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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Destan" data-source="post: 1173845" data-attributes="member: 12157">Personally, Dru, I’d love to see you take the ol’ heroes down into the Underdark.  I think there’re enough possibilities down that vein to fill a sinkhole.  Ahem.  At any rate, Piratecat shows in his own SH how a single tunnel can be extremely important for any number of races, groups, clans, etc.  Chokepoints are very easy to recognize and defend.  You could expose the players to a completely foreign world of shifting alliances, political intrigue, and various groups vying for underworld dominion.  I’m not certain if your group enjoys the “strategic” aspects as much the “tactical” ones – you would know, certainly.  I’ve found some of the most fun, as a DM, comes from putting the PC’s in situations wherein they don’t know who’s “good” and who’s “bad”.  Moreover, it’s great to have dozens of shades of gray so that even the “good” guys have “bad” streaks, histories, or tendencies.  A group of 21st level epic adventurers would be a highly valuable entity for various underdark organizations to ally themselves with – perhaps give the PC’s a number of choices, each equally interesting and equally intimidating.Finally, the underdark allows combat in a whole new dimension – e.g., vertical.  Place them in combats wherein they must fight up, down, or around a chimney, sinkhole, slope, etc.  The underdark conveniently nerfs some of the of higher-level PC powers such as teleportation, a tangent that I, for one, am thankful for.  Forces the PC’s back to their Meepo routes of picking a marching order and burning some boot leather enroute to their goals.I think the Underdark – particularly the lower recesses – gives the DM a lot of freedom he otherwise might require planar travel to exercise.  You could have new molds and fungi that grant different powers (or negate those the PC’s already have), certain odd arcane by-ways and nexuses that might influence spellcasting, yada yada yada.One final recommendation would be to never name an underdark monster by a label the party is familiar with – either as a character or as a player (unless their character has requisite knowledge skills).  By changing one or two physical traits and slapping a new name on an otherwise “common” underdark critter, you may evince a sense of novelty and interest not found since hiking across the Borderlands back in 1982.  Or maybe not.Anyway, I ramble.  Whatever you do – I’ll be reading!D</blockquote>

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