Hold Back the Dead is the next free DnD adventure coming from Wizards of the Coast, which will be available for registered DnD Beyond users to claim on February 4. WotC hasn’t said anything much about this freebie adventure so far, but the central premise – defending a “mighty fortress” from “hordes of deadly monsters” – is giving us real vibes of Bloons TD and other tower defense games.
Hold Back the Dead takes place in the Western Heartlands of the Forgotten Realms DnD setting. The villain sending the aforementioned monsters to your fortified doorstep is a Red Wizard of Thay, a necromantic baddy who will be familiar if you’ve watched the DnD movie ‘Honor Among Thieves’.
This is a “challenging, single-session adventure”, according to the listing page on DnD Beyond. There’s no word as to whether it comes with pre-generated characters. It does however contain “a fortress map for Dungeon Masters” and “player-friendly maps, character tokens, and creature tokens for the D&D Beyond Maps tool”.
If this had been released a little closer to when the Dungeon Master’s Guide appeared on the DnD release schedule, we might have assumed it was an excuse for DMs to give the players a DnD Bastion after they secure it from the undead. But with the Monster Manual out just two weeks later, this may well give a sneaky preview of the updated statblocks for more DnD monsters.
The prospect of a castle siege against hordes of monsters is really compelling, though we might be saying that because there are so many miniature wargames players on team Wargamer. As we argued recently, the scenery of a battle has a huge impact on how interesting and challenging it is, and the battlements and defenses of a castle give the players such an advantage that the GM can throw absolute hordes of monsters at them.
The different DnD classes, and even some of the DnD races, have to think extra hard about their role in a siege. If the Wizard can’t reliably find enough time to get a long rest, when is the right time to cast fireball? Should the Fighter lead a sortie to spoil an enemy offensive, or remain in reserve to plug any breaches that may open up? What DnD tools did the party bring with them that could help to shore up the defenses during breaks in the fighting?
Plenty of monsters from the new Monster Manual have already been spoiled: make sure you check them all out, as there are some real doozies in there. The Arch Hag is a particular favorite of ours, a real counter-spelling nightmare that will get under the party’s skin.
If you happen to be a fan of the tower defense genre, our sister site Pocket Tactics regularly updates its guide to Tower Defense Simulator codes for Roblox to help you get free crates.
Source: Wargamer
