My D&D 3.5 campaign, played out every week using Roll 20, has now reached two milestones. The first is that the bad guy behind the various plots the PCs have been going up against, the Lich Kel Aval, has been destroyed and the Scarlet Brotherhood's plans for domination of the Hestmark Highlands have been stopped. The second is that most of the party is now 20th level.

What originally started as a “let's try out virtual gaming for a few weeks” has now been running for over a year, and has turned into an opportunity to try out all the various aspects of AD&D which I purchased books for but never got around to really using. Apart from running a conversion of Against the Giants, and an attempt at The World' Largest Dungeon, our preference has generally been for game systems as little like D&D as possible over the last 20 years.

Since the players are wanting to continue, the next books to explore will be a mixture of the new and the old. Obviously, we are moving into Epic territory, so the next set of adventures will explore a side of D&D I've never tried before. Though the group got up to the high teens in the Against the Giants adventure (3rd edition giants are a lot tougher than 1st edition), I haven't tried levels 20+ before and coming up with suitable challenges is going to be interesting.

Initially, the plan is to head towards Sigil, aka the City of Doors, and have some fun in the Outer Planes. The party found something really nasty during their assault on the Lich (the Eye of Vecna) and are looking for someone to help destroy it. They've been given a name - Mr Croop, a Githzerai sage who specialises in the destruction of artefacts, and a place - the Six Armed Slut, a brothel in Clerk's Ward. Should be easy.

After that though, they're heading back to deal with some of the other foes they encountered - the Drow. Amongst the earliest AD&D adventures I purchased back in the '80s were G1-3 (Against the Giants), D1-2 (Descents into the Depths of the Earth), D3 (Vault of the Drow) and Q1 (Queen of the Demonweb Pits). Though I got around to running the G series ~15 years ago, I've never run a party through the sequels (I've tried twice, both ended with TPKs somewhere in D1), and now seems a good time to try it.

D1-3 will be interesting to convert to Epic level play, but with the large almost-sandbox map of the Underdark there's plenty of room for really nasty dangers down in the depths of the earth, as well as some opportunity for plotting and scheming with the Drow and other intelligent denizens to provide more subtle challenges. Also of course, the Illithid will provide an opportunity to dig out my copy of the Psionics handbook.

The final plan will be to go after Lolth in her home in the Abyss, which in 3rd Edition really does require Epic level characters. I'm not sure yet exactly what level they'll need to be in order to defeat a goddess, but I'll work it out over the next few adventures. Should be fun.