Experiences with In the Belly of the Beast [spoilers]

[Timely Drought]

This adventure has recently come to my attention, but it seems very incomplete. It calls on the DM to develop the social interactions beyond their embryonic state.

The adventure gives very little support for social skill resolution (please keep your roleplay vs. rollplay arguments to yourselves). Though Gather Information is taken into account at the beginning, Sense Motive seems to be ignored throughout the adventure. There is no advice on making Diplomacy checks to counter established alliances or create new ones. No mention of Bluff checks if the PCs do not intend to honor their alliances, or how the NPCs would react with a successful Sense Motive check.

It also fails to follow through on many basic ideas. For example, the wizard Ofec is 'smart enough to concoct reasonably cunning plans, but he lacks the wisdom to properly implement them'. This is maddening. What kind of plans is Ofec capable of concocting? His Knowledge (undead) and Knowledge (demonology) seem to be of no use to him.

Anyway, I'm posting here to hopefully get some accounts of how your groups went through. Did your players go through unexpected actions? Are there some NPCs they preferred interacting with, or others they shunned?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Is this the one where the character's are in the sewers? If you plan on running it, they have a miniature for the budding demon lord out now that looks great! Wish I had him when I ran this adventure.

It worked pretty well for me but I didn't take it to the level suggested by the book. Some members of the party weren't quite evil but they were prone to listening to some of the NPC's that they probably shouldn't have.

I originally ran this when it came out so I apologize for the lack of details but I tied it up into the Fiery Dragon campaign world setting and had the female orc be one of the Himrak (a race of orcs in the FD setting.) and used that to tie into some other products.

 

[Gilladian]

I was not terribly thrilled with this adventure. My PCs enjoyed it right up until they were stuck in the demon, and then got bored. They hardly bothered to talk to anyone, and killed all the pirate leaders in short order. I had turned the orcs into human pirates because it fit my storyline better, and had a ring of slaver/thieves working with a mercantile house the PCs were feuding with be involved.

It was a forgettable session, unfortunately.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I had some fun with it. Ran it as a subplot for two of my PCs who required a mini adventure. The other players took over the characters in the module - gave them each a stat + fact card and talked through their motivation.

Powered everyone up slightly to account for the lower number of PCs and converted it over to AU. Was good fun... Nazrek survived and became a bit part later on in the campaign.

If I was running it closer to how it was written, I think it has to played by ear. The NPCs actions depends greatly on what the PCs do. Got to allow enough time for the players to explore and realise they are stuck, then some more to get them interacting with the NPCs. Time the zombie attacks accordingly...

 

[Darth Shoju]

I've only experienced this as a player, and all I can say is TPK. Or at least it should have been. Our DM was merciful on us. It came down to two surviving characters (cleric and wizard) facing Vog-mor (sp?). They couldn't damage him enough to defeat him and faced imminent death. Here's the DM mercy: he had Vog-mor open a portal out of his "belly" and told the characters to race to the exit. The winner would go free and the loser would be devoured. Amazingly enough, it was the cleric in breastplate and falchion with a 20' movement that beat the realtively un-encumbered wizard (can't remember how).

The adventure really went wrong from us as soon as we hit the belly. Once we were trapped in the room with all the NPCs, there was a bit of a stand-off between us and the orcs. Our wizard moved to the front ranks to negotiate and my barbarian came to his side as backup. Our druid was the only one who spoke orcish, and he heard two of them speaking in the back. One said to the other "Be careful, these people look dangerous." Our druid decided to tell us they said "These people look dangerous, let's attack them now and take them by surprise."

Needless to say, this resulted in a large battle in which we killed the majority of the orcs,

Spoiler

thereby feeding the ranks of undead. We managed to stay alive for a while, interacting with the surviving NPCs. Eventually one of our players got impatient and went over the barricade separating us from the undead. We lost him and two other characters in the attempt to keep him from dying and creating one more undead enemy. We lost our thief near the end when Vog-mor was closing off rooms with flesh walls; she went into a room to grab some loot and was sealed in to die slowly. Ultimately, I'd say the adventure is best suited to a group who is considerably more subtle and patient than mine. :\

 

[Thengil]

I ran this adventure for two of my players in our Freeport campaign (one of those nights when only a few players can show up) and we had a lot of fun with it. Since we were on a tight time schedule I probably rushed things a bit to be able to run it in one evening, which led to less NPC interaction than I would have preferred.

Also, I switched the Iron Ring leader to be an old enemy (a merchant who sold them a fake treasure map that led them into a deadly ambush) of the PCs, which may have been a not-so-wise move, since the elf pirate PC has a bit of a temper and swiftly promised to cut off the slaver's head as soon as they got out of the mess they were in. This of course led to the players wiping out the slavers as soon as they could (they WERE ambushed by the slavers I must add in their defense), and since neither the necromancer nor the female Orc leader survived the subsequent events the PCs were a bit short on allies in the final fight.

They made it out though, even if both PCs were down to single-digit hit points by then. On the other hand I can't say that's not how most adventures end in our campaign... The only NPC that survived was Ironcrow - mostly because he behaved rather cowardly in the final fight, and because the PCs rather liked him.

 

[scourger]

near-total conversion

I started out to run this adventure in my Pirate D&D game, but it was so different by the end that it couldn't really be considered the same module. I used the name for the aristorcrat merchant but made that character female. The half-orc became his ex-slave bodyguard. The orcs were island natives who led the party to a ship where wererats had eaten the slave cargo (this was in lieu of the whole demonic threat). The remaining NPCs just never appeared or were converted to Dutch wererat pirates.

If I were to use it again, I would probably run it as a one-shot and give the NPC cards out to the players in random groups and let them hash out the adventure given their own agendas.

 

[buzz]

I ran this back when it came out. It can be a little tough to know how to balance all of the NPCs motivations; the DM is asked to take on a *lot* of NPCs with differing motivations. Also, if you have PCs at the high end of the reccomended levels (1-3), it can be pretty easy to just wipe out the NPCs if the playres don't feel like talking and then get to the Big Bad before it grows too powerful.

Still, I think that the basic adventure premise is excellent, and I consider ITBOTB to be a 3e "classic" if there can be such things yet. There's plenty of room for gratifying roleplaying, but still a good honkin' fight at the end.