Dead in Thay/Doom Vault Tips

[MadBear]

Morning Everyone,

Gonna be adapting the Doom Vault for my campaign, and really was hoping for advice on what others found they liked about it, and what tips/improvements others made to help it flow well.

The black/white gates seems like it could be confusing, and I'm curious if it's doable without giving players a chance to rest (outside of a few specific places they are able to do that).

[MadBear]

Gonna take a shot in the dark, and say that either:
A. Not many have run this dungeon
B. If they have, they don't have much advice to give.

[Debaterinarms]

I ran this dungeon last year, it was reasonably fun but very busy and the gates were confusing.

Some things I would do:

1. Be super explicit with the gates. Feel free to have Magic Mouth spells explain that areas are prohibited or that a given key is needed.
2. The final vault is a 3 dimensional map with different gravity fields, you might want to make a fold-able representation to explain it.
3. Get your random encounter tables in order (perhaps roll them ahead and plan them accordingly), this is an active research facility and high secrity vault for a totalitarian lich-state, it is not a static dungeon and will make no sense if run as one.
4. There are a lot of spell casters, which are harder to run, be familiar with their goals and abilities ahead of time so they aren't dummies (red wizards should not be dumb and unprepared).
5. The dungeon scales up well, it really has a lot of de-powered stuff, so it is easy to replace weakened monsters with the full power ones (which I totally did).
6. Familiarize yourself with possible social interactions, especially if disguises are in play (which they really should be) because otherwise this is a huge slog.
7. Tension around not letting the rest of Thay know what the PCs are doing can help you pace the adventure, you may want to plan what the duty rotation and check in schedule for the vault is and have NPCs and clues keep the players in the loop.

[MadBear]

I ran this dungeon last year, it was reasonably fun but very busy and the gates were confusing.

Some things I would do:

1. Be super explicit with the gates. Feel free to have Magic Mouth spells explain that areas are prohibited or that a given key is needed.
2. The final vault is a 3 dimensional map with different gravity fields, you might want to make a fold-able representation to explain it.
3. Get your random encounter tables in order (perhaps roll them ahead and plan them accordingly), this is an active research facility and high secrity vault for a totalitarian lich-state, it is not a static dungeon and will make no sense if run as one.
4. There are a lot of spell casters, which are harder to run, be familiar with their goals and abilities ahead of time so they aren't dummies (red wizards should not be dumb and unprepared).
5. The dungeon scales up well, it really has a lot of de-powered stuff, so it is easy to replace weakened monsters with the full power ones (which I totally did).
6. Familiarize yourself with possible social interactions, especially if disguises are in play (which they really should be) because otherwise this is a huge slog.
7. Tension around not letting the rest of Thay know what the PCs are doing can help you pace the adventure, you may want to plan what the duty rotation and check in schedule for the vault is and have NPCs and clues keep the players in the loop.

First, just let me say THANK YOU, those are exactly the kinda experiences/advice I was hoping for. I'm modifying the dungeon to happen in my own world using a Red Wizard group analog (and the BBEG is a dracolich that they're trying to stop).

With that said, the gates were definitely my biggest worry, and using something like Magic Mouth seems like a great way to make things more explicit.

Were the players really able to do ok with so few long rests (it seems like the dungeon is designed to prevent a lot of resting), or did you allow rests and just repopulate areas that took damage.

A

[jojosskul]

One thing to keep in mind, this dungeon was designed for MULTIPLE parties to run through it simultaneously for some weird competitive DnD thing for DnD Next if I remember right. It is entirely possible to run through only one or two sections of the dungeon and be able to reach the end area.

With that in mind, unless you REALLY want to, don't prep the whole thing at once. And if you have a couple of particular areas of the dungeon that really strike your fancy/are fun for you, consider limiting where the party is able to enter the dungeon gate wise to help nudge them in that direction. They still may go somewhere completely different, but in my opinion EVERYONE will have more fun if you focus in on the parts of the dungeon YOU like.

I say this having PREPPED this, but not RUN it. The DnD group that was headed towards Dead in Thay broke up before we got there. Happens sometimes. Hope you have fun!