I don’t like vicious mockery.

It’s a weirdly dissociated mechanic. If you kind of squint at it in the right light, you can almost see an association. Magically enhanced insults so utterly devastating that they can literally kill you with psychic damage seem like a thing you put your thumb on.

But can you actually describe in character what the spell is doing? If a bard casts vicious mockery and kills a dolphin, what actually happens? If you’re targeted by the spell, what does it feel like?

Your mileage may vary, but this is one of those mechanics that, when the players trigger it, I’m completely uncertain how to describe what actually happens. That’s a red flag, in my opinion. (See, also, non-divine guidance.) More often than not, it feels like casting the spell means we all disconnect from the game world for a bit, do some dice stuff, and then reconnect to the game world with no clear description of anything actually happening (except maybe someone keeled over and died).

Alternatively, you’ve got the issue where players feel like they need to improvise the insult they hurl at the target of the spell. (Or, often, the DM will demand it of them.) That, too, seems fine. But, if we can be honest for a moment, how easy do you find it to improvise an insult so withering that someone falling over dead after hearing it seems like a reasonable outcome?

What actually happens most of the time, of course, is a sort of comical mismatch:

Player: I call the dolphin “fish-face”!

DM: This insult overwhelms the dolphin, who instantly dies!

Yes, I understand that the insult has been “laced with subtle enchantments.” But, again, what does that actually look like?

The mechanics of the spell — first introduced in the Player’s Handbook 2 for 4^th Edition before being adapted for the 5^th Edition Player’s Handbook — are also getting more dissociated over time. In 2014, for example, your target had to hear the insults, “though it need not understand” them. (Which kind of raises the question of why it needs to be an insult at all.)

In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, however, this requirement is dropped. The target of the spell is now “one creature you can see or hear within range.”

So we’ve gone from insults that drive your foe into a blind rage to a spell where the target doesn’t even need to understand what you’re saying (I guess they can just tell from your tone) to, today, your target standing in a silence spell while unable to see you, but still being completely wrecked by how mean you’re being to them.

Mechanically speaking, though, there’s nothing wrong with “Wisdom save or suffer damage and disadvantage on your attack roll.” It also provides pretty core functionality for bards, so I don’t want to just nix it from my game.

So can we tweak the presentation of vicious mockery to achieve the same or similar mechanical effect without the issues?

ETHEREAL SONATA

With the aid of subtle enchantments, you pitch your voice so that it vibrates through the Ethereal Plane instead of through air. As these ethereal tones resonate with a target you can see and who can hear you, they psychically damage and discombobulate them.

VICIOUS MOCKERY (REDUX)

You utter an epithet from the primal ur-language which was used by the gods to carve the minds of the first sentient races in the multiverse. Infusing the curse with magic, you precisely tune it to a target you can see and who can hear you. On a failed Wisdom saving throw, the target’s mind momentarily rewrites itself, shaking them with the sudden belief that your disparagement is utter truth.

SONIC BARRAGE

Weaving your magic, you tune and focus the perfect pitch of your choice into a killing word directed at a target you can see and who can hear you.

Note: This version would be an evocation cantrip dealing thunder damage instead of psychic damage.

FURTHER READING
Guidance Sucks in 5th Edition

Astonishingly dense arcane runes cover every side of incredibly complex origami structures. In some places, translucent onion-skin has been layered over the paper, creating sections in which the runes are overlaid with each other, forming inscrutable and ever-shifting patterns.

A proper understanding of the origami folds — and the multiple orientations in which they are designed to be read — allows one to begin unraveling a truly innovative method by which glyphs of warding can be interwoven.

INTERWOVEN GLYPHS

Interweaving glyphs of warding requires an Intelligence (Arcana) check (DC 10 + the total level of the interwoven glyphs). Interwoven glyphs of warding are:

• Simultaneously triggered.
• More difficult to find and disable, increasing the DC of the checks to do so by +2 per additional glyph.
• More difficult to identify, requiring an Intelligence (Arcana) check of DC 10 + the total level of the interwoven glyphs of warding.

Each glyph of warding must be cast in sequence and without interruption. If the sequence is interrupted or the Spellcraft check fails, the glyph of warding spells are all lost to no effect.

The total level of glyphs is based on the level of the casting of glyphs of warding for explosive runes, or the level of the stored spell for spell glyphs.

ADVANCED SYMBOLOGY

Among the origami notes describing the interweaving of glyphs of warding, there is also an incomplete treatise analyzing how symbol spells could also be interwoven (both with each other and with glyphs of warding).

If completed, this advanced methodology would also raise the saving throw DC of all interwoven glyphs or symbols to the highest DC among all of the interwoven glyphs and symbols.

However, because the research has never been completed, a PC interested in these techniques would need to finish perfecting them as a downtime research project. (See p. 338 of So You Want To Be a Game Master.)

This material is covered by the Open Game License.

These creatures exist somewhere between parasitism and symbiosis. A writhing mass of thick tentacles, capable of great, undulating speed when independent, but vastly preferring to attach itself to the back of another creature.

Writhing Partners. Once attached to another creature, the tentacular demands compliance through the simple expedience of strangling its host if attempts to remove or threaten the tentacular in any way. The tentacular draws it sustenance from the blood of its host (and is otherwise incapable of feeding), but will also aid its host by defending it and helping it to gather food (usually through butchery and murder on a grand scale). Elves speak in hushed whispers of deer with blood-stained maws and squirming black masses on their backs.

Corpse Riders. If the host of a tentacular dies, some of its tentacles will vanish into the corpse and puppeteer. This state of affairs can last for several days until the rotten meat can no longer by forced into a facsimile of life. Such horrific creatures are often mistaken for undead.

Spawning Tentaculum. A tentacular reproduces by abruptly sprouting a multitude of small tentacles in a process known to scholars as “budding.” After tripling or quadrupling its number of tentacles, the tentacular will abruptly fission, “shedding” individual tentacles until it has split apart entirely. The individual tentacles seek new hosts, at which point the tentacles will sprout additional tentacles as it grows into an adult tentacular.

TENTACULAR
Small aberration, neutral evil

---

Armor Class 15

Hit Points 75 (20d6)

Speed 30 ft.

---

STR 12 (+1), DEX 15 (+2), CON 11 (+0), INT 3 (-4), WIS 10 (+0), CHA 5 (-3)

---

Skills Stealth +5

Senses passive Perception 10

Challenge 5 (1,800 XP)

Proficiency Bonus +3

---

Parasite. If not attached to a host, the tentacular must succeed at a DC 10 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed until it attaches to a host. When the tentacular is attached to a host, the host must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw once per day or suffer one level of exhaustion, which cannot be removed as long the tentacular remains attached.

---

ACTIONS.

Multiattack. The tentacular makes four tentacle attacks.

Tentacles. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) bludgeoning damage. If the target is a creature, it is grappled (escape DC 15). Until this grapple ends, the target is restrained, and the tentacular can’t use its tentacles on another target.

Strangle. The tentacular forces a creature it is grappling to make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw or begin choking. Once a creature is choking, it can survive a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can’t regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again. The creature can attempt the save again each round on its turn, with a success indicating that it has managed to get some air (and is no longer choking).

Attach. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one grappled target. Hit: 8 (2d6+1) necrotic damage and the tentacular attaches to the target. While attached, the tentacular can’t make Attach attacks. The tentacular can detach itself by spending 5 feet of its movement. As an action, a creature within reach of the tentacular can try to detach it, doing so with a successful DC 17 Strength check. (The attached victim has disadvantage on this check.)

---

 

Go to Part 1

THIS BROKEN RAILROAD

By its nature, Call of the Netherdeep is a linear campaign: Festival of Merit → Emerald Grotto → Bazzoxan → Ank’Harel → Cael Morrow → the Netherdeep.

In theory, this should be fine.

In practice, however, the designers have decided to link these set pieces together with a railroad.

And, unfortunately, it’s a really shoddy railroad. Honestly, just sloppy, terrible, ill-conceived infrastructure. Maybe not quite, “there’s a dragon attacking a town that’s also being besieged by an army, and our expectation is that the 1^st level characters will decide to just walk into town,” bad, but close.

Let’s start with the hook for the entire campaign.

At the end of the Festival of Merit, the Elders of Jigow choose the two most successful teams to compete in the Grand Finale race through the Emerald Grotto. One team will be the PCs. The other team will be the Rivals.

This is a little weird, because literally none of the festival games up to this point have been team-based events. The only previous mentions of a “team,” in fact, were (a) an event where you are explicitly FORBIDDEN from competing as a team and (b) a different event where you competed with a partner (which is not the same thing as the five-ish person teams selected at the Grand Finale).

So, to kick things off, there this’s big, glaring continuity error squatting right on top of the event which is the lynchpin for the entire campaign.

In any case, the PCs and Rivals have to race through the Emerald Grotto and claim the Emerald Eye. Whichever team returns with the Emerald Eye wins the race.

Oddly, the adventure then acts as if the races ends as soon as someone grabs the Eye. Which, of course, it doesn’t.

But let’s move past that, too.

The real problem here is that the entire campaign hook is horribly broken.

Here’s how it works:

• The PCs get to the end of the Emerald Grotto and they spot a shark that has the Emerald Eye strapped to its side.
• They fight the shark.
• When the shark dies, it crashes into a stone pillar, causing the wall of the cavern to crack open.
• This reveals a passage “awash with golden light.”
• If the PCs go down the passage, they will discover the Jewel of Three Prayers, which — as noted above — is the essential McGuffin on which the entire plot is built.

Problem #1: It’s a race.

So, yeah, the glowy light is interesting. But the PCs are motivated by their immediate and only goal to NOT explore the light right now. Generally speaking, you want scenario-crucial actions to flow from the established goals of the PCs, not in direct contradiction to them.

The same is true of the Rivals, of course, but ultimately you, as the DM, control their actions, so you can just decree that they go and check out the glowy light even if the PCs don’t. The campaign is designed to hypothetically work if the Rivals claim the Jewel of Three Prayers (more on that in a second), so you can route around this. It’s just kind of awkward in its design.

The bigger problem is that you don’t have to fight the shark.

In fact, fighting the shark is probably the dumbest way for the PCs to get the Emerald Eye.

Even if you overrule an Animal Handling check, that still leaves alternative solutions like mage hand (to grab the amulet), an animal friendship spell, or just a Stealth check (with or without invisibility). And it should be noted that the writers know that these options exist, because animal friendship is how they get the amulet on the shark in the first place:

A druid of Jigow cast animal friendship on the shark earlier today and tied the Emerald Eye around its body, then made a speedy getaway.

So… no dead shark?

No thrashing.

No thrashing, no pillar collapse.

No pillar collapse, no glowy light.

No glowy light, the campaign doesn’t happen.

Oof.

Okay, let’s move forward to the next day. There are four scenarios:

PCs have the Jewel, the Rivals are Indifferent. The Rivals decide to just follow the PCs. (We’ll come back to this.)

PCs have the Jewel, the Rivals are Friendly. The Rivals offer to join the PCs (and, as mentioned before, the rivalry breaks and GMPC problems start).

PCs have the Jewel, the Rivals are Hostile. In this case, the Rivals try to steal the Jewel. First, as mentioned earlier, this probably means that the Rivals are now dead and the rivalry is over. More than that, the railroad is frequently driven by the Rivals showing up by surprise and forcing the plot forward: So whether they’re working with the PCs or they’re dead, the railroad breaks multiple times over.

Second, their plan for stealing the Jewel is also hilarious:

The rivals’ plan is to gather outside the inn where the characters are staying. One rival then sneaks into the characters’ room at the inn and searches for the jewel. If the thief doesn’t return after an hour, the rivals travel to the Emerald Loop Caravan Shop (described later in this chapter) and wait up to seven days for their mission companion.

Uhh…

Maggie: So the plan was for Galsariad to sneak in and grab the Jewel?

Ayo: Yup.

Maggie: And then he comes right back?

Ayo: Yup.

Maggie: And he hasn’t come back.

Ayo: Yup.

Irvan: What should we do?

Ayo: Let’s leave town and wait at a rest stop for a week. See if he shows up.

…

Anyway.

The Rivals have the Jewel. This is, as both we and Call of the Netherdeep have established, quite likely. And if it happens, the railroad junction is almost unimaginably bad:

You’re eating breakfast at the Unbroken Tusk while locals chat around you. Through the cacophony, one voice catches your attention.

“Rumor has it they’re going to Rosohna to sell it. Elder Ushru met them and everything, kept whispering while pointing at a huge, shiny amulet on the table. He was talking about ‘destiny’ and other heroic-like words. I think they were the group who won the grand finale yesterday. The amulet looked plenty magical, but even if it isn’t, it’d be worth a fortune. Yeah, they’re traveling down the Emerald Loop today.”

[…]

People are saying that the jewel would sell for over 1,000 gold pieces — maybe twice that if it’s magical, and twice that again if the sellers were to make the long, oversea journey to a trade hub like the desert metropolis of Ank’Harel.

Nothing is forcing the characters to chase down the rivals, but the thought of losing out on such a prize is enough to motivate most adventurers.

That’s it. That’s the hook: Chase the Rivals down and rob them.

“The thought of losing out on such a prize is enough to motivate most adventurers.”

That’s not adventurers. You’re thinking of criminals.

And not even very smart criminals. There’s gotta be easier marks for 1,000 gp than five well-equipped adventurers who already beat you once.

Even if the players do hear these rumors and leap straight to, “Oh, man! We definitely gotta rob those people!” Call of the Netherdeep forgets to include a mechanism for telling them that they’re supposed to go to Bazzoxan.

Sure, they might interrogate the Rivals before/after robbing them. Or maybe they follow them all the way to Bazzoxan before robbing them.

But if not, the entire adventure is literally scripted to derail.

EVERYTHING FAILS TOGETHER

Sadly, the whole campaign is like this. Every transition is a broken, ill-conceived railroad.

One I want to call particular attention to, however, is the transition from Bazzoxan to Ank’Harel, because I think it reveals the fundamental misstep of Call of the Netherdeep here.

To briefly review, the core structure here is:

• The PCs meet one or more of the three researchers in Bazzoxan.
• They go into Betrayers’ Rise.
• They follow one of the researchers back to Bazzoxan, where they join that researcher’s faction.

This seems pretty straightforward, right?

But every step of the way, Call of the Netherdeep transforms this into a tortured disaster.

First, the campaign hides the researchers so that the PCs have to jump through weird, arbitrary, unlabeled hoops to meet them.

The first option is:

• The PCs randomly wander over to the crematorium.
• They decide to stay and help dispose of corpses.
• A researcher named Prolix shows up.

If the PCs don’t go to the crematorium? The campaign breaks. If they don’t help dispose of the corpses? The campaign breaks.

The second option is:

• The PCs eventually wander into the inn.
• Among a number of other patrons, there’s a tiefling in the common room.
• If they don’t talk to the tiefling, the adventure specifically says the tiefling will ignore them.
• If they do talk to the tiefling (who is named Question), they need to mention the Jewel of the Three Prayers.
• If they mention the Jewel, then the third researcher (Aloysia), who has been eavesdropping on this conversation, will be like, “Hey! I’m the NPC who tells you what to do next!”

Don’t randomly talk to the tiefling? The campaign breaks. Don’t decide to spontaneously mention the Jewel (which you could very easily have decided is something you shouldn’t be flashing around) during this specific conversation? The campaign breaks.

This is, to put it politely, a very convoluted path. It’s really unclear to me why they’re locked the plot behind these deliberately obfuscated checkpoints.

To put it less politely, this is video game writing. And, sure, in a video game you can expect the players to keep clicking on NPCs in the tavern until they click on the right tiefling. But it doesn’t translate to the table top at all. There is no display of patrons for the players to click on.

But we’re not done yet.

Aloysia then proposes that she and the PCs should work together. Of course, as we’ve established, the campaign then just assumes the PCs will not accept her offer and pretends it never happened.

The campaign is simultaneously pretending that there’s no way the PCs are working with the Rivals, either. This is important, because, at the end of Betrayers’ Rise, the designers frame up a heavily railroaded “gotcha!” scene where Aloysia, accompanied by the Rivals, shows up and steals the Jewel.

This forced fight (which can’t happen at all if any of these convoluted preconditions is not met), ends with one of two scripted outcomes.

If Aloysia wins, she cracks a teleportation tablet, creating a teleportation circle to Ank’Harel, and announces that the Rivals should follow her. The PCs theoretically have the opportunity to follow her here, but since they’re presumably dead or unconscious, this is unlikely.

If Aloysia loses, she runs away and casts earthquake, triggering a cave-in that blocks the PCs from pursuing her. She then fumbles through her bag and — hilariously — drops two teleportation tablets on the ground while trying to activate a third.

The PCs can then spend 10-20 hours digging their way out, find the teleportation tablets, think to themselves, “This definitely isn’t a trap,” and then use them to follow her.

Now, once the PCs get to Ank’Harel, the book acts as if the PCs are equally likely to join each of the three factions. But that’s not really the case, is it? First, Aloysia has just tried to rob them (and possibly kill them). Remember the Unforgivable Sin of stealing the PCs’ shit? Yeah.

Second, the only way for the PCs to join Aloysia’s faction — the Consortium — is if they raced after her, jumped through the teleportation circle moments after she went through, immediately forgave her for everything, and then signed up on the spot.

I mean… C’mon. Even if the adventure wasn’t doing everything in its power to stop the PCs from doing that, it’s not exactly a plausible outcome, right? “Hey, person who just tried to kill us! We are interested in your ideas and would like to hear more! Do you have a pamphlet or anything we could look over?”

It seems fairly likely to me that all of this would have made a lot more sense earlier in development: You have dynamic, interesting Rivals. The researchers in Bazzoxan would have had clear, ruidium-focused agendas. This would allow the players to make meaningful choices about which faction’s agenda they agree with, and these choices could have been contrasted against the choices of the Rivals, driving the action forward through Bazzoxan and into Ank’Harel.

If the book just presented these as toys for the DM to actively play with, it’s a robust situation rich with possibility.

But then somebody decided that they needed to write a railroad that forces Aloysia to be a maniacal, monologuing villain.

And the whole thing falls apart into nonsense.

The researchers get hidden behind scripted cut scenes in Bazzoxan. The adventure wants to hide what the researchers know (so that there can be Startling Revelations™ in Ank’Harel), so the PCs aren’t given the information to make meaningful choices. Aloysia gets railroaded off the table as a viable ally.

No clear stakes? The choice of researcher becomes arbitrary.

No true choice in researchers? The faction recruitment in Ank’Harel breaks.

All of these threads — all of these broken techniques based on the fundamental flaw of believing that railroading is the only way to link an adventure together — are woven together here. The result is muddy, confusing, difficult to use, and, more often than not, completely broken in actual practice.

It’s easy to look at a moment like this and say, “Well, the writers can’t possibly account for every possibility!”

And you’d be right.

Which is why Call of the Netherdeep SHOULD be focusing on giving the DM — who CAN account for what the group has done — the tools to do so, rather than hamstringing them with unusable scripts.

FACTION MISSIONS

In addition to the shortcomings of Netherdeep’s connective tissue, we now need to talk about the faction missions in Ank’Harel.

Like the faction missions in Dragon Heist, these are very barebones in their presentation.

Unlike the faction missions in Dragon Heist, these aren’t designed to be run as contrapuntal story beats while other stuff is happening. They’re just a linear string of events. So the barebones approach here mostly just means that this phase of the campaign feels incomplete.

The other problem with the faction missions is that… well, they’re pretty bad.

For example, there’s a mission where someone is trying to frame one of the PCs’ friends for stealing a ring by planting it in his pocket. So the PCs mount an investigation to clear their friend’s name.

They find two pieces of evidence:

1. An Insight check reveals that someone has a “guarded expression.”
2. This same person, a researcher in the ruidium-infested ruins of Cael Morrow, has a ruidium infection.

The adventure then confidently announces: “The characters can present their findings to Headmaster Gryz Alakritos.”

…

WHAT findings?

Bizarrely, their NPC friend, whose name they “cleared,” then gives them the ring as a reward.

The stolen ring.

That isn’t his.

Because that was the whole premise of the entire scenario.

The next faction mission features the PCs needing to track down a double agent. This one wraps up when the PCs find two pieces of evidence:

1. An Insight check reveals the agent’s “true intentions and affiliation.”
2. This same person, a researcher in the ruidium-infested ruins of Cael Morrow, has a ruidium infection.

And if you’re thinking, “Justin, you just said that.”

Yes.

Yes, I did.

It’s the exact same setup.

And the conclusion is, once again, “Proof?! Sir, I made an INSIGHT check!”

Add to this the aforementioned problem of multiple faction missions being set in the ruins of Cael Morrow, despite Cael Morrow being too small to support multiple faction missions.

Basically, the faction missions are really bad.

Fortunately, they’re also pointless: The idea is that you have to do these faction missions in order to gain access to Cael Morrow. But it turns out that the impregnable security on the Cael Morrow site consists of… a handful of CR 1 guards who might summon five CR 3 guards if they get a chance.

CONCLUSION

I’ve spent the last couple of sections really breaking down the problems with Call of the Netherdeep, so as we wrap up, I want to mention a few more things that I really like about the book.

First, the monster design is fantastic. Look at this aboleth spawn, it oozes creepiness:

And look at this sword wraith:

Just incredible concepts wedded to fantastic art. In fact, as you’ve seen throughout this review, the art team for Call of the Netherdeep is simply superb from one end of the book to the other.

Speaking of the visual design, I also want to mention the ruidium-inspired design of the book. At the beginning of the campaign, the occasional page will have have a ruidium-veined edge treatment. Over the course of the book, however, these veins grow, until the ruidium appears to be literally taking over the tome.

I don’t know if that’s the work of Senior Graphic Designer Trish Yochum or Graphic Designer Matt Cole, or both, but bravo. Excellent work.

In closing, as I look over the totality of Call of the Netherdeep, I see some familiar themes and elements:

• Faction missions from Dragon Heist
• Corrupting crystals from Legacy of the Crystal Shard
• A three-stage god fight like the one found in Rime of the Frostmaiden
• Deep-diving memory visions to redeem a divinity from Descent Into Avernus

But the synthesis works here. In fact, in all but one case (the faction missions), I think you can safely argue that each individual element works better in Call of the Netherdeep than in its antecedents.

I think there are, as we have seen, some serious issues with structure and logic that will make this campaign much harder to run effectively than it should be. Ultimately, whether you decide to answer the Call of the Netherdeep or not is largely going to depend on whether you think it’s worth the salvage effort to rebuild the core structure of the campaign into something that makes sense.

The things to focus on, I think, are:

• Those excellent dungeons that form big, meaty pillars to build your campaign around.
• The fundamental excellence of the Rivals once your strip away the badly scripted sequences.
• The beautiful and enigmatic lore of Alyxion the Apotheon, which — if properly structured — will draw the players deep into a tragic story of epic proportions and then empower them to provide its conclusion.

Despite my reservations, I recommend Call of the Netherdeep. With a manageable amount of work, I think you’ll find something truly special for you and your players to enjoy.

Style: 5
Substance: 3

Project Leads: James J. Haeck, Matthew Mercer, Christopher Perkins
Writers: James J. Haeck, Makenzie De Armas, LaTia Jacquise, Cassandra Khaw, Sadie Lowry
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
Cost: $49.95
Page Count: 224

FURTHER READING
Call of the Netherdeep: Running Betrayers’ Rise
Call of the Netherdeep: Running the Rivals
Remixing Call of the Netherdeep
How to Remix an Adventure

Go to Part 1

THE DUNGEONS

Call of the Netherdeep is studded with a sequence of really cool dungeons:

• Emerald Grotto
• Betrayers’ Rise
• Cael Morrow
• The Netherdeep

Emerald Grotto is the launch point of the campaign. It’s a pretty basic cave design, but the underwater setting gives it some nice flavor. The forked design is also used to structurally highlight the relationship between the PCs and the Rivals.

Betrayers’ Rise is you standard “cyst of evil” affair, but the devil is in the details here. (Pun intended.) The map is lightly xandered, giving the PCs some nice strategic control in their exploration, and the key is drenched in gothic atmosphere.

Cael Morrow is a sunken city. Or, more accurately, a small part of this city. This is probably the weakest of the dungeons, but is still quite good. The back half opens up, allowing for a more freeform exploration of the ruins, and the key is once again excellent in its specific detail.

The Netherdeep is the big finale of the campaign, an extrusion of the Apotheon’s subconscious mind and memory. And, not to sound like a broken record, once again the map is great and the key richly detailed.

Here’s a good example of how great these dungeon keys are:

R2. HALL OF HOLES

The walls of this hallway are covered with carvings that depict a great battle involving mortals, celestials, and fiends. A faint whistling noise emerges from the walls, sounding almost like snoring.

A character who succeeds on a DC 15 Intelligence (History) check recognizes the wall carvings depict the Battle of the Barbed Fields. This fight was a climactic battle of the Calamity, in which the devotees of the Prime Deities broke through the garrison at the Betrayers’ Rise and reached the walls of Ghor Dranas. Prominently depicted in one scene is a proud, melancholy warrior with curly hair carrying a spear and shield. By his side are two figures; a white-haired girl no more than twelve years old, and a young adult woman with hair that flows behind her, turning into a road upon which countless soldiers march. A character who makes a successful DC 10 Intelligence (Religion) check realizes that the latter two are common depictions of the gods Sehanine the Moon Weaver and Avandra the Change Bringer.

There are several things to note here.

First, the boxed text invokes multiple senses, not just sight.

Second, you see generic “there are pretty pictures on the wall” or “there are some statues here” in dungeon keys all the time, but the writer here has taken the effort to get specific with the art: The hall isn’t just covered in carvings; it’s covered in these specific carvings depicting this specific thing.

Third, this effect is enhanced with multiple skill checks allowing one or more PCs to dive even deeper into the lore. This turns the lore into a reward, giving real meaning to the PCs’ abilities and also likely investing the players more deeply in what their abilities have revealed.

In a single room, this attention to detail is nice. Over the course of the entire campaign, it elevates the entire experience. This is the practical method by which the world of Exandria is brought to vivid life in Call of the Netherdeep.

When it comes to the dungeons, however, I do have a quibble.

Taken on their own merits, Betrayers’ Rise and Cael Morrow are both really good dungeons. The problem is that the dungeons are too small for the lore surrounding them.

Betrayers’ Rise, for example, is presented as a sort of Moria or Undermountain: A vast underground complex with depths unexplored and perhaps unexplorable, out of which demons of the Abyss emerge to threaten the town above. But the actual dungeon found in Call of Netherdeep is teeny-tiny, consisting of just sixteen rooms.

To address the mismatch, the writers kind of toss out the idea that “the characters experience a particular version” of Betrayers’ Rise, and that others experience “different configurations” of the dungeon. They also provide “Betrayers’ Rise Encounters” (p. 63) that can be used as inspiration to “expand” the Rise. But ultimately you’re selling one experience and then delivering another.

Betrayers’ Rise does, ultimately, work as presented, even if it’s not ideal. More problematic is Cael Morrow: Here again, the lore treats the drowned city as a vast archaeological site… but only delivers a handful of buildings and seventeen keyed locations.

In Cael Morrow, however, this is not just an aesthetic mismatch; it’s a deeply flawed structure. The campaign is designed with the expectation that the PCs will journey down into Cael Morrow for a series of faction missions (at least three, possibly more). This makes sense if the archaeological expedition is exploring the entirety of the ruined city, but it isn’t. Cael Morrow simply isn’t large enough to support the iterative missions.

Imagine that you give the PCs a faction mission that sends them into a dungeon. And, when that mission is done, there are seven DAYS until they receive their next mission. (And then another seven days between that mission and the one after that.)

What are the PCs going to do?

Well, if they didn’t completely explore the dungeon during the first mission (and they very easily may have), they’re almost certainly going to go back and finish exploring the dungeon.

Again: It’s only seventeen rooms.

And there’s nothing else for them to do in Ank’Harel.

Because Cael Morrow’s design doesn’t match its lore, there’s just no way these faction missions can work as written.

A good chunk of Cael Morrow is also hilariously linear given the nature of these missions.

The way it works is that the Allegiance of Allsight (one of the Ank’Harel factions) has used magical keystones to create regions of the city where the water is held back, making it much easier for them to excavate these sites. In practice, what they’ve done is create a linear corridor of air about 300 feet long.

One of the Allsight faction missions involves the primary archivist, who is concerned because one of his researchers has been missing for three days and he has no idea where she might be.

Where is she?

200 feet away, straight down a linear corridor.

To be clear, the problem here is not that the excavation site is limited to only one small portion of the city. (As I mentioned before, on its own merits the design of Cael Morrow dungeon is pretty good.)

The problem is that everything in the campaign — the NPCs, the faction missions, the lore, the pacing — is pretending this isn’t the case.

Go to Part 3: This Broken Railroad