The Dungeon Master's Diary: Delving into the Depths of the Underdark

Evil stirs within the depths of the Underdark, whispers of an ancient evil, born of shadow and flame and now resurfaced from the fiery chasms to lay ruin to all. Foul creatures and pitiful beasts have been drawn to its calling as ever the shadow grows. It has destroyed much. The great Dwarven City of Guantlgrym is in ruins and something dark and sinewy now sits atop the throne in Mithrall Hall. It has besieged the Deep Wastes to the East and the Buried Realms over the borders of the Sharnlands. A dark, fell sorcery presides over it, causing all who fall under the shadow to be swayed towards darkness. It has claimed several Drow and more yet follow. Soon it will amass an army that will lay claim to all the Underdark and thereafter it will seek the lands above. But hope remains. Reunited once again, the Companions of the Hall gather in Waterdeep, at the Inn known as the Yawning Portal, where ale, a warm and a hearty meal and tales long forgotten are shared. But your gathering here is no cause for merriment. With one last wave to Durnan the Barkeep, one final swig of ale and one last bite, you descend into the depths of the Underdark through the gaping portal at the center of the Inn. Your mission: To destroy the shadow beneath...to seek out the name whispered in fear in the quiet dark...Errtu, the Balor!

Well, that was the premise for our Friday night's bout of Dungeons & Dragons. After successfully surviving the previous Ravenloft ruckus, the adventuring party, the Dungeoneers, had set upon me a task of constructing a dungeon that would be deemed more dangerously deceptively dark and deviously diabolical to delight this despicable dungeon master's dreams 🐲 

For this, I opted again for a pre-built dungeon using the Legend of Drizzt D&D board game for the setting. I utilized ALL of the cavern tiles and restricted the heroes to those included in the base game.

This time around, there was no McGuffin. Their mission, should they choose to accept, was simple: traverse through the Underdark, defeating as many monsters and mini-bosses as possible and then go on to defeat the Balor Errtu.

Of course, easier said than done as this was a really, really, really long dungeon trek through the Underdark and with more 2, 3 and even 4 Monster tokens scattered throughout. For the mini-bosses, I included the dragon Shimmergloom as well as Methil the Mind Flayer and the Ychlol.  Errtu the Balor was left towards the end as a big bad final boss fight.

 

Also, I opted to clearly show the players what they would be up against and the villains were all present on the board at setup. Their path would again be fairly linear with 2 optional pathways through the first half of the dungeon leading up to Mithral Hall where the Mindflayer lay in wait. Thereafter they would be traversing through fire and flame with volcanic vents setting the scene leading up to their final encounter.

We welcomed a new player to our Dungeoneer party and D&D fraternity for our gaming night. Poor soul, I thought - he was in for a rather glum night as my Dungeon Master mode was set to Kill! 😈

For some respite, I, being rather stupid if I may say so, decided to include a Loot Goblin with an uncanny love of 80s music tracks. Whenever an 80s track randomly popped up (through my Spotify playlist), the Loot Goblin would show up with his special items which all had a sinister catch to them. I thought I was being a rather snarky DM. Turns out my grooving Goblin played straight into their hands!

The Loot Goblins Special (Nut) Sack

Here's how it all went down:

Their choice of characters for the Dungeoneers comprised Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenor, Arthrogate and Jarlaxle. Right on, a real skop-skiet-en-donner team who were all skilled fighter-types and ready for an all out slugfest. And no, don't ask me to translate "skop-skiet-end-donner". You wanna let it roll on your tongue.

Obviously their choice of team was exactly what I was counting on. Fighter types are powerful but in this format of the game, rely heavily on being adjacent to monsters to really deal out damage, which meant that for any monsters with ranged attacks, I had an uncanny advantage. And, with a few carefully placed narrow passages and multiple monster spawn tokens, I was ready to deal out a world of pain muahahahaha!!!

Off the bat, despite the diverging path, the party opted to stick together again (so predictable) and take the left road which led to the dragon Shimmergloom who protected some special gems which could be mined off the side cavern fissures (more on this later). Of course, the journey to the Drow tile housing the smoking dragon was wrought with peril and my devious devices.

The dice gods must have been appeased by my diabolical scheming as my rolls were more than favorable, all in the high 16+ range with more than two critical and painfully satisfying 20 hits. Alas poor Wulfgar who repetitively kept rolling fives, much to my delight. By the time the party squared off against the dragon, a comrade had fallen and a healing surge was needed. Things were looking gleefully grim for our gung-go ghetto squad!

At this point, my groovin' goblin made his appearance, cue Bonnie Tyler "Holding out for a Hero" as my marauding merchant offered up some wares. The ask was simple: each player could give up a treasure item to acquire some green footpath tokens or all the players could give up a treasure item to gain the coveted Secret Tunnel item, a must-have in this long dark dungeon. As for the footpath tokens - pay first, information after. Hey, goblins are tricky fellas. A few players buy into it and are rewarded with a permanent +1 to speed. Bruenor, the slowest of the lot, does not buy into it at all. The stubbornness of dwarves!

Shimmering Shimmerglooms!

My devious DM strategy appeared to be working out...they were losing, hopelessly. But then...

Wand of Polymorph. Fuck that item. Next game I'm burning it. The Battlerager Arthrogate (played by newbie Kevin) pulled this treasure item. Now, our house rule agreement as per our previous games was that Polymorph may be used on monsters and villains that are not boss villains. Which meant, any of the mini bosses scattered throughout my fiendishly constructed dungeon were now susceptible to this damn shitty wand. Shimmergloom did manage a few sizeable chomps before he got polymorphed into a water elemental 😩😭  

Then, they spent a total of 2 rounds just trying to mine the +1 attack gems off the fissures which infuriated my devious designs. So I started throwing encounters and monster spawns at them, forcing a move. They did manage to mine a sizeable number of gems which I thought would be rare and difficult to acquire when I built this dungeon.

Decisions, decisions

Still, I was confident in that they had a long, long way to go. A rather hilarious encounter card saw poor Bruenor catapulted back to the start tile and with no extra speed from the fleet-foot tokens, meant the hapless dwarf was doomed. Yay! Wanting to add to overall hilarity, I dropped the Loot Goblin with a Separate Ways track and a counter spell, allowing Bruenor to buy a 'hero token' which led to him swapping places with the Swashbuckler Jarlaxle. Yeah Bruenor was back in the mix but poor Jarl was a looong way from Kansas and it would be at least 3 or 4 turns before he reached his team mates.

Once they hit the broken door and ancient throne tile, a 4 monster spawn and another fallen player meant another healing surge needed. Oh, they were in the thick of it now! Happy that things were panning out the way I envisioned, the Loot Goblin dropped some rather useful HP recovery and damage attack dice, all the while grooving to Eye of the Tiger.

The final fight

But, they endured. Somehow, they endured. And they defeated the Mindflayer, sending poor Methil into an explosive cacophony of flying tentacles and crispy fried calamari. Alas!

Still, their teamwork and carefully planned combo attacks was admirable and in that, I dropped the final track as my Loot Goblin came moonwalking in with Billie Jean and some very precious loot that would ultimately cost me the evening: 

Overpowered Dice that cost 2 surges but gave a permanent buff to players, allowing them to roll these dice at the start of their turn for either a +3 to AC, +2 to Attack, +1 to speed or view the top 2 cards of either monster or encounter deck and arrange in any order, drop a +1HP +1AC decoy or a wildcard to chose any option.

I knew. I knew this was probably not a good idea but with my Balor charging in and two trolls showing up as well as a bevy of monsters, traps, volcanic vents and encounters. I thought I had the upper hand. I was wrong. So very, very wrong.

They rolled mostly decoys on the OP dice. Which gave them the advantage over monster targeted attacks. They used their gems for multiple attacks, they used their previous loot dice to gain some last minute HP and they vaulted right up to the hideous visage of the Balor, who clearly could NOT let it whip, rolling some dismal 2s and even 1s. By the time Drizzt landed the final blow that smote the Balor's ruin upon the mountainside, it was all over.

Alas, poor Errtu, I knew him well

They had done it again. They won. Damn loot goblin with his 80s tracklist and overpowered items!

Still, this was a fun dungeon to build and throw at them. Admittedly, it was a long trek, a bit too long for our usual 3 hour slot but it was fun to build and play. Our next bout of D&D gaming will be Mid October and will see the Dungeoneers brave the perils of Firestorm Peak as they face the Wrath of Ashardalon!

Till then, may all of your rolls be crits!