Tell me about your Underdark campaign(s)

[Mercurius]

Very inspiring, Tav--that's exactly the sort of stuff I want to do.

 

[Nebten]

I would definatly use Night Below to mine for information. I ran it until the final part until I realized how much of it was just straight up hack & slash. The first part was great but once you got into the underdark it was rinse and repeat. Yah I could have done more to make it better, but eh. If I had to do it again, I would do the first part, a little of the second then go straight to the Sunless Sea. The travel down just seemed to be a bunch of random encounters. I would also make the penultimate episode a tighter sequence of events.

 

[Mentat55]

I rather enjoyed Empire of the Ghouls as a player. The ghoul empire and the different power groups struggling in the Underdark made it kinda neat.

 

[Wizard Biscuits]

As dubious as this advice may sound have you ever played the game Gears of Wars or it's sequel? Several portions of it take place underground and I was rather impressed with how they managed to execute and vary those levels. Alien, glowing fungus of a myriad colours; vast, yawning caverns and cramped, narrow corridors, they even squeeezed in an underground sea. It all creates a very pretty vista and I certainly yoinked a few ideas from it when I was running a brief delve into the Underdark with some of my players.

 

[freyar]

My only experience with the Underdark came in real life, while visiting a friend in Arkansas. One day his father in law took us to see a set of salt caverns (IIRC). I was struck by several things:

- It was really dark. Sounds obvious, I know, but on the surface, even in the dead of night, there's usually some light. Down there, the only light was what we took with us, and that didn't travel far.

- The colours were very strange and alien. Things were slick, and purple and green.

- It was impossible to judge sizes beyond a very short distance. Down there there wasn't really any convenient reference points, so it was difficult to judge distances, which in turn made it hard to get perspective.

- Despite all this, there was plenty of life down there. It was a nice, even, warm temperature, and there were lots of small bats flying around. Presumably, they must have eaten something, which implies insects, or plant life, or something similar.

It really was a fascinating experience.

I took a number of cave tours as a kid, and delericho is spot on. Especially about the darkness. One time, the tour included a planned "lights out" time, and it's much darker than anything I've experienced on the surface. Most of us rely a lot on sight, and it made me feel totally cut off, even from people sitting 6 inches away. Really spooky.

Caves also have some weird sounds and winds. I found a bit about that on the Wind Cave Natl park site. I remember visiting that cave, and there are points where the "cave inhalation," as they call it, can be quite strong.

For inhabited or deserted underdark locales, you might check out the Wieliczka Salt Mine near KraKow, Poland. I had a real sense of history visiting that mine, and some parts reminded me of my mental images of Moria.