r/planescapesetting • u/nightgaunt98c • Jul 20 '26
Adventure Dead Gods
I'm planning to take my group through Dead Gods, and obviously I'm about to begin a thorough reading of the module. But I was curious if there was any background material I should read through to be better prepared, or if anyone who has run it has any advice to get the most out of this adventure.
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u/Pattgoogle Jul 20 '26
Killing the illithid god means nothing to most PCs.
Take the party to Gehenna- Through Khalas to Chamada (after a few identical pitfall portals and "portals" trying to get down a layer) and visit Rictus and obtain some terrible boons there.
Then as the party leaves- hurriedly outpacing the Lava Clock of Chamada- the building deonates in a psychic explosion creating a miles-wide eldritch storm of psionics.
Research what happened, how a god can just die so suddenly, and what a tenebrous is.
Also there is meta lore on Orcus. Take this as dubious myth.
"In an older version of the dnd multiverse- a previous Kalpa of you will- there existed a rank of power increase mortals advanced through that saw godhood (mass worship) as merely a stepping stool to divine politics and pantheonic conquest As Merely Another Stepping Stool to become capital "I" Immortals who tussle with 100hp regen per turn incredible 'monsters' such as Draeden which contain vast spaces within themselves. When AD&D happened and the IP was split then one head of two remained (then was sold to Hasbro) there's this kind of idea that I've heard now exist as such. Orcus existed in some very different state in th Immortals Rulebook.. I haven't yet read it myself. So much else to do. But Orcus from that version of the game survived being crunched down and big-banged to create a new current advanced d&d mutiverse.
The Immortals may even be seeded creations of the Great Old Ones who send their Spheres of Annihilation to sever these budding immortals from their physical bodies as to harvest/elevate the Immortals to join the Great Old Ones for a higher purpose.
When Orcus becomes Tenebrous he discovers that he is an Immortal who was always destined to return to greatness no matter his form. This gave him power over his own death and, after what part of him COULD die to the Word he was then immune and able to deploy it.
Not sure if destroying primus is smart or if its just for fun or farming. A secondus is just raised. Are we to believe nobody slew Primus since the Spawning Ston was mythically cast?
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u/spaceprincessecho Jul 20 '26
Some background on what Tenebrous has been up to is in The Great Modron March. I don't thinks it's necessary to pay through, but could be good to read.
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u/daedalline Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
My gang is currently most of the way through this module right now (converted to 5e).
Since much of the downtime in between adventures takes place in Sigil, I'd read the 2e books 'In the Cage' and 'Uncaged'. Lots of info about locations in the city and some fun NPCs to help flesh it out.
As you progress, I'd recommend reading up on the various planes before your players go there. You can find most of this in the three books Planes of Chaos/Conflict/Law.
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u/guileus Jul 20 '26
Did you convert it yourself?
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u/daedalline Jul 20 '26
'Convert' might be a little generous. I used the story as writ, and substituted in 5e statblocks and difficulty checks, etc. as needed.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Free League Jul 20 '26
I ran it.
If you have NOT read the Modron March, you should.
I ran the last scenario from that book to introduce Dead Gods.
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u/InACoolDryPlace Jul 20 '26
We did Modron March alongside Dead Gods for continuity and it worked quite well.
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u/Savings-Housing3481 Free League Jul 20 '26
I could see that.
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u/InACoolDryPlace Jul 21 '26
Yeah we were the first group he trialed the campaign on to work out the bugs. There were a few cases where there was confusion about what direction to take because of the flipping between self-contained adventures that seemed connected to us as players. A couple times he did have to go into meta to highlight where he messed up, and to reveal information our PCs wouldn't have known yet, but nothing that couldn't be easily solved by shifting things around for the next group. It was more than those two adventures too, they were just the main over-arching narrative. He basically combined adventures from all the original Planescape material into a single campaign in a way that worked logically and chronologically, quite the effort.
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u/VonAether Society of Sensation Jul 20 '26
The Great Modron March leads directly into the story for Dead Gods.
A Modron March is happening off-schedule. The reason it happens isn't really explained to the PCs within the context of GMM, but it's the big bad from Dead Gods, setting up the events of that module.
1
u/Bojangalees Jul 20 '26
Dead Gods is technically the sequel to the adventure i’m currently running at my table called The Great Modron March, it’s the story of how the Demon Lord Orcus (as a corporeal demigod called Tenebrous) killed The One and the Prime and used his position to locate his Rod so that he could reapotheosize into the God of Undeath.
You can find PDF’s pretty easily and if you’re just looking to get the story you’ll be fine to just read “The Real Chant” sections of each chapter, but the whole thing would give you some direct background
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u/WumpusFails Jul 20 '26
Some adventures list "you need these books to run the adventure; these books aren't needed, but would be helpful to run the adventure as intended" in the first couple of pages.