Night Below - 2E Adventure, 5E Rules

About the adventure

Do you love the Underdark? Did you play through Out of the Abyss and want more classic Underdark foes to cross swords with? Maybe you're just looking for a chance to play a classic adventure from the 90's, but with 5th edition rules? This game may be for you! I'm looking to lead a group of adventurers through Night Below: An Underdark Campaign, one of my favorite modules I've ever run. Similar in scope to the hardback adventures of 5th edition, this is a full-length campaign, bringing characters from 1st to 11th level (or higher). The campaign takes place in Haranshire, a remote region of villages, forests, and rolling hills... where a sinister plot is unfolding beneath the players' feet. As they explore the area, they begin to unravel the mystery, and the clues lead them deep underground to confront an epic threat.

Additional Details

How to prepare

We'll be using Discord for chat/voice/video. Text chat is welcome between sessions. Voice chat is required during sessions. Video is encouraged but optional. Once you're in the game, I'll invite you to the server. We'll be using D&D Beyond for character creation, so you'll also need an account there. Once you're in the game, I'll invite you to the campaign. We'll be using Foundry Virtual Tabletop, but you don't need to sign up for anything to use it. Once you're in the game, I'll send you a link to the server. OPTIONAL: You may want to install the Beyond20 extension for Chrome/Firefox. It allows you to click an ability/attack/spell/whatever in D&D Beyond and send the results to Foundry, but this is not required to play.

What I provide

I'll bring the adventure! Including... maps updated to modern VTT quality, top-down tokens for all the baddies, compendium sharing in D&D Beyond for character options, and a great time!

Gameplay details

We're using 5th edition rules to play through a 2nd edition module, so this won't be a 100% original take on the adventure. I'll be modifying encounters, maps, treasure, etc. to adjust for differences between editions and playing on a Virtual Tabletop. Still, the bigger picture stuff (locations, NPCs, plot points, etc.) will remain true to the source material. Since a large part of this adventure is a dungeon crawl (of sorts), it has the potential to be very combat-heavy. Enemies abound. However, I encourage players to find noncombat methods of overcoming challenges. The amount of roleplay (especially in the latter 2/3 of the adventure) depends on how willing you are to befriend/deceive/avoid potential foes. The choice is yours... A typical session includes a quick personal check-in, and then a summary of where the PCs are in the story. From there we jump into the action. We'll take a 5 minute break at some point during the session, and at the three hour mark, I start thinking about a good stopping point. When we do stop, on average about 3.5 hours into actual play, I will hang out in the Discord channel to debrief with players and get feedback on how they felt the game went. I also use this debriefing time to ask players, "Where do you think you'll go next?" so I can more efficiently prepare for the next session. We'll be using Foundry Virtual Tabletop for gameplay. I run a pretty minimal Foundry setup - if you're familiar with Foundy and want to see my list of addon modules, check the character generation folder below. If you're unfamiliar with Foundry, just ignore this section and trust that I'll be making your use of this virtual tabletop as easy as possible!

Content warnings

(none)

Safety tools used

(none)

How will character creation work

You'll create a 1st level character on D&D Beyond prior to the first session. Full character creation guidelines can be found at https://bit.ly/CDG-NightBelow. This links to the Google Drive folder where I'll keep notes for the campaign - character generation, session summaries, house rules/rulings, and so on. We'll use D&D Beyond for character management throughout the campaign. In-game, you can choose whether to use the Foundry character sheet, or the Beyond20 browser extension to roll right on D&D Beyond. Either works for me!

Players can expect

• Find a game to join solo or search for a professional game master for you and your friends/coworkers/family.
• Book your session and wait for the Game Master to approve you.
• If you don't have a blast with your first game, your next game is on us.