Symbol: Insanity

In last week’s Night Below session, you could tell things had gotten really high level. The party continued the assault on the Kuo Toa Priest King’s palace, and took on the king (a 12th level fighter/cleric), the last Illithid in the city (as far as the players knew), a couple of the kings 10th level fighter guards (complete with good armor and magical great swords), and a handful of 5th level “whips” (fighter/thieves). The main temple of Blipdoolpoolp might have been a better strategy, in that the destruction of the statue in that place would reduce all Kuo Toa priests in power, including the king. But the decision was settled on to take on the palace because the Illithid there bore the Crown of Derro Domination. And they managed to get their hands on it, in addition to fairly handily take care of the royal guards and the king.

A really high level spell was encountered in the king’s chamber, a Symbol of Insanity that the king inscribed upon the floor of the center of the room to hopefully catching any foolish enough to charge right in. Well, Vaidno the Bard was so foolish (actually, a pretty brave character who comes off these days more like an acrobatic fighter), and he tripped up the symbol.

What a powerful spell this is. See, the king had the spell per the module, and I hadn’t really studied on it significantly. So when it was set off and I looked up the save, it said “special.” The Symbol spells have a variety of affects, but it turns out in the case of this one there is no save. On the spot I could not really figure it out, and we even looked in the DM guide. The only indication of save is in the Confusion spell that you are directed to for rolling on a table for affect (run away, fight your friends, etc). That spell gives a save -2. Anyway, not wanting to burn the player with a permanent spell that only a Wish or Heal spell will cure (ironically, it was a player complaint that kept Terry from running two characters some time back, depriving the party of high level hobbit cleric Kayla, who was the only character that could provide a Heal spell), I decided to give that save as per confusion. “Surviveno” made the save, as usual.

Was it wrong to not go by the book and mess up this character, effectvly taking him out of the game for the final session of the campaign? Well, I wasn’t sure of the spell, and basically decided it was better to decide in favor of the character in case there was some addendum to this spell that we later would find, after Vaidno had already ran screaming into the Underdark or was dispatched by the others for attacking them.

In all honest, I know we are dealing with high level spells, and some of them can just mess you up, saving throw or not. But a spell that a character would just step on and be really messed up with no kind of save seems kind of bogus to me. The character could easily have missed his save and been jacked-up anyway. It seems much more exciting to make a save of some kind. A freaking fighting chance.

Anyway, I’m going to have to take the time to better understand these higher level mess-you-up spells for the next session for sure, so I can decide in advance if I want to nerf them or not.

Night Below: Murder Below

We are finally in the home stretch of this Night Below campaign, which is getting close to the two year mark. I’m guessing we have about two games to go. I could easily have stretched this out. The Derro town urban location I created as a last stopping point before the City of the Glass Pool could have provided a ton of role-playing opportunity, with its marketplace and slave trade and all. All sorts of humanoid types mixing it up there. But with the previous game more or less being one giant waste of time (taking place almost entirely in a small cave two characters were recovering from going into the negatives), I feel I should not dilly dally. Personally, I am starting to feel a bit burnt out on running AD&D. Not for good mind you, I just want to spend the upcoming year focusing on a Knights of the Old Republic campaign, and maybe a bit more Metamorphosis Alpha and some Champions. I need some quality time with a game where players cannot argue with me on every point.

I’m going to do a long post with my final thoughts for posterity on this setting when the campaign is over, but for now I’ll say that it is not just challenging and often brutal in terms of combat, but is also a bit of mental grinder. Besides the oppressive underground setting, there are around half a dozen mostly neutrally aligned tribal forces that have to be dealt with, either through some kind of appeasement or with a huge fight. I see online that there have been groups that have had campaigns go for the better part of a decade with this module. Sheesh, good thing I am stopping with book 2.

So in this game the party carried on, meeting and counseling with the group of Derro Renegades who oppose the Mind Flayers who have enslaved many of their people. Jump ahead to the party going into the Derro Town, meeting the few allies they have there, and making an assault on the Mind Flayer tower where the Crown of Derro Domination is supposedly held by an Illithids. If it is there or not, the group decided that if they were going to assault the City of the Glass Pool, they didn’t need this place at their backs with evil reinforcements. So we ended the game with them beginning assaulting the tower, and the giant Derro cavern rocking with explosions from the Renegade Derro causing distractions for the party.

OK, but the most significant thing that happened this game was while among the Renegades. The Renegade leader had offered to purchase the party captive, Prentyss, the young female thief member of the slaver group from the previous couple of games (and a group that, with the exception of the added NPC Xavier, was a set encounter in book 2 of the module). Yet another argy bargy started (see last game for an example of such) over what to do with Prentyss, but Krysantha the Drow put an end to debate about the teen girl by taking her scimitars and murdering the helpless thief in front of all. It was kind of a chilling moment. I tried to give the other players a chance to do something, but with the Githyanki ally I had Paul (of Lily fame) running also ready to kill Prentyss to end arguments, there was not much they could do.

Let’s talk about big Dan and his drow character Krysantha for a minute. Dan is a big beefy dude from South Africa (white guy) who has also lived in Australia for a long period. He is an international businessman with his own internet-related company (and he lives up on Mulholland in a big house with a view and a hot wife, so I’m guessing rich or on his way to it). He has also worked in the past with some kind of mountain rescue, and you can for sure picture him coming down a mountain with a fucked-up hiker over each shoulder. Dan was one of our group’s original players along with me, Andy, and Terry. He is a funny guy, with a great enthusiasm for the game. Dan also justifies what I would call “powergaming” as just letting off stress and getting some escapism, which I truly believe. He is by no means a problem player as a person, but his character Kryantha has gotten my goat a few times in the past.

When we started this group I was just off of a more or less 7 or 8 year gaming hiatus. The year or so leading up the formation I was dying to do some gaming, but didn’t want to seek out other groups because I wanted to run my own games (plus I wanted to pick and chose the type of people I would sit for hours with and pretend – you know what I mean). So when we got together and my players base turned out to be pretty cool I was tickled pink. One of those side effects of the pink tickle was that I was pretty open with what I was going to allow for characters. Thus came Krysantha.

Krysantha is a female drow, and a fighter/druid. I didn’t really look up drow in the Unearthed Arcana to refresh myself on them before I said “OK, you can have one”, nor did I think of the power gaming ramifications of a female drow (females being the more powerful of the species) combined with fighter prowess and druid spell ability. Ultimately, this turned out to be a powerful character. How much of this did Dan count on? I dunno. See, in the 90’s I ran tons of games of all kinds for a couple of different long-term groups. Most of these people had at most a little bit of gaming experience. So they took what I had to offer without much complaint. Sure, somebody would occasionally point out an inconsistency or something, or ask for something for a character that was out of line. But for the most part, as long as they were having fun they didn’t care how the sausage was made. This is how I got in the heavy (and lazy) habit of house ruling so many things.

Well, as it turned out, when I got these much more experiences players for this latest group, I had house ruled myself into a corner. Both Dan and Andy had a lot of gaming background, and had played under different kinds of DM’s. This did not fully gel with my laid back style, but over time they mostly acclimated. Andy especially has stopped being a pain for me almost completely with this stuff. I think he now gets how I do things, and approaches things a bit more in a way that is more enjoyable to me. Dan as well to a degree, but there is still a side of me that sees the big guy as a shamelessly powergaming bastard. And I made it all possible.

But hell, Dan is fun and really into roleplaying and I would not give him up for anything. But his actions are still a bit frustrating. Before this last game, he emailed me saying he would like to change Krysantha from lawful neutral to neutral. “Oh brother” I said, “he wants to be more difficult with the character now.” That hasn’t panned out yet, but to avoid more argument against his characters wishes, he committed murder on a helpless (and not fully evil) captive and his neutral status prevents any kind of forced alignment change. My call, because Krysantha claimed to have done it for the good of the group (whereas I think Dan just wanted to kill something).

Anyway, it sets up an interesting dynamic. Big Ben’s Lumarin the high elf is lawful/good. Terry is neutral/good (actually, I think neutral with good tendencies), as is little Ben’s Ormac the gnome. Andy’s bard Vaidno is staunchly chaotic/good. I think the shock of this murderous act was palpable for a minute or two. Personally, I had more I would have liked to do with the Prentyss character in the future, but a part of me was glad because her death made a couple of things easier on me (like I didn’t have to have her boyfriend Xavier and friends try to bargain for her release).

But what next? These basically good characters could not really do much about Krysantha, even the lawful Lumarin. I mean, Krysantha is a deadly character with her two magical scimitars and all the rest. Plus they are in the “belly of the beast”, so to speak. More dissension in the group at this juncture could result in a total party kill. But considering this was a basically evil act, the good PC’s are unlikely to associate with the drow once this is all over. Also there is the party NPC, neutral/good ranger Dia to consider. She was obviously miffed at Krysantha for the blatant murder, and she carries the sword Finslayer. Finslayer, besides being and anti-Kuo Toa weapon, is also anti-drow.

The “epilogue game” after this adventure is going to be a hoot. That is, if they all survive the next couple of games.

All that in-game argle bargle

After several weeks we managed to get back to The Night Below. Until last night I figured it would be maybe three games to finish this up. Now I feel I could not have been more wrong.

I can’t say it wasn’t fun. It was a mostly role playing session, with a short bit of combat at the end. But it was not meant to be hugely talkative, because in this game I expected the group to meet the Derro Renegades, and then spend around half the game in the Derro Town (the last stop before The City of the Glass Pool). I’m no railroady DM though, so things rarely pan out the way I would like, especially in relation to the amount of time things take.

I have a group where the players are all often of a different mind about things with each other, and it is for sure like that with the characters. Not generally especially argumentative with each other, when it comes to the handling of captured NPC’s or treasure they can argie bargie (using the terminology of my Scottish parents; “argle bargle” counts as well) up a storm.

The thief member of the slavers that were fought (to a standstill more or less) last game was charmed by Kyrsantha the drow, so she returned at the beginning of this game from running away from the cave-in. Two characters, Big Ben’s Lumarin the Grey elf MU, and Terry’s Helena the human fighter, were at negative hit points and therefore pretty damn jacked up. The slaver’s young thief Prentyss was then taken into custody (but treated friendly at this point) and the group backtracked a few miles and found a perfect side cave to take the several days rest required for the negative hit point nellies to recover. On a side note, Helena was negative 8, and it had been a long time since anyone in my game was that bad at such a high level (Helena has around 50 hp). My impulse is to at least have some minor crippling of some kind, but that is always tempered by the fact that D&D isn’t really set-up for that. In the long run, I didn’t have anything be wrong once the time period went by, although I am likely to give her a minor thing next game, like a minus 1 to the strength in her shield arm or some BS like that.

Anyway, let the hours-long never ending argle bargle commence. Ultimately, both Kryantha the drow and Lumarin the elf felt fairly harsh measures where called for. Not killing (I think), but at least stripping Prentyss of her stuff and sending her off alone into the Underdark. Now, both these characters are lawful in alignment (Lumarin lawful good; Krysantha lawful neutral) and it seems that the last couple of games I have to constantly remind them. I’m like “If you are going to choose a lawful alignment, fucking own it! I didn’t make you choose that alignment.” Man, nothing is more tiring than fretting over alignment issues. The people that don’t use them for sure have a point.

It seemed like they were ready to send Prentyss away to the surface world along with an Invisible Stalker escort to protect her, despite the now uncharmed and tied up Prentyss telling them that gang leader Xavier has a map of the City of the Glass Pool and would probably trade it for her. It really seems that both Lumarin and Krysantha are taking out a lot of their anger at Lily for her betrayal last game on this thief NPC. It all smacked of chaotic actions to me. Even ol’ chaotic good half elf bard Vaidno has become a voice of reason aimed at these guys. Only Vaidno, Helena, and Ormac the gnome seem to not have become bitter at the heavy experiences they have had in the Night Below.

Dia, the NPC ranger and bearer of Finslayer the anti-Kuo Toa, Aboleth, and Drow sword, finally spoke up, and the sword demanded that Prentyss be kept as a useful hostage. Finslayer only cares about what will help the goal of destroying it’s hated enemies. Meanwhile, both Lumarin and Krysantha seem more bottled up with their own vendetta’s against a couple of young female thieves than in destroying the true evil power in the area. In this game for sure they seemed somewhat unlawful to me. Both Ben and Dan are stone sure they are correct in their thoughts and actions (and I have to admit that it is often hard to figure out what is supposed to be coming from the characters, and what is being vented by the players themselves. Here is where it starts to feel like work).

So it is decided that they will take the hostage Prentyss along with them. So begins the hour long bargle over who gets what out of Prentyss’ belongings. Hoo boy, another long spirited debate. At one point Andy was yelling at hard-headed Dan here, and it was a comfort hearing somebody else having to raise their voice at the sometimes obstinate and power gaming Dan.

Poor Paul. Paul is a young guy who came along late in the group, and had no tabletop experience before (although he had lots of D&D type video game experience, such as Neverwinter Nights). He turned out to be a great roleplayer though, and his actions as Lily last game netted him more experience than anyone else has received in one game in this group. Just outstanding stuff. Paul got a kick out of all the trouble Lily was still causing in the group despite having run off with Xavier and gang, but lets face it; sit around for three hours listening to the arguing with no character present is tiring, and finally he was picking up his stuff and ready to book. But I had him stay, and for one little combat encounter with a Derro patrol I had him show up with a Githyanki NPC to run and join the party. In the little bit of time we had, he got right into the character (he had Githyanki experience from them being a major plot point in one of the Neverwinter Nights games).

So there we had it. A spirited game, but one that had way to much in the way of debate. Fun on one side of the coin; exhausting as the chapter in LOTR where they all argue at the meeting in Rivendell on the other side of the coin. Just in the spirit of getting the campaign to a conclusion sometime this millennium, I am going to have to cut these debates short, putting some kind of 15 minute time limit on any subject on the table. It was a special case though, in that they all spent a week in a small cave, and that added to the slow down in game play. I’m hoping we can now move into a nearly all combat phase of the campaign finale. In those brutal and deadly last hours of the campaign, these guys are not going to find me to be the softy, pushover DM I tend to be just for the sake of shutting people up.

Time to pump it up a notch.

Character betrays party: film at 11

We got to do our Night Below game two weeks in a row, which is a rare treat. Let’s just say that Andy promised to take the trash out and mow the lawn for the wife for the next 30 years so we could get that extra access to her workshop.

Anyway, this session would prove to be just as memorable as the last Deck of Many Things session.

Let’s talk about the character Lily for a second. When a couple of new players came along last year, both of their characters began in the hands of a fierce tribe of gnolls in the sub-surface caves above the deeper Underdark. First captives of surface world slavers looking to make a buck from the Illithids way down at The City of The Glass Pool, the gnolls came along and picked up a little something for dinner, slaying most of the slavers in combat, and taking the already bound captives to a larger cave to butcher and munch them. Seconds from becoming a nice meal as the gnoll chopped up one captive after another, Lily and the other new character Lumarin the lawful good Grey Elf MU, were saved and became a part of the overall quest against the COTGP and the Aboleth in the Sunless Sea.

Lily is a local of the frontier settlement Overtown above, and her upbringing was less than ideal. She was a child mostly of the streets, and at a young age learned both to steal and to sell herself. At some point Lily learned magic from a mage “john” (yeah, I am allowing human multi-classing in some cases), and hence began her adventuring career as a Thief/MU. In her notes on her history, Lily described a gang leader boyfriend in town named Xavier who had tricked her into killing her own estranged father. When Lily was captured by the slavers, she was on the run from Xavier.

I should mention that Lily’s player, Paul, is a young guy very new to tabletop, and most of his experience is with video games. It was kind of refreshing to have this rpg near-virgin come to the table, as in stark contrast to most of my other players he comes with no baggage from previous years/decades of game play. Paul’s character actions, which might be pretty munchinky from more experienced players, take on a sort of innocent quality. Pretty much Paul is just trying to run a character with a broken soul, and nothing he did with Lily comes from just being a prick or anything. That in itself is refreshing, no doubt.

Lily had proven herself mostly unworthy of trust by sneaking around stealing and hogging treasure while others fought the good fight in encounters. Krysantha the Drow was especially hard on her, and in at least one case Vaidno the half elf Bard kept Krys from letting loose with violence on Lily and her nihilistic attitude. Things had gotten bad enough that when Lily got wishes from the Deck of Many Things in the last game, she offered one to Krysantha if she would agree to leave Lily alone in her endeavors from now on.

OK, as for the current party in general, they had left the Jubilex Shrine slime caves and were well on their way further down. Beaming from their fabulous rewards from the Deck of Many Things, nothing impeded the party or broke their spirit. Several wandering Displacer Beasts were handily dispatched. Further down the road, a Purple Worm (fixed encounter in book 2 of NB) attacked, but they managed to defeat it in fairly quick time (only Vaidno took a hit from the tail, and making his save was one of at least three close calls he had this game. I took to calling him “Survaivno”).

But the next encounter proved to be a bitch for everybody, even me.

In book 2 after the purple worm area, there is a set encounter with a high level group of slavers. A 7th level fighter in plate, a 7th level female human MU, a 6th level human cleric, a 6/6 high elvish female figher/MU, and Prentyss, a 9th level thief (and “Frienemy” of Lily who vied for Xavier’s attention). All these NPC’s have magic items up the yin yang besides their own decent powers and abilities. Some time ago I decided I would include Lily’s old gang leader boyfriend Xavier (a fighter/thief 6/7) to round out this group. Tall, dark, and sadistic, I gave him (besides other things) a magical tattoo that could turn into a giant rattlesnake once a day that would help fight for him.

Of course, I based this all around Lily, having previously rounded out the NPC personalities in relation to having known Lily before, and I also had given Lily notes about them before this encounter (“in case she ever ran into her old gang again”). So yeah, this was all about a cool encounter with people from Lily’s troubled past. I rarely use high level groups of NPC’s in encounters these days, although I did that a lot In the past. I feel it is not just a great challenge to players, but it often comes off like a cool comic book hero/villain group encounter. With my comic book upbringing, this is a great thing and I just don’t do it enough anymore. Here I was going to make up for it in spades. A possible battle royal, and finally a real challenge for this party.

So down in the tunnels, the Xavier gang is heading towards the party. 9th level thief Prentyss, invisible, scouts the way up ahead, and comes across the party while they are encamped and preparing for a rest period. Prentyss recognized her old friend Lily, and listens to the heated discussion going on (as the party tends to have). After a few minutes Prentyss returns to Xavier to tell him about Lily and her new friends. Xavier assumes Lily has joined up with some other gang, and decides he can use her to make capturing the characters easier. Xavier sends his fighter and bodyguard Groznyi to the character party to ask Lily to go speak with Xavier while Groznyi stays with the party as a hostage. After some arguing, Lily is allowed to head down the tunnel alone.

At this point I need several minutes with Lily’s player Paul, so I throw everybody out and tell them it’ll be a bit. Almost all of them smoke something or another, so it’s “smoke ‘em if you got em’.”

Xavier is there waiting with his badass gang for Lily. Basically, he asks a bit about the party, then asks her to rejoin him and help him take the party alive for sale down at the City of the Glass Pool. Now, although Lily’s alignment is pretty much chaotic neutral, Paul told me early on that she has a tendency towards evil, but not fully. So when I designed this encounter for Lily I had no idea which way this character would lean. At least for now, she agrees to lull the party into a false sense of security and lead them past the Xavier gang.

Finally back at the camp, Lily tells the party that her old friends are willing to let them pass without a fuss. Krysantha, ever the angry paranoid, is unconvinced. The drow goes ahead and uses her detect lie on Lily, and proceeds to give her the third degree. As still invisible Prentyss is listening close by, she goes and tells Xavier that the plan is not working, and he and the gang move in for the attack.

All hell busts loose as 6 powerful player characters and 6 NPC’s lock it up. Well, 5 player characters, because Lily turns invisible and hides. She seems unsure of what to do. I will admit that at this point I figure Lily will help save the day, but it is not to be so. She sneaks up behind a badly wounded Vaidno (one of her main defenders in group arguments regarding her) and attempts a backstab.

This was a big “oh shit” moment for me. Paul likes the character, and you would imagine that if for nothing else he would help the party to still stay in the game. But no. Lily decides that the ultimate quest is doomed to fail and figures helping Xavier is the best way out of the horrors of the Night Below (or as I call it after this game, “The Hurt Locker”).

Anyway, Lily misses her backstab on Vaidno! The bard lucks out again, because Lily’s extra damage would possibly have killed him. Lily hits herself with Mirror Image as attacks begin to come her way.

Although the NPC high level cleric is quickly killed early on in the battle by Vaidno and his flashing blades, most fight to a pretty good standstill, great blows being given and received. The NPC party has a high level MU and a mid level fighter/MU, and they use their decent amount of spells for good effect. But since Xavier wants the party alive, they hold off on fireballs and lightning bolts. But as damage is mounting on both sides, both Lily and the high level MU burst loose with fireballs. I describe the tunnel shaking badly, and Xavier tries to pull his people back from the fight, yelling at the characters to do the same so nobody else dies. Most comply, but Lumarin the high elf MU decides he hasn’t had enough and lets loose with some chain lightning on the NPC’s (an unusual move for the lawful good and reasoning Lumarin, but he had just come out of unconsciousness so he gets a pass).

At this point the game had gone until 11:30PM. We usually stop around 10:30, but this fight was bigger than I thought it would be. I was getting a big exhausted and cranky (I went into this session tired as hell). I described a roof shaking and possibility of collapse, and I was a bit pissed when the chain lightning went off because I had so far been lenient on fireballs and explosions from the party in the games. I just had not taught the players a lesson about not being careful with that shit underground. So I went for a cave-in roll. Got a 5 on a 6 and here comes the cave in.

Now, the players got scared and thought I was super mad when I called for a saving throw vs. death magic. But it isn’t instant death, I have just traditionally used that save for natural disasters like cave-ins and floods and the like. It was just a save for no damage. Those who failed got several dice in damage, and a couple of the characters went into negatives, including Terry who assumed her character Helena was toast at this point. All the NPC’s managed to make it out alive and kicking, and it provided a decent way to have them escape without any more fighting. I even had Prentyss, who was charmed, turn and run out of self preservation.

I was fairly generous letting the dying PC’s be gotten to and saved by the others in the dust from the collapse, but still, with one of the party fighters and the MU now in a world of hurt and needing a week of rest to be at full capacity (or at least a full heal spell), and many of the others battered and bruised and plenty damaged, the party is in a bad place. They are at the literal front steps of the Derro area before the City of the Glass Pool, and they will be needing every hit point for that.

This was a really exciting last couple of games. Unlike the last Deck of Things game where I got to negotiate characters dreams with them, this one was brutal dice rolling and bookkeeping game. Trying to do the turns of several powerful NPC’s in quick fashion (in many cases my doing turns for all those NPC’s was shorter than most of the single characters turns) is a bit of a challenge, but rewarding in the end. It was a hell of a battle royale.

September was the two year point for this campaign. 3-4 more sessions, and this ride is over – or is it?

(added note: Lily escaped with the bad guys, much to the party's chagrin!)

Reconsidered: Night Below Campaign

Reconsidered: Night Below Campaign

During the 90’s, I hardly ever bought D&D supplementary material. I mean, I had so many seeds of ideas in my head when it came to gaming, I never felt I needed to buy other people’s ideas. Plus as a Scotsman, I’m notoriously cheap (and yet can never seem to save any money).

But when I got back into gaming after several years off, I had a hankering to purchase some of the interesting sounding items that I passed on many years before. So some time around winter of last year I got great deals from Ebay on the Dark Sun boxed set, and the Night Below boxed set.

By then I had a nice little campaign going, running countryside adventures to build up PC’s for an eventual dungeon crawl. Although they were interesting reads, Dark Sun and Night Below didn’t seem to have any immediate use in my current games. Actually, I had mulled over making a gateway in the dungeon that would transport the party to the Dark Sun world, that would be sort of a post-apocalypse version of my regular game world. But that was just a thought.

The party is getting up there in levels, most around 6th or 7th, and it is starting to seem like they will be at least 3 levels higher than I had planned them to be for the dungeon. So this last weekend I broke out my copy of Night Below, wondering if it might just make a decent alternative to the dungeon players were heading to. I took a good look at the first two of the three books of NB. I started to see the events of book 2 would be easily adapted to my current scenarios.

Book 1 features little adventures in a populated area of towns, villages, and farms. Much like my games have been so far, these little Mickey Mouse outdoor adventures are designed to beef up the party for eventual underground adventuring. Many little situations in book 1 are meant to give motivations for the Underdark adventures in book 2, but I should have no problem using what has already happened in my games to tie this in. For one thing, in the last couple of games the party has explored a gnomish “Safechamber,” a secret pad under the human frontier town of Overtown built long ago as a place for gnomes to hide from the monsters that once roamed the surface world in greater numbers. The party found a hidden trap door within, and that one appears to lead to an even larger gnomish area around a half mile under the town. I didn’t plan to have them go much deeper than that, but seeing as the underground gnome town (apparently abandoned) had passages to the Underdark, why not switch gears a bit and give the party good reason to go deeper (waaaaay deeper) below?

In the last few games I’ve had party members running afoul of a group of Drow who are in the area, secretly planning to eventually go to the same dungeon the players are going. But no problem, I can now have them coming to the area to meet up with Mind Flayers (from book 2) and working out a deal to capture spellcasters for them. So I can change the human slavers the party eventually encounters near the Derro area underground to these drow no problem. The players deserve a real face-off with these pesky dark elves anyway.

In the next game the party will explore the little abandoned sub-surface gnomish town, and they will discover gnome historians (and their infant daughter) from the gnome areas up north. They will have been spending years here studying and restoring this once bustling little community. The gnome family will be getting bothered by gnolls who have moved into upper caves near the abandoned gnome town of “Southgem”. These gnolls in turn will have been displaced from lower caverns by the troop of orcs that are working for the Mind Flayers who have been moving back and forth between the surface area and the City of the Glass Pool far below in the deeper underdark.

So all this, with a bit of prodding, should get the adventurer’s on their way to the Deep Gnome city, and eventually to the Kou-Toa.

There is a lot I don’t like in the Night Below material, and it will take a lot of my personal tweaking. But it has always been thus when I use modules or adventures created by others. You have personal taste, and you have to take that into account and make mods if you are a creative DM.

So in a later posts I will detail some of the changes, for good or better, that I plan to make in Night Below. If you have used the NB material in your games, I’d love to hear what kind of changes you might have made, and how the adventures panned out. If you have only read the material, I’d still love to hear what you think about it.