For the past few months, I have been running the Descent into Avernus campaign module. With the holidays and various scheduling conflicts, we had gone from being able to meet biweekly to meeting no-weekly. Luckily, January has been way better for us being able to get together, which has allowed us to finally finish Chapter 1. I would like to share my experiences running the game, as well as the experiences shared with me from the players so you can learn from my successes and failures.

Hey folks. Dirk here reviewing the new published adventure by Wizards of the Coast: Descent into Avernus. You’re welcome to read the full review or skip to the bottom for my final statements and consensus. This is going to be a first impressions review. My opinion may change as I run this campaign in the coming weeks. I am going to try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, with the understanding that the adventure has been officially published since 9⁄17 and, hopefully, some of you have already gotten your hands on a copy.

Welcome back to the second part of our World Building mini-series! This article assumes you read July 2019’s article on World Building: Setting the Stage, however, you will still be able to follow along with this article even if you haven’t read it because these aren’t necessarily meant to be an exact Step-by-Step process for everyone. It is my / our process, but that does not mean it has to be yours.

This is the first part of a multi part series on world building. Here, I will lay out my foundational steps with some examples to help illustrate my point. I hope what I will share with you will be something you can use for your own games in the future. A Primer on World Building At first when you think of World building you are getting nervous, and perhaps a little intimidated.

Let’s talk about character development (name drop). Have you ever made an NPC, or for you pretty players out there, met an NPC, that you wanted to like but you just… couldn’t? What about one that was so memorable that you and your friends joke about it as an inside joke or reference him/her/it for YEARS afterwards?! A lot of the time, these memorable NPCs are founded in humorous anecdotes.