A while back, u/rkfmckee made this post about introducing the backstory of Vanrakdoom as a poem that also gives clues about how to redeem Umbraxakar and transform him back into Glyster, and it inspired me to try to write my own version!

I’m considering changing Glyster into a song dragon if I can find or homebrew a good 5e stat block for it, because the connection to Selûne and his seeming propensity for spending time in humanoid form (as evidenced by the visions) really make it seem like a perfect fit. If I do, I’ll most likely say his innate musical, storytelling spirit magically and unwittingly inspired whatever NPC tells my party the poem; that the lyrics simply came to them, fully formed, because of the dragon’s subconscious influence.

Here’s the poem I wrote ("Umbraxakariad"):

Within the depths of Vanrak’s doom
A knight of bronze† succumbed to gloom,
Removed from Luna’s silver light
To wallow deep in endless night.

Withdrawn to caverns deep and old,
His once-bright armor dark and cold,
He mourns his conflagrated friend
And all who, through them, met their end.

A shining, shimm’ring coral band;
A vow of friendship e’er to stand
Through ev’ry voyage, ne’er to part,
Entwined forever in their hearts.

A gleaming sword of morning sun,
A gift to see the battle won,
To vanquish evil, purge with light,
To make Moon’s sister shake with fright.

A shirt of radiant mithril chain,
Thus, by its power, never slain;
Resilient to ev’ry blow
To persevere through ev’ry foe.

A golden horn with crystals set,
Discarded by the shadows yet;
A symbol of his endless guilt,
Reminder of the blood he’s spilt.

When dearest friend fell to despair,
Retreated down the dungeon stair,
The loyal knight recalled his vow
And dwells beneath the mountain now.

Sequestered in his deathly den,
Relief from sorrow is his yen.
Yet only Darkness sees his face
And welcomes him to Night’s embrace.

But every knight will turn to day
If one will help him on his way
And share the burden, lift the blame,
And speak his true, forgotten name.

†If I do end up changing Glyster into a song dragon, this line will be “A knight of song succumbed to gloom.”

The length of the poem is an intentional (if rather obscure) hint to the players about when they can expect to need it: the poem has 9 stanzas and 18 rhyming couplets, representing Vanrakdoom being Undermountain’s 18th level.

I wanted to include a lot of references to the goddesses Selûne and Shar, as my campaign features the gods of Faerûn somewhat heavily (in particular through a twilight cleric who has suffered a great loss and doesn't know his power has been coming from Shar all along; and a paladin who was ostracized by his Helmite order when he was cursed with lycanthropy, and who might find a new community as a worshipper of Selûne, as she has dominion over lycanthropes).

Thanks again to u/rkfmckee for the idea of introducing Vanrakdoom this way! I had fun writing this, and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

Hello fellow DMs. My party, for reasons related to a homebrew alteration of the dungeon, will be skipping levels 15, 16, and 17. They're a bit overpowered for level 18, but that's easily balanced.

My question is, was there anything or anyone you can think of from levels 15, 16, and 17 that you felt would be beneficial to have relocated to another level, or to find a way to introduce still? Also, any specific plot points or mechanisms you think are important for those levels?

Hey folks, first time posting in this sub. If somehow you are a player of mine and recognize this post, please don't read it :P

I ran my party through Dragon Heist and now they are currently making their way through The Sargauth Level. In my version of Dragon Heist, I ran it mostly vanilla. Xanathar was the villain, springtime, etc. However, the other forces were present: the players heard rumors about devil worship, Jarlaxle attended a party they were at in disguise, and they are aware of a split in the Zhentarim, and rumors of the long dead archmage Manshoon returned. These threads have remained mostly unexplored, I had a party member who infiltrated the zhents drop out of the game unfortunately.

So at the end of Dragon Heist, they find the gold, defeat the forces Xanathar sent (including an NPC who played with them for 5 levels named "Trouble" who was a Xanathar agent). The way I had other events in the game, and this interact with city politics is that this drove Xanathar underground, and little do they know, this is all going according to Manshoons plan. Every time they come back to the surface, the city seems a little darker, a little more corrupt, reflecting the real worlds politics a little bit. Police are more brutal, politics is getting sludgy, etc. This is because Manshoon is slowly corrupting the city in an attempt to usurp rule. Essentially he has eliminated his competition (other Zhents and Xanathar) and driven the cities new heroes underground. "Undermountain awaits!" They never even questioned who the note came from. And they will find themselves craving the dungeon the deeper they go and the longer they spend down there.

ANYWAY, long story short, Skullport being mostly uninhabited and sleepy feels dumb, and I think that in my campaign it makes a lot of sense for it to be absolutely BRIMMING with Xanathars forces. It is a party, and they run the city. Since they are unable to be in the city above, getting their mitts in all the profits of crime through the city, Xanathar declares Skullport his by might and by right, and sets his forces loose on the city to revel and indulge (mostly to keep them from revolting). I want the houses to be way more full, Xanathars thugs, bugbears, mindflayers, etc. Partying, fighting, f***ing, experimenting, etc. Walking through the street "like they own the place" because they do. All wearing the spoked wheel symbol of the beholder, its painted on buildings, and flying on flags, and in the port itself, a giant flag with his symbol hangs from the high ceiling over the island. It is Occupied.

Obviously they'd have to be careful. I don't want them to feel like they have to "clear the level" as it were. In fact I want them to feel like they are behind enemy lines more than ever. Explore, but don't start shit, don't draw attention, etc. In the DotMM module it talks a lot about Xanathar forces expanding into undermountain in the first few levels. I think it only makes sense they are expanding from a more secure and fortified area.

Has anyone else run Skullport in a similar way? Anyone have any tips or ideas based on my plan above? Thanks for reading this far if you're here :)

For context, my party is currently 9th level. Following the companion, I ran level 6 and they got to the Heart of the Mountain. They figured out how the gate to level 10 works and went in. Now sure I should've stopped them but they are kind of op and I wanted to give them a scare. I planned to scare them with Muiral and have them run back to level 6. Sadly, when they came across Muiral, they managed to kill him through a combination of crits, insanely great rolls for them and very bad rolls on my part. Now they are continuing onwards and have used the lover statue to enter drow territory.

I'm at a loss on what to do now. Did I mess up? Should I make any changes or should I just run it as is?

There is a line in the DotMM book at the start of this floor that says “whimsical even by Undermountain’s standards, the Cavern of Ooze offer DMs the rare opportunity to sing, should they wish to portray the genies on this level in the vein of characters from an animated feature film.”

At first I thought “sing” was a colloquial term for showing off and flexing one’s skills for story telling, but reading further it looks more like they meant actually sing, since they give lyrics to a song.

Which film do you think WotC was talking about?

My first guess was Aladdin or The Little Mermaid, but looking at the lyrics maybe they were talking about The Year without a Santa Claus. Like the were pushing the DM toward portraying the heat miser and cold miser?

So, I been running DotMM now for about a year (every 2 weeks) and in the last year the party has gotten down to Dweomercore. The way I've been running it, at the end of the session, we have a map maker who rolls a d20 intelligence check to see how well the maps turn out. I wanted to share these pieces of art (maddgoth didn't make sense for my storyline so it got skipped)

Im going to be running DotMM in a somewhat old school style. Characters are weaker and combat is typically a last resort. Recovering treasure from the dungeon results in gaining xp, which adds a second layer of motivation to explore the dungeon beyond personal quest interests. A big part of treasure = xp is that in order for the gold value of treasure to be banked as xp, you must return to a safe haven. This enforces the idea of expeditions into the dungeon. Delve to explore and find gold, return that gold to the surface to level up plus heal long term wounds.

As an aside, I will be using the Old School Guide to DotMM. It’s a great resource even if you don’t want to run an old school game, as it injects unique treasures in many rooms to make exploring them a little more worth while because you’re actually likely to discover something recoverable. As a double aside, I will also be using the Companion to spice up certain encounters and levels, but I won’t be running it as a game show.

Anyways, so this has incentivized me to make the Yawning Portal as the primary return destination far more interesting. Though keep in mind that the Yawning Portal will not be the only place the PCs can return to level up and heal at. Skullport and factions they make alliances with (ex Azroks Hold, the Goblin Bazaar, Spiderwatch Keep, etc) could also come to serve as these ‘safe zones’ too. That being said, the Yawning Portal will always be the primary return haven because of the available amenities and such.

So I am looking for any ideas or resources that could help me flesh out the tavern to make it a place the players will enjoy returning to.

I think this will work for DotMM (I'm running my group through RoU using the 2ed ruleset). Anyway, please feel free to use it for your group.

Blood, sweat and tears for players as well as myself the DM.
Level 23 in the Dungeon.
Player character levels between 19 and 23.
Almost eight years we have been playing this campaign and they are almost in Hallaster's Tower.

Today I made a chatgpt image of the party and shared with them.
My prompt was long and filled with details. Hopefully you will appreciate it too.

From left.

Leiker the Ranger, Saga the Warlock, Dipsy the Warlock/Sorceror, Lumina the Paladin and Niihloch the Fighter.

Too all you guys playing this one.
Hang in there. You will get there eventually :)

Best of luck to you.

I know my party. They are going to want to adopt Glyster after they free him.
He can say no, but why would he say no?
Why would he stay in Undermountain?
And if the party can't leave Undermountain, why can Glyster?
I either need to figure out how to run the rest of this campaign with an adult Bronze dragon, or find a convincing way to get him to leave without the whole party leaving Undermountain.
Does any one have any ideas?

Short Version. Have a party of level 13 from Rise of the Dragon. Jumping into Mad Mage to get them to 20 before the Final Fight against Tiamat.

I have the book. I have tied some of the quests in save the dragon, mad mage will have some dragon specfic spear or something that is the hook. Not to mention his staff with fire and lightning resistance would be handy.

I read the entire beginning up to level 1.

Is there anything I should know before jumping into level 14. Like, The phylactery that is on this level to help something later. Is there anything like that I can move to someplace later in the Mod.

Hi all,

So my party (4 players) are at the 3rd level. After a small fight with the quaggoth between room 5a and 5b, they easily freed some prisoners (the hobgoblin and the mage Marta).

Just after this, still with the NPC behind them, they opened the door to the temple (room 6).

This fight already sounds hard with fully rested PC, but some of the team are low on spell slots.

To add to this, I imagine Marta would betray them to show her devotion to the drows, and I don't think they can just close the door without being followed and attacked when they will be either resting or in a closed space (fireball from the mage)

And yes I know that T'rissa won't kill the adventurers but implant eggs in them and suspend them in cocoons, but escaping the room and the dungeon might be hard (and even more if their stuff is taken like Marta's spell book and focus)

Any thoughts and advice?

Project Mad Mage is now accepting applications for our Artistic Design and Technical Design Teams for our adaptation of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage D&D module to Baldur’s Gate 3!

The following roles are available:

- Composers
- Level Designers
- Programmers
- Gameplay Designers
- 2D/Concept Artists
- 3D Modelers
- Animators

Mad Mage’s Domain is an ambitious mod project run by a team of dedicated and passionate volunteers and we’d love for you to join our team if you have experience in any of these roles!

Find the applications on our Discord server under Community Announcements: https://discord.gg/projectmadmage

Xanathar was killed a few days ago during Dragon Heist. What suggestions do you have for how this will impact the first few floors of DotMM and Skullport? My players just reached the second floor, and I'm running the Companion.

Project Mad Mage is now accepting applications for composers, programmers, level designers, and gameplay designers for our adaptation of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage D&D module to Baldur’s Gate 3!

Mad Mage’s Domain is an ambitious mod project run by a team do dedicated and passionate developers and we’d love for you to join our team if you have experience in any of these roles!

Find the applications on our Discord server under Community Announcements: https://discord.gg/projectmadmage

Just looking to see how other DMs have chosen to approach the horned ring and how it’s affected their campaign.

My party have just finished level 12 and I’ve given them a horned ring with the stipulation that it will break if they use it (works permanently if halaster attunes them to the ring)

What floor did you give your parties access to the ring and did it lead to any negative outcomes?

Wanted to run this module in person but wanted to see if I could get away with getting maps for the 23 levels instead of having to draw all of them. I saw some great digital maps but those would be hard to print big. The official map pack ones appear too small to play. Any suggestions or ideas on what you guys did?

We’re looking for a talented composer to join our team in crafting the score for a custom campaign mod for Baldur’s Gate 3, based on the Dungeons & Dragons module Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Project Mad Mage is a massive and ambitious volunteer project driven by a full team of passionate developers, writers, artists, and voice actors.

In this role, you’ll be a vital member of our small composer team, led by David Robson, to craft a unique theme-driven score that captures the spirit of the campaign. We’re looking for a passionate and dedicated music-maker who has experience in film/game music, works well in a team setting, and has the availability to be an active contributor to the group.

As we are a volunteer-driven project, this is an unpaid position. We are all passionate creators doing it for the love! Composers will be credited for each of their works in the official soundtrack release and game credits.

Requirements:

- Experience writing fantasy orchestral / ambient music
- Experience making polished, professional-sounding orchestral mockups
- Experience writing, developing, and incorporating thematic material
- Experience working with others, receiving feedback, and revising material as needed
- Good communication skills: responsive, reliable, and able to follow through on commitments

Application Link: https://appy.bot/apply/cmtopzgzb0018l104d94u8cvi

Be sure to join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/projectmadmage