Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Experiences with Empire of the Ghouls, Night Below, or Other Underdark Adventures?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="werecorpse" data-source="post: 8332447" data-attributes="member: 55491"><p>I ran the D series a couple of times D1 has the classic “why are all these monsters living next to each other“ problem and while D2 and D3 were very evocative underground city concepts they had limited built in adventurer interaction ability. </p><p>I ran Night Below as a 3e/3.5e conversion campaign which lasted 6 years levels 1-20. While it is a series of encounters it is also an onion peel style story adventure. In my game I leant into the James Bond nature of the villains Plan. Book 2 is essentially an homage to D1&D2, Imo much better done. The onion layer nature of the story is excellent up until the beginning of book 3 at which point the players largely realise where and what the big baddy is but have a bunch of encounters that exist to level them up. Book 3 can drag a bit and more should have been done to give the players in game rather than meta game reasons to explore those encounters. In this story the theme (as we played it given its duration) was all about isolation in an alien realm. The characters had a good reason for being there but by part way through book 2 were playing up that the journey had “changed them“. They started to refer to the caverns as the normal world and the above ground world as “The Overlight”. They were no longer comfortable in the normal world. By the end some of them had also been mutated by some homebrew stuff such that they could never go back.</p><p>I also ran Out of the Abyss - we had a TPK early but the players wanted to keep going so they made up a group of underdark appropriate characters (Duergars, goblin, drow tiefling etc). From there it was heavily modified. In this version, like Night Below, while the Underdark is the backdrop it’s the story that matters. The story is much more about the different cities and civilisations and the impending doom that exists because of the abyssal incursion. This underdark is less thematically about isolation, it is much more densely populated. The Duergar city, the deep gnome city and the fungus city are all places the characters went to interact with the denizens. I found the Adventurers League stuff for the Out of The Abyss had some good encounters in it and the party went on to get caught up battling Grazzt worshipping Drow.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="werecorpse, post: 8332447, member: 55491"] I ran the D series a couple of times D1 has the classic “why are all these monsters living next to each other“ problem and while D2 and D3 were very evocative underground city concepts they had limited built in adventurer interaction ability. I ran Night Below as a 3e/3.5e conversion campaign which lasted 6 years levels 1-20. While it is a series of encounters it is also an onion peel style story adventure. In my game I leant into the James Bond nature of the villains Plan. Book 2 is essentially an homage to D1&D2, Imo much better done. The onion layer nature of the story is excellent up until the beginning of book 3 at which point the players largely realise where and what the big baddy is but have a bunch of encounters that exist to level them up. Book 3 can drag a bit and more should have been done to give the players in game rather than meta game reasons to explore those encounters. In this story the theme (as we played it given its duration) was all about isolation in an alien realm. The characters had a good reason for being there but by part way through book 2 were playing up that the journey had “changed them“. They started to refer to the caverns as the normal world and the above ground world as “The Overlight”. They were no longer comfortable in the normal world. By the end some of them had also been mutated by some homebrew stuff such that they could never go back. I also ran Out of the Abyss - we had a TPK early but the players wanted to keep going so they made up a group of underdark appropriate characters (Duergars, goblin, drow tiefling etc). From there it was heavily modified. In this version, like Night Below, while the Underdark is the backdrop it’s the story that matters. The story is much more about the different cities and civilisations and the impending doom that exists because of the abyssal incursion. This underdark is less thematically about isolation, it is much more densely populated. The Duergar city, the deep gnome city and the fungus city are all places the characters went to interact with the denizens. I found the Adventurers League stuff for the Out of The Abyss had some good encounters in it and the party went on to get caught up battling Grazzt worshipping Drow. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Experiences with Empire of the Ghouls, Night Below, or Other Underdark Adventures?
Top