Are Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch hanging out in my room? ‘Cause it’s kinda filled with glee. This past week, the amazon.com fairy left a present on my door stoop: the D&D 4th edition Underdark supplement.
I’ve been waiting for the advent of this book for quite some time. My Monday night group (the Solar Knights) are venturing through the Underdark to get to another city on the surface world. The book arrived only two days before the group reached the Shallows, the first portion of the Underdark before it gets real. Just like your typical sojourn to your corner grocer to buy eggs, milk, and Vault, the adventurers encountered some filthy human slavers and some downright repugnant Troglodytes. In case you’re wondering, the elderly woman who’s paying in pennies in front of you? Troglodyte. Now, I thought I’d take the chance to geek out over the information presented therein.
For you fans of the acclaimed Drizzt series by Forgotten Realms author R.A. Salvatore, the Underdark supplement stats and describes much of what you’ve been waiting to see. The editors even develop some new cities and areas as well as flesh out some new nasties and obstacles. I must say, however, the most impressive descriptions are those of the various noble Drow houses in the Deeps (see above: where it gets real). The editors pay particular attention to the matrons of each house and make sure to paint them as maliciously as possible. Among some of my favorite details are those that warn DMs and PCs alike that the characters are not required to go through the Deeps.
Oh hell yes, they are. You know, if they want to make it through the Underdark to Porto Champlaign to stop the Baron de Marco from eviscerating the entire region with his insane malificence…. but I digress.
I’m not a cruel DM by any means but I love to challenge the players. Despite some of my initial reluctance (like making Magic Missile potentially miss — what have we come to?!), I freely admit that 4th edition does a wonderful job of setting up new and intricate obstacles for the characters to overcome; the supplements — especially the Underdark one — help to push these challenges to great new limits.
DMs out there: take your game to the next level… by descending several tiers below sanity into the Underdark.
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