AD&D Night Below campaign boxed set

[Laser T. Swift]

My nephew is bugging me to run him in a full blown campaign in D&D so I thought I would pick up the night below boxed set since I really don't have the time these days to write a whole campaign myself.

So, to make a short question long - Has anybody played/run this? Is it worth $15 (my cost) to pick up?

Any info would help.

Thanks.

Laser

[Sangrolu]

Book one is great... open ended, gives the players room to explore.

Book three is good... nice tactical scenario that hearken's back to good old vault of the drow. The possibility of alliances that might make your characters rethink their stance on good and evil.

Book two is a slog. My players nicknamed it "death by perpetual encounter." I would definitely recommend sprucing it up, finding side quests, etc, otherwise you'll just burn your players out unless they REALLY dig lots of melee.

[Joe_G_Kushner]

My group ran through it and was wiped out by the balrog at the end.

I loved the first few parts. Spiced it up with side quests from A Hero's Tale, an anthology of short adventurers for 2nd ed by Monte Cook I believe.

A lot of great potential there if you manage to get the whole group through it.

[Sangrolu]

My group ran through it and was wiped out by the balrog at the end.

Are we talking about the same adventure?

[Skull Leader]

A classic! This was my very first AD&D campaign as a DM and it's the one my friends will always remember fondly. I definitely got my money's worth out of the boxed set (only then, I paid $30 on its release).

The campaign is set on a small countryside, so you only have to worry about two or three towns (where I was able to flesh out some very colorful NPCs). For the surface world, you can add a lot to what the first book has written as far as encounters go - it'll make the place a lot more interesting to adventure in.

I have to agree about the second book - my friends and I skipped most of the lairs, since all it involved was endless hack-and-slash (two of my players died TWICE from these deadly encounters). Take Sangrolu's advice and add/remove the parts you think your group will need, then just head straight to the City of the Glass Pool. More than half of the other lairs in this book really bog down the game.

I picked up Night Below in Jan '96 and I'm still running it today. Three years into the game, two of my players enlisted in the military and we played once every year. Now that both of my main players have returned, we are VERY close to completing it. All of us had many fond memories from this campaign: the assault on Broken Spire Keep (where one of the players ran from battle, only to be paralyzed and devoured by the carrion crawler), the escape from the Great Rock Dale (in which 50 orcs chased after our paladin and ranger), and many other stories.

If you still need help making a decision to buy the game, read this review - http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/reviews/rev_5950.html

Have fun with this, I know I did.

[Laser T. Swift]

Cool! Thanks for the input. I will have to pick this up today.

Laser

[bobrunnicles]

Yep, this is a great 'non-specific campaign world' set that you can pretty much fit in anywhere, it's so self-contained. I always dreamed of following this up directly with the Dragon Mountain boxed set but those plans never came to fruition (TNB takes PCs from 1st to 10th level IIRC and DM takes them from 10th to 15th). A vast amount of gaming potential in only two boxes.

Those were the days :)

[LiteratePugilist]

I definately remember thinking that Book One was the strongest part of the whole campaign.

It was just so...classic. Even if you never actually got to the Underdark, I thought it was a great example of fleshing out a campaign world, starting with one tiny hamlet and one tiny lil' job, and expanding from there.

It's cliched, but it a fond-memory-old-friend sort of way.

15 bucks? Yeah, definately worth it.

[Victim]

Book 1, Book 3, and some parts of book 2 are good. I reccomend cutting lots of stuff from the intermediate sections of book 2. The trolls and city of the glass pool are both pretty good. But you could cut around 1/2 the other areas to speed things along.

My NB game stopped in book 2.

[johnnype]

One more thing. You might find this (http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/NightBelow/) website helpful. They go into great detail about the adventure and what does and doesn't work going so far as suggesting alternatives and changes. Great site.

[Joe_G_Kushner]

Are we talking about the same adventure?

Pit Fiend? At the end of Night Below, when they're going through the city, there are several factions that are involved with the evil going on there. One of those factions is an outer planar evil.

My players pissed it off big time and it killed them down to the last man.

[Sangrolu]

Pit Fiend?

Ah, pit fiend. Yes there are those.

[Matthew]

One more thing. You might find this (http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/NightBelow/) website helpful. They go into great detail about the adventure and what does and doesn't work going so far as suggesting alternatives and changes. Great site.

That site seems pretty...I don't know. Not useful. Book Two is geographically linear, but the PLOT, the STORY isn't. Each encounter gives the players new opportunities to screw things up or make new allies. My players never felt like they were being railroaded into anything, because they were constantly being presented with new encounters and choices.

Read the thing before you run it. It's like every module ever; it doesn't know what your campaign is. Your reponsability as a GM is to read the thing, and change those parts you don't like, or that don't make sense in your campaign.

I ran it and found to be, bar none, the best module ever. Now, what does this mean? Does this mean that, as written, I was able to use it with no changes and it was fantastic? No. It means "those parts I used were amazing. The whole thing was put together in such a way as to make it very easy to swap parts out" and this is also part of the brilliance of the design. The reason someone can make a website and say "this is how I recommend changing it," it because it's well-designed. It's easily modifyable.

[Rupert]

Are we talking about the same adventure?

You are - there's a pit fiend at the end, but you only fight him if you're silly, and/or careless in the deals you make.

[pelvo]

The Night Below harbours one of our most gloriously idiotic moments in gaming.


You know how somewhere along the way you find a rod of absorption that sucks magic spells away?

Ad then, right near the end, there are these great big balls of magical energy that suck magic spells and the magic from magic items away?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the two went together?

We did.

Having earlier destroyed a flux point (long story) and been yelled at by the rest of the party, I merely suggested the idea. As a result, they seem to have forgotten that it was my idea, and blamed it on the resident loon.

Which is a good thing, because that was one mighty huge explosion, and we were just lucky there was still a metre or so of water over the entire city or we would have been smashed when we (finally) hit the ground.

[Belac]

Night Below is a really cool campaign setting. I've run bits and pieces of it before, but never had the time to run the whole thing. I'm considering it lately, though.

[Judas]

I ran it. The greatest dungeon crawl ever created.

But the giant who had some kind of blood vessel explosion and vomited a fountain of blood all over the PCs was a surreal moment.

[Laser T. Swift]

This is all good stuff, thanks! I really like the idea someone had for adding Dragon Mountain onto the end. Maybe I will start a thread on Dragon Mountain. Of course I should probably see if I can find it first...

[Jason Sinclair]

Dumb question, but where are you buying this from? E-Bay?

-Smart Shopper J

[Kesh]

Sounds like he found a real copy, but you can get a PDF version from RPGnow (http://www.rpgnow.com).

[bobrunnicles]

This is all good stuff, thanks! I really like the idea someone had for adding Dragon Mountain onto the end. Maybe I will start a thread on Dragon Mountain. Of course I should probably see if I can find it first...

That was me....if you do manage to pull this off, please post the results here, I would be VERY interested to know how it went :)

[Laser T. Swift]

Dumb question, but where are you buying this from? E-Bay?

-Smart Shopper J

Actually I found it at a local used bookstore

[Laser T. Swift]

That was me....if you do manage to pull this off, please post the results here, I would be VERY interested to know how it went :)

Will do! But considering the time it will probably take to run it that might be awhile.

[bobrunnicles]

Will do! But considering the time it will probably take to run it that might be awhile.

Oh, naturally - that's a LOT of campaigning. I'll look for an update in about a year's time then :)

[Rattrap2474]

My wife and I are Co-DMing Night Below and we are converting it to 3.5 on the fly. We've encountered the problem of the party being to powerful on more than one occassion. Does anyone know of a place where someone ahs done a full conversion to 3e or 3.5? Or does anyone have any tips for running the game? Any and all advice would be helpful.

[Christian]

It's a long, long campaign. Parts of it - mainly the second book - were brutal. Endless hack and slash.

I was playing a fighter and in AD&D 2e, that's just not the class to take for the long haul. A ranger, cleric and wizard will find themselves very well rewarded with some unique magic items.

A gnome character might help, as would an elf for encounters withthe Rockseers and Svirfneblin.

It's worth the $15, but be ready for some long, protracted battles.

[Rattrap2474]

It's a long, long campaign. Parts of it - mainly the second book - were brutal. Endless hack and slash.

I was playing a fighter and in AD&D 2e, that's just not the class to take for the long haul. A ranger, cleric and wizard will find themselves very well rewarded with some unique magic items.

A gnome character might help, as would an elf for encounters withthe Rockseers and Svirfneblin.

It's worth the $15, but be ready for some long, protracted battles.

Well we have a copy of most of the old 2nd ed stuff.
Here is what we have in our party at the moment. We are just taking on the Grells in the second book.

NPC's:
Snagger 6th level dwarven fighter
Ragnar 6th level human knight (from PHB II) He was actually the guard from the acolites in the first book, the one who was supposta die. 4 people hit him with healing at the same time and saved him. Currently acting as Cohort to Lucien.
Tevis 3rd level human Paladin Squire to one of the PC's (Lucien)
Roonmottin and Mardnottin Awakened war dogs

PC's
Raulwocket 4/3 gnome Ranger/ Illusionist
Lucien 7th level human Paladin
Caranig 4/3 gnome Bard/ Rouge
Garn 7th level dwarf cleric
Vinjuran 3/3/1 elf Wizard/ cleric/ mystic theurge
Maglor 7th level elf sorcerer

Our group is good at adding extra role play to the story so he long battles are mediated with sessions of stright RP. The wife is the primary DM and has added parts from Hero's Tale. All in all we're doing quiet well.

My wife and I Co-DM so she handles most of the big story stuff and I do her grunt labor :) prerolling inishes, doing monster conversions, and so on. I was just wondering if there were any conversions or tips. Thanks of what you said though :)

[jimbojones1971]

Book one is great... open ended, gives the players room to explore.

Book three is good... nice tactical scenario that hearken's back to good old vault of the drow. The possibility of alliances that might make your characters rethink their stance on good and evil.

Book two is a slog. My players nicknamed it "death by perpetual encounter." I would definitely recommend sprucing it up, finding side quests, etc, otherwise you'll just burn your players out unless they REALLY dig lots of melee.

This was our experience too. Book one was awesome, book two almost killed the game, but book three was great.

Actually, my players hated book two so much that they almost mutinied at one point. But with a little bit of thought and not too much work, you should be able to make it a lot more palatable.

[Rattrap2474]

This was our experience too. Book one was awesome, book two almost killed the game, but book three was great.

Actually, my players hated book two so much that they almost mutinied at one point. But with a little bit of thought and not too much work, you should be able to make it a lot more palatable.

What did you do to cut it up a bit?

[LeoCrusher]

We still talk about the underwater chain lightening...

[Rattrap2474]

We still talk about the underwater chain lightening...

That could not have ended well

[General_Tangent]

Probably the only gaming module I ran that ended up with a total party kill.

I hadn't even got the party into book two!

[Skull Leader]

Probably the only gaming module I ran that ended up with a total party kill.

Same here. My players were wiped out in an epic assault on the City of the Glass Pool on our 9th anniversary game session. :mad:

[Pete Whalley]

If Carlsberg made D&D adventures, they'd make Night Below.

I absolutely loved the campaign, but managed to lose the set to an unscrupulous player who borrowed and then sold it! :mad:

[General_Tangent]

Same here. My players were wiped out in an epic assault on the City of the Glass Pool on our 9th anniversary game session. :mad:

Ooh, that sounded really nasty, I hope that wasn't nine years of play?

The party was killed while looking for the pilgrims. I tried to restart the campaign with a new group of characters but it didn't seem to fit.

[Gen. Lee]

The Night Below harbours one of our most gloriously idiotic moments in gaming.

I can second that, in a different way. I played in this campaign years & years ago, and we totally frustrated the DM in Part One. He suggested that our party start out as really poor, and we ran(away) with that thought. Us PCs were worried about starving (yes, we counted every last loaf of bread and lump of cheese), and wouldn't take on a job without payment, and the NPCs didn't care enough (it seemed) about the plot to offer to pay us.
By the time the DM dragged us to the linear part of the campaign, we had lost a lot of interest, and soon one of the players moved out of town, and we broke it off. I'm sorry to hear that others consider it a great game, it sounds like we missed out on a good time.

[Rattrap2474]

well an update on our current plight, we play on Sundays and Easter was alot of fun we had a big ham dinner and then gamed from about 2 till after midnight. we finished out the grell area and the grell paitriarch with 3 regular grells and one philosapher handed us a beating, but we managed to win with the help of some well placed spells and tactics. The deepspawn dam near did a TPK but everyone survived with a few hit points left. The highlight of the night was when our dwarf fighter crit twice in a row on the deep spawn and did over 140 points of damage.
We then did a side adventure from the Hero's Tale book (the Kyo Race) and ended on a good note.

All that leads to this, the Hero's Tale adventures pair up very nicly with the night below. If provides a nice set of side events to help with levels and treasure and adds an extra note of mystery to the campaign. I highly recomend useing it in conjunction with Night Below, it's worked well for us.

[blizack]

All that leads to this, the Hero's Tale adventures pair up very nicly with the night below. If provides a nice set of side events to help with levels and treasure and adds an extra note of mystery to the campaign. I highly recomend useing it in conjunction with Night Below, it's worked well for us.

What are Hero's Tale adventures? I've never heard of them.

EDIT: Never mind, looks like there was a 2nd edition module called A Hero's Tale. I assume that's what you're talking about.

[General_Tangent]

All that leads to this, the Hero's Tale adventures pair up very nicly with the night below. If provides a nice set of side events to help with levels and treasure and adds an extra note of mystery to the campaign. I highly recomend useing it in conjunction with Night Below, it's worked well for us.

I thought exactly the same thing and they do match quite well.

[Rattrap2474]

We're still looking for other options for a campaign or set of adventures to tag on the back of night below once we finish (hopeful thinking I know). I've looked over a few options including Dragon Mountion, the Labyrinth of madness and castle whiterock. Any other ideas?

[Skull Leader]

Ooh, that sounded really nasty, I hope that wasn't nine years of play?

On and off. See post #5.

[LeoCrusher]

We're still looking for other options for a campaign or set of adventures to tag on the back of night below once we finish (hopeful thinking I know). I've looked over a few options including Dragon Mountion, the Labyrinth of madness and castle whiterock. Any other ideas?

We followed into Labyrinth of Madness, with varying success... Most of the problems were to do with outside stuff however... It's a bit of a meat grinder though...

[Rattrap2474]

We followed into Labyrinth of Madness, with varying success... Most of the problems were to do with outside stuff however... It's a bit of a meat grinder though...

So far all of the options I've heard about are mostly meat grinders. Hmmmm.... hopefully I can find a slightly option :)

[Naniwa]

Labyrinth of Madness...:eek: My players died in the first room! That has never happened before.

I'd suggest checking out A Paladin in Hell. Just classic, IMO. It's a little tricky with factions, but from the sound of it, Night Below is much more complicated anyway.

[General_Tangent]

We're still looking for other options for a campaign or set of adventures to tag on the back of night below once we finish (hopeful thinking I know). I've looked over a few options including Dragon Mountion, the Labyrinth of madness and castle whiterock. Any other ideas?

I planned to follow up the Night Below with the Rod Of Seven parts campaign, as they have a similar theme running through them.

[Halvormerlinakyad]

My group ran through it and was wiped out by the balrog at the end.


Wait, there were Balrogs before Diablo?????




Hey, hey, kidding.



But I'm really surprised they were ever in D&D before this. Please give me some stats that aren't a part of Diablo.

[Rattrap2474]

I planned to follow up the Night Below with the Rod Of Seven parts campaign, as they have a similar theme running through them.

I checked it out and holy crap it can be tied in perefectly. The first one can be put in during book two (the naga adventure) as part of the exp and EQ gathering. The second can be put in as an extra area off of the City of the Glass Pool. Just another aboleth to the party :) a little extra treasure and the first 2 parts of the rod, from there you launch right into the Rod. Great Suggestion! Take 1 "thinking outside the box" poin if you collect such things.

[General_Tangent]

I checked it out and holy crap it can be tied in perefectly. The first one can be put in during book two (the naga adventure) as part of the exp and EQ gathering. The second can be put in as an extra area off of the City of the Glass Pool. Just another aboleth to the party :) a little extra treasure and the first 2 parts of the rod, from there you launch right into the Rod. Great Suggestion! Take 1 "thinking outside the box" poin if you collect such things.

As there were only three players, I had them start with the first section of the rod as it functions as a wand of healing.

Its function as a wand was explained to them by an elderly family matriarch who wanted to have it destroyed.

Anyway, once the party was killed I tried to restart it and added the wand to a treasure haul the party found. However, as the new group lacked the initial tie to the item it fizzled out.

Thanks for the point, I've added it to the signature.