Who played or ran Night Below?

[RangerWickett]

The first D&D game I ever ran was Night Below: An Underdark Campaign. The adventure path was written for 2nd edition, and it ranged from a surface abduction mystery to a subterranean conspiracy to rule the world.

I ran it with two friends who played two PCs each, all of us in 8th grade. We just loved killing stuff with dice, and the roleplaying was pretty secondary. We didn't care that you never met the villain until the final encounter, or that you never went back to places you'd visited before. For us, it was enough that there were multiple 'stages' with different types of enemies for us to fight.

If I were to run it today, with my modern conception of 'good design,' there'd be a lot more looping back, and the 'stages' would at least have mini-boss monsters, or different gameplay hooks (in this cave, there's poison gas, and one PC has to carry an object that protects you all but prevents him from attacking; or the kuo-toa city's water pipes can be turned on or off to alter terrain and hit enemies; etc.). And if you didn't meet the villain, at least you'd know his name, and he'd have a personality other than being a big wad of hit points with spells.

I wonder, if I as a teenager played an adventure path that I as an adult would design today, would I enjoy it? Would there be too much plot and pre-staged stuff distracting from leaving things open for the players to try weird things as they went? Would the adult-me designer include a sidetrek to a cave full of exploding fungus ruled by an insane drow mushroom-mage (which would prove instrumental in teen-me's players' victory when they used Item to reduce the exploding spores in size, then put them into glass jars strapped to the ends of arrows, creating makeshift SCUD missiles)?

So did you play Night Below? Or any other module that you think wouldn't live up to modern ideas of quality, but that you still loved the hell out of?

 

[Gilladian]

I ran the first third of Night Below quite successfully, but it dissolved in the long boring middle section. I've sometimes thought of converting it to 3e, but I'd do some of what you mentioned - tie in some of the end to the beginning with more foreshadowing, earlier intro of the big bad guy, and more reference to earlier events and locations in the later story.

It was a fun adventure, but it had some weaknesses.

Another module series that I love the beginning of but not so much the 2nd and 3rd parts, is the Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh. U1 is great, but U2 and U3 are not so well-thought out or fun to play.

 

[Tharian]

I remember playing in the first part of the campaign. Unfortunately, the DM for that particular group fell out of sorts so we never had a chance to resume it.

I own the box and have wanted to update it for different editions or even run it in AD&D2e, but never really have come up with the time to do so. Shame, really. I enjoyed reading it a lot though.

 

[Darkness]

Night Below? I ran it three times. We never finished it.

If I recall correctly:

Can't quite recall exactly how it ended the first time, but I believe it ended in late volume II or early volume III. Total party kill or something, I dunno.

The second time, the party disintegrated due to the personal issues (in-game ones) in volume III.

The third time, I ran it in 3.0 rather than AD&D 2e. There were 2 PCs. One died trying to fulfill the prerequisites for a prestige glass; the other was a dumb, probably evil-aligned half-dragon orc who basically didn't know anything. So it ended pretty early in volume II.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I ran it back in the day for my group. The first part was very good, but, as others have noted, the second book left something to be desired.

The group retracted after the encounter in the Grell nest because they had to replace a dead PC. I was a firm believer in "you always have to start from level 1" way of running campaigns, so the party went for some other adventures to get the new PC up to speed. They never returned to the campaign...

 

[amethal]

I'm running it at the moment, using Pathfinder. The PCs have just about completed book 2.

It seems to be having something of a resurgence in popularity these days, and lots of advice available on how to "modernise" it.

For example, I've added in a neutral underdark city whose vampire overlords welcome anybody with money to spend and take a dim view of people disturbing the peace - this gives the PCs a (mostly) safe place in which to buy and sell magic items. The adventure itself stridently follows the second edition party line that the DM should absolutely not allow trade in magic items, but you pretty much have to have it in a 3.x game.

Night Below is extremely modular, so I've been able to hack it about and replace chunks of it without causing problems later on. I've also put in quite a bit more foreshadowing.

From player feedback, they would have liked more guidance during book 1. Its premise is basically "wander about the countryside until you stumble onto the edge of a conspiracy" and they worried that the clock was ticking whilst they were effectively just treading water. If I ran it again I'd try to address that aspect by telling them there isn't really a significant deadline to worry about, or disguising the fact it was an adventure path in the first place.

There is lots of criticism about the "grind" of part 2, so I pretty much don't use wandering monsters. I also allowed the PCs to acquire a map showing them the way to the City by the Glass Pool and giving hints as to what can expect to find, allowing them to avoid some encounters if they wanted to (they have so far declined to take on the dragon, for example). The players have been able to follow their progresson the map, so they get the impression they are making headway towards their goal rather than fighting for the sake of it.

Those encounters I didn't like, or which used monsters for which there was no Pathfinder equivalent (for no better reason than I didn't feel like importing 3.5 stuff like Grell), I replaced with stuff I did like. This also enabled me to make things a bit more cohesive, whilst still retaining all the maps and other goodies that come with the boxed set.

I'm also perfectly happy making monster stats up on the fly, so that cuts down on the amount of time I spend converting monsters with class levels (e.g. AC 25 sounds about right ...) by allowing me to concentrate on converting properly only those monsters that I expect to be significant encounters. A laborious "by the book" conversion of everything would take more time than I am prepared to spend.

I'm also looking forward to lending the boxed set to the other DM in our group, so he can let me know which bits he would have changed had he been running it.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I'm running it at the moment, having first started it in D&D 3.5 and then converted it over to Pathfinder. The PCs are in the midst of an assault against Great Shaboath, although I'm afraid that they will soon get slaughtered by the pit fiend there, which they are rushing in to attack head-on.

A lot of the middle slog got cut away due to the fact that 3rd edition has faster leveling, which means less XP grinding, and the fact that I added my own PC-centric sidequests, such as the group's paladin founding a church in Thurmaster.

Surprisingly, there have been no party deaths so far. The PCs have been in a bad situation more than once, but lucked out each time. Two rogues had the paladin flanked and ready to fall victim to their sneak attacks, but both rolled 1s. A marilith had the group dead to rights, only to have the group's sorcerer get off a baleful polymorph that bypassed the demon's spell resistance and then it failed its save. A lich was just about to deliver an insta-death spell, only to get disintegrated on a lucky roll. Crazy, crazy luck so far for the group.

The biggest problem I've run into is party bloat due to the number of NPCs ready to join the group and the fact that the adventure frequently encourages adding those NPCs as allies on adventures. Currently, the group consists of 3 PCs and 4 NPCs. I've gotten around this by having each player control one of the NPCs during combat so there is less downtime between turns.

As to the big combat slog, what doesn't get bypassed because of the need for less XP grinding can be tweaked based on the ebb and flow of the game. The group ran into the fire giants, which is basically a combat encounter, at a point when they were getting sick of dungeon crawling, so instead that encounter became a one-on-one combat between the paladin and the chieftain's son, with the paladin winning and convincing the fire giants to join up with them. When the players are sick of combat, turn a fight into a social encounter, and when they are sick of talking, roll for some random encounters.

 

[Nailom]

I run 2/3 of the campaign. I liked the box with all the premade handouts.

I found it great during book one. It was very open and dynamic and I remember some roleplaying, exploring, random encounters that turned into returning villains and creative problem solving.

Book Nr. 2 turned into a Hit and Run Crawl and wasn't that great.

Because of this we stopped after finishing the second part.

 

[MoxieFu]

I played this converted to 3e right after that edition came out. The DM ran the entire thing though I dropped out right before the very end.

It was a very successful conversion throughout the entire adventure, but the last phase of it turned into a tport-attack-tport, lather-rinse-repeat but it was still fun.

I don't like the idea of mini-bosses being added in. It makes everything seem the same old, same old. Then again it might be because I hate the term boss.

 

[Croesus]

I wonder, if I as a teenager played an adventure path that I as an adult would design today, would I enjoy it? Would there be too much plot and pre-staged stuff distracting from leaving things open for the players to try weird things as they went? Would the adult-me designer include a sidetrek to a cave full of exploding fungus ruled by an insane drow mushroom-mage (which would prove instrumental in teen-me's players' victory when they used Item to reduce the exploding spores in size, then put them into glass jars strapped to the ends of arrows, creating makeshift SCUD missiles)?

I don't mean to derail your thread, but this is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially when anyone talks of "growing the hobby", or a new version of the game.

I too have a very different style of roleplaying than I did 30 years ago, and I'm not at all convinced that the rules and adventures we have today would have appealed to me then. I enjoyed simply taking a party into the dungeon, breaking heads, taking their stuff, rinse and repeat. Yeah, we made a lot of mistakes, especially with balance, and characters sometimes had all the personality of a cardboard box...but man it was FUN.

I definitely appreciate the more sophisticated adventures we have today, but there's something to be said for a simple, bare-bones, wild and wacky game that lets the players be as creative as they want to be - without all the dire warnings from us old farts about balance and deep characters and whatever.