The Night Below

[Balgin Stondraeg]

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).

[Fabian]

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

[Custom_Hobby]

 :yeahthat: Yep any published campaign should work just fine

[Balgin Stondraeg]

: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.

[Custom_Hobby]

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.

[Balgin Stondraeg]

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!

[eyeolas]

Sounds good!

[Custom_Hobby]

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

[Balgin Stondraeg]

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).

[Custom_Hobby]

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

[Balgin Stondraeg]

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.

[Fabian]

What books/supplements will you be allowing, Balgy?

[Balgin Stondraeg]

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.

[Custom_Hobby]

What level do we start at?

[Balgin Stondraeg]

What level do we start at?

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