Category Archives: undermountain

Halls of Undermountain Review

Halls of Undermountain is a hardcover supplement that presents just under a hundred pages of pre-made dungeon, and oddly still sets you back just under thirty bucks.

For those not in the know Undermountain is a dungeon built underneath Waterdeep, which is a city in Forgotten Realms. It originally started a dwarven mine before an insane wizard moved in and stockpiled the place with monsters and straps…kind of like a meta-Dungeon Master. While personally not a fan of Forgotten Realms (though a huge fan of Neverwinter Campaign Setting), the dungeon is exceedingly easy to drag and drop basically anywhere.

The first 13 pages are dedicated to the dungeon’s history and various entrances that include the Yawning Portal, an inn built on top of a well that leads directly into the dungeon. Again even if you do not run in the Realms you can use or lose the inn backdrop, NPCs and all. The rest of the book features three adventures, but there are also tips on running, pacing, and making your own adventures, as well as tables for random room generation/encounters.

Given enough time and/or players I would not mind running my players through this. While on the surface you can run it simply as a theoretically never-ending dungeon crawl, the DM advice and adventures make it clear that there is room for an overarching story and social interaction. I consider it a good buy despite the page-count to price tag ratio. If nothing else in the interim I am sooo going to use the random tables.