Expedition to Undermountain Opinions?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Fun is not the point here. There just isn't enough in the book to run anything with it really unless the DM has lots of time to work on maps, encounters, plots...etc.

There's not an included adventure with detailed (Delve-style) encounters for a big adventure within Undermountain?

 

[Obergnom]

There's not an included adventure with detailed (Delve-style) encounters for a big adventure within Undermountain?

There are 4 adventures in this book. The first one is actually not unlike your typical dungeon adventure. As it is on the entry level, PC movement is predictable.

The typical adventure is build like this: a describtion of the part of undermountain it is set in (in addition to the general describtion of all levels in the beginning in th book) a double page of random encounters (Describtion + statt block), a detailed map of the actuall adventure area and the encounters set in it. Adventure 1 has no empty room in it, Adventure 2-3 have one the first part of adventure 4 is a natural cave system with some empty caves and the last part of it consists of just 5 encounters set on a map that provides like 25 rooms. (It has its own random encounters, though)

The "problem" is, that you have to make traveling through the dungeon between those adventures, sometimes between parts of those adventures, like you would do overland travel. But the book says so right in the beginning. Adventuring in UM should be mission based, and thats what the book provides. This is why you do not have to prepare more than for an usual adventure, too. If your players would completly loose track and ignore the mission, they would suddenly be in an empty part of UM where you have nothing prepared for... not unlike what happens when they suddenly decide to change direction in a wilderness adventure. And everything one can use to prevent that or compensate for the (setting up encounters that make them flee where you want them, simply change the location of your adventure) can be done in UM as well.

Summary: The missions are complete, the dungeon is not. The adventure seems very playable to me.

 

[DM_Jeff]

DM Jeff (and others with the book)-Is there any reference to the Matt Sernett article series on the WOTC site from a couple of years ago, converting Undermountain to 3E? I wonder if there is overlap or if they are complimentary, so that one could snag the on-line articles to buff up the size of the detailed encounters and such?

The articles in reference are here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/archfr/ru

There is no mention in the book of the articles on the site that I have seen. And I didn't read the web articles in-depth, but I did notice a few rooms there named the same as in the hardcover, and I saw an article with a "named mimic" which also features in the hardcover (but with a different name). So I think they took the articles and mined them for ideas to include in the book; that's my initial impression anyhow!

-DM Jeff