DDO Quests as Inspiration for Tabletop Dungeons (Redfang the Unruled)

[Drakeen]

I played DDO for years, and when I started DMing, one of the first things I did was recreate some of my favorite DDO quests as tabletop adventures.

I found that DDO quests translate surprisingly well into tabletop dungeons. One I adapted started in a warehouse, descended through a long series of ramps into a basement (Redfang the Unruled), and eventually opened into the sewers with kobolds, traps, levers and hidden areas.

One of the biggest advantages is familiarity. If you've run a DDO quest several times, you've essentially experienced the dungeon firsthand. You remember what's around the next corner, where the traps and secret doors are, how the rooms connect, and how opening one area affects another. That's very different from reading a dungeon description and trying to visualize it from scratch.

DDO also influenced how I design my own dungeons. Things like levers opening distant doors, mechanical obstacles, vertical layouts and interconnected areas are ideas I've carried over into tabletop games. And I still use those metal flood doors which slide up into the ceiling opened with levers or valves from The Waterworks.

I'd be interested to hear from other DDO players who also play tabletop which DDO quests have you adapted that translate particularly well to a tabletop adventure.

 

[nix]

Quite a few quest [pack]s are actually based upon pnp scenarios.

 

[Zavina]

I'd be interested to hear from other DDO players who also play tabletop which DDO quests have you adapted that translate particularly well to a tabletop adventure.

As @nix correctly said, there has been a lot of quests that have been PNP scenarios.

One of my favs in DDO has always been Haunted Halls of Eveningstar.

In PNP, it's a "A module for character levels 1-5" (wiki entry)

In DDO, it's 28-30 (Wiki entry)

 

[saekee]

I DM each week with my family and have tapped some quests. The one big issue with a lot of DDO dungeons and quests is ecology. I ask myself always how the creatures live so as to more meaningfully make the role playing sensible instead of just a combat crunch.

Redfang is full of spiders with nothing to eat and somehow some trolls surviving in a closet-size area. How did the traps get there too, and why?

For the most part, the Attack on Stormreach chain is well-thought in terms of how things survive and in fact supply chain disruption is an xp opt; only the Minotaur city is rather impossible in terms of how they survive there.

It is easy to slap undead in quests but consider how they ended up there.


In general the big things like giants and dragons are difficult to explain how they feed, so I try to incorporate huge prey.

 

[Ghostwheel]

I think Korthos would be solid. I like the shipwreck on the island to get the party together, I would use the first undead quest with Drexelhand then the tavern where they kill him. head to the wilderness to recruit Heyton and also fight undead Drexelhand, but may include that encounter in Misery's Peak instead. Streamlining it could be a cool setup for an Illithid (aberration) campaign or just work as a cool mini campaign.

Also, the NPC party working on separate tasks would add an interesting extra set of roleplaying opportunities.

 

[Drakeen]

I DM each week with my family and have tapped some quests. The one big issue with a lot of DDO dungeons and quests is ecology. I ask myself always how the creatures live so as to more meaningfully make the role playing sensible instead of just a combat crunch.

Redfang is full of spiders with nothing to eat and somehow some trolls surviving in a closet-size area. How did the traps get there too, and why?

For the most part, the Attack on Stormreach chain is well-thought in terms of how things survive and in fact supply chain disruption is an xp opt; only the Minotaur city is rather impossible in terms of how they survive there.

It is easy to slap undead in quests but consider how they ended up there.


In general the big things like giants and dragons are difficult to explain how they feed, so I try to incorporate huge prey.

Yeah it is fairly easy to come up with a reason. What I came up with is this.
The troll is part of a larger gang and works as a poison dealer. If you look at the room he is in that is what is implied. He feeds all the spiders and harvests their poison for resale on the black market. He is particularly good at it because any damage the spiders do will likely regenerate and he is strong enough to get out of their webbing. He is also adept at all the climbing in there. And the gang set up all the traps. I even left the shrines in there but I forgot how I made them work or what qualities I gave them.