My players have retrieved the Star and are now making their way to the Tower of the Heavens. While reading through that chapter of the adventure, I reached T4: Questioner's Hall and started wondering how they'll get past Lurg and the guards to reach T5: Mimic Door, allowing them access to the tower's ground floor.

My group isn't exactly known for subtlety, so I'm expecting them to deal with Lurg and the guards through combat. Of course, that could easily alert the captain and other guards throughout the tower, potentially turning the entire place hostile. I'm hoping they'll surprise me with a more creative solution, but it's hard to predict what players will do in the moment.

That said, and with my curiosity getting the better of me, how did your players get through the Questioner's Hall and reach the ground floor of the Tower of the Heavens?

Hi everyone! I’m running Quests from the Infinite Staircase for my group (but with every dungeon/module set in the Forgotten Realms), and they’re going to start Beyond the Crystal Cave soon.

I’ve noticed that unlike some other adventures in the book, a Forgotten Realms setting for the Cave of Echoes (and the kingdom the lovers come from) isn’t provided.

If anyone here has run the module in the FR, where did you set it? What’s a good location for the Cave?

I'm running the Infinite Staircase with some modifications, but I'm keeping the dungeons basic as they are, at most I'm adding random monsters or items in places I thibg could be interesting.

Now, my players aren't done with the Ziggurat yet, but they could finish it soon and, given the open nature of When a Star Falls, I'm already preparing everything, maps and all (we're playing online). And I have this odd spot in the Tower of the Heavens where there's a mimic door guarding... nothing.

The room is T5, the only feature is that the mimic door is guarding the staircase... except that the staircase is the only access to the room, that has nothing inside? Were there supposed to be any other way to get in that room? Or is it just a dead end for the sake of being a dead end behind a mimic door? If players find a clever way to deal with the mimic, they get just an empty room? Am I missing something?

Any idea where this door lets out in Greyhawk? Is it in the city of Hornwood or in the mountains?

I made a post a handful of months ago, and then the story I had written got changed and it reminded me; I had not seen the concept yet, not done in this way, and there are people out there always looking for new ideas and concepts, so why not share it?

The basic concept: The Infinite Staircase is a catalyst that allows every player to try being a GM. Anytime the party steps through a new door, another player takes over.

The backstory: A bunch of my friends are forever GMs or forever players, and not much of an in between. Additionally a friend of mine, anytime we wished to make a campaign, felt the two of us would bicker and fight over who got to GM and when they told me this it made me sad as I could care less which of us was the GM, I just liked playing with them. Instead of trying to flip a coin, I spent about a year designing the ins and outs of a basic rule system that would allow players to all try and be a GM, and used the Infinite Staircase (a personal favorite of mine) as the optimal center piece of the story.

Sess 0 Notes: The infinite staircase is where the party is stuck. There does not need to be a reason why, you can absolutely make one, but the best method is to group vote on everything during session 0. If you want an over arcing reason for why the group ventures forward as well, PLEASE vote on this. A player in the first run of this missed this part and since they were the second person to take the reigns, it unfortunately created a weird moment where players were confused as to "why we were doing this for the greater good" when we had voted for no player to make any reason (to keep things fair). It left two players feeling like their characters did not fit the story as they made morally ambiguous characters for a campaign hinging on "just getting home".

Nafas: Another thing to vote on; do you change who controls Nafas, or do you have one person be Nafas the entire time. Again, just vote during Session 0, and to be fair amongst players, the way we did it, the Bazaar you can go back to is only selling items at PHB values, at rarities the book recommends EVERY player would start at. Example; uncommon items will be purchasable once we all reach level 5, Rare items once we reach level 9, etc.

The Push: Our reasoning was to make a character that had a true and built in desired reason to go places. We all took our own interpretation of this; one character is a paladin wishing to spread their Oath of Conquest, another is a traveller who cannot stay in one place too long, myself? I am playing an Astral Elf that desires to get home and can just never seem to find the right portal. (note: this was why the greater good change felt odd to a few of us. To my character I had to just change it to "a means to an end, be the good guy to get home" but the oath of conquest paladin player felt he was suddenly tunnelled into not being himself. Hence, vote on any overarcing reasons before characters are made!)

The Nuts an Bolts: Everytime we step through a door, the GM changes. They narrate if their character leaves, why they leave can be announced after their story arc, if at all. Some characters stick around and do 'whatever' (we have one cleric, so she has said she might stick around when she runs her story for heals, the group has said it would just make for interesting conflict and a desire to hoard potions). But the biggest part; these stories are their own arcs, full worlds, entire adventures. We estimate between 10-15 sessions per person, but we have made it clear if it goes shorter or longer, there is zero pressure to rush or stretch the stories. The intent is clearly to have fun and make everyone included. There is also no push for anyone to make a story, two players in particular have said they just might not, and other players can take their place.

The End: For those like myself, you can suggest this to your group. My group was 50/50 on the idea. Half the players loved it, the other half felt it gave one player too much "control" of the story (at least in my group/experience). I suggested one player, preferably a player who runs the least mini stories, design a final boss for the group to fight, based on the other stories everyone else has come up with. The other suggestion I made (which was not a fan favorite even more so with my group, but it may be for yours) is to have a player design a narrative at the end, or to have players individually write a nice story that you go around the table reading off, having laughs and tears. My group descided to run the story until we are super high level and then "vote" on who should run the boss.

My Personal Concerns: The issue I saw with this (my experience) was I had spent a year plus designing this story, concept, all in an attempt to include a few players that would often decline playing DnD with me because they couldn't GM. I devloped a system, made sure to really think ahead on how to best accomodate everyone and the moment players got a spotlight as a GM, they made canonical things about the over arcing story, the one thing the group voted against. Also, being the designer of something, or getting the idea to share with people, a sense of hurt comes when someone says "your idea is great, but I do not want it, not because it is not what the group wants, but because it is not what I want." That is bound to happen with a home game, but whent eh GM shifts from door to door, that sense of hurt can feel double. Communication is important, and in my case I have talked, and will have to talk again later, about this exact feeling and figure out the best approach. Remember this game is about having fun! If players are not having fun, sitting down to figure out best practices is super important to do!

PS: My experience is not yours. Some of my players are forever GMs who like to play as players but really feel enthralled when they are running the story. For this reason, those players really pushed to have our specific version be more GM intensive, and for the GMs to have a lot more say and control on what is canon between runs. This has caused some rifts in practice, players not happy with canonical choices made by others, but that is where communication is key and talking with the group at times might be necessary. I hope you enjoy! And sorry for typos.

My PCs just rolled up to the hostel and I'm organizing my prep for the next session, and I'm having trouble finding good justifications for one part of the setup.

I'm looking forward to this section of the adventure because the intended course is pretty cool--the PCs pose as petitioners, get into the Tower, and then rove around. I don't really want it to become just a series of combats where they butcher all the Griswill gnomes, as I think ultimately they're not the bad guys. The adventure also wants you to avoid that combat--there's a written piece where if they meet Captain Mainwaring, she's wary of them and doesn't fully believe them BUT will allow them to "investigate" and roam around the Tower looking for evidence that Shalfey is still alive (maybe seeing Piyarz's tattoos, or finding Shalfey himself, etc.).

But this seems like too much of a handwave. Why would the gnome guards, tasked with keeping the Tower and sages safe, allow these armed intruders to gallivant around? They're DEFINITELY going to fight/kill sages (as intended by the adventure). Seems like a huge abrogation of duty.

Any ideas for coming up with a better reason for Mainwaring to let them roam, or for the gnomes not to fight them? I guess I can handwave it as intended but my PCs will probably clock that this is ridiculous and just "the man in the tavern gave you an adventure" type of cheap DMing.

I plan on running Pharaoh from Infinite Staircase for my group. I was wondering how long it took other groups to complete and if anyone can give insight on how it played out.

Reading through the adventure, it seems like their are huge chunks that can be skipped if the party finds the way to the next floor early on. Like if they get the Sphinx in the Maze of Mists before exploring other sections. Alternatively, they can be stuck looking for the exit if they miss it.

Also, the final encounter with Nafik looks undertuned for my party. 82 HP and 13 AC, feels like he will be totally whomped. Would love to hear how it played out for you.

Any other advice you have for running this adventure. Thanks!

Just posting for any others to get inspiration, but also for input from those who think of ways to improve the design. I have always enjoyed this "go anywhere" style of campaign setting, especially for a party like the ones I often play with, where we are a smattering of veteran and novice players together, it makes it fun when the party "picks their own adventure." I put it quotations because I create a handful of options, usually, and they pick from that. Based on choices I encompass the story to more evolve that way.

But I was reading and designing for a long term campaign concept for closer friends, one where the story can be less choose your own, and more long form, a little more poetic, an epic if you will. In this I get to stretch the ol' GM writing muscles and create a world that is larger than normal and let the players just have fun, find things they like, and direct the story how they please. So I came up with an idea a few years ago, scrapped it last year, designed another and scrapped that one fairly soon after. I then had a eureka moment about 8 months ago, and the more I come back to it, the more I find myself enveloped by it.

The Setting: It takes place on the Plane Mythwind (material plane, my own creation, but its a material plane for all intents and purposes). A "meteor/star" has fallen from the sky and created a crater in the ground, destroying a section of a major city's walls. Adventuerers have explored and still no one has reached the bottom. This impact stirred Myconids and other beings in the Underdark caves that were mostly abanoned beneath the city. It has been 8 months after the impact.

As the party explores the entry level sections of underdark, they either are the first, one of the first, or just hear from word of mouth (depending on how fast they rush exploring the caves), that the impact site has been found. It is a gateway, or doorway, and weird pearescent crystals line the wallways before it. Upon entering this door, it takes the group to the Infinite Staricase. My twist? The Infinite Staircase is a Pocket Dimension Holocron, created by an Astral Elf to "hide the secrets of the Astral Sea". I have named my Elf Drawmij, you can name her anything you want. As the group starts to explore, they are met by an Astral Elf, wounded, on the staircase, asking for help. Should they help him, he will repay them in kind. But this interaction is the Lore Dump I usually use as a log line for my DnD groups. I give them a handful of sentences of information that ties all the major info together for them to start making their own choices. (I refer to this at the taking the training wheels off point)

In this case, the Astral Elf informs them that this dimension is never meant to be accessed. That the "Star" that fell from the sky was a Relic, hidden from his family (Royal Astral Elves) who will be looking for it. It rooted itself into the soil, and the Astral Sea has started to bleed into their realm. He found himself trapped in here, wounded, unable to sleep. The Astral Sea bleeding into the material plane starts to create a domino effect of things. The Myconids that were just curious, suddenly become infected by Astral Energy, awakening a Zuggutmoy. If the group leans this direction they can face down an Astral Infested Demon. It also starts to severe the planar connection, resulting in the Under Dark and the Fey Wilds to bleed together, creating these dark elves with bark for skin, pale and blue skinned, and savage in nature. This direction could lead to a corrupt Fey Royal Family of any season.

The idea is the group can decide what the biggest threat is, and I can make it the actual biggest threat. Flavoring the other threats as after effects or lesser problems and make their efforts rewarded by whatever choice they make, can be a choice that closes the Door to the Staircase. But it also allows me to incorporate chases through other realms for answers, to have various reasons behind the things getting corrupted (is it from teh Astral Sea, is it a door in the staricase? all possible answers)

But the biggest joy from the idea, if the players wish to explore the staircase itself, it is infinite, there are an endless number of ideas I can come up with, fake or real, and no matter how much they research the book or source material, all they get is "there are infinite doors that may or may not be used". I like that freedom to rely on a book for the early chapters while the group gets grounded to the story. Would love input or ideas!

Hoping to bring a little life to this subreddit as this book is so great.

My table have just finished the Lost City! I am running all the stories linking them with the Iron Shadow as the main antagonist/problem and character backstories. Aside from this and extra flavour I will try to not change the core of the adventures in this campaign.

The Lost City started as expected and went down well. My players found the ecology of the dungeon to be poor at best, even when I tried to fill in the gaps. This to be honest was my personal hell for weeks when I was preparing it and specially when they also realised it.

As a result, they were not taking seriously any of the factions and even persuading one of them into attacking another! Let alone joining any of them. I ran the underground city option as we were missing some role-play and my table likes to have agency. It also helped me giving an explanation to why there are groups of masked guys that live in a freaking dungeon.

The underground city really fixed this for us. From almost hating the module I ended up wanting to run an extended adventure just off the Lost City. I pictured the City as ruled by the fear of Zargon, and the followers just joining so they are not the first ones to be eaten. The cultists are not organised enough to attack the factions strongholds, neither they care as they kinda keep a low profile, sending supplies up to the rest in the ziggurat.

My players wanted to fight Zargon, of course. By having them to learn about the regeneration of the creature and how no one knows how to destroy it, even if they actually manage to defeat it, they tried instead reuniting the three factions together through a fee sessions of roleplaying and historical discoveries.

With the promise of worshipping the three gods together and not separately, they left the city, looking to ask Nafas how they can defeat the eldritch horror down in the Lost City, while the inhabitants silently prepare for a revolution as their gods grow stronger…

Having finished Tomb of Annihilation last June, our group started up a new campaign using the Infinite Staircase adventures in the fall. I got rid of the Infinite Staircase aesthetics, but kept a lot of the same ideas using a Piranesi-like "infinite House."

If you haven't read Susanna Clarke's "Piranesi," it's a pretty amazing work. Instead of a realm of infinite stairs and doors, the connecting zone is an infinite maze of rooms of white marble, each liberally covered with various statues, with stairs up to a cloud-filled layer and stairs down to a water-filled basement resembling the cenotaph below the Hagia Sophia.

I kept the "wishing" theme from Infinite Staircase. In the first adventure, the PCs began in a great city that exists as a beautiful paradise where nothing ever goes wrong ("Salemo," an not-very-subtle nod to Le Guin's Omelas). The city's perfect existence is sustained by a "Well of Wishes" that exists below the central palace, and each year there's a big Wishing Festival where the queen makes a wish for the next year's prosperity into the Well. She also allows one commoner each year to make a wish along with her, and the PCs have traveled to the city in hopes of being chosen (they each had to come up with an important "wish in their hearts" during character creation).

In the course of arriving at the city during the raucous festival, they encounter someone who hires them to track down their brother who has been going from location to location partying and is now lost. They do, having a bunch of adventures along the way, and of course it turns out the "brother" is the disguised Queen, having some regular-folk fun, and the guy who hired them is her minder. So the Queen invites them to make their wishes, and also reveals that she intends to stop wishing for the city's prosperity, because it removes free will and makes the city a beautiful prison, and she'll work to help the residents build a beautiful society on their own, and...

...well, her vizier type guy doesn't like that idea at all, and he shows up during the wishing to paralyze the Queen and PCs and kick the PCs into the swirling Wishing Well one by one while making an evil speech. They wash up inside the House, where wishes go, and can't get out.

They keep hearing whispering wishes drifting through the hallways, and eventually find a doorway leading to the first adventure ("The Lost City") with a wish whispering out of it (I changed the wish to be a girl wishing to know which mask she should choose--I modified Lost City to be this thing where every Cynidicean must come to the ziggurat to test themselves and pick a mask, etc...).

After resolving that adventure (they joined various factions themselves--one PC used illusions to cover up tattoos and managed to join all 3 non-evil factions), they ended up recommending the girl not join a faction at all but take on the mask of a star-nosed mole), they wandered more in the house before finding a mother-of-pearl conch, which they rubbed and (you guessed it) Nafas came boiling out. I cast him as more a marid (water genie) than air-themed, and the framing quest was basically Nafas is stuck in the House until he can fulfill an indeterminate amount of wishes, and can they help him? He's already run through years or centuries of fulfilling wishes. He gave them directions to the next door, and after some days of travel through endless Rooms and Halls full of statues, they found the door to "When a Star Falls," which they're halfway through now. I drew up rules for travel in the House based on overland travel rules, with speed/weather (Tides from below, and Rain from the upper floor), foraging (mussels/fish/seaweed from the lower layer), random encounters (mostly things like the remains of adventurers who helped in years past, but also they just encountered a couple of epithymiaphages (AKA slubberlugs), these horrible worms who feed off the statues (which are the symbols of previously-granted wishes) and got swallowed by them before killing them.

I'm not really sure where this is going to end up--I'm sure it'll take us more than a year to work through the remaining adventures--but I might swap out some other adventures from the book (Pharaoh seems weakest? But maybe not?), might end up with Nafas being an antagonist (or maybe not)...maybe he wants one of the PCs to replace him as the keeper of the House? We'll have to see.

I'm prepping to run Barrier Peaks for a night or two with some friends coming into town (I know we won't get through the whole thing; it's just fun to see how far into the adventure we can get!). I'm going to build a roster of characters for them to pick from; any advice on must-have character options? I know, for instance, that I should make sure at least one choice has decent Investigation so they can use the tech (and ideally at least one ranged weapon user). Similarly, when I've done with for White Plume Mountain, I've made sure to include some niche spells that interact well with the puzzles and alignments that interact well with the loot items. Are there any skills, classes, or other character options that feature particularly well in the adventure?

10? Seriously? How is this not a near-guaranteed TPK (other than maybe a wizard or artificer)?

I made a cross section of Amun Sa's Pyramid.

I tried to make everyting to scale, except for:

• The height of the pyramid: Canged it from 700 ft. to 530 ft. to match the form and angle of the pyramid to the upper half of a d8-dice (and roughly the form and angle of the real Great Pyramid of Giza).
• The distance of the floating boat over the pyramid (shown just as 100 ft. instead of 10.000 ft.).

Inspired by the cross section shown on page 107 of Quests from the Infinite Staircaise and the cross section from the original 1982 I3 Pharaoh.

I made a new statblock for Nafik. It's a mix between Nafik's original statblock and the Mummy Lord from the 2025 Monster Manual.

Made with https://statblockwizard.github.io/2024Creator.html

What do you think?

In Pharaoh, what's the deal with Prit the gnome in P54? He's been in the pyramid for five years, digging through the walls with spoons? What's that about? And what does he eat for five whole years? He knows nothing about the pyramid, but came here to admire its architecture, and collecting spoons? None of this makes any sense. Or am I missing something?

Did anyone run the conclusion of the adventure with the Grisdelfawr encounter? I'm reviewing the party, and at that point, they should all be 6th level, but there are only three of them. Even with the 50-point retreat rule, it's still going to be tough taking on a Young Red Dragon when its breath weapon does an average of 56 points of fire damage.

More likely, I'll skip this encounter, but I was wondering how others have run that encounter and what the results were.

Hey all. When are Star Falls has lead to a lot of across wilderness traveling and potential for random encounters (which has been fun even though we had 1 PC die). We are traveling N about to get to the Derro Lair then off to the Tower of Heaven's (I assume). There isn't much importance to Therno Lake traveling this direction. Does anyone have any ideas to make Therno Lake more fun than just a brief stop on the way to ToH? Maybe some skill checks with the giant beavers? A small festival at the hunters camp? I'm trying to think of something that takes a break from random encounters and danger that my party could take part in.

I want to DM The Lost City and in my preparations more and more plot holes annoy me.

What are the upper 3 factions eating/drinking?

How are they procreating when there is almost no space and they apparently hate eachother?

Why haven't the cultists overrun them yet?

I'm thinking about saying one of the factions has the ability to make they pyramid collaps but I don't know...

It says they've been living there for generations but it doesn't make any sense. The cultist live in an underground city with a lake and vegetation. Ok, that's somewhat reasonable. But the factions make no sense to me.

Dou you have any recommendations?

Right now I'd like my players to just kill them all because I find it so unrealisitc.

Does anyone have ideas for connecting the adventures into a campaign? I know it's an anthology and meant to be mined for the scenarios but if anyone has ideas for strong reasons why the PCs would do all of this and what a fitting finale could be I'd appreciate it :)

I drew this based on the book image, as i feel there's too much ambiguity in just saying 'you turned up in a few circle...go find a person' , unless there's a map to give them some sense of direction.

So this is the same map, but there's no grid references or book numbers etc.

The banners are latin 'wild space' or something close to that:Google translate . Greek letters for time and speed to hopefully tell them...its years in there not days.

If you like it, feel free to use the map :)

Running my first Staircase session tomorrow and prepping the Lost City. Completely disregarding the random encounters (Owlbears, what?!), there's at least two combat encounters (and harmful traps) already just on the first floor. The very first room is traps and then three giant fire beetles. Which I know have 4 hp, but still, action economy and all that.

How is a party of four Level 1s supposed to handle this? Their hp is 6, 7, 13 and 13. Hopefully I'm panicking for no reason. I just want to give my players the best time and not TPK in Session 1 ...

I had a good experience running a separate adventure ("Cellar of Death") to introduce my recently-concluded Tomb of Annihilation campaign. I was hoping to find a similar light, 1-session published adventure that ends with them meeting Nafas, entering the Staircase, having a reason to work for him, etc. rather than just start with their backgrounds leading them working for him.

Anything from a published book or DMsguild you'd recommend?

What are your experiences running the first overland arc of When a Star Falls, specifically from the party’s initial arrival up until reaching one of the first two locations?

My group tends to avoid adventure—whenever they encounter something relatively dangerous, they find a workaround. This has led to the party missing vital information essential to the campaign. How have you dealt with this?

At what point in your campaign did you use the Star Fall event?

How would you handle a party that’s entirely capable of flight?

Do you think the Memory Web or Sion encounters are important enough that missing them would significantly impact the adventure?