, I picked up Waterdeep at a yard sale. I tried to run it, but never got it off the ground – very few of my campaigns lasted beyond the first few levels, and I usually shied away from doing mid-level one-shots. Years later, in a 3rd edition game, I decided that I wanted to shake things up in my campaign setting with a Time of Troubles-style event, so I hunted down Shadowdale and Tantras on eBay.

Yeah…I actually bought these monstrosities of my own volition.

And you know what? The game I ran with them turned out to be a lot of fun.

Any adventure module can be fun if the DM puts work into it. In the case of the Avatar Trilogy, it was still a waste of money on my part because the amount of work I put into the adventures to make them playable exceeded the work I would have needed to write my own adventure from scratch. Adventure modules are supposed to make things easier for a DM, not harder.

That said, let’s say you somehow wound up with these modules and you want to put them to use. How can you make this mess of an adventure into something enjoyable? Well, here are my suggestions…

Continue reading “Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Making the Avatar Trilogy Work” →

As Chapter 5 of Waterdeep begins, the PCs have been separated from Midnight. They have also lost the Tablet of Fate to the god of death. But wait…didn’t the text in the previous section state that the PCs could hold onto the tablet if they took special pains to do so?

“If the PCs managed to hang onto their Tablet of Fate through the battle at Dragonspear Castle, they should lose it before they reach Waterdeep. Harry them with more night riders, or have Myrkul himself steal into camp invisibly and steal the tablet from its sleeping guard.”

Yeah…should’ve known better.

“Once they lose the tablet, the PCs still should head for Waterdeep. They can guess that is where Myrkul will be, with one or both tablets. Besides, they still want to meet Elminster, so that the sage can help them find Midnight.”

There is no part of that paragraph that I like.

Continue reading “Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Waterdeep, part five” →

Who will be the new gods?

The God of Strife is dead, destroyed in his attack on Tantras, and Midnight and the player characters have recovered the first Tablet of Fate – one of a pair of mysterious artifacts that will return the gods to their former glory and save the Realms from the fallen deities’ wrath.

But the quest isn’t over! To find the other Tablet of Fate, your heroes must travel across Faerûn to Waterdeep, the City of Splendors. But both Midnight’s former ally, Cyric, and Myrkul, the Lord of the Dead, want the tablets for their own dark ends, and they will stop at nothing to capture Midnight – even if it means the destruction of the Realms!

Waterdeep marks the third and final portion of the Avatar Trilogy. It is also the most epic, with the PCs taking on multiple gods and meet Ao the Overlord himself. Perhaps because it has so much epic potential, it’s also the worst of the three modules, repeating all of the mistakes in the first two modules and then ending in the ultimate screwjob to the PCs. (Well, maybe not as ultimate as the “Rocks fall, everyone dies” ending of Neverwinter Nights 2, but it’s right up there.)

I think the cover, like the covers of Shadowdale and Tantras, is recycled art from another TSR product. But unlike Tantras, this recycled art makes sense, as it sets a pair of adventurers right in front of the Yawning Portal, a popular inn in Waterdeep. The woman even resembles Midnight’s description in the text, although it doesn’t mention her being so scantily clad in the flavor text. The back of the product says the module is for four to six PCs of levels six to nine, which is in line with the other modules. And a blurb on the front cover advertises the adventure as compatible with both 1st and 2nd edition AD&D, although we already saw some of 1st edition fall away in the last module with every assassin in the Realms dying at once.

The introduction gives us a breakdown of the story so far, in case the DM didn’t run the first two adventures. It also explains that the NPCs Midnight, Adon, and Kelemvor, are required for this adventure. Of note, both Adon and Kelemvor are 5th-level characters, meaning that they should be lower level than the PCs. Naturally, we can expect level not to matter, since they and Midnight are massively plot protected.

The prologue also gives details about the plans of Myrkul and Bhaal, the two remaining evil gods who stole the Tablets of Fate in the first place. The gods are manipulating Midnight and the PCs, allowing them to find the Tablets only to rob them afterwards. We begin with an in media res opening for the PCs, who took a ship from Tantras to Waterdeep only to get booted off because of a magical storm that caused the captain to think they were bad luck. So Chapter 1 begins back in Cormyr, not far off from where the PCs got involved in this whole mess in the first place and with several hundred miles of travel to go before reaching Waterdeep.

As in Tantras, there are no random encounters or non-plot related events here – the PCs should be used to having no freedom by now, anyway. And, as should be expected, we open up with an offstage event. The PCs are being pursued by two groups: followers of Bane, who blame Midnight for the death of their patron god (even though it was very clearly Torm who killed Bane in Tantras), and Cyric, who hopes to grab the Tablet of Fate from them. Cyric was, after all, the guy who walked around the last module wearing an “I’m evil” t-shirt but who still surprised all the NPCs with his sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

Continue reading “Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Waterdeep, part one” →

And now we’re on the final chapter of Tantras. In a good module, this would be a massive and memorable set-piece that would have the players talking about it years later. Bane is about to invade Tantras, meaning that he’s going to do battle with Torm. While chaos rages in the city, the PCs have to find their way to the Tablet of Fate, all the while dodging the two brawling gods in the streets.

But this is the Avatar Trilogy, meaning that interesting choices and perilous scenarios aren’t really allowed. The PCs are accompanied by Midnight, Adon, and Kelemvor, who will do everything for them if necessary. Additionally, Elminster is around this time, grabbing the heroes by the wrist and leading them along the way.

Continue reading “Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Tantras, part six” →

The old saying from Spaceballs is that evil will always triumph because good is dumb. In the Forgotten Realms, it’s the other way around – evil is so very, very stupid. To illustrate that point, Chapter 5 opens up with the following off-screen event:

“Cyric arrives in Scardale, leading a Zhentilar force. To test this rising star in his ranks, Bane has sent him (along with Durrock, the assassin who led the assault on the PCs) to Tantras, to kill Kelemvor for his treachery and to capture Midnight. Bane is worried that the PCs are getting close to the Tablet of Fate.”

You would think that Bane curing Kelemvor of his panther-itis would have come with a price, but it didn’t. Bane gave Kelemvor everything he needed on good faith that the warrior would betray his friends. Moreover, he’s worried that the PCs are getting close to the Tablet of Fate…didn’t he just capture them last chapter? It’s a case of, “Why don’t you just kill them?” He knows that Midnight is the one of value, and she was sitting bound and drugged in a cell when either Adon or the PCs saved her. Had Bane just killed the helper characters, he wouldn’t have had to make his idiot bargain with Kelemvor in the first place. Not that I’m advocating that the PCs should have been killed off, but it would have been nice to see a villain show some competence. Bane supposedly got his divinity by tricking the old god of death, Jergal, into relinquishing his power. Did Jergal have the intelligence of a tree stump, or has Bane just become really stupid in his later years?

Before the events begin, the PCs finally arrive in Tantras. A guardsman calls out to them as they dock:

“Ho, the ship!” bellows one, from a raised stone deck ahead of you. “Lose way – you’re too fast in, by far! Fend you off from these” – he waves at three gigantic, seagull-covered spires, rising dark and glistening from the water – “and turn in here. That beyond’s for larger boats. Turn in, I say!”

Around the officer, as he speaks, a dozen archers come to look down at you, and ready shafts to their bows.

Wait…what?

This is going a bit far…the designer is begging to give the PCs an excuse to get killed here. The docking could have gone nice and smooth, but instead the PCs’ first impression of Tantras is thirty archers aiming bows at them for what amounts to illegal parking. If the PCs ignore the warning, they become perforated. If they have common sense, they dock and everything goes smoothly. An adventure is perilous enough as is…is it really necessary for a module to contain the possibility of the PCs getting killed by overzealous traffic cops?

Continue reading “Troubled Times, Troubled Adventures: Tantras, part five” →