Tabletop Tales: ‘Out Of The Abyss’
Warnings adventurer; spoilers ahead!
Wizards of the Coast’s strategy with the D&D Fifth Edition book has been seasonal story arcs that are a series of themed adventures meant to run characters from beginning to end. Out of the Abyss marks the start of the ‘Rage of Demons’ storyline, and is for a group of first level characters and ends with them all at fifteenth level. While the previous storylines were more suited for novice players; this book is far from introductory. While the other storylines also support levels one to fifteen they are more focused on dungeons rather than exploring an entire underground region.
Out of the Abyss is based in ‘The Underdark’, the underworld beneath the surface consisting of caves and tunnels. The party has been captured and brought to a small slave encampment south of Darklake, hidden amidst the webs of the Dark Elves favorite pets. Failure to escape timely will mean getting carted off to the Drow Capital as slaves. The leading jailers are detailed in personality, but the most amazing thing is the sheer amount of characters you meet in just the cells you’re thrown into. This list includes a monster that proclaims he is an transformed Elf, another is a gamblo-holic Deep Gnome, an Orc bully, and a fish-person monk that proclaims he has found the true way. Despite starting with so many characters you only get more and more throughout the story.
As quirky as they seem, these initial allies almost seem barely noted when introduced. This is because Wizards of the Coast uses an organization method that assumes the reader is familiar with the trinity (Players Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, Monster Manual) as any text in bold is a reference to that exact word in one of them, typically obvious by the context. This results in a lot of cross-referencing book by book, and the difficulty of some encounters isn’t immediately obvious until you look up the creature’s statistics. This works both against and in your favor; especially as the book randomly declares earth elementals are helping you fight; or when you meet Glabbagool the friendly Gelatinous Cube.
The Underdark is detailed so well in this book it doubles as a general setting book. From the parties escape they can go in any direction, and pretty much anywhere. Well, sort of. There is a town very close by in one direction and a enourmous sentient fungus cave network in the other. From the town the more obvious path is to traverse the Darklake to Gracklestugh. Assuming the grey dwarves don’t enslave you or feed you to their red dragon; there is a more ideal path to the dwarvern city of Gauntlegrym. Much of the book assumes the players want to go to the surface yet the storyline actually picks up in a dwarven city at the middle-ish layer of the Underdark. While this is obviously the ideal route; the Underdark is never a place of straight paths. When the players get lost all sorts of things might appear in their way, such as the long lost crypt of an ancient sorcerer or the Temple of Ooze.
Every single location, no matter how minor it may be, is detailed with a set of general features that are always in effect while the players are there. Usually this builds on the basic “It’s dark down here” description of lighting, adding hazards like slender crevices, pollution, spider webs, and other environmental hazards. Chief among them is the unique type of wild magic field that permeates the Underdark: Faerzress. Not only will spells act a little wonky in areas where this mysterious energy flows but staying in them too is hazardous to your mental health. Sanity, and it’s sudden demise down below is a central theme to the adventure. Every race and monster is experiencing sudden lapses of insanity and strange behavior. Several of the party members may come down with bouts or permanent madness conditions; writing additional flaws and personality traits on the characters sheet. Some of these are harmless, some comedic, others entertainingly dangerous. Gazing upon a demon lord is the surest way to go crazy, each has their own personal madness table that generates the conditions players suffer.
Each location has several things going on. Power struggles, assaults, dangers, and all manner of side-quests for the players. The party is often a deniable asset that the local leaders can fling at whatever issue has come up. While it’s not immediately obvious, the book is written in a way that leaves a lot to the GM’s discretion. The most important story quest of the game: gathering ingredients for the final ritual, is a list that can be added to and taken away from in a way that goads players to go to specific places. Many of the initial NPC’s have general things they try to do listed, rather than any specific dialogue. This aspect of the book severely limits its use to inexperienced players; as it takes a creative mind that knows how to put this all together in a way players can process.
Every aspect of ecology and society is investigated within the book. Many monsters have “Roleplaying as” sidebars that encapsulate how you would roleplay those creatures. The actual monster manual entries lack such information, while this book ties together a lot that is alluded to in other books. The recently released Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide barely mentions the Underdark, as this pretty much is the Underdark book. Creatures that otherwise are listed as just “monsters” in one book come to life when explained in this one. It’s written in a factual tone unlike the SCAG which is written from the tone of a dwarf adventurer. So while the SCAG is cryptic and alludes to all sorts of weird things, those things are addressed in this book in full.
The major new content comes in the form of stats for several demon lords (two of which only barely mentioned in the Monster Manual.) pose as the end bosses of the adventure. They have the tendency to just pop up every now and then, each is hiding out somewhere in the Underdark. In Dungeons and Dragons cosmology if you kill a demon on its home plane it’s dead for good, and if you kill it while it’s summoned to another it just reforms on their home plane. The adventures whole point is essentially to clean up a mess the Dark Elves made.
Something that always bothers me about the end of “End of the world” story arcs in video games is the story suddenly gets very rushed at the end as we suddenly go “Alright let’s do this!” and the setup often overshadows the actual deed. The climax reads this way. The final acts of the story are collecting a series of ingredients for calling all of the rampant demon lords together so that you can fight the survivor; as written it’s always Demogorgon (Rightmost above). A variant rule exists letting players control a demon lord in a minigame fight but the end result should still be the same: A boss fight against a weakened demon lord. Still difficult, but with the players all at level 15 and given serious bonus it’s not the hardest fight in the book.
Don’t get me wrong. Assuming you had to fight Demogorgan he still most certainly will hit you, and his attacks drain your maximum hit point total; being reduced to zero means instant death. While other Demon Lords do significantly less damage and lack any such effect. The book was clearly written to make him seem powerful, despite this book being the triumphant return of Zuggtmoy the Lady of Rot and Decay. She get’s far more potential face time than he does! She can be talked to in her lair, and a whole chapter revolves around going to the World Fungus to stop her from marrying it. Yes. Really.
If you are gathering books to play Fifth Edition then I would highly recommend this book be part of your collection. It’s well written with support from Green Ronin Publishing; one of my favorite companies. If you have some Dungeon Mastering experience and want one book to last you for a few months than you will find Out of the Abyss is a book that just keeps on giving.
For me, this book summons Five out of Five Demon Lords
