D&D 5E 5e Return to Keep on the Shadowfell Ideas

[GHammy26]

Hello guys (and gals) of EN,

I am coming to you for your brilliant ideas again as I am yet to be disappointed from your suggestions.
Keep on the Shadowfell (4e) was my group’s very first campaign ever and it went well up to the point a few of the group fell out with the rest and we stopped playing this campaign. The group parted ways to play with other people which saddened me greatly (not just because I spent months drawing detailed maps etc).

The group I am DMing for currently comprises 2 of the original group and they are playing hoard of the dragon queen campaign. I have already stated to them in a very passing manner that this campaign is set in the same land 10 years after the keep on the shadowfell occurred and that their original group failed to stop the evil beneath the keep. I've said that winterhaven was removed from the map because of this failure.

FYI, I know Keep on the Shadowfell wasn’t based on the Sword Coast but I have ran that evil things have been occurring along the sword coast due to this failure, explaining that this is probably why the cult of the dragon has started gaining more power, possibly due to an alliance with some evil deities but nothing is known for certain... just whispers...

Anyway,

There are a fair amount of travelling parts to do with HotDQ and I thought they could come across the ruins of winterfell, maybe investigate what happened, find their old characters now possibly converted to serving Orcus or something...

Do you guys have any ideas what I could include when they search these ruins etc?

I think it would give them some closure as each person from the original group still talks about it to me, as I seem to be the only one who is still in contact with all of them.

I'm looking forward to hearing your ideas =D

G

p.s. they had just got to the hobgoblins on the second basement level of the keep.

 

[Tony Vargas]

5e Return to Keep on the Shadowfell Ideas

I actually ran KotS in 5e, just as a sort of proof-of-concept that 5e could handle adventures of each prior ed. It turned out not to handle KotS, Twisting Halls, or Bastards of Erebus all that well, while doing OK with the early part of Sunless Citadel and In Search of the Unknown and beautifully handling Village of Homlet. JIMHX, FWIW.

There are a fair amount of travelling parts to do with HotDQ

Yes, yes there are. :|

Do you guys have any ideas what I could include when they search these ruins etc?

If the tower, maybe just the last two chambers from KotS, accessed when the party pokes around a section of the crumbling tower, and the outer chamber just happens to have a little cave-in?

I don't recall anything interesting in the town, though. The seer's tower, maybe?

and I thought they could come across the ruins of winterfell, maybe investigate what happened, find their old characters now possibly converted to serving Orcus or something...

I think it would give them some closure as each person from the original group still talks about it to me, as I seem to be the only one who is still in contact with all of them.

p.s. they had just got to the hobgoblins on the second basement level of the keep.

The former PCs could be undead - wraiths, perhaps, or mere skeletons in their old gear, if you want to keep it easy. Kalarel might be undead, himself, by now, and has had plenty of time to die or gain levels or simply to move on, leaving behind a lesser underling.

Or, maybe one of Cultists they're chasing after precedes them there and ganks whatever remnants of Kalarel & co were there, maybe leaving a few to rise as wraiths or something to challenge the PCs?

Or, what if Orcus and Tiamat are working at cross purposes, and Kalarel and the undead former PCs now represent potential, if sinister & dangerous, allies?

 

[pukunui]

I actually ran KotS in 5e, just as a sort of proof-of-concept that 5e could handle adventures of each prior ed. It turned out not to handle KotS, Twisting Halls, or Bastards of Erebus all that well, while doing OK with the early part of Sunless Citadel and In Search of the Unknown and beautifully handling Village of Homlet. JIMHX, FWIW.

Could you please elaborate on this? What aspects of KotS did 5e not handle well?

 

[Tony Vargas]

Could you please elaborate on this? What aspects of KotS did 5e not handle well?

To be brief: sooo many kobolds... Kinda like HotDQ, really, that way.

To be fair: KotS didn't work wonderfully well in 4e, either, having a bad case of First Adventure Syndrome. Kinda like HotDQ, really, that way.


To be less brief: If you recall playing KotS in 4e, you probably remember one of the key possible screw-ups was the waterfall fight. If you took a short rest before going through the waterfall, you could probably handle it, in spite of Irontooth being an over-leveled, bad-math Elite. If you charged straight through from the fight outside, you were probably going to be overwhelmed.

Well, being outnumbered tells more heavily in 5e than it did in 4e, and 'short' rests are an hour. So you can guess how that went.

And just, in general, 5e doesn't handle the large 'set piece' encounter well, if it doesn't quickly overwhelm the party (because, say, it's a Solo or a couple of Elites, and they outnumber the monsters), it goes the other extreme as they curb-stomp it, or it may even just become static and dull. You can try breaking it up into smaller encounters or plug in optional modules or whatever.

I figure it's usually easier to just run something original on the fly, at that point.

 

[pukunui]

Hmm. OK. Thanks. Some things to think about, for sure.

 

[delericho]

Do you guys have any ideas what I could include when they search these ruins etc?

Two things:

- I would definitely do something about the map, either by adding a new level, or simply by mixing it up. You might well find this useful.

- If you have any players who went through the original, I'd make sure to include something tied to their previous adventure - a monster that they didn't kill, or keep NPCs, or a kobold shaman out for revenge, or something like that. Basically, an Easter egg for the players to enjoy if they spot it, but that won't affect things too much if they don't.

 

[Goonalan]

I appreciate that this post does nothing to answer the OP's original question but I just wanted to say that I also played KOTS, more or less just making the encounters up as I went along (with a modicum of thought) on Fantasy Grounds. The conversion is obviously pretty vanilla but we had fun with it.

So much so we continued into Thunderspire, I wrote the action up on Obsidian Portal, here-

https://the-european-union-d-d-5th-edition-campaign.obsidianportal.com/wikis/001os

If I was going to go back to Winterhaven and the Keep as part of the DQ campaign then I'd put some eggs there, or else make the PCs an offer they can't refuse from some devil/demon/undead bad guys- some curve ball that would provide them with an insight into the big picture but possibly bite them on the ass.

Have the adventurers go delving to fix the portal would be my favourite- what comes out of it... well, that's for you to decide, but whatever it is has to be bargained with, somebody has to lose their soul, or else fight for it later on in the piece...

Cheers Goonalan

 

[aco175]

If you are looking to place it in FR you can drop in in Phandelver. You can have the fallen keep there be the keep or place the keep in the woods nearby like the other goblin keep. If there has been 10 years of the portal being opened and Kalarel the BBEG living large that could change the landscape.

You could take it easy on the group and have the portal opening delayed by the last adventuring group and now the time is right for it to be opened. A rash of cultists and Zentarim have come to Phandelver pushing people around and digging in the abandoned keep. They could enslave townsfolk to dig in the lower levels the clear the rubble around the portal or such.