Custom Hobby Forum

Okay, so when Deathtrap Dungeon is finished I'd like to (maybe after a short break) run the Night Below boxed set (the Underdark Campaign) from the late 90's, a famous AD&D 2nd ed boxed set. Now most of the adventures take place below the surface of the world and it's generic enough that it could fit in anywhere. It would be for first level characters (although they could easily expect to get to 18th level or even higher if they stuck with it) and would probably work best with a "balanced party" (whatever that means).

I'd give the players some advice regarding character creation nearer the time (such as "the treasure seems focussed towards wizards early on, then clerics get a lot of good stuff in the middle then wizards again towards the end" and other generic slightly guiding comments like that) but I'd be happy to allow the players a good ammount of freedom.

Anyway, since it's fairly generic I could either run it in a published setting (like Greyhawk) or one of my own (such as The Flatworld). The benefits of using a published setting is player familiarity and the ease of access to resources for the players. The downside is that the campaign can have world altering consequences and I wouldn't want to do that to anyone's favourite world (especialy if you get the whole continuity thing in another gaming group using the unaltered setting). The good things about using a home made setting are that the consequences don't need to spill over into anything else and it's self contained (no creating house rules to ignore the bits of another setting that you didn't like or anything). The downside would be that it's harder for the players to get a feel for the setting so they might be feeling pretty alienated.

So I thought I'd post a poll and see how people felt about it. Clearly this won't be happening anytime soon (it'll be after DTD finishes after all) but I thought I'd get the wheels moving a little bit now (at least I've already converted about three quarters of the monsters and npc's to 3rd ed).

Um... using a published campaign setting doesn't mean that you have to change the continiuity in everyone elses' games...  :icon_scratch:

 :yeahthat: Yep any published campaign should work just fine

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 05:17:30 AM
:yeahthat: Yep any published campaign should work just fine

Trust me, it wouldn't work in Argle, Mirrors or Midnight very well :p. There are some published settings that it just would not work in.

Forgotten realms or Greayhawk should be just find (a few tweaks and maybe dragonlance). If you go with the ones from D&D you should be ok.

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 11:56:38 AM
If you go with the ones from D&D you should be ok.

Given the obscene ammounts of magic items in the treasure (and indeed the obscene ammounts of treasure, and obscene 1st ed scale of some encounters) it wouldn't work in all my favourite settings (I couldn't see it working very well in Ravenloft without some serious tweaking).

The other reason I'm reluctant to use a published setting is that I'd need to rename a the geographical area in which the overland part takes place and I really can't be bothered to scour maps looking for an area that could be it.

The only reason I'd use the Forgotten Rubbish is that it's a save the world type of quest and you could all be responsible for destroying one of the worst settings ever :). And there simply isn't enough information in my old Greyhawk boxed set for me to feel comfortable enough running it there.

The sheer ammount of spare +4 two handed swords you'll have lying around by the end of book 2....... When I played this through with a bunch of mates we had a five page long list of "spare stuff in the portable hole". My mage even had a wand quiver!

Sounds good!

If you need information on any of the D&D worlds I have extensive files.

If anyone would like me to begin putting together a Night Below starter information pack now then let me know (otherwise I'll start preparing it later).

Start it now if you can. I would like to look into it.

Okay, Night Below starter information pack post 1:

Your characters are people.

You shall be adventuring in a poor (or even impoverished) part of the countryside. Do not expect to be able to purchase healing potions, minor magic items or even very expensive equipment to begin with.

Two or three day's travel away there is a large city where commerce can be carried out (it does not have a name, it's just "the rest of the world" so to speak).

A lot of the adventuring will be done underground. This means that, since sometimes you can get into very tight spaces, minotaurs, centaurs, harpies and stuff like that aren't very suitable characters. I actualy remember playing this once and watching the party struggling to get a centaur down a vertical shaft with a ladder fixed to the wall (they tried lowering him with a rope and that wasn't working because he didn't bend easily at the hips).

So humanoid characters of medium size or smaller are proably your best bet.

The campaign works best if you have a "balanced party". So that generaly means cleric, fighter, magic user and thief. You could probably get through it without a thief because there aren't that many traps (although there certainly are quite a few of them and you'd want a thief around to deal with those).

There are some npcs of the henchman variety scattered throughout the campaign. They are mostly fighter types, the idea being that they are the muscle and the players are the "tactical genius" of the group. Of course there's nothing from stopping you playing a party of fighters (other than your shockingly low willpower saves and the mindflayer hit squads :p) but a balanced party with a variety of skills would probably do best.

In order to complete the campaign successfuly you would need at least one arcane and one divine caster in the party. Not only that but they would need to be able to access most schools of magic (so specialist wizards might not work very well).

There is rather a lot of treasure so I might be instigating the 1st ed training expenses rule for when people go up a level. You'd be running up huge debts to begin with but you'd actualy all be out of the red by about 5th level. Of course you might want to blow it all on item creation if the treasure you find doesn't suit your tastes. I haven't had enough experience with the 3rd ed item creation system to know how expensive it is but basicaly at the end you'll be so chavved up you can afford whatever tacky oversized bling you desire.

Treasure: There's a lot of generic treasure (+1 shields etc). There are also class specific items (pearls of power, wands and scrolls). In the early parts of the campaign most of the class specific items are geared towards wizards (lots of spell scrolls and some other items). Towards the middle the treasure takes a shift towards cleric items (clerical scrolls, mace of disruption etc). And then at the end it's nearly all magic user items again.

Amongst the treasure there is a nice item for gnomes, something good for rangers, dwarfs and elves (although most of it is generic).

There is no resurrection unless the party do it. The highest level friendly npc cleric who can help you out (to begin with) is 3rd level (with a 7th level cleric who occassionaly pops in to see how he's doing). You will meet higher level clerics later on but to begin with it would probably be wise to be careful and take no uneccessary risks untill you're around 4th or 5th level.

Okay, that's probably everything covered really guys. I've left out as many spoilers as possible :). Let me know what you think.

What books/supplements will you be allowing, Balgy?

Quote from: Fabian on October 07, 2007, 01:16:51 PM
What books/supplements will you be allowing, Balgy?

PHB races and classes at character creation (with some exeptions). The "complete" series for prestige classes and feats (some prestige classes simply won't fit at all). DMG prestige classes.

Other stuff is subject to GM approval (as is a lot of the stuff in the "complete" books too). Some of the Ravenloft feats (like Back Against the Wall or Desparate) will work but some others (like Cold One) won't really work that well.

The Mongoose "Quintessential series" is generaly overpowered and broken in so many ways that it only really works if everyone else is using ti too and you want to play that sort of game so most of the stuff from there won't be allowed. I'm not sure about other sources that I'm not familiar with.

What level do we start at?

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 01:34:03 PM
What level do we start at?

1. It recommends starting at level 1 or 2 but 1's better.

Why don't our characters from Dark Awakenings have a go? Or the ones from Deathrtrap with any additional people?

Or are you aiming for a different flavour than either of those?

Quote from: Fabian on October 07, 2007, 02:55:49 PM
Why don't our characters from Dark Awakenings have a go? Or the ones from Deathrtrap with any additional people?

Or are you aiming for a different flavour than either of those?

Well mostly because, if I used the characters from Dark Awakenings you'd miss about a third of the campaign (coming in at around 5th or 6th level) and it doesn't feel right to drop them all down to 1st again without a very good reason.

As for DTD, I'm running it asa one off and there might not be any survivors at all (but we'll see how it goes).

The style of the Night Below campaign is sort of dungeoncrawl crossed with diplomacy and lots of big epic type stuff at the end. Dark Awakenings is more investigative to begin with, as in fact is the Night Below campaign, but DA definately takes a different direction.

I wouldn't mind if people wanted to create similar characters (although all those arcane scrolls would be wasted on a sorceror when a wizard could learn them and use them over and over again, enemy wizards in Night Below tend to carry their spellbooks on them so you can really canibalise them for knowledge).

Another thing is that while Dark Awakenings and Deathtrap Dungeon are closed environment encounters (one taking place on an island, the other in a dungeon), Night Below features frequent trips back to the surface to restock supplies. As such it's often easier to add in new characters or have them drop out (although it would be nice if at least one or two core characters stayed in it most of the way through). There's even mechanisms/opportunities to introduce more characters in the vast sprawling underground cavern systems (to elaborate on that any more would include a major spoiler).

It wouldn't really work on Titan (the Fighting Fantasy world) without some serious changing (as Titan has it's own bestiary which differs from the AD&D one considerably). I wouldn't mind running it in the same world as Dark Awakenings but the tone is considerably different (there's a lot more magic and a lot more treasure). Also I feel that jumping in halfway through (which is entirely possible) would actualy means you guys missing out on rather a lot of useful infromation that would help the rest of it make sense. As such I feel that starting from the beginning (with relatively fresh characters) is the best way to go.

An example of epic stuff: our party came across a monster stronghold blocking our path to our very important world saving goal. The only approach was up a narrow tunnel with a well defended barricade at the far end. So we summoned a large earth elemental, instructed it to smash down the barricade, and rode it's shoulders into battle.

Another example: knowing that mindflayers had magic resistance we cast rock to mud on the ceiling above one's head. The mud then fell on it (stunning it for a few seconds). Before it could react we cast mud to rock on the mud. The shock of having the mud, which had mixed with it's slimey coating and seeped into it's skin pores a bit, turn into stone, slew the beast outright.

It does get into that sort of high powered stuff about half to two thirds of the way through.

No worries, just curious.  :icon_cool:

Sounds good, Balgin.  I'll drop back to this thread when we've completed one of the other games :D  I'd certainly be interested!

the old rock to mud mud to rock trick always works :)

So how do you want the stats rolled: points or 4d6 drop the lowest?

Quote from: eyeolas on October 07, 2007, 04:10:34 PM
the old rock to mud mud to rock trick always works :)

Oh that's nothing. We polymorphed a purple worm into an actual earthworm, kept it in a jar, fed it, and then later threw it at some really tough monsters and dispeleld the polymorph (returning it to it's true, and by now very angry, shape).

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 04:23:29 PM
So how do you want the stats rolled: points or 4d6 drop the lowest?

:yeahthat:

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 05:09:15 PM

Quote from: Custom_Hobby on October 07, 2007, 04:23:29 PM
So how do you want the stats rolled: points or 4d6 drop the lowest?

:yeahthat:

I'll decide nearer the time.