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The Apocalypse Stone (2e)

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The end times approach . . . .

To everything there is a season. Every campaign has to come to an end sometime, so why not go out with a bang? The Apocalypse Stone is an epic adventure to challenge high-level characters, but beware?it will destroy your world.

This adventure has it all: gods and devils, plague and pestilence, rains of fire, and world-shattering conflicts. Here is an opportunity for PCs to display undreamt-of heroism. . . or fall to ultimate defeat.

The Apocalypse Stone is a tool for Dungeon Masters to present extremely challenging encounters for high-level parties, to wrap up a long-running campaign. . .or both.

This adventure can be used with your own game world or an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons setting.

Product History

The Apocalypse Stone (2000), by Jason Carl and Chris Pramas, is an end-of-the-world adventure for AD&D 2e. It was published in March 2000.

Origins (I): It's The End of the World. By 2000, D&D was quickly hurtling toward its third edition (2000). To support the coming change, TSR opted to offer GMs the ability to end their old second edition campaigns … with a bang. The result was three "Apocalypse Adventures".

The Apocalypse Stone (2000) was the first. As Wizards said in their ads: "Stuck looking at the same mucky swamp, ruin or back-alley? Well say no more! The Apocalypse Stone adventure is designed specifically to scour your campaign world and pave the way for Third Edition. It's time to level the playing field. Literally." And, they weren't exaggerating. GMs who opened the book would be told "This adventure will end your campaign and destroy your world!". Yowtch!

There would be two more of these so-called "Apocalypse Adventures". The Dungeon of Death (2000) was just a killer dungeon, but it got included in the trilogy because it was "Just what you need to remove those pesky player characters and pave the way for Third Edition.". Die Vecna Die! (2000), the last of the trilogy, was more obviously apocalyptic. As the ads said, "Campaign out of control? House rules growing in every corner of the realm? No worries." In fact, Die Vecna Die! could destroy the whole multiverse, not just a measly campaign world.

Origins (II): Return of the Edition-Shaking Adventures. World-destroying adventures were new for TSR, but the idea of adventures that could shift players to a new edition was not. For the 1e/2e transition, TSR had produced "WG8: Fate of Istus" (1989) to explain the changes in Greyhawk and the Avatar trilogy (1989) to explain the changes in the Realms. The difference in the 2e/3e transitions was that they instead were about wiping the slate clean — though the ascension of Vecna after Die Vecna Die! could perhaps be used to explain the rules changes throughout the multiverse.

Adventure Tropes. The Apocalypse Stone is a cause and effect adventure broadly broken into two parts, where players cause an apocalyptic problem in the first half of the adventure, through a MacGuffin quest, and then try to solve it in the second half, via another MacGuffin quest to retrieve the same item! These two halves of the adventure are laid out with a big interlude in the middle, creating a (short) episodic campaign.

The adventure is definitely story-focused and most of it is laid out as episodic encounters, which the players face one after another. Nonetheless, several sections provide more player agency, including a huge castle crawl at the start and a smaller castle crawl at the end. A series of episodic tests also provides some agency, as players can fail or succeed at them!

Expanding D&D. Short rules lay out character classes for death knights(!), who can be priests, warriors, rogues, or wizards.

Exploring Various Lands. The Apocalypse Stone is a generic adventure, but it suggests placement in several of D&D's more normative worlds: Dragonlance, the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Mystara.

Artifacts of Note. This is another adventure about an artifact: the otherwise unknown Stone of Corbinet. It's mentioned again briefly in "The Dukes of Hell", an article that was part of the first online "Dragon magazine", Dragon #360 (October 2007).

Monsters of Note. A rampaging tarrasque appears as one of the signs of the apocalypse. It's one of the best uses of the ridiculous monstrosity, following disappointing uses in DL16: "World of Krynn" (1988) and SJR4: "Practical Planetology" (1991).

NPCs of Note. The Big Bad in The Apocalypse Stone is Garloth, who is opposed by King Alain. As characters from a generic setting, they're never heard from again.

More notable is the archdevil Moloch, who appears in the Interlude. He debuted in Gary Gygax's "New Denizens of Devildom" in Dragon #75 (July 1983) as a preview of the Monster Manual II (1983) and then was immediately referenced in Ed Greenwood's "The Nine Hells, Part II" for Dragon #76 (August 1983). However that was pretty much it for Moloch. In fact he was so neglected during the devil-hating era of 2e that The Apocalypse Stone marked the first time his stats had appeared for the updated game system!

About the Creators. Carl was a game designer for Wizards of the Coast from 1999-2001. 2000 was a busy year during which he also wrote The Dungeon of Death (2000) to end 2e campaigns and Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game (2000) to quick-start 3e campaigns. Pramas was still a relative newcomer at the company, but would soon be rolling out his own Green Ronin Publishing

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the editor-in-chief of RPGnet and the author of Designers & Dragons — a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

We (Wizards) recognize that some of the legacy content available on this website does not reflect the values of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise today. Some older content may reflect ethnic, racial, and gender prejudice that were commonplace in American society at that time. These depictions were wrong then and are wrong today. This content is presented as it was originally created, because to do otherwise would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed. Dungeons & Dragons teaches that diversity is a strength, and we strive to make our D&D products as welcoming and inclusive as possible. This part of our work will never end.

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Reviews (2)
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Reviews
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August 6th, 2021
an absolute unit of a 2e adventure with so much packed into such a small tome i cannot imagine ever running this but even having it feels like having a 2e equivanlent to a forbidden scroll of doom its a fun oddity & the print on demand copy is well [...]
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May 15th, 2004
This is an okay adventure. The premise is pretty interesting, and some of the events are cool. Overall though, I don't think I care too much for it. The main "bad guy" that gets the players involved in this definitely seems to take a "ne [...]
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Product Information
Electrum seller
Pages
96
Edition
1.0
Publisher Stock #
TSR 11614
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