D&D BECMI - The Wrath of Olympus

The Wrath of Olympus

D&D BECMI Rules

• Publisher: TSR
• Rules: Dungeons and Dragons BECMI
• Series: Immortal Adventures
• Developer:
• Reference:

Product Description - The Wrath of Olympus

Immortals lie chained atop a mountain in the Broken Lands. Their bonds relentlessly drain their power while demons cavort with glee around the wispy barrier, as strong as any prison.

Have you the courage to embark on a dangerous mission for the materials necessary to craft an artifact? If you survive that task, you must then assume the Identities of legendary heroes of Darokin and face deadly Immortal foes without revealing your Immortality! The demons of Entropy stand between you and your final goal. Have you the power to rescue the imprisoned Immortals and preserve the Prime Plane? The future of the Prime Plane is in your hands!

This adventure is designed for four or five Temporals, levels one or two. There should be one from each sphere.

Product History

IM2: "The Wrath of Olympus" (1987), by Robert J. Blake, is the second Immortals Set adventure for Basic D&D. It was published in February 1987.

Origins: More Immortals. TSR published just three adventures for their Immortal Rules (1987), which allowed players to take on the roles of gods. This was the second of them.

Adventure Tropes: An Immortal Adventure. Immortals rule author Frank Mentzer first revealed how to create an Immortals adventure in IM1: "The Immortal Storm" (1986). Now, Bob Blake was able to offer an alternative view.

Where Mentzer focused his adventure on the setting by designing a magical mystery tour of the planes, Blake instead focuses on the immortals themselves, centering his adventure on the conflict between different immortals and on the immortals' prime directive — that they not interfere on the Prime Plane.

Blake does repeat a few of Mentzer's tropes: the adventure starts off with a delegation from the hierarchs … then moves on to another multi-part MacGuffin hunt. And, he still does let players travel across several planes before landing back on the Prime Material Plane.

Exploring the Spheres. "Wrath of Olympus" takes the players to another set of planes that are quite unique for the world of Basic D&D, including: Rylum, Kryla, Pyts, and Tempus. Because Basic D&D's cosmology included "millions" of outer planes, these were new planes (and would not be seen again).

"Wrath of Olympus" also returns to the elemental plane of earth, previously seen in IM1: "The Immortal Storm" (1986).

Exploring the Known World. Unlike its predecessor, "Wrath of Olympus" returns to the Known World: the Olympian gods are making trouble on the border between Darokin and the Broken Lands. Though there's just scant description of Darokin itself, there's rather extensive detail on four Darokin demigods, who could be used as background for any campaign in the area.

NPCs of Note. Two hierarch turn up in "Wrath of Olympus" … but they're different from the hierarchs in "The Immortal Storm"! The hierarch of matter was Djaea but is now Terra and the hierarch of entropy was Nyx and is now Night. Perhaps they're alternate names?

The arch-villain Orcus also makes a rare appearance in the Basic D&D cosmology. He's part of the backstory for the first few chapters (and apparently the trickster who created a portal to Pyts).

About the Creators. Bob Blake is best known as the creator and coordinator of some of the earliest D&D tournaments, a few of which TSR published as C4: "To Find a King" (1984) and C5: "The Bane of Llywelyn" (1985). This was his last work for them, though he'd author some books for New Infinities later in the year.

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.

Where it is used - The Wrath of Olympus