TL;DR, I'm creating a blog post series about this book with the intention of making it approachable. This intro is going to be longwinded though. Every so often, my thoughts come back to Out of the Abyss (or OotA) published 2015 for D&D 5e. It was the first D&D adventure (or campaign) book that I owned. I read the whole thing, it's 200 pages and some change, but I never successfully ran it. It's left me with a feeling like I've left something unfinished, and I need to finish it. The reasons why I never successfully ran it are well, have you seen the damned thing?
OotA is not a campaign. It's just not. It's a campaign setting presented as a campaign. There are cool ideas here, but there's a lot of empty stuff in between. It's a massive sandbox with a focus on exploration and roleplay more so than combat. It's got an alien horror element to. It doesn't feature anything that is traditionally D&D or fantasy, and that means you can't rely on familiar tropes and generic fantasy. It's got no castles or treasure or goblins or damsels in distress. Instead, it leans into survival mechanics, and it introduces madness mechanics, and there's everywhere is dark. The setting is the Underdark which does not resemble any biome on planet Earth, and it's just not the type of setting that offers what most people expect in D&D which I assume to be either Critical Role style play, old-school style play, or something in between. This is a ten-year old book that simple doesn't get discussed on the internet. Not only that, but this is also not a book for beginner GMs!
I want to sell you on running this campaign book.
I plan to break this ten-year old book down chapter by chapter and simplify it for you, and present it in such a way that would make it appealing. Who else but me? Like I said, I read the damned thing! And it was an absolute chore, too. This book is dense and presents a lot of unique D&D material in a very dry way. It was an actual challenge for my AD&D-ass brain. Also, I might be one of ten people on planet earth who did read it. I'm serious. This is not a joke. Only ten people ever read it. No, this isn't a joke. Anyway.
What is the Underdark?
It's a subterranean network of caves and chambers that go as far and wide as the Sword Coast, maybe further, but the Underdark has layers meaning that it's got a third axis, so it's actually a lot larger than the Sword Coast. That said, it's also full of a lot of nothing, so it's a lot more empty than the surface world above. There are strange things down here. Strange and weird things like Ilithids AKA mind Flayers, Umber Hulks, giant worms, devil manta rays, crazy cultish fish men, fungus people, and demons. They also have inverted evil mirror-universe versions of familiar fantasy races. They have spider worshiping evil matriarchal elves called Drow, evil work-obsessed dwarves called Duergar, and a suspicious and serious variety of gnomes called Deep Gnomes or Svirfneblin (try saying that three times fast). All of these creatures are adapted to living in the dark and underground. They all have complex societies, and their societies have complex relationships with each other. Also note that everything is like thirty (30) days away from everything else in the Underdark. That's a lot of exploration and your player characters are assumed to know nothing about it!
We will take it one step at a time! So, don't be overwhelmed. You can trust me because I'm one of ten people on planet earth who read this book! When our powers combine, we can make this a kick-ass adventure module.
First, you have to ask if this is even something you want to run or play. It's not Dark Sun, but it's definitely different. It's not for everyone. Everything traditional about D&D is absent, or at the very least is not a main feature. It even plays differently by emphasizing exploration and survival. If you play D&D for fun heroic combat that makes you feel like a badass, that is not the Underdark. That kind of play is completely antithetical to at least the first half of this game. It's going to require people to actually be interested in something very different. If people aren't into that, then they aren't into that. It's niche.
Second, the only things iconic about the Underdark are all controversial because California and Seattle said we must talk about certain things with -ist and -ism and -phobe (or as I say ist-ism-phobe). I am not going there. You're welcome. I trust that you're an adult and you understand that what we do in play is not... You know what, you're an adult (probably). You don't need to be lectured.
Index Card RPG (ICRPG)
This is not required reading, but if you haven't read the Game Master material in ICRPG, I genuinely believe you are a less good Game Master than you could be. ICRPG began as a mod or hack of 5e, and it's great. I can't prove this but I genuinely believe that the author of ICRPG has ADHD and I think his book shows it. His design philosophy says to me that he wants to reduce cognitive load by abstracting and simplifying the game and cutting unnecessary things. He has a minimalistic presentation for his settings and adventures that give you a structure to build on rather than give you everything there is to know, and everything is written with an engaging active voice. He's even got a mechanic called a timer die which he invented to make players hurry the hell up because he's impatient and he wants to get to the good stuff fast (that is ADHD 100%).
Like I said, ICRPG is not required reading. I reference ICRPG to let you know that I will be presenting OotA in a manner that might suit the design philosophy of ICRPG, though this is not indented to be a strict ICRPG adaptation of OotA, and I won't be converting anything. In fact, I'm going to treat this without consideration for the game system you're using (such as D&D). Like the author of ICRPG, I can draw, but I won't be putting in cool drawings. Shame I know. Well, maybe. No promises. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, after all.
OotA is a Two-Part Campaign
Out of the Abyss is divided into two parts.
Part one is a lot like Alice in Wonderland, except you replace Alice with D&D adventurers and you replace Wonderland with the Underdark. Basically, these adventurers begin in a prison, and they must escape. Then, they go from unusual place to unusual place that defies logic and reasoning, and meet unfriendly people who might just be crazy but you can't tell because you're not from here. Your player characters, like Alice, are searching for a way out! The Underdark is so complex however that they can't just navigate out like a maze (unless you choose to let them). Instead, they must visit the major locations, and they must ask around for someone who knows how to get out. It's up to the GM to decide where the exit is, who knows about it, and what the players have to do in order to receive that information. While the player characters are searching for an exit, they are being actively pursued by their former captors which adds tension and conflict.
Part two is different. In fact, the book recommends that once the players get out, give them another adventure or two as a palate cleanser and to fatten them up with resources. After some months, the dwarven kingdom of Gauntlgrym will contact the player characters. Gauntlgrym has heard of their adventures in and escape from the Underdark, and Gauntlgrym has an urgent task with epic stakes for them. Go back in and kill the demon lords. What are the demon lords? Well, in the D&D setting of Faerun, there's a hell. It's called hell. There's another place like hell called the Abyss. It's like hell, but shittier. The most powerful badasses of the Abyss are called demon lords. They have escaped form the Abyss and they're a dangerous, unstoppable threat. If they escape the Underdark and onto the surface, the Sword Coast is in danger. Go back in there. You're the most knowledgeable about the Underdark, it must be you! Gauntlgrym will give the players resources and send them back in. The players must now search for a way to defeat the demon lords, and fair combat is a death sentence. For completing this, they will probably be offered anything they want and then they can retire from adventuring.
The campaign can therefore be structured into two arcs, and each arc has one main goal. Main Goal 1 is to escape. Main Goal 2 is to defeat the demon lords and save the Underdark and by extension the Sword Coast. Knowing that these are your players characters main goals should also give you much needed perspective for planning and prep.
Interestingly enough, you could play the first part of the campaign and never come back to it, and just pursue some other adventures indefinitely. Or, you could have any mid-tier adventurers be recruited by Gauntlgrym to go into the Underdark and stop the Demon Lords without ever touching the first part of the campaign. You could also do the campaign from the perspective of people from the Underdark using exclusively Underdark races (or subraces as they may be). That's an interesting twist.
Gameplay Loop
So, in case you missed it while reading the last section, this game has a sort of gameplay loop. It goes like this. First, the player characters are in location A. They must explore and survive the Underdark to reach Location B. Then, they must use social interaction to find information. You give them a weird quest to complete or conflict to resolve. Upon completing it, they either get what they're looking for, or they get told how to find it, and the loop repeats. NPCs can also lie to the player characters, or they NPCs might be too mad to know they're not being honest.
Themes and Player Character Backstories
You'll also notice that this isn't really the sort of campaign that suits your typical farm boy who leaves his quaint village to become a hero type of story. It's not, and that's another obstacle to this game. The Underdark is rather alien. If your players are into backstories with unresolved conflict and proving themselves and becoming famous, that's not compatible with this setting and its tone and themes, or at least it will probably be very difficult to realize. The Underdark is weird fantasy, horror, and maybe even a little sci-fi. It's Alice in Wonderland. It's isekai. It's the Super Mario Bros. movie from the 1990s! It is a fish out of water story. Your character's stories are probably going to be more introspective, existential, and themed on sacrifice and answering a higher calling and completing hard but thankless tasks. Your player characters will be fighting hopelessness and dread. There are demons down here, and cultures that are predominantly evil. That's kind of heavy.
Conclusion
I think it's very weird that a company like Wizards of the Coast for 5e D&D came up with this campaign. We'll probably never see anything quite like it again unless they do Dark Sun. I mean it. Let me reiterate some things I discussed. No familiar tropes. Exploration is dominant, combat is not. All locations are really far apart. The tone and themes are heavy.
How can we spice this up? How can we make this fun and interesting? Honestly, that's up to you. I can give you some ideas, but you need to take a creative interest and you need to take some creative liberties. You don't need to use all the material in the book, and you don't need to stick to it strictly. Remember the two goals? You only need as much material from the book as you need to reach your two goals. That might mean that not all content gets used. Oh well. You might even want to fill it up with your own stuff instead. Maybe it can be post-game content if people aren't sick of the Underdark, and I expect that's a possibility.
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