dnd

Out of the Abyss

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Overview

Out of the Abyss was the first DnD campaign I ran as the dungeon master (DM)…it was a lot of work! We started the campaign around December of 2021 and only just recently finished part 1 of the campaign in December 2023. Because of our busy schedules, we could really only meet about once a month; it took us around 25 sessions of about 4 hours each! Out of the Abyss is a survival type campaign where the players all of a sudden find themselves imprisoned in the underdark by the drow. They need to escape and find their way out of the underdark and back to freedom; however, they quickly come to realize that the underdark is not only full of dangers but something strange is also happening….

The Players

We started the campaign with 5 players – 4 onsite and 1 remote. As the campaign progressed, we lost a player but also gained one. I would say this is about the sweet spot for the number of players I can comfortably take into account for with this campaign. At times, I had to get a little creative and make certain situations a little harder, easier, or simply somehow split the group up in story for them to have a difficult but fun time fighting (or talking…which rarely happened with my group) their way through the scene.

Preparation

As the DM, it was part of the job to know the campaign and its story as well as I can to be ready for most of how my players will be interacting with elements in the world I’m creating. This could vary a bit depending on the campaign, but Out of the Abyss is a massive campaign with many elements – it usually took me around 3 – 4 hours to prepare for a session. This included familiarizing myself with the creatures, NPCs, places, nuggets of information certain NPCs might have, map related things, and dropping in hints/information/knowledge that connect the players not only to their immediate setting but also the larger campaign.

This particular campaign doesn’t necessarily tell the DM exactly what to run. It simply lays out a bunch of different places, occurrences, and NPCs and its up to the DM on what to include and in what particular order. The campaign does have “major checkpoints” where it tells you things like “by the time players reach this place, they need to be level xx”; however, what happens before and after those checkpoints? Its up to the DM.

Aside from knowing out of the box things for the campaign, there are also player backstories, interactions, and scenarios they might want to integrate into the campaign to have subplots going on. All of this is super fun and great, but as the DM, I had to make sure to make time for these sort of things and make sure my players what to expect and let them know, I am listening.

Tools Used

Part of the struggle with running a large campaign like this with a bunch of other adults is scheduling. As the DM, I had to make sure i took into account peoples time, availability, and get things in order in a timely fashion so that 4-5 hour sessions wouldn’t just show up out of the blue. I used rally for my scheduling needs – very straightforward (assuming people noted their time in a timely fashion).

Discord was also a pretty big tool used. One of my players, The Grumpy Gnome Rafa, lives in Germany – so we had to put him on video for our sessions (which means always carrying an extra laptop). Our session calendar events were also on discord. Planning, note discussion, images, names, and other discussions also happened on discord under the dedicated out of the abyss channels.

As the DM, note taking is also pretty important for planning, having links to things ready, and progressing the story. For the most part, I used notion for my note taking needs – which was overall, pretty smooth. Occasionally I toggled to sublime for handling battle tracking.

Of course, a major tool used was DNDBeyond. This is where I created and managed the campaign and the players. The actual out of the abyss campaign is also on there.

The usage of tiles, minis, and other related world setting tools were also used to help bring a scene, especially a battle, alive! Even our friend from Germany sent over his mini for us to use as a representation of his character.

Obstacles / Difficulties

There are a lot of different things to consider when running a campaign this large.

  1. Because we met in person (except for the guy on discord), establishing a rotation of who is hosting was pretty important – we pretty quickly figured that out.
  2. People’s availability – again, scheduling a 4 – 5 hour session between 6 adults can be very difficult, so it is important to have options and have everyone weigh in as early as possible on when they think they will be available. Typically, we made sure to plan for EVERYONE to be present.
  3. Out of the Abyss as a large number of NPCs to deal with. As the DM, I needed to figure out a way of handling all of them in a manner that was both fun for the players and manageable for me.
  4. Getting people to get into their character and role play can be a very difficult thing but it does make things more fun. Figuring out ways of having players engaged in their character could also be very difficult. As the DM, I had to try my best of motivating players to do so.
  5. Player engagement. Some players like only battling, others like roleplaying, others like something else – figuring out a balance between all this is pretty important. Additionally, making sure the campaign is going somewhere is important as well. It is up to the DM to make sure there is an actual semi-descent story that players feel engaged in following.
  6. Difficulty of the campaign. This may vary for each campaign, but having to remind the players of the constant danger they are in without making it impossible for them to escape from is also very important. This is a survival based campaign and players need to know that if they decide to not take things seriously, their character can die. As the DM, it was always fun putting them in a “WTF” sort of moment to remind them the underdark is not messing around.

There are plenty of other things to note but these were some of the larger ones. Struggles in other areas are mentioned throughout this post.

Growth as a DM

DM-ing could be a very difficult and easily overwhelming thing to do. But if we have done our due diligence of at least learning the campaign we are running, everything else is living and learning.

  • taking a team pulse – it’s important to take note if people are enjoying something or not, to make necessary adjustments
  • giving people the opportunity to do what they want (within reason). Throughout the campaign, rare items, pet dragons, crazy plans, and laughably useless items were used simply because I figured it would make the campaign more fun for the players (even if it meant re-organizing a few things on my end). This gets a little into how much intervention a DM should have in certain things, but for now, ill simply say that if all it is is a little more effort for the DM to have players more engaged, I’m all for it.
  • this one is a mix of the survival type genre of the campaign and me as the DM having a bit of fun…. but throwing in some pretty deadly scenes was always super fun and it reminded the characters of what’s lurking in the underdark. Though, many if not all have died with a couple of players permanently dying…. (but we made it work).

Overall, I learned to really step back and let the players also developer their own story within the context of the campaign and intervene to help build. I only learn what is possible within the campaign but it’s up to my players to help me actually build the world.

Conclusion

Overall, this was a lot of fun and very much looking forward to when we pick up part 2 of this campaign! I would like to believe everyone else had fun as well. For now, I am in fact happy that a lot of my time will free up as I get ready to simply be a player in another campaign :).