We just finished Night Below

[freyar]

Sounds cool! So if I see a used box set of Night Below on the cheap at my FLGS, how much of a must buy is it? Is it worth being the only hard copy RPG book I get the rest of the year (extremely limited shelf space)?

 

[vagabundo]

I'm in the process of converting the 2e Beneath the Twisted Tower to 4e, could the night below be used to extend that campaign? Maybe, leaving out book 1 altogether?

I'm converting BtTT to level 5, but the damn thing has an

Spoiler

Aboleth

in it, I think the PCs are going to have to deal with IT through RP or they will get smushed.

 

[Fifth Element]

My DM tells me it took him over 100 hours to do the conversion, spread over 2 years. I can believe it.

 

[RichGreen]

Well done! I ran this in 2e but we got bogged down in Book 2 with troll encounters and gave up on it. Pity as we didn't get on to the more interesting stuff later, and we really enjoyed Book 1.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Fifth Element]

Well done! I ran this in 2e but we got bogged down in Book 2 with troll encounters and gave up on it. Pity as we didn't get on to the more interesting stuff later, and we really enjoyed Book 1.

Yes, Book 2 is definitely the slog I referred to earlier. There's a lot of grindy combats there. Book 1 is fun, and Book 3 is much better than 2.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

I remember Night Below. That campaign was the last one I was a PLAYER in! Sure I've been in adventures and "linked" adventures but that was the last real campaign I played.
It was back in highschool, good Ol' 1997-1999. The campaign took us 2 years to run through (AD&D 2E) and our DM, being a Math Major decided to calculate how much time in game had passed. Our characters barely aged a year when we ourselves aged 2 and a bit.

I remember our DM throwing every last bad guy in the entire city of the glass pool as an epic pre-end-boss fight. Once again Mr. Math Wiz pulled out his calculator and gave us 11.5 million XPs each (though back in those days you could only go up 1 level at a time, our DM graced us with 3).

Then the epic fight came... and ended in one round. Our mage/cleric teleported next to (Unpronouncable name) and cast Ressurect reverced (Destruction) and the DM fumbled his save AND his magic resistance roll and it crumbled to dust in front of our eyes.

Then, like a bad villian in a video game, the entire place crumbled to dust and sunk to the bottom of the sunless sea... and we were DENIED LOOT!!!

It was a sad, anti-climactic day... but one I still remember (and I don't remember Yesterday!)

I once took the liberty of converting it to 3.5 for a group. It took me like 140-odd hours, but I was lazy. Then, as a reward for my efforts, the group broke up and I eneded up not using the conversions. Now they are lost in a binder somewhere, probably in a dump because I can't find it for the life of me.

I still have the very boxed set of the game I played in, with all its parts! Eventually I'm thinking of converting it to 4E because the group I'm DMing for now has hung on to my adventures for 2 years, and I think they'll stick arround for somthing that epic.

 

[Fifth Element]

Then, like a bad villian in a video game, the entire place crumbled to dust and sunk to the bottom of the sunless sea... and we were DENIED LOOT!!!

You were robbed! The DM is supposed to allow 5 rounds for the PCs to grab loot before high-tailing it. (I know this beause the DM thought it was a bit silly, but went ahead anyway and showed us the passage in the module to prove it wasn't his idea). Probably just payback for your incredible luck...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Ok, i also converted night below, first to 3.0 and then to 3.5... (guess how long it took us out of game time to reach the city )

Conversion first took a lot of time... until i realized: npc don´t need to be fully fleshed out...

the best thing: not one encounter or one magic item had to be changed: I made a 1:1 conversion and even though everything was tougher, i only killed 2 or 3 PCs in my favourite group and all but one could be raised by the cleric...

the one permanent kill was when my party fought against the trolls when they still were level 5. (Ok, they had to do it... i didn´t give them a chance there...) and then only the druid and his bear died, and only because he thought he could handle a troll in melee and use his bear as just a fighting pet...

i wonder how it will convert to 4th edition i guess the magic items will make some problems, i guess the encounters will actually translate better to 4th edition than to 3rd edition, because you usually fight large groups of enemies, often with different combat roles...

edit: i played it with more than one group... i had some TPKs and PKs there, but as I see it it was mainly their own fault for fighting in bad conditions and never thinking about retreats...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well done! I ran this in 2e but we got bogged down in Book 2 with troll encounters and gave up on it. Pity as we didn't get on to the more interesting stuff later, and we really enjoyed Book 1.

Cheers


Richard

book two can be called: level up in the dark...

I think my players still thought it was quite interesting because they searched the whole level...

sadly the encounter design didn´t went so well with 3rd edition rules... so some combats took very very long... not that they were not fun, but 4 ours combats with a lot of casters having to track thousands of spell durations, with minions barely survining one hit...

i really look forward to convert it to 4e on the fly

 

[Ulrick]

I have this module, and I've always wanted to run it. But I know that it'd be difficult for players to make a 2 year committment from start to finish.

Question:
If book 2 is sort of a slog to get through, how does a DM keep his players' interest?

It seems like book 2 is meant to get the PCs to just level up. But I don't think its as bad as the Crater Ridge Mines in the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.