You can find the first part of this article here.
Fortunately, when I started this project, 4E was robust enough to have most of the components already in place I needed to convert The Spire of Long Shadows from the 3.5E Age of Worms adventure path. The majority of creatures encountered in Kuluth-Mar are the product of Kyuss’ apotheosis, and they carry his contribution to the undead lexicon, the Kyuss worm. Thanks to the 4E supplement Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, I had a template called “Spawn of Kyuss” I could apply to creatures to reflect their special nature.
In some cases, it was a simple application to a standard creature with no other changes besides the undead type: “Spawn of Kyuss” + guardian naga = guardian naga worm. In other cases, it was tweaking the powers one by one to reflect the effects of Kyuss’ “gift” on his servants. In the “Knights of the Worm” challenge, the adventurers encounter three of Kyuss’ henchmen transformed by his undead nature at the moment of his apotheosis. Wanting to fully embrace the diversity of 4E, I decided the three were a dragonborn, a fire genasi, and a stone giant in life. I then combed the Compendium for creatures of the appropriate level and set about crafting them into unique creatures.
For Barnos Indara, Dreamer of the Green, I started with the level 13 solo brute havoc goristro as the base. Because both a goristro and a fire genasi are elemental humanoids, I changed the subtype and size and then focused on the powers. Aura of Bloodlust became Aura of Worm Dreams, retaining the charm keyword but also gaining the necrotic keyword for the damage. Rent Earth became Green Flames, dealing fire damage. Blood Fury was renamed Worm-Addled Fury. You can see the results of the changes below.
View attachment 56122View attachment 56123
The Spire of Long Shadows is unique for a 3.5E adventure in that it has skill challenges designed as specific encounters, long before 4E codified the term. The skill challenges are flashbacks to Kyuss’ past, revealing information to the heroes through successful Knowledge checks after they witness each vision. The heroes gain XP for each flashback as if they battled a monster of the appropriate level. It couldn’t have been any easier to turn the flashbacks into 4E skill challenges – the hard part was making them relevant.
First, the majority of information could only be gleaned through Knowledge checks, and not every character has those skills. That meant some players would feel left out or inadequate for flashback after flashback, and other characters would dominate the scene. Second, some information was repeated scene after scene, and the players might be tempted to interpret things from their own perspectives, instead of making the requisite skill checks for their characters’ perspectives. Third, the skill challenges were essential to garnering the characters enough XP to advance in level, but if they deliberately chose to ignore them or bypass them, there had to be a tangible penalty besides no XP.
Another Wizards of the Coast product to the rescue! I had long wanted to incorporate fortune cards into my game as a reward, but I needed a balancing factor as a punishment. The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond introduced despair cards, which completed the final piece of the puzzle. Now I had an incentive to participate in a skill challenge, and a punishment for not participating. I worked on some secondary skills so all the characters could feel they were contributing, then crafted a back story to explain why these skill challenges were essentially mandatory. Here is the “King Kyuss” skill challenge as an example.
Setup: This vision reveals the origins of Kyuss as a mortal ruler. Istus, the goddess of fate, has decreed that Kyuss cannot conceal his past, especially as he makes a play to dominate the future. Forewarned is forearmed, so the more the heroes learn about Kyuss and his rise to godhood, the better fortified they will be for the advent of the Age of Worms.
Complexity: 1 (4 successes before 3 failures).
Primary Skills
Failure: Each hero draws a Despair card.
Development
Each hero who elects not to participate in the skill challenge draws a Despair card.
Regardless of what the heroes do, they earn the XP for this skill challenge by Istus’ decree.
Treasure in 4E is different in form and function from treasure in 3.5E. Magic items are no longer a necessity, but they are also less powerful and more focused in their applications. Treasure parcels make sure that characters stay balanced from level to level, but they tend to break the “fourth wall” if you simply hand out magic items and let the players choose the specifics. I want my players to enjoy the story as much as the action, and I also want that illusion of reality – however miniscule – in my game. Not everything the heroes find will be useful to them; however, they know where to go to trade for what they want, so no harm, no foul.
Likewise, it’s not realistic for every single encounter to yield treasure. So I waited until I was done with everything else before I distributed treasure throughout the entire adventure, placing it where I thought it made sense to be found. The assassins in Magepoint have their payment. The mummy lord looking for a new lair has his burial accoutrements. The naga worm warlock looking for a way to escape the ziggurat has magic items and valuable objects to aid in his research. Those all make sense. The fountain of writhing worms that charms all approachers to drink and contract the worms of Kyuss disease? Nobody threw coins in that fountain. Nor did the looming overworm separate the equipment of its victims from their bodies before swallowing them.
When all is said and done, I read through the entire conversion, looking for gaps, inconsistencies, and problems. If anyone has ever acted as their own editor, they know this is truly the hardest part, no matter what else I’ve said. Your mind tends to fill in gaps and skip over things it recognizes, making you much more prone to miss things when proofing your own work. But unlike a short story or a magazine article for publication, there’s no editor in the average D&D group to proof an adventure – the DM is flying solo.
The last step in my process is choosing monster and NPC representation. As a group, we have a pretty good selection of miniatures from over the years, but they’re not stored at my house. Add to that inconvenience the fact that a lot of the creatures in this adventure are unique and therefore were never turned into minis, and I turned to pogs for most of my creatures. RP Tools has a handy token creator, which I use to crank out discs of the appropriate size, glue to cardboard, and then punch out with one-, two-, or three-inch hole punches from the craft store. Sort them into baggies by encounter, label them, and stick them in a binder.
Boom! I’m ready to run an adventure…
Fortunately, when I started this project, 4E was robust enough to have most of the components already in place I needed to convert The Spire of Long Shadows from the 3.5E Age of Worms adventure path. The majority of creatures encountered in Kuluth-Mar are the product of Kyuss’ apotheosis, and they carry his contribution to the undead lexicon, the Kyuss worm. Thanks to the 4E supplement Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead, I had a template called “Spawn of Kyuss” I could apply to creatures to reflect their special nature.
In some cases, it was a simple application to a standard creature with no other changes besides the undead type: “Spawn of Kyuss” + guardian naga = guardian naga worm. In other cases, it was tweaking the powers one by one to reflect the effects of Kyuss’ “gift” on his servants. In the “Knights of the Worm” challenge, the adventurers encounter three of Kyuss’ henchmen transformed by his undead nature at the moment of his apotheosis. Wanting to fully embrace the diversity of 4E, I decided the three were a dragonborn, a fire genasi, and a stone giant in life. I then combed the Compendium for creatures of the appropriate level and set about crafting them into unique creatures.
For Barnos Indara, Dreamer of the Green, I started with the level 13 solo brute havoc goristro as the base. Because both a goristro and a fire genasi are elemental humanoids, I changed the subtype and size and then focused on the powers. Aura of Bloodlust became Aura of Worm Dreams, retaining the charm keyword but also gaining the necrotic keyword for the damage. Rent Earth became Green Flames, dealing fire damage. Blood Fury was renamed Worm-Addled Fury. You can see the results of the changes below.
View attachment 56122View attachment 56123
The Spire of Long Shadows is unique for a 3.5E adventure in that it has skill challenges designed as specific encounters, long before 4E codified the term. The skill challenges are flashbacks to Kyuss’ past, revealing information to the heroes through successful Knowledge checks after they witness each vision. The heroes gain XP for each flashback as if they battled a monster of the appropriate level. It couldn’t have been any easier to turn the flashbacks into 4E skill challenges – the hard part was making them relevant.
First, the majority of information could only be gleaned through Knowledge checks, and not every character has those skills. That meant some players would feel left out or inadequate for flashback after flashback, and other characters would dominate the scene. Second, some information was repeated scene after scene, and the players might be tempted to interpret things from their own perspectives, instead of making the requisite skill checks for their characters’ perspectives. Third, the skill challenges were essential to garnering the characters enough XP to advance in level, but if they deliberately chose to ignore them or bypass them, there had to be a tangible penalty besides no XP.
Another Wizards of the Coast product to the rescue! I had long wanted to incorporate fortune cards into my game as a reward, but I needed a balancing factor as a punishment. The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond introduced despair cards, which completed the final piece of the puzzle. Now I had an incentive to participate in a skill challenge, and a punishment for not participating. I worked on some secondary skills so all the characters could feel they were contributing, then crafted a back story to explain why these skill challenges were essentially mandatory. Here is the “King Kyuss” skill challenge as an example.
Setup: This vision reveals the origins of Kyuss as a mortal ruler. Istus, the goddess of fate, has decreed that Kyuss cannot conceal his past, especially as he makes a play to dominate the future. Forewarned is forearmed, so the more the heroes learn about Kyuss and his rise to godhood, the better fortified they will be for the advent of the Age of Worms.
Complexity: 1 (4 successes before 3 failures).
Primary Skills
- History
- DC 22: The citizens are Suloise, with heavily freckled skin and red afros.
- DC 30: The man’s armor matches that of the ancient Flan peoples who once ruled the northern continent.
- Perception
- DC 15: The word being chanted by the crowd over and over is “Kyuss.”
- DC 22: The vision shows Kuluth-Mar at its height, about 2,000 years ago. The kingdom collapsed almost overnight, with no explanation.
- Religion
- DC 22: The man’s holy symbol is an archaic symbol for Nerull, the god of death.
- DC 22: Two deities seem to struggle over the vision – one attempting to show it, and another attempting to block it.
- DC 30: Istus demands the vision be shown, and Kyuss attempts to block her will, but as a major goddess she manages to show it to you.
- Arcana DC 22: The vision is a magical replay of a scene from history. There is no way to interact with it, but there is a malevolent energy inherent in it that demands attention. Succeeding on this check provides a +2 bonus to the next Religion check made during this skill challenge.
- Insight DC 30: The vision seems to be a test, with both a reward and a punishment, depending on how the heroes interpret it. Succeeding on this check provides a +2 bonus to the next skill check made during the skill challenge.
Failure: Each hero draws a Despair card.
Development
Each hero who elects not to participate in the skill challenge draws a Despair card.
Regardless of what the heroes do, they earn the XP for this skill challenge by Istus’ decree.
Treasure in 4E is different in form and function from treasure in 3.5E. Magic items are no longer a necessity, but they are also less powerful and more focused in their applications. Treasure parcels make sure that characters stay balanced from level to level, but they tend to break the “fourth wall” if you simply hand out magic items and let the players choose the specifics. I want my players to enjoy the story as much as the action, and I also want that illusion of reality – however miniscule – in my game. Not everything the heroes find will be useful to them; however, they know where to go to trade for what they want, so no harm, no foul.
Likewise, it’s not realistic for every single encounter to yield treasure. So I waited until I was done with everything else before I distributed treasure throughout the entire adventure, placing it where I thought it made sense to be found. The assassins in Magepoint have their payment. The mummy lord looking for a new lair has his burial accoutrements. The naga worm warlock looking for a way to escape the ziggurat has magic items and valuable objects to aid in his research. Those all make sense. The fountain of writhing worms that charms all approachers to drink and contract the worms of Kyuss disease? Nobody threw coins in that fountain. Nor did the looming overworm separate the equipment of its victims from their bodies before swallowing them.
When all is said and done, I read through the entire conversion, looking for gaps, inconsistencies, and problems. If anyone has ever acted as their own editor, they know this is truly the hardest part, no matter what else I’ve said. Your mind tends to fill in gaps and skip over things it recognizes, making you much more prone to miss things when proofing your own work. But unlike a short story or a magazine article for publication, there’s no editor in the average D&D group to proof an adventure – the DM is flying solo.
The last step in my process is choosing monster and NPC representation. As a group, we have a pretty good selection of miniatures from over the years, but they’re not stored at my house. Add to that inconvenience the fact that a lot of the creatures in this adventure are unique and therefore were never turned into minis, and I turned to pogs for most of my creatures. RP Tools has a handy token creator, which I use to crank out discs of the appropriate size, glue to cardboard, and then punch out with one-, two-, or three-inch hole punches from the craft store. Sort them into baggies by encounter, label them, and stick them in a binder.
Boom! I’m ready to run an adventure…
