The first adventure in the new Oracle of War campaign set in the Eberron campaign setting is The Night Land by Shawn Merwin. Designed for a party of level 1-4 characters, it introduces the party to the town of Salvation. There, they and others work as salvagers, taking trips into the shattered lands of the Mournland to recover valuable artefacts.

A Town Named Salvation

The adventure uses a familiar structure for introductory DDAL adventures: the party meet in a tavern and go on a selection of short quests. The first official DDAL adventure in 2014, “Defiance in Phlan” used this structure, as do many subsequent entries. It provides an excellent way of introducing the party to the main themes and NPCs of the setting. The variation in this adventure is that it only has three missions rather than four or five. As a result, there is a little more space for role-playing in a four-hour slot.

The players can choose the order of the quests – taken from the tavern’s notice board – but they will complete all three of them. One is a relatively straightforward trip into the Mournland, where the players face a few combat challenges, albeit ones with complications. Another requires the characters to find a stolen relic. This quest features intriguing role-playing scenes, as well as a trip into the Mournland. Finally, there’s one scenario set entirely in Salvation, where the characters explore a strange tunnel in a junkyard.

The action is clearly defined. The players and DM should generally know what to do, and they shouldn’t be left wondering what to do next. Despite the individual missions being short (they range between 60 and 75 minutes each), some have surprising complexities, and – what is very refreshing – consequences. Some of these take place immediately. For instance, if you take too long in an investigation, the final encounter changes because the villains have had more time to enact their plan. The consequences of others come later. The players note these on a special log sheet.

A Readable Format

After all the struggles my fellow DMs and I have had with the Season 8 format, it’s an utter relief to realise that these adventures don’t use it! The text clearly describes the NPCs actions and knowledge, with a sidebar providing additional role-playing details. This sidebar has two new role-playing aids: a section that describes the NPC’s mannerisms, and one describing their overall motivations. These provide good starting points for a DM developing their characterisations of these characters, but they aren’t prescriptive.

The format maintains numerous headings and subheadings but arranged more conveniently. In particular, the adventure is far more explicit about how the designer saw events playing out. It’s not “there are a petrified body, some cockatrices and a train, go!”. Instead, it explains the order of events and how to present it to the characters. The format is less prescriptive when it needs to be, but there isn’t a false “playing the three pillars” section when there’s no reason that two of the pillars would occur!

These are still relatively linear, short quests. The adventure is not a sandbox. It has a goal of being accessible for play in a set time-frame, and it achieves that well.

However, I found it very evocative of the distinctive features of Eberron. It doesn’t feel like a standard D&D adventure. Yes, there are adventure and combat, but the setting is distinct – where else would you find a lightning rail? – and you also meet NPCs and factions that are unlike those in most D&D campaigns. The characters encounter intrigues and deceptions, and not everyone is who they seem! I’m not sure how a DM unfamiliar with Eberron would go; there’s a moderate amount of assumed knowledge. You’d do well to study the Eberron campaign setting before running this adventure.

Challenges for the DM

Although most of the adventure is clearly described, I struggled with one encounter. And that’s the one with a spectral train. It’s a brilliant idea, and the text lays out the pieces brilliantly: there is someone you must rescue, a foe you must overcome, and a train bearing down on everything. However, the adventure doesn’t note how far the PCs begin away from the action. As this is incredibly time-dependent – there are only five rounds before the train kills the person you’re trying to save –you need to know the initial positions of all participants. I very much wanted a map of all of this! (The designer has noted that this information was accidentally removed during editing and development. It should be: “The PCs, like the train, start 200 feet away. The ‘pet’ is halfway between the PCs and Garundah, 100 feet from each.”)

There is also one role-playing encounter during the investigation that might be an issue. I enjoy scenes that aren’t overly detailed, and I was able to run it successfully, but it did occur to me that some DMs might want more details. Furthermore, learning critical information seems to rely on a successful Charisma check. What happens if that fails? Are the players stuck and unable to proceed? I’d prefer that the characters always learn the necessary information, with the additional levels of detail (which are present) revealed with better results on the check.

Final Thoughts

That then is Into the Night Land, an excellent start to the Oracle of War series, a campaign of twenty adventures taking characters from level 1 to 20. It augurs very well for the future: an evocative setting filled with fascinating NPCs and clearly defined quests. The way it allows the actions of the players to have an impact in future adventures is very clever; it should allow the players to feel that their choices make a difference to how everything plays, despite the campaign as a whole having a fixed course.

I highly recommend this adventure!