Adventure Review: The Demonplague
Hello friends!
Today I've got my second-ever product review, though this time it's not from the DMs Guild. I'll be reviewing The Demonplague, a level 1–20(!) adventure module published by Roleplaying Tips. They were looking for reviewers and I happened to see their call, so I thought I'd give it a shot!
Now, I know I just laid out a reviewing structure the other day when I did my first review, but now I'm going to completely abandon it, at least for today. After working on today's review, I realized that what I laid out before might not work so well for an adventure module, so I'll reserve it for non-adventure DMs Guild content and do something else for adventures.
Here's how this will go: I'll describe what sort of product it is (like being a 20-level adventure, etc), then I'll talk about some of its contents and what I liked or didn't like, and finish with an overall opinion of the work as a whole. Ready? Let's go!
Today I've got my second-ever product review, though this time it's not from the DMs Guild. I'll be reviewing The Demonplague, a level 1–20(!) adventure module published by Roleplaying Tips. They were looking for reviewers and I happened to see their call, so I thought I'd give it a shot!
Now, I know I just laid out a reviewing structure the other day when I did my first review, but now I'm going to completely abandon it, at least for today. After working on today's review, I realized that what I laid out before might not work so well for an adventure module, so I'll reserve it for non-adventure DMs Guild content and do something else for adventures.
Here's how this will go: I'll describe what sort of product it is (like being a 20-level adventure, etc), then I'll talk about some of its contents and what I liked or didn't like, and finish with an overall opinion of the work as a whole. Ready? Let's go!
What is The Demonplague?
The Demonplague is an adventure module for D&D 5E, which you can buy HERE. The main product is an adventure that takes characters from 1st level to 20th level, including the expected assortment of NPCs, locations, dungeons, and new monsters and magic items. It appears to have been originally funded on Kickstarter, with some stretch goals having added "bonuses" to the product, such as NPC logs and extra art. There are no surprises here; if you've used published adventure modules before, you're getting pretty much what you would expect.
The 20-level adventure is divided into four sub-adventures: The Frozen Necromancer (levels 1–5), The Winter Druids' Legacy (levels 5-10), Icefall (levels 10–15), and Xancrown's Prison (levels 15-20). Each adventure could theoretically be dropped into an existing campaign to fill a gap, but they clearly all tie together into a full campaign of their own.
The Demonplague is a sandbox-style adventure: it presents the DM with locations, NPCs, and things that are happening, but leaves things open for the players to engage at their own discretion. Naturally, this implies certain strengths and weaknesses (mostly subjective) compared to a more linear adventure, but that's not specific to this adventure, and will be neither credited nor penalized in this review.
Okay okay, so can we get on with it already?
Yes, let's get to the meat of the review! Now, a caveat: this product is HUGE — several hundred pages (varying slightly depending on how you count certain bonus documents). I haven't read the whole adventure cover-to-cover and I sure as hell haven't playtested 20 levels of content. So there are some portions that I skimmed, but I did carefully read the "big" stuff, like all the NPC descriptions from the NPC log, the background information, the details of the "home base" settlement, and so forth. I also spot-checked some mechanics (custom monsters/items) for both functionality and balance, but not every single one of them. Here are my impressions.
The Product
First of all, the documents themselves: the title font is annoyingly hard to read, but thankfully it's only used in titles. The font used for headings and body text prioritizes readability, up to and including a generous font size that will make it easier for folks with visual impairments (or small screens) to use the documents. They even went to the trouble of making two versions: one in a two-column format, and one in a page-width format, so you're covered regardless of your preference on that point.
The maps are cool (and there are plenty of them). On the other hand, they tried to integrate the typical 5ft = 1in grid into the artwork (as opposed to being a gray background). This sounds like a cool idea at first, but in practice it means that the grid lines are the same weight and opacity as everything else on the map, which sort of prevents them (at least for me) from "fading into the background" and makes the maps look overly busy, causing a bit of strain. Also, the bonus map packs (documents devoted to maps that are otherwise listed in the adventure documents) fill in the negative space with solid black, which will eat all your toner if you wanted to print them out. I like the things they tried to do with the maps, but I don't think their efforts bore quite the fruit they had hoped.
The Content
Although sandbox adventures do carry certain risks (like wildly level-inappropriate random encounters), those are not the fault of a given specimen, and The Demonplague overall seems like a really solid implementation of the... genre? Format? You know what I mean. The random encounters aren't any more swingy than they need to be (and many are not combat). The necessary information about locations and NPCs is concise, malleable, and well-presented. Combat-heavy arcs take place in discreet dungeons that players will naturally tend to finish all at once, rather than at-home series of events which could easily be disrupted by the author failing to read the players' minds.
One thing that really caught my eye was a villain progress chart in The Frozen Necromancer, which lets the villain continue their plans while the PCs are doing other things, thereby dodging the "everyone waits for you to get to the next checkpoint" issue that can sometimes show up in D&D games. Similarly, the setting (which is kept regional, allowing you to easily drop this whole thing into your own game world!) continues to change and develop as time passes across the four sub-adventures, which is great.
On the other hand, despite the solid-looking gameplay material, there are some problematic decisions in the creation of the narratives. CONTENT WARNING: Body Image, Mental Illness — Skip to next paragraph. For example, there are roughly twice as many men as women among the NPCs. A few NPCs are described as having dark skin, and the rest are unspecified — does that mean the authors intend me to assume they're white by default? The art also depicts everyone as white, regardless of description. There are only a tiny handful of fat people. The fattest (by a significant margin) is described primarily as a "lazy coward," and the only fat woman (who is only a little fat) is an alcoholic. So-called "madness" or "insanity" is a frequent stand-in for under-developed antagonism, furthering harmful stereotypes that equate mental illness with moral depravity rather than writing properly-developed motivations. Overall, The Demonplague is still leagues ahead of D&D's cringe-worthy past, but nonetheless has plenty of room to grow.
Mechanics-wise, the adventure presents some new items and monsters, of which (as I said earlier) I spot checked a few. Mostly they seem really solid, but a couple of items are missing key information. What's the duration on the Blood Pike's effect? What type of action does it take to activate a Chaos Gem? Definitely missed some important details in development, but only on a few things.
So what's the verdict?
Overall, the biggest stain on this product is the harmful patterns and stereotypes that it carelessly allows itself to feed into. Without those, I'd give it an A–, a solid product with a lot of value and just a few warts (maps, item slip-ups). However, some of the content — while an improvement from days gone by — nevertheless adds another iteration of pain for some already very tired groups of people. As a result, it drops a full letter grade down to B–. Those elements of the content give me pause, but if you (or your DM) has the spoons to clean it up, then the result is likely to be a really solid sandbox adventure.
That's all for today. Let me know if there's a product you'd like to see reviewed next, or a topic you'd like me to talk about! Until next time, take care of each other, okay?
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