SPOILERS FOR DESCENT INTO AVERNUS

If you’re a local player in my campaigns, you might want to steer clear here. I may be running Descent Into Avernus in the future, but not for people who’ve read the plot.

Last year I wrote the Alexandrian Remix of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. It sought to revise the published campaign in order to create a richer, more dynamic, and (importantly) more robust scenario. People seemed to like it. They liked it a lot, in fact, and I’ve been repeatedly asked to do a similar remix for Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus.

Which is obviously why we’re here today.

I’ve done a few of these in-depth remixes in the past, and they’re generally of two types:

Expansive remixes, like I did for Eternal Lies, where I’m primarily creating lots of cool new stuff (props, dioramas, new spin-off scenarios) to enhance an already great experience.

Design remixes, like the one I did for Keep on the Shadowfell, in which I’m primarily focused on fixing the flaws and shortcomings of a scenario.

In the latter, the flaws I’m looking at are usually in the scenario structure. This is not because shortcomings in the scenario structure are the only problem published adventures suffer from. Rather, in order for me to want to spend the considerable time and effort necessary to remix an adventure, there must be both (a) something about the adventure that needs to be fixed and (b) something that makes it worthwhile to do so.

This almost always means that the adventure has some really cool stuff in it. It’s worth remixing specifically so that you can bring that cool stuff to your table in the best possible way. If there wasn’t any cool stuff to start with, it wouldn’t make much sense to spend a lot of effort remixing it: Just move on and either find better material to start with or make something new from scratch.

(For example, there was no mystery about how the scenario structure for Hoard of the Dragon Queen needed to be fixed: Ripping the railroad apart and reassembling it into a node-based structure would have been pretty straightforward. I describe how you can do it in Remixing Hoard of the Dragon Queen. But I never actually did it because the actual material in Hoard didn’t excite me.)

When I started looking at Descent Into Avernus, it was almost immediately clear why people were asking me to remix it. Its structure was badly, badly flawed. There was, in fact, a goodly span of time where I thought it was going to end up being more like Hoard of the Dragon Queen than Dragon Heist. Its structural flaws were so significant that it seemed as if fixing them would mean throwing out virtually everything of value in the adventure and starting over from scratch with a vaguely similar premise. (At which point, again, why bother?)

Fortunately, thanks in large part to a vigorous discussion with the patrons of my Patreon and also my followers on Twitter, I had a series of key insights that, at the end of the day, will radically transform Descent Into Avernus, but do so in a way that still leaves a lot of the meat on the bone (so to speak). It is primarily because I think these insights will be useful to others that this project is happening.

With that being said, the Alexandrian Remix of Descent Into Avernus will probably be a bit more “hands on” than my previous remixes. My plan is to critically look at each section of the adventure and then lay out what steps are necessary to redress the problems we’ve found. In some cases, those fixes will be specific and detailed. In others, though, you may have some “homework” to do before actually running the adventure.

(Of course, I basically said the same thing about Dragon Heist and then I ended up diving into all the nitty-gritty details. So we’ll see how it goes!)

One thing I learned from doing the Dragon Heist remix, though, is that it’s a lot easier for people if I tackle the material sequentially instead of topically. So rather than, for example, looking at all of the heists and then looking at all of the mysteries (like we did with Dragon Heist), we’ll instead be largely walking through the book step by step. This might mean that some of our early installments get a little top-heavy, but I think it will all work out in the end.

The actual remix will kick off tomorrow. This page will serve as a landing page and navigational portal throughout the whole thing. Please note that I usually add navigational links when a post is scheduled, so if you see a dead hyperlink to the “latest” post, it probably means that post hasn’t actually gone live yet.

Part 1: The Beginning

Part 2: Character Creation

Part 2B: Elfsong Tavern

Part 3: The Vanthampur Investigations

Part 3B: Lore of the Vanthampur Investigations

Part 3C: The Vanthampur Revelations

Part 3D: Investigating the Murders

Part 3E: The Poisoned Poseidon

Part 3F: Dungeon of the Dead Three

Part 3F-B: Key – Part 3F-C: Roster – Part 3F-D: Handouts

Part 3G: Jaquaying the Dead Three

Part 3H: Trafficking Amrik

Part 3I: Vanthampur Manor

Part 3J: The Portyr Assassination

Part 4A: The Road to Candlekeep

Part 4B: The Road to Avernus

Part 4C: At the Threshold of Hell

Part 5: Hellturel

Part 5B-A: Arrival in Hellturel

Part 5B-B: Streetcrawl in Elturel

Part 5C-A: Pointcrawl in Elturel

Part 5C-B: A Very Brief Gazette of Elturel

Part 5C-C: Elturel Locations

Part 5D: The High Hall

Part 5E: The Grand Cemetery

Part 6: The Rest of the Remix

Part 6B: The Avernian Quest

Part 6C: Quest of the Dream Machine

Part 6D: Lulu’s Memories

Part 7: Exploring Avernus

Part 8: The End

Addendum: Rumors of Elturel

Addendum: Corpsedamp Zombies

Addendum: A Textual History of Elturel

Addendum: Playing Gargauth

Addendum: Streetcrawling Tools

Addendum: Elturian Names

Addendum: Hellturel Map Patches

Addendum: Soul Coins

Addendum: DMs Guild Capsule Reviews

Addendum: More DMs Guild Capsule Reviews

Note: Parts 6, 7, and 8 were significantly reorganized. At the moment, references to those sections of the Remix in Parts 1-5 are probably inaccurate (for example, Lulu’s memories are now discussed in Part 6, not Part 8). Once everything has settled, I’ll be doing a full sweep to fix references and add hyperlinks. For the moment, just imagine one of those old school, Geocities “Under Construction” GIFs.

If you’re new here at the Alexandian, you might find it useful to dive into these articles before the remix kicks off, as they include deep discussions of topics we’ll be visiting here:

There are many more articles at Gamemastery 101 that you might also enjoy! Please also consider becoming a patron if you’d like to support this type of work in the future!

Go to Part 1: The Beginning