Hey guys! I am a DM with not much time on my hands, and want to run a pre-made module. I googled the "best modules," and Rise of the Runelords is highly regarded as among the very best ever, period.
Here's my question: how easily (or not easily) could I port Rise of the Runelords to the Dark Sun campaign setting? For anyone unfamiliar, Dark Sun is a gritty, ruthless, post-apocalyptic desert wasteland of a world. Magic is forbidden, equipment is brittle, and survival itself can be part of the adventure.
I've read the one-paragraph adventure synopsis, about goblins, cultists, ogres, giants, and a sorceror-king, and some of those themes seem like I could potentially port them. Dark Sun's city-states are run by sorceror-kings, ogres could be converted to Thri-Kreen insectoids, cultists could be desert cannibals, etc.
Thoughts? Thanks!!
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"I am a DM with not much time on my hands..." and "Could I port Rise of the Runelords to the Dark Sun campaign setting..." do not belong in the same paragraph.
I suppose if you were committed, it could be done but the effort would be herculean (and might result in you actually being committed as in to an asylum.)
My memories of Dark Sun are dim, lost in the depths of the time before time, etc. so my judgement may be off. But while Dark Sun has some similarities to Varisia (place were RotRL occurs) - there are city states, and ruins of lost civilizations - there are really challenging differences: the AP assumes a temperate climate and at least one book depends on weather that will not exist in Dark Sun. And there will be quite of bit of work shifting the monsters and NPC's to Dark Sun alternates. Thri-Kreen might replace Ogres in the story but that'll take quite a bit of re-writing to pull off. Across the AP, much of the "read this to the players" sections in terms of background or description would also need to be overhauled.
You could tell a RotRL inspired story in Dark Sun but not very much of the actual material in the AP would be directly usable.
I have to ask - why would you want to? If you like Dark Sun (and don't get me wrong I always thought it was cool - the feral, cannibalistic halflings made me giggle with joy) why wouldn't you run an adventure already set there? Converting 2E or other published Dark Sun material to 3.5 or PF would be a lot easier.
Mummy's Mask or Legacy of Fire might be your best bets:)
Curse of the Crimson Throne could also work, it would require some work and thought as well but not as much as RotRL would, plus its really really good, but yeah your best bet is finding old school Dark Sun modules and converting them to pathfinder (using 3.5 edition and Kasatha as your guide posts for Thri-Kreen)
RoRL would require a lot of work, I agree. If you were to do it though, I would replace the Runelords with some of the dead Champions of Rajaat.
Ogres I would change to the weakest form of giant you can get instead of thri-kreen, because ogrekin (half-ogres) appear in the Hook Mountain Massacre module, which would probably correspond to half-giants in Dark Sun. The distorted humanness of the ogres is pretty key to the module's flavor.
Goblins could probably be replaced with especially cannibalistic or feral halflings.
In the final module, you could probably replace the denizens of leng with psurlons who are trying to open up a portal to the astral plane with their artifact.
Yeah, Runelords would not be an easy port. Mummy's Mask and Legacy of Fire work a lot better because of the desert setting. One off the wall suggestion? Depending entirely on whether you'd find the premise of ancient spaceships and technology compatible with your fantasy, Iron Gods might be a pretty easy conversion. It's essentially set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, tech stuff tends to be timeworn (i.e. falling apart), etc.
Dark Sun/Athas is poor in metal and hardly technological, so I wouldn't recommend Iron Gods.
Legacy of Fire involves a fair amount of planar connections. (Fortunately, these tend to either be with elemental creatures like genies, or demiplane sort of stuff that could be ported into the gray or just on Athas itself). You would need to figure out what to do about the jump to the plane of Fire though.
Amazon has Darksun modules for a reasonable price:-)
I don't think it would be an easy fit. First, there is the conversion of the PF system to darksun. Athas.org did some good conversions to 3.5 which you could move to PF but a lot of PF stuff doesn't fit.
Second, the setting of ROTRL has some callbacks to the dark sun setting; however, the environments aren't the best. If you were to set it in dark sun, then I would suggest moving it far out of the tyr region. (the valley of dusk and fire maps show another continent across the sea of silt that may serve your purpose or perhaps in the land of the mindlords of the lost sea).
Third, if you are looking at running an adventure in darksun with the 3.5/pf system, then it would probably be easier to take some of the free adventures on athas.org and string them together (the rise of dregoth series is a great high level adventure to finish with).
forth, if you are dead set on using a PF adventure path in dark sun, then Legacy of Fire is probably more in tune (there is some plane of fire aspects but athas has always been closely tied to the inner planes). Otherwise, I would suggest the Serpent skull adventure path (make the jungle the forest ridge and have the island in the first adventure be an oasis with the party trapped there by a sandstorm) or the slumbering tsar adventure path (placed near the fields of the dead and substituting either dregoth or the dragon for orcus with elemental clerics for the holy groups)
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I guess you could set it in the far future of Athas, after the Sorcerer-Kings have all been overthrown, and have it be about one of them coming back, but then you kind of lose a lot of the point of playing Dark Sun in the first place.
I don't think it would be an easy fit. First, there is the conversion of the PF system to darksun. Athas.org did some good conversions to 3.5 which you could move to PF but a lot of PF stuff doesn't fit.
Second, the setting of ROTRL has some callbacks to the dark sun setting; however, the environments aren't the best. If you were to set it in dark sun, then I would suggest moving it far out of the tyr region. (the valley of dusk and fire maps show another continent across the sea of silt that may serve your purpose or perhaps in the land of the mindlords of the lost sea).
What page is this other continent? I can't find references to it.