orangefruitbat
Adventurer
Scattered thoughts
I ran a heavily modified form for my group. The adventure took about a year (playing 3-4 hours, every week).
*My first problem was that I thought the Underdark travel section was too short and simple (in terms of travelling choices, not danger!). So I replaced the Underdark map with one of my own. Think D1 in style. Several large cave areas. I also created a PC map (they get one in Szith Morcane), that basically offered 3 general routes:
i) a direct way that passed through a Duegar city and led past the "Unblinking Gates"
ii) a longer way along the "Road of Crypts". This passed near a Kuo Toan community
iii) the longest way, through the "abandoned quarter"
Basically, the party had to choose between risk of detection and speed of getting to Maermydia.
*I created lots of smaller cave areas. Most of these I took directly from Necromancer Games Rappan Atthuk 1 and 2. The giant cave with the 50 gargolyes was particularly fun! I also heavily used the FR Underdark book for ideas, maps, environmental hazards, and random encounter ideas. Plus I liked how they had different depths of the Underdark, each becoming progressively more alien.
*I stole ideas from Piratecat's storyhour and created political intrigue in the Kuo Toan temple and also in the Duegar city. (Basically, the drow were covertly manipulating usurpers as to neutralize any opposotion in the area).
*I created temptations to distract the party away from their goal. For instance, one of the 3 keys to Larin Karr's tomb could be found in a grimlock city that had been overrun with beholders. And their was the Hammer of the Dwarven King that looked pretty attractive to our Dwarven Defender. And the mystic theurge's mentor was enslaved in an aboleth colony. The PCs never used 1/2 of the hooks, but they were there to be taken. Some were used to great effect. For instance, the party gave the hammer to the Duegar king and convinced him to lead his army against Maermydia. They basically took out Kurgoth's army - although the balor slowed their progress considerably.
*I kept Szith Morcane, Maerymydia and the Twisted Fortress/Undying temple pretty much the same. In general, the longer underdark sections broke up the hack and slash crawl of the actual module (of course there was still lots of fighting!). As others have mentioned, the maps are beautiful and provide really interesting 3 dimensional settings.
*the adventure was still a meat-grinder. Only one of the original PCs survived. The rest were all killed at least once. Plus we lost a cohort and a number of animal companions. (Incidentally, trying to find animal companions that would reasonably exist that deep underground is hard. I ended up breaking the rules and giving our druid a baby bullette!. We also had chitten cohorts to replace our dwarven cleric. Think Gollem, but with 4 arms and a knife in each one!). While everyone had fun, the shear deadliness of the adventure damaged the continuity of the game.
*the organization of the module is abysmal. In order to save space, stat blocks are at the back. But HP of genericl creatures are listed in their room (ie, for each drow soldier). Generic monsters simply refer you to the MM. I basically wore out the book spine flipping back and forth.
*watch out for the 3.5 conversion. While I didn't find the change to the haste spell to be a big deal, other changes were more significant. For instance, lots of creates have DR that has to be changed. The forbidden spell works differently (I just used what was in the module, but it caused confusion for the group). The biggest change is that demons have been upgraded in power. There's an early encounter with 2 bebiliths - I reduced it to one and it was still a tough fight. Plus there's the balor, who could have totally tpked the party, if they ran into him (wisely they avoided it).
*you need to be pretty combat-heavy, and you need a good cleric. A cohort cleric won't cut it. A druid won't cut it. A mystic theurge doesn't do the trick either. (The mystic theurge isn't a substitute for a good wizard either). Some of our multi-classed characters felt a little inadequate. (Though their scouting and other work probably saved them from other grevious harm).
In summary, the group had a lot of fun. I did put a fair bit of creative work into it, but it was worth it. I hate creating stat blocks for high level creatures and this module has them in spades. The maps were good. The plot was good and was easily adaptable to my campaign. The individual encounters were good, but there needed to be more variety.
I ran a heavily modified form for my group. The adventure took about a year (playing 3-4 hours, every week).
*My first problem was that I thought the Underdark travel section was too short and simple (in terms of travelling choices, not danger!). So I replaced the Underdark map with one of my own. Think D1 in style. Several large cave areas. I also created a PC map (they get one in Szith Morcane), that basically offered 3 general routes:
i) a direct way that passed through a Duegar city and led past the "Unblinking Gates"
ii) a longer way along the "Road of Crypts". This passed near a Kuo Toan community
iii) the longest way, through the "abandoned quarter"
Basically, the party had to choose between risk of detection and speed of getting to Maermydia.
*I created lots of smaller cave areas. Most of these I took directly from Necromancer Games Rappan Atthuk 1 and 2. The giant cave with the 50 gargolyes was particularly fun! I also heavily used the FR Underdark book for ideas, maps, environmental hazards, and random encounter ideas. Plus I liked how they had different depths of the Underdark, each becoming progressively more alien.
*I stole ideas from Piratecat's storyhour and created political intrigue in the Kuo Toan temple and also in the Duegar city. (Basically, the drow were covertly manipulating usurpers as to neutralize any opposotion in the area).
*I created temptations to distract the party away from their goal. For instance, one of the 3 keys to Larin Karr's tomb could be found in a grimlock city that had been overrun with beholders. And their was the Hammer of the Dwarven King that looked pretty attractive to our Dwarven Defender. And the mystic theurge's mentor was enslaved in an aboleth colony. The PCs never used 1/2 of the hooks, but they were there to be taken. Some were used to great effect. For instance, the party gave the hammer to the Duegar king and convinced him to lead his army against Maermydia. They basically took out Kurgoth's army - although the balor slowed their progress considerably.
*I kept Szith Morcane, Maerymydia and the Twisted Fortress/Undying temple pretty much the same. In general, the longer underdark sections broke up the hack and slash crawl of the actual module (of course there was still lots of fighting!). As others have mentioned, the maps are beautiful and provide really interesting 3 dimensional settings.
*the adventure was still a meat-grinder. Only one of the original PCs survived. The rest were all killed at least once. Plus we lost a cohort and a number of animal companions. (Incidentally, trying to find animal companions that would reasonably exist that deep underground is hard. I ended up breaking the rules and giving our druid a baby bullette!. We also had chitten cohorts to replace our dwarven cleric. Think Gollem, but with 4 arms and a knife in each one!). While everyone had fun, the shear deadliness of the adventure damaged the continuity of the game.
*the organization of the module is abysmal. In order to save space, stat blocks are at the back. But HP of genericl creatures are listed in their room (ie, for each drow soldier). Generic monsters simply refer you to the MM. I basically wore out the book spine flipping back and forth.
*watch out for the 3.5 conversion. While I didn't find the change to the haste spell to be a big deal, other changes were more significant. For instance, lots of creates have DR that has to be changed. The forbidden spell works differently (I just used what was in the module, but it caused confusion for the group). The biggest change is that demons have been upgraded in power. There's an early encounter with 2 bebiliths - I reduced it to one and it was still a tough fight. Plus there's the balor, who could have totally tpked the party, if they ran into him (wisely they avoided it).
*you need to be pretty combat-heavy, and you need a good cleric. A cohort cleric won't cut it. A druid won't cut it. A mystic theurge doesn't do the trick either. (The mystic theurge isn't a substitute for a good wizard either). Some of our multi-classed characters felt a little inadequate. (Though their scouting and other work probably saved them from other grevious harm).
In summary, the group had a lot of fun. I did put a fair bit of creative work into it, but it was worth it. I hate creating stat blocks for high level creatures and this module has them in spades. The maps were good. The plot was good and was easily adaptable to my campaign. The individual encounters were good, but there needed to be more variety.
GlassJaw said:
