![]() The second scenario, “The Mazes,” is one of my two favorites in the book and one of the few I’d recommend running pretty much as given. The book’s cartography is as superb as ever. I don’t regret using it to get my PCs to Sigil, and it’s certainly better than the suggestion offered in the Campaign Setting, but it’s still a bit lacking. This version of Baator feels a bit small and closed off. ![]() It’s a linear plot, and while the book will do much worse in this regard later, linearity causes problems when you’re trying to impart the infinite majesty of the planes. The scenario assumed they’d do exactly what the book hoped, though, meaning that the wide open space that appears when you see that map of Baator is in fact quite limited. Doing so made the story fall apart immediately, such that I needed to come up with a completely new bit of storyline. My players wanted to go off the map in Baator and explore another lead that’s mentioned in the book. Yet immediately we see the problems I mentioned above creeping in. ![]() What’s more, the writing is some of McComb’s strongest in the book, as it doesn’t involve nearly so much bad dialogue (at least here, this is my biggest stylistic qualm with his writing-his dialogue is consistently meh-to-terrible) as he did in more roleplaying-intensive adventures. Its mcguffin is interesting enough, and the version of Baator/Avernus it posits is both hellish and not too difficult for players to survive, which is always a difficult mixture to get right. I ran a version of this adventure not too long ago and for the most part it went well. Along the way they’re forced to go through Baator, aka Hell, but the reasoning behind all of this is ultimately sound. “To Baator and Back” focuses on getting the player characters out of the prime material world and, ultimately, into Sigil. To its credit, Well begins with one of its better adventures, and that it’s also the one with a map on the poster makes me suspect everyone involved in creating the book knew it. There is fun to be had here, but unlike with The Eternal Boundaryyou kind of have to go out of your way to find it. Of the two, the second is definitely preferable, as it’s not that hard for a committed dungeon master to add new material, but at the same time if you’re largely writing an adventure yourself then why are you playing a pre-made adventure in the first place? Well features plenty of adventures in both of these categories, and the result feels neither cohesive nor satisfying. The second is a nicely open scenario with many points of interest and ideas players might explore, but not enough information to flesh things out. The first of these is a largely linear adventure, where players hit each plot point like a rollercoaster ride. The small page count for each adventure means there are two main options available, neither of which is great, and both of which we’ll see plenty of here. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think that this format is a particularly good one, and as a result has largely gone extinct. It’s not bad per se, at least not when compared with Tales, but it’s thoroughly skippable and there’s only a couple of adventures in the book I’d actually consider running.Ĭolin McComb’s Well of Worlds collects nine adventures into 128 pages plus an additional poster-map. Now, Well comes along to say, “Here’s what they’re like now that Planescape is here and the result is… good?” I mean, sometimes, though on the whole it’s the first work in the series that you won’t find on anyone’s best-of lists. ![]() Until now, that was what planar adventures looked like to the average player. As such, Well of Worlds had a doubly difficult time, as it was also the setting’s counterpart to Tales of the Outer Planes. They tend not to be particularly deep or groundbreaking, with the exception of David Cook’s Campaign Settingitself, but that’s fine, it’s not really their purpose. All of these early products were based around introducing the setting and illustrating how people might set their games there. ![]() Well of Worlds is the final of what I consider the first wave of Planescape releases. ![]()
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