Shadows of the Underdark

Shadows from the Underdark

Tabletop adventure set in the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Forgotten Realms universe. Done in CMU's RPG Writing Class.

Quest Design:
- Created the Act 3 for the campaign that includes the following:
  - Multiple small NPC encounters
  - 2 major combat encounters that includes the final boss battle including the maps, tokens and stat blocks for enemies.
  - Quest objectives for the player characters.
Writing:
- Co-created and developed the main villain of the campaign
- Created and developed 2 NPCs.
- Co-created one of the main player characters.
- Wrote the final dramatic scenes between the player characters and main villain in screenwriting format.
- Formatted the entire document in collaboration with a teammate.

This project was completed in 3 months and involved the following steps in the process from beginning to end:

Each team member from our team pitched 3 main villains for the campaign
Based on the feedback, we pitched a total of 3 adventures with details about the villains and player characters, out of which the instructors acting as creative directors, selected one by the second week
We fleshed out the selected adventure and created a one-page outline
The outline got refined every week based on feedback while each team member worked on fleshing out the Act and developing the characters
While working on Act 3, I also finished the combat encounter and the dramatic scenes in the second and third month
The last 2 weeks were utilized to resolve story errors, continuity problems and address feedback while compiling the final document in DnD format

3 Villains Pitch

3 Adventure Pitches

Adventure Outline

Characters written by me

Act 3 - Encounter Maps

Act 3 - Dramatic Scene (Screenplay)

One of the major learnings for me was that research of the world helps a ton in resolving plot holes and even solving player motivation issues.
- While working on Act 3, I did not have a strong way of killing a very powerful villain with a comparatively weaker player character.
- After reading about Drow and the DnD lore, I found mentions of a few weapons like Soul Knife and Soultaker Dagger. The combination of these was a perfect fit for the kind of situation I wanted to create.
- So, I combined them into one Soul Dagger that could land the final choice of the encounter in the hands of one of the players who is supposed to be the main villain's lost daughter.