Forgive my stupidity - if it is. I'm about to start DMing scap, from the magazines, but in the Forgotten Realms. Is there a conversion guide somewhere? Have I missed it in Dungeon?
My main thoughts are to do with deities and subtlety.
1) Deities.
St Cuthbert becomes Helm easily enough, Pelor becomes Lathander even easier. Am wondering about Kord though. CG, physically-oriented, as are both Sune and Lliira, but neither fir the bill very much. My biggest headache is Wee Jas though. Looking through my Realms stuff for a deity interested in magic and death, LN but sinister I drew a blank. The closest I've come is Jergal (LN and sinister, but not really a common deity at all) and Hoar (LN and sinister, but no interest in magic). Any thoughts?
2) Subtlety. I think this may be answered in the way people DM, but my impression of Greyhawk vs Realms (and don't lets open that can too far) is that Greyhawk allows more shades of morality, more subtlety. Not sure how a fairly upright, black-and-white Realms atmosphere is going to cope with some of the moral jiggery-pokery that will happen.
Any thoughts appreciated
Mark
I joined in on the adventure path with Secrets of The Soul Pillars - with a 14th level party, so my conversions might not fit all.
1) Deities:
I exchanged St Cuthbert with Torm - simply because his faith is more strongly represented in the realms, he features in the novels, and there are some very strong paladin forts outside Waterdeep - see Thornhold by Elaine Cunningham for ideas.
The Temple of Wee Jas I have exchanged with one of Kelemvor - all the benign things the temple has done for Cauldron is definitely within his faiths remit. For the moral change I have let the the absent high-priest and Ike be Cyricists in disguise (or even use Shar if you are bent on a more evil campaign), who have manipulated the rest of the temple into the faith.
2) Subtelty:
I think the strong point of the realms is that everything is straight forward. You dont need jiggery-pokery of morals, if it turns out that the good people were in fact duped by evil people ;) It just makes it easier for the players to direct their hate against a true villain. Think about the original Dragonheart movie - it never becomes an epic - because the evil guy is really not evil, just morally screwed up...
3) Locale:
I use cauldron, renamed as Silverspires, set in the Silver Marshes. This area is fairly untouched, and was declared "open land" by Alustriel - as long as you could protect it.
Hope this can help you a little.
I just started running the SCAP set in Chult, with Cauldron midway between two cities (one on the north coast, one on the south coast... don't remember the names). My solution to the deities is to run it exactly as-is. The idea is that back in the day, when Ubtao was given dominion over Chult, all of the new Faerunian pantheon were forbidden to establish a foothold there. In this version of the world, Chult is basically the last place the older (read: Greyhawk) pantheon is still worshipped, because they were there before Ubtao got dibs. So, there are temples for St. Cuthbert, Wee Jass and Kord, and shrines to Pelor and Farlahngnhanan, but that's about it.
Thank you both for your contributions. Both were useful - I've nicked ideas from both posts!
I ran mine in the north, but the realms none the less.
St. Cuthbert = Helm
Pelor = Selune
Kord = Lathander
Wee Jas = Kelemvor
Alright, so not much needed for the Helm conversion and I will come back to Pelor. Basically I was a little perplexed on Kord myself, so I took a look at what role the church plays in SCAP and went to convert from that. Primarily the church of Kord is interested in the physical contests in the flood festival. Reading through the FR gods this actually seems to fit best with Lathander's portfolio. Since that was the role the church really needed to play I went with it.
That left Pelor hanging though since the obvious conversion is Lathander. However, looking at the role again I just needed a church that would be small, be somewhat downtrodden and get pissed off when their access to the sky was blocked by another church. It actually doesn't sound like Lathander's current role in FR, so I felt good about that. Selune works pretty well though, just instead of access to the sun being blocked it is the view of the moon.
And of course Kelemvor seems a good switch for Wee Jas' death portfolio. Kelemvor is a LN diety and so could be accepted in the town but is also fairly new so the upper ranked priests were likely serving previous gods of death... ones who were not so... fair. It is this influence that turns the high priest and her followers as she disdains the new god of her chosen portfolio.
As for the morality of the realms, I have never had any problem seeing many a shade of grey in the realms and I think this is a great campaign for it.
Feel free to browse the archives on this one if you want more options as well... it has been discussed several times.
Sean Mahoney
I definately agree with the Lathander=Kord in this case. Especially if you look at how Lathander is worshiped in Chessenta, where he is worshiped as much for physical activity and athletics as for his portfolios of dawn and rebirth.
I also agree about the morality issue. Helm is a LN deity, for whom the end justifies the means, and yet his main concern is opposing evil. Mystra is NG and yet allow a wide range of alignments in her clerics because her predicessor was LN, and she is foremost concerned about the grown and practice of magic. The Red Wizards of Thay are an "evil" organization, but a lot of the merchants in their enclaves are more honorable and fair than a lot of merchants selling magic. Just a few examples off the top of my head.
While I'm not the DM, my group and I are playing through the SCAP in the Realms at the moment (we just started the nineth game). I don't know who exactly was traded for whom, but the gods in Cauldron are Oghma, Helm, Lythander and Tempus. The DM put Cauldron in Chult, close to one of the major port cities whose name I can never remember.
It's worked out pretty well for us so far. The temple of Helm is the one that we 'worked' for in the early adventures, and the temple of Oghma was the one we ended up destroying because of their conection with the Cage Makers, if that helps you figure out who my DM replaced with who.
My feelings on a realms conversion (KnightErrant, divert your eyes :)
Gods:
St. Cuthbert becomes Helm, especially reading AP1 (helm protects kids).
Pelor becomes Lathander, pretty straight conversion, and it makes sense.
Kord becomes Tempus, because no other deity makes sense.
Wee Jas becomes (wait for it) Banites or cyricists or Shar's Nighcloaks posing as a temple of Kelemvor or (worse yet) Jergal. If you put it near anauroch, it could be a sect of servants of the fallen A'tar the merciless, trying to remove Lathander's power base...
The Triad could be a group such as the dracolich folk trying to induce godhod in one of their undead dragons. Or they could be malarites, or people from the Iron Throne. It all depends on where you set it up.
If you put it near chult, you could use yuan-ti extensively, or the gnolls later on if you're in damara or halruaa.
Good luck
/d
For what it is worth, my DM plopped the SCAP on the western edge of the Lake of Steam primarily because Cauldron is set in a dormat volcanic caldera and the Lake of Steam is an volcanic region. We finished the SCAP about four months ago and we are now in the Age of Worms. My handle is the name of the character that I played in the SCAP.