Jared Rascher: What Do I KnowBack when I was doing my review of Vecna: Eve of Ruin, I wasn’t sure if I would still be doing these reviews for official WotC material, because I like having a little bit of time before the release date to post them. Once we hit street day, everything gets flooded with reviews, promotions, and first looks, so it becomes a little redundant to try to post meaningful D&D content.
It turns out, WotC is still releasing items on D&D Beyond early, if you preorder. The process is actually simpler now than when you had to buy the bundles through WotC’s website and apply a code to D&D Beyond. Now you just buy the bundle, and it unlocks when it unlocks. No, I don’t think it’s scandalous that WotC allows early access via preorder. Of all the things that parallel the video game industry, that’s one of the least odious trends to emulate.
Disclaimer
I’m working from my early access to the D&D Beyond version of the adventure. I don’t get review copies from WotC, although I do get press releases. This literally just unlocked, so I haven’t had a chance to play or run any of this material, but I am familiar with D&D both as a player and a GM, and I may even be familiar with some of the adapted material in the book.
Quests from the Infinite Staircase
Lead Designer: Justice Ramin Arman
Art Director: Emi Tanji
Designers: Dan Dillon, Carl Sibley
Rules Developers: Jeremy Crawford, Makenzie De Armas, Ron Lundeen, Carl Sibley
Lead Editor: Judy Bauer
Editors: Eytan Bernstein, Michele Carter, Janica Carter, Laura Hirsbrunner, Sadie Lowry, Patrick Renie
Principle Graphic Designer: Trish Yochum
Cover Illustrators: John Patrick Gañas, Syd Mills
Cartographers: Stacey Allan & William Doyle, Marco Bernardini, Jason A. Engle, Sean Macdonald, Damien Mammoliti, Marc Moureau, Mike Schley
Interior Illustrators: Hazem Ameen, Luca Bancone, Mark Behm, Eric Belisle, Olivier Bernard, Zoltan Boros, Zezhou Chen, Daniel Corona, CoupleOfKooks, Axel Defois, Julie Dillon, Olga Drebas, Tomas Duchek, Craig Elliott, Victor Ferraz, Jaqueline Florencio, Jessica Fong, Michele Giorgi, Kevin Glint, Alexandre Honoré, Adrián Ibarra Lugo, Dario Jelusic, Jane Katsubo, Katerina Ladon, Yuliya Litvinova, Titus Lunter, Marie Magny, Dave Melvin, Martin Mottet, Irina Nordsol, One Pixel Brush, Hinchel Or, Alejandro Pacheco, PINDURSKI, Andrea Piparo, Arash Radkia, Noor Rahman, Tooba Rezaei, Cyprien Rousson, Taras Susak, Kamila Szutenberg, Matias Tapia, Brian Valeza, Zuzanna Wuzyk
Concept Art Directors: Josh Herman, Kate Irwin, Emi Tanji
Concept Artists: One Pixel Brush, Noor Rahman
Consultants: Tempest Bradford, Ma’at Crook, Dominique Dickey, Sameer Joseph, Omar Ramadan-Santiago
Project Engineer: Cynda Callaway
Imaging Technicians: Daniel Corona, Kevin Yee
Producers: Bill Benham, Siera Bruggeman, Robert Hawkey, Andy Smith, Dan Tovar, Gabriel Waluconis
Prepress Specialist: Jefferson Dunlap
Product Manager: Natalie Egan
Product Overview
Quests from the Infinite Staircase is the latest adventure anthology published by WotC, following other products like Tales from the Yawning Portal, Ghosts of Saltmarsh, Candlekeep Mysteries, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, and Keys from the Golden Vault. It’s similar to Tales from the Yawning Portal and Ghosts of Saltmarsh in that it’s adapting adventures from previous editions to D&D 5e. It’s similar to Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel and Keys from the Golden Vault, in that it frames the adventures as something that can be accessed via a common source, and while the narratives may not be directly linked, you can make a campaign of it using that connective tissue.
This reintroduces the Infinite Staircase, a cosmic structure that winds through multiple planes of existence. Originally just kind of a reference to something that exists, and that you could use for planar travel, over the years it has accumulated some lore around it. The Infinite Staircase is where Helm killed Mystra when she attempted to return to the outer planes during the Time of Troubles in the Forgotten Realms. A Planescape anthology product called Tales from the Infinite Staircase provided more detail on the location, mentioning huge landings that might house structures, and introducing inhabitants, like the lillend. It also morphed the staircase a bit more from its portrayal in the Realms, where “staircase” was more of a concept than the literal appearance, and from the entrance of the staircase, the staircase itself would wind upwards towards another portal to another plane.
In this presentation, the Infinite Staircase builds on its Planescape description. Doorways lead to the staircase, which exists between planes. At various points on the staircase, some doors lead to various planes of existence, some of which may provide some clues as to where the portal leads.
One of the landings on the Infinite Staircase houses the Censer of Dreams, home of Nafas, a noble Djinn. Nafas can only grant wishes on the Infinite Staircase, but wishes from all across the multiverse travel on the wind to him. To fulfill some of these wishes, Nafas sometimes recruits adventurers to go help out. That how the anthology ties these adventure together. Those reworked adventures include:
- The Lost City (1st-level)
- When a Star Falls (4th-level)
- Beyond the Crystal Cave (6th-level)
- Pharaoh (7th-level)
- The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (9th-level)
- Expeditions to the Barrier Peaks (11th-level)
One interesting note is that two of these adventures have been adapted to D&D 5e previously, while Goodman Games had the license to do their Original Adventures Reincarnated line. Goodman’s 5e adaptations were very concerned with keeping everything in the adventure as it was in the original, just with 5e stats. They often included additional material, but it was added on to the adventure and didn’t modify what was already present. I haven’t read ahead yet into the adventures, but I’m pretty confident that WotC is more likely to change not only problematic content but also content that just doesn’t work as well with D&D 5e’s playstyle.
Artwork
Looking at the introduction and chapter 1, we get several views of Nafas, the Censer of Dreams, and various locations on the staircase itself. There is a total of six pieces in the two sections I’m looking at today, and they really lean into the wondrous. I especially love the shot of the enormous interior of the Censer of Dreams, as well as the wide shot of adventurers traversing the staircase toward the Censer.
Introduction
The introduction briefly touches on the concept of the Infinite Staircase, and gives some background, about a paragraph each, on the adventures adapted for this book. They also mention that you can use the framing device of the staircase and Nafas to insert other adventures from the various anthology series into a campaign as well.
Chapter 1: The Infinite Staircase
This chapter goes into more detail about what the staircase is and how it manifests. It distinguishes the doorways that lead to the portal as distinct from the portals in the Planescape setting in that they don’t require portal keys. There are just specific, set doors on various planes of existence that lead to the staircase.
This section also mentions that the staircase can manifest as ramps or clockpunk conveyor belts as well as stairs, which I appreciate as a nod to accessibility for player characters that may need mobility aids.
A malevolent force from Tales of the Infinite Staircase, the Iron Shadow, is reintroduced. This is a cosmic force that drains art, motivation, and joy from whatever it touches, and doorways that have been corrupted show signs of that corruption. There are also a few monsters associated with the Iron Shadow, one of them new to the anthology.
There are sections on finding the staircase, locating specific doors, random doors that PCs may encounter, random encounters on the staircase, as well as a list of four adventure starters for (a few paragraphs each) to build on for an adventure taking place primarily on the staircase itself. There are a lot of evocative doors with interesting locations on the opposite side, and the list specifically name-drops doors for the Radiant Citadel, Ravenloft, Zybilna’s domain in the Feywild, Candlekeep (Forgotten Realms), Sharn (Eberron), and Dargaard keep (Dragonlance). Most of the encounters aren’t just “entity,” but rather “entity doing thing,” which I generally find to be a bit more useful, especially if I really do randomly generate the encounter.
Nafas and the Censer of Dreams are the subject of much of this chapter. I love Nafas’ origin as the sum total of the exhalations of breath from across the multiverse. The Well of Destiny, a location within the Censer of Dreams, is a nice, evocative creation. Wishes are carried on the wind through the multiverse to the Well, and when he hears them, Nafas tries to arrange for visitors to help out those that are in need across the planes.
Thoughts on the Introduction and Chapter 1: The Infinite Staircase
I am a big fan of featuring the Infinite Staircase, and adding details to it as a location where PCs can spend time and even adventure, rather than a background detail providing a planar shortcut. Nafas and the Well of Destiny are a far cry from the framing convention of Tales from the Yawning Portal, where the whole idea was . . . people might talk about these adventures in the common room?
Since Eve of Ruin is still fresh in my mind, I would have loved some cross-pollination between this framing convention and that adventure. Having Nafas deliver the PCs to the Wizards Three as the answer to a Wish spell that didn’t go off properly would make them feel a little more like they weren’t just randomly summoned. Having a single portal in Alustriel’s sanctum that lead to the Infinite Staircase, and having the PCs track down the pieces of the rod from there would have made the transition between different settings a little more purposeful and a little less contrived.
I wish we had gotten a little more detail on the Iron Shadow. I appreciate it’s inclusion as a tie to the 2e material, I just wish there was a little bit more. The description of how it saps the creativity and novelty out of a location that it corrupts almost, almost, felt like a meta-commentary on using specific settings in D&D adventures. For all of my frustration that WotC doesn’t do a lot of setting detail with their prime material plane settings, I have really been enjoying their multi-planar organizations and locations that have been introduced over the last few products. I may not always agree with the “the multiverse is the setting” ethos, but at least if the multiverse is the setting, they are adding some interesting multiversal bits.
I like having story elements that facilitate my predilection toward pointing my PCs at other planes of existence, even when they don’t have the means to get there themselves. I have a feeling that Nafas and the Well of Destiny are going to get some use in one of my campaigns.
If you would like to explore planar-themed anthologies from other editions of the game, and you don’t mind contributing to my habit of buying new games to review, you can click through the affiliate links below. Thanks!
- Tales of the Outer Planes
- Tales from the Infinite Staircase
- Elder Evils
- The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea
- The Plane Below: Secrets of the Elemental Chaos
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