I was just reading the Andoran book and given that Kobolds infest Mount Kia I thought it might be fun to transplant Dragon Mountain there. By fun I mean spending countless hours I probably don't have trying to wish upon a star and convert the old 2nd edition monstrosity into something resembling a fun Pathfinder/3.5 romp. If I undertake this would anyone care to see the results or collaborate?
I have found countless threads on just about every game community's messageboards about converting Dragon Mountain and which things were the most difficult but I've never seen any hard data to inspect other than literal translations which are problematic at best due to the huge paradigm shift between 2nd and the d20 editions of the game.
So I am going to be the change I want to see in the world and promise to do this thing...eventually...<insert small print and loopholes here>
Pathfinder deserves psionic monkeys and Dragon Mountain delivers the goods.
I ran this thing twice with 2nd edition. I've been thinking of running it again in Pathfinder, so I'd be willing to help out.
I ran this thing twice with 2nd edition. I've been thinking of running it again in Pathfinder, so I'd be willing to help out.
In one of the few 2e campaigns I played (suffered through), we had a GM who LOVED Dragon Mountain.
Unfortunately for him, all of the players had heard of the module beforehand and so nothing he could do would get us there. We even changed alignments to avoid being forced to rescue friends/ loved ones from the mountain when he kidnapped them. (He never quite got that none of us liked that sort of killer/ frustrate the players dungeon crawl.)
I have since read the module and I think that there is some room for a PF game, but I think it would take some serious re-writing and fleshing out to make it more than just a long, annoying dungeon crawl and turn it instead into a PF worthy ROLE PLAYING adventure.
Yeah the overall story behind Dragon Mountain (if you can even call it a story) was quite weak sauce. When I played through it as a PC our GM had written a whole new plot.
I always thought there should have been a bit more thought given to the dwarfen clan(s) that originally held the mountain wanting to perhaps get their fat little fingers into it. Of course the "plane shifting" angle made that rather hard in the published adventure.
I am in agreement that for such a long dungeon that there needs to be some worthy story elements in order to mesh with Pathfinder. The place is big enough to support a lot of good story telling. But at the end of the day it is still a massive dungeon crawl.
Well I have been noodling around ideas for some fun story to interject into Dragon Mountain to make it more worthy of being placed in Golarion.
Mount Kia is located smack dab in the middle of King Daralathyxl's domain. Red dragons don't get to his advanced age or reputation by flitting about and exposing themselve to assassination by their awful coniving fellows. Additionally he has made darn good and sure that he is the biggest and baddest thing around through the systematic destruction of any other chromatic or metalic dragons that even think negative thoughts about him or have the audacity to survive long enough to achieve higher power. His reclusiveness has increased with his age, power and typical red wyrm paranoia. His absolute megalomania must then be worked through intermediaries to ensure that no one gets too big for their britches when he is in hiding.
I plan on using King Daralathyxl as the main benefactor of the player characters driving them onward and upward to investigate Infyrana (Susturthys in the conversion) and unravel her subtle scheming. Of course the players won't know they are talking to and working with/for a great red wyrm (insert awesome magic power and super cover up abilities). They'll just think that Lord Blahblah is concerned about all the dang kobolds around Mount Kia and the threat it poses to Andoran's safety. Once it becomes clear that Susturthys is not quite the timid kobold loving dunce that he thought her to be he will contrive to send the characters in to her lair to defeat her or at least weaken her.
Assuming the players succeed they will have done him a great service and he may even allow them to "borrow" Susturthys' treasure until he finds a place to put it in his own lair. Or hey maybe I'll be in a bad mood that day and have him show up to mug/destroy the PC's...
So..on with the conversion/rewrite/update...to be continued.
Bill I think you have a grand idea there. Rather than building a giraffe and trying to say that it is a gray kitten, it makes more sense to just do something like "Dragon Mountain 2: Kobolds, Kobolds, Kobolds." The thing that made DM interesting in 2nd edition was the fact that it was one of the few examples of a living dungeon available at the time. To that end an updated DM is going to need some more umph in that direction because D&D has evolved. If you are feeling up to doing some collaboration we could come up with something kick-arse.
I have been spending a lot of time writing about the kobold kingdom of dragon mountain. The clan definitions in the original adventure are okay, but I think they need some updated spankyness to hold their own with modern adventuring pc hooligans. To that end I am working through each clan to define in a lot further detail exactly who they are as a "people" and what their goals will be during the time the PC's are in the mountain. When you take all twelve clans in concert it should make for one heck of a GM challenge to keep it all straight. However, it will go a long way towards making the dungeon feel more like a bustling location akin to a city rather than over a hundred rooms with...more kobolds in them.
Additionally keeping the plane shifting mechanic makes more sense than I originally thought, because it puts PC's on a time table that will actually stick for higher level play. Go ahead and retreat outside the mountain and regroup. The kobolds will make it harder to get back in, things will change while you are away and...the mountain shifts away in X time to random plane Y...
Bill if you feel like taking on a couple of clans I'd love to have some spirited help!
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Interesting... though I owned Dragon Mountain some many years ago, I never had the chance to run it. Since the PF game I am running now is almost completely revolving around Andoran (mainly Darkmoon Vale) and its neighboring countries this is an excellent idea! I look forward to hearing about the progression of this ambitious project. I'd lend a hand, but my knowledge of game mechanics was and always is a bit blurry :)
You could even link the chain of modules listed below with this...
Hollows Last Hope... Crown of the Kobold King... Revenge of the Kobold King... and lastly, Hungry are the Dead.
No necromantic energies here Mr. Mead. Dragon Mountain is huge and I haven't been in any obsessive rush to convert it. Even though I don't have any good reason like military deployment to stand on, I have had a busy year as kids, work, life and Kingmaker have sidelined my free time pretty thuroughly.
If you are still interested I'd be willing to fire up the ol' fires of creation and see if we can't move the boulder up the hill a few more feet though. Heck if you wanted to take over the task, I'd even assist you hahahah.
