Undermountain Begins! (And DMGII Tidbit...)

[Arkham]

I am so very stoked about this.
And then I see the first room.
Wah!
I hope they don't just rehash a bunch of rooms
from the box set.

But what I am now more looking forward to is the
update to the Random and Attracted Monster Tables
alluded to.

 

[AuraSeer]

Well, you'd think they would have pointed out where the starting room was located on the big map. In case anyone else is having trouble spotting it, it falls on the border between pages 5 and 6. Look for the northernmost room split across those pages.

To find it on the one-page map: start at the "D" in "Undermountain", and look straight south past the oval room, to find a large rectangular chamber. From the middle of the rectangle's south wall, look directly SW. (The well is represented by a red dashed line, which is practically invisible unless you zoom in.)

I must say I'm underwhelmed by the description of the starting room. After all the buildup I'd have expected something dangerous, or at least interesting-- a simple trap, a magic mouth, or even just a corpse or two. Instead we get one gold piece and a secret door with no trigger. Whoop-de-doo.

 

[Arkham]

I must say I'm underwhelmed by the description of the starting room. After all the buildup I'd have expected something dangerous, or at least interesting-- a simple trap, a magic mouth, or even just a corpse or two. Instead we get one gold piece and a secret door with no trigger. Whoop-de-doo.

As highly trafficed as the bottom of the well is, it does
make sense for it to be fairly clear. ( Note: My PCs, even having
(mostly) survived several dozen trips down the well haven't found
the gold piece. Mostly from lack of looking. )

 

[RobJN]

Bottom of the Introduction section has a "reference map," which shows the room in question lit up with a big, red "1."

 

[IronWolf]

I must say I'm underwhelmed by the description of the starting room. After all the buildup I'd have expected something dangerous, or at least interesting-- a simple trap, a magic mouth, or even just a corpse or two. Instead we get one gold piece and a secret door with no trigger. Whoop-de-doo.

This is a room at the bottom of a well in a busy tavern. I wouldn't expect too much in this room as it is probably one of the most heavily travelled rooms in all of the Undermountain. As DM, you are always at liberty to drop some corpses in there from the *last* party to have tried their hand at the Underdark.

 

[ruleslawyer]

The first is the Superman school of story design - kryptonite takes Superman's gifts away, and forces him to be clever.

The second, the Batman school - The Joker's cunning forces Batman to use all his gifts cleverly.


To me, the second is much more fun.

Patrick Y.

I will raise what might seem an odd counter to this. The Batman Joker stories never have Batman working at his smartest: The writing that shows him at his best tends to come in the Batman vs. anonymous criminal type stories, not the Joker stories; those usually have to dumb Batman down, the reason being that the writers can't be as smart (or, more to the point, crazy) as the Joker would have to be to confound Bats. (The possible exception is Arkham Asylum.) On the D&D front, I don't actually think that it's possible to allow effective use of all character abilities in every scenario. More to the point, I know I've never seen a high-level adventure that allows unrestricted use of PC abilities AND "forces [the PCs] to use all [their abilities] cleverly" in all kinds of situations. I don't think it's possible to run a dungeon with easily-available teleportation and planar travel magics and no restriction on those; believe me, I've tried. Also, anyone faced with potential 13th+ level opponents is going to install teleport wards, or develop the magics to do so.

Seriously, though, if you can recommend me a published scenario that successfully resolves these problems in a dungeon-ish setting, let me know!

 

[AuraSeer]

Bottom of the Introduction section has a "reference map," which shows the room in question lit up with a big, red "1."

Okay, this is strange: IE on my computer at work cuts off the page just before that link, about 50% of the time. I can reload the page repeatedly and watch it appear and disappear. Works fine in Firefox though, and in IE on my home machine.

Anyone else seeing this problem, or is my PC going insane?

 

[John Morrow]

I don't think it's possible to run a dungeon with easily-available teleportation and planar travel magics and no restriction on those; believe me, I've tried. Also, anyone faced with potential 13th+ level opponents is going to install teleport wards, or develop the magics to do so.

Well, I think the second comment comment explains how to handle the first fairly. A high-level opponent will plan for such threats but should do so within the rules using things like like Mage's Private Sanctum with perminancy to protect their main lair, using Dimensional Lock to protect temporary lairs, using Demensional Anchor to keep they from fleeing, etc. Basically, a DM can limit the protected area based on how an opponent might protect themselves within the rules rather than waving their hands and declaring large sections of a dungeon a "no teleport zone". In addition, creative use of environmental hazards like underground lakes or even lava flows and spells like False Vision could also discourage a party from blind teleportation into areas that they've only seen via scrying.

If you are hard pressed to figure out how to protect an NPC from teleporting PCs, put your PCs in a situation where they have to protect themselves from teleporting NPCs and take notes about how they protect themselves.

 

[The_Warlock]

Hmm, haven't really checked, but the Well room on the site seems to be a simple rehash of the original sraight from the book (secret door, stuff hidden in the room, et al). I too really hope they detail rooms that were never detailed in the original boxes, as I have both of those, and can convert old editions to current fairly well in my brain as the need arises should my PCs descend into the depths.

Regarding plausibility, pre-existing abilities, spells, and effects, and NPC intelligence and stupidity factors: I just don't see the problem with Undermountain and similar dungeons. Limits, even ones that encompass the entire locale, provide a challenge to be overcome.
Especially if there is a ruling NPC intellect behind the design, it is plausiblle, and even expected that at high levels that such an opponent will protect himself. My PCs have, glyph spells, anti-scrying spells, dimensional barring spells, and would think an opponent stupid, incompetent, or an obvious lure if they didn't defend themselves smartly with at least the baseline things out of the book.

As for the concept of the DM only using things out of the core book, or only things that PCs have access to to defend the NPCs, I have no problem that, on a certain scale. But certain villains, and certain locales get the "and it shall work thus" as the hand of god passes over it, as long as it makes sense, there are methods to deal with it, and it is not simply a bad GMs way to "win" the game. I certainly DON'T restrict, remove or hobble my PCs because I am out to get them, and perhaps because of that I don't see it as an issue.

Also, on the issue of using specific tied effects in a manner consistent with PC usage, here's my problem. The PCs have themselves to worry about when warding - anywhere from 1 to 8 minds generally able to picth in and set up their defenses, usually on very limited holdings. I have one brain, and if the smart, near epic or epic NPC antagonist reasonably had the time and means to wartd his whole damn dungeon - well, for pity's sake, I only have so much time a week to prepare - let me say "the dungeon is impervious to teleportation magics from outside" as my baseline, knowing that there are reasonable methods to do it, and instead list the exceptions to that as a rule for the singular locale.

And as Arnwyn pointed out, its not like there aren't rules and products that support this challenge design philosophy in 3E.

I guess my point really is, if it makes sense for the location, adventure, challenge, whatever you want to call that which the PCs aim themselves at, then what the big deal of setting the terrain? In this case, the terrain is a magic that says no to teleport. Just like a real wall prevents people from walking through it. It's terrain, it's describing the battelfield, it encourages and demands tactics. If you can't get the bad guy in his lair because he's got half a brain and warded it up since he's a stay at home villain, figure out how to draw him out, or change the battlefield to your advantage.

In that regard it appears to me to be sound design based on possible and plausible use of the system as presented, that brings verisimilitude based on the powers and effects in the game and setting. Saying that X warded Y against scrying is, in my book not heavy handed., Heavy handed GMing, which I define as

Player:"I use my widget of power"
GM: "Nope"
Player: "What? Why not?"
GM: "Because I said it doesn't work, because you'll avoid/ruin/imasculate everything I've done, because I wrote this adventure and you have to do it that way, otherwise it doesn't work and all and I don't know how to handle that."
Player: What about my Mental Powers of D'oj, or my Fragumon of Glowing?
GM: "No, those don't work either."
Player: "Ooooohkaybe...I'm leavin..."

Besides, I personally would get pretty bored if every major dark lord of the pit was played like he had foot fungus for brains.

Damn it, there I go again defending reason and logic. Somebody stop me!

 

[John Morrow]

I have one brain, and if the smart, near epic or epic NPC antagonist reasonably had the time and means to wartd his whole damn dungeon - well, for pity's sake, I only have so much time a week to prepare - let me say "the dungeon is impervious to teleportation magics from outside" as my baseline, knowing that there are reasonable methods to do it, and instead list the exceptions to that as a rule for the singular locale.

Part of my point is that if the GM tries to protect the opponent's lair using the rules, what you'll often get are selected critical areas of the dungeon being protected by Private Sanctum spells or such rather than, "You can't teleport anywhere in the whole N mile radius region." And those different forms of protection (which I mentioned earlier) each have distinctive characteristics that can complicate the milieu. It provides a much more interesting landscape then simply saying, "Scratch those spells off of your list for this adventure because they are 100% useless." Instead, it creates a situation where they are useless only in some areas of the dungeon but can be quite useful in others.

If you want a quick and dirty way of simulating that, identify the handful of spells that either thwart or mislead spells that involve teleporting and scrying. Take a look at roughly what their area of effect normally is. Assume that protected areas might be covered by multiple copies of the same spell to increase the area but doing so is expensive and time consuming so that the opponent will normally only protect those areas critical to their safety and not, say, where their guards live, their petting zoo, their hated mother-in-law's living quarters, etc. Give the PCs some places where they can use those spells and some places where they can't rather than just telling them to forget about using those spells anywhere during the adventure. Just as people normally only put walls and a roof around their bedroom, living room, kitchen, bathroom, and garage and not their yard, driveway, swimming pool, etc. the bad guys will only pay to limit teleportation where they think it matters.

I guess my point really is, if it makes sense for the location, adventure, challenge, whatever you want to call that which the PCs aim themselves at, then what the big deal of setting the terrain? In this case, the terrain is a magic that says no to teleport.

In many ways, that's like running them through a dungeon where all the inhabitants are small and the ceilings are all only 4 feet high so you can apply negative situational modifiers to almost everything the characters do simply to cut down their attack modifiers, skill rolls, and require Concentration rolls for spells with somatic components. As a part of a large dungeon, that could be interesting. As a single entire dungeon that happens once in a campaign, it could even be interesting. When it happens frequently to entire dungeons, it's pretty clear that the DM is saying, "I really want to apply these limits all the time."

Just like a real wall prevents people from walking through it. It's terrain, it's describing the battelfield, it encourages and demands tactics. If you can't get the bad guy in his lair because he's got half a brain and warded it up since he's a stay at home villain, figure out how to draw him out, or change the battlefield to your advantage.

There is a way to walk around or cut through a real wall. There is no way to teleport around a no-teleport zone. It's more like filling a dungeon with water and saying, "You have to swim rather than walking because I don't want you to be able to move around so quickly and run away from my monsters." And as I pointed out above, if you really want tactics, then mix it up and give the players places to use teleportation and places where they can't. In other words, "If you want to teleport in or out, you better find the places you can do it," rather than, "Don't even try to teleport because it won't work." To say that they can't use teleportation at all simply eliminates a tactical option entirely by taking if off of the table.

In that regard it appears to me to be sound design based on possible and plausible use of the system as presented, that brings verisimilitude based on the powers and effects in the game and setting. Saying that X warded Y against scrying is, in my book not heavy handed., Heavy handed GMing, which I define as [...]

It's "heavy handed" in the sense that it's sweeping and absolute. There are no nuances to it. The goal is not to push the players toward using their high level movement spells creatively nor is it something that they can avoided. It's often all about limiting the ways the player can approach the dungeon so they can't bypass the sequence of encounters that a GM has carefully crafted which is, ultimately, about limiting the control the players have over the scenario.

No, it's not as heavy handed or overt as a lot of other things that a GM can do and players can most certainly have fun in a game like that but I think its a bit disingenuous to argue that the objective isn't simply to reduce and eliminate player options to make it easier to the GM to manage the situation.

Besides, I personally would get pretty bored if every major dark lord of the pit was played like he had foot fungus for brains.

That's an false dilemma argument.

I submit that the only two alternatives are not (A) turning entire dungeons into teleport-free zones or (B) playing powerful villain NPCs as if they were simpletons. Nor does it require years of careful research for the GM to carefully calculate every cost or area of effect to create a dungeon that at least seems like it was created within the rules. And remember that the bad guys can also use spells to limit the ability of the PCs to teleport away, too.

Note that I'm personally not arguing that no part of a dungeon should ever be protected against teleportation or scrying. Of course areas of a powerful dungeon should be. That's why there are spells to do it. What I'm arguing is that simply declaring an entire dungeon a teleport and scrying-free zone is an unnecessarily sweeping and flavorless way to deal with the issue.