|
Does anyone else think that Serpent's Skull would be the best port to a 1920's pulp era setting?
This AP is the one that makes me wish there was a Pathfinder Modern Conversion. It evokes the feel of a 30's pulp serial, Indiana Jones and The Mummy.
It's a long while before I can even consider running this AP, and I'm considering a lot of different options before I do and the one I'm considering most heavily is making this a modern conversion:
Some flavour conversions:
Azlanti = Atlantis
Serpentfolk = Mu/Stygia
Mwangi = Africa
Red Mantis = Japan (NINJAS)
Aspis Consortium = Nazi Germany
Shackles Pirates = ??
Pathfinder Society = National Geographic Society
Sargavan Government = British Colonial Government
_______________________________________________________________________
The basic premise is that the true and secret history of the world as posited by Robert E. Howard's "Conan the Barbarian" stories happened more or less as written. Africa is still largely unexplored by western society, and has many strange and fantastic creatures living there.
Book one works more or less perfectly as written (the cannibals are degerate Nazis that are trapped on the island).
Book two also works pretty well, mostly just changing up some of the rival faction's equipment.
Book 3 onward is where I start to get iffy as the game starts to get pretty high magic by that point.
Anyway I'm off to bed, anyone have any ideas or suggestions - ideas on how to best modernise PF classes or Pathfinderise Modern classes?
Vaults of Madness could be techno-science vaults.
Serpentfolk are aliens.
Could work out. I saw the rules for guns in Pathfinder just being redressed bows and liked it a lot.
The Shackles pirates could be Soviets (if you want to go the "egalitarian pirates"-route).
This is a pretty cool idea, and I don't think a gun-toting hero would be out of place at all in this AP. I even think it requires minimal reworking if you wanna keep the magic stuff (it even harkens back to the source material for the serpentfolk in pulp and Lovecraftian litterature).
I think the Pirates could American businessmen and their mercenaries. Uncultured and greedy, but access to all sorts of resources.
Alternatively, you could just cut them. Five factions is a lot to juggle, and you don't have to do an exact 1:1 conversion.
Book 3 I think works fine as written. Just change the Aboleth to something more like an idol infested with corrupting magic.
Book 4 also works fine as written.
Book 5/6 would involve taking some cues from "Journey to the Center of the Earth" and inventing a new type of creature. I think the Serpents could be turned into "evolved dinosaurs" pretty nicely: they were driven underground by the extinction meteor, and now they've evolved alongside the apes to create an alternative human.
Replace the Skull of Ydersius with some Biblical artifact. Like the staff Moses used to cause the plagues of Egypt or something. (If it falls into the wrong hands, the user can summon the angel of death and commnand it to turn rivers to blood and kill all the firstborn: this is "Ydersius".) Or if you'd prefer a tighter fit: invent an ancient Babylonian device that summons "the destroyer."
Mostly I'm just angry at you for not thinking of this sooner and posting it before we got halfway through the AP. This would make an amazing re-write.
Mostly I'm just angry at you for not thinking of this sooner and posting it before we got halfway through the AP. This would make an amazing re-write.
There was an earlier thread on this subject.... :)
But I think this idea works best if you assume a Crimson Skies type of setting, where the Spanish flu and Great Depression were worse than they were in reality.
That makes the setting a former European colony. Germany is the obvious choice, with devil worship instead of Nazism, though having England or France fall to the forces of hell would work just as well.
Set the colony anywhere. Again, the obvious choice is Africa, but you could also place it in South America and have the Shackles be the pirates of the Caribbian. Or place it in the South Pacific and the Shackles are Austrailians or a more politically chaotic Japan.
Sounds like a lot of fun. I also agree with a previous response that 5 factions is plenty; dropping / combining to 3 or 4 might tighten up the plot. In my game, I plan to have only a small team of Red Mantis agents hired by the Aspis Consortium as part of that faction, and some Free Captains financing the Sargavan faction, as well as sending along some logistics advisors and thugs.
For your specific changes, consider that piracy along the Barbary Coast had been a historical danger over many decades. You could replace the Shackles Pirates with Libyan freelancers allied with the Nazis. Fun and topical!
A small detail - the cannibals on the Shiv add great flavor to that adventure (no pun intended), so you want them to make internal sense. In order for them to have had decades to devolve into savagery, they would have wrecked originally around 1860. They should probably be English or Dutch colonists or maybe even American slave traders.
Keep the Serpentfolk as is, and read about Lovecraft's Yig for some ideas.