3.5 SCAP + extra stuff + FR. Trying to make SCAP the best experience ever!

As title says.

I played SCAP up to Zenith Trajectory as it was published in Dungeon magazines as a player and it was probably the best experience I had till now.

Then I had to move to another city so I left the game. And here I am now DMing an experienced 3.5 party that needed a DM. We finished some parts of Rappan Athuk in the last session but the players told me it was too much of hack n slash for them and they wanted something else.

So I decided to run SCAP for the first time as DM. And the problems started before even our first session.

• SCAP is Greyhawk and I have extensive knowledge of Forgotten Realms. I decided to put it in FR but I can't find any finished conversion for it as opposed to Eberron. Just posts and threads about basic stuff like Cauldron's location and Deities conversions. But a stting conversion is much more than this in my oppinion.

• This is an Adventure Path even able to get you to epic levels so it's something that'll take a LOT of time playing through it. As such it should be as memorable as it gets roleplaying/storywise. For this reason I'm thinking to import several stuff from other published books and/or from magazines that I have no idea if they would work good for it (only read the books never played them let alone DM them).

• 3-3.5 conversion. Planning to buy the hardcover version in the next weeks (when I find the money for it) but till then I have to convert anything from monsters to NPCs to treasures.
  

These are the main problems I'm facing right now and the first session will be in 5 days from now so I could use some help for it.

Outside the problems I'm making a blog or a website or something for Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper and this'll be the first adventure I'll start uploading in the form of a diary or chapters of how it goes. Everything will be written down in a form of fantasy book or something from a spectator's view. Something like the bard's that keeps following the party at Journey Quest videos epic tale.

What I want from you is ideas of what I can add/change/foreshadow as well as successfull NPC backgrounds you may have made for it as I want it to feel like a real world. Every NPC should have a personality etc.
I want my players to remember that this fat dwarf with long red hair and no beard (unusual for dwarves) is the innkeeper of Slippery Eel if they see him walking in a street in Cauldron. I want 'em to remember that he will probably start trolling them the moment he sees them because that's his personality without them needing to write everything down for OOC to IC info even if they haven't seen him for the last 2 modules.

Books I'm considering using:

• All WotC published books except Tome of Battle/Unearthed Arcana/Specific setting books outside FR
  
• All source books from Alderac Entertainment Group (Haven't read the others yet)
  
• Esoteric Libraries and Festivals, Fairs, And Holy Days from Athenaeum Arcane
  
• Alchemy & Herbalists
  
• Riddle Rooms 1&2
  
• The Book of Curses
  
• PoisonCraft-The Dark Art
  
• Forbidden Arcana - A Collection Of Arcane Options
  
• Several ideas from Dungeons and Dragons magazines to make stuff as realistic as possible
  

Stuff I'll houserule.

• You get addicted to potions
  
• Max hp each level (same for monsters)
  
• Cross-class skills at 1/1 ratio
  
• Number of PrC<= Number of classes *Unless you finish a whole PrC line*
  

Stuff I'll homebrew.

• Reading stuff in libraries grands you a permanent bonus to a equivalent Knowledge skill depending on reading time (somehow will work like Handle animal on checks etc)
  
• Casters can make custom spells (read rules for it somewhere in a 3rd party group but not sure where)
  
• Greater gp cost at crafting but no exp cost
  
• I'll find a way to make Character Proffesions meaningfull
  

You might already have seen it, but there is a free PDF available on the Dungeon Resources page which has some information about Cauldron's location in the FR. It's the "Savage Tide Conversion Notes" PDF (between the on-line supplements for Dungeon 139 and 141).

You can download it here.

Most of the relevant information is on page one.

"Addicted to potions" is what sticks out here to me.

For making it a FR centric campaign, where the adventure is located (the Tashalar) it's very possible some of their early foils are from the Rundeen, who the Harpers assassinated a member of their organization a few years ago. The other aspect you have to think of is that the Tashalar has some harsh laws regarding any serpentfolk types (Yuan-Ti, Lizardfolk, etc), and they really don't like them.

As far as location, I actually placed it right on the edge of the black jungles on the east side of the Tashan Gap, in the Delfin Mountains at the beginning of the Amarast river. This is far enough away from Tashluta to make it the Sasserine of the campaign.

I also made my PC's travel to Labrand's Folly for Zenith Trajectory (entry along the north side of the Hazur Mountains).

So, along the digressions, here are my suggestions for chapters 1-4 (since we didn't make it any further):

Chapter 1 is all about learning the city, endearing yourself to the church (whichever you make it, I chose Helm), and learning the city has an undercity and so much more.

You can use the first adventure to introduce "rumors" about certain shops being really good, or others where "stinky scaley ones sleep," moving onto more serious rumors such as "one of the Stormblades took down a stone giant" or other exagerations. The quill and Feather from the RPGenius was a huge help filling in the other gaps.

The conversions are time consuming and I've lost mine since I did them. Yay losing the thumb drive :*(

One thing that helped me, again from the RPGenius, was the stat blocks, which I used to convert to pathfinder, and it made that process very, very quick.

Update: Due to some personal issues either mine or players' we haven't played yet. I also bought the HC (waiting for it to arrive within the week hopefully).

So... I did some reading over rpgenius and I really really loved some of the stuff there. So I'm thinking to start it in the following way...

1) Delvesdeep's Sasserine combined with FR Tashluta. (Will need to do some conversion as Tashluta is a place of treason in FR but Delvesdeep's Sasserine is like a heaven-on-earth town. Hard but doable). There the campaign will start probably on Druid's feast from Delvesdeep's Sasserine pdf. The players will be natives of Tashluta or will have stayed there long enough and they will be friends already (last time I started with them it took them 2 sessions to form a party!!!). There they will find a newspaper article about the abductions in Cauldron and hopefully they'll decide to form a party and go check it out.

2) While they're walking through the jungle rain and heavy winds will start at sometime during sunset and some baboons or something will chase them to the Lucky Monkey Inn to play the session from rpgenius.

3) The next day they'll start again for Cauldron and right outside the gates I'll use the foreshadowing from rpgenius for the Stormblades.

4) After entering the city I'll introduce Vhalantru as a patron using the 3rd idea from here and then get the off for their first adventure in Jzadirune.

Any more ideas I could use to make it more alive?