Undermountain tips?

[killianh]

I'm pulling a group together and they want to try out a module. Any good tips for running Undermountain?

[Murg]

There was a ton of adventures printed for Undermountain 2e, but in 3.5 the only module that I know of is "Expedition to Undermountain" which is, unfortunately, extremely underwhelming.

The main problem with the EtU adventure is that it's not really an adventure at all, it's more of a very loose framework for a campaign. They basically spend a few paragraphs describing each level, then show you a big map of that level with like 100 different rooms, and then they provide you with an encounter or two and basically say, "OK, here's 100 rooms, we filled up 2 of them, it's up to you, the DM, to do the work of filling up the other 98%."

Now the Undermountain stuff for 2e was pretty awesome. There were 2 boxed sets, and then some mini-adventures -- Maddgoth's Castle, the Lost Levels, I think a few more. These were fully complete adventures with everything the DM needed to run them. I ran a 2e Undermountain campaign that went great using just the Ruins of Undermountain boxed set.

So you might consider finding some of the 2e stuff cheap and converting it to 3e. Or better yet, maybe someone on the internet has already done the conversion for you, might be worth looking into.

[killianh]

So EtU isn't all that good to run then eh? Hmm