I'm running Descent into Avernus for a group of 5 players, we've just about reached the end of chapter 2, and I feel I'm running out of steam. I've been running it pretty loyal to the book so far (though I managed to completely miss the section on encounters in Baldur's Gate until we were on our way out) and things have gone fairly smoothly, but I worry things are turning into a narrow corridor for my players, and they haven't really found much to engage with on a character level. What should I do to try and make Avernus feel a bit grander in scale, and offer things to hook the players besides the critical path? Any and all advice would be welcome, thank you!
I'm just finishing running Avernus and found much of the hell section of the adventure sort of lacking (I thought the Baldur's Gate section was much better). I too felt myself losing momentum after a while. The book doesn't provide much in the way of paradoxical choices one would expect from devils, nor any real requirements for infernal contracts. I threw in a couple of my own. (Examples: The party came to a crossroads and they had to decide which of two NPCs would die at the hands of a horned devil in order to pass - both NPCs had damning and redeeming elements. The party encountered an enormous army of devils and had to bargain with an Erinye to gain safe passage, which character would give up their soul or something else dear to them, etc.) That said, I do feel like the hell section of the book is too narrow and I wish I had run it further from the book, but I got a bit caught up in worrying about wanting the players to have the "intended" Descent into Avernus experience.
My advice is to just add in some fiendish conundrums where there will be a cost or consequences regardless of what choice the characters make. Also make some enticing reasons to have characters enter into one or more infernal contracts. I don't want to say much more due to spoilers, but feel free to DM me if you'd like.
I think the Avernus locations works best as a sand box, but that puts burden on the DM to dump more into it than the adventure already provides. The two paths or encounter chains presented to run the chapter suffer from railroadiness. I'd say the way to sandbox it is to immerse yourself in all the 9 Hells/Infernal lore you can (MToF, etc). A possible tool that may mean less original planning on your end is a Avernus encounters set that I think includes two additional storylines available on DMs Guild, it's written by the design team behind Avernus as well as some of WotC's D&D's regular writing stable and a few others.
It's an odd book, while I'm adhering to the overall arc, I'm treating the encounters more as inspirational than a literal map to follow. I can throw some hooks your way if you want too over PM as well.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
While I agree with Avernus likely working better as a sandbox, just the amount of prep required to make it work, even with prewritten stuff, gives me anxiety. I also worry that adding side content kinda undercuts the urgency of the main quest, while there's no hard timeline to things, the idea seems to be that Elturel really doesn't have long before it's destroyed, and the campaign is essentially failed. I feel like I need to deepen the appeal of the core content to the characters as much as make the surroundings more interesting.
Two responses, first regarding on the sense of urgency. Time doesn't have to correlate perfectly with time on the prime material plane. I"m giving my party a "year" to get the job done.
Since the grounds under Elturel are a war zone, the mechanism drawing Elturel Into the Styx is broken.
When they get back to the prime material, I'm thinking maybe two weeks have gone by in their world ... or maybe they show up earlier.
Second, for the party's investment, what is their investment? My parties have people from Elturel who signed the Creed Resolute, if you don't, have them make a connection to someone currently in besieged Elturel, ideally a few people so they have a reason to save them.
I may have already bungled both of those options, as all of my party are out of towners, and we have cleared everything in Elturel without the party really growing fond of anyone in it. When we last finished up they were trying to figure out a way down. I honestly think they'd dump Lulu if they had the chance, it's been largely difficult to get anyone to talk to npcs in general.
For further reference, the party is largely driven by well-intentioned self-interest. The main decision maker is the no-nonsense monk who's largely just doing stuff cus he's doing stuff? Besides him there's a Tabaxi Rogue who isn't desperately interested in hero stuff, a Warlock who serves the inscrutable wishes of his patron (and thus is the easiest player to simply direct), a fighter that got turned into a tiefling sorcerer when Eturel fell, who's still trying to figure up from down, and a halfling ranger who mostly just goes with the flow and fades into the background a lot during rollplay.
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I'm running Descent into Avernus for a group of 5 players, we've just about reached the end of chapter 2, and I feel I'm running out of steam. I've been running it pretty loyal to the book so far (though I managed to completely miss the section on encounters in Baldur's Gate until we were on our way out) and things have gone fairly smoothly, but I worry things are turning into a narrow corridor for my players, and they haven't really found much to engage with on a character level. What should I do to try and make Avernus feel a bit grander in scale, and offer things to hook the players besides the critical path? Any and all advice would be welcome, thank you!
I'm just finishing running Avernus and found much of the hell section of the adventure sort of lacking (I thought the Baldur's Gate section was much better). I too felt myself losing momentum after a while. The book doesn't provide much in the way of paradoxical choices one would expect from devils, nor any real requirements for infernal contracts. I threw in a couple of my own. (Examples: The party came to a crossroads and they had to decide which of two NPCs would die at the hands of a horned devil in order to pass - both NPCs had damning and redeeming elements. The party encountered an enormous army of devils and had to bargain with an Erinye to gain safe passage, which character would give up their soul or something else dear to them, etc.) That said, I do feel like the hell section of the book is too narrow and I wish I had run it further from the book, but I got a bit caught up in worrying about wanting the players to have the "intended" Descent into Avernus experience.
My advice is to just add in some fiendish conundrums where there will be a cost or consequences regardless of what choice the characters make. Also make some enticing reasons to have characters enter into one or more infernal contracts. I don't want to say much more due to spoilers, but feel free to DM me if you'd like.
I think the Avernus locations works best as a sand box, but that puts burden on the DM to dump more into it than the adventure already provides. The two paths or encounter chains presented to run the chapter suffer from railroadiness. I'd say the way to sandbox it is to immerse yourself in all the 9 Hells/Infernal lore you can (MToF, etc). A possible tool that may mean less original planning on your end is a Avernus encounters set that I think includes two additional storylines available on DMs Guild, it's written by the design team behind Avernus as well as some of WotC's D&D's regular writing stable and a few others.
It's an odd book, while I'm adhering to the overall arc, I'm treating the encounters more as inspirational than a literal map to follow. I can throw some hooks your way if you want too over PM as well.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
While I agree with Avernus likely working better as a sandbox, just the amount of prep required to make it work, even with prewritten stuff, gives me anxiety. I also worry that adding side content kinda undercuts the urgency of the main quest, while there's no hard timeline to things, the idea seems to be that Elturel really doesn't have long before it's destroyed, and the campaign is essentially failed. I feel like I need to deepen the appeal of the core content to the characters as much as make the surroundings more interesting.
Two responses, first regarding on the sense of urgency. Time doesn't have to correlate perfectly with time on the prime material plane. I"m giving my party a "year" to get the job done.
Since the grounds under Elturel are a war zone, the mechanism drawing Elturel Into the Styx is broken.
When they get back to the prime material, I'm thinking maybe two weeks have gone by in their world ... or maybe they show up earlier.
Second, for the party's investment, what is their investment? My parties have people from Elturel who signed the Creed Resolute, if you don't, have them make a connection to someone currently in besieged Elturel, ideally a few people so they have a reason to save them.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I may have already bungled both of those options, as all of my party are out of towners, and we have cleared everything in Elturel without the party really growing fond of anyone in it. When we last finished up they were trying to figure out a way down. I honestly think they'd dump Lulu if they had the chance, it's been largely difficult to get anyone to talk to npcs in general.
For further reference, the party is largely driven by well-intentioned self-interest. The main decision maker is the no-nonsense monk who's largely just doing stuff cus he's doing stuff? Besides him there's a Tabaxi Rogue who isn't desperately interested in hero stuff, a Warlock who serves the inscrutable wishes of his patron (and thus is the easiest player to simply direct), a fighter that got turned into a tiefling sorcerer when Eturel fell, who's still trying to figure up from down, and a halfling ranger who mostly just goes with the flow and fades into the background a lot during rollplay.