This is an attempt to share my thoughts on running the Sunless Citadel.

Specifically, I am running the 5e version found in Tales from the Yawning Portal. This book contains 7 adventures throughout the history of D&D. In character level order these are

• The Sunless Citadel
• The Forge of Fury
• The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan
• White Plume Mountain
• Dead in Thay
• Against the Giants
• Tomb of Horrors

As the book mentions “over 30 years separates the newest from the oldest”. However, there is an attempt to connect them all through the Yawning Portal, either as separate adventures narrated in some way by someone or as an actual campaign in one way or another.

All of them focus heavily on dungeon crawling and danger-wise they lean on the deadlier side of the scale. So why did I decide to run one of these adventures, especially with new players in the group?

Well, recently I’ve been craving some dungeon crawling. And even if I’ll be GMing, I will live vicariously through my players. Now as for the difficulty, well, it’s called dungeon crawling for a reason. In my humble opinion, I do believe there needs to be an increased sense of danger in these scenarios. Now, should there be Tomb of Horrors levels of danger? No, but it also shouldn’t be a walk in the park [1]. So probably something in between. The second reason is that I believe each previous edition of D&D has design elements that are worth remembering and incorporating into TTRPG design. So why not have fun while studying these elements?

So I decided to share my thoughts here, mostly as a way to try to piece them together. But since I don’t know how to write these session reports I’ll just start with a couple of words about the adventure. The Sunless Citadel was first introduced as an introductory adventure for 1st-level characters for D&D 3rd Edition. The party will delve into a keep that has been swallowed by the earth (making it sunless) and will discover a group of Kobolds clashing with a group of Goblins. And beneath that, there is a corrupted Druid that needs manners and a vampiric tree that requires a bit of pruning.

And now a word about the characters. We have a High Elf Cleric with necromancy tendencies, a Half-Elf Rogue who is getting the hang of checking every single door, window, and hole for traps, a High Elf Sorcerer who doesn’t know why she’s here, and a Dwarf Barbarian who dive bombs head first into everything and asks questions later. The Cleric and Rogue are the veteran players of my group and none other than the other two contributing authors here, Nicole and Anastasios (who are very professional and won’t read this post). Then we have the newbies of the group who, have already 3 sessions under their belt and are looking for some increased difficulty.

And more than 500 words in let’s see how the first session went. I was wondering whether I should set this in the Forgotten Realms or Eberron. I like Eberron and it’s my go-to published setting. I’m already running a sort of campaign there, which is more of a group of oneshots loosely linked together. The reason I was considering the Forgotten Realms was because I wanted to use the Yawning Portal in Waterdeep. Plus, I also wanted to mention the Undermountain, hoping to get my players there at some point. But all of these could be moved to another setting. Yes, but I don’t want to do the homework. So I just went with the Forgotten Realms.

I think at some point I should mention this is not a spoiler-free post so be careful if you want to play this adventure. Now, if you want to run this adventure, feel free to continue reading.

For the first session, I didn’t want my players to spend too much time in inns and villages so did a bit of fast-forwarding. I gave them a bit of the Yawning Portal and how they met there and found out about the Sunless Citadel and the fruit that comes out of it every year, and then transported them to Oakhurst, the village near the keep. Once again, I fast-forwarded the interactions there but gave them the time necessary to gather rumours about the citadel. Then they were promptly dropped near the ravine where the fun begins.

They managed to reach the courtyard (location 3) without alerting any rats. I think my description of the courtyard was enough to convince the rogue to check for its stability, so he also found the trap. This allowed them to move into the keep (location 4) safely and without facing any issues. They missed the hidden door in the tower and they moved north, towards the kobold’s area, skipping the door that led south (location 6).

And here is a complaint I have. Areas 7 to 12 are described first, even though going through the door in area 7 is not an easy feat at level one and at the beginning of the adventure. So if you’re someone preparing this adventure you get to read around 2 pages that won’t come up early. The description of areas 7 through 12 should have been moved later into the adventure and area 6 should contain a mention of the area number, just like it was done later for areas 25 and 31. Rant over.

The players then dispatched the mephits of area 14 quite easily, thanks to the sorcerer’s player following the Pokemon type matchings. The best part was that the Barbarian noted that the room must be a boiler room, moments before smashing the keg that was basically a boiler.

Since calmer minds prevailed in are 15, the characters managed to communicate successfully with Meepo the kobold so he led them to the kobold group’s leader (location 21). There they struck a deal and were quickly led to what I consider a buffer area between the kobolds and the goblins (location 25). Therefore, they kinda missed exploring a few in-between areas, but I feel it’s not an issue because they returned there to have a long rest (and end the session) and they will have to return again once they have finished with the goblin situation. We’ll see.

I really enjoyed areas 26 and 27. The characters managed to figure out relatively quickly what to do in both, especially with the Barbarian being practical-oriented. As in he tried the red liquid without really any worry, trying to turn the handle of the door towards area 27 and being just extremely lucky and taking almost zero damage. They didn’t visit areas 28 and 29 and followed the humanoid tracks towards area 31 instead. The Rogue’s stealth skills shined once more in areas 31 and 32 since he managed to reach the blockade before the goblins were alarmed by the Cleric. So it was an easy fight.

And this is where session 1 ended. The characters decided to return to the kobold area to take a safe long rest because half of the party had sustained quite a bit of damage. However, they still managed to visit a lot of areas. I wonder if they will want to backtrack a bit at some point. Also, now that some time has passed, I can “restock” some areas a bit, just for fun.

At least, I can confidently say that for the first session, even though the portal was yawning my players definitely did not.

The next session will be on the 30th of November at the earliest, so I have some time to prepare. I have some things I’ve noted that I need to prepare and do better but I will mention them in the next installment, hopefully.

And until next time, have fun!

[1] As I’m writing this specific sentence, it’s 9pm on a Monday after 10 hours of work so I would definitely make some mistakes. So it was quite funny watching Nicole’s (my better half and author on the blog) reaction as she was reading what I was writing and came across the sentence “a cake in the park”.

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