What lies beneath the Kingdom of Merlokrep?

[Albion, The Eye]

Hi everyone,

I have been running my years long tabletop gaming group through a PbP experiment using Crown of the Kobold King (there will be some light spoilers below, so please stop reading if you plan to play this one).

We have played many times and many games over the years, but system mastery has never been a thing, so some of the challenges become WAY more harder than they could be.

Anticipating this + the fact we are talking about an older module + the fact we are kinda getting burned out on starting 1st level characters from scratch, I let them begin at 3rd level.

Without knowing every in and out of it, I am pretty knowledgeable regarding PF 1st Edition so the idea behind the game was to give the PbP medium a try and see how it works out for our group specifically, while running a more or less straightforward adventure which should not give them too much trouble, and allow further understanding of the rules for all of us.

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Things did not turn out like that, but still they plodded onward more or less successfully until reaching the kobold warrens. It is irrelevant how, but all hell broke loose, and now the PCs are pretty banged up and kinda cornered into a position where they somehow have to negotiate with the kobold tribe.

I intend to just roll with it, so I thought a good twist/follow up for this one was the fact the Truescales have actually been pushed out of their caves by some 'foul “creeping shadows” which rose from the dark caves below and withered their finest warriors to skeletal husks' - so a result for the negotiations with the PCs could be agreeing to have them explore the 'evil below', in exchange for releasing the children to return home with Edgrin for example.

What I am looking for are suggestions for modules/scenarios/adventures which could be adapted to this situation - I imagine some underground exploration coupled with lurking evil (undead spring to mind, but there are so many other options), etc. I would go freeform adventuring and improvise stuff as we go but... I am looking for something more self contained and ready to go (I am working from home as many others, but I am indeed working :D).

I plan to level them up to 4 (or maybe even 5) - we have known each other for many years, and leveling has always been a slow process in our games, so I have no qualms in allowing them to just gain two levels instead of one, so we can continue our experiment.

Any ideas/suggestions on adventures which I can adapt to this one would be very welcome, and thanks in advance!

[Albion, The Eye]

Bumped? :P

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

You can always adapt mega-dungeons like Undermountain or Rappan Athuk.

My personal favorite is Kostakep, from the Mystaran fanzine Threshold (starting with issue 1 and continuing). Here is an abstract, a map and timeline.
In short it's a megadungeon of settlements layered on top of each other, going at least 12 000 years back in time. Waves of settlers/invaders building on top of each other, warring, ignoring and creating new stuff.
Undead galore, ancient demigods and artifacts, remnants of vibrant cultures of many races and creatures to talk to as well as kill.

Pros and cons Features, not bugs: lots of great ideas, enough detail to guide you through developing it in a variety of ways depending on what you want to do. Not fully fleshed in every detail so you need to put in a little work with some map portions and encounters. It's mostly system agnostic with a basic assumption of BECMI D&D so you better be good at adjusting things to P1.
Lastly, most importantly, it's very tightly firmly located in Mystara and if you are running another setting, the dungeon may require extensive rewriting. You can jettison a lot of setting specific material at the cost of jettisoning a lot of the flavor, if you wish.

[Albion, The Eye]

Thank you for the suggestion Bjørn!

Man, don't tempt me - I am a HUGE fan of mega-dungeons, and Rappan Athuk specifically. I have this dream of one day playing through a Rappan Athuk/Slumbering Tsar game which does not fall apart.

For some reason I am also partial to Night Below, perhaps because I actually have one of the original boxed sets for this :O

So I am definitely going to try and take a look at Kostakep.

For this particular case, I am not looking for something so... Deep. I really want to take things one step at a time, so I do not risk getting in over my head (or the players'). In any case, you are absolutely right that mega-dungeons are many times divided in almost self-contained portions, so they can be the source of good ideas (like the Tomb of Saracek level in RA :D).

Keep the ideas coming - modules or short adventure sequences are also welcome.

[Albion, The Eye]

Hungry are the Dead would seem like a 'natural' follow up, though the level jump (from 3 to 6) is a bit too steep for my taste...

[Albion, The Eye]

I am going to shamelessly bump this one again :P

[Today is a good day to... halp]

Mebbe some of the dungeons in the PF2e Abomination Vaults AP can serve as inspiration for some undead themed stuff; that and stuff from PF1e Tyrant's Grasp AP too.

[Thread Necromancers' Guild]

Albion, The Eye wrote:

I am going to shamelessly bump this one again :P

Never feel ashamed of Necromancy.

[Albion, The Eye]

hehe TNG :D

I have to admit I have spent some time looking through online references, and... It has not been easy to find what I am looking for - underground, darkness (perhaps undead/demonic) themed location based adventure, around levels 3-5.

One would expect there would be a LOT of those out there. Maybe my Pathfinder-search-fu is just off :P

[Artofregicide]

Albion, The Eye wrote:

hehe TNG :D

I have to admit I have spent some time looking through online references, and... It has not been easy to find what I am looking for - underground, darkness (perhaps undead/demonic) themed location based adventure, around levels 3-5.

One would expect there would be a LOT of those out there. Maybe my Pathfinder-search-fu is just off :P

I'd imagine that there are - but nothing immediately comes to mind.

Maybe steal a level of a superdungeon, like you suggested?

There's a lot of fun, horrible stuff from underground that isn't demons or undead. Aberrations, darkfolk/owbs, derro, lovecraftian cultists, daemon worshipping urdefhans and their ghoulish skavelings...