I have the original 3 ring binder with only the first stack of monsters that it came with. I never got around to getting the other packs to fill the binder. I'm happy to see all of them in this clear, easy to read, excellent bound reprint from drivethroughrpg. Another book I'd love to have a copy in hard cover.

Excellent copy, print is nice, binding is excellent and way more durable then my DM guide I bought when 2e first came out (its falling apart from so much use).. I hope this never goes off the print list and hope the hard back version comes as I'd love a hard back copy as well.

A classic module I was happy to be able to get in print form. A pdf is nice but print is king!

Got my copy today, only 2 weeks from the UK to AUS, very happy to have this tome in my hands again.

A fantastic example of a proper reproduction. Very nicely printed, great quality, with no obvious scanning flaws. The original A1 map is incorporated into the book itself here, which is fine but of course not the same as having the proper pullout map.

The content of GAZ1 itself are about as good as it gets, as a DM resource. Karameikos serves as the centre-of-the-world for most BECMI Mystara campaigns, and is a highly versatile setting. A must-have resource.

This is definitely a valuable product. With nearly 300 pages of fiendish evil throughout its pages it serves as the most thorough exploration of the full nine Hells in Fifth edition. The adventure hooks are well-crafted and implemented in a way to drive the characters in the right direction, but give them lots of freedom along the way. As someone who was looking for an adventure like this, I absolutely love how well put together the whole thing is, and look forward to running my own version of it with some players in the future.

I felt the need to take it down to four stars for a few reasons I'll elaborate on, shortly, but I will say I highly reccommend this product to anyone who wants to run a deep dive into the Nine Hells.

Downsides/Weaknesses:

The art style of the archdevils. I'm just not really a fan of most of them. They look like rendered 3d models, and their textures seem off. They also look very little like previous official art for the characters, and do not feel as enticing as many are described as being. They also look a bit more like Sci-Fi aliens than fiends to me. It may be something that you like or doesn't bother you, so YMMV on the topic, and I'm just a sucker for different art styles than this one. The art for the monsters in Appendix B is much closer to what I would expect and would have preferred for the rest of the content. The difference in style of artists is just a significant mark for me.

Statblocks. Are mostly very good. I'll agree with another reviewer that some abilities, like all language proficiency should be more broadly applied to the archdevils, but overall they are well-crafted and should lead to really interesting encounters. I do think that all of them will see some level of adjustment in my own play, but this is commonly necessary for any high level campaign to do a little tweaking here and there. It's a little unfortunate that the campaign also requires multiple additional resources to provide the statblocks for all of the included encounters, so that's something that bugs me just a bit too, but it's entirely understandable. It is one of the benefits of being an officially licensed product that it's not restricted to using the SRD or unique content, but it does make this book a little more complicated to use. (Updated document fixed one of the mistakes in a statblock for the Hellcats mentioned in an earlier review.)

Partially Improved by recent update. Maps and artwork: Overall the scene-setting pieces and the cartography are interesting and useful. I would really like to see all of the planar maps, and really almost all of the images extracted for better VTT integration. The player handouts and other large spreads especially would be far easier to use at the table (virtually or in person) as images in addition to their place within the text. The whole adventure could also use some additional basic battlemaps for areas within the planes that are likely to arise. There are several thoroughly described areas (and several less thoroughly detailed ones) that involve potential combat encounters, and very few of them have anything close to resembling an appropriate battle map for them. This is something I would have truly liked to see, even if many of the encounters are flexible as to where they might occur. It would have been great to see possible lair/palace maps for the archfiends as well, but that's not entirely within the scope of the adventure. But even many adventure locations could have really benefitted from having a map to put them in. Those maps that do exist are decent, and it would have been nice to see more. Note: A recent update added a handful of images for battle maps as a seperate download. I would love to see this pack improved on with an inclusion of more of the artwork as individual files as well. It is a real boon to VTT play in particular, but also just generally. (Side note, if a FoundryVTT or Roll20 module for this ever gets created, I would absolutely snap it up, especially if it could be discounted for PDF owners and/or it contains additional maps and implemented artwork.)

Overall, these things were enough for me to knock it down from a 5 star product, but I absolutely love what they've created here and hope to see more items like this in the future.

I purchased the 3 book set (PBH + DMG + MM) in softcover and think these are of solid quality. They are of the later printing from the mid 90s, which in my opinion is not the best, but they do work well together as a cohesive set. I bought these to use as reference as my original books are getting too old and worn to handle the beer and cheese dip from years of play. For the price I'm happy. Since the hardback versions are now worth their weight in gold, these ones are perfect for reference without too much worry you may damage them.

My biggest gripe is that the packaging for the shipment was lackluster to say the least... Luckily it didn't rain before I was able to get home, as one entire side of the package was exposed to the elements. There was also some adhesive from the box on the pages of the DMG, I was able to carefully clean it off but it was not ideal for a near $90 purchase. I also recommend grabbing the PDFs with them, as nowadays I find myself using a tablet/laptop to read them just as much (if not more) than the paper version.

Books them selves are 5/5 for me, but the packaging and shipping was disappointing.

Itneedserrata to orrectdetailsFor example, I can't find anything in it that discusses down time for my players. You never go back to civilization or "normal" areas, so typical down time doesn't apply. The players are just constantly at risk the entire time, which is fine, but I'd like options on how to deal with it. The developers have a mechanism to facilitate a small amount of buying and selling of loot with the party's patron visiting, but i get the impression that's not the intent behind their creation. I can figure out additional options on my own, but it'd be nice to have ideas that fit with the story. I can just add options from the Avernus campaign, but it feels like an oversight to not even discuss it in the book. Also,

there are small errors that need looked at. For example, in the monsters section, there are stats for a Hellcat. It has a trait called Shadow Dweller, which you'd assume means it gets advantages in shadows. The copy I have says attacks against it in dim or bright light are made at a disadvantage. If that's the case, why would it ever leave the light? Aside

from these issues, I do think it's great content. The art is wonderful and the premise is quite good. It just feels like there wasn't much play testing done to catch these small issues. I wish I could've gotten a hard copy.

This is a great T1 adventure! Had a table of more seasoned adventurers and they loved it! It's a bit shorter, and I was able to run it in almost exactly 2 hours. Good mix of RP, combat, and environmental challenges. However, you could run it for longer if you adjust it a bit to include "optional" combats, assuming your players want more of a challenge.

My players were enthusiastic when I told them I could beef up the encounters for them. The added challenge kept them on their toes, but wasn't too difficult.

Overall, this is a great adventure to run at a local game store like I did!

POD is a little dark in some places but overall very nice and worth the purchase. maps are included and reduced in size to fit on pages. Still references well. Section on Fortunes Wheel is useful for use with fifth edition Planescape adventure book.

Print is very clear and clean. Very happy with this POD purchase.

Really good but one issue I had was its missing a map I had to go and find it online.

Okay, so overall I think that this is a very good supplement for anyone wanting to do some campaigns involving the Nine Hells. I like a lot of the lore provided for the locations as well as the maps (though a minor nitpick I have is that the River Styx is colored blue instead of red), and if you want to even go further and use this book in conjuction with D&D 3.5e's Fiendish Codex II: Tyrants of the Nine Hells, you will have a ton of information to work with! I also think a lot of the art is really good! The environmental art is very cool, and the character art looks absolutely wonderful. I also really like the inclusion of devils and other monsters from previous editions and giving them 5e statblocks, very cool!

Alright, now that I have the positives out of the way, I'm gonna get into the things I don't really like.

• Not a fan of the Triad in the Nessus part. I think they're a bit odd both narratively and design-wise. In a narrative sense, I find it kind of strange that they are the ones who pen and enforce contracts; because that, in part, overlaps with the roles of some other devils. All contracts, from the lowest imp to the highest pit fiend, are enforced by Asmodeus. The interpretation of contracts and exploiting loopholes is also something that any devil is capable of doing, and Glasya in particular is known for sifting through the legalese of contracts to find things she can exploit. So I think having a set of characters who specifically oversee this for all devils takes away from the other devils as well as their agency to write and enforce their own contracts. Personally, if you wanted to expand on devils who oversee certain tasks and/or bueraucracy of the Nine Hells, I think the Dark Eight would have been an interesting bit of lore to expand upon. And design-wise, not a fan of the look. They look very similar to nupperibos, which I think is an odd choice given that they're archdevils and nupperibos are considered the lowest of the lowest in the devil pecking order.
• Continuing on the subject of design, not a fan of the art for the archdevils. I myself am an artist so not a huge deal to me as I have my own designs for them, but the issue I have with them is that I think that they don't really convey the personality and characteristics of those archdevils as seen in some of the official artwork of them. To me, they all kind of look like 'generic evil demon guy'. For a clearer idea of what I mean, let's think about the artwork of Asmodeus from 3.5e (or a favorite of mine, the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist concept art of him), I feel that that art in comparison to the depiction of him here conveys a sense of charm, regalness, and human-ness that the work here does not; I feel like the art here for the archdevils in this book conveys a more 'monster-y' and visually offputting/evil look, which I am personally not a big fan of. The other devils included in the book like Abigor, Adramalech, and Morax also look ill-suited for devils as well. Stylistically, they don't look like devils at all; if I didn't know they were supposed to be devils, I would think they're aliens from a sci-fi horror game or some manner of undead creatures.
• Also with the archdevils, I find some information in their statblocks to be weird. For one, I think every archdevil should have "All, telepathy" in their statblocks instead of only a few. Every official archdevil (except Bel, might be because of his origin as a pit fiend) in 5e knows every language. I know that the reason for many of them only having Common, Draconic, Infernal, and Celestial in here is something from previous editions, but frankly it just doesn't make sense for beings of near god-like power. Also I think their condition immunities should include frightened and exhaustion as well. Once again, every official archdevil statblock in 5e is immune to "charmed, exhaustion, frightened, and poisoned" (again, except Bel for some odd reason, but he should too). Another thing I think they should have as archdevils of their status is "truesight 120ft" (though it's very inconsistent which archdevils have truesight and which don't in the official 5e statblocks), or at least Asmodeus definitely should, by virtue of being a god; and I think it would be very fitting for Dispater especially, as well as Mephistopheles and maybe Baalzebul and Glasya. And I'm curious why Glasya is resistance to necrotic and radiant damage and has blindsight. I couldn't find any reason within the text to suggest why she would have those.
• The Horsemen of the Apocalypse characters seem a bit odd to me. This is a minor thing I don't like, considering they're only mentioned in one section, but I think they have the potential to be cool. For one, I think it's weird that they're devils, as, if they are supposed to embody and be heralds of death, war, famine, and pestilence, I think it would be more fitting for them to be yugoloths (neutral evil) or even a group of strangely affable demons (chaotic evil). Also, a minor nitpick I have is that I don't like that they have dinosaurs as steeds (sorry, I'm a dinosaur hater), I think it would be cooler if they had infernal war machines, either Devil's Rides (motorcycles basically) or some unique ones; to me, dinosaurs gives Jurrassic Park vibes and it makes it feel rather silly. Narratively, I also find them a bit strange. I don't really see where the title given to them comes in to play, as none of them have anything to do with/relation to the themes of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse story. To me, they read more like some Arthurian tale of riddles and bickering knights.

Going back to the top, the things I dislike are minor, nothing really egregious, and would be easy to fix on your own as well. As a big fan of devils and the Nine Hells' lore, I think this is a really good addition of content to try playing through or incorporating into your own games. I myself definitely am planning to use some of the information in this book for my own campaign I'm working on.

TL;DR: Overall, very good buy with a lot of information and maps/visuals to work with. There are some small things I dislike (which is subjective to my own taste), but nothing that wouldn't be easy to rework. 4/5!

Even though this is 2e book, it is almost completey informational. No book, including the newest 5e book is as a more complete run down as this book. Every bit as current, and great information. I highly recommend this, in addition to the Faces of Sigil book that has some great hooks to complete the 5e campaign setting on the City of Doors.

One of my first ever bought modules back in the day (with the brown full-colour EO cover), and I still love the crazyness of it! But the pages are not super clear, and the maps that are provided with the pdf are really sub-par, and thus I dread the POD-copy I also ordered... :/

EDIT: Yeah, the maps with the POD were really bad!