Ptolus: Doctrine of Ghul Review

Spoilers follow for the Doctrine of Ghul...

An adventure for Monte Cook's Ptolus city setting, Doctrine of Ghul, provides some awesome dungeon design for adventurers to explore, but makes a few major missteps with its overall plot and adventure hooks.

The Doctrine of Ghul, like many Ptolus adventures, involves investigating another of the many (oh so many) chaos cults the city is afflicted with. However, it doesn't provide a very strong investigative structure to lead into finding the first dungeon, nor does it provide any clues for a GM to use. You have to come up with those yourself. I would also argue that it lacks strong motivation and direction on what to accomplish with the adventure hooks. 

Instead the party needs to be guided to the point when they can read the eponymous doctrine, which then railroads them into the plot of seeking additional pieces of the text to avoid being pulled into "Ghul's Utterdark." The adventure, and frankly the Ptolus sourcebook are also pretty unclear on what that means too, meaning that should the party fail to complete the adventure on the generous timeline provided, the GM may also need to generate their own consequence. There is also a bit of a snub section providing a rival adventuring party, but it lacks much assistance in how to utilize the rival party in the adventure, and doesn't provide any specific encounters or vignettes to guide those interactions, especially in the dungeons.

The three dungeons are the best part of the adventure. They are amazing in terms of cool ambient effects and generally just being different from normal dungeon fare. They aren't perfect thought. One problem with the Frozen Crypt is that if the players don’t touch anything and aren’t aggressive in their investigations then nothing happens. They can largely walk through the dungeon except for the ambient cold effects. 

While I love the concept of the Breeding Pits of Formless Hunger, and really enjoyed the fact that the characters could generate oozes due to the environment, the dungeon didn't work completely for my playthrough. I think this is because it is based on a couple of assumptions—one that characters will climb down into gross pits, and two that the GM will use fiat to have the Formless Hunger shove characters into random pits throughout the dungeon. My issue too with the tentacle of the Formless Hunger is that it plays a bit of a deus-ex-machina role. Shuffling the characters around or herding them seems to be the intention. There also isn't really any fleshed out discussion of whether you are able to make opportunity attacks against it as it slams through the doors of the dungeon and even down the long passage to the secret shrine almost instantaneously.

Galchutt Cyst is a really cool and well crafted dungeon, just hurt by some unclear layout of information placing essential bits in different portions of the text, making referencing it difficult to do quickly. The musical puzzle is evocative and cool, and my players really seemed to enjoy it, although one disliked the GM fiat in calling for saving throws against the ambient noise generated in the Cyst.

As an overall comment on the plot, it seemed completely out of left field for a wizard from the Inverted Pyramid to be behind everything. Nor did it make much sense for that individual to 1) be interested in promulgating the Doctrine of Ghul, or 2) to appear at the end to fight the party themselves. The adventure also leaves an escape for this appearance though, as it implies the wizard does not appear if they leave his magical dark blot which is a lens for scrying into the Galchutt Cyst's shrine. My characters did nothing to damage this magic effect, although they found it unnerving, so I never had the mage appear. Perhaps he'll make his appearance known later, if I can make the plot make sense. 

Lacking a player who speaks Abyssal or with comprehend languages makes finishing the questline of reading the doctrine difficult. As mentioned above, the consequences of being pulled into “Ghul’s Utterdark” are also not well defined. What does that mean? Is it GM fiat where I make a player character disappear like the Void card from the Deck of Many Things?

A final critique, perhaps localized to my particular game and group of players. My players never engaged with the Chaositech devices causing the effects in each of the shrines, which was a disappointment. I described them in such a way that I think any other group would have investigated further. However, they may need to return to the shrines, as their own actions have not stopped the effects of the doctrine by breaking the chain.

To recap, the dungeons of Doctrine of Ghul are generally amazing, and well worth playing through. The overall plot is a bit take it or leave it. If you can work in either a current or fallen BBEG who experiments with weird magic, then these dungeons would make great drop in pieces for any campaign.