You may notice that although I normally tag all of my Freeport Trawl posts with both the Freeport Trawl and Freeport tags, I did not include the Freeport tag on this one. Although the title is Hell in Freeport, and it does indeed take place (or at least start) in Freeport, this isn't a Freeport adventure at all. It's better seen as a tie-in to their popular themed monster book Legions of Hell, which was also out at the same time. Although it starts in Freeport, the action that takes place there makes no reference to any iconic Freeport location, and could easily be set in any fantasy city, as long as it's a port city, as it has the PCs take a sailing voyage out of town nearly first thing; after a single combat encounter and a subsequent conversation encounter. There's also a twin city to Freeport in Hell itself, called Freetown, but since oddly very little happens in town there either, and only about three locations are referenced, that could also be any fantasy city.
It also has a very different tone. This was very much the early 00s high fantasy D&D as it's own sub-genre within fantasy kind of tone. It's pretty super-heroic, as it's set for PCs of around 10th level or so, so they have spells like teleport, fly, plane shift, etc. that the module has to work around frequently. Now, I'm not sure that Pramas would agree that Freeport was meant to have a kind of low fantasy, grubby fantasy feel more like a Warhammer FRP than D&D—as it often veered into very high fantasy gonzo 00s D&D—but that's the feel and tone that I always associated with Freeport.
This particular adventure, like I said, starts off with something that's actually not a bad idea; a serial killer who's setting people on fire in Freeport. No witnesses, no clues, no nothing. Turns out its a devil, and the next thing you know, the PCs are being carted off to another island where there's a gate to Hell. They, of course, get stuck on the wrong side, have to do a weird prison break (complete with all kinds of weird modern references; devils watching prisoners on screens in a command center, etc.) traveling on the river Styx to one of the layers of Hell that's literally frozen over, lots of weird clockwork stuff, a strange extraplanar gladiator pit, etc. Just a lot of weirdness in general. Cities threatening to get plane-shifted en masse, so devils could harvest their souls, etc. Really non-grubby, non-Lovecraftian, non-piratical stuff. Like I said earlier, this feels more like a tie-in to Legions of Hell than to the Freeport line; and it is only in the Freeport line because, well, why not? But it doesn't have the tone, feel or even much of a presence at all in Freeport.
And this is my big problem with it. I don't really care for the weirdness of mid-level D&D on the planes, where it's really leaning into the weirdness. I especially don't care for it in a setting where I expect a more low fantasy skullduggery and horror vibe. The original Freeport trilogy was still occasionally too D&D for my taste, but it did lean quite a bit more into the Lovecraftian low fantasy vibe of a Warhammer scenario with a Warhammer tone... and that tone is really, really missing here. That's the tone that I came to Freeport for in the first place, so when I'm in a series of products that are much more wahoo, full of puns and in-jokes, and other kinds of silliness (which yes; I realize that Warhammer campaigns had plenty of that too. Although it was less on-the-nose)... honestly, I just don't like it as much.
I think that I'll have to endure at least two more products that aren't really the tone that I want, but then it'll start leaning back in the direction of more playing it straight, and trying to embrace the darker, grubbier feel that made Freeport different than most other D&D settings. That was really its whole thing; without it, Freeport isn't anything all that interesting, in my opinion.
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