Running the "Lord of Chaos" Adventure at Your Table
I've run the Jordan Lord of Chaos campaign material maybe six or seven times across the last few years. It shows up in a handful of tables every year and tends to cause the same problems each time. Most groups handle it fine. Some groups struggle through it because they didn't expect what was coming. The module isn't some obscure homebrew. It's a published adventure scenario centered around a planar incursion event where the chaotic energies of the Outer Planes begin bleeding into the Material Plane. The core premise is straightforward enough on paper: a gateway destabilizes near a small frontier settlement, entities from the chaotic planes start seeping through, and the player characters need to either seal the breach or negotiate with whatever has come through. The writing is functional. It's not going to win any awards for prose, but it does the job when you need a quick high-lethality encounter with some roleplay hooks. The adventure uses standard D&D 5e mechanics as its base, which makes it portable across different groups and house rule sets. You don't need special supplements to run it.
How to Run It Without Breaking Your Table
Here's what actually matters when you run this. The adventure assumes your party will approach the central threat head-on. That's a reasonable assumption for levels 5 through 8, but it falls apart quickly if your players decide to scry on the gateway first or try to talk to the entities instead of fighting them. The module has very little material prepared for those options. I ran this at my table and my players spent forty minutes discussing whether they should attempt a Diplomacy check on a doppelganger lord before rolling initiative. The DM section literally says nothing about how to handle that. I had to improvise a modified DC system based on the creature's Chaotic Evil alignment and its established reputation in the local area. Here's what I ended up using: Diplomacy checks against the planar entities use a DC equal to their Challenge Rating plus 10, and success gives the party one round of advantage on their next attack or a temporary shield that absorbs 2d10 force damage. It's not in the book. It worked because it kept the scene moving and gave the players something tangible for investing resources into talking first. Another thing the module underplays is environmental storytelling. The gateway site is supposed to feel unsettling, but the written description is about two paragraphs. When I ran it for a second time, I added details about the local wildlife behaving oddly — birds flying in impossible geometric patterns, insects mating and dying in loops, the ground feeling warm in spots that don't correspond to any fire source. It only took five minutes of preparation and changed the whole tone of the encounter. Players noticed immediately and it made the planar incursion feel real before they even saw a stat block.
Stat Block Adjustments That Matter
The standard creatures listed in the module — mostly chaotic undead and minor planar entities — are fine at lower levels but become unreliable once your party hits level 7 or 8. A typical encounter that should be dangerous becomes trivial because the damage output of 5e higher-level characters scales faster than the static CR values in this particular adventure. I increase the HP of the mid-tier encounters by about 25 percent and give one random creature per encounter the +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls from the cursed weapons rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide. This brings the action economy back in line without making fights unfair. It also keeps the battle going long enough for the narrative beats to land. The module assumes fights will be over in three or four rounds. They rarely are with my parties.
Get the Full Details
When This Module Fails Completely
Let me be honest about when you should not run this. If your group plays a min-maxed optimization build focused entirely on combat efficiency, this adventure will disappoint them. There are no treasure hoards worth optimizing around, no legendary items on a guaranteed drop schedule, and the pacing moves slowly through several social investigation segments. Players who want crunch-heavy combat encounters will check out during the portions where they need to interrogate survivors or trace the origin of the planar energy. Similarly, if your table prefers narrative-heavy roleplay campaigns, this module is too combat-dense for what it offers in the story department. The dialogue options are thin, the NPCs are archetypal, and the moral questions it raises get abandoned halfway through because the adventure pushes toward a climax quickly. It's a middle-ground product that doesn't fully satisfy either extreme. A better alternative if your group needs something more narrative-rich around the same thematic area would be the "Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus" material. It handles planar incursions with more depth and gives your players actual agency in how the story resolves rather than following a predetermined path toward a single confrontation.
What to Do With the Reward Structure
The reward section of the module lists several magic items that scale with party level. I've found that the designers underestimated how much magical item economy has shifted since the core books were published. Giving out a +1 weapon and a potion of healing alongside a single uncommon magic item feels like a rounding error at level 8. I redistribute the gold piece value of the listed rewards into one meaningful uncommon item and use the remainder to fund a tangible consequence — a rebuilt section of the settlement, a permanent NPC ally who provides information later, or a recurring plot thread tied to the faction that caused the planar breach in the first place. This takes about ten minutes of setup. It makes the session feel more consequential than just collecting loot numbers.
Quick Reference for Running This Smoothly
Before you sit down with your group, do these things. Prepare three environmental descriptions for the gateway site — one for approach, one for within the portal zone, and one for after the breach closes. I keep these on index cards so I can reference them without slowing down the pacing. Read the full encounter section before session one. The module places certain creatures in a sequence that works only if you understand the intended flow, and misplacing even one encounter can make a fight either trivially easy or nearly wipe the party. Have backup rules ready for social encounters with planar beings. The module doesn't provide them, but your players will almost certainly try something other than combat at least once. Having a simple DC framework prepared prevents you from either shutting down the player's idea or accidentally resolving a complex interaction in two seconds because you're winging it. Run it once. Then decide whether it fits your table. The adventure itself is serviceable but unremarkable, and the differences between a good run and a forgettable one usually come down to how much preparation you add around the edges.
