How did you change KotS?

[Rechan]

The topic of KotS comes up around here a lot, specifically how to run it/how to make it better. But recently I've seen a few anecdotes posted here about neat things folks have done (such as this thread). So instead of advice, I'd actually just like a thread of anecdotes about how you changed the overall story of KotS. Because it seems like many people have ran it, and many have adapted it to their tastes.

Any changes are relevant, from plot to encounter changes.

 

[Rechan]

For myself, I was DMing for a group who wanted to run through the WotC published adventures so I did what I could to liven it up.

Character Hooks

Two PCs had been hired as bodyguards/escorts by a noblewoman in Fallcrest. A cousin of Lord Padriag, her daughter had some months back went to visit Padriag's daughter. However, due to the kobolds disrupting trade and travel, no word had been heard back from her daughter, and the noblewoman was concerned.

The Warlock PC was tasked by his pact Patron to release a fey beholden to her who was trapped in the Keep's basement (A11).

Two PCs were seeking the Mentor hook - Douven was the adopted father of one PC and the adventuring buddy of another. He was a month late meeting them, and they were looking for him.

Sidequests The noblewoman's daughter had disappeared from Padriag's care and joined Kalarel's cult. Padriag's daughter was suspicious of this, and confessed to the noblewoman - and the noblewoman hired the PCs to find her.

After the initial encounter with the kobolds, the PCs stumbled across two gnomes on the road. They informed the PCs that they were hired by the local Fae lord to track down a gnome who had offended their patron. This was Asgrid, and as soon as the PCs defeated him, the gnomes appeared and claimed him, giving the PCs a token.

Irontooth had deposed the previous leader of the Kobold lair, changing their ways to disruptive and dangerous. This meant the previous leader of the kobolds - a devout wyrmpriest - had been kicked out. Wanting to wrest control back from the death-goblin, he approached the PCs and offered them a back way into the kobold lair if they would slay Irontooth.

Plot

Since I was intending to transition into Thunderspire Labyrinth (which I was also tweaking), I had several hooks set here. In the Feywild side of Thunderspire had a court of fey known as the Parliment of Jagged Crags. One member, Cliffstrider, was an ambitious satyr who wanted influence. Kalarel had approached him, offering to siphon power from the fey trapped in the Keep's basement (and give that power to Cliffstrider) if the satyr gave him some protection - Kalarel got a fae bodyguard, just in case some holy rollers showed up, the death priest wanted some non-undead. Cliffstrider also had a slave bride, Ninaren's daughter. Kalarel found her mother and told her that if she helped him, he would tell her where her daughter is, and use his influence to help free her (a lie).

Kalarel did not correspond with letters. His instructions to Irontooth was a magic mouth set into a skull, and Irontooth had several. He had a colleagual relationship with the Vecna-obsessed wizard in Thunderspire, and was coordinating/trading information with him as well - the wizard's correspondence was in a whispering stone that slithered its words into the user's ear.

Encounters

I skipped the second ambush. The kobold lair was changed to a single encounter inside a kobold warren - the previous leader led the PCs into a secret passage, and allowed them to get the jump on Irontooth and his retinue. The burial site had a wraith-like entity present (this was before WotC revised that encounter).

In the Keep, I used a skill challenge of surviving the night during a rest, where the events of Sir Keegan's slaughter played out. The goblins had various large vermin in cages that were released throughout the first level of the Keep. Splug (one of the PCs) helped with the Area 4 encounter. I put various bat-monsters in area 9 and removed the encounters in areas 10 & 11.

One sweeping change I made was replacing several of the hobgoblin encounters with Kalarel's cultists; the hobgoblins only appeared in the room with the tables, resting after bringing Kalarel slaves for sacrifice. One cultist was in area 5 - using the ghosts of Keegan's wife and daughters to attack the PCs, while maintaining a ward to keep them out of the second level. The next room contained several other cultists. I also spiced things up with various fancy zombies from Dragon Mag instead of all normal zombies/minions.

Misc

The mirror at the burial site was a link to the Shadowfell; it reflected back the Shadowfell's echo of whatever the mirror would normally reflect. Kalarel wanted it for his purposes; shattering the mirror would have made a far easier gateway than the ritual he had to prepare. Douven was actually in the torture chamber, tortured to tell Kalarel where the burial site was located and any lore pertaining to the mirror.

 

[wedgeski]

As the first 4E module I played, I really wanted to leave it alone to get a feel for the system, warts and all. However I'd just put together a brand new group of quite experienced roleplayers and I realised pretty quickly that the simple hack'n'slash and villain-of-the-day nature of the adventure wasn't going to cut it.

Spoilers below.

I made Winterhaven a settlement built by the remnants of the knightly order that was expelled from the Keep when Keegan went mental (this may have been part of the actual adventure as well, I don't recall). His purgatory was a curse laid on him by his fellow knights as they left, and the only way to remove it was to receive forgiveness from one of his own bloodline. The only remaining Keegan descendant was a drunk old farmer from the town (I co-opted one of the existing NPC's for this), tortured by nightmares of the carnage and going slowly insane.

Keegan imparted much of this to the PC's during their first foray, although he hid the truth of what he'd done as much as he could. They duly returned to WInterhaven, researched and discovered the farmer's connection, convinced him over the pleas of his wife to return to the Keep with them, and then had to protect him when he refused to grant Keegan forgiveness and the old blackguard decided to kill him for it. (That fight was the first 4E combat where we all realised exactly how cool a 4E fight could be, and still stands to this day as one of the best I've run!).

That was the thrust of the adventure for us. Keegan's destruction opened the portal to the Shadowfell and flooded the lower levels of the keep with its denizens, which started spilling out and threatening the countryside. At that point the PC's became the clean-up crew and the module *did* become the pure hack'n'slash fest it's become famous for. Since we were all acclimatising to the system, and since the Keegan episode had been quite satisfying, no-one seemed to mind.

 

[Klaus]

1 - Keep the top level of the Keep pretty much as-is.

2 - When getting to the second level, keep the encounter with the hobgoblins. Scrap the rest. Keep the encounter with the room full of undead.

3 - Keep the map for the ruined temple (the one with the four obelisks). Scrap the creatures. Scrap the entire last encounter (save the map for some other adventure). In the ruined temple map, place the deathlock wight and the minion skeletons from the revised last encounter (available in the D&D website).

4 - This is the big one:

Scrap human Kalarel. He is now a Huge black dragon aiming at dracolichdom (why Huge? Because it's awesome!), bent on opening the rift to the Shadowfell and becoming Orcus' exarch. Place him in the ruined temple map, in the middle of the broken pillars (he must stay there to complete the ritual). Because his life-energy is being siphoned away, this Kalarel has the stats of a young black dragon.

This serves two purposes:

- Keeps the more dynamic map for the final encounter.
- Gives a dragon for the PCs to fight in a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I just ended my 3 year campaign that had begun with using Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth, and as I prep my next game, I'm thinking about perhaps using the Keep once again.

I noticed while reading the Dungeon 186 article Backdrop: Mistwatch something very intriguing. This village as described in the article (located on the shores of Lake Wintermist, north of the KotS) shares a lot of similarities to the village of Barovia from Expedition To Castle Ravenloft. They both are surrounded by dense fog and mist... they both are overrun by the walking dead... they both have a Lord that descended into madness and evil... they both have the Lord's castle on a rock outcropping overlooking the village... they both have a coterie of strange gypsy people led by an old woman who might have had something to do with what's going on.

Basically... Mistwatch seems to be a perfect analogous village to Barovia that would allow me to incorporate Expedition To Castle Ravenloft into the Nentir Vale PoL setting... substituting much of the Transylvanian aspects of the original module into more classic PoL. And one of these possible substitutions is to change the ruins of Lysaga Hill to the Keep on the Shadowfell.

I've not planned much out yet, other than using Winterhaven as the starting location of the PCs... but it certainly makes me curious about the ways I could incorporate KotS, Backdrop: Mistwatch and Expedition To Castle Ravenloft together into a new campaign set several years after my previous one.

 

[jbear]

I used the Forgotten Realms variation of KotS. It was our secondary campaign, run when some players couldn't make it to the game. So I ran something I didn't have to prep or think much about.

I had an NPC paladin from the Order of Keegan sitting in the tavern. He wants to restore the stain Keegan brought to his Order's name by wiping the ghosts from the Keep. He is praying for a sign. He however wouldn'y talk to the NPC's til he was brought the Mirror. This begins a Skill CHallenge to win him over. The challenge of course amongst other things involved a good old fashioned arm wrestle!

The ' recently rich merchant' (name? Bairwin?) is an agent of Kalarel with a church of Shar beneath the shop where other secret members of the cult worship. He supplies Kalarel with equipment, food etc. He works with the Elf Ranger (name?). Together they hose-napped the mayor's prize stallion which the ranger keeps out at her hut. Unless freed the mayor begrudgingly obeys Bairwin's orders and will subtly work against the PCs.

The PCs first dealt with rescuing their mentor, Douven. Kalarel's shade appeared as one of the monsters at the sight as per the revised version. This gave a first early contact with Kalarel. Douven tells them to take the mirror to the Paladin. I gave it an important role in the final encounter which escapes my memory.

PCs gained Paladin in skill challenge and went with hin to deal with Irontooth. The paladin was however killed in that encounter. They brought his body back to town, the Mayor receiving them, taking the body from them and celebrating a massive feast in their honour. That night a shadow creature (as per Dungeon FR version monsters) attempts to steal the mirror. However the PCs grew suspicious of the mayor and slept in a different room. They awoke and managed to trap the creature who after some torture revealed Bairwin's connection.

The next day they went to confront Bairwin. He invited them to speak privately in his chapel below where he offered them 4 times the reward money if they simply walked away from town and never looked back. All they had to do was swear it upon the altar of Shar.

They refused and a battle ensued with more shadow creatures hidden in the wings and Bairwin. Also the now undead Paladin joined the fight, brought back to life with a darkritual during the celebration feast. The Ranger elf set fire to the store and the stairway, sealing their entrance. They won and managed to find the secret entrance out with Bairwin as hostage.

They used him as a guide to the Keep, gaining important information from him. I used an additional encounter with a mix of Kobold guards and members of the gang that is meant to be a hook to the next module outside the entrance. A kobold managed to escape.

For the Keep I created a random list of spooky events inspired by Kalarels story and the 3.5 Heroes of Horror book. After each short rest something spooky happened that challenged the PCs will or insight etc depending on what happened. Failing these spook attacks had negative side effects but once 3 of them had been overcome in a row you became immune and received a positive boon. Not dissimilarfrom what they came up with for the Shadowfell.

Inside I wiped the entire uneccessary East wing of lvl 1 (where the Kruthiks are). I swapped out hobgoblins for shadow creatures.

The escaped Kobold released Bairwin and he raised the alarm. This meant they encountered a prepared ambush as they descended to lvl 2. They were already beaten up badly so they fled back to Ser Keegan's room to hide and rest the night. Unfortunately with a very unlucky search roll the Shadow creatures were able to track them and they had to duke it out. Things went badly for them on the dice and the entire party was wiped out.

It was lots of fun how we playedit. I'm skimming over heaps of detail but it didn't take all that much to bring the adventure to life.

 

[Will Doyle]

I decided that the Shadowfell gate could only be opened during a thunderstorm, and Kalarel's ritual took days to perform, so he needed to summon a magical storm. One of my players was running a paladin of Kord, so I had Kalarel use a stolen, storm-summoning relic called the "eye of storms". Aside from giving the paladin a divine purpose, this also meant I could do a cheesy, Ghostbusters-style cloudmass swirling above the keep for the final stages of the adventure.

I introduced Kalarel through a flashback where one of the PCs actually played him (as I mentioned on the other thread). I ran the rest pretty much as is, but right at the end, I had the eye of storms tear the place apart with Kord's wrath. The PCs had to flee, and make various skill checks to avoid tumbling boulders, collapsing statues, and so on.

One nice unplanned touch was the goblins. The players got into all sorts of arguments about keeping captives. They spared Splug, for example, but also spared another goblin called Azrig (whose name quickly mutated around the table into Arserag). When they escaped the keep, Arserag was waiting for them with a horde of goblins. All the way through the battle they were expecting Splug to switch sides, but he stuck with them, and is still with them to this day.

 

[jodyjohnson]

General modifications:
1. Eliminate encounters that don't advance the story or seem out of place (basically the encounters added for XP advancement over story, to fill rooms, or just to show off new 4e tech). Experience was tweaked up to compensate.

2. Halve hit points of any creature that was mookish - add minions to taste. We don't enjoy needing 3-4 hits to take out run-on-the-mill skeletons, kobolds, goblins, and hobgoblins. For each half-hp mook add a minion.

3. Adjust defenses to current math - especially the defenses of the main mobs at the 1-3 level. 22 AC on a Level 3 grunt is too high and very grindy. For goblins and kobolds watch their reflex. Melee characters are +7 to +10 at 1st - ACs of 15 to 17 at Level 1. Casters are +4 to +6 - F/R/W should be balanced around 13 at 1st.

Specific to KotS - do the entire second level in one run. Use the items from Keegan to restow a full daily/encounter/surge reset when needed. I surprise refreshed the party right before the last 3 encounters.



I'm tying everything much stronger to the Orcus storyline. It starts in KotS and then ends in the Epic trio.

The Heroic tier theme was building toward Pyramid of Shadows mixed with the PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus (a shadow pyramid prison enclosed the entire valley in the SotC storyline).

H1 - The party is hired by a descendent of Vyrellis to find the Sword of Light to free Vyrellis' spirit from the Pyramid of Shadows. Search KotS for the sword of light last in possession of the Cult of Orcus. Incidently stop their current plot. Unfortunately no sword.

H2 - find the sword under Sharn. Vecna ties switched to Orcus. Sword in the Tower of Secrets.

H3 - Solos changed to 6 Colossus solos with key breakpoints only defeatable by the Sword of Light. Encounters set stage for colossus fight, recovery of the shards of Vyrellis and gaining the three keys. Instead of imprisoning X the Pyramid had been the prison of an Aspect of Orcus.


Paragon's theme will be finding the items and rituals needed to stop strengthened Orcus. 3 primary locations (P1, P2, P3) and learn of his plot.

 

[Hactarcomp]

I didn't change a great deal about the structure or setting, as it involved me easing myself into the roll of DM and the players getting acquainted with the system. Thematically, I changed a great deal, given that my campaign is about attempts by the Primordials (who weren't nearly as badly defeated as the propagandists would maintain) to restart the Dawn War and the God's reactions to this. I changed the idea from opening a portal to the shadowfell to opening a portal to the Elemental Chaos. I replaced the undead monsters with elementals of various stripes or creatures from the Elemental Chaos. I replaced the kobolds at the beginning with Bullywogs, given their association with the primordials and (mutual) hatred of the gods. The dragon grave site turned up a half completed tale of the battle between the Raven Queen and Umboras (two of the PCs are divine followers of the Raven Queen, a paladin and an avenger).

I kept all of the encounters, although with the undead monsters changed to elemental ones, including those that, in retrospect, didn't make a whole lot of sense (the blue slime for example, as they did not go to Thunderspire Labyrinth afterward), although I am glad that I kept the gelatinous cube, as it led to a really enjoyable encounter.

The results of the adventure played out a bit differently than the module led me to plan for. The players did not take out all the goblins, so I let the goblins raid the town during their escape after the death of the hobgoblin warchief, which added an interesting sense of consequence, as an NPC that two of the PCS had been hitting on was burned out of her farm and had to leave. (Said NPC was Ninaran, who I removed from the undead encounter and is now currently working with the PCs as a scout in the current adventure.)

 

[Dykstrav]

I made several changes to Keep on the Shadowfell as presented--I actually didn't run it until last year, so many of the people in my group had already played it. I wanted to give the old hands a few surprises, and there's also a good bit of DM fiat in wanting to change up some things to suit my style and tastes.

First off, I actually started the campaign off with "the Twisted Halls," the mini-dungeon presented in the D&D Essentials red box. I did this so that I could cut some of the less interesting encounters later on, and also to give the players the sense that something big was going on--multiple necromancers just seemed more interesting to me than a lone madman in the ruined Keep.

I had it set up so that Malareth was an associate of Kalarel, and they were both in the region looking for magic of necromantic significance. When the characters dealt with Malareth, they had strong leads (maps, old books, correspondence with Kalarel's group) that something was afoot in Winterhaven and off they went.

I cut the encounters on the King's Road map. Kobolds laying in wait were not only sort of boring, but I just couldn't imagine it within the nature of kobolds--it didn't fit my notions of kobold psychology or society. They build carefully trapped warrens, they don't organize into bands of raiders. They did defend their warren when the characters invaded it, but there were fewer kobolds and more booby traps--several snares in the undergrowth and grass that immobilize charging invaders and even some punji sticks in the bushes.

In the Keep itself, I "moved" area 3 of the first level into a lower cavern with a waterfall leading outside. Area 3 on the map became some catacombs, and I used the map of the Toadwallow Caverns from the Dungeon Master's Kit to represent an entrance at the base of the hill that lead into the catacombs. I've always hated the idea of dungeons having only one entrance and one exit, so I put four additional means of entrance and egress at various points in the complex.

That's just the mechanical considerations... I made several changes to the narrative.

Kalarel was given a bit more "meat" in the story. The characters knew of Kalarel as a kindly, sage cleric of Pelor that was semi-retired in Fallcrest. About a decade ago, the Nentir Vale was stricken by the White Plague, an illness that caused the eyes to puff out and leak blood and pus before killing the victim. As a cleric of Pelor, Kalarel worked tirelessly to fight the plague and help the suffering. The White Plague was eventually halted, but not before many Vale folk died--Kalarel's young daughter, Minarra, among them. In despair, Kalarel moved to a cottage outside of Fallcrest to live out the rest of his days.

What the public didn't know was that the White Plague was halted when Kalarel betrayed his vows and turned to Orcus for aid. Orcus' agents agreed to halt the plague if Kalarel fudged the burial rites on the extant victim's bodies, allowing them to be raised as undead at a later time. Feeling that Pelor had abandoned him, Kalarel agreed. The White Plague ended, but Kalarel did not escape unscathed. His daughter died, and he interpreted the event as an act of retribution from Pelor. He took his daughter's body into the wilderness, where he used rituals to prevent it from decaying while searching for a ritual powerful enough to restore her life.

Kalarel's ultimate goal wasn't to "take over the world" or anything of the sort. All he wanted was to return his daughter to life, and over time, he stopped caring about the implications of dealing further with Orcus' followers. He got to the point where he didn't care about unleashing a horde of undead from beneath Shadowfell Keep, he believed that Orcus would be so pleased that he would raise Minarra from the dead.

I gradually revealed this information to the players through a set of "flashbacks" based on trained skills. For example, when they players asked about the White Plague, I did a flashback where the characters trained in Heal had actually worked with Kalarel to fight it, whereas the characters trained in Endurance were actually survivors of the plague. It was a short, ten-minute thing where we sketched out a scene of tending the stricken when Kalarel got word that his daughter died, then retreated to the chapel to perform last rites over the body. In another flashback, everyone trained in Religion had attended Kalarel's retirement ceremony, where the people of Fallcrest had gathered to honor his contributions and the temple gave him a formal send-off. In yet another, the characters trained in Arcana and History went through a day in their formal schooling where they heard the legends about Shadowfell Keep before they became adventurers.

I feel that it was a great way to communicate information, the players got into it and it was more interesting than boxed text.