Descent into the Depths of the Earth - your experiences?

[Chupacabra]

I only played and ran them back when they were 2 books. As a player, I enjoyed the (what I deemed to be) copious amounts of loot to be had, especially in the Shrine. As a DM, I enjoyed running the D2 (the Shrine) more than D1, particularly because if the players were not careful, they could trip off the entire settlement and have scores upon scores of angry kuo-toa coming after them.

One time I ran a party thru D2 that was much higher than the "recommended level". And this was back in our uber-Monty Haul days, so all the PC's were tricked out with badass gear and had copious wands, staves, rods, etc. to lay the magic smack down with. This particular party cared little for such things like stealth or tactics. It was pretty much walk in and lay waste. Well, it got to the point that the guys guarding the Priest-Prince rang the alarm gong to the "All Citizens of the Shrine Come Out to Fight" level, and thats what happened. The PC's backed up from the throne area to make their stand on the idol pyramid in the middle of the shrine. From there they launched a 360 degree fusilade of missles and spells on the incoming hordes of guards, monitors and mook citizens. Like I said, this was back in our super-unsophisticated gaming days. At the end of it all, they wiped out just about everything that came at them. There would have been bodies stacked 3 deep all around the pyramid, had we cared about things like that.

Back in the day: there was nothing better than throwing an entire town at your players. And as a PC there was nothing better than laying waste to said town. Ah, good times.

 

[ruleslawyer]

I think this is the best of the series, actually. My PCs ran through this twice. They basically got wiped out in the Shrine of the Kuo-Toa due to a traitorous PC; the lone survivor (beside the traitor) retreated to the surface, found a new group of allies (the new PC party), and hunted down the traitor, THEN turned around and went back underground to finish the quest. Good stuff.

One thing about this module is that it has such a beautifully evocative setting; nothing I've ever run compares. Moreover, it's so easy to graft other elements on; among others, I've added elements from The Dungeoneer's Survival Guide, Night Below, The Illithiad, Drizzt's Guide to the Underdark, and the Menzoberranzan boxed set without skipping a beat. The one real oddity to it is that under 1e rules, PCs end up with unbelievably high ACs due to the abundance of drow armor and bucklers, and can all travel unseen due to the cloaks. I'm not sure how this would pan out in 3e; you could either use the disintegrating items, or make it very clear to the PCs that they'll need to use imaginative tactics (rope trick, lots of disguising illusions) simply to get a good night's sleep.

 

[Style]

I ran this one once under 2e and found it pretty cool. The players had recently come through The Night Below series so were very nervous of kuo-toans and bypassed the Shrine completely. I had fleshed out a whole bunch of the surrounding areas and the adventure for them was more about finding a deep dwarven citadel and navigating a safer route into the depths than in the published version. I liked the inspiration it gave though, for creating underdark areas - much of the detail that I did for that adventure became standard game background for the campaign as a whole. The players enjoyed the idea of being underground for months on end so I am pretty sure that I'll be stealing chunks for future games. I still use the underdark geomorphs that came with the adventure for caves and caversn in general.

 

[tec-9-7]

The one real oddity to it is that under 1e rules, PCs end up with unbelievably high ACs due to the abundance of drow armor and bucklers, and can all travel unseen due to the cloaks.

While it's true that they can travel unseen, remember that in 1st ed. a buckler could only be used against one opponent per melee round - while they are bad-ass against the first guy, if there is a second or third opponent, they will have a much easier time hitting the character.

Paul

 

[Garnfellow]

A bunch of us are working on a 3.5 conversion: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=126470

Any help is much appreciated.