Death and Skullport (an Undermountain play report)

I'm still playing catch-up on older game reports for our Undermountain campaign.  The objective of the players has been to find a way through the dungeon to the underground pirate city of Skullport, which is home to the headquarters of the secretive Xanathar's Guild, the major thieves' guild in Waterdeep.  The Black Staff, a wizardly protector of Waterdeep, has commissioned the players to eliminate a threat facing Waterdeep - the minds of ordinary citizens are being replaced by intellect controllers under the control of a mind flayer working with the guild.  After months of play, the players are getting close to their objective!  Last game, they agreed to act as ambassadors to the hobgoblin nation of Azrok and take a diplomatic missive to Xanathar's agents.

As an aside on Undermountain (I'm using the 5E Dungeon of the Mad Mage) it really does a fine job of creating a living underworld, with connections between inhabitants, between levels, and story elements that can drive the campaign forward.  I recommend the dungeon master develop story reasons for the players to be interested in Undermountain that fit their own campaign and the play styles of the players.  For my group, the aspiration to be members of the Harpers and the group 'Force Grey' gave them sufficient reason to take on complex quests from figures like the Blackstaff. The books Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage provide you a lot of "lego pieces" to customize a cool exploration based campaign.  It's classic 1970's dungeon crawling, but with 5E systems.

Skullport from Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Skullport is a harbor town located in a large cavern on the shore of an underground lake.  Apparently there used to be locks and waterways to reach the city from a hidden sea cave on the surface, but that way no longer allows large sailing vessels to reach the port, and the population of the town is dwindling.  The mouth of the harbor is guarded by an oppressive fortress squatting atop the aptly named "Skull Island".

There are several cave passages between Undermountain (level 3) and the town of Skullport; the slow moving Sargauth River that flows through level 3 also leads to Skullport harbor.  My players used a passage guarded by the hobgoblin kingdom, the "Ghost Way", where they indeed needed to skirt a haunted cavern to reach Skullport.  We spent 1-2 game sessions with the players carousing around Skullport, visiting pubs such as the Black Tankard and the Dragon and the Flagon, while seeking the location of one of Xanathar's agents to give the wax sealed scroll with a message from the hobgoblin king.  Word reached the commander of Skull Island, an 8' tall half-ogre champion called Sundeth, who flew out of the dark cavern on a wyvern mount to receive the character's message.  Sundeth dispatched a courier to take it to Xanathar; the players foresaw something like this happening and made their rogue, Teukros, invisible in advance.  Teukros was able to tail the courier to an entrance to the thieves' guild, in the basement of an inn called the Gut and Gartner.  A long arc of the campaign was coming to a close and the players were now ready to return to the surface, share their intelligence with the Blackstaff, and identify what comes next.

There's a saying "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink…"  It applies equally to RPG players.  There have been several times during the course of the campaign where the character's faction connections, be it Force Grey, the Harpers, or even the Zhentarim, have made it clear there are friendly agents in Skullport who could aid the characters in getting back to the surface if they're able to make contact.  My group of players considered this tact and declared, "seeking out friendly agents sounds too much like work, let's figure out if we can sneak or fight our way back through the drow city".   (The last time they tussled with the drow a character died and the rest of the player characters fled for their lives).

Backtracking through the hobgoblin kingdom, making their way to the drow outskirts, and sneaking through the drow city was certainly a legitimate option to try.  They came up with an intricate plan to go "light-free" and  guide their blinded characters with ropes, while sneaking along the outskirts of the ruined dwarven hold and avoiding drow patrols.  Unfortunately, they had a barbarian in the group.  Bosko, their goliath barbarian, got frustrated about not being able to see in the darkness; he tossed his drift globe in the air, yelled the command word for daylight, and charged into a nearby intersection, daring the drow to come out and fight like men.

There was a movie in the late 1960's, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - it tells the story of the legendary train robbers and gun fighters.  At the end, Butch and Sundance are living as outlaws in Bolivia where they are identified by the local police while eating at an outdoor café.  The Bolivian Army arrives and surrounds them completely, and the movie ends in a hail of gunfire.  That's a good metaphor for what happens next to my players.

Bosko and some of the frontline fighters (like Alfred, the duelist fighter) created one front at an intersection, dueling at a  drow elite warrior and some flunky soldiers.  Virsk (cleric), Teukros (rogue), and Ace (their elf wizard), were embattled on a nearby street fighting a gaggle of quaggoths, including a quaggoth shaman who was frying Virsk with a heat metal spell.  Giant spiders were bearing down on them from above and plopping into the combat, and ordinary drow soldiers would pop out of an alley, fire a sleep dart with a hand crossbow, and then duck back out of sight, using effective hit and run tactics.  It was all very exciting and cinematic (for me).

One of the things I like to do stylistically, when it makes sense, is to use "cut scenes" to raise the tension at the table.  It's a good technique to give the players information their characters don't know.  In a situation like the pitched battle in the drow city streets, I'd describe (in between combat rounds) how forces are mobilizing in other parts of the city; bells are rung and drow soldiers fall out of the barracks with their gear; the drow priestess abandons her meditations and brandishes her freaky tentacle scourge as she makes her way out of her sanctuary.  As a dungeon master, this transparency gives the players necessary information to make choices, raises the stakes and tension, and relieves my conscience in case the reinforcements flatten the player characters if the players don't switch strategies.  The key to being a fair bare-knuckled DM is to give the players the information they need to plan and make choices so the consequences aren't arbitrary (particularly when a TPK, total party kill, is looming on the horizon).

This was an interesting moment for the players.  I actually had one player, who plays in many other 5E games, quip to his compatriots, "It's nothing to worry about, we'll be fine - 5E is balanced for the players to win".  The others were hearing the ominous forces winding towards the battle front and were looking for ways to escape.  There are modern DM's who embrace a "fail forward" philosophy - no matter how boneheaded the player's choices are, they'll find a way to minimize the negative results to avoid total failure or death.  Do any of you do it that way?  Character death has been part of the campaign since we started, and the players have known all along failure can be final.

This session ended with several of the characters at zero hit points or unconscious, finally succumbing tothe drow sleep poison darts flying in at them; Teukros broke off using his rogue skills ("bonus action disengage" the 5E rogue's cheesiest declaration) and creating darkness to cover the escape of him and Virsk the cleric.  Bosko, Ace, and Alfred were cut off and became prisoners of the drow (ultimate fate yet to be decided).  Teukros and Virsk stumbled into a cave that looked out on the swirling black waters of the Sargauth river.  There was a raft nearby.  We ended this game with them drifting off into the darkness, putting distance between themselves and the carnage back in the ruins.  The river would eventually take them back to Skullport.

The players of Bosko, Ace, and Alfred would make new characters for next game - thugs or outlaws that could be met in one of the dockside taverns in Skullport.

Let's Look at Dungeon of the Mad Mage

In the city of Waterdeep rests a tavern called the Yawning Portal, named after the gaping pit in its common room. At the bottom of this crumbling shaft is a labyrinthine dungeon shunned by all but the most daring adventurers. Known as Undermountain, this dungeon is the domain of the mad wizard Halaster Blackcloak. Long has the Mad Mage dwelt in these forlorn depths, seeding his lair with monsters, traps, and mysteries—to what end is a constant source of speculation and concern.  (From the back cover of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.)

Waterdeep:  Dungeon of the Mad Mage by Wizards of the Coast picks up at 5th level, slotting in as a nice follow up to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist or one of the introductory adventurers like Lost Mine of Phandelver, or Dragon of Icespire Peak.  It covers 23 dungeon levels, taking player characters from level 5 up through level 20, and it weighs in at 320 pages, one of the larger adventure books on the WOTC 5E shelf.  (On cursory glance, only Rime of the Frost Maiden also has 320 pages; most of the adventure books like Tomb of Annihilation, Curse of Strahd, Descent into Avernus, et al are 256).

Dungeon of the Mad Mage has an impressive room count as well - 535 encounter areas across its 23 levels, including over 1220+ rooms.  That hearkens back to the 1,000 room dungeons of the olden days (back when druids were true neutral and elven fighters maxed out at 7th level, the way Gary intended).

Most 5E adventure books start with level 1 characters and take the party up to level 10 or so; there are a few outliers like Avernus and Princes of the Apocalypse that cover a 15 level span ( 1-15).  Dungeon of the Mad Mage is the only official campaign designed to challenge 20th level characters.  We shall see if it proves a challenge, when we get there!

It's fine as far as printed megadungeons go.  The levels are interesting and varied, and each is preceded by 1-3 pages of narrative laying out factional conflicts and politics for that level.  I may complain about the Fifth but I generally enjoy Chris Perkins' work as the lead adventure designer, and he did a nice job adapting and updating Undermountain.  There's some history of Undermountain up front - it's a long abandoned elven dungeon, and then a dwarven dungeon, and then a mad wizard's dungeon and all of his apprentices, down through the years.  One of the deeper levels has a portal to an asteroid in outer space!  The room descriptions are brief and use effective bolding to highlight important information for usability.  The text is not hard to run at the table.

The maps are another issue.  The map quality is fine, but the maps themselves are strewn through the text and it's unwieldy to run at the table without a lot of flip-flip page flipping.  Back when I started Undermountain with an Adventurer's League group pre-pandemic, I used the optional "map pack" accessory that includes separated glossy map pages so you can reference the book text and have the correct map side by side behind your DM screen.  Selling an "optional" map pack accessory was some shrewd capitalism by the WOTC overlords.  Of course since the pandemic we've been 100% online anyway.

I am not enamored with the Forgotten Realms.  Years of running published 5E campaign hardbacks set in the Realms have done nothing to dim my smoldering apathy towards them.  (I have a Drizzt Do'Urden voodoo doll in my desk drawer).  But I have learned to appreciate the special charm of having a sprawling megadungeon right under the player's home base city.  It's cool that a raucous adventurer's tavern surrounds the entrance to the dungeon, and rowdy tavern patrons place wagers as adventurers get lowered out of sight into the underworld.  We've gotten some excellent mileage out of those scenes.  The Realms may be bland to me, but putting your giant dungeon under a tavern - ten out of ten, Ed Greenwood, ten out of ten.  (You can't see it, but I'm sending him telepathic heart emoji's.  With my mind).

The Yawning Portal dungeon entrance - doesn't that look fun?

There is a significant issue with experience points and pacing with this 5E version.  It's been optimized for a party of 4 players, and there's just enough combat experience, if the players complete every room, to allow this 4-person party to level at the requisite pace.  That's terrible.  It's terrible in so many ways.  As we work through how I've tweaked Dungeon of the Mad Mage for my play style, we'll address the experience point problem right away.

There are essentially no wandering monsters.  On the first two levels, there are a few text blurbs about monsters that wander the levels, but that guidance stops from the 3rd level onwards.  Did Chris Perkins get tired of writing or just run out of space?  We may never know.  What I do know is that you'll be making your own wandering monster tables if that part of the dungeoneering experience is important to you.

Don't let these quibbles dissuade you from checking out Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  There is no such thing as a perfect WOTC adventure module; if they published one, the world would stop.  Be thankful for their imperfect products with correctable flaws.  Mad Mage is one of the good ones.  In posts to come, I'll lay out tweaks I've made to operate the adventure more to my liking, striving even for an "old school feel" (whatever old school means), and then I'll do some recaps of our play through.  It will be fun.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading.

A Prelude to Undermountain

 How do you start a retrospective on a 16 month D&D campaign?  From the beginning?  I guess so, but death by explication is a serious threat to the readers.  I'll elide the minutiae and strive for broad brush strokes.

The campaign, Dorks with Bows Undermountain, started in Waterdeep with the published adventure, Dragon Heist.  I had run Dragon Heist for the Adventurer's League crowd before the pandemic and noticed it had many commendable qualities that I wanted to explore with my regular gamers.  Although several chapters are heavily plotted (like the cinematic roof top chase sequence) you can leverage the adventure to embed the characters into the political factions of the city, grant them a cool home base lair, and land them with a royal 50,000gp reward at the end of the adventure.  It's customizable with many opportunities to expand.  Politics, property, and fantastic wealth are all rife with complications, and complications are fun.  My players had agreed that playing Undermountain, the only official published WOTC campaign that goes all the way to level 20 characters, sounded like a worthy endeavor, and Dragon Heist is a fantastic way to start a campaign in Waterdeep.  So we did.

I'm not going to recapitulate my second Dragon Heist campaign; the retrospective I did after running it with the Adventurer's League crowd is fine.  As my home group ended this one, the Dorks with Bows (known around the city as "The DWB") had ties with a group called the Harpers, ties with Force Grey, and an alliance with a rogue faction of the Zhentarim.  They also made several powerful enemies.

I treat the Harpers like the Fellowship of the Ring and the Council of Elrod - a diverse group of (stereotypical) powerful fantasy do-gooders who try and keep a lid on the dark forces of the world, their ears to the tracks.  They are melodramatic, where every new threat is the single greatest threat to civilization.  Force Grey are mercenaries working for the Black Staff of Waterdeep, a powerful wizard enforcer who ruthlessly eliminates threats to the city.  They are part Suicide Squad, Dirty Dozen, and the Expendables.  The Black Network (the Zhentarim) are a continent-spanning network of criminals (I treat the zealots like the MCU's Hydra organization with different leaders portrayed like comic book villains such as Zemo or Red Skull).

Very early in Dragon Heist, one of the dungeons brings the characters into contact with a Mind Flayer and its intellect devourer pet.  It's a very dangerous encounter for 1st level characters!  The Mind Flayer isn't there to fight, it quickly melts away from the combat, but even a solitary intellect devourer is rough.  I'm not one to pull punches, and at least one PC died in that particular scene.  Much later in Dragon Heist, one of the Force Grey side quests involved the characters trying to discover why a high level fighter named Meloon, a Force Grey agent, was acting uncharacteristically.  That particularly side story ended for us with Meloon dead and an Intellect Devourer materializing outside of his empty cranium - it had been using his body like a puppet.  That set off "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" style paranoia and mayhem!  Who else among the Waterdeep elite have been replaced by Intellect Devourers?

The body snatcher problem became the catalyst for our Undermountain Campaign.  In a conference chamber high in Black Staff Tower, the Black Staff briefed the players.  The city faced a grave threat.  The Xanathar Guild has allied itself with a Mind Flayer and are using Intellect Devourers to replace prominent citizens with loyal puppets.  The Guild headquarters is known to be linked to the underground pirate city of Skullport, which has been closed off from the surface waterways for some time, but there are ways to reach Skullport from within Undermountain, the legendary dungeon beneath the city.  The player's quest, for the good of the city, is to scout and explore the first few levels of Undermountain, starting with the entrance beneath the Yawning Portal Tavern, and to report back when they've located Skullport and found the entrance to Xanathar's guild headquarters.

This is how we started our exploration of Undermountain.