My favorite module! I'm a new dm running this for a group of 6 and we're all having a blast.

I bought, ran and completed Call From the Deep from start to finish over the course of two and a half years. It is easily my favourite pre-made campaign, heads and shoulders above the competition providing a diverse setting, wide variety of enemies and a growing conspiracy to hook players in. The setting is, of course, the Sword Coast as most D&D adventures are, however, the party is tasked with travelling all over the region to stop the enemy. One thing I particularly like is the escalating groups of enemies, each one working as minions for the next group, linking them together but providing unique monsters at each tier.

Now for some complaints I had while running the game. First, I quickly found ship-to-ship combat very difficult to run on a VTT, two floating multi-level 3D objects moving at different speeds, was incredibly difficult to run. Because the game is a naval campaign, this proved to be challenging. My second complaint was I felt the party was showered in powerful magic items, to the point that they no longer were interested in new ones by Chapter 3. Finally, I didn't love the switch to Elderitch Horror from the peak of pirate adventure felt like a bit of a whiplash in tone, especially with the recommended Sanity rules that would have killed my party before they even made it town.

As for the additional materials, the group loved the included font file to create my own cipher notes and the maps, were generally pretty good, though I do have some gripes about circular dungeons in a grid based system. The handouts in general were very well recieved, something i'm going to carry forward in my D&D games, and I felt like I could run the story more or less as intended until the last chapter (though that was my call, to customize the campaign ending to my group).

Shout out to the Well-wishers, on the Tides of Change, it was a hell of story.

The content is pretty good with a lot of good ideas that are all fleshed out ready to use, however my biggest beef with this book is the amount of spelling and grammatical errors in it. I mean one of the comments even asks which version should be printed manually, the edited version or the original, to which the author of the book says to use the edited version. The edited version was apparently done by some fan and not even the original author. Highly disappointed that the PDF that goes to the printer has not been updated and I received a book that doesn't even appear to have one pass of spelling and grammar checks done, otherwise most of these obvious errors should have been caught. Another small complaint would be that the darkness of the box text that you would read to the players. These boxes are unnecessarily dark and can be difficult to read in certain lightning conditions. 3 stars for the content and the concept as I do like the ideas inside the book and can easily create a campaign around this content, but 2 stars taken away for the inability to do something as simple as fixing typos and grammatical errors before sending off to the printer for a hard cover version and the darkness of those boxes you're supposed to read to the players.

I am in Chapter 3 at the moment with my group of 5. There are issues with this campaign, but it is a decent framework.

I am part of the discord server where DM's offer insight into this campaign and plenty of artwork, maps, ect. It’s worth joining the group if you want to run this campaign.

Firstly, I agree with many of the points made by P.D. in their review. There are many logic gaps and strange things you find throughout this adventure. That being said, I think it is still a decent framework for running a game.

Secondly, this author obviously did not run even a basic spellchecker on this before publishing it. There are SO MANY spelling errors in this published document and it is hard for me to deal with at times. There are many instances were the same word is misspelled throughout the entire document. I cannot believe it was published without running a spellcheck on it.

Third, there is a section in Chapter 1 that doesn't even make sence. It’s within the first location that the characters are sent to, but the only mention is to NOT go to this location. I cannot for the life of me find anywhere in the adventure or even in the externally accessible adventure flow diagram where this is supposed to be used. I find that this type of "dead end" happens a fair amount in this adventure.

Fourth, there are a LOT of random adventures that make up this overall adventure. I find the random adventure section completely useless as it is expected to be used from levels 1-12 but there are not separate tables for choosing an encounter that is hard enough, but not deadly. I spend an inordinate amount of time prepping each game with random adventures that you just don’t have to do in a normal D&D campaign. This needs a lot of work for the DM beyond the purchased adventure.

Fifth, As partially stated with my first point, there are areas within even Chapter 3 that inadvertently give up the big bad already. The entirety of Chapter 4 is to figure this out, but what if the characters find it out by taking the first quest in Waterdeep? There are some strange things like this that are not very well though through.

Finally, I will finish with this:

The campaign is interesting and there are great concepts within it. The art and maps that are published are good, but what you can get from discord are vastly improved. If you purchase this campaign to run at your table, you will need to spend A LOT of time on working on random encounters, particularly at sea. There are some good items published in the random encounter chart in Appendix A that you can expand on. It will however not be a simple follow the page kind of adventure. You will also need to spend a lot of time sorting out the various sections to figure out how the puzzle pieces go together. This is pretty frustrating at times and differs greatly from normal WoTC campaigns. On the positive side however, this lends itself to more of an "open world" type campaign which is very nice.

Another issue I have had is that included there is a Print version (commercial book printer), but not a "Printer Friendly" version. Not having a Printer Friendly version is means it takes a ton of ink to print it. The page background is blue and many of the pictures are still there. To print the sections for my campaign, I had to copy and paste the sections into word, manually select the returns for each line, and the reassemble it to print it without using a bunch of color. In doing this, the amount of misspelled words was ridiculous. Very annoying no having a printer friendly version provided.

For $39.95 the quality of product does not meet the price. It is worth purchasing to some extent, but to not even thoroughly edit before publishing nocks $10 of the price. The story holes, logic holes, and missteps knocks off another $5. Finally, the inadequate random adventures which are referenced many times knocks off the final $5. For $19.95, this is a great value. For $39.95, I expect much more. I will still finish the adventure with my group, but with the amount of content I have to create on my own, I am only saving about 50% of the time it takes me to homebrew the entire campaign.

I will leave this final note for the publisher:

I know that writing a book is a difficult process. Getting artwork that you can use in your book is also challenging and costly. Overall, I really like the story you wrote and the concepts within it. If you are going to publish future books, I highly recommend reading my review and compensating accordingly. This will allow you to get the price of $39.95 as you desire and maintain a 5-star review.

I haven't read all the reviews, but I am surprised at how many 5 star reviews there are. I think they reflect the popularity of pirates and mindflayers and great cover art. I have only played through most of chapter 1, and find it somewhat flawed. The other 3 star review calls out a user friendliness problem, and I agree. This is an ambitious, complex adventure, and there is not really much in the way of synopsis in the beginning. If you don't read through the whole thing before starting, you may find problems that you didn't catch on a casual skimming of the contents. These include gaps of logic that you find yourself having to explain at the table and at least one place where you need to be careful about steering your party into a TPK.

SPOILERS

Problem: Slow start The Captain Callous encounter is essentially a random encounter. It is stuck in here to level up the PCs. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do wih the story. It introduces ship combat, which doesn't figure again in Chapter 1, so there are mechanics to learn, and then you stop using them. The Captain is noted as a devotee of Asmodeus; has nothing to do with the adventure. This whole encounter feels like a distraction. Skip it. Start in Gunbarg

Problem: Logic gap. The party approaches Gundbarg from the east, from Neverwinter. Shortly before arriving, the encounter Sauguagin and their captive Bern. Sahuagin and Bern hail from the west side of the island. Why are they over here on the east side? The module goes out of its way to force the party to travel overland to get the west side, and here is this tiny fishing boat that belongs on the west side, somehow, for some reason, over on the east side. This encounter has some clues, some foreshadowing. It has value but it is clumsy.

Problem: More random antagonists, more delay and distraction from the story. The party is supposed to encounter Olga Saltwood in Gunbarg. She is a hag. She makes potions. She steers the party to her lair, the Gallows Grotto, ostensibly to get potion ingredients, but really to kill them. And then if they return with the right ingredients she will make potions fo the party?

Problem: Logic gap. After investigating the crash site, the players are supposed to find the sahuagin footprints that lead to the Wreck of Golden Crown. If you look at the map, Fiskrbak is on the west of the island. The crash is only an hour's travel out of Fiskrbak. The wreck of the Golden Crown is on the north side of the island, looks to be about a days overland travel at least. Why would the sahuagin, who have a swim speed, walk along a beach to get from their underwater lair to the crash site? They wouldn't they would swim. Unless they had a prisoner who couldn't swim? Would they march him to their lair? No, they would take him to the mind flayer. And that is where the possible TPK comes in.

Problem: The possible TPK: Chapter 1 is designed to run your party from level 1 to level 5. After the encounter that advances them to level 4, comes Berranzo. At least in the sequence of how things are laid out. There is a sentence in this section that reads "Berranzo may never feature in your game..." It definitely should not feature in chapter 1! Why bother to put it here? Berramzo is the lair of a mindflayer. Not just any mind flayer, but a juiced up mindflayer that comes in at CR10. I outlined above the logic of why your party ought to end up here; logically, this is where sahuagin footprints would lead. But this thing should flat out kill your party if they end up here at this stage in the game. And yet, there is no other reason for them to end up here at another stage in the game?

In my game, the tracks led along the beach to Berranzo, where there was a clear fork in the tracks, with some leading to the sea, point the party towards the wreck, and some leading to the mine, because that seemed logical. Well, the party didn't have water breathing potions, because after they got the ingredients, they headed straight to Fiskrbak. And given the choice between going underwater or going into a mine, they took the mine. And the mind flayer. Yep. It would have been a TPK, but I decided that the mindflayer they encountered was not Thiliossk. Instead, it was a very newly created mindflayer that did not yet have its full abilities, could not so readily recover mind blast, and was not at full HP. It was still a big challenge.

Admittedly, if I just went with the illogical idea that the tracks would point towards the golden crown and have nothing to do with the mine, I'd have avoided this.

As we get ready for the next session, where the party will investigate the wreck, I see other problems.

Another Random Distraction? Hoch Miraz (really all of Wreck) is an attempt to tie pre-existing lore into the story. But Hoch is pretty random and contrived. Why did this wizard die in cabin? Seems like he was powerful enough to do something about that. Is it really plausible that the sahuagin managed to steal his staff of the magi? And then why did he go back to a state of suspended animation or whatever instead of hunting down his staff? He just stuck around to give the party something else to fight? It is not clear to me that this story line is relevant and I am inclined to gloss over it, but it is awkward to try to explain why the zombie-lich like entity is just hanging out here.

More logic gaps? Prisoners -- why did the sahuagin bring prisoners here instead of take them to Thiliossk? Why are they still alive given the underwater temperatures are supposed to create exhaustion hazards? I imagine my players are going to want to figure out what magic is sustaining the prisoners so they can exploit it. Might be interesting. Of course, I will have to make it up, because it does not seem to be anticipated by the module. One of the prisoners is a pirate who happens to have a map that points to the future plans of the pirates. Aren't the pirates controlled by the mindflayer-brain who controls the sahuagins? So why is that pirate who has the secret plans being held prisoner? Regardless of that, why hasn't the ink on that map bled?

This is just my experience with chapter 1 of a 5 chapter module. I find myself frustrated by perceived logic gaps and an abundance of unrelated distracting encounters. Importantly,despite my feelings, I think my players are mostly enjoying it. I mean, they fought a sort of mind flayer and it was fairly epic. But I feel like this is a lot of work for the DM, and it should be a lot easier

I bought your adventure a while back and recently after reading it and seeing a groupe of twitch streamer playing it. I decided to DM this campain and my player are having a blast. I will buy your new adventure waiting to see some more great campain.

Great campaign. Excellent, well thought out lore, characters, maps, and encounters. I ended up using this as a base and combining aspects from Ghosts of Saltmarsh for my custom homebrew. My players absolutely loved it. The big bad is so fun and clever, and it includes some really rich worldbuilding that lead to great RP moments for my players.

Highly recommended.

This is a high quality product, well written and researched and with great artwork. Highly recommended.

This is a must buy, its as good as any main release book if not better, goes great paired with ghost of saltmarsh.

As everyone else says, this module is unbeatably good; in terms of story and structure, it's a great deal better than any official story modules from wizards. There are some typos and a couple of things that don't quite add up, but the authour is incredibly responsive if you have questions. The maps are a little bland for some people, but they've all been recreated in colour on the discord.

Talking of which, check out the active discord; It's full of DMs who have recreated all the maps in full colour and shared lots of other useful resources. There's also a community group on there recreating the module in foundry VTT if that's your thing. https://discord.gg/cVNxxHZrsR

I cannot say enough good things about this campaign. First off it is beautifully structured. It was easy to read through and get a good idea of the story planted in my mind. The leveling stat blocks of some of the recuring villians just makes it feel like the story progresses with the players characters. Mind Flayers are a great villian and this campaign offers more depth to each of them within the plot.

If you are looking for pirates and nautical adventures, look no further.

Off the back of this I look forward to checking out more from JVC Perry!

Call From The Deep is a nautically themed adventure with a little something for everyone. Slightly Cthulhu? Check! Pirates and high seas adventure? Check! A little haunting? Check! Heavy use of an iconic D&D monster? Check! A scratch for your Spelljammer itch? Check!

I will preface my review by simply stating that I was stunned by the length, depth and production quality of this book. The book weighs in at a whopping 270 pages (for context that is a slightly higher page count than Curse Of Strahd) and is chock full of absolutely fantastic and evocative artwork and maps. I would easily say the quality of this book is on par with anything Wizards Of The Coast has published themselves.

In addition to the excellent use of art and maps the layout with regular breakout sections and clear subsections makes it a very easy read for a book with this much content. I particularly liked how much focus was given to each significant NPCs motivation and personality, the level of description provided should make each NPC easy for DMs to role-play and memorable for players to encounter.

The adventure features many different nautically themed locations that all manage to feel unique and important with a character all their own. Flavour text is descriptive and evocative without being overly long or drawn out.

The thing I appreciate most about Call From The Deep from a DM perspective is that it is a massive campaign length adventure broken down into bite-sized pieces that are incredibly easy to absorb and then run for your players. The art and flavour text will make the settings and characters come alive for the DM and then they can use that immersion to deliver a truly fun and satisfying experience for their players.

I can't recommend it highly enough. The amount of content contained herein is a bargain at the price and I can guarantee your players will enjoy it....unless maybe they get sea sick or are allergic to shellfish.

I haven't ran this campaign yet, but I've been reading through it, planning to run it after my group's current campaign ends. (Although, the two campaigns are both in FR, so will be canon together) I am loving what I have read so far. The creativity in the author's plot ideas, and interesting NPCs is what has be really excited.

Most of the main story is very detailed and leaves little needing to be planned (save usual player tangents) but the Chapter 3 opens the world up for me in a very exciting way. This is where the campaign becomes a sandbox, allowing the players to sail free and visit various locations.

There is a huge list of locations included in this chapter, with varying levels of detail; but all have some interesting info, and plenty to be plot hooks for DMs to lead off of; or simply an interesting one-off encounter.

Having run this module, it's great! It's well put together with a rich cast of characters and an intriguing storyline. Definitely worth your time!

Let me start this review by saying I didn't end up running Call from the Deep, but I wanted to. The ideas behind a pirate adventure with Lovecraftian horror elements are extremely appealing to me. Whenever I got to the story contained in the book, it drew me in.

However, the book very often buries the lead in that instead of explaining what is going to happen at the start and then fleshing it out, you have to read every part of the adventure to get at what is going to happen in a particular chapter or adventure. To be fair, the book does have a plot overview; however, when you get to the individual chapters the location descriptions, plot, and quests all run together. This, combined with how many of the areas of the book only have tenous vague suggestions of how to get your players to engage with the quest made considering how to run the effort more effort than I wanted to expend, and I opted to run a homebrew campaign instead.

Other things to note are that the art and maps are fantastic, the travel rules are something that I will be stealing for my home game, and the dungeons are interesting. However, this is outweighed by the user unfriendliness that made me puzzle over how I would DM this adventure, which I haven't found with either of the WoC adventures I ran. However, if you are up to a sandbox campaign with little to no railroading, this may be a campaign for you.