After Hours: Judge's Guild: Inferno - Part 1
Added 2020-11-16 19:37:18 +0000 UTCWe're going to Hell! Judge's Guild put out a module called Inferno in 1980, ostensibly based on Dante's Divine Comedy. It's a LOT. Caleb, Rob Stith (from the Orpheus Protocol) and Noah all followed me into this devilish scenario. We have so much to talk about that we are going to make a mini series of this journey as we could only get about halfway through the original module in this episode. There's also a 2014 remake of the scenario that completes the entire 9 circles of Hell!
If you liked this episode, be sure to check out The Mixed Six
The Orpheus Protocol
Thinking Too Hard About Anime
Comments
Yeah, it was more an observation on adventures from the era, less this specific one. So many this in this specific adventure are just weird, and I think Caleb summed it up pretty well saying he probably realized that medieval catholic fan-fic is hard to read and just skimmed it for some aesthetic inspiration.
Jay Watkins
2020-11-19 19:53:05 +0000 UTCI can see that but even from that perspective there are a lot of odd decisions, starting with the choice to theme it after the Divine Comedy but then not using the more gameable parts of it.
Ross Payton
2020-11-19 19:50:16 +0000 UTCY’know, not defending the scenario cause it’s noticeably awful, but in general, these design choices that lots of people dislike from early games, especially D&D seem like they were just a desire for a game in search of a system. When they only had ttrpg’s that’s what they tried to use, but once videogames became more developed that very same desire gave us rogue likes and actionrpg’s that have been very well received. Looking at games like this I see a close relation to games like God of War, Dark Souls, Hades, darkest dungeon. It’s interesting to see the design instinct in there, they want a challenging game, with a ton of mechanical puzzles (in many cases fights because that’s how you interact with the rules, by punching stuff) and its punishing so you have to trial and error it to learn how it works. ‘Ok, last time we fought this dragon it ate steve and roasted half the rest of our party with fire. So now we’ve got our armor spikes and fire resistance potions let’s see if we can take it out’ isn’t too different from botching a darkest dungeon run and having to regroup in town to get another party and make sure to stock up on extra torches and curatives.
Jay Watkins
2020-11-19 18:58:10 +0000 UTCA round in AD&D was actually a minute. A turn was 10 minutes. Just an fyi.
Max Writer
2020-11-17 15:16:19 +0000 UTC
