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Review: Princes of the Apocalypse
by Colin Padgett Arnold
After running it for seven months, my home table has made it through the first four dungeons of Wizards of the Coast’s Princes of the Apocalypse, an adventure book for Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. This comprises the book’s first act and covering roughly a third of its content. I figured this was as good a point as any to reflect back and review the book thus far. Specifically, I’ll be covering Chapters 1, 2, 3, 6, & 7 as well as Appendices A, B, & C.
Some quick notes for bias and control. I am a fairly experienced GM with most of my experience running games spread over D&d 4th Edition, 13th Age, and Dungeon World, and experience playing in just about everything else. The players consist of two experienced role players and table top gamers, two experienced creatives who have none the less never touched an analog role playing game, and one inexperienced player with impeccable comedic timing - a fine mix of sagely wisdom and fresh perspectives. The party is made up of a cleric, a paladin, a ranger, a barbarian, and a warlock. Suffice it to say, they are running a surprisingly balanced party with one more player than ideal for the adventure, but not enough to have to necessarily change anything prewritten. I won’t be detailing the specifics of how my players have played through the adventure, but if you’d like to follow my group’s exploits against the elemental cults then you can find us at #Kru.
Addendum: when I originally started writing this the group was seven months in, now we’re a whole year. A combination of me putting off covering the appendices and summertime simply being a busy time of year for me professionally had this just not happen! In a few weeks they’ll be through Chapter 4 with several more Side Treks under their belt. However, I won’t be covering that chapter in depth. Each of the dungeons in Chapter 4 are impeccably well designed and where the game really shines. The problem is, it’s also where the game becomes infinitely mutable. While you can run each of these as a highly tactical dungeon crawl, players can also get by them largely through skulduggery and diplomacy or, my favorite, using a cataclysmic weapon of the cults introduced in this chapter along with a myriad of spells and abilities to upend the sand box. My players have done all three, including clearing a dungeon entirely by leveraging a character’s backstory and the character arc we’ve been building to destroy it in a handful of encounters. Chapter 4 will be truly different for every single group that plays it, especially if the dungeon master is heavily integrating their players’ characters and backstories.
At a Glance
Princes of the Apocalypse is a heavy tome at 256 pages, brought to us by Sasquatch Game Studio. Its lead designer, Richard Baker, has had a prolific career in game design running Forgotten Realms development during the early 2000s, working on D&d since it’s TSR days, and writing a number of other games and novels. Princes was specifically written to bring the classic Temple of Elemental Evil storyline and concept into 5th Edition and to create a more free form foil to the previously released Tyranny of Dragons story line. The adventure sees you going on a hex crawl inspired by the classics to take down four cults devoted to elemental magic in a sleepy frontier valley. The scenario is structured into three acts, each one delving into a deeper layer of dungeons controlled by the elemental cults and is designed to take a party of four adventurers from level 3 to 14. It also contains two short adventurers to take a party of level 1 characters up to the book’s starting point.
On the whole, I’m on the fence on how effective Princes is at being an exploration game. Taking place in the Dessarin Valley just inland of Forgotten Realm’s Sword Coast, the meat of the adventure takes place in a measly ten hexes of a sum nine hundred and ninety hex map. Occasionally the book proper takes you out of this clump, and the adventure’s side quests are all far reaching into the rest of the valley. However, I’ve had to very heavily bait the party to any part of the map that isn’t the small neighborhood of scrub hills the elemental cults are based in. Not because they don’t want to explore the world, but because comparatively the distance to any extra location is two to four times the distance between the town Princes starts you in and the cults themselves. The game certainly is a sandbox as every situation has a number of vectors to approach from and contexts to find it in, but I rarely see my players tempted off the major roads and landmarks.
The cults themselves, who at the start are organized in four surface level strongholds, seem to have been designed with  a “correct” order in mind, with each one being balanced around a party level one higher than the last. While a smart party could certainly take down the level 4 or even level 5 dungeons right out of the gate, the “final” stronghold is filled with a number of enemies capable of casting Fireball. A level 3 or 4 party simply doesn’t have the mechanics to deal with or throw back that kind of firepower. Likewise, each stronghold has an entrance to that cult’s corresponding Act II dungeon and each one feels like the natural place to proceed in the moment. This does, however, land the party into dangers designed around a party 4 levels higher than they are.
I feel like Princes has two separate games inside it, just playing with the same elements. You can certainly run the game like Tyranny of Dragons or the Starter Box, with a lightly railed plot where the party goes around kicking in doors, one dungeon at a time. The surface text almost expects it. Each of the main villains of Act I’s “how to role play” blurb ends with “and then they probably just attack the party.” If you want traditional, heroic, storm-the-dungeon fantasy then Princes has you, which is weird because that’s not what it says on the tin.
A smart party that approaches Princes like a sandbox game will do perfectly fine in Act I as long as they at least half expect to get in over their head. That level 6 dungeon with all the Fireball casting mages? It’s a rickety tower in disrepair with spotty defenses that, if players have a mind to, could just be burned down with minimal effort. Every cult has a fairly easy way to infiltrate their ranks with a subtext that the players might even seriously join one. And the NPC villains are certainly more fun to play in Act I when they’re more concerned about their rival cults than this band of adventurers loping through the valley.
Ironically enough, the things that have helped motivate my players to range far away from home and the cults themselves have been trying to scrounge up resources, aid, and solutions when they’ve bitten off way more than they can chew. I think where the genius of this design comes in is when you run it as a sandbox for players that haven’t learned how to approach one. Yeah, I’d prefer if all four of the “Haunted Keeps” where on more even difficulty with each of them having some threats that were particularly too much to deal with. But looking forward to Acts II and III, I’m hoping that the rather large disparity of letting a party walk into a dungeon twice their level at the start of play is to help teach players how to scout, retreat, and really think about when they should fight, talk, or completely circumvent a problem. Princes really does present you with an exquisite chess set to play around with, even if the directions themselves are rather straightforward. There are relatively few cues for how to use the NPCs and their resources outside of letting the players roll up on dungeons, but each cult and character’s motivations are clear, concise, and interesting. I’ve honestly been surprised how easy it’s been to go off book with this adventure and have it still feel seamless to what’s already there. Any game master with a little experience willing to play back and forth with their players will find a fun way to run it.
Whew, that was a long glance.
Chapter 1: Rise of Elemental Evil
Simple enough, the first chapter gives you a sweeping backstory for the adventure. Four cults each drawn to a different Prince of Elemental Evil (supremely powerful beings who are each King of an Elemental Plane and associated with air, earth, fire, and water respectively) have taken up residence in some ancient castles on top of an ancient Dwarven city on top of some spooky Underdark caverns. A diplomatic mission to Waterdeep gets kidnapped by these cults, which kicks off the whole adventure. Chapter 1 details the philosophy of each cult and their elemental master, along with the history and motivations of each cult’s Prophet - the leaders that are ultimately going to be your big villains at the end of the game. Out of any of the story set up, I think the character write ups on the Prophets are the best things in this book. I’ve been so anxious to introduce them, I’ve been giving my players short aside scenes to build them up between major events. Every one of them has something akin to the Sending spell to start a real dialogue with the player characters, though it’s unlikely they’ll be on the cults’ radar until after Act I.
For players, there’s a list of several adventure hooks to give characters a reason to join the adventure. Some are cryptic rumors to help lead the party to any of the first four dungeons. Some are connections or bounties to encourage a character to seek out and deal with certain mid level villains in the cults’ chains of command. Some help reveal hidden information about the dungeons that lay beneath the valley, and a few even point all the way to the final dungeons. Regardless, each hook is a hint and a set of criteria for the character to receive 2-4 inspiration points. A little advice: don’t give out the adventure hooks that won’t pay off until the end game. If you plan on making your players stick with character deaths, you’ll need them to help fold in new characters. If you like to play fast and loose with character death so that it only happens when it matters to the story and characters, then you can always assign new, relevant adventure hooks at the start of each Act.
If you’re a big fan of Forgotten Realms, 5th Edition’s focus on Faerun’s faction system makes an appearance in this book as well. Each faction has an investment tied up in the delegation that goes missing at the start of the game, and each is represented by agents across every settlement in the valley. If a player would like to start as a part of a faction they get an easy in on the adventure, but there’s no additional benefit. My group elected not to start with any affiliations, and has still managed to frequently interact with them. The book leaves plenty of room to encounter the various factions at your leisure, and they feature in several of the Side Treks.
Chapter 2: the Dessarin Valley
Princes is set in the Dessarin Valley, a frontier wilderness off the Storm Coast of Faerun. Chapter 2 details the various towns, villages, and settlements throughout the valley, provides random encounter tables, and contains a helpful map of the whole region and all the various hidden fortresses and goodies. The most in-depth attention is paid to Red Larch, the town the adventurers start in.
Red Larch is a tiny little crossroads town with about twenty or so major businesses and locations for the players to interact with. It has everything from competing caravan carpenters and an adventurer supply shop to agents of every major player faction and either a spy or lead for every cult. Each location has an entry describing it’s look, business, and the key NPCs that reside there. Some also have entries for leads relating to the cults’ business in the area (Rumors of Evil) and secret agendas concerning the townsfolk for an optional side quest (Trouble in Red Larch). Of particular note: the local temple hosts shrines to any god imaginable and is manned by a single priest who is relieved every two weeks. The initial NPC is a contact for The Gauntlet faction, and getting the players involved with rotating clergy can give them a more personal connection to the outside world and the powers and resources of Waterdeep, the nearest major city, without having to abandon the adventure to actually go there.
The other half of the chapter details exploring the valley. Every major settlement or location has a quick description, details on any NPCs that might be found there, and a summary of why in the world the players would even want to go there. Mostly this details which faction can be found where, what can be bought, and whether or not the place is tied up in a side quest. All the locations have some nice flavor but, again, they are all particularly out of the way.
Aside from distance, my only real complaint is that the valley is inhabited overwhelmingly by humans, and humans end up being most of the cultists as well. Feel free to spice that up as you see fit. I certainly like my fantasy to be a little more fantastic, and you have plenty of room to add in things without out-shining some of the crazy stuff the cults will bring to the table.
A note on the scale of the map: the book’s scale says 1 hex = 10 miles, while the errata for the book says 1 hex = 4 miles. I’ve been operating under the errata’s listing but using The Alexandrian’s guide for traveling a Hexcrawl. Even ignoring terrain types, this travels a little slower than rules as written 5th Edition. However, even when running 5th Edition’s travel times, 10 mile hexes make most locations a week or more away, which doesn’t always match up with cues and notes throughout the book.
It does, however, match up with the math for random encounters. Princes’ random encounter check will have you encountering something every 3 or 4 days which is perfect for 10 mile hexes but with 4 mile hexes leaves the players mostly alone in the wilderness. If you go with 4 mile hexes, which I highly recommend, either roll double the twenty sided dice when doing random encounters or just throw in one whenever you deem it appropriate.
The biggest thing this adventure is missing is some kind of random weather or event table. The book frequently mentions how the Elemental Planes are affecting the valley, changing the weather, and disrupting daily life. Aside from the random encounter table, the cults themselves, and a few events keyed off of hitting checkpoints like clearing dungeons, Princes largely leaves it up to you to narrate. I would have loved to have a few prewritten tables for flash fires, thunderstorms, or earthquakes just to remind myself to remind my players the huge stakes early in the adventure.
Chapter 3: Secret of the Sumber Hills
One of the most important parts in this section is right on page 41 in a grey text box. This little box lists the level around which each of the four major dungeons are designed around, and suggests letting the players gain a level every time they clear one of the haunted keeps. This is fine if your players are clearing the scenario cleanly and easily. However, if your group embraces the sandbox aspect a little more or really likes tracking experience, take note: the math for experience in this adventure does not match up to rules as written. Raw experience for a four person party comes a few hundred short even with side quests under 5th Editions rules of only rewarding experience for killing, routing, charming, or otherwise neutralizing another creature. So feel free to throw them some extra exp for role playing, story events, creative problem solving, or whatever.
The first section gives details on how to get the players out the door. Details from any of several factions come in that an important diplomatic delegation has gone missing in the Sumber Hills, your own little neighborhood of the Dessarin Valley. A variety of clues can be found in Red Larch which can lead the the party around the local area in a simple investigation with a few combats. At the very least, the clues should get the party started and lead them to the Water, Earth, or Air cult dungeons. Just after this is a section titled “Cult Reprisals” with encounters to run after each dungeon to point them towards a new target. The Air and Water cult encounters expressly include directions to their bases, and fairly easy to find information in the Early Investigations lead directly to the Earth and Fire cult bases. If all else fails, the Air cult’s Feathergale Spire is visible on the horizon of Red Larch.
Of the four dungeons, Feathergale Spire is the most scripted. The party can walk right in, socialize, go on a quick hunting trip, and get back in time for the game master to figure out how long they want to stretch this one out. The air cult here is the easiest of the four mechanically, but strategically as a tower in the middle of a canyon with knights mounted on vultures it’s the hardest structure to assail by force. If they can charm their way through the front door, which is an easy task, they shouldn’t have any problems. The unit gives you two named NPCs: a rather blank knight named Savra who’s pretty easy to take in any direction you want, and the tower’s captain Thurl Merroska who will be an easy way to make the players distrust any NPC of authority they meet for the rest of the campaign.
The second dungeon, Riverguard Keep, is located on the major river of the area. The book recommends playing it out as a mercenary group attempting to renovate the castle to protect the river from pirates, who they secretly are. Fairly quickly my players gathered more than enough information about the local river pirates and the water cult that trying to keep up the deception would have been ridiculous, and this was the first place they visited. Mechanically, the keep throws a lot of bodies at the party which could be overwhelming, but there’s only a few spell casters spread out over the whole dungeon. This dungeon’s named lieutenant is a Genasi river boat captain that your players are just as likely to meet on the river or in the port of Wormford. Their leader Grimjaw can be particularly troubling depending on how much you stick to the rules as being a Wereboar leaves him immune to most early forms of damage and capable of saddling one or two of your players with lycanthropy for their next couple of levels. Goldenfields and Summit Hall are two religious locations that should have a high level cleric with remove curse, should you need to point your players towards one.
The Stone Monastery, the Earth Cult’s base of operations, is the first problematic dungeon as far as order goes. The abbey contains four gargoyles which can be particularly tough without some strong magical damage. And while the Earth Cult’s base enemy monk is fairly easy to deal with, they have two other unique enemies with strong defenses, strong attacks, and some very good spell casting. The dungeon itself has some specific notes about what to change if the party leaves and returns to take the cult down another day, which is likely to be the case. The monastery gets three named NPCs. A friendly Lich has been living in the building since it was his family home and can drop some exposition about the area’s history. A rather boring priest is there to greet visitors and possibly induct the characters into the lowest level of the cult. Lastly, the abbess of the monastery is Hellenrae (or, as my players have taken to calling her “Literal Actual Toph Bei Fong.” A blind, no nonsense, female kung-fu master who can see through vibrations in the very earth? Yeah, checks out.) Probably the most dangerous thing about the Stone Monastery, though, is that the entrance to it’s Act II counterpart is right in the basement and only needs a key that the party can pick up from either leader on site. Equally frustrating for dungeon masters: depending on how you approaching looting, the Earth Cult’s priests and guards all wear splint and plate mail. Granted, it’s all made out of magically shaped stone as opposed to metal, so if you do allow your players to upgrade their armor this early you can at least saddle them with the awkwardness of constantly looking like Earth Cultists.
The last dungeon, Scarlet Moon Hall, is a burnt out hill with an old wooden tower and a flaming wickerman where some long lost druids are performing some kind of a sacred right. Fantasy Burning Man’s mechanics do a lot to compartmentalize all the various forces in the area, and many of the camps around the hill are druids and adventurers come to see the supposed ritual that can be recruited to the parties cause. This is great because between the giant fire elemental in the burning giant, the hell hounds, the fire cultists with magically flaming swords, and the several priests capable of casting fireball twice per day Scarlet Moon Hall throws some heavy punches. The big boss is Elizar, a fire themed druid who can summon smoke mephits from his tobacco pipe and possibly the most fun I’ve had running an NPC in this whole book. Princes’ NPCs have only the minimum of text to motivate specifics, but Elizar is the only one depicted coolly taking a drag in front of an explosion.
Chapter 6: Alarums and Excursions
Here we have the side quests. The first set includes a number of small excursions into the wilderness around Red Larch and two dungeons. Designed to take a party quickly from level 1 to 3, I feel like it gives new players a very nice crash course on combat, exploration, and investigation without bogging things down too much for experienced players. The first dungeon focuses on a necromancer who can net the party an early wand of magic missile. While the quest does end with a perfect moment to pass around a piece of paper with the Elemental Evil logo drawn on it, it never really ties back into the deeper machinations of the book. If you happen to start your party at level 1, be prepared to tie this back in during Act III somehow.
The second dungeon is wrapped up in a conspiracy controlling Red Larch. It’s dungeon directly hints towards the ancient Dwarven city which makes up Act II, and helps throw a little action to endear the party with the townsfolk of Red Larch. The aftermath shows a number of town elders in the pockets of the Earth cult, and leaves you to elevate whatever NPCs the party has really taken a shine to to be their reliable home contact when they come back. The villain of this dungeon, an Earth priest by the name of Larrack, makes a perfect recurring villain if your party happens to kill all the other cult captains. I’ve personally got a soft spot for the village idiot, a half-orc named Grund who spends most of his time pickling, and elevated him up to a major supporting character for the party.
The rest of the chapter is devoted to what it calls Side Treks, largely one shot style side quests. These are fun romps to try to entice the party off to the four corners of the valley. All of them net new equipment, opportunities for allies, or magic items, so don’t worry about the challenge for experience if you’re running by the book’s estimates of leveling up after each major dungeon in Chapter 3. Do try and keep an eye on the recommended level for each as they’re meant to be peppered over the whole adventure. The Vale of Dancing Waters is an adventure designed for a party at level 8 that’s particularly easy to accidentally run for a party of 3rd level characters poking around in the early game.
Chapter 7: Monsters and Magic Items
While there are some wild magic items made for this adventure, you really don’t come across many of them early on. For the time being, you really want to look at the sections on Monsters and NPCs. Every cult has a more physical, warrior thug and a spell caster priest that make appearances. Some even have two! Enemies inspired by the Monk character class make a big show. All of the spell casters have heavily elemental themed spell lists, and might have some particular inspiration if you have a sorcerer in your party. The most interesting of all of them is the Water cult Fathomer, a second spell caster that can transform into a watery serpent.
Largely, I don’t really like 5th edition monsters. Either their complexity is so simple that it comes down to how many attacks they get with their multi attack, or you’re tracking an entire spell list for them (I highly recommend the 5th Edition Spellbook app found in the iTunes App Store and Google Play. It contains every spell available through the Players Hand Book and Princes of the Apocalypse, and lets you organize individual spell lists for characters. And it’s free). Some of the lower level enemies have once per combat abilities or special circumstances like the Crushing Wave Reaver’s double damage to unarmored enemies. The Assassin ability along with sneak attack damage plays a recurring role in many NPC enemies in the Side Treks, which is good because it’s potentially fatal no matter what level it shows up in and does a great job at teaching why players should start combats on their own terms instead of charging into every situation head first. Combats that don’t involve spell casting enemies largely become boring, however, and the Black Earth Guard’s plate mail leads to some particularly slogging combat as the party levels up. At the very least, Princes adds a large number of spell casting enemies to the game, something I found sorely lacking in the Monster Manual. If your players really need a challenge, I’d suggest playing around with how enemies from different cults can interact mechanically under the narratively plausible idea that the cults are so fed up with the player characters that they’ll actually work together to try and stop them.
Appendices A, B, & C: The Good Stuff
Appendix A details a new player race for 5th edition: the Genasi. Listen, there are one hundred different articles out there talking about the optimization standards of the Genasi and their sub-races. Who cares? Do you want to play an elementally powered humanoid? The peasant version of a Djinn/Jeanie? Do you want to have rock skin, flaming hair, fin ears, or just constantly float a few inches off the ground? Do you want to have jewel colored skin and magical abilities regardless of class choice? Genasi are amazingly fun to play and for once you have a setting and adventure that neatly ties them in regardless of how Tolkienic you like your fantasy. Each cult has a major Genasi NPC to pit against the party as well. Beyond that, if you pick up the free player supplement for Princes, you’ll get Aaracokra and Deep Gnomes as well. Aaracokra can fly, which is considered the most broken level 1 ability in the whole game. Take that as you will.
Appendix B adds a slew of particularly elemental themed spells which are included as part of 5th Edition’s free content. Druids, Sorcerers, and Wizards make out with the most additions, the first two getting the most thematically out of having more elemental spells. Each element gets their own Prestidigitation/Thaumaturgy style cantrip to control an element. Frostbite, Create Bonfire, and Thunderclap are all cantrips worth considering for build optimization period, if that’s a thing you’re into. Regardless of if you’re playing Princes of the Apocalypse or not, the added spell list does a ton for filling out spell lists for characters that just want to cast Ice spells and nothing else, or whatever element happens to take a player’s fancy.
Lastly, Appendix C describes how to take Princes and apply it to different settings. Mostly focusing on transplanting the campaign into Darksun, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, and Eberron, this section details a lot of focus on how to pick the region your players will explore and exactly what function each player faction is supposed to bring to the story. Even if you intend drop Princes into a wholly original setting or just keep it in Faerun, seeing four more takes on the adventure’s context helps understand what’s supposed to be important and what isn’t.
Final Review
All in all, this is one of the best pre-written adventures I’ve ever run or played. My biggest complaints are a somewhat mundane cast of races and a lack of a full service for weather and elemental effects in the overworld, which are things that are easily changed and designed at home. Princes’ set piece dungeons are so tightly designed, inspiring, and well notated that any dungeon master should have plenty of time and energy to fill in whatever gaps the book leaves in their play style. As for length, a focused and effective group of players could finish this adventure in around a year with weekly sessions, though there’s plenty of room for role playing and side content to keep a group content for even a whole two years. This ranks up there with the best games I’ve ever been a part of.
Thanks to Peter Tesh for editing.
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