DDEX1-1 Defiance in Phlan is the first adventure in the D&D Expeditions range from Wizards of the Coast. It is only available to organisers and DMs running games of the D&D Expeditions program, which is primarily in-store and convention play. While most of the D&D Expeditions adventures can be played in a single 4-hour session, Defiance in Phlan is written as five, short, one-hour sessions. The adventures can be played in any order.

The author of Defiance is Shawn Merwin, who has written a lot of Organised Play adventures for Wizards, primarily for the Living Forgotten Realms, although he’s written a few published adventures as well. His brief for writing the adventure was to introduce the main themes of the first run of Expeditions adventures, introduce the factions, introduce the town, and do it all in short one-hour adventures that could be run as pick-ups at major conventions. Yes, the brief was just a little challenging.

The result is a collection of five short adventures (missions). Each mission highlights one of the factions that player characters can join, and all provide a good introduction to the Tyranny of Dragons storyline and Phlan itself.

Long-time players may remember Phlan as the setting for the very first official D&D computer game, Pools of Radiance, released back in 1988. My first campaign at university (in 1990!) used the companion published adventure, Ruins of Adventure as a base, so I’ve got a long history with the town. In terms of the timeline, it’s now about one hundred years since Pools of Radiance and the Realms has had one or two changes. Phlan is more prosperous than the ruined shell it was back in 1988, but one thing is still the same: It needs heroes!

All of the missions start in the same inn: Madame Freona’s Tea Kettle. To aid in players identifying which missions they’ve already completed, each mission begins at a different time of day and includes one of Madam Freona’s five daughters (all distinct in manner and appearance). From there, the missions diverge greatly in style and approach. One mission involves stealth and deceit, another involves an investigation of a secret hideaway, yet another is a mystery investigation, and the final couple involve the rescue of prisoners. Some of the adventures require a lot of role-playing, others require more traditional dungeon-crawling and combat skills.

Interestingly, it is possible to get through two of the adventures without combat at all. My experiences with running the adventures indicate that they generally take between 30 and 50 minutes to play through; there are a couple of adventures that may run short if the players are clever. The adventure gives guidelines for scaling encounters for between 3-7 players of levels 1 or 2. Unlike the other Tier 1 adventures in the D&D Expeditions line, this adventure is specifically an introductory adventure and cannot be played by levels 3 or 4 adventurers.

Although each mission involves a different faction, the player characters do not need to belong to that faction to participate in the adventure. The missions tend to only touch lightly on the faction’s goals, although the mission involving the Harpers is more dedicated to the Harpers’ goals (although, in this case, those goals also align with those of the other factions). By the time a player has played all five missions, they should have a good feeling for the foes of this first part of the campaign and some of the dangers that may face them later on.

The adventures are ingenious, but more than anything, they have a lot of personality. It’s impressive how much is packed into these short adventures, and inventive players will likely have a great time. While a couple of the missions are quite linear, others really allow the players to surprise the DM with their tactics.

The formatting of the pdf is good. The maps are relatively primitive but quite usable. There is no artwork.

Overall, Defiance in Phlan is a great introduction to the D&D Expeditions program. I hope you get the chance to play it!

A few organisational notes:

Your local WPN store can sanction D&D Expeditions about 3-6 weeks in advance of the session. They will get access to the pdf of the adventure, and will be sent certificates for the permanent magic items items included (and possibly a few of the consumables as well). The certificates allow magic items to be traded between players, but aren’t necessary for players to gain the magic items for their own characters if they play in the adventure.

At the current time, the D&D Expeditions adventures are not available for home or online play.

Players need to log play of Defiance in Phlan on their Adventure Log sheets. Because Defiance is actually five adventures, I’ve instructed my players to note down “Defiance in Phlan #3” or whichever mission number is appropriate on their logs. The missions can be played in any order. (“Defiance in Phlan Mission 2” would work, it just takes up a lot of space…)

DMs who run Defiance in Phlan also gain XP and downtime for one of their characters for each mission they run, as noted in the adventure. DMs should use the name and DCI# of the event’s organiser in the DM space of their log. As a DM can both play and run Defiance, I write “Defiance in Phlan (DM)” when I DM a session of this adventure.

More information can be found in the D&D Adventurer’s League Player’s Guide, available from the Wizards AL Resources page.