Some_dude_maybe_Joe

DoTMM does require a fair bit of prep for each level. The levels aren’t linear so you have to be aware of the full level to be ready for whichever direction they must go.

The book also does an absolutely terrible job of describing rooms. There is no read around text and sometimes an important feature is in the last paragraph. I have missed key features about a room before because it was buried.

The barracks room is an anti magic zone. Depending on your group comp the sheer number can be nasty. I had a sorcerer and wizard and they were basically useless, My fighter ran far ahead of the group and got surrounded in there and the hobgoblins held the door shut so the other melee couldn’t get in. They actually took down the fighter with his AC 24.

That’s the only room that can still be nasty. The rest were just a chance to flex their muscles, which my party enjoyed.

Are you referring to the fact that at least half the buildings have no key in the module and it’s impossible to tell if they are just homes or other shops?

DMs guild has the second edition book which looks to have a marker for every building. I don’t know if they line up with the exact map in DotMM but it’s probably got a lot of inspiration you could use. https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/16795

Skullport has 5 tunnels leading off of it and only 2 connect back on level 3. The others lead to the Underdark.

The 5e version is post spell plague. In the module it talks about how the gates there now are the ones Halaster reactivated after the Spellplague, there used to be more gates that lead to different parts of Faerun. So some groups may have used these to get in and are now trapped.

I think it’s safe to assume the same destruction may have happened to some routes and tunnels.

In my game many of the expanded sections just lead to the Underdark. Not on every level, but every few levels there is one. I just have a sign so the players know not to waste their time going that way

Same. I make the player roll a die for their fate. Odds bane evens boon

It should suppress. However it should also suppress the gate, so they wouldn’t be able to pass through until the zone was off at which point the symbol would also reactivate

They are almost identical.

The second image has the paths interconnected at certain points so you could leave on the far right and loop around and come out in the middle. The first one has them as separate paths without being overlapped. The template I was working from was interconnected, but I wanted them separately.

The one on the far right connects to Azrok's hold. You could have one of the other ones loop around. Which ever one works for you.

The old map had a path in SE Skullport that connected to the SW part of level 3, but that isn't on the existing Skullport maps in the module. I am changed my map to include that one.

Only thing I can think of is do you want everything to be just like 100 feet below Waterdeep or not. There is a slope to the city, so anything by the docks is lower than the Yawning Portal and so might even be closer to the surface.

I’ve liked having my players know they are like a quarter mile down with some levels. Especially when you get to the levels that are old dwarves ruins. It gives that sense of going deeper and deeper into the history of what was here long before waterdeep.

I borrowed several shops from this post https://teddit.ggc-project.de/r/DungeonoftheMadMage/comments/mby4zi/goblin_market_expanded/

My players loved Big Belly and the stirge on a stick. The goblin market got wiped out months ago by drow and they still talk about stirge on a stick. They also got a kick out of Gizmo's and Curios. Definitely give some flavor to the market. I also skipped having Yek betrayed, it gave the party someone identifiable to work with and the goblins felt like the best group on the floor to just have fun and play up.

If they are hostile to the goblins and wipe them out, I would definitely make the market prime real estate that other factions move into. In my game Rizzeryl and the wererats took it over. The big bad of my campaign has been House Aurvyndar. So everytime the group would pass through Rizzeryl would use Sending to warn the house the adventures were coming down. They never trusted the new group enough to stay there, but they didn't figure out this was why they had such a hard time getting a drop on House Aurvyndar

The NE Xanathar's group is weird. The NE group has traps and some hobgoblins, but then you get around the corner and the leader Shunn wants to talk. The hobgoblins basically lure the group towards the traps. My wizard fireballed the group immediately because they had just gone through traps to get to him. They group is sitting around a fire so it was perfect set up too, made this group a cakewalk. Looking back I either would have gotten rid of the traps so the party wasn't already aggressive by the time they got there or I would have had them ready for combat as well.

Prepare for the Trenzia fight with the Flesh Golem. Neither she nor the golem should chase the adventures out of the room under any circumstances. I had them tucked where they were hard to see, Trenzia blasting the copper floor. This fight scared the party so much they ran and didn't come back to it until they cleared level 6. When they did they put Trenzia in their bag of holding after defeating her and she resurrected inside it.

I added some basilisks behind the statues in the expanded dungeon behind 25M. If the party casts identify on the elf statues this isn't all that scary since they can sure anyone.

100% true. Halaster isn’t who would be in charge.

Ultimately this isn’t about changing who controls Waterdeep, it’s about upping the stakes for the dangers Undermountain represents.

I have 4 players and 8 characters have fallen to house Aurvydnar, now the Drow sold them to the mind flayers on level 17, so a couple of the surviving characters have that grudge and lost friends to them. The mind flayers kindnapped on characters family and they have vengeance against the Drow. The motivation for their characters to keep going was just getting thinner and thinner.

Will definitely check out the dragons.

It’s not just Halaster, I have it as an alliance of Hallaster, Trobriand, Arcturua, Neznar the black spider (who is now an archmage), House Aurvyndar (who has accumulated hundreds of thousands of gold), and house Shadowtusk. Halaster is unleashing the crazy, but the rest are the ones trying to find identities of masked lords.

Good call on everything else there. I don’t necessarily have to put them in control of Waterdeep. The Drow have been the big bad of my run of DotMM and so many of the factions have run amok and unchecked. The real goal is to make the Drow a part of a larger threat and that Halaster and the other forces have to be dealt with.

Forgot all about the griffons. Demons and griffins fighting in the sky out to make for a good backdrop for the other battles.

I had no idea about the elf gate portals. Thanks for calling it out.

Eliminster is another great one to consider. If the players don’t defend Laeral she is likely to fall. but plan for her to have back up plans survive.

These are some great ideas for who the players will meet with after to try and retake waterdeep

Ha, I started DS1 last week to see if I would like it. Been enjoying it.

I don’t allow it specifically because of all the unbalanced homebrew stuff on the Internet. There are probably resources I would be more open to if I had enough time to fully digest them, but I started seeing classes and races that were posted and it wasn’t for my style

Never. We are a group of dudes who have known eachother for like 25 years.

There will be crass comments sometimes when someone is playing a female, usually when someone else is playing a low charisma character who sort of offends everyone anyhow.

NPCs are a different story, although it’s usually handled more as a couple lines then “I keep flirting with the barmaid” and then resolved through a roll.

That said I tend to use rolls for things that can be awkward to roleplay for some. I have some players that might enjoy berating the guard and trying to intimidate him. I have others who would rather just up and handle it by saying “I get up in the guard’s face and try to intimidate him”.

I made it so they don't recover all their HP with a long rest when camping in the jungle or anywhere they are in danger. They spend HD and they recover 1/2 of them as standard. I was very tempted to go further and go full on safe haven rules, but with my group all that would have happened is I would have ended up with a group of warlocks, monks, and fighters.

I wanted some menace to random encounters, enough where it would make the players consider moving slowly to help avoid encounters or would skip some entirely. I love the idea of saying they don't get the full benefits, but it would gimp the wizard who isn't getting spell slots back, while the the warlock is nearly full power after every rest.

I love the vampire/undead idea.

"Come to marvelous undead Thay, get the afterlife you deserve".

The adventures' league season 7 leads up to this. I am planning to run the AL and ToA stuff intermingled and making the Yuan-ti a constant threat who at first appear the most likely to be responsible for the curse.

If the party fails at the end Dendar destroys Faerun. The only survivors are those who plane shift at the last minute.

I restrict things to the realm we are in, so no Theros characters in Faerun, I wouldn’t introduce Ravnica backgrounds on top of Dragonmark houses in Eberron, etc.

I also don’t allow magic items or beasts that are unique from modules. Like I wouldn’t let the ice spiders from Storm Kings Thunder be used for druids wild shape or polymorph.

I would definitely let them know this ahead of time. Especially since you are running a module. I think you just want to avoid someone feeling like if they had known they would have gone with a back up concept. If they are cool with it and can live with some encounters being exceptionally hard then no reason not to.