We were given the opportunity to get a sneak peek at the quickstart of Inferno – Dante’s Guide to Hell, the setting for D&D5e based on the imagery created by Dante Alighieri for the Divine Comedy. Thanks to Two Little Mice, Acheron Games and Epic Party for the occasion, but first of all for the creation of this terrific product. Keep reading and you’ll prove me right. For everyone interested it is possible to freely download the quickstart. I emphasize that more than a quickstart it is a bigstart, considering that it is close to seventy pages. The Kickstarter campaign will kick off on March 23rd.
Divine The Comedy, Divine The Art
It is not possible for me not to start this journey by talking about illustrations and layout. Dante Alighieri’s work is a masterpiece of world literature, which can describes through the words places and creatures capable of inflaming the imagination of centuries of readers. The responsibility of translating all that imagery into art must not have been easy to manage. But there is no doubt that the result is superb.
Black and red dominate the scene. References to the historical engravings that accompanied the Comedy are mixed with more modern and fantasy images. The illustrations are stately and realistic at the same time, truly intense and impressive. The highest expression of contemporary giubellianism (neologism created in our Broken Compass review). But we have to celebrate not only the fantastic Daniela Giubellini, but also Vincenzo Pratticò and master Gustave Doré, famous illustrator of a Divine Comedy back in the 19th century. The quickstart is worth downloading for the illustrations alone (Charon! Admire that Charon!)
The layout follows the quality of the illustrations and is meant to exalt them. It is well done, elegantly embellishing the work without protagonism. Reading is a journey and turning the pages is exciting every time.
The Importance of Dante’s Legacy
The responsibility of disturbing the Divine Comedy is not limited to the illustrations. This preview based on the quickstart of Inferno – Dante’s Guide To Hell for D&D5e offers only a limited window on the final result, butthe attention to the quality of the text and the fidelity to the original work are and must be already put under scrutiny. We are talking about the Supreme Poet after all!
The team of authors makes their debut immediately ensuring that
with a precise philological approach, and with the help of experts, scholars and professionals of literature and games, we started a journey to Hell in the footsteps of Dante and Virgil, which adds nothing to the original but transforms the unreachable triplets of the Comedy in a completely new itinerary.
The material is still too little to make a complete judgment. But the air that you breathe among the concepts of Hope, Sin, First Love, Divine Inspiration and many other components of the game or the premises that animate it are excellent bases to expect a good job.
Quickstart of Inferno – Dante’s Guide To Hell for D&D5e: a Different Game
We are literally flooded by new RPGs every year. Great titles, new editions, reboots, indie, drafts, minimalist, zine and so on. Often it’s not the game that needs to change, but the approach. The first text box of the quickstart talks about this and deserves to be mentioned.
Inferno is not just a setting, but an attempt to generate a unique and profound experience. We ask players not to abandon only hope, but also preconceptions, and try to approach this manual with open mind and heart, and with the desire to be amazed. So put aside the search for the most powerful builds, and the rarest artifacts, and don’t already think about the great and famous opponents to be killed. The experience we offer you, if you like playing it, is more elegant and requires a bit of seriousness. Your biggest enemy will be yourself.
It is certainly a different game in which the characters are called Travelers and the master the Guide, which is not only a contextualized appellation, but also it is reflected in the setting, connoting it as a real guide, a Virgil who accompanies the players in a campaign obviously called Journey.
Travelers and their Sins
The characters, once they enter the Dark Forest, lose all ranks, levels and previous professions, as well as part of their memory and identity, and take on similar appearances to those they had in the material world or are transfigured and changed due to vices, virtues and sins.
For this reason, a great warrior who fought to serve heresy may find himself taking on the Archetype of the Blasphemer and forced to exchange his sword with the powers of fire. Similarly, a small and weak man who has dominated his subjects can find himself embodying the Archetype of the Tyrant and towering among the damned in his bloody armor.
They carry Emblems, allegorical objects ineluctably linked to them, their Sin and their class (or rather Archetype). Everyone has a Sin, there is no multiclass. But above all the objective of the Travelers is not to lose hope; while Lucifer aims not to kill the characters, but to make them use their powers thus exalt their Sin. And chain them forever to Hell.
And how beautiful the emblems! They are powers and burdens, they are allegories and counterpoints, combined with powerful visual presence and game mechanisms! As Hope is a mechanic, which starts from 33 points, a perfect number (doubly perfect I would say!).
The Introductory Adventure
The adventure almost cannot be defined as such. It’s a small introduction, a glimpse of what it can be to play in Hell. It is a pretext to present the situation to the players and make them comfortable with the setting. Certainly interesting and impactful, because thinking of playing a character who has crossed the Eternal Door and is on the banks of the Acheron is enough to send the hype on fire. An NPC is mentioned who will play an important role in the campaign featured in the manual; this suggests that there will be a main plot that will help at least the first approach of a Guide to his work as a storyteller.
The adventure takes all the poetry and philosophy of references and allegories back to the most classic role-playing game. Mission, confrontation, resolution. On the other hand we are always talking about D&D. Being able to blend these two souls of the game may not be an easy task and it will require commitment from everyone present at the game table.
The Quickstart of Inferno – Dante’s Guide To Hell for D&D5e: Final Considerations
I might surprise you: at the end of this preview I can tell you that I hate the quickstart of Inferno – Dante’s Guide To Hell for D&D5e. It’s just too good to wait for the full manual and try it out.
Seriously speaking, Two Little Mice confirms the extreme quality of its works and its attention to create a centered, homogeneous and satisfying product from every point of view. If this is the beginning, I can’t wait to see all the material that will be published, both contents and art. I am curious to better understand how adventures in Dante’s Inferno can be lived; but I am extremely confident that I will have a lot of fun playing them.
We are talking about a free product full of interesting ideas and embellished with fantastic illustrations: what are you waiting for to download it?
For any other information, we advise you to also follow the pre-launch page of the Kickstarter campaign, which will officially start on 23rd March.
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