This is a review the Adventurer's League module Duke Ravengard Goes to Hell (Again) a 4 hour, tier 4 adventure by Jeremy Cheong. It was my top pick of all the Adventurer's League Adventures released in April 2024 so I thought I would buy it, run it and write a review.
First impressions were very good.
Jeremy is a graphics designer for his day job and it really shows in the production of the adventure. The whole thing is a pleasure to look at, there are two original pieces of artwork, three full colour maps and an array of well designed handouts.
How he can produce something that looks like this for $4.99 (and on offer for $1 until the end of May 2024) speaks to either his confidence in making sales or his passion for excellent design, probably both.
The Adventure
The premise is very silly, this is not a high-fantasy adventure that takes itself seriously.
It centers around a "movie studio" based in Ribcage (the gate town to the Nine Hells), run by a pair of liches using modified memory stones to distribute movies across the planes. They had great success editing found footage from scrying on the Duke from his previous adventures (Descent into Avernus, some Season 9 Adventurer's League modules and Baldur's Gate 3) into hit movies but now they need a sequel and the Duke isn't doing any adventuring so they have staged a kidnapping to obtain more adventure to film.
The liches have placed a "planar lock" on the Duke preventing him being simply plane-shifted away so characters have to either rescue him, overcoming several challenges to be able to safely take a portal to Sigil where there is an all-star fight with several big names from the D&D canon and break the lock or help get the film finished including a staged fight with a fake "Zariel" at which point the liches will gladly let him return home.
The Good
There is a lot to like here, the premise is silly but with a Tier 4 AL party things are likely to get silly however seriously a module takes itself. The adventure deals very nicely with the issues that high-tier magic provides by conscripting the party into the fiction and having them use their awesome powers alongside their adversaries to do cool things rather than trying to place restrictions that prevent them using their magic effectively.
The players are offered a clear choice between doing this as a more usual adventure working against the adversaries to escape or collaborating with them to make as many moments of them being cool as possible.
As I mentioned in the introduction the art and design are great, the handouts and maps are all very professional, and the text of the adventure is clear and well written and genuinely funny in places.
I was inspired to make a lot of effort with my VTT and tokens for all the NPCs because of the quality of the provided material.
The Bad
The theme won't be for everyone, though you will know by reading the preview whether it is likely to suit you.
The other issue is that if you take the option of helping to make the movie then it is very improv-heavy. Players will need to look at script ideas and work out how to improve them, describe how they want their costume for the final battle to look and recount incidents from their past.
Of the group I played it with two really engaged with it and seemed to be having a great time, one seemed engaged but was very shy and two were obviously struggling with the improv. No shade on them some people are better when they have some warning and can freeze up when put on the spot but you need the right group.
With an engaged, improv-savvy, role-play-heavy group this adventure has the potential to soar, but with a more roll-play, mechanically focused group it could really drag.
The Ugly
While the graphic design and layout were generally good I felt the organisation left a little to be desired. The adventure is structured as:
Call to action > Part 1. Studio Tour (Location descriptions and NPC encounters) > Part 2. Adjusting the Scene (improv route) OR Part 3. Everyone's a Critic (traditional rescue) > Conclusion
In practice it didn't really flow like that, I would have preferred the location descriptions split off into their own section separated from the story because you were effectively running both parts 1 and 2 (or would be running parts 1 and 3) at the same time. It worked, it wasn't like I couldn't understand it, but it led to more flipping back and forth than I like in an adventure.
Conclusion
If you like sillyness and have a group who are into lots of roleplay and improv this module is fantastic and you should run to the DMs Guild to grab it. If you like a more serious tone and think tier 4 characters should be deployed only to save the multiverse or have a group more focussed on solving problems with their character sheets maybe give it a miss.
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