All the bells and whistles

After a very lack luster game on one Friday, and some feedback from the players, I finally managed to pull together a great many of the things I have learned about the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, and the results were quite good.
We were one player short on the night, and as that player happened to be the one who quite often had to work the next morning, we were suddenly free to play as long as the game required.
This ended up being a game which ran from 7.30pm to around 4.30am.. I still can't believe we did that at our ripe old ages..
The game featured a hasty mission into the mysterious chambers beneath the Dwarven city of Sundabar.. ostensibly on a rescue mission for the dwarven king, who's son was off looking for a cure for the deathless plague which the city is suffering from.
The players got their gear together, found an entrance to the city beneath the Cathedral of Moradin, and soon found themselves facing some of the unexpected elements I had thrown together for the evening.
First off, a puzzle.. quite an odd riddle was asked of them by a bunch of ancient guardians..
'What is family, what is face, what is pride of the dwarven race?'
It stumped them.
The answer was 'beard'.
They then got into a scrap with the guardians, but quickly discovered that they were way more powerfull than their opponents, so they finished them all off very quickly, and were in a good mood..
Innovation number one for the evening.. I gave them hordes of mooks to obliterate.
Next up, they had some doors to get through, and decided they would leave them propped open, thus avoiding any need for levers and such later on, though at the time, they had no idea what a great idea they had just had.
Innovation number two.. let players foil your evil schemes.
Next, they discovered that there were demons in the premises, and once more, they were pretty punu examples of their wretched kind.. The wizard of the group managed to do a devastating attack, literally pasting the demons in mid air, resulting in a slick rain of demon goo from above as they figured a way across some odd rooms full of narrow paths, sickening drops into dark waters below and some chains hanging from the roof (some real, some illusionary).
I totally expected the players to just use their flying carpet to get across, but they didn't, they prefered to do it the old fashioned way, just because it was more fun to use their skills.
What followed were more rooms and more fun, somewhat underpowered fights with creatures that were interesting, but not much of a challenge.. it did allow the players to all have fun with their abilities and resulted in quite a few laughs.
For instance, we all refer to Dimensional Marauders as "Warp Chickens" now.
The final encounter started when I would normally be winding the game up with a 'to be continued'.. but we decided to play on.
It featured the following..
An already open portal wall to the Abyss, which periodically spat our more demons.
A Yochlol demon who seemed to be in charge.
A glowing magical crystal hovering above a round shaft in the middle of the room, the crystal being the obvious source of power for the rift into the Abyss. (and yes, we made lots of Dark Crystal jokes)
There were two big Neldrazu demons, a bunch of Rupture demons (which lasted to the very end of the encounter, much to my surprise) and a small army of Dretchs.
The Dwarven King's son was there, manacled to the wall, and the manacles were a trap version I had included in a couple of places on the complex before the players got to this room, so they would know how to deal wth them before the fight started.
During the fight, they had some Gnaw demons show up, as well as some Bloodseep demons.
In the end, it was a combination of defeating the boss monster and destroying the crystal that closed the portal and ended the fight, and by that time, we were all completely frazzed.. Thank goodness for my method of keeping track of monster hit points and conditions on printed copies of their monster manual entries, otherwise that combat would have been a real mess.
But, the players absolutely loved it!
They greatly enjoyed fighting creatures that could not hope to match them, and they really liked the combinations of odd enviroments, terrain hurdles that were mildly challenging, but mostly just interesting to imagine.. and creatures that were pesky, not particularly deadly.
The final fight was great because at the start, there was an actual horde of bad guys.. they were facing ten Dretches, four Ruptures, two Neldrazu and a shape shifting Yochlol.. that is fairly intimidating.. but they charged in anyway.
They were heroic, they were epic, it was a clear case of good guys vs bad guys, and they got to rescue a prince!
What's not to like about that?

I consider it one of my best ever game nights.