Canonfire!

Thu Mar 13, 2008 7:15 pm The Oerth Below

The current GH campaign I'm involved with has dealings within the Oerth Below (aka The Underdark) and I was wanting to get some ideas off of the rest of your who've done something similar.

I am not a fan of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and as such I am scarcely interested in using resources from it.

To this extent, I seek council from you all.

Please, ideas?

Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:00 pm

you could try looking at the 2e Product "The Night Below" for some ideas, it was a decent underdark heavy boxed set.

Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:18 pm

I would use all the background info in the 1st edition dungeoneer's survival guide hardback book.

Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:00 am

There's also the Underoerth -a work in progress thread.

The Runes of the Dwur timeline(RD) has lots of underdark material:
http://hem.passagen.se/warlich/Greyhawk/World/the_world__greyhawk.html -> Runes (timeline) and Migrations (map)
and here:
http://billg350.tripod.com/races_of_greyhawk.htm

Check out the timeline and the map for the dwarven migration which should have occured largely underground. The Runes of the Dwur material also ties nicely into the 2E accessory Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, which is itself based on the artifact in the 1E DMG.

Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:10 pm

The funny thing is that most of the FR underdark stuff was inspired by the classic Vault of the Drow adventure. If you have it, that adventure as well as Descent into the Depths of the Earth are all great sources of inspiration.
The already mentioned Night Below boxed set was probably one of the best 2nd ed. underdark sources. If the campaign is going to be Mind Flayer heavy the 2nd ed. sourcebook The Illithiad was also pretty cool (lots of fluff, and the crunch wouldn't be too hard to convert).
For the current edition, Lords of Madness updates a lot of the Night Below and Illithiad stuff. I didn't check out any of the 3rd ed. underdark sourcebooks because they weren't needed in my home campaign. I do remember a really good article in Dragon 298 about Erelhei-Cinlu the Drow city (the whole issue is Drow themed and is a good one).
Hope that helps.

Mon Mar 17, 2008 2:40 pm

Though it'll likely get me crucified for saying so on these boards, and though I've often stated my dislike of FR in general, I must admit I actually use a number of items from the 3.5e FR material. Call me a heretic, but I find quite a lot of it useful and some of it even reminds me a bit of Old School GH. I highly recommend cannibalizing the FR books for the juicy bits.

Wed Mar 19, 2008 3:19 pm

There's also some great articles on Canonfire like other drow enclaves or something like that :)

Mike