Several ideas for adapting the Age of Worms Adventure Path have already been shared here. Here’s another. First, a warning—anyone who doesn’t like borrowing from other game materials to expand/modify their own campaigns won’t like what I’m proposing here. It includes pieces of Greyhawk, modified for Golarion, but still obviously Greyhawk in most respects. I suspect it will be an equal opportunity offender of both Golarion and Greyhawk purists. There are some AoW spoilers scattered in what follows as well.
I have begun a conversion “sourcebook” of sorts, from which I’ve summarized the main ideas below, to keep things fairly brief here.
I have kept the two broad storylines of the campaign somewhat separate – the story of the Wind Dukes of Aqaa and that of Kyuss. I’ll discuss the Kyuss story, since it’s the most important to the campaign. If people like it and want the rest, I’ll add it later.
The Cult of the Ebon Triad seeks to unite Asmodeus (Hextor), Rovagug (Erythnul) and Norgorber (Vecna). With small modifications to specific details and references throughout the AP, this adaptation feels pretty transparent and didn’t require much of a mental shift for the players to make.
Kyuss is a necromancer from ancient Taldor who led his followers to the Brazen Peaks along the northern border of Katapesh and built the city of Kuluth-Mar in a secluded mountain valley that collected what water flowed from the mountains. The change of setting from lush tropical jungle to arid hills required some creative re-envisioning, but in many ways adapted smoothly, changing from a Meso-American feel to a Babylonian feel.
Kyuss curried favor with Urgathoa instead of Nerull to gain his mastery of necromancy. I also envisioned the spellweavers to have a connection with the alien masters of Katapesh. There was a similar feel there to me.
The severest jolt of adaptation comes from my decision to lift the city of Greyhawk and many of its environs (e.g., Diamond Lake, Blackstone, Mist Marsh, etc.) straight from the Greyhawk setting and transplant them in Molthune. I wove the city of Greyhawk into the history of Molthune, making it a city on par with or even greater than Canorate or Eranmas. Although Canorate remains the capital, Greyhawk is the country’s most important trading hub and its strongest holding, to such an extent that the Imperial Oligarchy has granted its Lord General and its Directing Oligarchy a far greater degree of autonomy than any other city or region in the country. I have plotted out many intrigues and political tensions arising from this situation that could form excellent adventures on their own, so I’m pretty confident that the insertion can be made fairly convincingly without sacrificing much of the city’s existing tone and flavor.
Another advantage to transplanting Greyhawk in Molthune that I discovered was that the geography cooperated nicely. Greyhawk sits along the east bank of the Nosam River, near its mouth into Lake Encarthan. Diamond Lake, in turn, sits nicely about four day’s ride southeast of the city in the hills there (i.e., Cairn Hills). I then turned much of the lowland along Molthune’s border with Druma into marshland, creating the Mist Marsh. The Five Kings Mountains made an excellent replacement for the Abbor-Alz Mountains and the location of the Greysmere dwarves. I could list more examples of transpositions, but I think you get the idea if you’re an old-time gamer like me who has played in Greyhawk and compares all of the elements of the AP between settings.
I debated transplanting Alhaster intact, but I liked the adventures and materials developed for it so much (and because my time for revising is limited), I decided to include it largely unchanged as well. Again, the geography cooperated pretty well. I placed Alhaster in the far northern bay of Lake Encarthan that is part of Ustalav. The tone and flavor of the city seemed to fit pretty nicely with the corrupt and petty lands of Ustalav as well.
Although the distance is a bit stretched, I placed the Rift Canyon in the valleys of the Mindspin Mountains. Again, the geography cooperated, by placing the giant clans in a suitable location. The greater relative distance between Alhaster and the Rift Canyon does pose a troublesome discrepancy, but, given the level of the PCs by the time they reach this part of the AP, I didn’t worry about it.
That covers the gist of my conversion ideas. Feedback and ideas are, of course, welcome.
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I just wanted to thank you for this adaptation. I'd been dealing with a lot of trouble and uncertainty about where to place the adventure sites. I'll be using most of your adaptation for my own Pathfinder Age of Worms, save a few thing I thought worth mentioning:
I liked the lush tropical jungle too much and will be placing Kyuss' old center of power within the Mwangi Expanse.
I didn't think agents of Rovagug would work well with other religons so my Ebon Triad is Asmodeus, Lamashtu, and Norgorber.
What did you go about the other gods prominent in the early levels of the AP? Iomedae is an obvious replacement for Heironeous but I'm stuck on St. Cuthbert.