Planescape review: Love Letter
For the last three years, I've run a Planescape1 campaign through almost all of its modules. Now, after successfully finishing it, I want to look back and review these adventures, highlighting the pros and cons of each one.
Each module will be rated in three categories, up to 3 points in each:
- Presentation: how easy is to understand and run the adventure.
- Openness: how open the adventure's scope is, regarding the freedom of choice.
- Quality: Overall quality of the adventure, including the originality and richness of its content, and players' enjoyment.
The full list of currently published reviews is available under the #planescape tag.
Love Letter
Wherein the Heroes learn that the Coils of Love wrap 'round Fiends and Friends alike, and may undertake to aid in a secret Correspondence.
- Designer: Colin McComb
- Source: The Well of Worlds2, Chapter III
- Party: up to 6 characters of any level
- Play-time: 1 session
- Locations:
- Sigil
- Abyss / Plane of Infinite Portals (L1)
Overview
This short module can be easily run in one sitting at any time during your campaign, when you are chilling in Sigil between adventures. The mysterious gentleman that wishes to hire you is obviously shady, but pays well, and the mission seems simple enough — deliver a sealed letter to his beloved and bring back her response.
Of course, nothing in Sigil is what it seems, and the gentleman is in fact a cornugon baatezu engaged in a romantic long-distance relationship with a succubus of high standing. Besides this omission though, the quest giver will keep his side of the bargain, but surely will attempt to cheapen out if the exact wording of the contract allows (as baatezu tend to do). Moreover, if the characters perform this mission in a professional manner, they can expect more mission offers from the cornugon in the future, for example — carrying out further correspondence between the two lovers.
The Abyss
Once arrived on the Plane of Infinite Portals, the party is presented with about ten miles worth of travel to their destination, offering pretty much the same meager amount of free choice as To Baator and Back if not less. Basically, there are two possible paths: swim across the lake, or travel by foot around it.
The highlight of the trip is the crossroads with a pike-mounted talking skull dispensing information of dubious quality about two roads the characters could take. Otherwise, the landscape serves as a good first look at the first level of the Abyss, including battlegrounds full of dead fiends, clusters of craters bubbling with disgusting substances, a lake of black acidic water, and of course, encounters with the local fauna. The latter one mostly consists of aggressive eyewing swarms.
The Tower
The characters' destination is a terrible grim tower which they need to traverse from its bottom to the very top to find the letter's recipient. During the ascent, the characters will observe the inhumanly-weird interior design taste of the tower's owner, and even stumble into some dangerous traps if they are not careful enough.
After delivering the letter, the characters are asked to wait while the succubus writes her response. If the party acquired some loot from the tower, she will also politely asks to return the items. If the party offends her by an uncouth conduct, she will not spray her perfume on the letter, which will undoubtedly anger the quest giver upon delivering the response. If all goes well, the succubus will open a direct portal to Sigil, returning the party back where they started.
Scaling
You can run this adventure multiple times for different power levels. Additional challenges provided for the more powerful characters are listed below.
Mid-level (5-8)
- Eyewing swarms are doubled in size.
- While crossing the lake, the boat is attacked by an abyssal dinosaur.
- A lonely chasme guards the entrance to the tower.
High-level (9+)
- At the very start of the adventure, the characters face several barbazu lead by an erinyes. She will question the party regarding their mission since she is investigating a rumor of some baatezu communicating with the enemy.
- Craters dotting the landscape might burst with a random squad of belligerent tanar'ri from the lower levels.
- Eyewing swarms are quadrupled in size.
- While crossing the lake, the boat is attacked by an abyssal dinosaur.
- A balor accompanied by a pair of molydei guards the entrance to the tower.
Presentation
🖋️🖋️🖋️ superb
Keeping the overall layout quality of The Well of Worlds, the adventure is divided into neat sections, each labeled with a key corresponding to its location on the map. All required monster stat blocks are included within.
The tower's map contains such intricate details as the wall-mounted sconces' locations. There are some minor errors, like an apparent inaccessibility of the room 14 (Tropical Chamber), but nothing serious.
The tower design is truly (and quite fittingly) bizarre, and almost each room is of some crazy irregular shape. For this reason, I would not recommend the traditional way of describing the rooms to the players so they could draw the layout, in this case. Instead, draw it yourself, or have pre-drawn maps of the tower levels ready.
Openness
☀️☀️ semi-linear
The first part is just two paths with predetermined dangers. For the high-level characters you can at least put some random encounters, but that won't change the overall lack of impactful decision making, except potential grievances from the both sides of the Blood War the characters might acquire if they are not careful.
Once the characters get into the tower, they are free to do what they please while exploring the interior, but they still need to find the succubus and deliver the letter if they plan on completing the mission successfully. At least, the option of failing the mission is also covered in great detail, as well as the prospects of future employment depending on the characters' actions during the trip.
Quality
★★ good
This short and fun adventure serves as a good introduction to the upper level of the Abyss for low-level characters, but its small variability impacts the prospects of running it repeatedly for the same players, though it is assumed to be the one of the selling features of this module.
The fact that the characters cannot even loot the succubus' abode, makes traversing the tower more akin to a museum trip than a proper dungeon delve. It might be fun the first time, but if you plan to repeat this assignment later, I will recommend to spice the decor with some new features and inhabitants.
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