Review of the 1st part of Journey into Malebolge; Call me Virgil

[Adventure]
Journey into Malebolge Pt. I (2014)
Paul Elkmann & Geoffrey O’Dale (Spellbook Games)
Portal to Adventure (AD&D 1e homebrew)
Lvl 10+

And now it begins for real. In 1980 Geoffrey O’Dale and Paul Elkmann published Inferno, a high level crawl through the first 4 levels of a reworked Hell based on the literary classic Dante’s Inferno, a hypogean odyssey where you match blades against the absolute worst that hell can throw at you, have to bargain or trick earls, barons and dukes of hell, are surrounded by millions and millions of gold pieces worth of treasure (good luck carting it out), have to cross swords with the most brutal, cruel and unusual encounters and regularly find artifacts that would put the Hand of Vecna to shame. No plane shifting out of this one. Once you set foot in Malebolge, you are there to stay, and have to complete all 9 levels and escape through Lucifers mouth to get out. It had some problems that may have prevented it from becoming more famous then it probably should be. The difficulty of running high level games for one. You really need a thorough understanding of how DnD, specifically ADnD, works to do it justice. Large, complex encounters with monsters with tonnes of special abilities. If you are not fluent in the language of the game, go home, practice, hit the books, you are not ready. And that’s regular high level DnD, this feels like extra-hard mode, with tonnes of custom items, creatures and spells piled atop of all of that.

When the OSR got started the dynamic duo arose from their cryogenic slumber and transcribed level number 5 in Fight On #3. Its for ODnD but it feels the same. Great. It starts at about intensity 8 and by the time you hit level 4 it is about 13 out of 10, nice and painful. So when I discovered that O’Dale remade the entire thing, replaced all the book monsters with his own monsters, replaced nearly all the items, used his own wonky custom system of not-quite ADnD which I kind of hate because it is going to make conversion laborious, and did all nine levels, plus bonus areas, plus extra content, I had to check it out. This is not a review. This is a light scan. This thing is 400 pages long, and that is not including the Inferno Treasury of 200 items, the Inferno Bestiary of 700 creatures (?), The Codicil of Maladies which, haha, you will need because every step into hell is going to bombard your players with all manner of nastiness, the Gazzeteer and if you like it, why not enjoy another 400 pages of gazzeteer material since even now the module is relying on templates and allegory to cover the immensity that is HELL.

So is it better? Yes. Probably much better. To compensate for that it increases its comprehension complexity, the shit your brain has to eat before it can actually run this thing on your wetware, by what I suspect might be a factor of ten (I am not joking) and that is if you are fluent in AD&D. Don’t expect much in the way of handholding. This thing is huge, massive, and if you run into an editing oversight, which, because of its size, is likely to occur, you should be ready to jump into the breach and have a solution ready. You should also be prepared to have the original AND the Fight On article ready to use as a rosetta stone to convert back a lot of the statt blocks and magic items, although very often items are remarkably close. I keep thinking PtA adds more complexity which it does but then the actual artifacts and items are almost identical across editions and its mostly just the AC and saving throw system that works differently, that and there’s new spells, spell damage overall seems to have been greatly reduced, there’s no level drain and a tonne of other minor but significant differences.

So what changes? Not the premise. You are still a party of adventurers who, once they make their way into Hell, must now get out. It still uses cruel nerfing to make sure you get to experience hell as it is meant to be experienced; that means no teleportation, flight, planar travel, water walking or other means of skipping all the delightful punishment. Divination is nerfed so it is unreliable. Turning is harder. I don’t know the new system well enough to precisely estimate what spells are the most formidable since the magic system is one of the things that has gotten a major overhaul. Your constitution (or equivalent) is also literally lowered each day in Gehenna unless you succeed at a saving throw, to a maximum of 10 points, which is actually harder then in the original and adds an extra bit of pressure, not that it needs to as it is already about as pleasant as 2 Isles of the Ape. Time passes differently. Healing is reduced. Make a spreadsheet for each layer so you can keep track of this shit easily.

The first thing that changes, the intro. The intro to inferno was already good, very low key, with characters travelling into a spooky forest and encountering three magic animals that urge them to go back if they try to ascend to heaven via the mount, which is forbidden. It sort of gradually unrolls hell so the oh shit moment is more powerful when they actually stand before those gates that say ‘Abandon Hope all ye who enter’ it has fucking weight. This one is better. You walk this path to the Bridge of Doom, and before it there’s heads, ruins with incidental treasure, spooky, fucked up ominous signs. You dont know you are going into hell. Yet. But there’s something off. Animals and henchmen won’t cross over the bridge. The river itself is hallucinogenic, and the spirits of the damned can be dimly seen crossing over the bridge by priests of the gods of death.

Upper Hell, the hell prelude, hell light, whatever you want to call it, sort of lays the foundation for how these things operate, even though at this point your characters can still return. Every circle or realm of hell is defined by a series of environmental effects operating on the players, usually hourly, in ways that will eventually destroy them if they do not find shelter or move on. I don’t know if they get worse, yet, they change with every circle and they are unrelenting. In upper hell it is mild, cold rain, rarely gale force winds and lightning, and rotting odors that incapacitate elves if they dont save every hour. There are a lot of things to keep track off in hell, but this also means that every move in hell is difficult. O’Dale and Elkmann are less fond of railroading then they used to be, but they understand how to herd players. In this case, Hell light is surrounded by swampland, filled with miles and miles of disease, poisonous plants, horrible vermin, and dyptheria. You could explore the swamp, but do you want to? This also introduces the concept of tracking food and water. In hell, getting clean food and water is NOT easy. A lot of it is cursed, poisonous or inedible. In some cases, eating it will bind you to the land for 50 hours/pound consumed so you cannot leave, this in addition to the fact you are already trapped. You can sacrifice spell slots and create food and water, but now you have to find a safe place to rest to recover those. Places where you can actually relax and rest are very rare and that is appropriate when you are dealing with characters that have such immense resources.

So many new locations added, this one starts super light. You espy a ruined church. Tension. Could this be where you find whatever the fuck is going on? And instead it is very classic, very laid back, some fungus/slime infested ruins, and a mass of devils performing some obscene ritual of sacrifice. Peanuts compared to what comes after, but probably good to introduce the type of opponents you will be facing. You also find the last mad priest survivor of a kingdom, dragged into hell mere decades for him, thousands of years for the PCs, inhabiting the ruined temple of his now extinct faith, guarding the golden and impervious body of a saint. You can all still return after this and get your best stuff in case you went on the quest in your second best clothing. This is all to instill in you a taste of what is to come, a glimpse of the power of hell. You can go back and recuperate until you reach this point:

And then its on; The new edition also offers a dungeon area which is more action packed where you have to capture an Archpriest of hell, and he escapes into Inferno through a doorway. Its a bit quicker, one moment you are fighting a bunch of evil adventurers using arrow slits and oil and fire arrows, the next moment you find yourself before a glowing portal. This is also a good moment to get acclimated to the fucking density of Journey to Malebolge. The only thing that approaches it in recent memory is AX2, although AX2 had far superior organization to support this type of density. Here you are going to have to rawdog these victorian room catalog keys, read all the items, get a feel for how these NPCs, which are complex and intelligent opponents, might use them. There is a curious assymmetry of effort and probably information transparency. The keys themselves are hyper-detailed, but the purpose or overall design of the locations is muted, and little meta-information is provided to help you figure out what the fuck is going on or help you decide which information is critical and which is trivial. Here too Lahellin, a powerful priest, has all manner of escape capabilities, can summon the devils from some busts in one room, but this information is not centralized, it must be extracted, decrypted, integrated. Much of the actual design or what is going on is contained in descriptions of NPCs, rooms, treasure. The ultimate show don’t tell. Treasure here is already insane, and I appreciate the cruel gesture of including among the vastness some cursed scrolls that will teleport the players to hell, one way, as a sidewinder for people that seek to extract every last erg of coin.

Venture through the doorway in pursuit of Lahellin, and go into True Hell. Real Hell. You won’t be coming back hell. There is another transitionary piece that applies for both openings. You venture through a ten mile tunnel, basins on your left intermittently so you may refresh (and actually stock up on much needed water, a sly offering?), and then you emerge into a chamber of evil, with nine thrones centred around a table, each one belonging to a Prince of Hell. There is no treasure here, only the possibility to get horribly corrupted, turned evil, brought into contact with one of the princes of hell. Lingering brings only more problems. The entrance collapses behind you, before you is a longer sojourn, and a cavern filled with some useless detrius, but also, a last place of rest, sealed off by a giant boulder. After this, true hell awaits.

Conventions of Hell:
There are several conventions that apply throughout the entire series that add interesting wrinkles to the adventure as a whole, moreso because it is hidden information you can discover that can drastically increase your chances of making it out alive. First: major devils have talismans that, while very difficult to find, will allow you to control the devil in question and grant you a whole plethora of supernatural abilities, although like any major artifact, keeping hold of it for too long will eventually bring probable doom upon the character. These talismans are often hidden somewhere on the Circle wherever major devils are encountered, and getting your hands on them, a nontrivial challenge especially given the unreliability of divination, might be one of the only ways the party can hope to preval against the infernal nobility.

The second feature is that unlike the Abyss, hell is organized and patrolled. Mortals will be stopped and interrogated, reinforcements will be called, increasingly vicious manhunts (double encounter checks) will be organized across larger and larger areas, and while initially you can bluff your way past a patrol if you have a convincing story, the chances of doing so succesfully become increasingly remote as you proceed inward. If the devils are severely wounded they will be more reluctant to alert their superiors because of the embaressment. One interesting feature that is not fully realized (although it might be covered in something like the Diabolic Palace Module), is the ability to obtain a pass from an infernal noble to travel freely through the circle. How and under what conditions they will issue such a pass is not fully described, although a glance at some of the usual reactions show that, being devils, the price for such immunity is often incredibly steep. This is aided by Hell’s unfortunate tendency to render inviolate and binding all Oaths sworn, even under duress. There is a complex sort of social minigame here that is mostly hidden; I think there is a missed opportunity to encounter other mortals bearing such passes in Inferno.

Gehenna
Every circle follows roughly the same format, and this includes the Overworld of hell. That’s right kids! You don’t even start out in Circle Zero. You start in Gehenna, with the option to travel to the hell-city of Glasya-Labolas or explore such unappealing areas as the Vile Forest, the Wood of Errors and the Wailing Mountains. Elkmann and O’Dale’s solution to railroading is to present what is effectively a point-crawl as a hex-crawl. You have, at all times, the option to cut across country, attempt shortcuts, wander off the path and otherwise utilize 360 degrees of motion. The caveat is that very often, the environmental effects make most of these options very unpleasant, but it is good that you have the option for those rare cases when making such motions is a better move. Here, you CAN go to Glasya-Labolas (if the DM has that supplement), as long as it is understood that you are going to get out of hell only one way, and that is through 9 levels of infernal bastards.

The significant encounters here are the repurposed cougar, shewolf, lion encounter from the original (which you will need since the new bestiary and denizens volumes appear to omit their statistics), where you face these very potent supernatural talking animals in succession, each of them warning you away, and then atop the hill the forbidden gateway to Paradiso, now inactive, and an encounter with angels that CAN result in a very potent bit of aid for your trouble, but can also end poorly. The other encounter is optional, The Great Chimera of the Wood is feeding on the remains of two adventurers and a dog, do you tussle with it or do you quietely go around it? And then everything is very well worked out, you are given information about their origins in case the characters use Speak with Dead, there might be VERY good loot etc. My only regret is that the Chimera ALSO does not show up anywhere in the bestiary/denizens book (I should emphasize these are virtually the only omissions in the tome). The entry into Circle Zero is a 2000 feet deep pit clouded in perpetual darkness, with a zigzagging narrow path down that provides partial cover from the hurricane strength winds that threaten to pitch people into the pit, which is a way of lightly setting the stage for the absolute dragging that is to follow.

Circle Zero

Circle Zero is clouded in perpetual darkness, negating all normal light sources. Dispel magic (or equivalent) negates it for level * 15 minutes. There is no note on the efficacy of continual light, possibly this spell no longer exists in PtA. Go with the interpretation of the original Inferno, 6 turns, darkness negated for 10 ft, otherwise you have 3 ft. vision and you are going to get lost. A single road cuts through featureless sand. Occasional pylons are a recurring feature and provide directions along the lines of ‘Aikos, Tree, Dantalion, Shaitan‘ which is helpful. Encounter checks are light, three checks per day. This is all a prelude to the wall of hell, which is impenetrable and turns into fire if you try to surmount it, but it is still a bit softer then the insta-death wall in the original, and another splendid setpiece, the Gate proper, where we can read the immortal lines:

And of course: The Adventurers hear a loud mixture of sounds, curses, angry shouts, weeping and wailing, cries of pain, and cries for help, all over an undercurrent of buzzing. The air is hot and humid, and the atmosphere gloomy and oppressive. A mortal cannot pass the Gate due to intense fear, until they succeed on a 1d20 roll GTET [28-Will], checked hourly. Mortals must walk through the Gate on their own; an impenetrable Wall of Force fills the open gap if an individual is made unconscious or they are controlled or compelled by another. There is no resistance to passing through the Gate, but as each one enters a single mournful bell note sounds from an unknown location (p.32).

These sorts of moments are nearly always accompanied by interactive elements or objects, concealed treasure, considerations of alternate pathways etc. In the new edition you could even, theoretically, travel 600 miles around the wall of hell and attempt to enter by its eastern gate, which actually has different concealed treasure, or take one of the ten man-sized hell gates. The point is that while JiM has flaws and drawbacks, interactivity is not one of them; and it has expanded the range of actions considerably from its progenitor. Eat fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil! Cross the river Acheron (here again, it covers anything from swimming (by far the stupidest course of action), to paying the 2 GP toll (only after you have asked him three times) and having Charon ferry you across. And here too there are interesting wrinkles, like clerics/paladins being able to demand passage in the name of their gods. Alternatively, you can of course try to kill Charon and steal his shit and risk getting killed with an artifact level OAR.

Circle One

We continue on into the first proper hell circle. Proper hell environmental effects include earthquakes, lightning storms, storms, disturbing sighs that prevent rest and everlasting oppressive darkness. Tiamat’s lair has been excised from this edition, probably in an effort to rid it of its last TSR-isms and embrace total customization. This is also noticeable because JiM has no classic devils. Instead O’Dale and Elkmann, the madmen, have concocted a whole new order of devils that mostly resemble something you would encounter in a hieronymous bosch painting, and added a few special types. There’s about 3-5 devil types for each circle, not including officers, unique soldiers and officers belonging to each Prince, Common devils and templates for the demonic nobility, from Earl all the way up to Duke. On the plus side, it doesn’t look like they can chain summon, but that is about the only good thing. It will take you a long time to acquiaint yourself with all of them and figure out how to use them to properly demolish the players but given JiM’s extreme length and the number of random encounter checks, you are going to get that chance. To add to the maximum confusion, the taxonomy is given an overhaul between editions so a Type 2A devil in Inferno is not the same devil as a type 2A devil in Journey into Malebolge except the common devils which are the same, yes I know that is confusing just go with it fuck.

A great feature of this place and a great bit of game design in general is that Circle One is also the only place that has something resembling a real safe haven; a castle filled with virtuous pagans from across the ages that can provide a safe place to rest, magic healing, sages, advice, possible guides, several minor magic items and tonnes of other material to discover. The catch is that mortals are only permitted to enter the castle for 6 days each, and 36 days per year. So you are given a place of limited recovery, from which to PLAN subsequent expeditions, perform reconnaisance, recover in case of a botched foray, and bank XP (this is one I would have enjoyed a ruling on, but I assume no training and no levelling is possible while in Inferno unless it is through magic tomes), but challenge is maintained by strictly LIMITING this resource.

The other options on this level are to immediately try your luck by attempting to rob Charon. And yes, that is a pile of six million gp in the centre. This is essentially a heist, with several potent guards bringing in an overwhelming amount of reinforcements so the wise move is to get in, get what you can, and extricate yourself before you are totally destroyed. Treasure hoards in JiM are liberally sprinkled with extremely fucked up cursed items so diving in and immediately using everything you find is a risky endaevour. Magic items ok, but why treasure? you ask yourselves. This is also covered, there are numerous occasions when you may attempt to bribe or otherwise offer as gifts great amounts of wealth to various devils. Otherwise it is true that Malebolge has riches beyond the dreams of avarice for even a high level adventuring party, and figuring out a few choice pieces to carry off is critical.

An addition and optional area, the Cave of Tantalassus is a suprisingly restrained collection of caverns, with a cyclops and an oggress living together with their collection of wolves and occasional poisonous pets. Plentiful magic items (again, some of them cursed) and light guardians make this a remarkably lucrative side-trek, a good way to stretch the muscles and obtain some power before the difficult stretches begin to set in. The opening dungeon might be slightly harder then this one. Bonus points if you rob the joint when Tantalassus is out! Circle One kind of eases you in and is enough to give you a false sense of security. Some nice classic grecian elements too.

Impassible mountainous terrain (if you want to climb in absolute darkness for 6 days while eating 4 random encounter checks per day in a region without food or water the game graciously allows you) but a gate checkpoint that could probably be forced. Crawl across a waste blasted by storms and wrapped in utter darkness. The central feature, just outside the Canyon is the Palace of Minos, judge of the damned, an improved version of the original, with a greater degree of loopy-doopy. This is where Inferno starts getting properly assholish but we are not yet at full brutalization levels because you can actually just go around Minos’s palace if you don’t mind braving a patrol of 20 devils (this is arguably admittedly a problem in and of itself), an improvement from the old adventure where you could actually just walk around it without incident.

The Palace of Minos, wherein all damned souls gather for judgement and banishment to various hells, is another place where you can get yourself into horrible trouble if you are incautious. Dick security measures are taken to prevent you from catching wind of the deep shit you are in at the last possible moment, which is perfect.

Despite its cosy appearance, plentiful frescoes and luxurious full-lighting (smokeless torches) this is a lot closer to a traditional dungeon. There are no random encounter tables, though many of the guardians of certain areas will call reinforcements, simulating an organized response. Instead each room is another opulent marvel, filled to the brim with art objects, hazardous enchantments, deadly traps and inhabitants and doors sealed with passwords (or three knock spells), always with a note of who knows them (again, a very good way of adding an extra layer to a simple dungeoncrawl). There’s a secret office under a spell of permanent time stop, a hall of mirrors that mutates and distorts people that pass through it, typhonic spirits, animated spellcasting paintings, various scenes of torments of the damned, good souls to rescue and interrogate (I am not quite sure how feasible it is to restore them, although a wish spell would probably do it), hell harpies with cockatrice feather fans, unique hazards, puzzles and dozens and dozens of unique and powerful magic items and artifacts. Sort of a cracked out Rob Kuntz impersonation, and much denser and deadlier, and like most decent high level adventures, judicious and precise crawling will yield immense rewards while heedless blundering will soon have the characters embroiled into absolutely overpowering trouble. This is best illustrated by Minos’s Court, which, once entered, cannot be left without his permission. Either they must defeat an Earl of Hell, his hound and 9 fucking devils, or it is bargaining time. The text here is a bit unclear; in one case it states that Minos will demand an oath of allegiance for ANY bargain, which contradicts the single result of the table. I’m also not a fan of the ‘any deal with Minos is an evil act’ interpretation, which, while it is mythically intelligable, means that good characters are going to have to hammer their way out of the palace, although depending on the interpretation of the text, a neutral or evil character might bargain on behalf of the party.

Technically the wrong species of satanic THOT, and inconveniently located on the opposite side of Circle Two so unlikely to be visited. 6 super evil high HD spellcasting thots with magic items, female doppleganger henchmen, and a silver rape whistle that summons 2d12 2Bs and 1d8 2C devils (who can themselves also call reinforcements). While I believe PtA has excised level drain from the attack roster (which is a small mercy), it is hard to envision this as turning into anything but a series of brutal pitched battles (unless the characters are silly enough to accept offers of infernal snu-snu), and largely dependent on the interpretation of the DM whether a battle in front of one tent will alert the rest of the garden. Actually prevailing does mean the characters, besides six gorillion gp’s worth of parfumes, undergarments, trashy jewelry and the garish cosmetics that are the mark of a dissapointed parental figure, get access to some invulnerable tents, conceivably allowing them to rest anywhere.

Third Circle

A properly hellish level. Gateway is another checkpoint with the usual reinforcements, chance to bluff gets harder, chance they send an escort with you is higher, and trip through the mountains is unpleasant. No more perpetual darkness blasted by storms. Now its a frigid mire, oily snow, irritating air, frostbite, fog, hailstorms, despair, souls tormented by devils and savaged and defecated on by packs of wandering hounds. Packs of wandering souls are encountered often. I lost track how many checks you do, even calculating each mile is strenuous, let alone passing through it.

They redid the Cerberus encounter so it is much worse, and also much more interesting. Instead of a fucked up encounter alongside the only road, now there is no road, and Cerberus comes upon them in the fog, tries to incapacitate a character and then carries it away to its Barn. You now have a ticking clock to track it down before the character is transformed into a hideous dog-hybrid alongside another soul. Here I will note that raiding Minos’s palace should yield certain hellcakes invaluable in subduing or otherwise overcoming Cerberus, who is otherwise very potent. The barn proper is the usual open-ended tactical nightmare of orders of battle; some sort of chibi-cerberus, and various types of devils along with big C himself. Appropriately titanic hoard is hidden behind successive lairs of trickery, and then an even more secret hoard hidden behind another layer. Occasional items that generate endless food make a lot of sense in the context of hell and are invaluable. Good luck and good hunting?

There are two additional areas, optional, very tasteful. Caladierdra’s House is a grand hall/ranch run by frost giants that train various hell-hounds, garms, fenris-wolves, winterwolves and other canines for the infernal prince and is similar to the Barn in that it is a demented form of high-epic, hyper-dense spec-ops DnD, complete with rules for starting locations, characters arriving late, infernal parties being present in the hall, customers being present etc. It tries to be a real location, in hell, and has enough details so that you could run it like that although notes on how the inhabitants would actually respond to characters, say, trying to purchase a hell hound, are few. Presumably without passes, they get pretty suspicious.

The other one is a fucking trap in the shape of an allegory, the hall of gluttony, run by devils in the shape of serving staff, where the swollen souls of the damned gorge themselves on fine foods until they pass out, and at last are turned into pigs and sent to wander the forest of suicides. The moment you set foot in here, you are in for a bad time, and the amount of defenders makes attacking it very unwise. An honest to god trap encounter, and I love it. You get in, you have to succeed at a save to get out and resist eating, the save gets increasingly difficult the longer you eat.

Fourth Circle

Aka, the ‘Hurry the Fuck up’ level. A 300 ft. drop to a black plain where the damned are eternally pushing boulders in strange grooves in a futile, sysiphean ordeal, tortured by devils. The cliffs are honeycombed with Gargoyle caves to disincentivize you from flying down, but then the adventure displays that mercifull sort of extra granularity by allowing the players to avoid them if they move a sufficiently great distance away (this of course means more random encounter checks). Or you take the proper road but that one is of course guarded. Again, a trade-off. Although there are still occasional thunderstorms, the environmental effects are mostly absent here, and for good reason. Random encounter density is per third mile, which is brutal, because it means that it doesn’t matter how fast you are going, you are going to get X number of encounters, a recurring element, mitigated by the fact that it is ALSO by time if you dally.

The punishments are overseen by Plutus, lord of Avarice, carried in a stretcher by his demoniac retinue. You don’t want to encounter Plutus and his retinue, because it is like encountering Minos only you can’t just walk around him, but at the same time, the amount of checks that are asked more or less guarantee that you will at some point encounter Plutus unless you would very quickly fly over the level. You might get off lucky, you might have to run. There are other mythical elements to this lair like the appearance of the shade of Estraius, pointing you to a buried, triple hidden, tomb holding angelic relics.

This is also the most assholish subdungeon of them all, set in the 500 ft. cliff surrounding the border between 4th and 5th and it has come through the conversion from 1e to PtA mostly intact. There’s STILL the assholishly strong defenders, the false treasure trove, the true treasure trove hidden behind a hard to find (even with truesight) illusionary wall, a shapechanged ancient dragon, a false treasure trove with cursed items, then if you find it, a 3 ft. corridor with 4 heavily armored hasted bears in quick succession (no that is not a joke), then a room of utter cold inhabited by an ice golem (in this version THERE ARE TWO) with a crippling flail attack that goes down about as well as any supra-iron golem type ever does, then, as you are loading up your giant pack, the guards you may have bribed will return to kill you if you find the real treasure, and the one way door and then two Black Puddings in the tunnel to top it off. Nice. I don’t think I can quite convey how much treasure there is in this hoard. I am talking multiple major artifacts. A deranged amount of treasure with a deranged amount of protection. Totally optional.

This one, I think, ups the ante yet again. The gloves are properly off. Patrols are ever harder to convince, manhunts now encompass this circle and the two surrounding it. Random encounters, already unpleasant, are now becoming properly brutalizing. The ravine becomes narrower and narrower and slimier until you end up in the reeking swamps of the Styx. Operate the beacon towers with the quay, fly over, boat over, those would be your options. The ferryman this time around is Phlegyas, a huge asshole, charging either 10 1k pearls, 25 years of your natural lifespan or your right arm (cannot be regenerated) or you need written orders from demonic nobility. Entering the water exposes you to more diseases then a Troika gaming convention (malaria, elephantitis, diptheria AND whooping cough), you get mobbed by berserk manes, a sentient whirlpool begins chasing you and there’s a tonne of random encounters. As usual, you get to pick your poison.

The island in the middle holds Phlegyas’s tower and is fairly typical for the sort of optional locations that JiM likes to throw at you. Essentially a heist, with multiple NPCs with complex tactics and random starting locations, some curveballs, three king’s ransoms worth of treasure interlaced with cursed shit so you must keep awake, a secret vault and reinforcements if you dither. Strong nautical themes, and a nasty trap, a vault surrounded by an area with chlorine gas with lead-plated walls, a perfect trap for Passwall appreciators (it is not clear if this one still exists). Combat on the floor of the area can punch a hole in the wall and flood the place with lethal gas. A second area is an alchemical lab that can explode, cause fires or flood the place with poison. Nasty. Favorite item was an adamantine crank for an almost indestructable airballoon. There’s other material too if you are smart, like uncorrupted foodstuffs or alchemical supplies etc. Overwhelming. Probably a bit too much but it would be interesting to actually try out something like this.
There’s a second location, rather short, equivalent to a weird statue or alter you would find in the normal wilderness. Two infernal centaurs tend a grove of petrified weeping willows, surrounded by petrified creatures. Light defences, light treasures, and a potent boon, intermixed with the usual cursed evil sorceries.

Second half of the 5th circle starts you off in proper style. A 30 ft. wall, impregnable, manned by 3d12+10 devils at any single point. Gates that are even tougher. Reinforcements. They jeer and mock at you and begin blasting you with missiles and spells if you come within 50 ft. If you dally the Furies, yes, the actual Furies, show up and will proceed to murderize you. The best solution here is actually to either literally pray for divine intervention OR use one of three single-use artifacts you could have found during your hellcrawl OR try to bribe your way in (if you have a spare 900.000 or so laying about). Flying over is probably good too, you might take some potshots? Entereth DIS, city of Flaming Tombs.

An endless landscape of sepulchres and graves (which may be randomly determined beautifully, although the amount of heat you get and the paltry reward makes it not worth it), swearing manes, horrible stinging smoke and occasional storms. There’s no major locations, but you are provided with 10 (from the original 8) random locations to place anywhere along the route to the inner boundary. A lot of these locations are optional, leaving it up to the party if they want to deal with them or just avoid or flee. They are also great; two flaming 13 HD skeletons having a punching match in their tomb, a deranged hermit wielding the enchanted thighbone of a fire-giant sorcerer summons ghouls and bids them leave, hordes and hordes of rats, devils torturing souls and this encounter, which I think illustrates the differences between the old format in Inferno and the newer in JiM and why I do prefer some of the older material, which was by no means terse or light, but which feels more comprehensible and parsimonious.

Some additions to the encounter like also cursing the gold are nice but in one case you have a strong central idea, elegantly executed and in the other there is so much caveat and permutation that it kind of obscures the idea of the encounter; you see something too good to be true, and if you fall for it you pay. Otherwise yes, very cool ideas. The shade of a seeress curses you with a terrible doom, which comes into play in the form of a saving throw penalty on Circle Seven, there’s an elaborate and lethal encounter with successive waves of vampires, it’s all nuts. Extra encounter too, you fall into a tomb with pentagrams in the centre which, if touched, begin porting in skeletons, and zombies break through the walls if you remove its central treasures indiana jones style, with tricky environmental hazards in the side-rooms which would form obvious escape routes and fire breathing trolls. I love it, reminds me of DOOM.

It wouldn’t be inferno if it did not close off this circle with an unpleasant surprise. The inner circle, a 1500 ft. drop at a 70 degree incline that belches nauseating smoke, with the only normal way down watched by yet another guardian, the infernal minotaur.

Yeah that’s the stuff alright. Actually a slight downgrade from its FO counterpart (although he can now summon 1d10+1d8 minotaurs, arriving in 1d12 rounds). I wonder if this was done as part of playtesting, or as part of the conversion between OD&D and this PtA system, which is more finicky, with even more degrees of freedom (like decoupling to hit and to damage) and granular. So many items have multiple abilities. Its nuts.

Imagining how this would play, or whatever interpretation you would have would play, it is genuinely difficult. When we played Dream House of the Nether Prince it was already pretty insane with high level spellcasters and heavy magic item loadouts but added to this you would have all new creatures and items, if they ever knock over one of these major hoards they might have artifacts, there’s tonnes and tonnes of consumables etc. etc. I have seen what play looks like when characters have access to a Cube of Force, boots of levitation, a ring of regeneration, staves, bags of holding, hammers of thunderbolt etc. This would be a level slightly above even that.

I will not be rating anything until I have absorbed all three books. It will be interesting to observe how the new levels differ from the old ones since they are not modifications of the 1e versions but all new material. Next review…pretty soon? Stay tuned!

Postscriptum: I have read up on how hp works in the new PtA. It is very tradgame/heartbreakery. HP = Stamina (5d4 starting, +1 per level, or +2 per level if you are a fighter). Your 10+ level fighter is expected to have about 30 hp in PtA vs 100+ in 1e. This is all a bit deceptive, because armor reduces damage (at least in the new version, which is not the version Inferno was based on) and hit chance is determined by attacker and defender.