Night Below Ideas

[Azure Trance]

This discussion is relevant for the Night Below campaign adventure. Spoilers are bound to be in here.

-=-

Illuminating the Night Below
http://home.att.net/~david.r.ross/NightBelow/

The above is a great site for NB, with many ideas, hints and suggestions for running NB in a 3rd Edition game. I recognized three people whose input were in there; Eric Noah, Alan Koher, and Christian Walker (of Scrollworks Press).

The site says the largest problem of NB is Book II:

This is only truly relevant to Book II, where it can also be extended to the overall dungeon: "Night Below doesn't make for much of a maze". Alan Kohler found its linearity "constricting": "the setting the boxed set puts the characters in won't allow for much credible deviation"

Christian Walker, Remy, Chris Butcher, Alan Kohler - all deride it as a "hack fest".

I'm wondering what ideas people here can offer which would make it less of a hackfest. The site suggested moving the two troll clans to Book III, which is a good idea. Is there any suitable adventures for Book II perhaps adherent to the main plot of the game which could be done?

 

[Leopold]

don't move the troll clans from book2 to book3. The point in the troll clans is the point in proving themselves (the PC's) to carmen the svirfneblin. If they don't do that then she doesn't show them the way down.


As for the hackfest you can remove the quagoth battle group and keep the hook horror and that would speed up some time. Beyond that you need both sets of derro down below as well as the city of the glass pool. You might be able to get away with the slavers being out but that ruins the fact that it will encourage your PC's to see that they are not merely out for a killfest and have some goal and purpose down here.

I am running this as we speak and my people are on the derro hunt and then onto the glass pool. So far I am throwing more slaverish types at them and making them think they are getting closer and closer to the real goal. Continuity and purpose are what drives these people so I must constantly give them a reason for doing such. If not then they get bored and want to do other things..


expect book2 conversion posted when my PC's run through it. I have 1/2 the city of the glass pool done and it's nasty..

 

[Psion]

Well, I'm one of the quoted folks. As the site suggests, our group was one that just didn't care any more after book 2. (I did like the city of the Glass Pool and Book III though, so I ended up using it later -- I replaced the aboleth oriented dungeon in Rod of Seven Parts with it in another campaign with a different set of characters.)

Getting rid of the hook horrors and/or quaggoths or making it credible for you to bypass them would be the first thing I would think of doing. You could get rid of the trolls too if you find another challenge that the Svirfneblin ask you to take on. Perhaps instead of requiring you to eliminate the threat, perhaps the gnomes have lost some artifact to one of the groups and ask you to retreive it, opening the door to some magic and stealth.

Only thing is this would sap you of some needed experience. Normally, you could just throw some side adventures in, but the nature of the underground realms makes that a little difficult -- which is why I said there is not much credible room for deviation. Perhaps if you made your own maps and added some other underground civilizations and some less hack-and-slash encounters, it might do the trick. For example, perhaps you can put in a mystery/exploration type adventure in which the PCs pick through a ghost infested ruin of an ancient city.

Edit:

Or I can just repeat some advice I put up on usenet:

The City of the Glass Pool and Aboleth City look like great stategic challenges. What I'll probably try in the future - and recommend to anyone who wnats to run this boxed set - is to Run it as a 8th or 9th level adventure, weave the party in yourselves (almost anyone can lead the party up to the city in a less hack-n-slash manner that sargent has), and start at the last chapter of book 2. The rest is BORING, DROLL, HACK-N-SLASH.

 

[Leopold]

find out what party style your people have. Do they like combat or roleplaying or a mix? Then tailor the adventure for it. Ripping out the hook horrors and quaggoths and putting finslayer in the temple of jublix is another good idea. They have to pass by that way anyway.


Want another way to get the PC's involved and keep going downward? Try having the PC's visit the surface after some time underneath of doing nothing but hacking and slashing and find that the town of thurmaster is burnt down and tauster is kidnapped. If they still dally and have no reason have the count hire them to find out and go downward. This works well if there is a paladin or some noble person with leadership in the party, this way you can have them be empowered or otherwise have another reason for finding out what's below as the whole jennelyth plotline is weak after a while and the PC's tend to forget it.

I had Lafayer kidnapped and drug down below, also a few other NPC's from Bluffside that were traveling that way. Now the PC's have their own reasons to go down besides just some randomly kidnapped woman.

Also, once the keep is cleared the PC's then have a base of operations they can use. 10-1 the count wants NOTHING to do with it and the PC's have their own mini-fortress to expand on. Remeber that they can start using this for their own ends and buildup a nice training area for later use in scourging the forces of the underdark.


There is so much that one can do with this uber-module if you just think of the possibilities. The goal here is to tailor it in whatever way you can to keep the PC's going downward regardless. If they say "There isn't anything down here!" time to make slave runs and trips. More people are missing, strange creatures are seen by the gnomes and they point toward the lair of the dragons as the source. Involve involve involve!

 

[radferth]

I am running Night Below as a part of the worlds slowest D&D campaign: one-on-one with my brother a couple times a year. We started in 1987 in first edition when he was nine. I've been converting to third edition on the fly. As for suggestions, the Glass Pool and book three are great, but the first book and a half aren't vital to those adventures. If you get the group up to a high enough level, and find some other ways to dispense the clues, you can just start with the two groups of derro outside the pool city. I started with the orcs at the end of book one, and have gone from there. The adventure was written so it can be a hackfest, but need not be. It also is not completely linear. My brothers group has gone in the following order:
[mild spoiler alert]
trolls, grell, quoggoth/hook horrors, lizards, slimes

One of the best fighters is a gnome, so they avoided the gnome proof areas entirely. The trolls and grell are the only ones they totally wiped out. They also left for quite a period of time to earn some xp elsewhere.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

I am surprised to hear Night Below called a Hackfest. This is one my favorite modules along with Temple of Elemental Evil, Against the Giants, and Ravenloft.

The module is filled with combat and roleplaying encounters as well as a developing mystery to figure out that no one I have ever played with has figured out without having read the module. Night Below was well-designed and is one of the best generic epic modules ever made.


I would suggest that you run the module from beginning to end as is if your players have not already been through it. Let the story unfold and be sure to roleplay the building of strong relationships with the locals such as Old Grizzler and Tauster. Part of what makes this adventure great is that a good DM will make you feel like a part of the community after a while, thus, completing the adventure becomes much more personal.

Most of the locals should have some tail to tell about Jelleneth, which should make finding her seem more important than if she was some unknown. Once they find out about the evil priests and strange potions, start building the suspense up with your players as they try to figure out what all this means.

Night Below is one awsome module that provides hours and hours of gaming fun for a party that enjoys hack'n slash or roleplay. Take the base plot and run with it. Tailor it to your own world and make it come to life.

How can you not enjoy a module where the suspense and intrigue run as thick as a wall of stone.

 

[Azure Trance]

expect book2 conversion posted when my PC's run through it. I have 1/2 the city of the glass pool done and it's nasty..

Looking forward to it

And thanks for all the advice so far, I'll take heed of it.

 

[Christian Walker]

AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Man oh man. It's odd seeing my name attached to comments made on Usenet from a few years back....

Anyhoo, Night Below has great potential. Just take the time to make the NPCs interesting. Our group lost focus and by the end we really didn't care much about the module or its completion, mostly because our characters were never given reasons to care.

For example, the party will spend a lot of time with the Deep Gnomes. Be sure to make Karmineron as likeable as possible, because she will be asking the party for all sorts of favors.

Also, some battles can be quite long. I recall some caves packed with Trolls and our party took hours and hours to deal with a threat that seemed unrelated to the task at hand.

That pretty much speaks to some of the problems with the Night Below. The party should feel that they are making some progress and are having a real impact. Our GM ran the game with no frills and it felt like non-stop hack and slash. A pity, because it would have been nice to get to know the Quaggoth in a particular cave instead of being coerced into slaughtering them.

Any commnets you read of mine at the Night Below salt should be taken with a grain of salt. I was playing under a very green GM.

 

[Victim]

When I DM'd NB, my group also seemed to find book 2 somewhat tedious. I'd cut the quagoths, the trogs, and trim the grell and temple to jublix areas. The smooth caverns could use some trimming too.

The trolls are amazing. Essentially, the PCs go from fighting a mob of orcs to fighting almost the same number of trolls. Talk about a rude awakening! In 3e, trolls are even more hideous because they get their STR on all attacks and have rend. The point of the trolls is to slap the PCs in the face, probably with a dead or maimed comrade, and shout "Hey! It's dangerous down here!"

Another interesting shock encounter is when the PCs first fight a wizard. For about a book and a half, there are no enemy wizards. It might be fun to push the first wizards back even more, so that the first time they fight the enemy is using II or something.

In 3e, PCs probably will advance fast enough to allow for some removal of XP sources while keeping levels the same.

 

[Ulrick]

Talk about coincidence...

I was just thinking about running a modified "Night Below" campaign for my own homebrew world. Since I don't have the time to create adventures to test out my world, I was gonna use "Night Below."

I have yet to run the adventure. And I have a question to those who have:

If I ran a weekly game, 5-6 hours per session, how long would it take to complete the whole campaign?

I know the answer will probably vary from person to person, but I would like some input anyway.

Thanks.

Ulrick