D&D General They don't make adventures as they used to. A Night Below Review and in depth guide (Video).

I know I have started looking back in 2nd edition dnd the past months but for some reason I get the feeling that they do not make adventures as they did before. It might be the fact that looking back at those adventures I remember me being a geeky teen living and breathing for the next session of our game (almost a lifetime away) , and those memories simply refresh me...but still..

The Paladin in hell one of the first adventures I reviewed, and now the Night Below, an epic campaign that has it all, (excluding drow even if most of it takes place in the Underdark!) are gems that all players no matter the edition should read and play them.

I will do my best to break it down so much that all players will at least get inspired to take some plots and ideas for their own games.
The Night Below : Book 1 Evils in Harenshire review :

This is a very welcome blast from the past.
I’ve both played in this campaign and DM-ed it. Both were great experiences. It was imaginative, but also managed a great homage to all the traditions of D&D.
The box set was also excellent value and a real quality product.
Haranshire was a great home region for the adventures, and the levels of buy-in with the NPCs who lived their lives there was exceptional.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the Underdark without drow, with centre stage being given to less well known threats; something fishy was definitely going on.........

It was probably my most challenging DM experience ever, simply because I was running a party of 12 PCs ( too many of course!) and perhaps that’s the best tribute to this great campaign. They all seemed to enjoy it, start to finish.

GuyBoy said:

This is a very welcome blast from the past.
I’ve both played in this campaign and DM-ed it. Both were great experiences. It was imaginative, but also managed a great homage to all the traditions of D&D.
The box set was also excellent value and a real quality product.
Haranshire was a great home region for the adventures, and the levels of buy-in with the NPCs who lived their lives there was exceptional.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the Underdark without drow, with centre stage being given to less well known threats; something fishy was definitely going on.........

It was probably my most challenging DM experience ever, simply because I was running a party of 12 PCs ( too many of course!) and perhaps that’s the best tribute to this great campaign. They all seemed to enjoy it, start to finish.

Click to expand...

12 people holy smokes! You are a hero..
Its one of those adventures that the more hours to dump on it as a preparation being the Game Master you will get exponentially better results with your players.

I really wish they made modules today as box sets, I adore having all those amazing goodies at hand when I run the game...

Love it!

GuyBoy said:

This is a very welcome blast from the past.
I’ve both played in this campaign and DM-ed it. Both were great experiences. It was imaginative, but also managed a great homage to all the traditions of D&D.
The box set was also excellent value and a real quality product.
Haranshire was a great home region for the adventures, and the levels of buy-in with the NPCs who lived their lives there was exceptional.
I also thoroughly enjoyed the Underdark without drow, with centre stage being given to less well known threats; something fishy was definitely going on.........

It was probably my most challenging DM experience ever, simply because I was running a party of 12 PCs ( too many of course!) and perhaps that’s the best tribute to this great campaign. They all seemed to enjoy it, start to finish.

Click to expand...

This was before my time, gutted I missed out on playing Guy! Funnily enough it was the first campaign I ran for my Leicester group last year. Though we only did book 1. With an aboleth as the BBEG who was eating the captured casters to expand its knowledge. It was a great 6 level mini campaign.

They don’t make em like this anymore!

Would have welcomed you as player number 13, Rob.
Night Below remains awesome in my memories.....maybe it can go on the list for a revisit.

Night Below was soooooo good. One of the best campaigns I ever ran.

S

So, whilst on the subject of classic boxed sets....where would we all rank these three pieces of history?
You can rank on whatever basis you like; experience as a player, as a DM, simple nostalgia, innovation of design etc. Maybe just simple, unsubstantiated opinion.
For me;
1 Night Below for reasons given in earlier post
2 (and a fairly close second) Return to ToH. Partly because of its homage to the Gygax classic and partly because of the spooky city of Moil. I DM-ed it and we had a hoot. Winter wights still give me chills.
3 Dragon Mountain. An innovative take on kobolds. Who knew they could be so deadly, but outclassed by the competition here.

What do y’all think?

I wanted the Rod of Seven Parts adventure to be better.

I played Return to the Tomb of Horrors. Getting to Moil was a blast.

I would have to go with
1. Night Below, for obvious reasons stated in the video as well
2. The Return is a close second for me as well since it did an amazing work to expand on the original ToH and it beat it to the amount of the damn death traps there were in it, something really hard to achieve considering... Moil was one of the most terrifying beautiful cities and I have to say that Cordell is one of the writers that did an amazing work back then and not many people give him the credit he deserves imo.
3.I am ashamed but I have not encountered the Dragon Mountain, so I am oblivious of its premise, but that will change momentarily since I will try to find it and return with an update if I locate it.