ACKS Greyhawk: Hommlet and the Moathouse

We agreed upon a reasonable backstory for the adventuring party - the merchant guildmaster of the town of Verbobonc (Mistress Fernhall) had fielded complaints of expensive shipments of trade goods from the Elven kingdom of Celene  going missing in the vicinity of a small village in the south of the Viscounty.  The Viscount's steward authorized a bounty of 10gp per head for any bandits brought to justice, dead or alive.  The players each came up with a good reason why their fresh-faced level 1 character wanted to hunt bandits and earn some money, and we were off and running - the sleepy village, Hommlet was a 3 day's ride south of Verbobonc 

Looking at my Greyhawk  calendar, the players spent 7 game sessions adventuring in and around Hommlet.  First there was arriving in the village, seeing the sights, meeting people at the inn, the church, the trader's, the druid's grove, and eventually presenting their writ of bounty to Lord Burne, the erstwhile liege lord of the area.  Neither Burn nor his guard commander, Rufus, were aware of bandits or missing caravans, although Rufus suggested it'd been some years since anyone had ventured out to the ruins of the old moathouse a few miles outside of town.  Ruins, you say?  We specialize in ruins, said our characters, and they were soon off to investigate their first dungeon.

If you're not familiar with the Temple of Elemental Evil, as my players were not, they learned the local history along the way.  A decade back, an epic battle between the forces of Law and Civilization, led by the Viscount of Verbobonc, with allied armies from the northern kingdoms, members of the knightly orders, and friendly forces of elves and gnomes from the nearby Gnarley Woods and Kron Hills, fought a significant pitched battle about a day's march away at a place called Emridy Meadows.  A varied force of evil soldiers, wicked clerics, humanoids, and monsters, had vomited forth from a vast dungeon and evil temple nearby, to bring Chaos and destruction to the countryside.

The armies of Chaos were routed, the evil temple was defeated, the dungeons (supposedly) cleared, and ancient evils locked away once more.  The moathouse near Hommlet was a smaller outpost from the Temple of Elemental Evil, overthrown via siege in the aftermath of the temple's fall.  Two of the player characters were members of the Church of St Cuthbert, the local dominant religion, and they knew this history well - the church's spiritual leader, the Patriarch Serten, was one of Law's casualties in the fight against the temple's forces, and clerics and paladins of St Cuthbert memorialized Serten's sacrifice.

This adventure, the T1 Village of Hommlet was originally published for AD&D back in 1979 and written by Gygax, later to be joined in a campaign book called T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil, written by Frank Mentzer with access to Gygax and his notes.  T1 is a solid introductory adventure, although the 1970's edition always felt like a teaser, alluding to the nearby temple and a much grander story - alas, we'd have to wait until 1985(!) to see the full thing.

I'm going to elide the play-by-play and focus on the big picture in these summarized recaps.  The players spent several sessions exploring the upper ruins of the moathouse, facing over-sized swamp critters and discovering that bandits were indeed lurking in the ruins.  Sadly, the bandits did not have any of the rare elven trade goods, so the players surmised there was another factor.  The dungeon beneath the moathouse yielded a further mystery.  The characters discovered secret stores of arms and equipment, evidence that someone other than the bandits was using the dungeon as a staging area for future military action.  They found monstrous humanoids lurking in those dark chambers - gnolls, bugbears, and even a man-slaying ogre.  Ultimately they faced off against a small force of mercenary humans led by a powerful, evil cleric - the New Master.  Among the spoils in the master's treasury they found the rare elven wines and crystals, the missing trade goods and luxury items from Celene.

The master's forces had black garb embroidered with the crimson eye of fire, one of the many evil symbols worn by the forces of the Temple a decade ago, and recorded in the annals of the Church.  In the aftermath of the exploration of the moathouse, the players convinced the village council evidence pointed back to the cult of Elemental Evil.  The threat posed by the cult of elemental evil endured and was once again creeping forth to threaten the countryside.  The players made schemes to carry their explorations to the temple ruins themselves… but we'll cover those next time.

There are a few more points to make.  First, agents of evil had infiltrated the village, and some of them even joined the player group, seeking to betray them at opportune moments.  One such agent was the mercenary Zert, who tried to keep the players from returning to Hommlet with evidence of the crimson eye of fire.  There are other agents still in Hommlet the players haven't discovered yet.

One of their allies, the beefy farmhand Elmo, turned out to be an agent of good, serving the Viscount of Verbobonc himself.  The players would never have survived the moathouse without Elmo's sturdy axe and copious hit points.  At the end of these adventures, Elmo recused himself to report to his superiors in Verbobonc, and has vacated the story for the time being.  The party also relied heavily on an NPC mage, the greedy wizard Spugnoir.

Let's meet the players - our cast of player characters includes the Cuthbert worshippers Brother Grayson (cleric), and Barfred (paladin); a fighter Randolph; an Elven Ranger, Glyndal; an exotic scimitar-wielding priestess of a foreign deity, the temple dancer Shakti.  Several of them reached level 3 by the end of the moathouse, but the others are trailing based on attendance.  In future games they added Magnus, a mage, and Dunne, a whiskey distiller who happens to be able to fight, along with various henchmen and mercenary hirelings.  Casualties during this arc were relegated to hirelings, NPCs, and mercenaries, although there have been some lucky saving throws, and Barfred was mauled by a giant lizard, leading to some permanent scars (courtesy of the ACKS mortal wounds table).  Until next time!

How'd We Get Back to Greyhawk?

I won't spill a lot of ink on our decision to put 5E on the bench.  It had gotten a bit boring for me, the players weren't challenged, and complex battles had gotten tedious.  We don't play long game session, just a few hours, so it wouldn't be uncommon for intricate 5E battles to stretch over multiple nights.  I missed the fast and furious nature of OSR gaming.  They're all solvable problems, but at some point it's just easier to use rules that already lean into the style you want.  WOTC's attempts to revoke the OGL was the final trigger - I decided I'd either play games we already own or put my money behind the independent publishers of the industry.

We had some discussions and took votes, both on a choice of setting and campaign inspiration, and then which rules to use.  For setting and theme, we discussed a LOTFP style horror sandbox, an OSR megadungeon, or AD&D classic hits.  (Classic hits won, I'm going to call it the Tour de Gygax).  To me that meant Greyhawk - but which rules set?  Of course we put out their AD&D (OSRIC), classic D&D (Labyrinth Lord), or perhaps a modern clone like LOTFP or ACKS.  The player's picked ACKS - several of them liked it from back in the day.  The characters are a little more powerful and have a lot of options; I like the whole domain end-game possibilities, which I loved from AD&D and which other clones overlook.  Historically, we've had several long running LOTFP games (Gothic Greyhawk and the Black City come to mind), and used ACKS for an extended Dwimmermount campaign.  I was a little sad they didn't pick the low-powered horror sandbox, but I'm sure we'll strap on those flintlocks and rapiers and get in some LOTFP style games here and there.

Greyhawk, however, is an awesome setting.  For me it brings to mind the wonder and mystery of first discovering AD&D back in the 70's and 80's, before you knew what an elemental was, or a rust monster or a mind flayer.  The original Greyhawk books are idiosyncratic - they go into great detail on things like coats of arms for obscure principalities, weather patterns, the migration routes of ancient humans, and random encounter tables by geography, without telling you much about any meta story or what to do with the setting.  It's an open invitation to create your version of Greyhawk.  Our last Greyhawk campaign cast the Earldom of Sterich as a mist-ridden backwater filled with haunted moors, howling werewolves, and vampire's castles.  This time around we're leaning into a Lord of the Ring's vibe; fractious human kingdoms struggle with alliances and politics while forgotten evils creep back into the light of day to threaten Law and Civilization.  What role will the players have in rekindling old alliances or ensuring slumbering evils never awaken?

The only significant house rule is that every week, the players are committed to leaving whatever dungeon they're exploring and returning to a safe place, be it town or wilderness camp, where they have supplies, a place to rest, and the missing player characters and henchmen.  In this way we can roll with whoever is available to play the following week.  I like the inspiration mechanic introduced by 5E (where players can earn an extra die roll by doing something inspirational) so we're still using that one - it's already blunted the hard edge of some save or die rolls back in Hommlet's moathouse.  Players can nominate each other for inspiration for good roleplaying, tactics, flooring the table with a fine joke or quip, that kind of stuff - but the DM's say is final.  We use 3d6 in order for attributes, but let the players roll 5 sets of ability scores and pick the set of scores that best fit the character they want to make.

We never returned to in-person gaming after the pandemic.  Several of my long time players moved out of town, and using a virtual table top and video conference capability has been too useful to stay connected.  It's easy to scan old map images from TSR-era modules into roll20, obscure them with fog of war, and then leverage online maps and dice rolling.  However, we are not using tokens at this time, just "theater of the mind".  I'm really trying to avoid slow tactical combat after too many years of 5E, and I'm loathe to reintroduce miniatures… maybe later.  We use a discord voice and video channel for communications, and the players make good use of google documents for sharing notes, marching orders, communal supplies (like their campsite gear), posting images, tracking names and henchmen, that kind of stuff.  We don't get to share pizza, doritos, and pepsi, but otherwise online gaming has been pretty good.

I’ll put a couple summaries together of our first few months of Greyhawking to get caught up on the game reports - that'll be for during the week.

Arise Dead Blog - I Have Need of You

That moment when you're done with that Seattle company.

It was always a matter of when, not if.  Our long sojourn with 5E has ended.  I tried to stiff upper lip the Mos Eisley Cantina effect and the easy mode buttons as long as I could.  The kerfuffle over the OGL a few months ago was too much - I ditched my D&D Beyond Subscription and shelved 5E for good.  It's all over except for the selling.

We've been playing a Greyhawk-based D&D game for several months now (a classic clone).  We're up to 8 players (a 9th may join this week) and I'm running it almost like a West Marches game - every week starts and ends back in town so we can roll with whoever is available the following week.  It's been a fine approach with busy adults with varied schedules (and there are always a few stalwarts who rarely miss a game).

The players have been asking if I'd write up the game sessions on the blog, so arise dead blog - I have need of you.  Game reports will help absent players catch up on what they missed, while logging the player's mishaps.  We're playing a campaign built around Gygax's greatest hits, starting with Hommlet and the Temple of Elemental Evil (Gygax and Mentzer, I know).  Since we're a couple of months in, the players are already exploring dungeon level 1 of the Temple proper.  I have some work to do to get caught up.  I'd love it if we're able to proceed to Tsojcanth, the Giants, and then Erelhei-Cinlu.

There's some housekeeping to do.  There are a zillion spam messages to clear out of the comments and unapproved messages waiting.  I'm sure there are broken links and missing images - don't ignore your blog for years, I guess.  Oh, and LOTP just put all their PDFs on sale for like $1, so I grabbed a bunch of missing stuff.  I skimmed a few of them and burned my eyes out.  Those guys dance to their own drum beat, that's for sure.  And they like pictures of dongs.  Some "reviews" will be forthcoming.  It'll be great fun.

Seems like it will be an interesting summer, too, as various publishers try to extricate themselves from the OGL and flip WOTC a well-deserved double bird.  Time to roll the boulder away from the cave entrance and stumble out into the sunlight.

Favorite DM Advice of the Week

Writing a blog is a bit outdated.  So is hanging out on FaceBook.  At one point I joined a "Grognards Who Play 5th Edition" FaceBook group, and it can be as cringe as you would expect.  "I played 4th Edition, so I know what D&D was like back in the day".  I have to consciously pause and remember the playing base is huge, and people have encountered the game for their first time across a wide range of editions and play styles.  That means sometimes it's a Gen Z or Millenial 3rd edition or 4th edition player saying they pre-dated 5th Edition, so they're the grognards now.  I don't even care.  We're in week 3 of a brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, if you played 4th Edition and now you want to be known as an old timey war gamer, you go for it.  The world could end tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's some great DM advice that popped onto the Grognard's group this week (courtesy of a fellow old timer "Josh S").  They do a good job of distilling far more verbose descriptions of the old school mindset into 3 basic precepts:

1. The story is whatever the player characters do.

2. The DM’s job is to adjudicate the rules and bring the world to life.

3. The dice never lie. Don't ask them questions if you aren't prepared to accept their answers.

Carry on with your regularly scheduled programming.  Let's all be careful out there.

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.

Game Report: Diplomacy on Undermountain Level 3

Following their trouncing by the drow elves in the eastern passages of level 3, the party stealthily retreated to the west and south after sufficient recovery (in 5E terms, they finished a long rest).  There was a straightforward battle with a chimera in a side cavern, and then the party scouted a ruined dwarven city sprawled across the floor of a very large cavern.  The ruins were inhabited by giant spiders and drow patrols.  They took refuge in an abandoned dwarven dwelling and surprised a lone drow elf while he was relieving himself.  He was quickly taken prisoner.

It's been a long time so I don't remember exactly the word they used to intimidate or cajole the lone sentry to guide them through the ruins, avoiding watchposts and getting past the drow garrison in the ruined city.  But they left the low level drow flunky once they got beyond the city and made their way through warren-like tunnels to the edge of hobgoblin territory.  Again there was more negotiation, this time convincing the hobgoblin captain in charge that they were also enemies of the drow and potential allies to the hobgoblin nation.  (By way of reminder, the player's objective on level 3 was to find their way to the underground pirate city of Skullport and they were hoping to get the location from the hobgoblins).

The Legion of Azrok is the name of the hobgoblin kingdom on level 3 of Undermountain.  I'm not familiar with the original Undermountain, but there were elements of Azrok that reminded me of the old Orcs of Thar Gazetteer from Mystara era Basic D&D.  Humanoid societies there were presented as mirrors of the human world; the hobgoblin stronghold, with its building sized banners festooned with the Legion's heraldry gave it the feel of an autocratic police state; militaristic hobgoblins patrolled with regularity, checking the "papers" of visitors like the KGB or gestapo.  The players were subjected to the surreal experience of being marched by uniformed hobgoblins to a chamber where bespectacled goblin artists hastily sketched "guest visas" for visitors to the hobgoblin nation.  It was good for some comedy.

It turns out the hobgoblin nation was in dire straits.  The drow elves had recently invaded from a lower level, driving the hobgoblins out of the eastern part of the ruined dwarven city and inflicting heavy casualties.  The Legion of Azrok was on a war-time footing.  They were casting about for allies.  An ambassador from Xanathar's Guild was being entertained, a mind flayer named Ulquess.  The pirate city of Skullport sat nearby to the west of Undermountain level 3, and apparently Xanathar now controlled the entire city.  The hobgoblins were open to an alliance with the beholder Xanathar.

In their audience with the hobgoblin king and his queen, Lurkana, the players offered to help the hobgoblins against the drow, in return for safe passage to Skullport.  However, they wanted a private audience with either the king or queen.  The news that a mind flayer ambassador was loose somewhere in the Hold of Azrok was chilling to them.  (Whether you're new to these game reports or not, there's been a campaign-long theme where mind flayers allied with Xanathar's guild are using intellect devourers to murder and replace prominent people topside in Waterdeep City).  The players were immediately concerned the hobgoblin court was compromised.

The characters had a small supply of Potions of Mind Reading in their inventory, going all the way back to when they were adventuring topside in Waterdeep during the Dragon Heist phase of the campaign (they got roped into a Zhentarim side mission that involved knocking over a potion shop).  Ace, their elven wizard, now used one of the potions during their private audience with Lurkana to verify neither she nor her guards secretly had mind flayer pets lurking in their skulls.

The players convinced the queen to let them stage a dramatic scene in front of the hobgoblin court where one of the characters gave a fiery speech about the dangers of an alliance with Xanathar while Ace used a second potion to scan the thoughts of the assembled courtiers, a mix of hobgoblins, goblins, and bugbears.  One of the bugbears was being controlled by an intellect devourer and made a break for it when Ace touched its mind.  There was a short duel, the assembled court saw the bugbear's empty cranium and the horror of the emerging intellect devourer, and orders were issued to have Ulquess, the Xanathar ambassador, arrested.

The players decided a patrol of hobgoblins was no match for a mind flayer.  "I've sent a patrol of my best soldiers, they're already bringing the ambassador back here" said the queen.  "No", said one of the players, "Your men are already dead".  So they went themselves to the ambassador's quarters.  They were ambushed by a fair number of denizens who had already been replaced by mind-controlled servitors.  The mind flayer had been busy preparing defenses around the embassy, and had defensive contingency plans in place.

When the dust settled, the mind flayer was long gone - probably levitating to the top of the cavern once it learned that its network of spies was compromised.  The players had to slaughter a half dozen intellect devourers and their mind-controlled goon bodies.  The threat ended, the hobgoblin court was grateful and the players were elevated from guest visas to permanent residents if they wished.

Over the next few days, the players learned more about the hobgoblin nation and the politics of level 3.  Interesting encounters included a demonic hobgoblin trader, and a mutated necromancer, exiled from the depths of Undermountain.  The necromancer was slowly building a zombie army to help tip the hobgoblins tip the scales against the drow.  Her stories and rumors gave the players a glimpse of what’s waiting in the depths of Undermountain.

Ultimately the hobgoblins decided to cease diplomatic relations with Xanathar's Guild and close the passages between Skullport and the Hold of Azrok.  A missive was drafted and prepared to be taken by courier to Skullport, to be presented to one of Xanathar's agents. As the players were desperate to go to Skullport, they volunteered to take the diplomatic letter to Skullport themselves.  We'll pick up the game reports next time with their first visit to Skullport.

Undermountain Level 3 Play Report: Commence the Beatings

Let's begin our first of several game sessions that centered around Undermountain level 3, the Sargauth Level.  (Sarguath is the slow moving river that flows south along the eastern edge of the map).  Ah yes, the map - I've included an image below to make it easier to follow along, and added some simple annotations.

You'll notice when the party comes down the stairs from level 2, they are immediately faced with a go left/go right type of decision.  Go left (east) and you'll find yourself in a small sub area that houses a drow temple, prisons, and various drow torture/sex rooms.  If the players go right, they'll make their way to the partially collapsed remain of an ancient dwarven city called Stromkuhldur, which is now a drow military outpost.  There are some "no-man's land" tunnels between the drow outpost and the other half of the ruined dwarven city, which is now a hobgoblin base called the Hold of Azrok.  I put a few stars on the left edge of the map where there are paths to Skullport, the underground pirate city.  By way of reminder, the party's overarching goal in Undermountain is to scout level 3 and find a way to Skullport, and once there discover how to get into a secretive thieves' guild headquartered beneath Skullport.  Finally on the map, there's the river itself, and several caves and lairs which can only be reached by boat across the river.

The level 3 map is very large, but also somewhat linear.  The river is the principle feature that gives the players freedom to skip elements of the linear path, as well as the ability to explore the caves and lairs on the far side.  As we go through our play reports, you'll see my players never really learned to exploit the river in their exploration of level 3.  Because of this, they were very challenged by the drow elf hold over the middle of the map.  Level 3 presented them with a good mix of exploration, combat, and roleplaying opportunities, and several sound defeats.  Let's get on with recounting their first one!

The drow elves on this level are led by a priestess who has converted a Dwarven temple into a spider temple; they've been kidnapping people, possibly even citizens from the surface, and using them to incubate spider eggs and give birth to giant spiders.  The temple is festooned with corpses in webs with burst egg sacs that grew out of the victims.  It's a fantastic set piece if you want to accentuate a horror vibe.  There are several clues in the caves and passages before the temple, such as a hapless adventurer who died from things bursting from within, to give the players some foreshadowing as they explore the eastern area.  At the time, the characters in our party were still Bosko (goliath barbarian), Virsk (human cleric), Alfred (human fighter), Ace (elf wizard), and Teukros (drow rogue).  Their attitude was in the vein of, "Yay, we're going to smash the guts out of some spiders…"  After a relatively easy time breezing through levels 1 and 2, they would be coming back to earth very soon.

As a DM who has his roots in the 1980's, let me tell you something I'm enjoying about running this 5E megadungeon:  many of the encounter areas consist of zones where a group of rooms contain like-minded or allied inhabitants.  When the players enter the zone, you can give the monsters a tactical response as warranted by their intelligence and organization.  It's a chance to be creative.  Throw the kitchen sink at the players if you want.  Have fun.

An old school mind-set is to be tough but fair; you are an adversarial DM from the perspective that you're not there to let the players win.  They make their choices, they roll the dice, the chips fall, you report on the results.  That's how the story gets made.  You are a neutral arbiter of their actions and how the inhabitants of the game world react.  When those inhabitants are highly intelligent, organized, and dangerous, watch out, players.  Carelessness can alert whole areas and find the adventuring party taking on a much bigger force than expected.  Many combats in 5E feel like two opposing sides bashing each other with styrofoam weapons.  Escalating the tactical situations as intelligent opposition forms against the players is where you get to feel Gygaxian again.

Maybe you can see where this is going… as the players explored the eastern dungeon, they tripped on the sentries for the drow temple (which included quaggoths and a drow elf mage) and got bogged down fighting mooks while the mage gathered reinforcements.  (In 5E terms, a "mage" is a 9th level wizard, so they usually have access to some serious damage spells like cloudkill and lightning bolt).  Cloudkill synergized well with the quaggoths, who are immune to poison, while the confined spaces maximized the impact of the cloudkill on the player characters.

This battle was many game sessions ago, so apologies if I'm fuzzy on the play-by-play.  The drow mage leveraged "greater invisibility" to stay invisible while attacking, after alerting reinforcements in the temple proper.  Once the players got crushed by a lightning bolt, Ace realized they were facing an invisible caster and used "detect invisible" so he could counterspell and duel the enemy wizard.  The barbarian and Alfred hacked their way to the entrance of the temple, carving up quaggoths, troglodytes, and giant spiders along the way.  Virsk, as a storm cleric, figured out that gust of wind could take care of any further cloudkill nonsense.

The big gun in the main temple was the drow priestess.  As she made her way to the front, she dropped more giant spiders on the party through "conjure animals".  I still haven't yet succeeded in a "summon demon" roll to bring forth a Yochlol in one of these drow priestess combats, I'm 0-4.  Ace was able to knock the drow mage to zero hit points, but no one was able to make it over to his body and finish him off; my players know not to assume that powerful NPC's are instantly dead at zero hit points.  By now, the party was fairly injured after smashing through a guard post of quaggoths, an assault of troglodytes, several waves of giant spiders, and dueling an invisible drow elf wizard.  When the drow priestess dropped an insect swarm on them, characters started to drop.  Alfred died; he got put at zero hit points, and it took the players long enough to drag his corpse out of the insect swarm that he accumulated enough 5E failed "death saves" to be truly dead.  The casters were out of spells and everyone was limping along.  I think Teukros, their own drow elf rogue, dropped a darkness spell behind them so they could retreat and regroup.

The players retreated to a nearby cavern where they activated their Daern's Instant Fortress to create a secure location to rest and recover.  Virsk had been holding onto a raise dead scroll which they used on Alfred.  (This was before they made Revivify a staple).  When the players emerged from the tower after a rest, they discovered it was completely webbed and besieged by phase spiders, which was a fun combat and a reminder they were camped entirely too close to the enemy.  The players quickly made their way away from the "temple side" of the dungeon and towards the ruined drow city.

I've seen other game reports regarding level 3 of Undermountain; getting roughed up by the drow priestess seems to be a common theme; I've even heard of full on TPK's in this area.  My players would face her a couple more times before finally quelling the threat.  Next time we'll pick up with the drow outpost and their visit to the Hobgoblins.