Michael's RPG Shelf: Red Hand of Doom by Richard Baker and James Jacobs (2006, Wizards of the Coast) by modernzorker

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Michael's RPG Shelf: Red Hand of Doom by Richard Baker and James Jacobs (2006, Wizards of the Coast)
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I'm not going to sugar-coat things: *Red Hand of Doom* is quite possibly the single greatest first-party adventure ever produced for the 3.5 edition product line, and easily one of the best adventures in general written for the D&D ruleset. Calling *Red Hand of Doom* an adventure though is like referring to Tokyo as just a city: you're technically correct, but selling the place short. Maybe it's because this laded later in third edition's life (a scant two years before the massive 4E revamp/re-release); maybe it's because Wizards of the Coast tended to let third-parties like Necromancer, Green Ronin, and Malhavoc fill out the typical adventure quota so as to avoid a repeat of 2nd edition's shelf-glut; whatever the reason, *Red Hand of Doom* was seemingly overlooked upon its release. Even now, nearly thirteen years later, it has only two extremely scant, single-sentence reviews on Goodreads despite a 4/5 rating from reviewers. I'm aiming to fix that now. *Red Hand of Doom* kicks enough ass to qualify as a top-tier MMA fighter.
___
The adventure, which is written to take a single fifth-level party entirely through to tenth or higher (despite the text on the cover saying it's for 6th to 12th level characters, the interior text states it's for 5th to 10th, which the authors backed up in interviews so that's what I'm using) by its conclusion and will consume months of real time (and 45-60+ days of in-game time depending on the PCs actions), is more accurately labeled a campaign. No single one-and-done here--this sucker is 128 pages (and three battle maps) of combat, intrigue, and pants-wetting fear once the PCs realize what they're up against. *Red Hand*'s central conceit is that Azarr Kul, a powerful hobgoblin with dragon's blood coursing through his veins, has spent years uniting the various hobgoblin tribes into one colossal nightmare and crushing his enemies. They've swept through the entirety of the Wyrmsmoke Mountains, killing, enslaving, dominating, or recruiting everything they encounter. Races and creatures useful Kul (especially the dragons residing in the mountains) were conscripted, brow-beaten, or bribed into service. Those found lacking (like the tribe of Black Knife Goblins) were exterminated, enslaved, or eaten.

Now, with the Wyrmsmoke Mountains under his control both above and below, Azarr Kul is looking to expand his empire into the surrounding territories held by humans, dwarves, and elves. The army he's raised is large enough to steamroll through the smaller hamlets and villages of the Elsir Vale. The only chance the Vale has is for its communities to unite in a single spearhead of defense at the walled city of Brindol, but even this will only delay the inevitable destruction if some way isn't found to disrupt Kul's supply lines, delay his march, cut the fingers off his Hand, and unite the various factions against a common foe. Guess who gets *that* job? Heh heh heh...
___
If there's one major criticism to be leveled against *Red Hand of Doom*, it's that this is the very definition of a railroading. Plot railroads are so-named because once the PCs get on, they'll find it difficult, if not impossible, to get off before reaching the destination which the DM has set for them. If your players balk at the idea of losing player agency in exchange for experiencing a phenomenal campaign, then you'll have your work cut out for you to keep them from abandoning the table. It's possible to entice/fool the party into getting involved at the start, but make sure if you go this route your players won't hate you for it. I've played with groups like this before, who felt the DM providing them with anything less than a giant sandbox world for them to play in (and likely ruin) was a complete failure on his or her part. I can appreciate their feelings on the matter, but this is *not* the adventure for those types--if at any point the PCs decide to nope out of their responsibilities because they want to craft  magic items, build a stronghold, investigate a strange cave, or bounce into the Astral Plane to assault a Githyanki fortress, the Red Hand *will* devastate the better part of a continent. Roughly forty days from the point the party encounters the first band of marauders, the Red Hand *will* assault Brindol--this ain't *Skyrim* where NPCs stand around until the PCs to accept quests that advance the overall plot of the campaign and everything grinds to a halt in between.

If your players are this sort, or the sorts who rely on their potent backstabbing abilities, arsenal of offensive arcane magic, and frequent long rests, instead of their brains, to solve puzzles, give *Red Hand of Doom* a hard pass (unless you're trying to teach them a lesson). While there's plenty of opportunity brawling here, the goal is on deliberate, focused attacks on specific targets designed to slow down or disrupt the Red Hand. PCs stupid enough to believe they can stand their ground against an advancing army comprising literally *thousands* of enemies will be mopped up like the jizz-stained aftermath of a peep show.
___
How serious is *Red Hand of Doom* at putting the boot to the PCs' necks? Well, their very first encounter with an advance warband is rated Encounter Level 8. If you're unfamiliar with the terminology, the Encounter Level (EL) is a shorthand rating for how difficult or simple a particular encounter should be for the average party. At Encounter Level 3 (the rating for a single Ogre under 3.5 rules), a party of four 3rd level characters should expend around 1/4th of their overall resources (hit points, offensive magic, healing powers, etc...) to overcome said encounter. That's not an absolute, of course. The dice, player ingenuity, and party balance will play a huge role in how much the party expends. Therefore, an EL 8 like this one is meant to be a decent challenge for a party of four 8th level characters. *Red Hand of Doom*'s start is meant for fifth level characters though. This encounter is meant to be a slobberknocker, the sort of fight that could very well result in serious injury or even character death if not handled properly by the PCs. These sorts of events typically capstone a chapter or even the entire adventure. Baker and Jacobs, however, aren't messing around. Throwing the party into the fire at the beginning makes sure players are paying attention, and serves to underscore just how deadly serious the situation is. If the initial encounter with the marauders doesn't make players pause and think about what's to come, they won't have a chance when the full force of the Red Hand comes marching down the road.
___
One of the things I love about *Red Hand* are the "Designer Notes" sidebars. These feature the authors communicating directly with the reader about their expectations for the encounter, what inspired it, and why they made the choices they did with regard to enemies, encounter level, and other stuff. I cannot tell you how awesome a feature this is. If you're like me, there are any number of times you've read through a module and thought, "Really...?" at some particular puzzle, challenge, or encounter. Sometimes the designer will explain what's going on (Gary Gygax's modules, for instance, were rife with this sort of DM background), but often there's just a room description, a monster stat block, and listing of what the PCs can find once they overcome it and search around. Baker and Jacobs are thorough with their information without resorting to pages of info-dump. While they obviously can't (and don't) comment on every scenario, they do lend their voices throughout the text with their reasoning along with examples of how to play the NPCs, how their tactics evolve over time, and how certain actions on the part of the PCs affect future encounters with the Red Hand.

All this is important because *Red Hand* is such a marathon, both for players and DMs. Properly executed, the PCs will have very little in the way of down-time. Instead, they'll find themselves racing at top speed from place to place, and making painful decisions about what to do in the face of the oncoming horde. Many of their actions result in positive net results with regard to the war, but negative results with regards to the individual battles. They'll have to weigh the pros and cons of convincing an entire town to abandon and flee for safety, and thus allowing the Red Hand to overrun the place without a fight but ultimately saving lives, against staging a holding action to slow the advance for a short time at the expense of lives lost. Time spent attempting to recruit allies against the Red Hand is time *not* spent actively impeding their progress. A mission to one area to recover an artifact of great power could mean sacrificing one town to save another further down the road. It's the sort of tactical situation that would give anyone nightmares. No matter what happens, the results will be memorable for all involved, and the authors built the book to take place over 20 to 25 sessions of play. It's not exactly *Ruins of Undermountain* or *Night Below*, but that's still an impressive amount of playtime to bundle into a single softcover.
___
Back when *Red Hand of Doom* was published, the designers foresaw some potential complains and tried to head them off. One of their design choices, in order to prevent a lot of repeated content in stat blocks, directs players to the relevant entries in the *Monster Manual* to describe infrequently-encountered enemies like hell hounds or minotaurs, and to the first Appendix in the back of the book to describe commonly-encountered foes along with all relevant NPCs and big baddies. This approach hasn't been abandoned as we see with *Tales of the Yawning Portal* published for 5E using the same system, but *Red Hand* received an internet supplement in a free downloadable version of the Appendix that DMs could print out and collate for easy reference during encounters to avoid a lot of time-consuming page flipping or note-taking. With this, the module is *so* much easier to run. It's not available on the WotC site any longer, but with a little google-fu (look for "Red Hand of Doom Web Enhancement") you should be able to track down a copy easily enough.

One major thing to look for if purchasing a second-hand copy is the tear-out poster battle map. While you don't absolutely have to have it to make the campaign work, it makes plotting out the larger skirmishes (especially the end-game encounter with Kul) so much easier. The poster has three different maps printed across two sides, and I can't stress how much better this makes things for DMs and players alike.
___
So how do the PCs win?

Well, even this is unique. Jacobs and Baker had two ways of determining what happens when the Red Hand finally makes their way to Brindol and lays siege to the city. One, of course, involves lots of active combat and dice rolling to simulate hundreds of rounds involving literally thousands of combatants. For the statistically-obsessed, this is obviously the only way to proceed, but the pair weren't interested in forcing players and DMs to wear out their d20s, so they opted for a different system: Victory Points.

Every major action the players can undertake over the months-long course of *Red Hand of Doom* has the potential to generate Victory Points for the PCs. In fact, it's entirely possible for the PCs to kill every major bad guy they come up against by the conclusion of the adventure and still lose if they haven't done enough to slow down and strip the horde of its power. Actions that greatly hinder the horde's progress, like killing or capturing their commanding officers, breaking roadblocks, and forging alliances with other groups earn a specific number of Victory Points, and if the party has accumulated enough VPs by the point the Red Hand reaches Brindol, they have accomplished enough that the defenders can hold the line and break the back of the invasion.

Failure to reach this total doesn't mean the end of the world though--parties close to the needed amount have a final chance to push their total over the top by killing key targets in the final siege, and if they accomplish this, they can still stop the invasion. Parties who are nowhere near the needed number, unfortunately, will have failed the mission and Brindol will be overrun and sacked, with the PCs (and any other survivors) forced to retreat further from the front lines. Even then, all is not lost as they'll have one chance to redeem themselves. Unfortunately it involves traveling into the heart of enemy territory for a direct strike on the power behind Kul's schemes in a last-ditch effort to throw a wrench into the works. Damn, these two planned for *everything*, didn't they?

Yes. Yes, they did.
___
So there you have it: *Red Hand of Doom*. I wish *every* module included the types of designer notes and extra goodies this one does. While it's a complex adventure, and one you absolutely cannot run straight out of the shrink wrap, it *is* designed to be campaign-agnostic so you can locate the Vale and surrounding environs in Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, or your own homebrew world with relative ease. Baker and Jacobs' notes are useful not just for understanding how to run the different encounters, but also for teaching novice DMs ways to think about long-running adventures and designing campaigns more complex than "Go to dungeon, kick in doors, kill monster, loot, and repeat." The other various sidebars which detail responses to potential PC actions are an additional boon to the Dungeon Master who has trouble making stuff up on the fly--they force the would-be DM to account for things he or she might otherwise never consider, and it's a great feeling to have a ready response when a player asks an intelligent question of that NPC they're interrogating.

Baker and Jacobs are obviously familiar with many roleplaying tropes as well, as there are points where sly jabs at "Knights of the Dinner Table" play styles come out. Most notable are entries concerning what happens if the players are stupid or foolhardy enough to insist on taking some kind of stand against a force that clearly outclasses them. Stuff like this should be obvious, but it's great to see the authors including it anyway, and trying their best to make it as cinematic and brutal as possible. "Hopefully, your players are smart enough to figure out that there are some battles their characters can't win. But if they insist on staring down the Red Hand horde, here's what happens," reads the opening of one section early in the book. Then later: "If your players insist on fighting to the death here, consider obliging them."

Equally amusingly in another designer's note side-bar, we get this: "If you find that the characters are all so tough and determined that they can actually *beat* everything the Red Hand throws at them, you might not be running the adventure for the right character levels." Like every adventure ever published, *Red Hand of Doom* needs to be tailored for your particular group, but common sense should prevail. A group of epic-tier heroes with access to 9th-level spells, paragon specializations, and high-level feats could very well hold the Red Hand at bay with one hand tied behind their backs...but that's why the adventure is designed for mid-level PCs, not borderline-demigods.

For being not just a master class in campaign design but also entertaining as hell to both read *and* play, I have no choice but to award *Red Hand of Doom* a full five blood-stained palms out of five. Neophyte GMs will find many excellent suggestions and tips for running their own games (even if you aren't doing a 3.5 campaign), and even experienced Dungeon Masters can glean some new strategies, tactics, and ideas for taking their players down a notch or two if need be. *Red Hand* is brutal, but fair: if your players bite off more than they can chew, it doesn't automatically spell their doom...but if they're pig-headed enough to think they can take on the world, it'll snuff them without a care. Every game master worthy of the screen owes it to themselves to read through this campaign. It's auditing a master class in adventure design and plotting by two giants of the craft.

The only real problem nowadays is finding a copy that won't leave you destitute if you decide to pick it up. As of this writing, the cheapest second-hand copy on Amazon is selling for almost $150, and your options on other sites aren't much better. Thankfully, [DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/28797/Red-Hand-of-Doom-3e?it=1) offers a PDF version for $10, so you don't have to auction body parts if you just want a look at a book with solid writing and phenomenal artwork.
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@jbgarrison72 ·
This is going on my wishlist... 3.5 forever! :D
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@modernzorker ·
$0.02
I hope you grab it and love it. It's a badass campaign! :)
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@archdruid ·
Your post was upvoted by the @archdruid gaming curation team in partnership with @curie to support spreading the rewards to great content. Join the Archdruid Gaming Community at https://discord.gg/nAUkxws. Good Game, Well Played!
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@melinda010100 ·
A very thorough and well written review! I can't think of a single thing that you didn't cover.
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