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IN THE NOVELS

From 1994-2004, the Yawning Portal also appeared in a number of tie-in novels and short stories (with one additional appearance in 2009). Here’s a brief round-up of unique facts about the inn established in these novels. As stories, of course, these include a number of small descriptive details.

WATERDEEP (Troy Denning, aka Richard Awlinson, 1989)

• “Yawning Portal” not only refers to the well; it’s also a “tongue-in-cheek reference to the tendency of those who indulged in the tavern’s fare to tell tall tales.”
• Durnan’s office has a couch.

Note: This is a novelization of the events from FRE3 Waterdeep. Or vice versa, with both being released more or less simultaneously and shared passages of text.

ELFSONG (Elaine Cunningham, 1994)

• There is a secret tunnel between Blackstaff Tower and a “secret backroom” at the Yawning Portal which is hidden behind the storeroom. (It’s one of what are apparently a network of such tunnels, including another that runs to Piergeiron’s Palace. The secret room is used for meetings between certain Lords of Waterdeep (including Khelben, Laeral, Mirt, Kitten (Nymara Scheiron), and Brian the Swordmaster).
• There are live musical performances in the taproom, including by the Masked Minstrel.

REALMS OF THE UNDERDARK (“A Slow Day in Skullport,” Ed Greenwood, 1996)

• There are multiple wine cellars in the Yawning Portal, of which one is the “deepest” and home to bottles covered with “gray, furry dust.” It also contains various trophies from Durnan’s swordswinging days, including a lich’s periapt, a pair of tusks from a giant orc, and the “swords of fallen foes” (many of which gleam with enchantments). Some of the stone pillars within this cellar have secret vaults concealed within them, including Durnan’s old adventuring sword and a magic ring.
• These lower chambers (and possibly the entire inn?) are warded against teleportation (and possibly other magic).
• Belaerd, a black licorice whisky from Sheirtalar, is among the Portal’s offerings.
• Durnan is often known to sing ancient battle ballads in the taproom.
• There are enchanted, floating baskets that are used to move drinks and other supplies around the Yawning Portal.

REALMS OF THE ARCANE (“The Grotto of Dreams,” Mark Anthony, 1997)

• The taproom well is called the “Well of Entry.”

THORNHOLD (Elaine Cunningham, 1998)

• The tunnel connected to the Wet Well (which is here a hole in the floor covered by a board) leads more directly to Skullport.

Note: It’s possible that the “secret door” in Skullport (1999) was attempting to reference this passage from the 1998 novel. But the details are sufficiently different, that I don’t think so.

ELMINSTER IN HELL (Ed Greenwood, 2001)

• Durnan keeps a crossbow behind the bar.

WINDWALKER (Elaine Cunningham, 2003)

• There is a secret back door which is magically concealed using a powder gifted to Durnan by Khelben Arunsun and probably leads directly into the inn’s stables. (After closing the door, you rub the powder into the gap around the door and it vanishes.)

REALMS OF THE DRAGONS (“The Keeper of Secrets,” Ed Greenwood, 2004)

• The Yawning Portal has a well-oiled back door which “swings wildly” in Mirt’s wake and leads into the kitchen.
• There’s a trapdoor in the taproom with a spell on it that only lets Durnan open it. The chute inside leads down into “unseen depths” and Durnan dumps corpses down it. “Something that slobbered” waits their arrival.
• Orders are not “bawled.” (You get one warning and then you get ejected.)
• The taproom is lit by candle wheels hung overhead.
• You might see a lance-and-lion game board set up on the smooth-polished bar. (Mirt often plays with Durnan.)
• Black Sail is an ale on tap.
• Durnan keeps a “baldric heavy with warblades” on a peg on the wall behind the bar.

DOWNSHADOW (Erik Scott Deble, 2009)

This novel takes place in 1479 DR.

• The climb from the bottom to the top of the well is described as “a bow shot—a long hard climb.”
• There’s a harness at the end of the rope in the well.

ENDLESS QUEST: TO CATCH A THIEF (Matt Forbeck, 2018)

The Yawning Portal briefly appears in this choose-your-own-adventure book, but contains no detailed description of the tavern. (Although the character is told that there’s a secret route to Skullport there.)

LATER EXPEDITIONS TO UNDERMOUNTAIN

The Yawning Portal next appears in the 3^rd Edition City of Splendors (2004), still listed as building C48 (inn, Class C, 3 floors). The entry describing the inn is quite brief, but does state:

Yawning Portal: Built atop the ruins of Halaster’s Hold, the Yawning portal inn (C48) contains the primary entrance to Undermountain, a large well that drops down into Undermountain’s first dungeon level (UM L1). Secondary entrances are found in the inn as well, including a link to the inn’s less well known “wet” well and a passage leading out of the Yawning Portal’s cellars.

There is also an NPC named Adama Miiralin, who’s a regular at the Yawning Portal. I am not attempting a survey of all the various patrons of the Portal over the years, but Adama is notable because he keeps a record of everyone entering Undermountain.

Expedition to Undermountain (2007) includes additional details on the Yawning Portal, including what I believe is the first reference to the city “exiling the worst of its criminals to the depths of Undermountain” through the Well of Entry.

• The Yawning Portal is “built of stone, with a slate roof and an upper floor of guest rooms.” The inn seems to have lost a floor in this description, but later adds one instead by saying “there are three floors of guest rooms.”
• The tavern’s sign reads “The Yawning Portal,” with the words deeply carved into a silvery piece of weathered wood suspended from two short loops of black chain suspended from a black-painted iron pole above the front door.

The front door leads directly into the common room where:

• The floor is “well worn boards.”
• Word paneling adorns the walls, with an elbow rail and rich blue tapestries hung at intervals.
• The furniture is made from heavy, stout wood.
• Some of the tables have been built around the wooden pillars that hold up the ceiling and can’t be moved.
• The Well of Entry is now referred to as the “Entry Well.”
• Those who would journey into Undermountain are referred to as “The Called” and there are often hopefuls looking to join or form adventuring groups in the Yawning Portal.
• The crossbow below the bar is now a double crossbow, loaded with sleep arrows, and has been joined by a rod of flame extinguishing and a +2 seeking and returning handaxe (although Durnan often just “hurls a metal tankard when most brawls break out”).
• Durnan will dose drinks with sleeping powder to take care of rowdy drunks.

The Entry Well:

• “[T]apers as it descends, from 40 feet across at the top to 30 feet across at the bottom.”
• 200 feet deep. (Although this is possibly only the length of the rope, in which case its depth does not appear to be given. In any case, the depth returns to 140 feet in all future references.)
• The rope has a bucket attached to the end of it.
• A pulley system allows Durnan to raise or lower the bucket; there’s also a release lever that will drop the rope to the bottom of the well.

The upper floors are reached by “steep wooden stairs opening off the common room.” In winter, these rooms are heated by barrels filled with fireplace-heated stones that are placed at the end of every floor’s central hall.

Expedition to Undermountain also includes a good deal of detailed information about particular patrons and the fourteen live-in staff members. Some of these staff members sleep in the stables, while others take unoccupied guest rooms on the third floor (or relocate to cots in the cellar if the inn is full). Durnan’s family also live in rooms on the top floor.

Our next major expedition to Undermountain is Halls of Undermountain (2012), a 4^th Edition adventure which takes place in 1479 DR. The new or altered details for the Yawning Portal here are:

• “[T]hree upper floors of guest rooms…” (This is almost certainly just a slip-up, but it’s been a hundred years so you could certainly imagine that at some point Durnan added an extra floor.)
• The inn is now run by Durnan the Sixth, descendant of the original Durnan.
• The entrance/exit cost for the Entry Well is now 10 gp. (Inflation will kill you. Literally.)
• No healing or help is provided to returning adventurers, but Durnan will send a runner to fetch a cleric for no extra charge.
• The Wet Well is now referred to as the Wet Way. It’s located in the cellar instead of a backroom, where a curtained archway hides the well. The well descends uninterrupted to a cistern, but a separate passage leads up from the cistern into Undermountain. (Durnan VI has no idea the Wet Way connects to Undermountain.)
• At least some of the Yawning Portal’s rooms are suites.

There is another goodly selection of Yawning Portal regulars detailed here.

Also in the 4^th Edition era, the 2010 D&D Encounters organized play adventure Halaster’s Lost Apprentice also took the players to the Yawning Portal:

• The taproom has glass windows.
• The backdoor is (a) visible from the taproom and (b) leads into the alley behind the Yawning Portal.
• This alley, inexplicably, has a canal running down the middle of it. (Waterdeep doesn’t have canals. Although maybe it does now: The 4^th Edition-era map of Waterdeep infamously forgot to turn on some layers before exporting, resulting in all the streets and Castle Waterdeep disappearing.)

5TH EDITION ERA

The Yawning Portal does not appear in the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, making its debut in 5^th Edition as the framing device in Tales from the Yawning Portal (2017).

• It turns out the original Durnan went into Undermountain in the late 14^th century. When he returned a hundred years later, he paid off Durnan VI (and apparently kicked him and his family out of the inn).
• There are balconies on the second and third floors of the tavern that overlook the Entry Well.
• The entrance/exit fee has been reduced back to 1 gp.
• There is a sizable list of curios displayed in the taproom (p. 6), which I won’t reproduce here.

The inn next shows up in the opening scene of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (2018):

• “The place is a stone building with a slate roof and several chimneys.”
• “Most of the ground floor is taken up by the tavern’s common room.” (This doesn’t explicitly eliminate the numerous backrooms, private rooms, secret rooms, and guest rooms that have previously been found on the first floor, but it seems to have had that effect on subsequent depictions of the Yawning Portal.)
• The candle wheels have been replaced with iron lanterns hanging from the ceiling and candles on the tables.
• There’s an incredibly cool fireplace next to the bar which looks like the ceiling-high head of a demon with flames burning in its mouth.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage (2018) expands on this description, with a particular focus on the entrance to Undermountain itself:

• It takes 10 rounds to descend the Well if you’re being winched down.
• The walls of the Well are “crumbly, but have abundant handholds and footholds.”

The other entrances to Undermountain from the Yawning Portal are conspicuously absent, particularly given that this book is the first to ostensibly present the dungeon in its entirety (albeit at a fraction of its former size).

Our very last stop here is DDAL08-00 Once In Waterdeep, a D&D Adventurers League adventure from 2018. It notably includes a map of the inn (more on that below), but also:

• Asserts that the Well is not the foundation of Halaster’s old tower, but rather “the tip of a sunken stone tower.”
• A stage has been constructed by a travelling theater company at one end of the common room, draped with curtains. (This is presumably temporary, but might be something that happens on a not infrequent basis.)
• Durnan has a Welcomer’s Brew that gives 5 temporary hit points.
• One of Waterdeep’s “signature double-decker dray carriages” smashes through the front wall.

Next: The Maps

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26B: A Disposition of Treasure

There were three main problems to overcome: The sheer weight of the arcane equipment and precious metals. The pit of chaos warping the hallway. And the difficulty of lifting the material out of the basement here at Greyson House.

Out of everything, the “Drill of the Banewarrens” was going to prove the most difficult: Everything else could be mostly parceled up into smaller bundles, but the drill was both bulky and weighed several thousand pounds all by itself.

“Could we just sell the location of the drill to somebody?” Elestra asked.

“Like House Erthuo?” Tee said. “I doubt they’d be all that interested considering what just happened.”

“How can you make encumbrance fun?”

You can’t.

But you also can’t make hit points fun, and for much the same reason.

Hit points are just a number: It goes up. It goes down. At a certain value you might suffer penalties. At another you fall unconscious.

So, too, with encumbrance: The number goes up. The number goes down. At a certain value you suffer penalties. At another you can’t carry any more.

Hit points and encumbrance are simple gauges, and you can’t make them “fun” for the same reason you can’t make the gas gauge on your car fun.

But driving a car? That can be fun. And so is combat in D&D and a lot of other roleplaying games that use hit points.

The gauge isn’t fun. It’s just a gauge. But the system in which that gauge is used – for which, in fact, that gauge may be an essential part – can be all kinds of fun.

So the better question is:

“Why do we want to track encumbrance?”

Encumbrance is often most useful in expedition-based play: You put together the resources for an expedition, then expend those resources on the expedition to maximize your returns.

Encumbrance is, in large part, a budget. Without a budget, the solution is always “bring everything,” which is kind of like playing 52-card draw poker: Without limited resources, there is no challenge.

(Tangentially, one interesting facet of such play in 1974 D&D, because it had a system for resolving characters fleeing from combat, is jettisoning equipment in order to pick up speed in flight-pursuit situations. It became a unique way for bulk resource management to impact combat-based play.)

This kind of gameplay does become obfuscated if the encumbrance system is unwieldy and difficult or fiddly to use. (Imagine if hit points, for example, could only be tracked by keeping an exhaustive list of forty or fifty different individual entries on your character sheet. Combat would almost certainly become a slog.) Unfortunately, a lot of encumbrance systems are unwieldy and difficult to use, with the result that many groups simply ignore it (either decisively or by default through “close enough” fudging).

What you want, of course, is an encumbrance system that’s easy to use so that encumbrance-based play will effortlessly integrate into your play. Correctly designed slot-based systems, like Encumbrance By Stone, for example, can make tracking nitty gritty encumbrance as easy as writing down your equipment list.

THE OTHER HALF OF THE EXPEDITION

Prepping the resource pool for an expedition and then expending those resources efficiently in order to maximize your success is the front half of an adventure.

The other half of the adventure is returning home with what you’ve gained, which, in the case of D&D, is usually treasure.

We’ve talked about this a bit before, but creating bulky, difficult-to-transport treasure (and/or putting it in places where it’s difficult to extract it) can create its own unique challenges. We’ve seen the players here come up with a creative solution for disposing of the orrery, and now they’re being challenged once again with the Drill of the Banewarrens and some of the other treasure.

(And this stuff is all just a few hundred feet under a major city. Stick it in the middle of a jungle and watch what happens!)

“But, Justin, challenge isn’t really a big focus for my group! We’re much more interested in narrative, storytelling, and roleplaying!”

Drama is born of adversity.

And I don’t mean that you’re wrong or that you should value challenge-based gameplay more, I mean that in expedition-type stories encumbrance-based challenges are a fundamental part of the drama you’re looking for. (Look at, say, Indiana Jones trying to get the Ark of the Covenant out of Egypt.)

For example, a scene in which the players are roleplaying through the crushing guilt their characters are feeling because their decisions resulted in the deaths of innocent people that they feel responsible for? Grappling with the difficult dilemmas created by balancing expediency of liquidating their treasure against the responsibility of who’s benefiting from that treasure? This stuff is pure gold for dramatic play!

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26C – Running the Campaign: Running With Background Events
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 26B: A DISPOSITION OF TREASURE

August 24th, 2008
The 13th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

The bodies of Faeliel and the other Erthuo scholars were gone, and the Erthuo mercenaries had gone with them. Reconvening in the dilapidated living room of Greyson House, there was an involved discussion revolving around how they could go about getting the rest of the bulky valuables out of the complex below.

There were three main problems to overcome: The sheer weight of the arcane equipment and precious metals. The pit of chaos warping the hallway. And the difficulty of lifting the material out of the basement here at Greyson House.

Out of everything, the “Drill of the Banewarrens” was going to prove the most difficult: Everything else could be mostly parceled up into smaller bundles, but the drill was both bulky and weighed several thousand pounds all by itself.

“Could we just sell the location of the drill to somebody?” Elestra asked.

“Like House Erthuo?” Tee said. “I doubt they’d be all that interested considering what just happened.”

In the end, they decided on a complex scheme involving fifteen hired laborers to move the drill; an architect to design the supports and ramps necessary to get it up into Greyson House; and then spells from Dominic and Elestra to quickly create the structure itself.

It was going to take some time to pull all of that together. Plus, they still had to get rid of the chaositech items. (“And the sooner the better,” Tee said.)

So Agnarr headed back down into Ghul’s Labyrinth to keep an eye on things. Dominic and Elestra headed back to the Ghostly Minstrel to rest up and prepare the proper spells.

THE HALLOWED VAULT

Tee and Ranthir headed towards the location in the Temple District they had been given by Aoska when they had asked for a secure place to store the tainted items.

They found the address wedged into a narrow gap on the Street of a Million Gods. The door opened to reveal a small, largely unadorned room with little more than a door draped with a beaded curtain. An elderly man sat in a worn-looking chair.

They were momentarily confused, but once they had identified themselves to the elderly man they were led through the beaded curtain and down a narrow flight of stone stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs they emerged into a long chamber lit with a pale blue light. A shallow pool of holy water ran the length of the room. The walls were covered in niches of various shapes and sizes, all of them obscured by sheens of silvery energy… except for one, towards which the elderly man pointed.

Taking her cue, Tee approached the niche and placed within it the tainted items she carried. As she drew back her hands, the niche quickly sealed itself with the same silvery energy as the others.

Tee turned to the man. “Thank you.”

He smiled, nodded, and led them back out onto the street.

THE TROUBLE WITH ILTUMAR

Tor returned to the Ghostly Minstrel. As he came through the door, Tellith called him over to the front desk. Apparently Hirus Feek, one of the owners of the Bull and Bear Armory next door, had stopped by and asked if Tee or Elestra or any of their companions could spare a few minutes to meet with him.

Tor turned around and headed back out into Delver’s Square. As he entered the Bull and Bear, Hirus – a skinny, balding man with a thin gray hair – smiled at him.

Tor quickly explained that Tee and Elestra weren’t with him, but he had been the first to return to the Ghostly Minstrel and he wasn’t sure when the others might return.

“That’s all right,” Hirus said. “I just needed to speak with one of you about Iltumar.”

“About Iltumar?” Tor said. “Is everything all right?”

“I’m not sure,” Hirus said, frowning. “He’s been hanging out with some shady people. Ruffians. I don’t like it. I was hoping one of you might be able to speak with him. Straighten him out. He looks up to you.”

“Any idea who they are, exactly?” Tor asked.

Hirus shook his head. “Not really. But I heard Ilutmar say something about ‘the Brotherhood’ the other day. For some reason, I didn’t like the sound of that.”

“Is Iltumar here now?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“When will he back?”

“He’s supposed to be back here by 10 o’clock.”

Tor agreed to come back then and try to talk with Iltumar. Then he headed back towards the Ghostly Minstrel.

Coming out of the Bull and Bear, however, he spotted Elestra and Dominic coming across the square. He called out to them and, as they headed into the Ghostly Minstrel together, quickly filled them in on the Iltumar situation.

Tee arrived as they were grabbing some food and drink from the bar. She told them that she had sent messengers to Castle Shard, Jevicca (as a representative of the Dreaming Apothecary), House Erthuo, and even a place called Avery’s Armory with details on the drill, construct parts, and adamantine – basically every place she thought might be interested in them.

As Tee was finishing up her explanation, Iltumar entered the inn. Elestra, seizing the opportunity called him over.

“What are you doing?” Tee hissed to her while giving Iltumar a friendly smile and wave.

Elestra waved her off. “Trust me, I’ll explain later.”

“Tee! Elestra!” Iltumar grinned. “Master Tor!”

“How are you doing, Iltumar?” Elestra asked.

“Very well!” he said. “Very well indeed.”

“That’s good.”

Tee decided to make the best of it. “I’ve got an answer for your riddle.”

“Really?” Iltumar said. “Already?”

“I couldn’t help thinking about it,” Tee said. “Is the answer a fish and the ocean?”

Iltumar pursed his lips. “That’s… close.”

“Huh,” Tee said. “Then it must be a fish and the river.”

“That’s right!” Iltumar clapped his hands. “Do you have a riddle for me?”

Tee shook her head. And then her eyes widened. As Iltumar had raised his hands to clap, she’d spotted a new ring on his finger: A ring marked with the symbol of a broken square.

She had a ring just like that in her bag of holding. They had found it in Pythoness House as part of a cache of artifacts belonging to the chaos cultists. Tee glanced over towards Elestra, and she could tell that she’d seen it, too.

Thinking quickly, Tee smiled broadly. “Oh! That’s a nice ring! Where did you get it?”

Iltumar suddenly seemed very nervous. “What? Oh, this ring? Just… around.”

“Really? I’d love to have a ring like that!” Tee was putting everything she had into a flirtatious voice. “Do you think I could have it?”

“No,” Iltumar said sharply. “I can’t.”

“Oh…” Tee suddenly got very sad.

“It’s just… Somebody gave it to me.”

“Oh,” Tee said, brightening slightly. “Another girl?”

But it wasn’t working. Iltumar babbled slightly and then clammed up. Tee was left promising to come up with a new riddle for him soon, and then he went off to get a drink.

Seizing the opportunity, the others quickly filled Tee in on what Hirus had told him.

“Do we think there’s a connection between the ‘Brotherhood’ and the chaos cultists?” Elestra asked.

“There must be,” Tee said.

“What should be do?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do,” Tee said. “At least not right now. We’ll let Tor talk to him later.”

MAKING THE SALE

Tor and Dominic headed back to Greyson House to rejoin Agnarr. Tor was uncomfortable with letting entirely unknown workers handle the material directly (they might steal stuff). So, taking crates from the basement of Greyson House, he started packing up as much of the loose material as he could.

Tee, meanwhile, received a letter from Avery’s Armory, informing her that he was always interested in sources of adamantine and would be willing to pay market value for anything she might have (which she estimated to be worth a few thousand gold).

Later that evening, Tee was able to track Jevicca down in the common room of the Ghostly Minstrel. When she showed her the schematics of the Drill of the Banewarrens, Jevicca became very interested and immediately offered 10,000 gold pieces on behalf of the Inverted Pyramid.

Tee thought that was a decent offer, but told Jevicca she would need to check with the others first (since they all had equal stakes in the matter).

It was perhaps well that she did, because a few minutes later a letter from Castle Shard arrived. In response, Tee caught a carriage.

It turned out that Lord Zavere was also primarily interested in the drill. He offered to not only purchase both the drill and the construct parts for a total of 13,000 gold pieces, but to take care of transporting all of it, as well. Plus, he would deliver the adamantine directly to Avery’s Armory for them.

It was an offer that significantly simplified things for them. (And saved them a large chunk of money.) Tee accepted it on the spot.

After leaving Castle Shard, Tee sent a messenger to Jevicca to inform her that she had accepted a different offer. Then she stopped by Avery’s Armory personally to confirm the deal with him. Once that was done, she headed back to Greyson House and told Tor to stop prepping crates: It had all been taken care of.

KADMUS AND THE GATE

(09/14/790)

The night passed quietly.

The next morning, a gate appeared in the middle of the corridor. Kadmus stepped through the portal, greeted them cordially, and, with one hand, lifted the impossibly heavy adamantine drill.

They were universally taken aback by this prodigious display of strength.

“Remind me never to pick a fight with him,” Tor said.

It took Kadmus about fifteen minutes to move everything through the gate. When he was finished, Zavere stepped through himself. Handing Tee a pouch filled with platinum, he promised to have the adamantine delivered to Avery by noon at the latest.

Zavere stepped back through the gate. A moment later, it disappeared.

NEXT:
Running the Campaign: Treasure Logistics – Campaign Journal: Session 26C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

In the world of Exandria, in the city of Bazzoxan, there lies Betrayers’ Rise. Once a “dark temple instrumental to the machinations of the Betrayer Gods during the Calamity” (Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount), the Rise is a gargantuan complex worming its way into the earth; a place of vast, unexplored depths where explorers delved too deep and woke up abyssal horrors from an elder age, placing the people of Bazzoxan on the front lines of an ancient war.

As presented in the Call of the Netherdeep campaign, however, Betrayers’ Rise is a tiny little dungeon with just sixteen rooms.

They’re good rooms. Great rooms, even.

But it doesn’t quite deliver the experience promised by the lore.

THE PROBLEM

To be fair, Call of the Netherdeep knows it has a problem. The writers kind of toss out the idea that “the characters experience a particular version” of Betrayers’ Rise, and that others experience “different configurations” of the dungeon. They also provide “Betrayers’ Rise Encounters” (p. 63) that can be used as inspiration to “expand” the Rise.

And this is not actually an unusual problem: You want to send the PCs into a legendary dungeon — Moria, Undermountain, Castle Blackmoor, Betrayers’ Rise — as part of a larger adventure. But these vast dungeons have dozens of levels and hundreds, possibly thousands, of rooms.

At that scale, in published adventures, page count becomes an issue. For another example of this, consider Ed Greenwood’s FRE3 Waterdeep module. Greenwood wanted to send the PCs through the well in the Yawning Portal and into Undermountain as part of this adventure, but obviously couldn’t include the entire dungeon (which usually requires hundreds of pages) in a 52-page adventure. (His solution was to create a previously unmentioned secret well in the Yawning Portal’s backroom that conveniently led directly to where the PCs needed to go.)

But even if page count or prep time weren’t important (which they obviously are), there’s also pacing to consider. Megadungeons are awesome. I love megadungeons. But it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to put Call of the Netherdeep on hold for 10 or 20 or 40 sessions while a largely unrelated dungeon crawl is happening.

So what’s the problem?

If I’m saying that you can’t do a megadungeon in Call of the Netherdeep and that you shouldn’t do a megadungeon in Call of the Netherdeep, don’t we just have to accept that micro-dungeon that Call of the Netherdeep presents?

No, actually.

THE SOLUTION(S)

We’ve been hearing “vast underground complex” and we’ve been defaulting to “megadungeon” as the solution. The solution is to shift our paradigm, and we can do that by rephrasing our goal.

The micro-dungeon in Call of the Netherdeep is (a) good and (b) probably has about the right narrative weight for its role in the campaign. So what is it that we want?

Ideally, we’d take the exact same micro-dungeon and present it in a way that’s consistent with Betrayers’ Rise being a gargantuan complex with vast, unexplored depths where explorers delved too deep and yada yada yada.

OPTION 1: MULTIPLE ENTRANCES

Instead of Betrayers’ Rise having a single entrance that leads to a sixteen room micro-dungeon, the Rise has multiple entrances leading to a convoluted honeycomb of many different dungeon complexes. Some of these are small; some are vast. Some are connected to each other; others are not… or, if they are, the ways are secret, blocked, or only accessible through interdimensional spaces.

One of these entrances, of course, leads to our micro-dungeon.

The key question now is, how do the PCs know to use this specific entrance?

To answer this question, we simply step back and look at the PCs’ goal in Bazzoxan: They’re here to get answers about the Jewel of Three Prayers, the enigmatic Vestige of Divergence which has come into either their possession or the possession of their Rivals.

Therefore, this entrance must have a specific connection to the Jewel of Three Prayers.

There are many ways you could create his connection, but you can keep it quite simple: There’s a giant drawing or bas relief of the Jewel depicted on the entrance or near the entrance or just inside the entrance.

The next question is: How do the PCs learn about this connection?

This revelation is essential for the adventure, so we want to use the Three Clue Rule here. In fact, there are two closely related revelations here.

REVELATION 1: WE HAVE TO GO TO BAZZOXAN.

• The Elder in Jigow who told them to go to Bazzoxan (p. 37) should tell them: “I was in Bazzoxan once, where the legacy of the Calamity lingers more strongly anywhere else in Xhorhas, and I saw this very Jewel depicted on the walls of the Betrayers’ Rise. Perhaps you will find answers there.”
• The PCs can discover references to this depiction of the Jewel at Betrayers’ Rise through their own research.
• The Rivals will conduct their own research (or perhaps seek the casting of a legend lore spell) and discover the Jewel’s depiction at Betrayers’ Rise. They’ll then inform the PCs, ask for the PCs’ help, or the PCs can pursue them there.

REVELATION 2: THE LOCATION OF THE JEWEL’S DEPICTION.

• The PCs can do their own survey of the Rise’s exterior to find the depiction.
• The Three Scholars of Ank’Harel in Bazzoxan (Question, Prolix, and Aloysia) are all here researching ruidium (which is specifically found around this entrance and in this micro-dungeon). They can be questioned and their notes also include depictions of the Jewel.

Design Note: This conveniently also addresses some other structural weaknesses in Call of the Netherdeep. For example, in the adventure as written the Elder doesn’t actually give the PCs’ a reason to go to Bazzoxan; so when they arrive, they end up just kind of wandering around hoping to bump into the plot. By having the Elder give them this specific connection to Bazzoxan, the PCs now arrive in town with a specific agenda which will drive the action forward.

You could also further develop this lore to strengthen connections between Bazzoxan and Ank’Harel. Perhaps the excavations in the sunken city of Cael Morrow have recently discovered a depiction of the Jewel of Three Prayers, and some or all of the scholarly factions have independently discovered its depiction in Bazzoxan (providing an alternative or additional motive to ruidium for coming here).

OPTION 2: THE POINTCRAWL

If you want to actually delve into the “true” Betrayers’ Rise — that vast, unexplored depth which yada yada yada — then what you need is a pointcrawl.

A pointcrawl adventure uses a point-map to represent navigation at an abstract level. One way of understanding a pointcrawl, and its original application, is modeling travel along a trail system (i.e., the connections between points are literally wilderness trails running between the locations).

In the case of a dungeon pointcrawl, like the one we would use for Betrayers’ Rise, the points represent notable locations or regions within the dungeon and the connections between them model the navigational connections between them. Because these navigation connections are being represented at a high level of abstraction, they are often not specific. (There might be several different passages you can take from the Low Halls to the High Throne, but they’d all be represented by a single line. This is similar to how there are many streets you could take while driving across town from McDonald’s to the Museum of Natural History, but they’ll all be heading in basically the same direction.)

Let’s make this less abstract. The way a dungeon pointcrawl would work here is that the vast depths of Betrayers’ Rise would be abstracted. You’d narrate large spans of the journey as a sort of travelogue through terrifying-yet-empty vaults.

The Rise is not a beehive with every inch filled by demons. It is a wasteland.

If you want a touchstone for what this would look like/sound like in actual play, consider the journey through Moria in The Lord of the Rings:

For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met not danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard’s light, bobbing like a will-o’-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.

They had marched as far as the hobbits could endure without a rest, and all were thinking of a place where they could sleep, when suddenly the walls to right and left vanished. They seem to have passed through some arched doorway into a black and empty space. There was a great draught of warmer air behind them, and before them the darkness was cold on their faces. They halted and crowded anxiously together.

Gandalf seemed pleased. ‘I chose the right way,’ he said. ‘At last we are coming to the habitable parts, and I guess that we are not far now from the eastern side. But we are high up, a good deal higher than the Dimrill Gate, unless I am mistaken. From the feeling of the air, we must be in a wide hall. I will now risk a little real light.’

He raised his staff, and for a brief instant there was a blaze like a flash of lightning. Great shadows sprang up and fled, and for a second they saw a vast roof far above their heads upheld by many mighty pillars hewn of stone. Before them and on either side stretched a huge empty hall; its black walls, polished and smooth as glass, flashed and glittered. Three other entrances they saw, dark black arches: one straight before them eastwards, and one to either side.

Then the light went out.

The “points” of the pointcrawl would be points of particular interest/danger. They’d also represent key navigational choices. In the movie version of Moria, for example, these are:

• the Entrance;
• “I have no memory of this place”;
• Balin’s Tomb; and
• the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

In designing this for an RPG, you would need to include options for the paths Gandalf didn’t take (so that the players would have navigational choices).

PREPPING THE POINTCRAWL: Unlike Option 1, therefore, this option would require significantly more prep, because you’ll need to create other points within Betrayers’ Rise in addition to the original micro-dungeon (which I’m going to call the Cyst of Avandra).

My guess is that you’d want at least a half dozen points that are actually micro-dungeons. (You could think of each of these as a 5-Room Dungeon.) And then you’d probably want another dozen or so points that are just individual rooms or cool landmarks (a statue, a strange chasm, a subterranean bridge, etc.).

Some of these points might be better thought of as entire regions, out of which navigational choices can be made.

“You’re in the Hex Pits. You see a number of stairs winding down. Or you could perhaps try to make your way up one of the great ramps at either end of the Pits.”

OPTION 3: THE GUIDE

If we consider Gandalf an NPC instead of a PC, then we can get some of the atmosphere offered by the pointcrawl, but wrap it in a simple package (with near-zero prep) by simply requiring the PCs to have a guide.

What guide? One of the Three Scholars, of course.

And how do they know where to take the PCs? Once again, it’s the depiction of the Jewel of Three Prayers. Rather than being an entrance to Betrayers’ Rise, the painting or bas relief of the Jewel is located deep within the Rise.

The chosen scholar(s) can guide the PCs there in abstract time (a montage of moments as they delve into the dungeon; just like the hobbits’ experience in Moria), perhaps triggering a few “random” (actually scripted) encounters along the way.

When the PCs arrive at the depiction of the Jewel, you simply shift to now time as they come to the entrance of Cyst of Avandra.

Design Note: You could enrich this interaction a bit by having the Three Scholars each propose/take differing routes through the Rise. But there’s probably not a huge gain from this unless the PCs can make some sort of meaningful choice between route options.

The PCs could also avoid the need for an actual guide if, for example, they steal one of the researchers’ notes from their rooms. (Allowing them to study the notes and guide themselves.) You can prompt this as an active premise by having one of the scholars ask the PCs to steal a rival’s notes. (Prolix might do so in order to figure out what Aloysia is doing in Bazzoxan, for example.)

For the encounters studded along the route, you can use (or at least start with) the “Betrayers’ Rise Encounters” on p. 63 of Call of the Netherdeep. Try to have these encounters really reflect the vastness of the spaces through which the PCs are traveling, however: They pass through a galley looking out over a vast underground chasm or chamber, lit by the ruddy light of a lake of fire on the far end. In the center of the lake is an island upon which is a slab of stone. And upon the slab of stone there lies a sleeping balor.

Best not to rouse it.

FURTHER READING
Call of the Netherdeep: Running the Rivals

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 26A: Tor’s Training

After several mournful minutes in which little was said, they quickly decided that someone needed to return to the surface and notify House Erthuo of the death of Faeliel and the others.

Dominic and Ranthir took that heavy task on themselves. Tor left with them, needing to keep an appointment later in the morning.

The walk back to the surface took a little more than twenty minutes. Then they took carriages in opposite directions: Tor back towards Midtown; Ranthir and Dominic towards the Nobles’ Quarter.

In The Art of Pacing, I explain running an RPG for a split party is basically the easy mode for handling pacing as a GM: Because you no longer need to wait for the end of a scene before cutting back and forth between the groups, you not only have a whole bunch of new pacing techniques you can use, you’re also freed up from needing to honor the structure of the current scene (since you’ll be cutting back to it later).

In Random GM Tip: Splitting the Party, I delve a bit deeper into the practical side of splitting the party and share some basic best practices.

But if splitting the party is the easy mode for pacing, then splitting the party in an urban environment is the easy mode for splitting the party.

First, in my experience it’s much easier to convince groups to split up in the first place in an urban environment. Even groups that adamantly profess, “Never split the party!” will often still be comfortable doing it in an urban environment where (a) the risk seems minimal and (b) typical tasks so readily lend themselves to multitasking. (“You sell those mage-touched swords we took from the bandits and I’ll arrange for our rooms while the wizard gets his reagents. We can meet at the Onyx Spider afterwards.”)

WHO FIRST?

When the group splits up, whose scene should you frame first?

In general, what you’re looking for is the group whose scene is most likely to be interrupted the fastest. This might be:

• A complicated decision.
• A skill check.
• Some sort of logistical calculation.
• A dramatically appropriate moment.
• An unexpected rules look-up.

And so forth. Basically, any of the reasons you’d normally cut from one scene to another.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward: You’re dipping your toes in the first scene, and then as quickly as possible cutting away to another group. Not only does this keep everyone engaged, but you’re getting to the time-saving advantage of multitasking as quickly possible (with Group 1 continuing to resolve stuff in their scene while you’ve turned your attention to Group 2).

The slightly more advanced technique here is to first check for effective crossovers (those moments when elements or outcomes from one scene have an impact on another scene) and make sure you line them up.

For example, in this session I knew that the House Erthuo guards were likely going to stumble onto Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra with the corpses of the Erthuo researchers. This suggested a natural sequence in which:

• Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo.
• Tee, Agnarr, and Elestra are discovered by the House Erthuo guards, resulting in a cliffhanger.
• Cut away from the cliffhanger back to House Erthuo, where Cordelia arrives and explains what the guards are doing there.
• Cut back to Ghul’s Labyrinth, to finish resolving the confrontation.

HOW LONG?

As you start juggling multiple scenes playing out across a city, you’ll need to answer the question of how all these scenes relate to each other in terms of time.

First, remember that you don’t have to keep time perfectly synced between the groups. In fact, you’ll almost always want to NOT do that.

For example, maybe the Erthuo guards showed up 30 minutes before Ranthir and Dominic arrived at House Erthuo and the whole interaction between the guards and the dungeon group “actually” played out before anything of interest happened with Ranthir and Dominic. But that would have been dramatically far less interesting. And, even more importantly, you want to scale time to balance table time.

The key thing is not to push this so far that PCs can’t respond to things they reasonably should be able to respond to. (For example, if Ranthir and Dominic would have been able to warn the other PCs that the Erthuo guards were coming, it wouldn’t have been fair to frame things in a sequence that would prevent them from doing that.) But, generally speaking, you’ve got a fairly large fudge factor and the players will generally support you by not deliberately doing anything that violates established causality.

(And if something does go askew, a minor retcon is rarely going to hurt anything.)

Speaking of the fudge factor, you’re usually going to find it easier to juggle multiple groups doing stuff at the same time if you “chunk” time. You can kinda think of this as establishing ad hoc turns, with each discrete group usually being able to do one thing per “turn.”

I usually think in terms of:

• the hour,
• the watch (4 hours), or
• the half day (morning/afternoon)

Which mental construct I find most useful depends on how “meaty” the PCs’ planned actions are. If someone is planning to gather information down at the Docks, I might think to myself, “That’ll take about half a day.” And so the active question becomes: What is everyone else doing with that half day?

Once you’ve collected those declarations, it’s not hard to become sequencing how things should resolve.

Here’s my final tip: If the group has fractured into three or four or more groups (often in the form of individuals scattering to the winds), write down their declarations. Just jot them down in your notebook. You don’t have to get fancy or specific with this, just a quick one or two word reminder:

• Tee/Agnarr/Elestra: packing
• Tor: training
• R/D: Erthuo

Just enough that you can re-orient yourself with a glance at he end of each scene.

NEXT:
Campaign Journal: Session 26B – Running the Campaign: Treasure Logistics
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index