I know we all tailor our adventures a little, but I'm wondering if any of you have made extreme modifications to any of the adventure paths and how it's worked out for you.
For example, we're currently playing AoW in the world of Hyboria (Conan), in a desert, Hyborian-races-only, Mesopotamian gods, in a low-magic environment. Modifications have been a cinch actually and there has been little to no trouble completing the scenarios (they just started the Champions Belt -9th level).
What have y'all dun' that you would consider extreme?
jh
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Well, I'm running the Shackled City AP in the Forgotten Realms, and my conversion notes document is up to 94 pages of 7.5 point font text.
I've really enjoyed using the Shackled City as a skeleton for my campaign that I can flesh out. Some things I've left identical, others I've changed cosmetically, and other parts I've replaced completely.
The thing I've really appreciated is the pacing of the Shackled City - originally in my home brew campaigns, I'd try to plan a subtle, nefarious plot that would inevitably go over my players' heads and by 3rd level they'd be confused and bewildered. With the SCAP the pacing is such that by the time they're on to 'the big plot' they're physically and emotionally engaged to the campaign.
As for extreme, how about replacing Adimarchus and the last three chapters of SCAP with Levistus, a journey to Hell, and preventing an invasion by the floating extraplanar bastion city of Icerazor?
If I ever get around to running Age of Worms, I'm planning on setting it in the Dark Sun world (as in the original boxed set, ignoring everything that came after), using a heavily-modified version of the D&D rules. But, at the moment, it's an idea and nothing more - I first need to get gaming again, and there's at least one campaign I want to run first.
I'm running the SCAP in slow motion. Basically I am halving all the XP awarded in the adventures to double the encounters required to advance a level. The reason for this has to do with previous campaigns where I felt my party never had the time to become accustomed to their new abilities/powers etc before they were getting new ones.
Also I found that they had far fewer opportunities to develop allies and roleplay relationships out before they were already powerful. It was a bit like the 6 foot 10 year old who doesn't understand his own strength.
This has also allowed me to insert a lot more side treks relating to the characters backgrounds, interests and whims inbetween each adventure. This has proved a great success to date.
Another major change I have made is to insert the Smoking Eye into many of the adventures and villians of the SCAP. I also have another plot running alone side the main path to do with a planar exploration, retrieval of spheres of power and overall to do with a 'wizards' goal to draw the extraordinary power from the flickering spark of a dead gods soul which is drifting in the Astral Plane. So overall I think thats a fairly divergent theme to insert into the SCAP. :)
Delvesdeep
Dang, Archade, that conversion sounds quite extensive! I'd love to get a chance to see it, if you wouldn't mind. Although if you don't want to share it, I completely understand.
My email address is deitelbach@scu.edu
And your conclusion sounds pretty effing epic.
I turned the Age of Worms into a musical.
Andrew Llyod God
PS Okay, I didn't but boy would it be funny.
When I run the STAP, the Vanderborens will all be gnomes. Seriously.
El Skootro
When I run the STAP, the Vanderborens will all be gnomes. Seriously.
El Skootro
World's shortest deathknight....
I'm running the STAP, and I've changed the savage transformation so that the creatures effected are turned into Reavers from "Firefly" and "Serenity". The descriptions given in the moduals make me think of the cartoonish crew of Davy Jones From POTC Dead Man's chest. It just felt weak. Plus I like the idea of the monsters being less supernatural and more an exploration of the extreme cruelty that humanity can achieve.
I am pretty much running my Shackled City game standard, however I am running two Age of Worms campaigns, one of them is an play by post game and will have varies sidetreks as well because it has a party of eight players, and my other one on tabletop will have varies sidetreks because we are using a different experience chart.
My most extreme idea was using the AoW skeleton story for a World of Darkness game (most specifically Vampire the Requiem.)
I am seriously considering converting STAP to a SciFi game.
Sean Mahoney
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Dang, Archade, that conversion sounds quite extensive! I'd love to get a chance to see it, if you wouldn't mind. Although if you don't want to share it, I completely understand.
My email address is deitelbach@scu.edu
And your conclusion sounds pretty effing epic.
Glad to share it! I've emailed it to you, but fair warning - zipped it's 12MB.
If you don't get it, please let me know.
I've plugged my SCAP into my ongoing Forgotten Realms game. Adimarchus is the son of Shar, and has a lot of elements of Tharizdun tied into his background.
My FR campaign has (at its heart) an alliance between Shar and Jergal to overthrow Ao and break the cycle of deific replacement (Noon to Dusk to Night to Morning to Noon). Jergal is the ancient scion of the spell weavers, and he allowed Shar to reveal the secrets of the spell weavers to the Netherese the Shadovar to escape the destruction of Netheril.
Hrm...the Ebon Triad are Myrkul-Bane-Bhaal and, once the AoW games I'm playing in ends, I'll probably cannibalize AoW into epic adventures for the games that I'm running.
I've inserted Red Hand of Doom right before Zenith Trajectory, with Brindol being replaced by Cauldron. The siege will allow Vhalantru to show his 'foresight' by using the Blue Duke's army to help drive off the Red Hand.
I'm spreading out the Cagewrights a bit more to give PCs a chance to at least have heard of them before the final encounters. I haven't decided how yet, but I need to give the PCs more of a hook to get them down into the depths of the volcano.
There's more, but that hits the high points.
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My FR campaign has (at its heart) an alliance between Shar and Jergal to overthrow Ao and break the cycle of deific replacement (Noon to Dusk to Night to Morning to Noon). Jergal is the ancient scion of the spell weavers, and he allowed Shar to reveal the secrets of the spell weavers to the Netherese the Shadovar to escape the destruction of Netheril.
Very cool! I've made the Church of Wee Jas into the Church of Kelemvor, and all the bad guys are cultists of Jergal. I'm thinking of when I change over to the STAP, I'm going to follow up on this and replace Demogorgon with Kezef the Chaos Hound, doing the work of Jergal ...
Mesopotamian gods, in a low-magic environment.
That sounds really intresting.
Are you using Mesopatamian gods as detailed in Dragon 329, the D&D supplement Sandstorm, or some other source? It would be interesting to kow.
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I think I'll put some zoogs on Parrot Island.
They wear parrot feathers and parrot skull helmets, and have tiny gae bolga spears with hempen cords on the end to pull the spears back out with. And the warchief of the zoogs wears the skin of a porcupine, and loves to grapple.
zoogs are these tiny monkey or squirrel like creatures with tentacles on their faces. They are from the Lovecraftian Dreamlands.
And a gae bolga is a celtic spear with backwards facing hooks or serrations on the blade to wound more by pulling the blade out.
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Contributor
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Currently running the Age of Worms in a Napoleonic/Jules Verne inspired home brew. I've had to make serious changes to most of the monsters involved to get them to fit with the available races.
Of course, watching the PCs fire rifles and pistols at ancient Constructs has been priceless...
For those interested in my conversion notes, they can be found here, as they are too big to email to anyone:
http://taskaunt.stikipad.com/attachment/asset/11760/AP1_Shackled_City_1-5f. doc
Thanks for sharing Archade. I'm in the process of downloading it right now (you weren't kidding about its size!).
I'm contemplating converting the SCAP to fit in my current Exalted Campaign. It would be a lot of work, but I think it might be fun! (Plus it will give me a chance to use the expensive hardcover AND maybe make the players hungry for to play the regular version!)
I think I'll put some zoogs on Parrot Island.
And here I thought I was the only one who randomly inserts Zoogs into D&D campaigns... I also have a player who wants a "gae bolga" feat (you know, to throw the spear with his foot). Any ideas?
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I never knew about zoogs until I got the Dreamlands book. Now, I think they should take the squirrel niche in the food chain.
As for the gae bolga feet (ba dump ump) not sure. I'm not the most (game)mechanically inclined individual; I know that Mongoose had a Slaine rpg a few years back and they prolly had one. I know they had the salmon leap. I got the Slaine: the Horned God comics by Mills and Bisley.
Thanks for sharing Archade. I'm in the process of downloading it right now (you weren't kidding about its size!).My Savage Tide conversion notes are already at 5 pages ... :<
Yowza. I've been reading your conversion notes, and I am absolutely astounded at the level of detail you go into. How long did it take you to create this? It's practically a work of art. :)
As a side note, I love how Realms-ish your names are. I've always found the "name-game" hard to master.
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For those interested in my conversion notes, they can be found here, as they are too big to email to anyone:
http://taskaunt.stikipad.com/attachment/asset/11760/AP1_Shackled_City_1-5f. doc
I'd love to read the conversion notes but the site says that it is down. Should i keep checking? Or, please email me the attachment at ufoundbrent@yahoo.com. Thanks again. Brent
I'd love to read the conversion notes but the site says that it is down. Should i keep checking? Or, please email me the attachment at ufoundbrent@yahoo.com. Thanks again. BrentFor those interested in my conversion notes, they can be found here, as they are too big to email to anyone:
http://taskaunt.stikipad.com/attachment/asset/11760/AP1_Shackled_City_1-5f. doc
Remove the space before doc (at the end) and try again. It's massive. Archade must have had a staff of typists chugging espresso 'round the clock to get this done.
I plan on running STAP in an alternate Earth setting where magic is much less prevalent. We'll see how it goes.
Hmmm...haven't given it much thought yet. This world will be a Disneyland for historians. I'm going for a rompin' stompin' good time around the globe we all know and love.
Romans? Check
Carthaginians? Check
Greek City States? Check
Feudal England? Check
Byzantine Empire? Check
Gauls, Picts, Celts, Scots tussling with the English? Yes
The action will center around the Meditteranean area and the tropics off Africa. Magic came to Earth when Haley's Comet got captured in Earth orbit and became a 2nd moon, thus bringing about arcane power and the ability for priests to actually contact their gods and receive spells.
So, I'm thinking Sasserine will be in the Azores and the Isle of Dread somewhere around Mauritius.
I'm going to use the DR rules for armor from UA and all magic items will be tied to the life force of a person or intelligent creature, usually the person they were designed for. If the person dies, the item is no longer magical. If someone can find a meteorite that came off Haley's Comet, they can possibly use it to create an artifact or as an ueberspellcomponent.
I'm so sick and tired of all the magic item bookeeping. This forces PCs to possibly (gasp) get a magic item creation feat. I know it'll involve some juggling to keep the balance, but I love modifying pre-written adventures anyway, so I'm cool with that.
And...oh yeah, the sorceror class will use the variant presented in Green Ronin's True Sorcery book. That ought to be interesting.
Hey, I answered your question and I stayed on-topic, Heath. I guess my variant will be quite an extreme modification for an adventure path.
EDIT: I meant St. Helena island, not Mauritius...I always get those places mixed up. Isle of Dread middle of equatorial Atlantic between South America and Africa. Sao Tome and Principe also makes a good spot, possibly.
Archade...I just looked over your conversion notes and all I can do is take my hat off to you. Very impressive!! I'm going to read that thing in its entirety when I get some time.
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Nice with the Haley's Comet thing.
I also had to bone up on geography a little bit.
If you're using Wee Jas, I could see elements of her clergy crediting her for all magic arcane and divine due to her sending the second moon to earth; a view seen as heretical by other churches and leading to the 'problems' in the Sasserine backstory.
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Aw, gosh guys, you're going to make me blush!
I've been plugging at my conversion doc a page or so a week or the last year and a half. As you can see from looking at Foundation of Flame on, I'm building it on the fly.
I'm an onomastics nut, and I belong to a medieval reenactment group like Lilith, and my thing is researching medieval name construction. So I steal from that to make names for my NPCs. I have to be honest, it probably consumes a lot of brainpower coming up with those - if you can use them for your games, go for it!
Nice with the Haley's Comet thing.
I also had to bone up on geography a little bit.
If you're using Wee Jas, I could see elements of her clergy crediting her for all magic arcane and divine due to her sending the second moon to earth; a view seen as heretical by other churches and leading to the 'problems' in the Sasserine backstory.
I'm going to stick to Earth mythology deities, although I'm sure there's a Wee Jas equivalent there somewhere.
My thinking behind the Haley's Comet thing was that there seemed to be an inordinate fascination with astronomy back in the old days (I mean what else besides that and procreation was there to do at night?). The druids in England built Stonehenge to predict Haley's comet's passing (for my fictional world okay, not my thinking for the real Stonehenge). The Egyptians built the pyramids for the same thing, etc.
Why? Because whenever Haley's Comet passed weird stuff would happen (arcane and divine stuff) as the arcane forces surrounding Haley's Comet irradiated Earth.
I haven't quite figured out the backstory on how and why the comet got captured as another moon of Earth, but it involves Jesus and the anti-christ and all that stuff and I'm probably going to make a few of my players very nervous, as I'm going to take biblical history and shred it with a buzzsaw (but Jesus would be one ass-kickin' LG avatar, let me tell you, CR 50 at least ;) and Christianity is going to be one of the main LG religions in my campaign world.
I've been working on this idea for almost 20 years and I'm finally going to run with it...about 6-8 months before my current campaign ends and the new one begins.
I think the final piece of inspiration that took me over the top to finally run with this world was reading S.M. Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" series.
A most painful lesson was learned today. My players might not post on Paizo very much, but they are reading my posts to get clues about what's going on.
They got together and petitioned me not to run STAP in my new world, but to keep it in GH. They want continuity to their old characters and want those retired stogies (once they get there, that campaign ain't over yet) to continue on, even if only as major NPCs.
That's okay, it'll make the prep work easier. My "Alternate Earth" will rise someday, though!!!
Now that my secrets are no longer safe, I will not post as much about details of my campaigns. I'm not mad about it, I should have anticipated such.
Oh...my "Arcane Earth" campaign idea will not go so gently into the night. Since D&D campaigns only last 2 years now, as opposed to a 1/3 of a generation, I have a couple of years to perfect and refine it.
If you lived here, Heath...I have no doubt you could convince them to ditch GH.
The problem is one of my own creation. My players really hate the Great Kingdom and want to see Ivid and his bunch burn, burn, burn, burn....they hope that if I keep running GH STAP as a continuation of my current campaign, they can continue on their visionquest of ultimate revenge.
Maybe I've been too vivid in my development as the Archbishop of Pontylver, the Medegians, the Church of Hextor and the Overking of the Great Kingom as villains in my current campaign.
After they failed to assassinate the Archbishop a few months ago, the players are really taking this personal. It's cool, I'm glad they're having fun and so am I, so it's all good.
To continue on my previous post--two of the characters even got married for the specific reason to have kids so the kids or grandkids can continue on their glorious quest to cleanse GH of evil. How can I deny such RP dedication? (My wife was nervous about playing out a romance of her character with another character, run by a male friend of mine, but how insecure does she think I am, LOL)
(My wife was nervous about playing out a romance of her character with another character, run by a male friend of mine, but how insecure does she think I am, LOL)
A better man than I. lol
It was very much rated G. If you read my campaign log (Farewell2kings Greyhawk CY 576) in the journals here, you'll see the prose spouted forth by Elrohir Redleaf and Silver about their romance among the war against the Archbishop...it's very sappy, but hey, at least they're playing their characters.
....plus all the crude wedding night jokes in the game were made by me...LOL.... "Elrohir is Captain Blueb**ls no more!"
I'm considering placing the STAP on a conglomeration world centered on Nyambe (Atlas Games) and Naranjan (from Green Ronin's "Mindshadows") as I've been dying to play in those settings forever.
Part of me wants to add Maztica, Khemti (Green Ronin's "Hamuanptra") and the islands of Kozakura and Wa as well.
I've got too many settings . . .
The most significant modification I've made to my Age of Worms campaign has been fairly superficial, yet mood-defining. I opted to roll a d12 to randomly determine what month the campaign would begin in at the start. A "1" for January, "7" for July, etc. I rolled a one. The campaign has been set in the dead of winter since its onset. Although I am unfamiliar with the Greyhawk calendar, the campaign is currently in late Feburary, as the party prepares to leave Alhaster. The fortunate roll has allowed me to design "winter" oriented random monster tables, and altogether required little modification. (I even interposed magically-powered heating for Magepoint.) The sense of cold, desolation, and inhospitability the winter season has brought has given the campaign a unique flavor.
I'm running all three AP's in one big interwoven campaign.
Its a crazy, crazy idea - it might just work!
Its set in Ebberon, Sharn is the major city for all the AP's, and I'll be adding in the shadows of the last war/whisper of the vampires blade/grasp of the emerald claw and voyage of the golden dragon along with some Dungeon adventures and some stuff of my own. There will have to be much Daelkyr/Lords of Dust/Emerald Claw/Lord of Blades/Dragon Bellow/The Dreaming Dark type tweaking, but games are about once a month, so I have plenty of time, and there are 7 players, so the experience points are stretched a little further. I'm also cutting a number of encounters, and uping the CR's/EL's a little.
By coincidence, the party will get to Diamond Lake as winter sets in, having started the game calendar on the approximate real world start date (mid september). i've been looking forward to the winter theme.
PS: if this post ends up being one of two very similar ones here by me - I just lost one, and it doesn't seem to want to appear, so I re-wrote it. And this time its a cut and paste job ;-)