Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep

The Dm I played this module with did an excellect job. It was a crazy amazing game with twists and turns I never expected. It was a beautiful story that left me and my group in tears at the end and it also had great side stories.

Firstly, do you need to be a fan of Critical Role to enjoy this module? Absolutely not! Does it help? Yes, but is far from necessary. Call of the Netherdeep has some things about it I absolutely love. A rival party that I think more modules should play around with, a villain with just enough of a tragic backstory the players want to feel sorry for them, but not so much they feel evil fighting him, and a very simple call to action that makes the hard question of "Why are the players here" easy to answer. However, I think Call of the Netherdeep struggles to get all of this across. By the time I ran it, I was a very experienced DM, able to make changes as necessary. I find new DM's may need to read through the book a few times to make sure they can allude to things, steer the players in the right direction, and make the rivals engaging. Running it as is, the adventure is fun and the module is well laid out. With some tweaks? I think Call of the Netherdeep is one of the top DnD modules a DM could go for.

A flawed adventure with a strong emotional core, Call of the Netherdeep is going to be what your DM and players make of it. Overall, it tends to be a bit of a railroad, although the individual sections of track are pretty good on their own, with one notable exception in the form of a chapter of travel early in the adventure. Most importantly, a rival adventuring party is an amazing addition IF the players take them seriously. The same goes for Alyxian, the figure at the heart of the adventure. If your players make things intentionally complicated with the rival party and Alyxian, you will find incredibly memorable moments. If they treat both like additional bad guys to be beaten, it will be a lackluster adventure with a couple of good dungeons.

As a DM, this is hands-down my favorite module to run. The rival party is a lot of fun to roleplay and a great way to get your players invested in the story beyond "we had a vision, so let's see where it leads!" Each settlement the party visits is bursting with its own unique flavor. And the endgame is epic, featuring an unusual setting, a creative dungeon, and an evolving boss fight where your party gets to define what it will mean to win the day. Is the plot a bit of a railroad? Yes. Is there a lot of built-in space to explore character backstories? No. Is there a lot of community support to expand the story if that's your thing? Definitely. If you're a new DM, Call of the Netherdeep is an excellent starting module with enough guard rails to keep you on track while you learn what you're doing. If you're a veteran DM, it's a solid foundation that's easy to tweak, modify, and expand to tell the story you want to tell. And if you're a player? Hold on to your hats, because this story is one incredible ride.

This is a fantastic module with great world building, interesting concepts, great characters, and exciting and emotional hooks that had my players deeply invested in the story. that can be run as quickly or as slowly as you like. Tables looking for a short campaign can breeze through it fairly quickly, or you can take advantage of the massive amount of support from the community to extend this campaign for quite a while. The nature of the campaign does make incorporating character backstories into it more difficult but not impossible. Some groups will find it a bit more on-the-rails than other modules, but I did not find this to be a problem. The later parts of the campaign open up nicely and provide ample opportunity to explore as much or as little as the party would like. I would definitely recommend this module for both new and veteran GMs.

I have played and run Call of the Netherdeep. It has upsides and downsides, but overall, it is one of the more decent pre-written modules, and can serve as a good basis for a campaign. Its biggest downside is the terrible railroad it presents in more than one place. As such, if run as written, it would be a disappointing experience to any fan of Critical Role, despite the name of the campaign. It requires a fair amount of labor to make it truly shine.