A recent Dungeons & Dragons session I hosted for my friends saw them outside of a ruined mage’s tower that had been abandoned nearly 300 years ago. Upon dealing with the necromancer threat inside, the party discovered a well that had been placed on the map as a decorative set piece. The goal was to have the battle take place and the well serve as an obstacle or an asset depending on how the players wanted to use it.
The well had nothing else written for it. In fact, the battle map only existed as a courtesy. Rather than make the players use theater of the mind for the battle since we were playing over Discord, I set up a map on Roll20 and let them duke it out with the baddies there–plus, it is a bit easier to run for me since I have a visual of all the players and enemies and can make for more interesting encounters. So, it was quite surprising when the leader of the group said, “I look down the well, what can I see? Where does it go?”
My gut instinct was to say, “Nothing, it’s just a well.” That seemed like a cop out–even though it was the truth–but it was also late in the session and we were about to wrap for the night, so I thought, what would be down this well? I decided to make the well very deep. The goal was to encourage the players to actually descend into the well if they were interested or leave it if they weren’t. Since they were low on health and spells after the tower battle, it would be risky to venture into new territory, but also exciting.
The party decided to lower the lightest member of the party down the well with a series of ropes that had been tied together. I had player who tied the rope make sleight of hand checks to determine the difficulty check necessary to make sure the rope didn’t break. Unfortunately, the ropes did come undone and the lightest member of the party fell to the bottom of the well. Thankfully, he had Feather Fall prepared and was able to save himself from death at the bottom of the well, but it still left him in a large cavern far beneath the surface. He instantly cast Invisibility on himself and proceeded to explore his surroundings.
What followed was coming up on the fly with what exactly he found in this cavern. I led him through a large room and a tunnel that led further into the cavern before he decided to turn back. One of the other party members with the capability of flight eventually flew down to save him as he came across some massive creatures that existed beneath the surface known as Umber Hulks.
The overall experience was amazing and my players even ventured back to the caverns beneath the well in the next session when they were all rested. It was the first D&D adventure I had ever written myself from start to finish. Even though it was only a couple of sessions and a single area, I was able to plant something on the big bad that they discovered after they had defeated him which will spring them into the next section of the campaign–which is a realm of my own making. They also befriended a Dark Elf named Ucniha who I got to write a backstory for and now plays a part as a significant non-player character in the campaign.
Even though none of it was planned, it made for one of the most interesting series of events in the entirety of the campaign because it was the first time I ever really went off script to make something interesting happen. Since then, the players have gone on several adventures and quests where everyone is flying by the seat of their pants and no one–not even me–knows what is going to happen next. It is scary and interesting and fun and that is what Dungeons & Dragons is all about to me.