One of my players is a Hill Dwarf cleric of Selune, one of her goals is to 'free' the Duergar from the Underdark & convert them to Selunites.

Obviously, she can't just waltz in and convert. But I'm honestly torn on whether this should be possible at all. I'm struggling to find some way for one cleric (who's not even a Duergar) to convince an entire civilization to abandon the god & homeland they've had for generations, especially one as hostile as the Duergar.

I've already got a subplot for this character that is relevant to Selune & Shar, so her character will still have important, relevant things to do.

This player is usually very easygoing with their characters, and I can;t remember them ever getting annoyed at another DMs decision regarding them (our group rotates DMs every few weeks so we have a few campaigns going). We've been playing for 3 years together, so we're close friends away from the table too. I can't imagine the situation causing any major falling outs or anything.

That being said, I want to incorporate as many ideas that the players give me as possible, but I'm struggling to square this circle with the lore & culture presented in the book. Should I just make this goal pretty much impossible for her? If you were a player would you find this too railroad-y, or be annoyed that their character's goal is impossible? Any ideas would be really helpful!

Last week my party meet with zuggtmoy, and In the end the cleric died.

Jimjar couldn't do much, and he is with the party from the start, he likes them and i think he would like to help more.

One of the party is dead, and 2 cities of the underground are ruined, and in my point of view him being a deity and not doing shit, waiting patiently till the end of the campaign just seems bad.

Should I just wait for the reveal in the finale? Or just I just reveal it now?

Ive created divine rules, so that he is limited in his avatar, but I at least would like for him to tell them that he is a god, and that he can kill his avatar to go back to his plane and get more powers to help them in other non direct ways.

Howdy.

Background; My players have just left Gauntlgrym after the 67th session of the campaign- If you can't tell we take our time, get in the weeds with things, and I homebrew a ton of extra content that I weave in to flesh out the player's backstories and such.

Setup; I've had Bruenor advise the PCs to travel using the 6 Riding Lizards the Emerald Enclave gifted them as a scouting force, riding 1 - 3 hours ahead of their miniature-army. In game the rationalization is that the army is a huge loud force that attracts a lot of attention, and no one at any of the locations they're bound to go to will take a force of 40 showing up on their doorstep kindly. Out of game, this would allow me to do on-the-road encounters without 30 backup NPCs slogging combat down, it still allows the PCs to interact with their force during rests, and I can possibly play with some "this happened while you were away" shenanigans using the faction NPCs.

Question; So the main question is- What kind of random encounters, inter-party dillemas, rug-pulls, and challenges should I introduce on the way from Gauntlgrym to Mantol Derith and from Mantol Derith to Gravenhollow and beyond? The PCs have outgrown the basic challenges presented in Chapter 2, and while I'll assuredly throw some beefier enemies at them for the occasional filler encounter, what else can I do that has a bit more bite?

I'm playing with the idea of Harper vs Zhentarim NPCs getting into fights and the players having to settle disputes, a Doppelganger NPC the players picked up causing trouble by posing as an Emerald Enclave soldier, possible betrayal from one of the factions at some point, etc.

With the PCs both stronger, and in command of a sizeable force, random Grick encounters and foraging for food are childs play- Survival is no longer a challenge it seems, so how do you pad the time between zones?

Short Version of the question; How do you handle Stool in high-level play/the 2nd half of the campaign?

Longer version; My party has 3-4 NPC companions as of the end of CH 7 (Glabbagool, Derindil, Stool, and a homebrew NPC tied to a PC backstory). Stool, like at many tables, has sort of become the party's mascot, and one of my players in particular is obsessed with him- Likely having her character sacrifice themselves if Stool was ever in mortal danger.

Now that the party is in Gauntlgrym, I plan to have the NPC companions that parted ways with the party during their 3 months of topside downtime come back into the picture. Problem is while I have character arcs for some of the NPCs, I don't know what to do with Stool's personality or his stat sheet so he isn't this useless liability in the background.

My party is close to the end of the first half of the campaign, and im really confused on what to do in this little section.

THE PARTY: will be lvl 7 after escaping, tiefling (winged) fiend warlock, goblin shadow sorcerer, firbolg wildfire druid and orc ancestral barbarian (who is ront btw).

I want a short adventure in the surface but i have no idea what could be cool and fun to do, i was thinking of the lost caverns of tsojacanth, to give the demonomicon to the players, but it is to dificult and long to do and it has to much loot.

Anyone have any recommendation of adventure or change in the adventure mentioned????

What are some cool changes that i can make to iggwilv´s cool lair????

Last night was the big reveal at Sloobludop. I ran the encounter as a skills challenge.

What went well:

The party was rolling poorly and the tension was high. Our cleric had convinced Stool to stay in Ploops shack as they went to pose as bait for the ritual. As Ploop attacked Blopp and the the Kuo-toa began fighting amongst themselves, the cleric realized they had to rescue Stool before they could try to escape.

The party was rolling poorly. They had 2 of 4 successes but ultimately accumulated 3 failures as Demogorgon came ashore and laid waste to Slubloodop. The party was buried under debris as the remainder of the Kuo-toa fled or were destroyed of Demogorgon.

After the chaos, the party was dug out of the debris by Ilvara and the drow who shackled the party and made the decision to take them to Menzoberranzan.

I should have ended the session there.

Where I screwed up:

After some disoriented travel time, the drow made camp in a small cavern. Ilvara and Asha took their lizard steeds ahead to Menzoberranzan to make arrangements for the prisoners arrival leaving 4 drow guards with he prisoners.

The wizard created a distraction as the druid wild shaped into a snake to slip the shackles. Jimjar, who had vanished during Demogorgons attack, trailed the drow and used a torch stalk as a flash bang surprising 2 of the drow.

The party was able to kill 2 of the drow easily. The other was rolling well.... so I fudged a couple of rolls. Because of the fudged rolls, the party was able to defeat the remaining drow.

Now the party is on their way back to Sloobludop to assess the damage and try to find a boat to head to Neverlight, which was their original plan.

I panicked because I hadn't planned appropriately and now the party effectively suffered a minor inconvenience where there should have been dire consequences.

Moving forward:

Im trying to think of ways to make the failure more meaningful despite my poor judgement. I am considering having the party potentially get lost on the way back to Slubloodop. Or, if they get back to Slubloodop, all the boats are destroyed along with some of their equipment that got left behind when they were buried.

Im open to suggestions. If you made the same mistake I did, how would you take action to make reestablish meaningful consequences to their initial failure?

So, my players did some not so wise stuff and will reach Mantol-Derith later then expected.

I thought about the fight in Mantol-Derith to have ended or at leasted more thinks have happend.
Has anyone tired this and how do you think, Mantol-Derith looks after the fight?

The Zentarim and the Drow will for sure be at war, too. I don't think, the Duergar will get a total win against the deep gnomes. Would the black gem also lead to a war between Zents/Drow and Gomen/Duegar?

Started at lvl 1 only have 3 players, players escaped the holding cell they were in and killed 2 Quagoths we called session 1 over and they had enough XP to lvl up so I let them. If they get enough XP in the middle of the session or if we don't get out of Vellynvelve next session and they have enough XP should I let them. Or does this trivialize Vellynvelve?

Half of them are players that have been playing for 1 to 6 years and half of them are new to D&D but were really into the setting and the history of Out of The Abyss.

Firstly, I've reduced the races to the most known ones to not overwhelm with options.

Secondly, I've made a deck of spellcards simplyfing their effects to be more understandable in some cases and faster to read

Thirdly, I've made a "table of difficulty" of each class and subclass available on the campaign (I've chosen only 3 subclasses for each class). Mostly based on my experience and the experience of my party members which have the most experience on the game.

I plan to make a session 0 and make all the characters together.

A thing that was on my mind was all the npcs from Velkynvelve. Like, how to manage 10+ npcs and the party

Any other suggestion either with preparation or running the game?

Thanks for reading! :3.

I know its quite a challenge but I am ready to face it.

So I need to delay my game by a session before the big reveal in sloobludop. The party is already there and are meeting with both Ploopploopeen and Bloppblippodd (split party woohoo). for this session I want to give them things to do around the city to still earn XP and maybe get some combat in but not yet make it to the official sacrifice. Open to whatever crazy ideas you might have. already want them to visit Sloopidoop (who is a gulper rancher as well as a SOB member). Let me know any fun encounters you ran in Sloobludop that wasn't from the books!

I'll be starting this adventure tonight. I'm curious how your party escaped Velkynvelve

It seems dropping from 100' above is deadly at best. But other than using the lift, there seems to be little else. Jumping into the spider webs still leaves the PCs high above the cavern floor (still subject to fall damage)

How have your parties escaped?

My player died last session and is now in the Abyss thanks to Grim Hollow transformations. The character has been a demon since the start of the campaign, and we’ve played around 20 sessions so far. They are level 11, and the rest of the party wants to travel to the Abyss to rescue them and bring them back to the mortal world.

I need ideas for a multi-session adventure: dungeons, encounters, and anything that could make this storyline interesting. I’ve been DMing for about 5 years, but we’ve never gone into the Abyss before because I felt it was too chaotic to run—but I think I’m ready now.

Could Out of the Abyss help with this, or should I look elsewhere? I’m already familiar with the lore—demon lords, hierarchy, the Blood War, and the layers—but I’m unsure where the party could actually find the player.

The party is considering seeking out Tasha for advice on demons or searching for the Demonomicon, possibly even trading for the player’s soul.

Hey guys, this is my first adventure as a new dm, and I'm a little unsure how I should go about notes/prep. I know it's different for everyone, just bare with me.

So I'm using Obsidian, a really good note taking app. I am currently going through CHP. 2, and writing stuff down so I can easily look it up. But it just keeps fucking going. I thought my neat little "travel" section map would just be max 10 individual notes. It's getting a little difficult to maneuver. Would it be better to divide the notes into chapters going forward? Or are there any other cool tips and tricks I can gain some inspiration from?

So far I think I may run this in a homebrew world to allow more backstory flexibility

Hi all,

I ended yesterday's session early as we were about to head into a potential TPK and (as I was not feeling well) I decided to not rush into anything and think on what was about to happen. I would like your takes on the situation by way of a second opinion, specifically on whether it is unfair.

I'll try to briefly summarize but feel free to ask if you want more details.

We are well into part 2 of the campaign and the party just completed the shopping list, except for the grimoire. The party returned to Araj to hand the materials to Vizeran.

Months ago, the party asked Vizeran to create a scabbard for the sunsword (now lost) and handed him several gemstones to embed/use in its creation. Unbeknownst to the party, one of these gemstones is the one that contains Fraz Urb'luu. The player who took the gem did get an additional madness when he touched the gem but he never realised that it was because of the gem so they have no clue about the demon lord. When Vizeran worked on the gem, I rolled and he got the madness effect "My perception of reality doesn't match anyone else's. It makes me prone to violent delusions that make no sense to anyone else". I ruled that, if left alone, this would make him extremely paranoid.

When the heroes returned to Araj months later, they met with Vizeran in his sanctum. I had decided that his apprentice, Grin, had been replaced by a Rakshasa (I found somewhere that these are servants of the prince of deception) and that he had placed several glyphs of warding and a symbol spell, and that he would use an illusion to masquarade for him.

The party entered and the paladin sniffed out the fiendish presence of the Rakshasa. When Vizeran was unconvinced that his apprentice was a fiend, the cleric tried to cast a protection from good and evil spell on him (or his illusion) but he stepped on one of the glyphs. This prompted the paladin to try and smite the illusion. Their goblin NPC (never failing to roll insanely well) threw a dagger into the invisible wizards simulacrum (he is an insanely paranoid archmage after all). The wizard trapped Vizerans simulacrum in a wall of force while the fighter/ranger/barbarian unleashed on the rakshasa and a battle ensued. They triggered another glyph of warding, and were incredibly confused when the illusion of a beholder appeared to hover next to the tower, looking into the window, but otherwise the battle went well. Then the wizard got charmed to hand over the ritual components they had gathered and then someone stepped onto the symbol and the paladin, cleric, ranger/fighter/barb and the goblin failed their saves and went insane. The wizard handed over the components and then declared she intended to use a bigby's hand to grab the PC's and take them down the elevator. I couldn't really see a reason why Vizeran would allow her to leave (there was also some banter during the fight about killing eachother) and I don't like her odds. I ended the session to consider what Vizeran and the rest are going to do but it looks like a TPK is not unlikely. It would be a bit anti-climactic to end the campaign like this but we did agree beforehand that the gloves were off and we were playing for real so I'm cool with it potentially ending like this. But I don't want it to end because I was unfair to the players. So, what do you think?

Amateur DM, my party just left sloobludop for the first time and planning out darklake travel im seeing a lot of “group save” going around. Im not familiar with this mechanic and cant find anything on it. How does it work?
Also my session starts in 20-50 minutes…

I'm looking at the travel time table and wanted to ask you guys for clarification on something. When going from Velkynvelve to Gracklstugh it takes 28 days. Going from Velkynvelve to Sloobludop it takes 8 days, plus 20 days from Sloobludop to Gracklstugh takes a total of 28 days. Does that assume you're using a boat on the Darklake when going from Sloobludop, or is it assuming land based travel?

Anyone know what the deal with that door is? It doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere. Area 10 does say that the northwest entrance has a locked gate which isn't on the map, so maybe that's what it is, but it's definitely not blocking off area 10.

Hey y’all,

I’ll try to keep this general to avoid spoilers. If your character is named Morgran, Eugene, Savras, or Brux, stop reading this now!

I’ve been running OotA for a while now, and the party is about to reach the mid-point of the campaign (about halfway through level 6). I’ve been running the game in a somewhat open-ended manner and have let the party forge their own path after they left Sloobludop. They spent a bunch of time wandering the underdark, found and played out the events in Neverlight Grove, and eventually found their way to Blingdenstone where they are currently about to fight the big bad of the location. So far so good, but moving forward from here has me questioning things.

To keep it brief, this is the issue I’ve run into: The party is desperate to reach the surface, and the gnomes have offered them guidance in this matter. In the module, it states the gnomes know of a nearby tunnel that leads to the surface, and the party is eager to take that path. The problem is, their current path to this point never passed through Gracklstugh due to some errors on my end regarding settlement locations.

So my question to y’all is this: how essential is it for the party to visit Gracklstugh prior to their journey to the surface? Is it a location they absolutely must visit, or can they get away with making a bee line to the surface without going there? I know there’s a lot of cool stuff there, but I question their willingness to stay in the underdark since they’ve been promised a means of leaving it much closer to where they are. If it is absolutely essential, y’all have any ideas as to how I can convince them the location is worth trekking to? I’d like to avoid railroading them to it unless I absolutely have to.

Yeah, I probably should have thought this out a bit better, but I’m well past the point of having them stumble upon it during normal travel. Any advice is welcome.

We started September 17th, 2016.

Nearly 10 years in, and we are finally approaching the final battle with the Demon Lords in Menzoberranzan.

(We'll hopefully be in the battle by Christmas, they are making the dark heart now. I would LOVE it if we could be starting the fight in September, right at the decade point of the campaign! We'll see...)

Artris, Ulzur, Tarandus, Clank, Brambecken, and Dunvar: READ NO FURTHER**.**

I’ve got ideas. But I could definitely use yours too!!!

(TL;DR at the end)

Context:

• I have six players, and they are all remote over Zoom and Fantasy Grounds. For sound, I’m running Monument Studios Fantasy+, Voicemod, and Syrinscape.
• My players are level 16 and 17 now because of all the other tom-foolery I’ve added into this campaign. They are ultimate bad asses who basically cannot be killed unless I throw the damn kitchen sink at them. I pull no punches, and I sometimes even dynamically make encounters harder because if I didn’t, they wouldn’t be any fun. We’ve loved the "kitchen sink" approach so far!
• The players WILL at some point break a homebrew item I gave them called the Tridius Gem. This will unleash Faezress on the whole city for the next hundred years, putting “Potent Faezress” near the epicenter that causes 2x wild magic surges. When the gem breaks, I’m planning a really fun, psychedelic event. I’ve even got their wives on board for this part, doing things IRL for them (like handing them physical props or writing messages on bathroom mirrors) to solve a fun puzzle and return to "reality."
• Teleporting in Menzo is already a big no-no (120 lightning damage), but also teleportation magic in our campaign has become more and more wonky the last two years or so. The farther you teleport, the farther off-course you end up. They’ll find out why in the epilogue.

The Final Battle Mechanics

We are switching between two separate combats: one between the Demon Lords, and one with the Characters dealing with consequences wrought during the previous Demon Lord Round. This continues until one Demon Lord remains, which the players then face head-to-head.

1. Demon Lord (DL) Rounds: These DL "Rounds" are comprised of two combat rounds each. The players each control one of 6 Demon Lords: Demogorgon, Orcus (who they have BIG beef with), Fraz-Urb'luu, Malcanthet, Obox-ob, and Kostchtchie.

• Each DL has an Army and an Elite General (think of these as two different legendary actions that get added to their legendary actions list, but they are also units they can send across the battlefield to harass others).
• They’ll bid for which DL they want to play as the session before the battle. A quick Liar's dice game breaks disputes.
• DL combat is on a hex grid over the map of the whole city of Menzo. Ranges during DL Rounds are simplified to NEAR, MID, and FAR.
• Secrets: I’m giving some of them secret weapons or intel. For example, Orcus knows he has Acererak’s skull on his belt (powering his elite general ability). If someone removes the skull, he loses that power. That kind of stuff. Each DL gets one secret weapon power I homebrewed that can be used once during the fight, I will reveal these to each person in private to preserve the element of surprise.

Optional Mechanic I am toying with: Each time a DL is defeated, the victor is healed to full. Vizeran will send a frantic message that Narbondell is reinvigorating the victors with the life force of the fallen. To stop the healing, they have to wash "innocent blood" on Narbondel (in reality, just a drop will do, but I want to see the moral dilemma play out). If they stop the healing, they also accidentally stop the 120-damage teleportation penalty, meaning the final victor might be able to flee if they aren't quick!

2. Character Rounds After each round of DL fighting, we switch to the player characters. I’ll bring in the DL actions from the previous two DL combat rounds to create environmental hazards. If a DL stomped at initiative 15 in their round, the building the players are on starts to collapse at initiative 15 in this round.

• They’ll face 5 Encounter Scenes: 3 hard and 2 easy. Each Encounter Scene will happen upon return from a DL Round to a Character Round.
• I want to give them tasks with short time limits. If they fail the task, they suffer damage or madness, but the "Encounter Scene" changes regardless.
• Example: Encounter Scene 1 is saving slaves from a burning auction block. After the next DL Round, Encounter Scene 2 (regardless of if they saved them) moves to fighting atop a mushroom forest where the caps are explosive. They have to cross the field in two rounds or get scorched by an approaching bone dragon.

IRL puzzle: When the Tridius Gem breaks, I’m taking them on a trip. I’m using Xsplit to transition their screens. It starts with the screens going black and the sound of winter winds. I’ll tell them they are standing on a frozen ocean tundra. When they break the "ice," they’ll see a surreal video underneath.

They’ll plunge in and find themselves at a gambling table where a mysterious man is very serious about winning the next hand against them, then a "Library of Babel" screen with a little lore dump if they spot it, then a "Windows 93" desktop with files like Glabagool.npc or Reality.exe. Clicking these will have real effects later on- like bringing back an old favorite NPC (Glabagool the gelatinous cube that I voiced as Christopher Walken) to appear suddenly in the final fight, or Reality.exe triggering a fake Blue Screen of Death that kicks off the IRL puzzle with their wives helping. Each guy will get a clue, and one of them has to pour out some soil and touch it, to tether them back to reality and bring us back to combat.

“Crazy!” Glabagool says as you suddenly notice him standing among you. lol

TL;DR: 10-year OOTA campaign ending in Menzo. My remote players control the Demon Lords in alternating rounds between DLs and Player Characters. Breaking a homebrew gem triggers a reality-warping sequence involving digital transitions and IRL puzzles involving their wives/partners at home. Looking for any extra ideas to juice up the cinematic chaos and bring this sucker to an epic (and fun!) conclusion.

Even though I feel like a grizzled vet, this campaign is actually my first time DMing, so I’m open to any advice to make sure this lands with a bang when the chaos starts!!

For those interested in the "How" we’ve been at this one adventure for 10 years:

"How so long!?": We played once a month for the first year, then moved to once every two weeks. We don't handwaive travel- we roleplay the days. I’ve added the Fall of Cyrog, Tomb of Horrors, and a whole year's worth of homebrew backstory tie-up-loose-ends adventures during the Surface World break between the two halves of the book.

"Same players the whole time!?": Some of them! I think the newest member has been with us for at least 5 years. Two of them have been there since session 1, but most of the others joined by Gracklestugh, nearly 8 years ago. I have found any more than 6 players is less fun, as at one point I had 8 active players!! 6 players is OP for them (very tough to make encounters dangerous), but overall it's great- my goldilocks zone.

"Do you have any advice?": YES! TONS! I also probably have the most OOTA resources of anyone on the planet. I am a graphic designer and an avid mapmaker, so I have made OODLES of my own OOTA resources that have yet to grace the web. Once I finish this campaign, I will make a google drive and a mega-thread for my advice and tips! I also have VERY detailed campaign recap notes written like a novel- if anyone is interested I could post those too, but they are novel-length too so...

Final Disclaimer: I wrote ALL of this post myself, and used AI to format it for easier reading. None of the text came from AI- it was given strict instructions not to change anything I wrote, just to reformat it for easier consumption: bullet points and bold titles etc.)

Hello! A player of mine is a former slave from Menzoberanzzan and is in Gracklstugh seeking leads on dirt against her captors. She has a lead on a couple new NPCs who run a slave trade and also have underhanded ties to the Grey Ghosts. I'd like them to require her to do something for them to get the information she wants, but I'd like it to complicate the goings-on of the Gracklstugh plot and further the difficult decision-making they need to do. Any thoughts? I've been wracking my brain but not coming up with much.

Am using Gracklstugh revised, but I'm happy to do whatever if it works.

As the title says, I’m looking for reasons that a PC would be in Velkynvelve. Since it’s an outpost that ends up being a stop on the way to Menzobarranzan, any creature captured would likely be closer to Velky than Menzo. Assuming my PCs will be surface dwellers, why would Velkynvelve be the first logical stop? I’m thinking surface towns in the relative vacinity, or drow lore I’m not considering.

A little context. My players are halfway through the Gracklestugh chapter. They're working with both Errde and Gartokar/Therberchaud to investigate in the Whorlstone tunnels. They went in and managed to kill Droki in the Raucus Mesa but never went farther in the tunnels. They brought his corpse to Errde. She then proceed to tell them she needs more proof the he was working/helping dark forces. One of the players was tired of working for her so she(the pc) tried to charm Errde to let them go. It failed miserably. Errde decided to put them in prison and decide if she will sell them back to the drow. My players are not the kind of people that take initiatives so they didn't resist thir arrest and are kind of ok with the fact that they'll be sold back to the drow since they will finally leave the city.

What would you do during prison time?

Would you let them abandon Gracklestugh and skip the rest of the city?

Would you have Gartokar bail them out to seek the egg?

​

The part consist of a firbolg wildfire druid, tiefling(winged) fiend warlock, shadow sorcery goblin, and ront as a ancestral guardian barbarian, they are all lvl 5 and i used the silken paths as they were running out of a very angry themberchaud destroing part of gracklestugh. They were very sckeptical of everything in the webs and decided to ignore the poor halfling locked in the cacoon of webs, I am not going to ask them to do something they dont want to, but I really want to give them another chance of finding the lost tomb, but i also dont want to take out the impacts of their choices. Is there any way that I can put some hint and some way of them finding the tomb?

(Sorry for the bad english, im brasilian and am still working on my english)