Dungeon Masters Guild, $9.99
Fantasy, 2017

Tyrant of Zhentil Keep… did someone say Zhentil Keep? Ah yes, that infamous stronghold of the worshipers of that heathen god Bane, who had stolen the mantle of ruler that rightfully belongs to the god of all gods, Cyric the Almighty. Naturally, as a rogue of Cleric, you think it’d be nice to slip right in to create some chaos in what is promised to you to be an open world solo adventure played using the 5th edition system.

A solo adventure, one that you can gambol around without being bogged down by companions that would stop and scream that they are being sexually assaulted because an orc misgendered them or something—that sounds great, no?

On the surface, this one looks great. You haven’t ventured into any previous campaign before, and while this one is actually part of an ongoing arc where your character wanders around Faerun to do whatever at whenever, it can stand alone quite well… you think. The campaign is easy to play, with clickable links and nice jumps to combat stats pages for a comprehensive brawl or two. The narrative is easy to run, and there isn’t too much Buffy-speak that plagues way too many other campaigns these days.

The structuring of the campaign is odd, though. You have only a certain number of hours a day to do something, which makes sense, so there are only a limited number of activities you can do. That also makes sense. So you go about doing your thing, collecting side quests that you will have to carry out later when the time is right—the campaign will tell you when the right time is, naturally—so you go around the place feeling like a fat kid in a buffet, ready to tear things up.

Then, night falls and you are corralled to an inn to do the nap-nap. Hey, you’re a cleric of Cyric! The night is your element!

No, no, the campaign insists: go to bed, sweetheart, because it’s way past your nap time; you can do your thing the next day.

Fine, you say, and play along… for now.

The next day is the same. No side quests triggered, you get into some scrappy random encounters, pick up a few more future sidequests, and then the campaign drags you to your bedtime. Wait, what? Can’t you at least hire a gigolo or prostitute to make bedtime fun? No, that’s not allowed.

You’re not sure what happened, but after a while, the campaign forces an end to your perplexing trip to Zhentil Keep, basically telling you to play the next campaign or scram. To add insult to the injury, you can’t even cash in your XP, as you can only do so at the end of the next campaign.

You read through the entries at random, and find that there is some intriguing stuff to do, such as messing around with a love letter from Fzoul Chembryl. Shame that the campaign for some reason never lets you to go about doing it.

Maybe you can try again, to check whether you have somehow clicked wrongly on something and caused the campaign to come to a premature end, but nah. You’re a devotee of Cyric, chaos supreme and master of all masters of evil, and you don’t have time for all this regimented nonsense.

An open world campaign is supposed to be open world in every sense of the phrase, no? This one feels so linear and confining, something like the axis of lawful evil that is Bane would do to make up for the deficient inadequacies of his intellect as well the intellect of his followers.

No, you have a temple of Mystra to sack and a hot date with the clergy of Loviatar after that, and you’ve given this undeserving campaign enough of your time already!