So, DMs, what little changes are you either planning or already enacting in the Age of Worms from how it was published?
My biggest alteration is probably removing Eligos. The character didn't strike me as all that great, and I'm replacing him with a recurring NPC from my past games. He lives in the City of Greyhawk and is a sage - I think that fits the bill. He'll probably still be killed off at the end of Champion's Belt, but his lack of contact with Manzorian is the primary reason Allustan sends the party his direction (Allustan still distrusts his former master, and would rather not involve him unless, as is the case when the ulgursasta breaks out and Diamond Lake is demolished, there's no other choice).
There was a thread a long while back about the Ebon Triad's choice of gods. The poster made a lot of sense, but I disagreed with their choices, so my Ebon Triad is composed of cultists of Tiamat (Lashonna trying to get Dragotha annihilated by getting him to take the blame for perverting regular Tiamat worshippers) Nerull and Tharizdun (an imprisoned god of destruction whose worshippers generally desire a fraction of their lord's destructive power).
Thus the Faceless One remains the architect of the Triad's affairs in Diamond Lake: As the chief cultist of Tharizdun, he is attempting to raise the Ebon Aspect as a potential avatar to trap the essence of the other gods and use that power to open Tharizdun's demi-planar prison and let a fraction of his power stream forth.
I am using Eligos, but he is not a big wizard with information. In my game, the PCs will hopefully seek him out, on their own, during a Free City investigation section threaded into the beginning of HoHR. The PCs gain the doppelganger's attentions as they search for a hidden shipment of Slow Worms cabable of infecting thousands, sent by Illthane to aid Raknian in his final Champion's Games ceremony.
Here are some of the other changes I've made. My campaign is set in my homebrew of Wistera.
The Wispering Cairn:
PCs didn't get to the tomb until second level. Much of their motivation is based on a dispute between a local cattle rancher called the Blackknave, and the man who pushed his operation into the Miresburg valley, the Khellek character (in my game, he's named Archemedi - he tries to hire the PCs, and had not yet made his adventure party. . . he will, and it will eventually be five members, if the PCs don't kill him first).
After the PCs get to the tomb, there was a ticking clock against both the double-crossed Archemedi, and the Backknave's men. The PCs ended up fighting Kullen and his men in the Lair of the Laborers, stooges of the Blackknave.
Alastor Land's mother is still alive, albeit crazy as a loon. As a former priest of Pelor, she and three others tried to stop a growing evil in a fishing village to the south, almost twenty years ago. Alastor was taken captive, but fled into the hills to die in the cairn. He wants the PCs to bury his bones, and find the bodies of the other three Pelor Priests. Both he and his mother's curses will be lifted.
After a rousing, and very empathetic speech by the party's fighter, I allowed the PCs to make a Diplomacy check to convince Alastor to open the tomb first (it was only fair). They made it, and cleared the true tomb before they got to Filge. Fortuately, they were already 3rd level, so they didn't get TPKed by wind warriors (it was close).
Filge had a direct hand in spawning a disease that cleared out a fishing village. Instead of a recent arrival, he has been the only living resident at the village's observatory for years. He has the priest's bodies, and after his defeat, Alastor's mother is revived from her insanity. Once she rebuilds the temple in town, she'll be a good ally (I hope). I dropped Filge's necromancer statblock, adn made him into an evil druid. As a master of poisons, the syringes still came in handy. . . :)
The PCs also find a series of letters and notes that detail Filge's "good work" clearing out "a set of docks" in the big city. Balabar is a local magistrate, and Filge was hired in by him nearly twenty years ago. The PCs are not aware yet, but as a young man, Filge's talents with poison helped Zyrxog clear out Cinnmore's docks around the Sodden Hold, paving the way for an infiltration by Doppelgangers. Highly recommended, his next task was to clear out a fishing village. Unfortuately, Filge was double-crossed, and forced to serve as a lonly watchdog over the empty, diseased town indefinitely.
Wow, that was long. The above changes have already happened, for good or ill. I have alot more changes planned for the other adventures. Some, such as 3FoE are unrecognizable, but others, such as EaBK, will be run pretty much as written. Maybe I'll do another post after others have disussed their changes. Later. . . :)
Enticed the PCs to investigate Smenk's house after finishing TFoE, the impetus being Commander Trask's request to "get those ****** monkeys out of there so we can arrest Smenk". Once they got there, they found Merovinn Bask, one of Kullen's cronies that they had run off earlier, was in fact a high-ranking cultist of Bane (Hextor) that had survived and taken his revenge on Smenk.
They also found 3 dire apes (see Obituaries), a wizard (Bask), his rogue cousin Natalo ("Where'd he come from?"), and a flesh golem hiding in the basement. They're currently trying to figure out what to do with the latter.