My group is about to finish Three Faces of Evil, and will be starting Blackwall keep soon. In preparing for the future, I know that my party HATES dopplegangers and the headaches they can cause in an adventure. No offense is meant to anyone who like dopplegangers, its just how my group of players feels; they really would not like an adventure that centers around dopplegangers.
If I recall correctly (don't have it in front of me at the moment), the bad guy has some scrolls that are the adventure's only real tie to the overall Age of Worms plot.
Since I can stick scrolls in any treasure pile, my question is this: is there another good city-based adventure printed in Dungeon in the last few years that I can substitute for Hall of Harsh Reflections, one that is around HoHR's recommended 7th character level? I know that I can remove the dopplegangers from the adventure, but since they're so central to the adventure's plot, I feel that I would make more mistakes that way than by just playing a different adventure, and putting the right Age of Worms treasure at the proper spots. Has anyone else made a substitution here?
Thanks in advance
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I found the 'Styes' adventure fit pretty well with my concept of Shack Town in Greyhawk. I'm not scrapping HoHR, but am re-couching Dory (from the Styes) as a minion of a different 'whisperer', Zyrxog the Mind Flayer. The aboleth and the squid are removed entirely, and Dory's personal motivation will be to help bring about the unravelling of the world (the ultimate design of Tharizdun) by helping bring about the Age of Worms (Zyrxog is now more strongly tied to the same goals).
Basically, I placed Marzena at Blackwall Keep to investigate tales of Spawn in the Mistmarsh, at the behest of the Wizarding Guild. Marzena (who is joining the party as an NPC) has to return to the city to report back to the guild what happened, and her contact is Eligos. Eligos gives her an additional assignment of investigating some inconsistencies in the Lantern Man Killings case that have been reported to the guild.
My main reasons for doing this were two-fold. First, I liked the flavor of 'the Styes', and wanted to add it to the campaign in some form. Secondly, I thought the 'squid-motif' key that Elaxan possesses, which functions as the tie to the sodden hold, to be too obscure. As the party researches the murder to its unsatisfactory conclusion, they will see the squid-motif placards outside warehouses in Shack Town, so the symbol will be known to them first-hand when they gain posession of the key.
Of course, this is pretty specialized to campaign plot changes that I've made, so I'm not sure how much this helps, but I thought you might be able to do something with it. The level of the adventure doesn't quite fit, and I am not really scrapping HoHR, but rather inserting a side adventure in the middle of it.
I also scrapped the Body Thief idea, inserted a little episode where the party gets scryed by Zyrxog (but they think it's Eligos, as it happens prior to their meeting with him), and replaced the Harid character from the Styes with another Doppleganger from Telakin's group. By changing these few things and removing the more dangerous encounters in the Styes adventure, I think it will fit my party pretty well by the time they get there (They're a little higher than they should be because I keep sticking custom stuff in there).
Good luck. I'm sure there are others who are abandoning the Dopplegangers for the same reason and might have better suggestions.
I don't have any of my stuff in front of me (so it might not work), but an interesting thing would be to mix in the Istivan mini-AP (3 adventure series) Dungeon did a while back.
Basically, Istivan is attacked by outer planes thingies.
The neat thing is that the Istivan plot is refered to as an omen later in the AoW AP (Spire of Long Shadows or the one before then...).
That's the first thing I can think of here...
Creative Director
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If your players hate doppelgangers, my suggestion would be to still run Hall of Harsh Reflections but to drop the doppelgangers. Replace them either with another CR 3 monster like derro or pureblood yuan-ti. An even better choice, though, would be to replace the doppelgangers with a thieves' guild, and have the guild be engaged in a complex string of forgeries, blackmailings, and other crimes against the Free City's government and nobility. Drop the subplot about replacing a PC with a doppelganger and the other shapechanging elements, and perhaps add in a few drow agents to the mix since the mind flayer's still the one behind the scenes pulling the strings.
I'm running AoW in Eberron, and I'm considering replacing HoHR with a few of the following:
Murder in Oakbridge (scaled up for 7th level PCs) -- Dungeon 129
Steel Shadows -- Dungeon 115
Shards of Eberron mini-arc -- Dungeon 123-125
It's important to note that most Dungeon modules won't provide enough experience to level the PCs up to 9th level from 7th, so you'll have to replace HoHR with at least two 'regular' adventures.
