I often talk about my party doing the unexpected, but in a dungeon like the Netherdeep, I (and the book) had a few very specific expectations. Naturally, my party did not meet them, in some cases did the opposite. As usual.
One of the chambers is to discover the identity of some ghosts and to address them by name, to discover which was which. It’s a bit convoluted, I’ll grant you. I did not make this a difficult encounter, should the party choose violence, because the ghosts hurting them wasn’t the point. My group even commented how the book is often written for combat-focused groups, and that they were doing that this time. After, I told them that their usual tact was the one the book hoped for. We all had a good laugh… except the protagonist of the module who just sighed sadly.
Another chamber offers three options to help. My party, being rather large, decided to do all three things. Which was fun for me, because I got to run a combat with only half the party – which meant half the buffs they are used to. Made them think a bit more tactically instead of just squashing everything. And the protag was much happier with this result.
Now, my group in general, not just this particular party, has a general dungeon tactic: always go right. Normally, we also have a rogue who is constantly checking for traps and secret doors. This party, follows the first, but doesn’t have the second. This caused them to skip most of the first section of the dungeon, and move well into the second section. Until they ended up in a very long tunnel and I asked them if they were doing anything besides swimming. Maybe I shouldn’t have prompted them, but I wanted them to get the idea of the secret doors. One of them took my prompting and did start searching, and found one. Towards the end of the session, this also caused them to realize how much they might have missed earlier.
These two things had another result, as well. They ended up going backwards (according to dungeon numbering) through a few sections. The last of which held a ghost set up to take them “forward” through a secret door to a section they’d already been through. Which caused me to panic skim the section to figure out what to do. I ended up having him lead them there anyway, and give his lore dumps and pleas for mercy and compassion.
Now, they’re getting ready to go backwards to try and find everything they missed. And I have two mobile combat encounters to decide where to place. One of which is following them, the other I skipped last week in favor of the dungeon itself. So much more to go.