So what happened to Saif's Night Below PBEM and PBIRC Adventure?

As the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was titled, "All good things" must come to an end. After almost five years running, our Night Below game has ended. By just about any measure, it was a successful game. After the initial shake-out of players, we had pretty much the same group of eight players at our weekly chat sessions. The characters played rose from 1st level all the way up to 9th and 10th, something unheard of in most PBEM games. Over the three years that the web site was up, we had over 11,000 hits. Our site was linked to by several other sites which dealt with the Night Below module.

So what happened? It was a combination of several things. As the humble DM sees it, here were the key issues:

• Conversion to 3e We converted our characters over to 3e in late 2000. The transition proved to be... "difficult". Perhaps the most difficult thing was then having to try and convert everything else in the module over to 3e as well. As the party was just coming up on the City of the Glass Pool, I saw that task as somewhat overwhelming.
• Problems with the Module While the module provided many hours of enjoyable gaming for our group, we weren't blind to its shortcomings. The second book, in particular, was difficult to wade through. The writers spent much of the first book driving the idea of "don't kill everything you see" into the party's head, then in the second module expect them to wipe out tribes of neutral-aligned creatures without blinking an eye.
• Five years is a loooong time While I tried to throw in some color and variety to the game, the "dungeon crawl" feel, especially in the second book, finally sapped the excitement of most of the players. I've come to the conclusion that anything over a couple of years is too long to play a single storyline.
• IC and OOC party problems Over time, the group of players formed small cliques, cliques which were then echoed in the party. While there were no "lines drawn in the sand", the separation was noticable, and was growing more noticable as time went on.
• Changes in the DM's life The death knell for the game was when I was activated in support of Enduring Freedom, and in the process lost a third of my pay while doing the exact same job in the exact same place. The financial stress, along with the general stress of being activated, has somewhat decreased my desire to spend hours each week getting ready for and then running the game.

So what now? A month or so after putting the game on hold in late September, 2001, I tried to get back in contact with the players to see what their status was. I only received responses from three. We had already discussed splitting the party into more manageable (especially under 3e rules) 4-5 person parties. Each group was going to head off on their own adventure, one being a module, the other a custom-designed adventure. So when I could only find three of my former players, it was easy to reform a party around them. "In-game", only one of the Night Below characters (Ariessus) is still being played. The players of Nikki and Katrina both opted to develop new 3e characters, since the new game was going to stick very closely to the core 3e rules. I then added in two other players I knew would contribute to the game (both had once played with the group - Dan (Xaveus) and Robert (Beleg)), and we started back up. The new game doesn't have an extensive web site like this one. Instead, it is a very basic site geared towards the players, not the general public or lurkers. Still, if you want to check it out, it is at http://www.bluearch.net/dragonslair/index.html.

The last entry on the History page contains a quick "what happened to the Truth Seekers", explaining where everybody went. In general:

• Matar, Diana, and Amber were "bought out" of their share of the Retreat. They went back to Cormyr to deal with problems in Matar's new barony (the second game idea I had, which never got off the ground).
• Castinar and Sane have returned to the Underdark, continuing to hunt for Jelenneth. They have been joined by one of the Rockseer elves and several of Sane's kenku friends.
• Katrina received an "offer she couldn't refuse" to work for Midnight. Her whereabouts are currently unknown.
• Nikki was prefectly content to stay at the Retreat and bury herself in her studies. She is the only former Truth Seekers still at the Retreat.
• Thengal retired from adventuring to lead a more contemplative life as a cleric. He has been hired on as a "consultant" by the Jurgenville mining company, and is currently working on his axe.
• Ariessus has been recruited to help find the treasure of the dragon which slew King Azoun. She's ran off to Cormyr to help.

I have left this page up because I believe it still contains some enjoyable stories, and may be a good resource for any DMs who run the Night Below module in the future. However, there will be no further updates to the page. If you wish to browse around, I'd recommend you start with the "Guided Tour" button.

If you have any questions or comments about the page or the game which we ran, please feel free to contact me.